Sean B. Carroll
speaker
52 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Sean B. Carroll’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
um thinking through the myriad effects of you know creatures in these ecosystems to sort of you know weigh these things out but i think i think on balance we see that you know ecosystems the systems themselves are healthier when the components that have been there for eons are are there and thriving and working and you know these forests that produce you know oxygen and timber and um you know
rivers that give us fresh water and glaciers and rivers that give us fresh water and oceans that produce fish and things like this. These are all more productive when they when their diversity is intact. So I think on balance, it's a long way to get around to your question and say, you know, do these animals have negative impacts?
I would say, you know, yes, in probably a narrow view, but in the broader view, they've evolved as parts of these systems and the integrity of these systems depend on them.
Well, we've hit three of the really big ones, but I think the most important rule, Mike, and probably the most important message I could deliver is that nature is incredibly resilient. That given a chance...
given time and and space and taking pressure off these places they can rebound and they can rebound spectacularly populations can rebound species that have been pushed right to the brink of extinction can recover spectacularly habitats that look incredibly degraded can come roaring back and they can come roaring back before our eyes not you know not in centuries but i mean in years to decades
And this resilience of nature, I mean, just let's give it a minute to sort of sink in. I'll give some examples. You know, fisheries, which we pay close attention to for their commercial significance, a good number of fisheries in North America have been fished to a critical state.
And then the fisheries regulators step in and moratoria are put up, and many of those fisheries have rebounded and rebounded well.
uh it just turns out that the oceans are incredibly productive given a chance and populations will will rebound species that are familiar to us like the bald eagle people may know that in the 1960s because of widespread use of ddt bald eagles and peregrine falcons were devastated they had a lot of trouble with the viability of their chicks so populations crashed
We were down to fewer than 500 mating pairs of bald eagles, the national symbol, by the late 60s. Today, that number is over 70,000 breeding pairs, and the total population is even bigger than that. So when we took the pressure off, when we took away DDT, which was compromising their ability to reproduce, the population came roaring back.
And you can tell the same story of manatees in the waters off Florida, of grizzly bears in the Rockies, of sea otters on the Pacific coast. So individual species can come roaring back.
and um you know we alligators the american alligator people may not know in the late 60s alligators were extremely threatened and you know goodness go to florida now and try not to see an alligator you know they're everywhere well i like the way you have framed this as the rules of life how we're all interconnected and intertwined and interdependent on each other and it's not something i think most of us think about but
Thanks, Mike. It's always a pleasure.
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