NaturallyScott
At least once a week, I’ll bring you the very best of America’s spectacular world of nature — from birds to mammals, to reptiles and amphibians. From soaring mountains to endless plains, from rugged coastlines to rivers and streams.
Each episode will feature an expert guest — a ranger, a researcher, a birder, or an adventurer — someone who has seen what we want to see and been where we want to go.
NaturallyScott
E58 Wade Crowfoot – Water, Wildfire & the Future of Conservation in California
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In this episode of Naturally Scott, Scott Harris sits down with Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, for a wide-ranging conversation about conservation, climate challenges, and the future of one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.
Wade shares how a childhood spent outdoors in the Midwest shaped his path into public service, and how his work now spans everything from wildfire prevention and water management to protecting California’s vast natural landscapes. Together, Scott and Wade explore the realities of managing natural resources in a state of 40 million people—where conservation, development, and climate pressures all collide.
The conversation dives into:
How California is tackling wildfire through forest management and prescribed burns
The future of water in the West, including drought, desalination, and the Colorado River
The surprising resilience of nature—from salmon returning to restored rivers to rewilding efforts
The role of technology and innovation in conservation
Why protecting nature ultimately means protecting ourselves
From redwood forests to Monterey Bay, this episode offers a fascinating look at the challenges—and hope—facing conservation in the modern world.
👉 Stay up to date and get access to bonus content by joining us here: https://naturallyscott.kit.com/5fd12c6752
Hello and welcome to this edition of Naturally Scott. I am your host, Scott Harris, and today's guest is a fascinating man, Aid Crowfoot, who is the secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. So he runs a small little staff of 26,000 people. He's been a part of Governor Newsom's cabinet in California since 2019, which is where the California Natural Resources Agency is based, obviously. They've got 26 departments, commissions, and conservancies, and their mandate is to protect, manage, and restore the state's environment and its vast natural, cultural, and historical resources, which is a tremendous job. One of the things that I found most interesting is that uh Secretary Crowfoot is in charge of Cal Fire and the state park system in California, which I was a huge fan of in all the years that I lived out there. We're gonna talk about a lot, a lot of stuff. We're gonna talk about wildland and the environment, we're gonna talk about some critters, and we're gonna talk a lot about water and fire, which are two massive issues in the state of California, and both which fall under his purview. So take a listen um to what uh Wade Crowfoot has to say, and I hope you enjoy this, and I will look forward to getting some feedback from you guys after you've watched it. Thanks, take care, have a great day, and stay curious. Welcome to this edition of Naturally Scott. I'm your host, Scott Harris, and we've got uh a terrific show lined up for you today. Um, Secretary Wade Crowfoot of the California Natural Resources Agency has generously agreed to join us. And um I've lined up some some questions, but Wade and I have talked a little bit. We're just mostly going to have an organic conversation and kind of see where things go. Um so, Wade, thank you so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm excited to talk about many of my favorite subjects, really.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I'm excited too. And as a matter of fact, I'm 68 now. My wife and I retired here to South Carolina six years ago, but we both spent our entire lives previous to that in Southern California. So, um, and I spent a lot of time in Sacramento. Um, I was involved in politics back home, and so spent a lot of time up there and and um and had a blast doing it. And so, what I would love to do, if it's if it's cool with you, is talk just a little bit about your background, and then we can talk about the California Natural Resources Agency, um, if that works for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I'll just share a little bit about who I am and where I came from and how I came to this job, if that makes sense. That'd be honest. And I have a couple of notes. So if you forget anything, I can probably prompt you. Sounds good. Well, listen, I started my life and I was born and raised in the Midwest. I'm a proud Michigander. I grew up in a college town, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and both my parents were educators. So every summer we'd decamp up to northern Ontario, about seven hours north of where we lived. And we spent about a month for 15, 16 straight years on a cabin on a beautiful lake in Ontario, no running water or electricity. So I, you know, I think about the stuff that I do now on conservation and nature, and really think that the origin of of the of why I care about this stuff was was really those summers on Loon Lake in Ontario. Fishing, blueberry picking, hiking, doing a little bit of all of that. Um went to school at the University of Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_03Oh did you drive through the UP to get to Ontario? Yes, yes. Okay, because my mom's side of the family is from the UP.
SPEAKER_01Oh, the upper peninsula of Michigan is beautiful, and anyone that hasn't been to Pictured Rocks National Seashore is is missing out. It's it's a gorgeous land. It is beautiful. Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt you, keep going. Yeah, no worries. So, you know, fast forward, I did my undergrad college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Proud Badger. And during that time, I did some interesting things, I think. Uh at least I'd consider them interesting. I took off a semester with a good friend of mine who I was working at a summer camp with, and we traveled around the United States, basically hitting up every national park that we could see. Got out to California, stayed in the backyard of a friend who was going to UC Berkeley and was just blown away by by Northern California. Also went abroad, studied environment in Costa Rica, some other things, but really made my way back out to Northern California in part just to be out in this incredibly beautiful part of the world. I had done some hiking and camping that first trip. And when I landed in San Francisco after after college, a lot of my weekends, vacations were spent just exploring California and always thought it would be a you know few-year adventure and then I'd make maybe make it make it back uh toward the Midwest. Well, I never did, and you know, three decades plus, I'm doing what I'm doing here in California.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think California's probably lucky to have you now. Um, a couple of things. Number one, did you lose all your friends when you went from Michigan to Wisconsin?
SPEAKER_01Uh, no, you know, I I would have lost my friends had I gone to Ohio State because that's the real um that's the real rivalry. But um, yeah, Madison and NR were both great college towns. My dad had worked for the University of Michigan, and I had summer jobs around that university. So I wanted to do something similar but different. Um so I got up there. People haven't been to Madison, Wisconsin, it's just incredible on the isthmus between two lakes. Uh, great people, great culture up there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was just talking to a friend of mine this morning who moved to Wisconsin a few years, same time we moved out here, and he just loves it. Just absolutely loves the whole thing about it. Now, I understand if if I have my my notes correct, that Big Basin State Park was uh a bit of an epiphany moment for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I was a Midwestern kid, so I'd never seen Redwoods until Big Basin. And actually, that was the first state park in California history. And I got down there with some friends and we did a backcountry camp uh for a night back there. And man, there's there's nothing like walking through the redwoods on planet Earth. It's still my favorite thing to do. Easily my my favorite plant in the world uh are those huge redwood trees. So that was really one of the most formative experiences I had in in California nature. But of course, the amazing thing about California is you could spend your whole life exploring new places and new wonders in this state of ours.
