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Rewilding Earth Podcast
Episode 135: Dr. Todd Bridges on Engineering with Nature
00:34:38
Dr. Todd Bridges is a Professor of Practice in resilient and sustainable systems in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. Prior to joining UGA in 2023, Bridges served for 17 years as the U.S.
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- [00:06]
Dr. Todd Bridges
Most of your listeners have their own personal experience with understanding that our system is out of whack and we need to bring it back into a type of harmony, the productive harmony that the National Environment Policy act called for, this productive harmony between people and nature. And I think we have the experience and the know how. So what we need to do is then focus our resolve to accomplish that. And there are going to be some other elements to this, of course, some modifications and updating of kind of policy and how we approach our relationship with nature. But I'm quite optimistic that we have what we need collectively to do this.
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Jack Humphrey
Foreign.
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Podcast Host
You'Re listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
- [01:20]
Jack Humphrey
What does it mean really, when we.
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Guest Speaker
Talk about putting things back real, restoring nature's autonomy, its diversity, and protecting it both for its own sake and for the ability it gives humanity to live in this Goldilocks era of everything being just right to support us and all.
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Jack Humphrey
Life on the planet?
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Guest Speaker
Well, part of that is policy, education and understanding. Another even larger part of it is the actual actions we must take to make things right. Shovels and backbreaking work in some cases, but also making the simple but challenging choice to let nature do its thing in key places crucial to goals like biodiversity preservation and protection. I'm Jack Humphrey and my guest today is Dr. Todd Bridges, professor of practice in resilient and sustainable systems in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. When it comes to the shovels part of rewilding, specifically nature based solutions, Todd has an insider's view on what it will take for us to accomplish big goals like the 30 by 30 I.
- [02:19]
Dr. Todd Bridges
Was trained academically as a biologist, an ecologist. I did my doctoral work and biological oceanography. But after I finished my formal education, if you will, I went to work for the U.S. army Corps of Engineers. And I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with that organization. It's one of the world's largest public engineering agencies. It's about almost 40,000 employees in the United States with a very significant portfolio of responsibilities and infrastructure related to water as it relates to flooding, as well as ecosystems and navigation. And So I spent 30 years with the Army Corps of Engineers in research and development at a place called the Engineer Research and Development Center. And it was there, back in 2010, that I started with a team, a program that we call Engineering with Nature. And the intention of this was, as we described at the time, seeking ways to intentionally align natural and engineering processes to efficiently and sustainably deliver economic, environmental and social benefits through collaboration. And we Engaged in a lot of collaboration, partnership building, research, of course, but also with a focus very much on application. We use that kind of combination of effort to make progress in this space. And when I retired in February of 2023 and came to the University of Georgia, our work continues in this and the partnerships are continuing grow across both the public and the private sector, both for profit and nonprofit, as well as universities across the United States. There's just, there's a tremendous opportunity right now with all the alignment that we see happening, to seek out a new way of relating to nature that's beneficial to people and to nature.
- [04:29]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah. And it's a pretty tall order and it can mean a lot of things to different people. Like there are people in the rewilding movement, they look at it as nature for its own sake, self willed nature. And it takes some engineering to get back to that point. For some of the places that have been so radically altered, that's necessary if we don't want to wait 2000 years. So and that's part of the spectrum. I think that's one side of the spectrum and then there's another one that's that people are really most comfortable looking at it from the lens of what can that do for us in terms of restoring a big wild area, a watershed, a coastline, and then that also benefits nature. If it's done properly, it actually is good for nature. So it just really depends. I think we're all talking about generally the same thing though, don't you?
- [05:16]
Dr. Todd Bridges
Yes, I think there's a lot of shared conceptual space here. And generally what I find is that people in organizations come to it from a particular perspective or if you want to think differently, they view it from a particular lens that based on the mission of their organization, their discipline background. But yes, there's a, there's much more in common in these and these shared goals than there are differences. I, I'm reminded of this famous quote from Thoreau in Wildness is the preservation of the world. And I know that there's a range of perspectives about what he meant by that, but for me it's a reminder that we as people are part of nature and our well being is connected to nature's well being. And so how do we seek that, that kind of mutual benefit between us and everything else in nature? And there is most definitely a plate or if you will, nature for nature's sake. But there's an increasing consciousness, I think, not just among say conservation scientists or ecologists, that people are dependent in so many ways and so Many layers on nature and the services that nature provides. So how do we treat nature? Well, so that nature treats us. There's this mutual dependency. And how can we engineer in that space? As I mentioned, I worked for an engineering organization for 30 years, so I come with that learned perspective. And I would say that in learning to engineer, if you will, a better relationship with nature, we're going to have to do some UN engineering. For example, in the 20th century, in the United States, we collectively built 90,000 major dams. 90,000. And those structures impound 600,000 miles of river in the United States.
