A conversation with Dr. Danielle Buttke, who works for the National Park Service at the intersection of human, wildlife, and environmental health. This episode was recorded in September 2023.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

Climate change in Glacier: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/climate-change.htm Public health in National Parks: https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1735/index.ht

---

TRANSCRIPT:

---

Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri Sasnett: This is Headwaters, a podcast made in the verdant wonderland that is Glacier National Park. Millions of people come here each year looking for a break from the stresses of everyday life. My name is Peri, and this episode is an interview that my co-host Daniel did with Dr. Danielle Buttke, talking about the intersection of climate change and public health. They talk about how the health of our climate, environment, and communities is all intertwined. This episode is part of a series of conversations we've been having with a wide variety of climate change experts. These episodes don't have to be listened to in any order, each one stands on its own. And they all focus on a particular aspect of the way the world is being altered by the burning of fossil fuels. Over the past century and a half, human activity has released enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth's climate over one degree Celsius, with only more warming on the way. Throughout 2023, Daniel sat down with experts to talk about how that warming is altering Glacier National Park, our lives and our futures.

[drum and synth beat starts to play]

Peri: I've always been interested in the idea that people and nature are deeply connected. Maybe you know that already, if you listened to our season on whitebark pine. Still, I don't think I was prepared to hear Dr. Buttke explain these interconnections with so much scientific rigor. I was also struck by how profoundly our health is connected to our climate. I think this interview is essential listening.

[beat concludes]

Daniel Lombardi: So thanks for talking to us. We wanted to talk to you, Dr. Buttke, about public health and climate change and how climate change is impacting human health and the health of our natural environment, and how those two things are intertwined and all tangled up together.

Danielle Buttke: I'm excited to be here today.

Daniel: So you have an impressive background, right? You have a Master's in public health. You've studied environmental sciences, and you also have a degree in veterinary medicine, the health and epidemiology of animals. Is that kind of a good summary of that?

Danielle: It is, yeah. I had a little bit of a circuitous route to where I am today. Originally wanted to study and work in environmental science and wildlife conservation, which was where my, my Ph.D. work really focused, and realized somewhat early on that animals knew how to survive just fine. It was really that humans were, were taking over the resources and had basic needs that, that needed to be met before we could ask them to conserve resources for tomorrow. And that's when I switched to public health.

Daniel: So what's your job now? Tell us about where you work and what you do.

Danielle: So I currently lead the One Health program for the National Park Service, and One Health is simply the recognition that both human health, animal health and environmental health are all completely interdependent and interlinked. And when we think about the multiplicity of health outcomes and players, when we're looking at a specific problem, we all benefit when we think about health as a more holistic construct.

Daniel: A lot of times I think your job gets really kicked into high gear when like there's a hantavirus outbreak or something in a national park. Is that right?

Danielle: It is, yeah. Because we share so much of the same biology with other species, we often share a lot of the same diseases. Diseases that pass between humans and animals -- and they can often go in either direction -- SARS-CoV-2 or COVID is a perfect example of that, you know, they're called zoonotic diseases. And that's really where I got my start and where a lot of my work is focused, on those infectious diseases that can pass between humans and animals. Hantavirus is a perfect example of one of those. And so increasingly in our work, we're finding that when the environment is healthy, when we keep those ecosystems healthy, those ecosystem processes are occurring in the way that nature intended. We have many, many fewer disease risks and many, many fewer disease spillover events.

Daniel: Interesting. So I think one thing that's maybe surprising to some people, but talking with you, it seems pretty obvious, that like one approach to studying climate change or thinking about climate change is to think about it through a lens of public health, of environmental health. Do you encounter people that find that surprising, or that's a new idea for them. That these that climate change and environmental health and human health are connected.

Danielle: It's really surprising to me to hear and see how many people have not thought about that connection. In every aspect of the way in which climate change impacts the environment, has a similar impact on human health. And yet studies have shown that few people are aware of those impacts, even if they've personally been impacted by a climate disaster or climate emergency. Because when people understand climate change as an impact to their daily lives and their personal health and their family's health, I think it really helps people to understand why it's so important they take action. And it also helps to clarify the ways in which they can personally take action in their local community, in their home and the environment around them.

Daniel: Yeah. Do you think it's helpful for us to define the difference between health and disease?

Danielle: I think that Western medicine, and my own profession, has focused heavily on disease because it's really easy to see. It's very easy to measure. We have specific tests for specific diseases, and oftentimes it's it's something that we can directly treat. Health is a really difficult thing to measure. Health is not simply the absence of disease, but an individual's ability to thrive within the environment that they exist in, whether it's a human or an animal. And it's therefore a lot easier to understand why health is more directly impacted by climate change than disease per se. Even though we do know that climate change dramatically influences the rate, the types and the severity of infectious diseases. But again, health is much broader than just disease, and therefore the impacts of climate change are much broader than just disease.

[drumbeat plays, marking a transition]

Daniel: What are some examples of climate change really impacting wildlife health and wildlife disease that you've come across in your work?

Danielle: Climate change can influence the actual reproduction of a bacterium or a virus. Under warmer temperatures, or higher or sometimes even lower amounts of precipitation, certain bacteria and viruses can replicate faster, to a higher level, or for a longer period of time. Mosquito-borne viruses are a perfect example of this. When you have a longer, warmer summer, mosquitoes can replicate much more quickly and rapidly, they're present for a longer period of time throughout the year, and those viruses within those mosquitoes can also replicate more rapidly under those warming temperatures. We're also seeing that infectious diseases are changed under climate change because of the ways in which the environment influences where those animals thrive and survive. Avian malaria in Hawaii is a perfect example of this. While neither the mosquitoes nor the the parasite that causes malaria are native to Hawaii, they have become endemic in bird populations and in mosquito populations there. Prior to the warmer temperatures we've seen under climate change, a lot of the native bird species were able to only survive and evade malaria at very high elevations on the mountains in Hawaii. With climate change, those mosquito vectors are moving up in elevation, and those native bird species that are extremely susceptible to malaria, because they didn't evolve with this non-native parasite, are dying out from malaria. And as the mosquitoes move up, there's fewer and fewer refugia, or safe places, for those birds to survive and hide from both the mosquito and the malaria parasite. And we've seen a lot of those native birds go completely extinct because of this parasite. In fact, there's a variety of studies show that there's probably only a few more years left for some of these native bird species to survive without going extinct, if we don't take action now to eradicate that non-native mosquito and that non-native parasite that's present on the island.

Daniel: Wow. So basically, in the case of Hawaii and the birds there, it's a story of climate change and a story of invasive or non-native species in that the mosquitoes and the malaria is historically wasn't there. But this is -- generally, all around the world, what's happening is as the climate warms, these mosquitoes and the diseases they carry are able to spread into new places and impact more people and new species of wildlife as well. Is that right?

Danielle: That's absolutely correct.

Daniel: So we're seeing the potential for these mosquitoes to expand their ranges. Does their range contract alongside, too? As it gets hotter and hotter, they can move to higher elevations and farther north, but then does their the southern end or the lower end of their ra...

Climate and Health with Dr. Danielle Buttke

Powered by Wave AI