Air Date: August 22, 2025

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Life As An Incarcerated Firefighter


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Around a thousand of the firefighters who battled blazes around southern California in January 2025 were incarcerated. They do essentially the same work as other firefighters but are paid as little as around $5 a day. Eddie Herrera Jr. shares with Host Aynsley O’Neill what it was like to serve as an incarcerated firefighter, and how the experience helped him forge a new life after prison as a professional firefighter. (11:58)

Reforesting a Gravel Mine


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At a former gravel mine in northwestern Pennsylvania, nonprofits are working to plant 70,000 trees as part of a larger project to reforest thousands of acres of degraded mine land in the region. The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple reports on how they’re experimenting with fungi and biochar to help restore degraded soil and give the saplings a head start. (06:22)

An Ancient Climate Solution


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As the planet warms, water supplies are dwindling in Athens, Greece. To meet demand the city is looking to antiquity for solutions. One that’s attracting attention is an ancient aqueduct that runs beneath Athens. Niki Kitsantonis is a freelance journalist for the New York Times and a long-time resident of Athens, and she joins Host Jenni Doering to describe the project to fix it up and raise awareness about water scarcity. (09:39)

Listening on Earth / Sophia Pandelidis


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Living on Earth Producer Sophia Pandelidis is living and working remotely from Greece and sent in the sounds of church bells and festive bouzouki music in a café on the island of Paros, which is in the Aegean Sea between Santorini and Mykonos. (00:39)

Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet


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The many millions of miles of roads that crisscross our planet block everything from bears to beetles from safely moving through habitats. But new wildlife crossings like overpasses and underpasses are helping reconnect animals with the landscape. Journalist Ben Goldfarb joins Host Jenni Doering to discuss his book Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. (18:35)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

250822 Transcript

HOSTS: Jenni Doering and Aynsley O’Neill

GUESTS: Eduardo Herrera Jr., Ben Goldfarb,

REPORTERS: Kara Holsopple, Niki Kitsantonis, Sophia Pandelidis

[THEME]

DOERING: From PRX this is Living on Earth

[THEME]

I’m Jenni Doering.

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

Using fungus to help reforest an old gravel mine.

PARRISH: There's like little fine, here, you can see like fine white roots. That’s basically then what, you know, the roots of the fungi and how the fungi break down all of the nutrients and then the fungi pass on the nutrients to the tree roots, to the fibrous, little tiny tree roots.

DOERING: Also, building wildlife crossings across roads leads to all kinds of unusual questions.

GOLDFARB: How does a moose comprehend traffic? What sort of tunnel appeals to a mink? Why do grizzly bears prefer crossing over highways while black bears go under? These questions had empirical answers, but they also required ecologists to think like wild animals -- Empathy manifested as science.

DOERING: That and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

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Life As An Incarcerated Firefighter

[THEME]

DOERING: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston this is an encore edition of Living on Earth. I’m Jenni Doering

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

The wildfires that burned entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles this January took a massive response from firefighters to start to get under control. According to state officials more than 16,000 personnel battled the blazes across southern California at the height of the disaster. And over 1,000 of those people were serving prison sentences. While incarcerated firefighters do the same work as their counterparts, they are paid much less, as little as $5.80 a day. Here to talk to us about his experience in the program is Eduardo Herrera Jr. Eddie served eighteen years in prison and spent the final two of them as a firefighter. Now, he’s a professional firefighter for the state of California. Hi Eddie, welcome to Living on Earth!

HERRERA: Thank you for having me, pleasure to be here.

O'NEILL: So I understand that you were an incarcerated firefighter between 2019 and 2020, what is the day to day life like for an incarcerated firefighter?

HERRERA: So for me, it’s very unique. I actually lived at a firehouse. So my title was Institutional Municipal Firefighter. So what you would see in your normal municipal firehouse was very much the day to day, other than me being incarcerated, obviously. So I got up in the morning, did my training, did my six minutes of safety and weather, and then started my day running calls or just doing training.

O'NEILL: And now is that the standard setup, or was yours a unique case?

HERRERA: So in the state of California, every adult prison has a firehouse to service the prison system itself, but that also some of them have what we call a mutual aid contract. And not all of them do. But in my case, mine had a strong mutual aid contract with the county I service, and so that therefore you service the community where you're housed at. But to be clear, that station is outside the prison grounds.

O'NEILL: And now, we're talking about this in terms of wildfires. But was that the majority of calls that you were taking, or were there other types as well?

HERRERA: For the most part, it's a lot of medical calls, but there's definitely a balance between vegetation fires, wildland fires, vehicle accidents, residential structure fires, rescues. So depending how the season goes or the call volume is, it can vary.

O'NEILL: And how did you become involved in this program in the first place?

HERRERA: So I started with requesting to be there. I had to work my way down and go through a vetting process, and obviously applying, and then going through an interview process with the captain of the firehouse, and then upon completion of the interview, then I was able to go through an actual testing process. It takes approximately two and a half months to three months, and you do the cycle motor skills, and then you also do the academic and curriculum part of it. So completing that, once you upon completing that, now you actually can shadow but if you do not complete that, then you actually go back to the prison you're housed at and you're not in the program.

O'NEILL: And now there's been a lot of discussion surrounding fair compensation with incarcerated firefighters, especially in the light of these recent wildfire outbreaks in California. During your time, when you were incarcerated, how much were you paid for your firefighting work, and how did you feel about that compensation?