SPEAKER_03You really can. It is uh it is borderline unbelievable um how many different things there are in California, including, of course, the Redwoods. Um Steve Metz. Do you know Steve? Yeah. From Save the Redwoods League? Yep. I think that's the name. Yeah, Steve has been a guest on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01Oh, awesome. Yeah, I mean, Save the Redwood, one of the earliest, earliest conservation organizations in California, along with the Semper Virance Fund. Those two entities were formed, as I've been educated, to really save the old growth redwood, which are, you know, we're almost getting cut down. About 5% of old growth redwood exists today. And it would have been 0% had it not been for those two organizations.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's they're doing some great work up there. My wife and I back in 1981 did a six-month camping trip and visited all 48 states and um four or five Canadian provinces and a little bit of Mexico. But the trip started in the Redwoods. We left Southern California, went up in the Redwoods and started there, and it was a it was a it was a spectacular beginning to the trip. Um and really uh it was a special thing. And and I agree with you, by the way. Um, I don't know if you're a John Steinbeck fan, uh, but he wrote a book called Travels with Charlie, where he and his dog drove around the country for three months, and uh one of the great chapters is when he writes about visiting the Redwoods.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, you know, you and I have so much in common. My big uh inspirational book, which I have here, uh at least I thought I had, um, well, it's somewhere on my bookshelf there, is Blue Highways by William Lee's Heat Moon, which is a traveling. Absolutely, right? Uh, how he only took back back, you know, back highways, stayed off the interstate. So actually, my buddy Dan and I, that's what we did for six months, similar journey to yours, that formative one that brought me out to California. We we stayed off the interstates, and it was amazing. I mean, every every state in the union has something to offer, both in terms of nature and of course people and culture. It's it was an incredible trip.
SPEAKER_03We had we had two rules on ours. We stayed off the interstates and we didn't drive in the dark. Um not that we were afraid to drive in the dark, but we didn't want to miss anything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So that's awesome. Um we broke those rules with very rare exceptions. Keeping them at 100% was hard, but it was six straight months of camping, and um, and it was just spectacular. So um I I understand how much you love that trip and how formative it can be. And uh and Blue Highways is uh is a great book. It's just uh I I've I've probably read Blue Highways three or four times. I've read Travels with Charlie 40 times. It's usually a Christmas present to myself to reread Travel. And actually, I have the world's largest collection of Travels with Charlie. I probably have 400 volumes in 50 different languages. I have parts from the original from uh Rosinante, the truck that he drove around the country. Now, my wife says the reason I have the largest collection in the world is because I have the only collection in the world. Um but I am I'm quite I'm quite happy to take that title. All right, we're gonna move into uh your career and what you're doing there with natural resources, but tell me a little bit about fly fishing and um I think backcountry skiing is on the on the uh socket.
SPEAKER_01Hey, I mean, I'm I'm not like an extraordinary outdoor athlete. I just love to learn new things. So, you know, I grew up uh rod and reel fishing and never uh had fly fished until really the pandemic when I bought myself a$100 kit off the internet and taught myself to cast in the park across the street from where we live in Sacramento. So I call myself the worst fly fisher that I've ever gone fishing with, but it's super fun. Um same thing with, you know, I've I'm my my family grew up camping, got into more backcountry camping in uh in California, and then tried my hand at backcountry skiing pretty recently. So it's like, you know, actually both caught cross-country but bringing downhill skis into the backcountry. Um so I'm just somebody who who loves getting out getting outdoors, you know, like like so many of us, whether it's walking my dog down at the American River uh where I live in Sacramento or getting up in the Sierras with my daughters. We just went skiing yesterday. I get to travel a lot for this job. So I'm always I'm always on the lookout for visiting new projects in in new places. Um it's just amazing. I mean, we we live in an incredible world.
SPEAKER_03It it really is. I was just in Sacramento last month. I we started a trip in Calispel, Montana, and then went through five states and wound up flying home out of Sacramento. We've got family in Pine Grove. Oh, nice about an hour. Wow, I want your lifestyle. Pardon?
SPEAKER_01I want your lifestyle. You know what?
SPEAKER_03I'm not willing to give it up quite yet. I am gonna do a quick shout-out to a friend of mine I've known since 1969. His name is Randy Vance, and I was just out at his place as well. He lives right outside of uh Lassen National Park. It's got 110 acres up there, and he is a lifetime fly fisherman. As fanatical now, um, he and his dad did it when we were kids in junior high school and high school, and he still does it. It's still his favorite hobby. So he'll listen to this show, and I just want to give him a little shout out, and and uh maybe one day I'll hook the two of you up. Um I'll tell you who's a great fish.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful country up there. Beautiful country.
SPEAKER_03I'll tell you who's a great fly fisherman if you have an interest at some point. Uh Jeff Dean, who used to be the sheriff in Ventura County for eight years, um is retired and fly fishes all the time. Um he absolutely loves it. Absolutely loves it. It's not a it's not a hobby I've gotten into or a sport or whatever you want to call it, but nonetheless. So let's shift into your professional side. Let's find out a little bit about that. Um, was there an epiphany moment for you in conservation, a moment where you said, I'm gonna do this instead of accounting? Or whatever you learned at the London School of Economics?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I didn't I wasn't one of those, one of those rare people that knew what I was gonna do very early on and then plotted to it. I sort of found my way. My dad was uh professor of natural resources, actually, at the University of Michigan. So you'd think, oh, that's pretty logical. But um, you know, while I spent all that time outdoors growing up, I was really into politics and government. Studied that in in undergrad, came out west. I was working at like a small consulting firm doing economic development work for public sector like cities and such. Um, then I went and worked at a uh political polling firm, went to work for local government in San Francisco. So it was a little bit more on like the politics-government side, but I had this whole side of me that was out was doing outdoor stuff on the weekends when I could, loving nature. And um, it wasn't until actually it was then mayor Gavin Newsom, uh, who I was working for, uh, invited us. He had just been re-elected to be mayor, and he said, Hey, if anybody has any suggestions around how we can improve our operation, get more done, let me know. So I pitched him on this idea of being his environmental advisor because we had a public safety advisor and a public education advisor and a health advisor, but we didn't have an environment advisor in it being San Francisco. So I made the shift from being like the deputy chief of staff to being full on and uh on environment and supporting our Department of the Environment, et cetera. So that was a big shift. And then I went on to work for the Environmental Defense Fund for a little while and then have worked for the last two governors.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's fantastic. So when Gavin gets elected in three years, you're looking at Secretary of the Interior? Is that the uh is that the next step?
