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Rewilding Earth Podcast
Episode 149: Rewilding The American Serengeti With Henry Pollock from Southern Plains Land Trust
00:43:46
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- [00:08]
Henry Pollack
I think when you're rewilding, you want to be working with the species that are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. The species that are going to have these, these cascading positive impacts on biodiversity by virtue of how they interact with the ecosystem. And so I think if you had to distill our approach down in terms of like wildlife into, into one concept, I would say it's, it's focusing on rewilding the Keystones.
- [00:48]
Podcast Host
You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. The Southern Plains Land Trust mission is to protect and rewild the Southern Plains by creating a network of prairie refuges to ensure a future for native wildlife. So far, they've protected over 60,000 acres in their preserve network, providing urgently needed refuge to a wide variety of native grassland animals and plants. The scientists, organizers, donors and volunteers are Keystone wildland philanthropists working to restore the American Serengeti. Today I talk with Executive Director Henry Pollack. Henry has a background in ecology and conservation with a strong focus on quantitative, data driven science and practice. His PhD is from university of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in ecology, evolution and conservation biology and he has 15 years experience as a wildlife biologist and academic researcher. Henry, welcome to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
- [01:56]
Henry Pollack
It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me as a guest. I'm excited to talk with you.
- [02:01]
Podcast Host
Years ago, we had a woman named Nicole Rosemarino on. We love her dearly. And she was the last official contact that we've had from Southern Plains Land Trust. And as I'm looking at your site, I'm seeing a lot of different numbers than we talked about in 2019. So why don't you first just get us all caught up on what have we missed about Southern Plains Land Trust? If we're. And this should be corrected for anyone listening not subscribe to your list.
- [02:32]
Henry Pollack
Well, there's certainly been a lot of developments in recent years. It's a really exciting time. At Split, we're trying to sustain the level of growth that we've had in recent years. Nicole's innovation in the carbon space has really helped SPLIT to bridge the gaps on a lot of land acquisitions. She's developed a really excellent grassland carbon program for all the carbon storage that the lands that we're protecting are providing. And, and just in terms of the growth that you mentioned, since the last time she was on the podcast, I think they were around 25 or in the 20 thousands, and that was in 2019. And now we're up over at more than 60,000 total acres protected, of which 50,000 are currently owned in fee by the Southern Plains Land Trust. So just tremendous growth under Nicole's leadership in the past five or six years. And I am doing my best to try to carry on the tor and continue growing split and the lands that we protect.
- [03:27]
Podcast Host
Let's talk about those lands and I would love to hear updates on all the species that are protected on all this new land.
- [03:35]
Henry Pollack
Absolutely. So as I mentioned, about 50,000 of the acres that we currently protect are owned in fee, which by the way, for those listening is relatively atypical for land trusts in the land trust space. Most land trusts protect land by holding conservation easements on land that is owned by other landowners. And so we do have easements, about 10,000 acres of easements that we protect as well. But by owning the land in fee, it really allows us to manage for biodiversity. And so to that end, we, we, we've been doing a lot more work to try to suss out the species that we are protecting on this, this pretty extensive acreage that's based in southeast Colorado. Just a couple things that I can point out in terms of our sort of signature rewilding programs is that we do, we have reestablished bison on Heartland and the herd is currently at about probably 130 individuals and growing. So that's an extremely exciting, extremely exciting sort of development in recent years as our herd has continued to, to flourish and to, to bring those benefits that bison do bring to the landscape as ecosystem engineers and keystone species in the shortgrass prairie. We have recently, as of, this is probably new since the last podcast, but as of 2022, we have become a reintroduction site for the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Black Footed Ferret Recovery program. So we've done three releases over the past few years and release more than 100 ferrets out on the Heartland Ranch, which is our largest preserve that we protect. Those are just a couple of the examples. We're starting some really exciting collaborations in the plant space where we're going to start to do some more research to understand just the extent and distribution of some of the rare plants that we protect in southeast Colorado. One great example is the, is Forcera coloredensis, which is the Colorado green gentian. It's a species that's only known from a handful of counties in southeast Colorado and it's a Colorado state endemic. And last year we started an annual monitoring program where we're starting to try to map out these populations at a fine scale to really understand how they're changing over time and how we can potentially enhance their conservation. So those are just a few examples of some of the projects that we're working on. But another, I guess one other exciting thing recently in the, in the animal side of things is that we've recently had beaver start to recolonize some of our preserves. In particular Raven's Nest and Heartland. So those are both located in Bent county in southeast Colorado and, and both have streams on them. As you probably know, a lot of the stream in our area have, have been heavily damaged by long term livestock grazing and just erosion. And so it's extremely exciting to see through our, our efforts to try to coax them back onto the land with leaky dams and other types of structures to help hold water in the landscape a little longer. We've started to see recolonization of beavers as well. So yeah, just a lot of exciting stuff that's been going on in the past few years.