HERRERA: So it's very different. I will say I got paid a lot less than your fire camp or wildland firefighters. I figured, since we were servicing the community and actually going into people's houses to perform medical and mitigate those situations and actually being close to the community, I thought it would be more, but it was actually $56 a month. That was the max I would make. It didn't matter if I was running a residential structure fire, saving a house, or CPR call. It did not matter. I was still going to make $56 a month. So it's very little compared to what you make in fire camp. When you're actually fighting a fire, you make $1 an hour. So if you're out on a fire and that fire lasts three weeks, you do the math, it can add up.

O'NEILL: And now there's special concerns about this low compensation given the round-the-clock firefighting that is happening, especially with California opening the program up to inmates under 26. How do you respond to concerns about this?

HERRERA: Well, I definitely think that we should be compensated a lot more than what we're getting paid. I mean, simply put as this, we're doing the job, and now the public is is starting to see it, because we do save property. We do save lives, right? And so how can you put a price on that? And at the end of the day, like, the big picture is you do it because you believe in yourself. You want to demonstrate, you know, that you're not defined by your crime. But, I mean, let's be realistic, the amount of pay that you're making is really nothing compared to what an actual individual that does do the exact same thing gets paid a lot more. Not only that, gets a pension, right, and gets great medical service. And we, as inmate firefighters or incarcerated firefighters, are more exposed to smoke inhalation, and we're in the front lines, and so therefore those health issues affect us directly. So being in prison shouldn't be a death sentence, you know. So I totally think that there should be some compensation in regards to that, because at the end of the day, when you are released from the program, there's a very likelihood that you have some health issues moving forward in your life.

O'NEILL: So as I understand it, you were trained to be a firefighter while incarcerated, and then after release, you had to undergo the same training all over again?

HERRERA: That is correct. So me, as an institutional municipal firefighter, all the training that I did there, I did it all over again when I went to the Ventura Training Center. But as far as the job itself, it's still the same. And the same thing as wildland firefighters that are in fire camp, you get the exact same wildland training because you're already doing the job, the work. So it's no different, but just with the training that I had, I could have done the job when I came home. But the one thing I will say is that most important is, it's invaluable, is the experience. Because I had more experience than some of these firefighters that are out now, that are 18, 19-year-olds that are working as firefighters. I had 14 structure fires under my belt, vehicle fires, countless CPRs, medical calls, and wildland fires, and was already doing the job. I will share with you this one call that I ran, saving a residential structure fire, pulling up, seeing it on fire, extinguishing the fire, but finding out afterwards it was a correctional officer's house, and them coming to me and my partner's hands and shaking her hand and saying, "Thank you for saving our house." So these are the things that we're capable of doing. That, in itself, demonstrates that that we can do the job. Who better than individuals that were previously incarcerated, that want redemption, want to prove themselves? We are one of the hardest workers out there, and we've demonstrated it time and time again, consistently.

O'NEILL: Now there's a noted connection between personal history of trauma and incarceration. And then on top of that, we recently covered how merely being exposed to wildfires is traumatizing in and of itself, not to mention actually fighting these fires. So that's trauma on top of trauma. How do you and your fellow former inmates or the current inmates cope with the mental health aspect of this?

HERRERA: Great question, and I think that that is one of the biggest challenge. For me, I'll speak on my personal experiences. I did a lot of work prior to going to the firehouse, before I even started running calls and fire calls, so I developed coping skills, resiliency. However, there is a lot of trauma when you see things and experience that, as far as running wildland fire calls or just calls in general. And so when you see these things, you're taking them in, and they're just there. And if you don't know how to process them, eventually they come out. And so an individual that is currently incarcerated, seeing all this devastation, seeing these fires, is on heightened alert, always, high stress level situation, and then comes home, is released in society, and then now sees it again. They're triggered. And so being able to have things in place, as for instance, mental health, you know, addressing mental health is very important. And we don't, unfortunately; in the fire service or as an incarcerated firefighter, there's a stigma that goes with that that mental health. So a lot of people don't ask for help. I do believe that as an incarcerated firefighter and individuals are still incarcerated, it’s so important to address these issues, because upon coming home, just something like the smell of smoke or hearing the sirens can trigger it, you know? And so I think it's very important for that to be addressed now and recognized now.

O'NEILL: What do you want people to know about either incarceration, generally speaking, or specifically the experience of incarcerated firefighters?

HERRERA: Yes. So it makes me think about, I'm paraphrasing here, but a quote by Dostoevsky where he says, "You can tell a lot about a country by how it treats its prisoners." And so for me, the way I look at it is, well, how it treats his heroes, because an incarcerated firefighter is now deemed as a hero. So I think that that's very important, because we're no longer defined by our mistake that we've made. We're going to come home. 90% of the population that are currently incarcerated are coming home. What kind of people do you want them to come home to? Do you want an inviting society, and if so, demonstrate it in actions: allow the opportunities to be able to have programs, classes, just stuff, so they can come home as better people. I would say, for the general public and individuals that are now experiencing this to think about that, because the key to it is this one word is, is hope. We all want hope and hope for change, right? And that's exactly what myself and individuals who have been incarcerated, that's what allows us to survive and move forward, is that hope.

O'NEILL: We've talked a bit about the concept of redemption and change as it relates to this program. What kind of support is needed from the wider world when these formerly incarcerated firefighters and these former inmates, generally speaking, are coming home?