- [07:41]
Jack Humphrey
Ooh, I hadn't heard that number. That's.
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Dr. Todd Bridges
Yeah, exactly. It's a lot. Yeah, no, exactly. That's true Landscape scale engineering. We could consider on a different way, how much of the landscape has been transformed into another form to support agriculture.
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Jack Humphrey
Right.
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Dr. Todd Bridges
In the United States. Right. A different type of activity, but I would call it engineering. We may not recognize it immediately as such because it doesn't involve necessarily concrete, if you will, but it is. People in the United States over the last couple hundred years have brought about a lot of change in the environment, in the ecosystem, in nature. And we are experiencing now, particularly, I think, driven by climate change, we're experiencing a number of challenges that are associated with that transformation of the natural system. And so seeking a reorganization, a realignment, seeking a better harmony between humans, people and human systems and nature is something, I think, that we're seeing a lot of interest in many different organizations, public and private.
- [09:06]
Sponsor Representative
Biohabitats is proud to sponsor this episode of the Rewilding Earth podcast during the UN Decade on ecosystem Restoration and always Biohabitats applies the science of ecology to restore degraded ecosystems, conserve habitat, and regenerate the natural systems that sustain all life on Earth. Ecological restoration is positive action that you can take and support today. Today it's also incredibly rewarding and a lot of fun. Learn how you can get involved in the UN Decade on ecosystem restoration by exploring the links and extra credit@rewilding.org pod.
- [09:43]
Jack Humphrey
For some of the older guard and probably some of the new who are reading about the efforts of conservationists in the last 40 or 50 years. Certainly the Corps of Engineers comes up quite often. Is the effort that we're talking about somewhat on the same scale as the effort that it took to get where we are today in terms of what now the core knows? And that. That people like you even exist in the core is probably a little bit of news.
- [10:09]
Dr. Todd Bridges
I would say that many of our institutions, and I would say the Corps of Engineers as a part of this are learning. They need to be learning organizations. As you point out, something that the Corps of Engineers did or the Bureau of Reclamation did or the Forestry Service did a hundred years ago is probably not what they would do today. These organizations should be and are. I would maintain learning by this. And that was the intention of our Engineering with Nature program within the Corps of Engineers. And I could point Jack to many projects within the core's portfolio that go back as long as a hundred years that embody in every way what we call engineering with nature or what we call now nature based solutions in every way. These are old projects.
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Jack Humphrey
Can you give an example of one of those?
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Dr. Todd Bridges
Sure. One of them is a favorite of mine to make this point is it's called the Yolo Bypass. And this is a set of engineering associated with the Sacramento river in California. And this project was put in place because of flooding in, in and along that river. It's a very dynamic system. In fact, the Sacramento river during really high if as much water running through it as the Mississippi River. 400,000 cubic feet per second. Wow. But at drier times of year that could be reduced to just a couple thousand cubic feet per second. But it was apparent even at the end of the 19th century that a levees only approach would never suffice for the Sacramento River. And so a project with was authorized. In fact in 1911 there were we would call now the YOLO Bypass. What it mostly includes is a series of engineered structures we would call them weirs made of concrete that deflect high flow off of the river when necessary onto the historic floodplain. In this case 60,000 acres of floodplain. 75% of that land is privately owned and it's inundated with these high flows when necessary through easements arrangements with those private landowners. But had 16,000 acres of the Yolo Bypasses in the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area. And I visited a part of that wildlife area a couple of years ago on a December Thursday morning. And there were literally dozens of people out there birding because this large expanse of wetlands and floodplains on the Pacific Flyway. So on a Thursday morning with fog hovering over this December day, dozens of people are out there with binoculars looking at birds because it was only about a 20 minute drive from downtown Sacramento. So the first structure, a part of the what we're calling the Yolo Bypass, the first structure, the Sacramento Weir was built in 1916. That that project is over a hundred years old and combines engineering with floodplains and floodplain functions like storing flood water, in addition to purposes that we would associate with conservation.