SPEAKER_01No, I'm I'm I'm I'm focused in the here and now, which might you might expect me to say, but I also love the West. Um I I think the world of Gavin Newsom for what it's worth. I mean, I've worked for him as as mayor and then you know continue to stay in contact. And then I've worked the almost the entirety of his his his governor, his term of office as governor. Um so he's he's an awesome guy. And we've actually spent a lot of time in nature, and a couple of the ideas that we'll talk about today, we actually cooked up uh in nature. I'll tell you that origin story too.
SPEAKER_03Well, I will I will look forward to that. A friend of mine who's also a guest, one of the 52 guests in Why We Love Birds, was Deputy Secretary of the Interior. And actually there was a there was a former this one under President Bush, second President Bush, and she was actually the acting uh dep or acting secretary of the interior for four months when one retired and before they hired the other one. So, which was odd because it made her eighth in line for the presidency. Oh wow. That's there's actually an order. There there is very definitely an order. Um, and um, you know, it's uh it's one of those things. But that's an entire another show you and I could do. So for this show, let's let's start with what is California Natural Resources Agency? What exactly is that? What are you bringing to the people of California?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, so we're part of state government. So part, you know, there's local government, state government, federal government. We're in the state government. We're a big, we're a large agency. We include about 26,000 people about across 26 different departments. Some of those departments are really large. So, for example, Cal FIRE, which is our Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. A lot of people have heard of Cal FIRE, our state parks system, 280 state parks across the state, our Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is protecting nature and overseeing uh fish and game, hunting, fishing, etc. Our Department of Water Resources, focused on enabling water supply for our state. We have an entity called the Department of Conservation. We oversee oil and gas extraction. We have our coastal agencies protecting the coast. We have our energy agency plotting the way to uh California's energy future. So it's a big, vast agency. I'd say, you know, we're very much like the stewardship agency in the state. We have a sister agency called California Environmental Protection Agency, Cal EPA, and they regulate like clean air and clean water, toxics and pesticides. So they look a lot more like US EPA, and we look like a lot more like the Department of the Interior. We had a big long mission statement that basically nobody ever read, and we distilled it down to our core mission is helping all Californians and nature thrive together. So our success looks like if California's natural places, if our systems like our water systems, our biodiversity are really healthy, and our people are thriving too, because they can get outdoors and into nature and they're living like prosperous, healthy, and safe lives. So I'll tell you, this is the best job I've ever had and probably ever will have.
SPEAKER_03Well, first of all, congratulations. I love the mission. I had written down, again, in doing some research, one of the things that was said about you was to protect, manage, and restore the state's environment and its vast natural, cultural, and historical resources. Um I spent 35 years uh doing mission statements. So that if that was it, that would be kind of a cool one. So tell me, you know, when you're doing this, I have to imagine that one of the challenges all between it would be between goals and budget, of course. There's never enough uh uh time or money to do everything you want to do. But how do you balance this between uh public access and conversation and conservation or between you know the people in the environment? Because obviously people want to go out and go four-wheeling and go hunting and and do things and and and there are other people that think that no human being should ever touch the land um and desecrate it. So where where do you find that balance?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a great it's a great question. You know, I think uh definitely uh historically there's been this uh paradigm. It's like people are over in one place and nature is over in another place, and you have too much people, too many economic activities or um residence in nature, it's gonna it's gonna follow nature. I think one thing I've really learned in this job, and even before it is just the fact that we are part of nature. So we've got a quote at our headquarters here in Sacramento by the poet Gary Snyder, and it says, nature is not a place to visit, it's home. So when we protect nature, we protect ourselves. So when we avoid catastrophic wildfire, for example, we make sure that our watersheds, those, those headwaters of that we get our water from are clean and safe. So we've really been trying to make the case that actually taking care of nature and taking care of our home here in California is not only good for all the critters, all the life that relies on it, uh, but also uh us humans as well. But look, there are there are trade-offs and our challenges. We're a big state, we're almost 40 million people, most populous state in the United States. We're also, if measured by GDP, the fourth largest economy in the world. So we have a need to build more housing and more energy infrastructure and upgrade our transportation. And we have to do that in smart ways because we're also one of the most biodiverse places on planet Earth, meaning we have a more richness of plants and animals and other life than almost anywhere else in the world. Scientists suggest there are 36 biodiversity hotspots because of just this natural richness that's also under threat. And there's a lot of reasons why we have so much diversity of our plants and our animals. It has to do with a lot of the geology that sort of separated California from the rest of the uh lower 48 uh a very long time ago. But anyway, we have just this, we have these incredible places that people know, like Yosemite and Big Sur and Joshua Tree, all of these different ecosystems, landscapes, but we also have this tremendous natural life. So again, getting back to that theme of helping people and nature thrive together, how do we make sure that we're protecting the places that our most imperiled species are depending on and allow for housing and clean energy infrastructure that that we need. So it's definitely requires a lot of balance, but uh it can be done. And and I would argue in California we're doing it.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, and there there's certainly no shortage of things for you to do, but from what I understand, we're taking great strides forward. I have to throw something out because you mentioned biodiversity in California. One of the books I'm working on is a book called Wild Seasons. And I have selected what I consider uh the four greatest places in the country for biodiversity the Inside Passage of Alaska, the Yellowstone region, the Everglades, and Monterey Bay. Monterey Bay is the is the uh fourth of those four. And remarkably, and just from an author's point of view, unbelievably positive. Is the high point of each of those seasons from a biodiversity point of view from each of those four locations is a different season. So it's Yellowstone in winter, it's the Everglades in spring, it's the Inside Passage in summer, and it's Monterey Bay in the fall. And so maybe that's when we'll have a chance to meet, because I'm going to come spend a week and do some research on Monterey Bay for that book. But the biodiversity of Califor of California is spectacular. And you know, the the ability for me to be able to research and then highlight Monterey Bay, I'm I'm just thrilled about. And the more I study it, even though I've lived there, I I study marine biology. It was my first major in college. I'm not unfamiliar with these things, but I'm learning stuff now that I never knew about. And so when when you talk about biodiversity and the and the places inside of California, um it is it is spectacular. It is if you haven't explored it, if you haven't been a part of it, it's borderline unbelievable. And I do not use the word lightly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