HERRERA: So one of the biggest way you can support us is changing laws. In life, our words are validated by our actions. So if people really want to create change, they have to be willing to show up. And showing up is in the polls, is when they see something that's injustice, see something that's not right, is put it into action and change those laws. Because you guys are our voices. We don't have a right to vote. So for the public, what I would like to see changes is demonstrated in action by showing up and changing those laws that don't allow us to get paid what we should be getting paid, allowing us to have the funding, to be able to have classes and training in place, that if you are an incarcerated firefighter, therefore you're able to get the actual accreditation while you're still incarcerated, since you're already doing the job, so therefore when you are released, it's a lot easier for you to transition into that job and become a career firefighter. So I'm grateful that we're having this discussion now, because it's personal to me. So thank you.

O'NEILL: Eddie Herrera, Jr. is a professional firefighter for the state of California. Eddie, thank you for giving us some of your time today.

HERRERA: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm humbled just by being able to be here and speak with you.

Related links:
- Learn more about the Anti-Recidivism Coalition.
- High Country News | "What it’s like to be an incarcerated firefighter"
- Explore California’s incarcerated wildfire fighter program.

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[MUSIC: James Galway, “Morning Mood” from Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46, on The Best of James Galway, by Edvard Grieg, Sony Music Entertainment]

DOERING: Coming up, climate solutions both ancient and modern. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the Waverley Street Foundation, working to cultivate a healing planet with community-led programs for better food, healthy farmlands, and smarter building, energy and businesses.

[MUSIC: Oscar Peterson, “Stormy Weather” on Work From Home with Oscar Peterson, UMG Recordings]

Reforesting a Gravel Mine

DOERING: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Jenni Doering

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill. Lake Pleasant in northwestern Pennsylvania was created over 15,000 years ago when a glacier retreated. Since the 1990s, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy has been buying and conserving land around the lake, which supports rare plants and birds like osprey. The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple reports that now a nonprofit is helping the conservancy reforest a problem area.

[AMBI OUTDOORS NEAR ROAD]

[NAT WALKING]

HOLSOPPLE: Michael Knoop walks down a hillside in the Lake Pleasant Conservation Area in Erie County. This section was an old gravel mine, and now the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy owns it. We have to watch our step…

KNOOP: There's trees planted in this burrow right here, so if you stay to the left and right of it, we should be okay. I'm just going to show you one of the trees. This is what they look like when they go in.

HOLSOPPLE: It’s just a 8-inch-stick with a teeny green leaf at the top. Knoop is vice president of Bosland Growth a nonprofit that partners with landowners–in this case, the conservancy–to reforest land. Here, the trees will create wildlife habitat and improve water quality. But there’s a problem. The soil here is poor.

KNOOP: The regulations require the companies to return the landscape to relatively the same contours that they had been before mining, and to do that, they have to use heavy equipment that compacts the soil a lot more than is healthy for trees to grow in.

HOLSOPPLE: So, to treat the compacted soil and prepare for planting, Knoop says, last fall, a company ripped down into the ground about three feet with machinery, creating a checkerboard pattern across the landscape. Knoop is leading me and a group of project partners and guests today towards two experimental plots on the property, where they’re testing different ways to improve the tree growth here. We pass a team of workers, swinging hoedads, long spades used to make a hole in the ground, and popping the little trees in.

[NAT OF WORKERS]

HOLSOPPLE: This crew is planting 70,000 trees here this week. That’s no small feat on this 100-acre section of the property the conservancy purchased in 2006. Knoop says they’re planting white pine, black locust, scarlet oak, and red maple on the site. And in the bottom land, swamp white oak, sycamores and silky dogwood–trees he says like to get their feet wet. There’s already water on the property. It’s dotted with small ponds. Andy Zadnik, Director of Land Stewardship for Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, says they are actually the pits left by the mining company…

ZADNICK: They’re not natural, they really shouldn't be here.

HOLSOPPLE: Zadnick says Lake Pleasant is the finest example of an inland glacial lake in the state. It’s mainly fed by groundwater, so the water collecting in these pits could be impacting the water chemistry and temperature in the nearby lake. The pits are also infested with an invasive aquatic plant called Eurasian watermilfoil – the conservancy is treating the ponds for the plant which hasn’t made it to the lake yet…

ZADNICK: We're taking a really long-term view that we're hoping that if we can restore a healthy forest on this property in time, these pits might start to fill in or become more scrub-shrub wetlands and less these open water areas.

HOLSOPPLE: In the shorter term, the reforestation partners are hoping for a 70% survival rate for the trees over the next few years. Bosland Growth combines grant funding from government and philanthropic organizations with revenue from the sale of carbon credits to pay for the reforestation. They need healthy, growing trees here as a base for those carbon credits. Here’s where the experiment comes in. On one two-and a half acre section they’re partnering with the biotech company Funga. Josh Parrish, Chief Growth Officer at Funga, combs his fingers through some dirt in a 5-gallon plastic bucket to explain.

PARRISH: There's like little fine, here, you can see like fine white roots.

HOLSOPPLE: These are the fungal roots or “fungal hyphae”.

PARRISH: The fungi break down all of the nutrients and then the fungi pass on the nutrients to the tree roots, to the fibrous, little, tiny tree roots through the fungal hyphae.