- [13:45]
Jack Humphrey
And I'm glad you're telling this story because it is, it does seem one sided. I keep meeting people with organizations, institutions, agencies that are telling a different story than the broader narrative out there. If you ask a typical conservationist that's been in the business for a couple decades and they're like, ah, those guys, they just do this. And there's a predominant feeling like. But I keep talking to people like you who have been or are currently in agencies and it just feels like there's a different feeling that the sense of pride that you just used to describe this is, is palpable. Probably what you're talking to students about and you're turning out people that go into agencies with a whole different kind of mindset than some of the what drove some of the worse choices that were made out of lack of or even out of greed, Doing the bidding of a politician that wanted something to go through that maybe even the engineers thought this isn't good, this isn't good for nature, this, but we got to do it. I sense that there's a lot more going on under the surface than a lot of people know about. And until you guys get on podcasts and do some more stuff like this, it's hard for people to know that. So that's why I get so excited when I get someone like you on the horn.
- [15:01]
Dr. Todd Bridges
I'm happy to be a part of the storytelling because I agree with you, Jack, that we need to do more communicating and more storytelling about these kinds of projects, these kinds of opportunities, the needs, the way that we can adapt past practices to be more consistent with this way of doing business. I'll just give you another quote. One of the, I would say lead supporters of what we were doing with engineering with nature and the Corps for several years was, was the current Chief of Engineers, three star General General Scott Spellman. He's retiring next month actually. But back in 2021, just to give you one instance, he was testifying to a committee before Congress and he said this. We want to do more engineering with nature everywhere. We work across the core. You have my commitment and I could give many other examples of statements of support and interest in this space. But at the same time, we need to recognize there are always trade offs, there are always consequences. There's always a need to balance. We engineer to support and provide safe communities and safe places. But we want to do that also for a whole other range of reasons. That we've been talking about here. And I'll use another famous quote, and I don't know, it seems to be apropos to do quote Aldo Leopold in this context. But it's interesting because this year, a Sand county almanac, this is the 75th anniversary of the publication of that book. It was published in 1949. And the very last sentence of that book, in his essay on the land ethic, he wrote, we shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all, has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use. That that point that he wrote more than 75 years ago, the point that he was making is just as pointed, if you will, and just as necessary and relevant today as it was then. Maybe it's even more seeking these gentler means and methods and criteria.
- [17:34]
Jack Humphrey
I would like to get into maybe some ideas on where we're headed now with a groundswell with even the President of the United States talking about concepts like 30 by and what that even means, how we could work together to really make this happen beyond a President saying from the pulpit the words 30 by 30.
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Dr. Todd Bridges
Yeah, 30 by 30 is certainly a. I would call it an audacious and at the same time necessary goal commitment to make. But one of the questions that does come to my mind, conserves, if you will, and some metrics set aside, is special 30% of your land and your water. The question that comes to my mind is for what purposes? What are we seeking from that? And to be explicit about that, to start listing what it is we're trying to accomplish, what outcomes and outputs we're seeking from doing so brings us to a level of resolution, I think, where we can then talk about the tactics of it, the methods of it, and how we shepherd that process. I'll give you one example, I think that builds upon this. So back in 2022, in fact, it was Earth Day 2022, President Biden issued an executive order. It was Executive Order 14072. The title of it was On Strengthening the Nation's Forests, Communities and Local Economies. But the fourth section of that executive order was titled Deploying Nature Based Solutions to Tackle Climate Change and Enhance Resilience. And there were several elements within that. Commitments were made on the part of a number of federal agencies to participate in how we can advance nature Based Solutions, which the White House defines as actions to protect, sustainably manage or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges, simultaneously providing benefits for people and the environment. Back in 2010, when we started the Engineering with Nature program, had we had this term nature based solutions, we would have been very satisfied with that definition. But that's the one that the White House put forward back in 2022. And as a consequence of that, the White House issued a report later in 2022 on opportunities to accelerate nature based solutions that talks about these intentions, I think, that are also relevant to 30 by 30 and other initiatives within the agencies. So there are a whole range of federal agencies, as well as, I would say, organizations in the private sector that are aligning behind this idea of operationalizing nature based solutions. So that's one way even of thinking about 30 by 30. How do we think about the services provided by this 30% of our land and our water, and how can we invest in nature to provide those kinds of solutions or if you will, those services?