- [06:18]
Podcast Host
Beavers you say? Most people. No, I have a little bit of an affinity for beavers. So that is really, really cool. And I know we didn't talk about that with Nicole back then. That's, that's a big development. I, I, I can picture everyone's ears perking up at different things, but based on what they love, it could be black footed ferrets or it could be bison. But the running joke around here is I'm nuts about beavers. So this is really, really great news.
- [06:45]
Henry Pollack
Are you, would you consider yourself a beaver believer as I, I believe I read in Ben Goldfarb' to the beaver team? Yeah, my, myself as well. And just a little bit of history for the, for the folks out there listening there. You don't really think of the southern plains and southeast Colorado as, as beaver central, so to speak, but the reality is, is that back in the early 1800s there were enormous populations of beaver and the landscape looked very different. And in fact only about 45 minutes drive from Heartland is Bentz Old Fort, which is a National Park Service kind of historic site. It was, it was one of the main trading southeast Colorado on the Santa Fe Trail in the, in the early to mid-1800s. And there were tens of thousands of beaver pelts going through that fort in, in basically the 1830s and 1840s to the point where they basically pretty much extirpated beavers from the landscape. They got so good at trapping beavers. So it's another one of those sort of shifting baseline ideas where we really wouldn't think of these areas as, as Good for beaver. And the habitat certainly has been heavily degraded since their absence and, and the, and the presence of, of livestock on the landscape over long. But it's, it's definitely something that I'm probably most excited about in terms of really seeing the land recover and some of these keystone species coming back in.
- [08:07]
Podcast Host
Yeah, it's, it's remarkable. I need to see a beaver picture on the front of your website now because I think people, I think people are going to lean in because everything else looks like you guys are in Africa and, and they're going to really puzzle for a second why they're also seeing beavers there. And it just gives you an opportunity to tell a story they're not expecting to hear. I doubt very many people listening now are expecting to hear about beavers today in this geographic region. I wasn't.
- [08:38]
Henry Pollack
Indeed. Indeed. And, and it's, it's probably one of the most important regions that we need to be having beavers. I mean the Southern plains are incredibly dry. You know, where Heartland is based, we get an average of about 12 inches of rain per year. So having beaver on the landscape, bringing up the water table, having more standing water on the landscape and more native riparian vegetation is critically important for a lot of the species that inhabit the short grass prairie. I think there's a stat that riparian systems are comprise about 2% of the overall habitat in the short grass prairie ecosystem, but about 80% of wildlife depends on them to some extent or another for survival. So in these really dry systems, when you have more water, it waters life and water, water sustains all these other species. So yeah, you would never expect it. But again, it's a good point. I think we'll have to add a beaver to our homepage here at some point soon.
- [09:30]
Podcast Host
Everybody's laughing because I'm changing people's websites to show beavers now.
- [09:35]
Henry Pollack
So appreciate the feedback.
- [09:37]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean, and you guys are always calling yourselves America's Serengeti. And again, if everybody just checks out southern planes.org you'll get what I'm saying. If you have never heard of this organization, if you've never been to this website, take a look at the background at the, the reintroductions and tell me you don't think that these guys could be on another continent, but this is southeastern Colorado and it's really remarkable. What's your visitation like? Do people come and volunteer? Can people come and volunteer for anything and has it picked up? I would imagine you've gotten a lot more attention over the years since we talked last.