HOLSOPPLE: Parrish says nearly all trees require a below-ground fungus partner, to grow. His company tested the soil here for signs of life – to see how degraded the microbiome has become after all of the industry and land disturbance. They also took multiple samples of soil from healthy forest land. Then Funga uses machine learning and DNA sequencing to predict what kind of soil microbiome would make the trees they’re planting here healthier and more productive. Under each tree goes a handful of the healthy soil from one of the buckets.

PARRISH: By putting this with the tree at time of planting, you're essentially giving the trees the best chance possible at survival and growth because you're giving them that essentially the right partners.

HOLSOPPLE: Some of the rich soil comes from other Western Pennsylvania Conservancy forested properties. This is Funga’s first hardwood restoration trial in the US. Just over a little hill is a second experimental plot, where trees are being planted with another material: biochar. It’s a medium fine black powder and is a byproduct of the logging industry. It’s porous and helps trees retain water and pick up nutrients from the soil. It gives those microbes and fungi a space to colonize, too. Brenda Costa is scooping biochar from a bucket with a red Solo cup, as her colleague digs a hole with a shovel to prepare the soil. Costa is the executive director of the French Creek Valley Conservancy.

[NAT SCOOPING AND DIGGING SOUND]

COSTA: You know, Lake Pleasant is a really important feature or place within our watershed. And so, this additional effort to try to protect it is pretty great.

HOLSOPPLE: Lake Peasant is part of the headwaters of French Creek, an important habitat for freshwater mussels, including some endangered species. Michael Knoop from Bosland Growth says they’ll monitor the experiments over the next few years to see what’s most effective. The Lake Pleasant project with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy is Bosland’s first project toward their goal of reforesting 2,800 acres of degraded mine land in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

KNOOP: So, it's a gigantic opportunity to return native forest to a huge amount of land across the region.

HOLSOPPLE: Knoop says they have signed up a handful of private landowners to work with in Pennsylvania and West Virginia over the next couple of years.

O’NEILL: That’s Kara Holsopple reporting for the Allegheny Front.

Related link:
Find this story on the Allegheny Front website

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[MUSIC: Oscar Peterson, “Molten Swing” on A Night of Oscar Peterson, UMG Recordings]

An Ancient Climate Solution

DOERING: Climate disruption has plagued the city of Athens, Greece with intensifying drought and extreme heat. And as the water supply dwindles and demand surges from residents and tourists alike, the city is looking to antiquity for solutions. One that’s attracting attention is an ancient aqueduct that runs beneath Athens, and it’s largely intact. So a project to fix it up and repurpose it is underway. Niki Kitsantonis is a freelance journalist for the New York Times and a long-time resident of Athens. Welcome to Living on Earth, Niki!

KITSANTONIS: Thanks very much, Jenni.

DOERING: So tell me about this ancient aqueduct underneath Athens. Just how extensive is it, and how did it serve the city in the past?

KITSANTONIS: Well, it's an aqueduct that was built in the second century AD, it was commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and hence its name, Hadrian's aqueduct. And it pretty much supplied Athens with water for a very long time. In fact, it only really stopped, there was a pause during Greece's Ottoman occupation when much of it was destroyed. And what isn't really widely known by the people of Athens and in Greece generally, is that it continues to operate. It's still functional. In fact, it's the longest operational underground ancient aqueduct in Europe. So it's about 15 miles, and it has lasted the test of time. I mean, it's lasted essentially 2000 years. The issue is that it hasn't been tapped into. So although the water was continuing to run, it wasn't actually being used. And that's what they're trying to change now, sort of reharnessing this ancient network to try and solve a modern problem, which is drought, or, you know, scarce water supplies.

DOERING: So what's the plan for getting this off the ground? How will the water be used, and who will get to use it?

KITSANTONIS: So the test project area for the aqueduct reoperating is in Halandri. Halandri is a suburb of Athens. It's actually just north of the capital, quite big for the area. It's about 80,000 people that live there. A few hundred have applied to be connected to the pipeline in the first instance. So there is, obviously, there's the ancient aqueduct, and then there's this new, smaller network that runs parallel to the ancient aqueduct and is connected by pipeline to a number of homes in this particular borough. The water is non potable, so it won't be drinking water. It'll be for use in like watering gardens, washing, that sort of thing. So the aim is then to spin it out to another seven boroughs under which the aqueduct runs. The challenge, I think that the authorities have is in raising awareness and public interest in the aqueduct, because at the moment, there isn't anything really resembling a national or even local awareness campaign. And in fact, when I was reporting it, I was talking to people literally drinking coffee in a cafe called Reservoir, the name of the cafe's Reservoir. It's right next to the central reservoir of the ancient aqueduct. And nobody knew that it existed. Most people said, Oh, I just thought that was the name of the cafe. I had no idea it was linked to an actual aqueduct.

DOERING: What is the scale here in terms of how much this aqueduct might make a dent in Athens’ water savings over, let's say, a year?