SPEAKER_03The the different places you can visit, the deserts, the mountains, the valleys, the plains, the oceans, the bays, the harbors. It is yeah, and and anything, you know, and and for you to have 26 people 26,000 people out there trying to protect it, um, it's not just a gift to California, um, but it's a gift to our future and and to all Americans, and frankly, everyone around the world. I mean, California is still one of the most visited locations in the world. And so this isn't this isn't an isolated small thing. And I don't mean to minimize any effort anywhere made by anybody, um, but what a job you've taken on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a it's an incredible job. And, you know, we have our challenges to nature. So you mentioned the Monterey Bay, you know, we've had a major collapse of the kelp ecosystem off our coast. For those that haven't been on the West Coast or places with kelp, they're these incredible underwater plants that essentially are, you know, tens of feet uh in length, sometimes maybe over 100 feet. They create these underwater forests where the diversity of life in Monterey Bay lives, but also, you know, all the way up to Oregon and beyond. Warming waters, uh, acidification of our ocean have impacted the ecosystem. It ended up creating a phenomenon called sea star wasting disease, where the sea stars uh were the natural predators of the purple urchin, and the purple urchin eats the kelp. So these sea stars all but vanished. The purple urchin exploded, and the result is in some places a 95% reduction or loss of those kelp forests. See, like if 95% of the redwood belt in northern coastal California was gone, it would be it would be considered a massive environmental crisis. Well, for those who know how important the kelp are to that mare uh marine ecosystem, it's a it's a massive crisis. But challenges like that, catastrophic wildfire, uh changing conditions are really impacting our our terrestrial diversity as well. So we're we're facing challenges, but we're also uh making progress actually restoring our natural systems. So we talk a lot about protecting nature, but we're also restoring nature, um, areas that had been degraded that we're restoring uh so all of these species can continue to thrive.
SPEAKER_03Now the the kelp has a soft spot in my heart. I I was certified as scuba diver in 1972. Um, again with Randy Vance, the gentleman I mentioned earlier, and another friend from junior high school, Frank Sierra. And we dove off the Channel Islands forever in those kelp beds. It just I hate to think of them being gone or being endangered. Um is there a positive outlook for overcoming the sea star problem?
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, I'll just tell you there's a whole lot of Californians that have that concern. I chair in our agency what's called the Ocean Protection Council, and we've had fishermen, divers come to us in tears by by by uh sharing where they've die dove for tens, decades uh of their life are now these urchin barons. So it's intense. Uh the good news is, yeah, there's some there's some progress being made. There's a lot that's not known about sea star wasting disease and how to recover the kelp, but there's some incredible scientific partners, like the California Academy of Sciences, that is growing in laboratories billions of juvenile sea stars to reintroduce into the ocean once they get their official sort of approval from our Fish and Wildlife Department. There's also been all of this testing that we funded where we're paying divers or working with the conservation organization to pay divers to go remove a bunch of the urchin uh from certain plots and do things to help the kelp grow up.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you did? Wow. I was on I was on one of those teams where we went down and that was our job was to get rid of the urchins.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we're doing all of these different experimentations around how to help the kelp restore. And you know, what I found is you know, nature's really resilient, and you and you give it half a chance and it comes back. There's a great story that it's really an amazing proof point that we were we've been we've been part of in California during the administration of Governor Newsom, and that is removing four defunct dams on the Klamath River. So this could be seen as the largest river restoration in American history. Took out those four outmoded dams in this huge salmon fishery river, and it opened up over 400 miles of habitat for the salmon. Biologists thought that it would take two, three, four, five years for the salmon to come back because all the sediment was going to have to drain out of the dam, some of it really toxic sediment, etc. It took 10 days, believe it or not, Scott. Salmon were monitored coming through that first dam or where that first dam used to be in that 10 days. And now we just did our first census since the removal. We have over 10,000 salmon in that area. Point being, salmon hadn't gone in that in that habitat for over a hundred years because of those dams, and they recolonized it in a season.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's amazing. Steve Metz, the redwood guy we talked about, was saying that he's worked with a number of Native American tribes where they go in and rather than buy the land or try to buy the land, they work with them. And one of the things they're doing is a river restoration. And he said the same thing. They were shocked by how fast nature came back. And he's specifically talking about the salmon. And that is one of the things, you know, I've talked to a lot of, let's call them your peers across the country, um, about these things. And one of the things that that I have found that is really much more positive than I ever anticipated was how resilient nature and the earth in general is. Now, no doubt about, and I'm not one of these all humans are bad and everything that goes wrong is our fault. I don't fall into that category, but I'm also not blind to the fact we've screwed some things up. But it does seem like every time we try to fix it, like stopping DDT, let's say. I mean, the bald eagles and the osprey came back multiple times to what we had previously. You know, if we can figure out the lead and the condors, um, you know, we can save those. I mean, we're we're showing that if we make an effort to correct some of these things, nature will get on board and say, you know what? Here's some salmon, here's some bears coming back, here's some beavers rebuilding some watersheds, you know, there's it's it's far more encouraging, frankly, than I thought it was when I just started the podcast six months ago.