- [10:16]
Henry Pollack
Yes, indeed, we are growing. And not just growing in terms of the land that we're protecting, but growing in terms of the network of people that are involved with our organization. Growing in terms of our mission, in terms of moving beyond land acquisition to try to do more community centered conservation and really give back to the local communities. So just a couple examples of that. Well, just to answer your question, you asked can you get involved? That you can absolutely get involved. And volunteering is one of the primary ways that people can get involved. We, we do probably between five to 10 volunteer weekends per year and usually there are between 20 or 30 people there, all supporters of our organization who come out to do riparian restoration or fence removal or what, what have you. There's so many different things that we're working on right now, but we, we have a very large robust network of volunteers and I just want to give a shout out to all. They really make it happen for us. We have four employees right now, about to be five employees, but we have a small organization and that increases our capacity tremendously to have that network that we can count on to come out and help us with all of these management and stewardship projects that we have going on. We also are growing in the education space, so we're trying to make inroads with a lot of local K12 institutions, schools, and trying to get more kids out to the preserves to just see this incredible natural heritage that, that is out here that many people don't know about. The majority of the land in our area is privately owned and it's predominantly used for agriculture. And a lot of people don't even realize that this large intact chunk of native prairie exists out in the middle of, of the, of the country. So trying to get more people out to visit and just trying to increase our reach across the, across the region. And then the final thing I'll mention is we do have another project that we're working on. We actually just acquired a 500 acre property that's just south of Los Animas, which is in Bent County, Colorado, and it surrounds the Boggsville National Historic Site, which was another site that's of very high historical importance in the region. Just sort of another trading post with a lot of history there. And so that's going to be sort of more of a community facing project. We're going to be trying to create a community recreation hub that gives public access to the Purgatory river, which is a regionally important river in the area and gives people a space to go Hiking and, and just tries to give back to the community more. So as we're growing, we're also expanding our miss Trying to, trying to connect to the community in a variety of different ways.
- [12:36]
Podcast Host
How much potential is there for your area? Let's pretend for just a moment, as every organization loves to do, that money is not an issue. What are some of the things and if you can't say specifically, and I totally understand, but in general terms, if you wish, what's the potential in your area for expanding the protection and, and acquiring different places to, to make your impact even bigger?
- [13:03]
Henry Pollack
Yes. Well, what you speak to in terms of the area. So we are the Southern Plains Land Trust. And so our service area does encompass a handful of states across the Southern Plains, although currently all the land that we protect is in southeast Colorado. That being said, I do think that we have some strategic imperatives in terms of how do we best, how do we make the biggest impact for prairie conservation, for prairie wildlife moving forward. And I think that there's a couple of different strategies. I think you touched on one thing which is the importance of landscape level connectivity. So trying to build corridors and networks of protected lands across, across the Southern Plains is something that I think is sort of the, the gold standard to ascribe to and that's a lot easier said than done. And I think that the other thing you have to take into account in the area that we're at is that again, the majority of the land is privately owned. And so, and you also don't have, you have the Comanche National Grassland which is in southern Colorado. But besides that, you don't have a lot of these sort of large signature public areas that are, that are comprising the, the, these, these enormous projects like American Prairie is doing in Montana, but sort of a fundamentally different landscape in terms of land ownership in our region. So that's another thing that you have to take into account. And I think that ultimately continuing to expand the, our, our currently protected areas is of strategic importance. I think trying to move towards creating connectivity eventually with, with the public lands that there are, such as the Comanche National Grassland, would be important. But yeah, these are all directions that we hope to the future in terms of land acquisition.
- [14:32]
Podcast Host
What kind of pressures are there? It, it has to be difficult. Even if it, if you're talking about private land, I would think that you would be very cautious about what's ahead and how activities or lack thereof on public land surrounding your properties are treated because we're not in a very friendly environment right now politically.