KITSANTONIS: Well, to be honest, the actual savings in terms of water are a fraction of what Athenians use. So assuming that this network is extended to another seven boroughs, the projected saving is around 250 million gallons, which sounds like a lot, but when you bear in mind that the average annual consumption in Athens is 100 billion gallons of water, it's less than 1%. So we're talking about quite a small fraction of water that is actually going to be saved. But what the authorities are really flagging is the need to change what they call the water culture in Greece, to change the way that water is used, and to change people's habits whereby water is not just something that you can leave the shower running or the water running in the garden, as people used to do, and as lots of people I spoke to said, that that's what they used to do. And now they're telling their children, switch off the water in the garden, to cut down on their shower time, fill the bath halfway. This is something very new in Greece, because it is such a hot country, and it's becoming hotter. People were very liberal in their use of water, and this is something now that they're hoping that the reactivation of this aqueduct will help people change the way they think about water and just view it as a precious commodity, and something that needs to be preserved and not wasted.

DOERING: So it sounds like it's about more than the numbers. It's about changing culture.

KITSANTONIS: That's right.

DOERING: To what extent are there, you know, of course, this water would be going to some homes, but are there going to be any other more visible projects that, in the ways that this water is used, that Athenians will be able to see and enjoy?

KITSANTONIS: So in addition to the homes, the schools, the water from the aqueduct will be used to irrigate green areas. And the idea is to sort of reduce this heat island effect in that particular area. And the aim is to then present this as a test project to other boroughs, so that they can see what can be done with this additional water and how the impact of climate change during the summer, particularly, can be tackled with just a different approach to using water and redirecting water in a smart way to bring down temperatures.

DOERING: Yeah, as you say, that sounds really important on a really hot day in summer in Greece, to have, you know, lush green space, like a park where people can go and enjoy the benefits of those plants cooling the area.

KITSANTONIS: Right, yeah.

DOERING: So how might this model be used elsewhere? What other cities have the potential to tap into these kinds of ancient systems to address these present challenges?

KITSANTONIS: Well, one city that has asked for help from the Greek authorities is the Portuguese city of Serpa. They have a 17th century aqueduct that they plan to reharness in the same way that Athens has done with its ancient aqueduct. They're also very interested in the citizen participation aspect of the project, and the way that so many different parties managed to sort of collaborate in such an effective way. Locals in the Halandri area, the test project area, got so involved in the project. And children, school children also got involved in, not only learning about the sort of the ancient history of it, the engineering of it, but they actually got involved with some of the urban design. So they designed water tanks that are going to be in the schools. They designed green areas that are going to run over the aqueduct's course in their neighborhoods. And this is something unusual. You don't really see that much citizen participation in Greek sort of local authority projects. It's something that isn't the norm, let's say. This is also something that officials in Rome have been very interested about, which is quite ironic, because Hadrian was obviously a Roman emperor, so the Romans are now asking the Athenians for help in, not actually in reactivating an aqueduct, but in using citizen participation in other initiatives.

DOERING: So Niki, from your perspective, to what extent are the climate crisis and its effects part of the public conversation in Athens and Greece more broadly, and how might this project contribute to that conversation?

KITSANTONIS: Well, the climate conversation in Greece is something relatively new and is only really something that authorities started talking about because they started seeing the intense repercussions of climate change in terms of mega fires, wildfires that spiraled out of control, heat related deaths, something very new for Greece. And in 2024 we saw three or four islands actually declaring a state of emergency because they ran out of water. So this was something that was really in the news this year, something relatively new, and something that authorities, in a way, have been obliged to start talking about. So it's becoming a part of the conversation, but only very recently. Some argue that it's a bit too late. As one would say, though, climate change is something that worldwide has been tackled, perhaps with a bit of a delay, but at least we're seeing some discussion about it now, albeit in response to quite tragic developments.

DOERING: Before you go, as a resident of Athens yourself, Niki, what are you hoping the city will look like in the coming years as we continue to adapt to climate change?

KITSANTONIS: Well, as a resident of Athens, I do worry about what the city is going to look like in the next few years, because the truth is, over the last few years, I struggle with rising temperatures. I find that I've had to change the way I work, the way I plan my day around extremely high temperatures that were not the norm 20 years ago when I moved to Athens from London. And it's something that I worry about, because every year it gets worse and worse and more intense and it gets harder to deal with. So the thought that this could continue to intensify is quite terrifying, actually. Because apart from the practical problems of adapting to work, there's also what you see around you in terms of forest fires, which have become increasingly common and have actually become visible closer to the capital now, so it's beginning to change our life in a very visible way. And the idea behind this project is to sensitize the public to the fact that water is running out and the fact that action needs to be taken.

DOERING: Niki Kitsantonis is a freelance correspondent for The New York Times based in Athens. Thank you so much, Niki.

KITSANTONIS: Thanks, Jenni, thanks a lot.

Related links:
- Read Niki Kitsantonis’ article in the New York Times
- Smithsonian Magazine | "Athens Is Reviving a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Aqueduct to Deliver Water to the City Amid Prolonged Droughts"

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[SFX – CHURCH BELLS]

Listening on Earth

O’NEILL: We stay in Greece for a moment for this week’s Listening on Earth from one of our very own.

[CHURCH BELLS]

PANDELIDIS: This is Sophia Pandelidis, producer here at Living on Earth, and those were the church bells that woke me up on Sunday morning in Paros, Greece.

[BOUZOUKI MUSIC]

O’NEILL: Sophia also sent along a taste of festive bouzouki music in a café, again on the island of Paros, which is in the Aegean Sea between Santorini and Mykonos.