SPEAKER_01It's so true. You know, there's a lot to be concerned about in terms of the the way that our environment's being impacted. And, and it's an and there's a lot to celebrate. It's when people actually take matters into their own hands to improve the landscapes or the rivers or the watersheds in their own backyards. Remarkable things happen. And that's one of my key points is that like we're gonna, we're gonna continue to make progress. And I'm glad you brought up Native American tribes because that's been a big part of my job that I didn't anticipate early on. And that is really working with our tribes across California to learn from them about managing nature. You know, actually, interesting point. Um, prior to Western settlement, prior to European contact, California is one of the most culturally diverse parts of North America, uh, meaning there are more tribal cultures living in California, in part because just the abundance of the California nature could support a lot of people and a lot of people living in close proximity. And those folks brought, you know, thousands of years of environmental management. And then, you know, when when our when our state became a state and and our agency, we really disconnected ourselves from that knowledge. So there's this whole paradigm shift that's happening right now, which is really cool, where we're partnering with tribes, learning from them on some of those traditional practices that they used, and actually integrating that into our work in in state government, because you know it's not only the right thing to do to reconnect with tribes uh and support their leadership, it's the smart thing to do because they've been doing it for quite a while.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Amazing how sometimes things that are politically correct are also a positive. Um not always, but sometimes. I I hope you don't mind me asking, but the last name stands out, Crowfoot. Yeah, no, I'm not a tribe that you're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01No, I'm so glad you brought that up. I'm not. I I am I'm basically a white guy. Um where does Crowfoot come from? You know, Crowfoot's an English name. And I wouldn't speak with such confidence if I hadn't done the research myself. But um, yeah, the uh the first woman to win the most prestigious physics prize in the world was a woman named Dorothy Hodgkin Crowfoot in the early 1900s. Uh, she's English. Um, turns out you can find some Crowfoot in uh in England. Uh, and it's just a name that my family brought over four generations ago from Manchester to the to the mills of Massachusetts and and stuck with us. It's interesting. I work with so many Native American leaders today, and most all of them have what you'd consider to be really anglicized names. And then I happen not to be a Native American with a name that that certainly sounds it. So uh, you know, one of one of my ironies.
SPEAKER_03If you just showed the name to a hundred people, I imagine 96 of them would assume there was some. Now, if not tribal, then then Hobbit. I mean, I don't know if you're a Tolkien fan, but Crowfoot would make a great Hobbit name.
SPEAKER_01Um I'll tell you, it's what what I love about the name. I mean, I really do love my name in a lot of respects, but there's also not another person with my name uh, you know, walking around America, much less the earth. I joke that I left AOL as my email very, very late. And and when I went to Gmail, I just got, you know, my name. So just goes that, you know, uh, it's one of those things, I guess.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank thanks for sharing that with me. Now, this has been an issue in California for a long, long time. So talk to me about water and fire. I mean, those are those are two consuming things, and they have been um forever. And um I just I kind of want to know where you are, where where's that, where are we headed there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, we're a Mediterranean climate in California, meaning we have a climate a lot like the European Mediterranean. We typically have like two seasons, uh, you know, a wet and a dry season, and we're pretty temperate. And as a result, you know, these changes we're seeing uh in the weather and extreme events, you know, I talk about them as climate change, uh, are really shared across other regions of the world with a similar climate. So Europe, parts of Europe think like Greece, Spain, uh, and then parts of the Southern Hemisphere, parts of Australia, South South Africa, and Chile. We're all experiencing worsening wildfire, more intensified drought, and heat waves. So in California, a lot, you know, we we settled the state of, you know, and it grew to a state because we were able to build an infrastructure and our water that worked for the last century. We have about 1,500 dams um that are uh along our Sierra Nevada, and they captured the slow snow melt that would pretty reliably come. Are those dams your responsibility? Some of them are, certainly. Some of them are locally owned, you know. Um, but we have this whole 20, 20th century infrastructure for water. Um, and what we're realizing is that the we're gonna have longer, more punishing droughts, and we're gonna have still have a lot of water, but it's gonna come in warmer, more intense storms, like the storms we've been having for the last few years. So we're focused on modernizing our water infrastructure. At the same time, hotter, drier conditions are worsening our wildfire risk, not only in California, but across the country, or at least across the West. And that's paired with the fact that over over 100 years, there was sort of a thought that we needed to get fire completely off the landscape, uh, fire exclusion. So, CAL FIRE, which is in our agency, for decades, they their thinking was just like get fire completely off the landscape. Well, the challenge with that is fire is a natural part of the environment. So what happened was it allowed our forests to overstock and become super dense so that when fire does hit, it goes up and becomes really catastrophic. So we're managing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I'm sorry, let me interrupt you for a second. At the time when Cal Fire was still doing this, I know it's it's chain it's controversial now, or maybe it's even post-controversial. Was it controversial then, or was it just assumed that putting out fires are a good thing?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think at that time it was thought like a landscape without fire in any in all respects is a healthy landscape. And now what we're realizing is that landscapes actually, in a way, need fire, but they they don't need this unnatural, catastrophic, dangerous fire. So I'll tell you what used to be controversial, but is less controversial now are is this idea of prescribed fire. So you go in and in a lot of cases you you uh reduce the density, you thin the vegetation, you know, you can even do it mechanically. And then the way you maintain less density in our forests is you lay uh controlled fire on the landscape. This is actually a Native American practice that they were practicing for thousands of years. And now cow fire is doing it. And what they find is it actually protects the landscape, and we we believe it keeps the landscapes healthy and prevents the potential of that huge, dangerous, catastrophic wildfire. And are people pushing back against prescribed fires? It well, I would say definitely in the past, yes, because the idea is like, you know, the smoke, people are scared of fires getting out of control. But, you know, we had a huge sea change here in 2019, 2020, 21, 22. You know, 8% of our state went up in flames. And catastrophic, I mean, there's huge wildfire. I have a daughter, and I remember, you know, for a few years uh living here in Northern California where she couldn't play outside uh for weeks at a time because this toxic smoke was so bad. There was that, you know, that day when the Bay Area in San Francisco really never got light. It looked like planet Mars because of the smoke. So Californians understand that we have this huge crisis and they don't want that. So there's been a lot of education we've been engaged in to help people understand that we can get this low-level prescribed safe fire at certain times in certain conditions. So it's more and more accepted. I would say it's it's sort of it's sort of been mainstreamed.