- [20:48]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, and it's also not just 30% of anything that there are some places that are more valuable. If you're looking at it from a biodiversity perspective, if you're with the Audubon Society, you're primarily thinking about flyaways and safe spaces for the yearly migrations. So it really depends on who you are, what you're primarily concerned with. When you're talking about which 30, like, where do we do this? I'm also thinking about where there is waste. Where are there easy gains to be had here? I just had a fantasy the other day that if, if everybody agrees that high fructose corn syrup is really bad for you, and all the doctors do, and people are picking up on that and the purchasing that they're doing to try to avoid it more and more often, I went and looked and just did some very basic math and figured out that around 3% of our farmland is, is in service of producing crops for high fructose corn syrup primarily. And whether that's 3% or 1% or 0.5 or whatever, when you're talking about the land mass of the lower 48, you're talking about a lot of land. And if the whole country was just like, you know what, we ought to just not use high fructose anymore, everybody agrees it's terrible, we shouldn't do it, except for the people who make money from it, of course. But there's 3% of land that we could just say, hey, why don't you guys want to do something else or maybe do some rewilding on that land? I just think about the places that might be easy pickups for recovery and rewilding.
- [22:22]
Dr. Todd Bridges
I don't know if the word easy is one I would use here. I want to, though. Yeah, I, No, I get that. I get that. I guess the reason why I stumble over that word a little bit is because so many of these lessons have been difficult lessons. That is where there's been some pain and suffering involved. You try something out and it didn't work out, and maybe people in their property were actually harmed as a result of it. But you're. I think you're onto something here for sure. And my wife and I did a big road trip a few years ago, in fact, driving from Mississippi to Montana and back. And it was just a mind blowing experience to see all of that landscape from the ground level, not, not flying over it, but seeing it from the ground level. And one of the points that really stands out to you when you make that drive is how much of our landscape is dominated by corn. It's almost like an ocean of corn. And, and it just goes on and on. And if you look at the statistics, we've. We've. We farm enough corn in the United States basically to cover as much land as we have in the state of Montana. It's all in corn, spread out, of course, across the country. And we feed a lot of the world with that. And it's exported largely on our rivers and infrastructure has been provided on those rivers to get that product out. So there. I guess my point is there's a lot of, there's a lot of issues here, a lot of considerations here. But as we think about the point, the general point that you're making is that we only have so much space, there are only so many resources. So how do we best allocate that space and those resources? And we have to allow space for nature to do nature's thing, because we are dependent upon that in many different ways. Whether you're talking about water availability, right, to ensure water security, or, or if you want to think of it in terms of drought resilience, we have to have wetlands. That's another stark statistic for me that prior to European colonization of the lower 48 states, as we call them, we had on the order of about 200 million acres of wetlands in the conterminous 48 states. Today we have about a hundred million. So in much less than 200 years, we managed through landscape transformation, to lose, to eliminate, if you will, half of our inventory of wetlands. With consequences for biodiversity, no doubt, but also for a whole range of practical consequences related to flooding. Because floodplains. What do floodplains do? They store what we would call flood water. Right. High water, or with respect to drought, resilience. So there are consequences for how we use land, how we invest land in activities, whether for our benefit as people, as humans, or for nature or both.
- [25:45]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, I sure would like to know where I could find another hundred million acres of wetlands. Real quick.
- [25:51]
Dr. Todd Bridges
This, this was another. In fact, it was just during Earth Day this week, the administration established another goal, a goal they called the Freshwater Challenge, where the challenge is to reconnect, restore, or protect 8 million acres of wetlands by 2030. That's a pretty substantial goal. 8 million acres. And in addition to that, to reconnect, restore, and protect a hundred thousand miles of a river and stream by 2030. And the similar to what we were discussing with respect to 30 by 30, that these kind of goals, they. They prompt a lot of questions. Okay, how? By what means? And those questions need to be answered, of course. But first, you have to establish a goal, an intention.
- [26:44]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, I get the sense that we've gotten ourselves in such a hurry with all the pressures we're sensing to get this done. Nature's giving us many clear signals that we need to get our butts in gear. But things move slowly. They never start moving at all unless somebody puts it on paper and says, here's a goal, let's go. For this.