[BOUZOUKI MUSIC]

Related links:
- How to make a sound recording on an iPhone
- How to make a sound recording on an Android

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O’NEILL: Just ahead – making roads safer for wild animals. Keep listening to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the estate of Rosamund Stone Zander - celebrated painter, environmentalist, and author of The Art of Possibility – who inspired others to see the profound interconnectedness of all living things, and to act with courage and creativity on behalf of our planet. Support also comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green, and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[MUSIC: Gary Burton, “O Grande Amour” live at KNKX Public Radio, by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Youtube]

Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

O’NEILL: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering. The many millions of miles of roads that crisscross our planet allow us humans to get from Point A to Point B. But they make it a lot harder for the other animals we share the Earth with to get around safely. Fortunately, there’s a whole branch of ecology dedicated to making roads a little friendlier to wild animals, and journalist Ben Goldfarb explores it in his book Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. I started by asking Ben to read a passage from his book.

GOLDFARB: Road ecology was an act of inter-species imagination, a field whose radical premise asserted that it was possible to perceive our built world through nonhuman eyes. How does a moose comprehend traffic? What sort of tunnel appeals to a mink? Why do grizzly bears prefer crossing over highways while black bears go under? These questions had empirical answers, but they also required ecologists to think like wild animals—empathy manifested as science.

DOERING: Ben, that kind of thinking seems rare in our hyper anthropocentric world.

GOLDFARB: It does. Yeah, you know, and I think that's especially true when it comes to roads, that roads are these ubiquitous structures. We don't really think about them a whole lot. One of the beautiful things about road ecology is that, in a way, one of the guiding principles is to think about our human built landscapes the way that wild animals might think about them. Those non-human beings perceive our roads and railroad tracks and container ships and so on, so differently than we do. That idea of trying to comprehend our built world through the eyes of non-human beings, it's a really powerful idea. And in a sense, even though I'm not sure road ecologists would explicitly say they're doing that, that's what this field of science is all about.

DOERING: Of course, roads cause all kinds of ecological disruptions, but the most obvious and really tragic is roadkill itself. Just how big of a problem is roadkill in the United States?

GOLDFARB: It's almost unfathomably vast as an issue. We don't really know exactly how many animals are killed every day by cars, but the best guess is that more than a million vertebrate animals, so to say nothing of insects and arachnids are killed by cars every day. I think we have this way of saying, "well, look, lots of common animals like gray squirrels and raccoons and white-tailed deer are being hit by cars, but there are a lot of squirrels and raccoons out there. So yes, it's sad for those individual animals, but it's not really a conservation crisis," because logically enough, the animals that we see dead on the highway are the common animals. But there are lots of threatened and endangered species too, like Florida panthers and ocelots and tiger salamanders, for which roadkill is the leading source of mortality. There are many, many species in the US and around the world that we're literally driving to extinction.

DOERING: So, Ben, different animals respond differently to the presence of traffic. How might a bear's response compared to a deer or even a frog?

GOLDFARB: Yeah. So, it's a great question, and a few years ago, a group of road ecologists, led by a scientist named Sandra Jacobson, classified animals responses to roads because every animal experiences roads differently and reacts differently to them. So, on one end of this spectrum of road response, you have animals that have been called non responders, animals that don't really notice or react to traffic. There, we're talking largely about reptiles and amphibians. You can imagine a bunch of frogs on a warm, wet spring night hopping down to their breeding pond to mate, and they're just going for it. Any road that's in their way; they're going to cross it. They don't necessarily know that traffic means trouble, and they get crushed in enormous numbers. They're these, you know, mass squishing events, where hundreds or even 1000s of frogs and salamanders can be killed on a single night because they're not responding to the presence of traffic. So, there you've got the non-responders, the animals are just crossing the road come, you know, hell or high water. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we've got road avoiders, really cautious, wary animals, and grizzly bears are kind of the iconic example of that. These are really intelligent animals who rightfully know that roads are dangerous and that humans use roads and humans are dangerous, and even a handful of cars per hour can be enough to prevent grizzly bear from crossing a relatively rural road, and so they don't get hit by cars as much. But you know, I think for bears, you know, almost a bigger problem than roadkill is habitat fragmentation, because they're not crossing these roads at all. They're unable to find mates, find all the food they need. We know that road density is one of the biggest factors in making habitat unsuitable for grizzly bears. So, whether you're crossing the road too often, in the case of amphibians, or not crossing at all, in the case of many grizzly bears, roads spell trouble.

DOERING: And then there are animals in the middle, like deer, that will approach the road cautiously, and then when they think it's safe to go, they'll go across. But of course, we see a lot of deer collisions in the US, and that can be a huge problem, not just for the deer, the very tragic outcome of that for them, but also for us humans.

GOLDFARB: Absolutely. Yeah. So, deer, scientists have called speeders, which means that they're looking for these little gaps in traffic that they can run through. And of course, they don't always gage those gaps perfectly. And obviously, deer collisions are the result of that. There's something like a deer collision every 30 seconds in the US. Large animal collisions collectively cost society more than $8 billion in hospital bills and vehicle repairs and insurance costs and so on. And hundreds of drivers die every year, and deer crashes and other large animal crashes, the white tail deer is the single most dangerous wild animal in North America. That's not the deer's fault; that's the car's fault.

DOERING: Wow. Forget about bears or wolves or cougars. It's the deer you need to watch out for.

GOLDFARB: Exactly, in fact, there have been studies suggesting that return of wolves and cougars could ultimately be a really good thing for human safety because they would thin some of those overpopulated deer herds and prevent a lot of dangerous crashes.