- [14:56]
Henry Pollack
Absolutely.
- [14:56]
Podcast Host
Can you talk about things that you're looking out for or pressures that you guys feel on a daily basis?
- [15:01]
Henry Pollack
Yeah, well, I think that just to, as a counterpoint, I think we, we do, we have a lot of similarities mission wise to American Prairie. They're probably in terms of the land trust out there, the, the organization that's doing the work most similar to our work, although I'll be it in a different region in the Northern plains. But you know, as you probably know, with American Prairie, there's been a lot of political headwinds against them in terms of the community uniting together to try to prevent what is perceived as sort of a land grab by this private organization. And I think that our strategy, we are a lot smaller than American Prairie, although we do protect 60,000 acres. But, you know, we're not quite on the same scale as them. And I think what we've tried to do is just be as strategic as possible. I think the reality is, is that we're a landowner and when, when we're, when we go out looking for properties, the things that we're looking at are properties that are on the market and properties that people are trying to sell. And so we're not trying to force anyone into anything. I think we've, we've benefited from being good neighbors. We've done mutual fencing projects with our neighbors and are on good terms with our neighbors, which has led us to be able to amass a lot of the land that comprises Heartland now in a relatively short period of time, just being on good terms with neighbors. So I think that's our strategy is just to lay low and keep doing our thing. I think, I think that building more connections with the local communities and across the region, I think will be important for cementing our credibility in the region and that we are really focused on trying to help the local communities as well. And so I think just, just be a good neighbor and, and, and try to keep your, try to keep your head down. And that's been our, that's been our strategy and it's been quite successful thus far.
- [16:30]
Podcast Host
What about decisions though, on public lands near, around, between your properties? Are there any things that, that you do to coordinate or help with, maybe even studies that I would imagine that your properties give people, scientists, maybe people with agencies, ideas about how you can work together?
- [16:50]
Henry Pollack
Absolutely. It's, I think that the, the, the more partnership you have and the more you're working together, the more you're going to be able to do for conservation. And so that is something that I'm I'm trying to continue building. Taking the torch from Nicole, but we. We recently got involved in what's called the Regional Partnership. The regional Partnership initiative is something through Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which tries to bring together coalitions of groups on a regional basis. So either one county or multiple counties in our region, it's. It's six. Six counties in southeast Colorado. But try to bring people together from the wildlife conservation space and outdoor recreation and agriculture and just try to help envision a future for the region. And in terms of wildlife conservation and the stuff that we do, we're heavily involved in efforts to coordinate with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, which recently basically received some funding to conduct a statewide natural heritage survey. And one of the regions that has sort of data deficiencies is southeast Colorado because a lot of the land is privately owned. There's not a lot of data in that area. And so we're working with them, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, with the Forest Service, who, by the way, is the one that administers the Comanche Grasslands, to try to bring these groups together and figure out sort of a unified conservation vision for the region. Which species are the focal species? Like, where do we have data gaps? Where do we need to focus management efforts, these types of questions. So, yeah, I do think that working with. With partners is always good. Having public private partnerships, I think is a really, really good way to streamline conservation and make it more effic. And it's something that we are working on. I mean, I should. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we certainly have felt the cascading impacts of the federal funding freeze and a lot of what's been going on at the federal level with the agencies. A lot of our. A lot of our agency partners are already at or above capacity, and the mo. The recent cuts have really have really had a negative impact on their ability to function and as partners. And so it's sort of unclear how these things will develop moving forward. But I'm hopeful that. But there are ways that we can continue to work together to try to do what's best for wildlife moving forward.
- [18:54]
Podcast Host
You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. Did you know we also publish insightful and inspirational content from leading Rewilding scholars, poets, artists and organizers from around the world. You can visit rewilding.org and sign up for our weekly digest to receive brilliant, fresh insights on everything Rewilding. You'll find over a decade of articles and news from the front lines of wildlands protection and all kinds of restoration efforts. Efforts. Check us out@rewilding.org and don't forget to share it with friends. What are some of the stories that you like to tell people about what it's like to be out there, to be among all of this? I mean, it must be a pretty big perk to have the job that you do.
