WildFed Podcast — Hunt Fish Forage Food – Détails, épisodes et analyse

It's the final episode of The WildFed Podcast, and Daniel and our show producer Grant Guiliano get together to reflect on the last few years of podcasting together, tie a bow on some of the recurring themes we've discussed on the show, as well as look to the future of WildFed.

They chat about the value in reconnecting with the species in your landscape, their thoughts on the future regulations of hunting and foraging, imposter syndrome, plans for a future podcast + a few teasers for Season 4 of the WildFed TV show, and more.

We're so incredibly grateful for your listenership and support over the years! Stay tuned for what's to come...

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/174

Well, it’s finally here. The last interview of the WildFed Podcast. We'll be back next week with our producer Grant to do a final wrap-up, but as far as guest appearances go, who better to take us out than Dan Flores, and on what better topic than his new book, Wild New World. The book is incredible, even, dare we say, required reading for anyone who’s been following the journey of this podcast. It’s not just a history of North America and the animals that live here now — the extant animals — and the ones that were here before — the extinct ones. It’s also the story of the human predator crossing through Beringia and being unleashed on a homonin-naive megafauna assemblage and the impacts that would have here over the proceeding 20,000 years or so. 

It traces its way through the Clovis and Folsom cultures, to the post-ice-age extinction events that led to the great mass of cultures we refer to as Native American, up to the point of contact with European explorers. Then, what follows, as we are all painfully aware, is the Great Dying, which led to the loss of some 80-90% of the indigenous peoples of the continent due to diseases that Europeans had developed significant immunity to but were novel to Native America. And of course, colonization and westward expansion. This then gives way to the most substantial human-induced biomass reduction in known history, the denuding of the land and the commodification of its wildlife — which comes with it several tragic, high-profile extinctions. This part of the book is both compelling and at the same time gruesome and loathsome to read about. It’s truly a blemish on the history of this country and something we are a long way from reconciling still.  

Eventually, this leads to the beginnings of the modern conservation movement, which carries us through to the present day, exploring both its sometimes less-than-savory origins, but also its tremendous wins, like the Endangered Species Act. 

The book walks us through to the very present with some speculation about the future.

When Daniel last spoke to Dan, he'd only read a few chapters, and those were some feel-good pages. He didn’t really understand what was to come or how it would shake him to the core. He didn’t expect it would cause him to reevaluate many of his assumptions or make him audit his own practices and how they relate to this bigger-picture history.

It’s so easy to forget that we live, not as isolated points in space and time, but rather in a continuum. Embedded in a fabric of living history. Without context for what has come before, we can inadvertently focus myopically on where we are now. Conservation is no different. While our methods for wildlife management are light-years ahead of where they were just a century ago, one thing we've learned making this show is there’s still a LONG way to go. It’s far from perfect.

All that said, humans are and always have been — as long as our genus has existed — predators. Not just dietarily, but behaviorally. Those of us that hunt and fish know this in a very intimate way. The idea of giving that up is not really an option for most of us — despite the hopes of the planet’s vegan contingent who believes we can just implement a species-wide dietary experiment on the human population without any malnourishment consequences to ourselves or children. Daniel has been down that road and it leads, in his opinion, off the rails and into nutritional bankruptcy. 

So, it seems to us that we need to learn to balance our needs, wants, and desires as a predatory animal with our needs, wants and desires for intact fauna and healthy ecosystems. No easy task. One that’s not just centuries, but millennia, in the making.

It seems to us that this decade could be characterized by a now hyper-connected and networked human race coming to terms with itself, its past, and its future. Those of us who champion a meaningful ecological trophic connection to wildlife are going to have to do the same. We hope, when the dust settles, we can still hunt, fish, and forage, since as Daniel has stated on this show dozens if not a hundred times — we think this is essentially human. 

Who knows where this all leads, but we're grateful to Dan for this book and the incredible work that must have gone into writing such a sweeping ecological and environmental history. We suspect this one is destined to be a classic. Dan is, no doubt, one of the most important environmental writers of our day, and it’s an honor to have him back on the show — and especially as our final interview. 

As we mentioned earlier, we'll be back next week for one final, more intimate episode of the show. Thank you so much for following along on this journey, for your support, and for your listenership. It has meant the world to us!

Now, here’s our second interview with Dan Flores on his newest book, Wild New World!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/173

Our guest today is Tim Clemens of Ironwood Foraging, back for his second appearance. And this one is a lot of fun. In fact, Daniel was enjoying this conversation so much that he had to pull himself away to make his next appointment. They kind of range all over a pretty broad topic set just having fun and seeing where the conversation led them. We think you’ll appreciate the outcome.