DOERING: So, if you go on a road trip these days, you might go underneath one of these amazing structures called an overpass, or you might, you know, not even realize you're driving right over a lot of underpasses. What goes into thinking about what makes for an effective wildlife crossing when it is an overpass or an underpass?

GOLDFARB: Yeah, really good question. So, you know, I think the most important thing to start thinking about is, okay, what animals are you trying to help? Because there are some animals, like deer, that will very happily go through an underpass. But then there are other species that really prefer overpasses, going over what it looks like to us, like a pedestrian bridge, basically over a highway. A really good example of that are pronghorn, which are commonly known as antelope. And pronghorn are the prototypical overpass users. They're incredibly fast, right? They're the fastest land animal in North America. They've got amazing vision. They can see a really long distance. So, they don't want to be crawling through a little culvert. They want to be up on the deck of a bridge where they can look out for predators and run away if they have to. So, if you're going to build a wildlife crossing for pronghorn, you know, you really want an overpass, right? So that's just, you know, one example of how you really have to think about the animals you're trying to help and, of course, figuring out where the animals would want to cross the highway if they could right? And so, we're looking, typically, at road collision data. You know, if there's a big pile of carcasses, that's probably a pretty good indication that there's a migration route crossing the highway, and putting those satellite collars on animals, tracking wildlife to figure out where they're approaching highways and might want to cross if there is an opportunity to cross, that's another really helpful data layer. So, it's that combination of things. What animals are you trying to help? Where are the animals approaching the highway? All of those different factors are going into, you know, where these wildlife crossings are sited.

DOERING: Now, talk to me about migration, and how species that migrate often come into some of these road conflicts, more so than species that stay in one place.

GOLDFARB: Absolutely. So, you know, what is the point of migration? Right? The idea of migrating, if you're an organism, is to sync your movements with the resources that the world provides you. So, one chapter of this book, for example, is about mule deer in southwestern Wyoming. These deer are migrating between seasonal habitats. In winter, they're down in these low elevation valleys where there's not a whole lot of snow and the weather's a little bit gentler. And then in summer, they're following this green wave of new vegetation up into the mountains to spend the summer browsing up in the cool High Country. So, if you're a mule deer, you're following those seasonal resources is integral to your survival. The problem is that there's no spot in the lower 48 states that's farther than 20 miles from a road. So, if you're going to migrate, roads are going to get in the way. And in the case of those mule deer, their winter range is basically bisected by I80, this giant interstate highway. And during really harsh years, you know, they'll basically pool up against the North side of I80 looking for a way to cross to find that good winter food that they need to survive. Some especially harsh years, 40% of that deer herd will actually starve because they can't complete their migration to reach all of that really good winter range on the south side of I80. So, that's, I think, a really powerful example of how migration historically, this brilliant strategy, has become increasingly dangerous or problematic because of roads. And those migratory species, which were historically some of the most successful animals on earth, are today really endangered in many cases.

DOERING: So, Ben, you put in a wildlife crossing, an overpass or an underpass, the animals need to know that they're supposed to use it. So how do you direct them towards this overpass or underpass?

GOLDFARB: Yeah, so the really critical infrastructure that gets the animals to the crossings are roadside fences. You're fencing off the highway on either side of the crossings and basically guiding the animals to the crossings. And what happens over time, in many cases, that animals just incorporate those crossings in their movements, and they acclimate to them. And you know, a herd of deer will learn to include the crossing in their migration route, or a grizzly bear will teach her cub how to use crossings, and then her cub will become a crosser. But it really all starts with fences that are just keeping the animals off of the highway and getting them to those crossings. So, in a sense, those two pieces of infrastructure, the fences and the crossings, don't really work without the other, right? If all you did was fence the highway, then you'd prevent roadkill, but you wouldn't let animals migrate and meet each other, and if you put up crossings, but no fences, then the animals wouldn't necessarily know to use them.

DOERING: You visited a number of these wildlife crossings, overpasses, underpasses, in the course of writing this book, what's the one that stuck with you the most?

GOLDFARB: Well, it's funny. I mean, the one that I think about a lot, perhaps because it's the, you know, one of the most famous wildlife crossings out there is one that doesn't totally exist yet, or at least one that's not completed yet, and that's the Liberty Canyon crossing just outside of Los Angeles that's being built for mountain lions. And the situation there is, there's this little population of mountain lions trapped in the Santa Monica Mountains, surrounded by this ocean of freeways totally cut off from the rest of mountain lion society elsewhere in California. And so, there's a wildlife crossing being built over the 101, the busiest freeway on Earth, that would allow those mountain lions to mingle with cats elsewhere in the state, and refresh that gene pool and keep that little population alive. And that's an incredible project, I think, because there, it's they're just doing so much to essentially create a new ecosystem atop the highway. The thing about the 101, is that, because it's so densely traffic, so much noise and light pollution, that the designers of that crossing are really pulling out all the stops to create an enticing environment. If you're building a wildlife crossing over a little two-lane highway in Wyoming, you don't necessarily have to take all of these measures, but with such a busy freeway in Los Angeles, you really have to do a lot to make it appealing, and so they're adding all of these vegetated screens and berms and rock walls to block some of that sensory pollution. They're growing plants at an on-site nursery to create this vegetation community atop the wildlife crossing. So, they're really just again, creating this new chunk of land atop the highway that will resemble the surrounding ecosystem. And to me, that's just such a beautiful idea creating a new ecosystem over a highway. That just blows my mind.