SPEAKER_03So how does that work? Let's say I know, for example, the Malibu Corridor is a dangerous place for fires, but there's homes everywhere. Can you can you have prescribed fires in that area to try to cut back on those massive fires?
SPEAKER_01It's a really good question, and it speaks to the difference in landscapes we have across California. So up north, where I am here in Sacramento and the lake, is a lot of, particularly in the mountains, it's forest. So it's this big coniferous pine forest. A lot of our big fires have happened up here. Down south, you have around Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles, Malibu, you have what's called the chaparral environment, which you know, but others you could explain as like, you know, you have smaller shrubs on the landscapes. There, it's really not that those landscapes are not used to fire. So they don't have a they don't have an ecological cycle of fire like the forests do. And in fact, the challenge there is there's been too many ignitions, too many fires. That fire interval has been too frequent in recent decades. So in Southern California, protecting those cities, critically important. It's about building fuel brakes around the city to allow firefighters to protect the cities if it, if, if it indeed happens, and then hardening those communities so that if fire does come, you don't have fires that come into a community and then spread house to house. So it's a little different. We've been really educated on that, on that difference. But you know, we're we're we're investing billions of dollars with a B into all of this landscape management in southern Northern California before fires even ever start. And do you feel that you're taking positive steps? Oh, yeah, we're making great progress. I mean, the challenge is we it'll never be mission accomplished, and you know, we're dealing with unprecedented conditions. So obviously about a year and a half ago, a little bit of a lot of people.
SPEAKER_03Do you think those are challenges? What's that? You think those are challenges, the unprecedented conditions, the limited budget?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean, I'll say on those conditions. I mean, you know, last January in Los Angeles, we had that firestorm of over 100 miles an hour wind in the driest beginning of the year, the driest nine months in in the in Southern California history. And that really ignited what became those horrible, devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. So, you know, both things can be true. We've we've have a stronger fire response than we ever had through CAL FIRE. It's remarkable. We have 14,000 uh employees at Calfire, the vast majority of them are firefighters. We have more response capacity. We're doing more beforehand with these, with prescribed fire up north and these fuel breaks, et cetera. But we're also chasing these really challenging conditions. So, you know, what I'll always say is proud of our progress with a lot more work to do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let me just throw something out, and it we can edit this out or you can dismiss it. But I was talking to my son the other day, and we were talking about fires because when we where we lived in Thousand Oaks, it was a chaparral area and and uh it was fairly dry. And we twice had fires burn into our backyard. As a matter of fact, one time our home was the uh was the headquarters for the multiple fire departments that were battling, you remember the big Ventura fire, and uh they tore down our fences and used our property, which was fine, by the way. Great. But my son brought up the other day, we're we were talking a lot about drones. Um can drones be used to fight fires? Can can we load fire retardant into drones and get them down closer and lower than planes? Um and is that something that's in the future to use unmanned vehicles to to drop fire retardant?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, potentially there's it's it's remarkable. So we're really leaning in on the technology. And so, for example, you know, over the last decade, we've had uh unmanned, you know, aerial assets or planes from our Department of Defense who have actually run domestic missions to do fire surveillance at night over fires. And that's important because, you know, typically pilots aren't flying at night over fire dangerous conditions, but you're able to you're able to put up an unmanned aerial vehicle um with it. Uh Calfire and others are also using drones uh for surveillance. I'll tell you though, um civilian drones are really problematic. You know, uh a lot of amateur drone pilots have been interested in like going to Try to video a fire. Well, that's a huge no-no because we have a ton of helicopters and planes up there that uh are fighting the fire as well. Um the the question of whether drones could carry um you know large amounts of fire retardant, I think is an open question because we typically think of drones as fairly small. Um we have, but we have increasing, we have just incredible technologies that we're deploying. There's also a company called Rain that is um is is piloting or developing unmanned aerial technology in helicopters. So their take is you could fly a Blackhawk helicopter, of which we have several, without a pilot. And you could do that um maybe more quickly, and you could go into situations that a pilot couldn't. That's not something we've rolled out in California at this point, but I just share it to say, you know, we're really leaning forward on all possible technology to help us fight fires.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's fantastic. And the sister to that would be well, you're drinking now is water. So talk to me about, and obviously we could spend hours on fire and hours on water, but but talk to me a little bit about water.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, water's life, obviously, and and and we need it, you know, to maintain prosperity wherever humans are. And the whole the whole question is, you know, how do we adapt to these changes? Uh, what we call in our hydrology. Um, so if we're a big economy, a big state, how do we make sure that there's going to be water for future generations? And how do we maintain the health of our rivers, not only for fish and wildlife, but for water quality, et cetera? So I talk about this as well, a lot of people talk about this as, you know, 19th century laws and 20th infrastructure, 20th century water infrastructure for a 21st century challenge. So it's about uh adapting our infrastructure and our management. So what does that mean? It means stretching water further, more recycled water, exploring more desalination off our coast, uh, capturing water when it comes, trying to recharge our groundwater aquifers more effectively than we have in the past, where it makes sense, building reservoirs to capture these big flood flows that come in our biggest storms. Governor is actually in alignment with our federal government and our legislature to build the first major reservoir in a generation in California called the Sites Reservoir, which would be off the Sacramento River and in big storm systems like we just had here in California, would move that water into the reservoir, both for use by communities in agriculture, but also used by our environmental agencies to manage uh very dry periods. So there's a lot that has to happen. Uh, I'm really proud that California has been making those investments. So even as we've experienced some really backbreaking droughts here in the last 20 years, we're more and more building our resilience or our level to adapt to these changes. Okay.