Otherwise, we're going to be brief today, and let this conversation speak for itself because the grid is down here, and we’ve been without power for a few days now. Daniel had to shut the generator down to record the podcast intro due to the incessant grumbling noise it makes, so had to record on battery power. There’s a thick blanket of heavy wet snow bending all the gray birches and young poplars over pressing their canopies to the frozen ground. They say we won’t get power restored for another 36 hours or so, which is just part of living in rural Mane. It’s a bit of fun having this disruption to modernity, but it also makes things like podcasting a bit more challenging.

Oh, and one quick bit of housekeeping, we’re going to take next week off from the show to focus on the Holidays, so there won’t be a podcast next Tuesday. But of course, we’ll be back the following week.

Until then, we hope you have an incredible winter solstice and Christmas. As the Crooners say “It’s the most wonderful time… of the year!”

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/164

Tyler Sharp — CEO & Editor in Chief of Modern Huntsman — joins us for a fascinating conversation on his time in Africa, his thoughts on the rebranding of modern hunting, and how we can take control of the hunting narrative before we lose it forever. Tyler shares about his immersive experiences living and hunting in the African bush that were formative to his balanced outlook on modern hunting culture, and we also get to dig in on one of the most controversial hunts on earth — the African elephant. Tyler is passionate about elevating the hunting narrative, and we discuss his thoughts on the North American model of conservation, the hunter's paradox, and how we can make hunting more inclusive for all who want to participate.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/074

Dr. Karl Malcolm is an ecologist and hunter who leads the Renewable Resources department for the Eastern Region of the US Forest Service. With his inclusive, boundary-pushing, and thoughtful ethos on conservation, he's a model of the hunter/conservationist of the future. In this episode,  Karl shares about his experiences working with Moon Bears in China and the contrast between hunting and conservation here versus there. We also discuss his fresh perspectives on bringing other stakeholders outside of the hunting and angling community into the conservation funding model and how we can build bridges between hunters and non-hunters. Karl encourages us to push the conservation conversation into a new arena, and this thought-provoking interview will give you a lot to think about!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/073

In today's episode, our host Daniel Vitalis shares an incredible experience he had fishing for a blacktip shark in the Florida Keys. Despite strong, well-managed populations here in the US, fishing for sharks has become somewhat controversial — largely due to unregulated and unethical practices in other parts of the world — and Daniel's story leads this episode into a much bigger conversation about the complexities of fisheries, regulations, hunting predators and the emotional charge around charismatic species, and the future of hunting and fishing in the US. Enjoy!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/072

Today's guest is Dr. Susan Crockford — zoologist, author, and the polar bear expert that’s rocking the boat on the climate change narrative that these bears have become — through very manipulated data and media talking points — enmeshed in. To be clear, this podcast isn’t countering the theory of climate change, but rather the way polar bears have been misused as the charismatic mega-faunal poster children for climate change. Susan is here to share her research and set the record straight on polar bears, what’s really going on with the arctic ice, and what can happen when you step out of line in the scientific community. This eye-opening interview is a must-listen!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/071

In his book, The Fifth Beginning, archeologist and anthropologist Dr. Robert Kelly proposes a way of looking at the human saga that divides our history up into five distinct turning points — what he calls Beginnings — times of radical transition that fundamentally alter the way we live on the planet and with one another. In this conversation, Dr. Kelly walks us through the history of humanity, using the first four Beginnings as a framework that leads us to what he proposes is our current major stage of the human journey — the Fifth Beginning. This is a fascinating conversation, and we range across both time and geological space as we review human antiquity and speculate about our future too.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/070

Barb Barton — author of Manoomin: The Story of Wild Rice in Michigan, endangered species biologist, and leader of a local women's circle that teaches traditional wild food knowledge — joins us to share about wild rice, wild foods, and relationship to place from her unique perspective as someone with experience in both indigenous and modern approaches. Daniel and Barb discuss the history of wild rice, appreciating wild foods as gifts, the importance of restoring traditional knowledge, how speaking the English language vs North American indigenous languages can shape our worldview, and how to create ecological change on an individual level.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/069

It's always a pleasure to have Arthur Haines — botanist, forager & Maine Guide — back on the show! In this episode, Daniel and Arthur go in-depth on maple syrup, maple trees, and their own home sugar bushes. An iconic wild food of the Northeast, maple syrup is an important staple in both Daniel and Arthur's homes. Tune in to gain an understanding of the process of harvesting maple syrup, its indigenous history, health benefits and nutrient profile, along with simple strategies for a beginner's maple sugaring set-up. If you're interested in getting started harvesting maple syrup, this conversation will give you invaluable insights from two seasoned harvesters to get you going this spring!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/068