- [27:04]
Dr. Todd Bridges
We need to set some ambitious goals in front of us to be able to spark the dialogue, the conversation, the collaboration, the partnering that's necessary to make progress in defining, if you will, this new relationship, this a partnering with all things natural or with nature, recognizing that we're part of it, humans are part of it, our systems are part of it. So how do we make the it, this natural human system, work better for everyone, for everything? And I'm encouraged by the dialogue that's happening not only within government, but also in the private sector and this space. And now that I'm in the world of academia, what universities are doing to be able to support these intentions, including the educating and training the workforce of tomorrow so that we're able to deliver.
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Jack Humphrey
On these goals for our younger listeners? What are some of the things that you're really excited about that you're seeing that excite you about the future in.
- [28:14]
Guest Speaker
Terms of those jobs of the future.
- [28:16]
Jack Humphrey
Or things that younger people could be looking forward to in this vast landscape before us, of all these new possibilities that you probably think a lot more about than most people, I would start.
- [28:30]
Dr. Todd Bridges
By saying that over the last many years, I have been encouraged, very much so, by my interaction with young people. Particularly my interactions with young people in colleges and universities around the country, because they are bringing their values, their sense of ethics, their ethos to the modern challenge that we confront in the 21st century. And they, I believe, know what's at stake and they want to get after the challenge. And that's certainly what I have seen here at the University of Georgia, even before I came here and certainly now that I am here. And there was a lot of interest in what we've been calling engineering with nature and nature based solutions. This kind of right sizing this relationship between human activity and systems and natural systems. Here at the University of Georgia, we established in 2017 an institute for resilient infrastructure systems. And part of the intention here, very central part of that intention, was what we're calling engineering with nature, of how to combine the natural with the engineered. And by doing that, support the intentions that we associate with words like sustainability and resilience. And we're quite proud here at the University of Georgia that just this fall we officially launched a graduate certificate in natural infrastructure. So by satisfying your degree requirements, whether for a master's or an, or a PhD, not just in engineering, but maybe in ecology or in design or another field, by satisfying a some additional requirements, you can get this certificate establishing that you have satisfied these requirements. In this space we've been discussing in this podcast, which we call in this connection natural infrastructure. And there are other universities around the country who are doing similar things. So I think the, the academic community is responding to what they see as the needs of the future and responding to these signals that we see from government also in the private sector, to make these advancements. I would say in education, we need to train in our disciplines differently because this intention of bringing together the natural and the engineered requires an interdisciplinary approach that we have people who have cross training and more than just a particular narrow field of activity. So that's on the educational side. But I also am interacting with my colleagues in the private sector and large multinational engineering firms. They very much want people with these skills. They want to hire them, and we need to produce them so that they can deliver projects and systems that have these qualities.
- [31:39]
Jack Humphrey
So in light of everything we talked about today, and I, I sense that you and I could go on for a couple of hours on this. How do you feel about how things are going, given all of the challenges, as serious as they are, and they're as serious as they've ever been. From your perspective, how do you feel about how things are progressing, especially in light of what you've just talked about because you've brought a big lens to this.
- [32:01]
Dr. Todd Bridges
My outlook is quite positive, Jack. I will declare my biases that I am positive in most respects. But I think, as I've said before, the future is quite bright in this space. Yeah. Are there big challenges? Are there obstacles? Yes, we can frame what is before us in those terms, but there's so much practical need here. This is not just theory. There's a practical need to make tangible progress in this area of activity that we've been talking about together today. There's very practical and necessary need to do this, and there's some urgency in to do that as well. I think most of your listeners have their own personal experience with understanding that our system is out of whack and we need to bring it back into a type of harmony, the productive harmony that the National Environment Policy act called for, this productive harmony between people and nature. And I think we have the know how, certainly the experience. If you think back a hundred years, we have the experience and the know how. So what we need to do is then focus our resolve to accomplish that. And there are going to be some other elements to this, of course, some modifications and updating of kind of policy and how we approach our relationship with nature. But I'm quite optimistic that we have what we need collectively to do this.
- [33:34]
Jack Humphrey
Thank you. This has been a great broad overview and I'm now anxious to talk to you again at some point in the future about specific projects that are really interesting to you in light of what we talked about today and maybe get into some more nitty gritty. You're always welcome back on the Rewilding Earth podcast. And Todd, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today.
- [33:56]
Dr. Todd Bridges
Jack, it was a pleasure to talk with you and I welcome the opportunity to talk to you in the future about some specific projects and activities. Thank you.
- [34:05]
Podcast Host
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