SPEAKER_03And is the is the agency involved with the Colorado River stuff and the management of that water? Yeah, that's only one year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, seven states and part of Mexico depend on supplies from the Colorado River. 40 million Americans, half of them, 20 million, live in California. And most of the agriculture in the Southwest, which is really provides the nation, its winter vegetables, is also fed by the Colorado River. Allocations were made a hundred years ago with a bunch of legal agreements when the hydrology was much different. A lot more rain and snow. We've seen a 20-year drought in the Colorado River basin. Scientists suggest this is part of a drying trend. So seven states and part of Mexico have to divide a smaller pie among them to maintain water for their communities and agriculture and to keep a you know a living river. So it's challenging. Uh, and we're just coming out of the last 20-year agreement to split up and to manage water into a new 20-year agreement. And our seven states have not yet agreed on what's the shared pathway to do that. Is there enough water? I would argue yes. Over time, there is enough water to maintain economic prosperity and and agriculture. We just have to think differently. We have to invest a lot more. I mean, we know these solutions. You can use one molecule of water multiple times. It's called water recycling. We can do it in a clean and safe way. Um, desalination, both our ocean desalination and getting really salty groundwater, has come a long way, both on cost and energy footprint and also environmental impacts. Um, we can invest more technologies in conserving water better, having the water that we need, but not wasting it. So there's a lot that needs to happen to be able to live with less water, but all of these technologies and approaches exist. We just have to shift the mindset to realizing that we have a lot we have less water to use, and therefore we're going to use less water. I'll share with you where you lived in Southern California, absolute leader in water conservation. Uh Southern California grew by millions of people over the last two decades and actually kept its water use uh constant. And in some places it's actually gone down because of just smart conservation technologies and practices. So, yeah, we'll have enough water, but we have to be smart about the water we use.
SPEAKER_03Huh. And are they um so as as we move forward, you believe there is enough water, we just need to figure the best way to distribute, manage, and conserve it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, look, we we've always been clear that, you know, we're going to help, I mean, in our state, California adapt. I think everyone around the world is just looking, you know, is is identifying ways to adapt. Uh, I think uh I'm very confident that we can continue to prosper in a place like California that has this changing water system. And, you know, the progress we're making in certain areas are are helping us uh understand that. It doesn't mean it's easy. You know, each of our in the Colorado River, each of our seven states could retreat to these hundred-year-old legal agreements and make the case to uh protect the status quo of water use in our states. But look, you know, we have to adapt. And America's always been a leader of that. You know, America's always been on the front edge of using technology, learning, and really leading the world on on how to build prosperity uh in in our communities. And so we're gonna continue to do it. We just have to, we have to, we have to face these changes uh in an honest way.
SPEAKER_03But looking at those agreements, there's not enough water right now to honor those hundred-year-old agreements, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly, which is why we have to we why we have to adapt them. Exactly. Yeah. The the amount of water that those agreements called for across our states doesn't exist. And so I was recently at a meeting with the governors, and they all agree to a person, Republican, Democrat, up north, down south, that we have to do more with less. And every state has to contribute to the solution. In other words, conserve water. The challenge is, you know, uh the devil's in the details about how much and who's gonna do it and how we're gonna make that work. But I remain confident that, you know, across the West, uh, we're gonna find a way to work together to continue to enable our places to prosper. Really, there's no alternative.
SPEAKER_03Well, a lot of times that's when we make our best decisions when there's no alternatives. Um, last question on that. Again, we could go forever just on this subject, but uh for today. Um do we have any active D cell plants in on the coast in California? And are there any in the planning stages?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we have the largest D-Cell plant, I believe, in America operating in San Diego right now, and it's providing you know purified water into San Diego, and San Diego's actually has some flexibility to transfer water essentially to other places in California and even across the Southwest because of the D Sal, that DSAL plant. There's also two other uh ocean-based desalination plants uh underway, one in Southern California at a place called Doheny Beach, the other in actually where you're headed to in Monterey, California. Um, there's also a lot of DSAL technologies that are being deployed inland. A lot of groundwater, water in our aquifers that was forever determined to be undrinkable, uh is now treatable if we can apply desalination. So it's not without its controversy. Historically, it's been expensive, big energy footprint, and major environmental impacts on the ocean. So there's still plenty of people that are really concerned about ocean-based D cell. But these new uh D cell plants are actually using best in class environmental technologies and are in pockets of the coast that can actually afford these projects. So I'm not suggesting the future is is lining the West Coast with D Cell. I don't think that's ever going to happen. But, you know, where you can put well-positioned D sal to meet certain needs, uh I think, you know, is part of the future. And certainly Governor Newsom believes that as well. Okay. Is the Salton Sea a candidate for that? Great question. The Salton Sea is, gosh, that could be a whole nother conversation, Scott. That's a that's a terminal lake. That's a that was a basin uh in Southeast California in the Mojave Desert that uh had been had filled up and drained over time, uh, like time, like thousands of years. And when they were building an aqueduct into that part of California, uh a levee broke and uh water flowed from the Colorado River into the Salt and Sea uh for years. And so that Salt and Sea has actually uh been really kind of important to recreation uh in recent decades. I think the Rat Pack and John F. Kennedy visited, but it's shrank over time. So it's not really, you know, the I guess your question on desalination, there's been discussions around um taking water from the California coast or Mexico and bringing it into the Salton Sea because we have a problem with the Salton Sea shrinking. Um, the big question there has just been the cost uh of that. Right now, um those proposals or those ideas are simply too costly to try to stabilize uh the Salton Sea. Now, one of the many one of the many complex challenges we deal with here in California.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, understood. Hey, behind you, I see you've got a 30 by 30 sign. So Yeah. So we're running. So let me tell you this. A, I'm gonna invite you back as a guest again because I believe we've only scratched the surface of fascinating things to discuss. Um, and so I'll just say that now publicly that I absolutely plan on inviting you. But as I'm running out of time, I'd love to get some input from you on the 30 by 30.