DOERING: And this crossing Liberty Canyon started in part because the public fell in love with a very famous kitty, a mountain lion named P-22. Can you tell us his story?

GOLDFARB: Right, so, P-22 is the poster cat for this whole project. And so, P-22 was born in the Santa Monica Mountains, this little patch of habitat isolated by freeways. And he was, you know, one of the only cats that managed to get out of there. He managed to cross the 101 and the 405 these two incredibly busy freeways. Somehow, nobody's quite sure how he did it. And he ended up in Griffith Park, which is this, you know, tiny little island of wildness, really, in Los Angeles proper. You know, that's where the LA Zoo is, and the Hollywood sign. And P-22 lived there successfully for many years. He never bothered people. He hunted deer and raccoons at night. He was this wonderful neighbor.

DOERING: Didn't he break into the zoo at times though?

GOLDFARB: He did, he did kill a koala in the zoo. I think that's actually kind of incredible. I think in many places, they would have said, Oh, we can't have this wild, big cat menacing our precious zoo animals. But, you know, instead, to Los Angeles' credit, they said, well, we'll just sort of fortify the zoo itself, and we'll let P-22 do his thing. And so, he really captured people's imagination. But it was also sad story as well because he was isolated in this little park and was doomed never to find a mate. It was very unlikely that any female mountain lion would ever repeat that journey and end up in Griffith Park. So, he was doomed to be this lonely bachelor for the rest of his life. And so, I think that idea of this cat who is looking for love but trapped on this little island of habitat surrounded by an ocean of freeways, I think that captured people's imaginations and activated that ecological empathy we were talking about earlier. And thanks to the campaigning and fundraising efforts of a woman named Beth Pratt with the National Wildlife Federation and many other people as well, this wildlife crossing is being built now. And unfortunately, P22 died a couple of years ago. He was actually hit by a car and injured had to be euthanized. But this wildlife crossing is going to help his literal flesh and blood family members who still live in in the Santa Monica Mountains. So, it's, you know, I think, a pretty incredible example of how a charismatic animal can really galvanize public support.

DOERING: And by the way, how much is this wildlife crossing going to cost in the end, and when will it be ready?

GOLDFARB: Yeah, it's gonna end up being over $90 million in part, again, because, you know, it is the largest one ever being built, and they're really are pulling out all the stops. That's a pretty atypical price tag for wildlife crossings, typically with an overpass, we're talking more like eight to ten million dollars, so definitely don't want people to see the $90 million price tag and say, "Oh well, they all cost that," because the Liberty Canyon crossing really is exceptional, very unusual, and last I heard, it'll be complete in early 2026.

DOERING: Now, of course, most of your book focuses on what's happening here in the US, but you also do travel to other countries. What have you seen in terms of who's at the forefront of this field of road ecology and making sure that the environment more safely interacts with our roads?

GOLDFARB: You know, it's interesting here in the US, we have this very calcified highway system, right? We built our highways in the 1960s and 70s, at least, you know, our big interstates before we fully recognized what a gigantic problem we were creating for wildlife. So, most of the work that we're doing here in the US is basically retrofitting right, adding wildlife crossings here and there, whereas other countries, especially developing countries, that are building out their highway infrastructure now, you know, they can do it right from the get go. India is a really good example of that. And in some places, India has built highways up on these concrete pillars, so the whole highway is elevated above the forest floor, and tigers and elephants and other animals can wander back and forth unimpeded. So, the great challenge is that a lot of these countries that are building their highways now aren't necessarily doing that. We're in the middle of this period that the ecologist Bill Lawrence has called the infrastructure tsunami, — you know, this wave of new construction that's sweeping across the planet, especially in places like India and Nepal and Brazil, some of the most biodiverse countries on earth. And just the sheer number of highways that are being built right now, I think, really threatens to overwhelm nature. So, we're at this critical point in the history of infrastructure where we're building more of it now than ever. It's really the primary threat to so many different species, especially in the tropics, and we really need to get it right, because obviously some amount of highway building is unavoidable and even desirable, but how can we do that in a way that doesn't totally sacrifice nature? I think that's one of the next great challenges in human history.

DOERING: Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist and the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. Thank you so much, Ben.

GOLDFARB: Thanks, Jenni, it's great to be here.

Related links:
- Explore Ben Goldfarb’s work
- Purchase Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet and support both Living on Earth and local book stores.
- Learn more about the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing.

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[MUSIC: Gary Burton, “O Grande Amour” live at KNKX Public Radio, by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Youtube]

O’NEILL: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Paloma Beltran, Daniela Faree-ah, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Ashanti Mclean, Nana Mohammed, Sophia Pandelidis, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt, Bella Smith, Melba Torres, and El Wilson.

DOERING: Tom Tiger engineered our show. Alison Lirish Dean composed our themes. You can hear us anytime at L-O-E dot org, Apple Podcasts and YouTube Music, and like us please, on our Facebook page, Living on Earth. Find us on Instagram at living on earth radio, and we always welcome your feedback at comments at loe.org. Steve Curwood is our Executive Producer. I’m Jenni Doering.

O’NEILL: And I’m Aynsley O’Neill. Thanks for listening!

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from you, our listeners, and from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in association with its School for the Environment, developing the next generation of environmental leaders. And from the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, supporting strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

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