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So look, it's um it was a big goal that's now a state law to protect, conserve 30% of our land mass and our coastal waters this decade by 2030. Um, over the last four years, we've expanded over 3,000 or sorry, 3 million acres of conserved land uh across our state, for example, even as we're bringing on more housing and more clean energy development. So we're really excited because the whole idea is trying to conserve more places where it makes sense to conserve so we can protect our water and our natural resources and all that incredible biodiversity. So I'd just say stay tuned on this because our target is to add uh to ultimately meet that 30% goal here over the next four years. Well, good luck with that. Now, how does that work with rewilding, with rewilding efforts? Well, this is a purely voluntary effort, first of all. So there's no regulation involved. We're not telling people they have to conserve. This is land that's coming into uh acquired by conservation acquisitions like by land trusts, some uh uh conservation easements by private sector, improved conservation on federal, uh federal lands uh as well. So there's a there's a variety of ways that that we're actually trying to achieve um 30 by 30. Um and it's super exciting. But remind me of the actual specific question you just asked. Rewilding. Oh, rewilding. So rewilding is a cool idea. And the idea is, you know, as I understand it, is bringing nature back um where it wasn't before. There's a lot of instances of that. One of the areas that 30 by 30 that we're focused on is trying to bring more nature back into our cities, um, which is which is really important. So that rewilding movement is part of this broader kind of restoring nature, helping nature help us, giving nature half a chance to bounce back. And as we've been talking about, it's incredible to see what happens when you when you do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we had uh a guest on the show recently, Jody Hilty. Uh, she runs the Y to Y, the Yellowstone to Yukon rewilding effort. And she's trying to build a 1,500-mile corridor for wildlife. Um and um, you know, and it's the same thing. She's working with local and state and federal governments and parklands and private landowners and everybody she can to literally try to build a highway from the Yellowstone region to Yukon. Uh which's so cool, you know. Yeah, I I know that it's an exciting idea, and they talk about the the carnivore cascade that so in in these conversations that I've had with so many people in this conservation world recently, there seem to be two things that are crystallizing for me. One, m almost everybody I bel that I talk to believes that saving carnivores, the big ones, uh the wolves and the and the mountain lions and the bears and stuff, if we can save those, everything else naturally kind of follows from that. And then the other one is beavers. Is it uh it's amazing to me how important and these aren't just the people that are you know making their living studying beavers or studying carnivores, these are butterfly people and hydrologists and all kinds of people, but uh their focus is on the big carnivores and on beavers, and that those are really the ones that if if we're saving those, everything else naturally is going to be saved.
SPEAKER_01Um, so yeah, no, I I mean look, I think we've we've come a long way over the last hundred years of understanding how our environment works, and you need all of those pieces of the food chain. And there's that famous, you know, lesson of of how wolves impacted the rivers in Yellowstone because they reduced the overpopulation of elk that were mowing down the riparian areas that were having impact on the fish. So we're really focused on, you know, for example, with beavers, bringing beavers back to places that they had been made extinct in California. So we actually did the first beaver reintroduction in decades recently because we understand that there are these incredible, you know, natural engineers. We're building one of the world's largest wildlife crossings outside of Los Angeles over 10 lanes of the highway number one.
SPEAKER_03In Agora, I watched that being built for years. It's so exciting. It's super cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's great. I mean, and all that again, it's like the we we face real environmental challenges, but but human beings have been capable of remarkable things in our history. And you know, right now we have we have a big big work to do. Uh again, as I say, to help nature help us, but we we're making progress all over the place.
SPEAKER_03Well, congratulations and thank you. I am so sad to note that we are coming to the end. Um, and I've been thrilled to have you on board. If you're if you're listening to us, thank you very much for listening to the show today. And um, my email is scott at naturaliscott.com. If you're watching on YouTube, I'll throw it up on the screen. If you've got questions on this show, um send them to me. I am thrilled and and and pleased to answer questions. And and if you've got a couple of great ones uh for Secretary Crowfoot, then then I'll forward those to his team as well. Uh Wade, I had asked that uh you might highlight a book, anything nature-based, that you think uh would be a fun, important read for the audience.
SPEAKER_01You can see I've got a I've got a bookshelf of a lot of my favorite books, so I'll pick I'll pick one actually on the theme we just talked about. Um, Ben Goldfarb, and he wrote about beavers. He wrote a book called Ever Eager about the reintroduction of beavers across the West. This is all about crossings, um, how road ecology is shaping the future of our planet. The whole idea is just creating room to roam, giving animals the opportunity for the connectivity that they need. Uh, and this is it's a super inspiring book.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's fantastic, and I'll throw that up on the screen, and um I will add that you know, the danger of doing this podcast is the number of books that I'm struggling to read based on these conversations. Um I just started, I finished one yesterday on peregrines, peregrine falcons, and started last night a new one on wolves that I'm having trouble putting down. It's just spectacular. And just as a coincidence, uh 1995, which I think was a pivotal year for you as far as your relationship with California, that was also the year the wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So absolutely. You know, a couple of a couple of major couple major things happen. Hey, if you are watching on YouTube, do me a favor and hit subscribe. Every time you do, this gets pushed out to more people. And I think these messages are important, not because I host them, but because of the guests uh that are on the show. So please do that. There's no cost or anything to you to do in that, so it's a neat deal. Wait, do you have any final thoughts you want to share before we shut down?
SPEAKER_01Well, just thanks for doing what you do, Scott. You know, my the best part of my job is meeting people who are passionate about nature and about, again, helping helping nature and and people uh thrive. And I love I love what you're doing. It's really fun to hear about all that you have done and and continue to do. And I think it's a bit of an inspiration for us all. Get out there, uh, learn and connect, uh, because it's a it's a big, it's a big, beautiful world.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you, and I agree with you it is. And I close the show this time, uh, I close this the same way. First of all, thank you, of course. It's a it's been a thrill to have you on board. And we've talked about this a number of times in the last hour, but I encourage everybody to get outside, whether that's your back porch or your front yard or your local park or Yosemite or Joshua Tree or Lassen National Park. Um, whatever it is, get out there and do it. And when you do, make sure that you stay safe and stay curious. Wade, thank you so much for being a part of the show. Thanks so much, Scott.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris. Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra. Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at naturally Scott Harris. If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.