- [19:36]
Henry Pollack
It is, it's, it is a great perk. I think it also comes with its challenges like when you're living out in the middle of a nature preserve and it can be challenging to live out there when, when it rains, the roads turn into muck and it's hard to, it's hard to esc. And you can get trapped out there. We, we've had quite some interesting experiences. My, my partner and I have a two year old daughter who, you know, for the past year and a half has been basically living the lifestyle of a feral child in the middle of this nature preserve. So it's amazing. It can be challenging at times. The, the thing I would say about the prairie is you, it can be unforgiving, it can be harsh. And I think that it can, it can keep you humble as a human when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're huddled in a house and have 60 mile an hour winds battering your house all around you. And it can be, you're very close to the elements on the prairie. So I think that it's, it's a tremendous privilege to be able to, to live in a natural environment like that and to be surrounded by wildlife. As you mentioned, the. I can't tell you how many mornings I've woken up at our house out on Heartland and opened the blinds and there's, there's bison like foraging, eating out of the bird feeder in your yard. That's a pretty cool experience. And so I think that for me it's as, as someone who in my career has been trained as like a wildlife ecologist, I've always really liked being outdoor. I, I like to be close to the species that I'm studying. I think it was something that was really important for me starting this job at Split when I did in October of 2023 to spend a concentrated period of time really immersed in the, in the ecosystem and, and, and, and the wildlife. And I think it's paid off dividends. It's helping to form a really clear view for, as you mentioned, which focal species that we want to focus on moving forward. And I think that our, our approach in general has been to focus on Keystones Right. A lot of the wildlife that have been lost from the were species that had these disproportionate impacts on other species. They increased biodiversity, they help maintain the grassland ecosystems. These are species like bison and prairie dogs, which are keystone grazers. Prairie dogs create burrows and these enormous underground colonies that provide habitat for a whole suite of amazing species, including North America's most endangered mammal, the black footed ferret, which we've touched on briefly. Beaver create these standing water and more of a floodplain in these environments and provide habitat for amphibians and so many other species. So I think, I think that's a really, really intuitive way to understand what our priorities are. And, and I think when you're rewilding, you want to be working with the species that are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. The species that are going to have these, these cascading positive impacts on biodiversity by virtue of how they interact with the ecosystem. And so I think if you had to distill our approach down in terms of like wildlife into, into one concept, I would say it's, it's focusing on rewilding the keystones.
- [22:24]
Podcast Host
Yeah, well, give us a sense of that. What in, in your most intact piece of property where the most species diversity occurs. How intact is that? I mean, your science brain must just light up like a Christmas tree when you just run through everything that's been done on the property and it's on its way to being what you would one day maybe consider. This is intact, this is rewilded.
- [22:50]
Henry Pollack
Yeah, well, when you're rewilding, I think there's a couple questions you have to consider. You have to consider when am I rewilding to. And you also have to consider what was the state of the habitat and the ecosystem at that particular point in time. And so I think when you look at the southern plains of North America, you have just for a bit of historical context for listeners, the more than 50% of the habitat has been lost due to conversion to croplands, energy development, urban development, you name it. There's been a lot of habitat that has been, that has been already lost. And in addition to that just enormous loss of the overall extent of the habitat. You've had some of the most high profile extinctions or near extinctions in modern North American history. So take the bison for example. The bison was estimated to be between 30 to 60 million individuals roaming across the Great Plains from Canada to Mexico, Mexico in the, around 1800. And by the, by the late 1800s that number was fewer than 500 individuals, and they almost went extinct. And they've made a comeback, but they're still at only a tiny fraction of their former extent. If you take prairie dogs, which there, there's an anecdote from Texas about a prairie dog colony that was 150 miles long, probably hundreds of millions of individuals in a single colony, right. Prairie dogs, which have been decimated by plague, which was introduced on rodents, probably through the fleas they carried around 1900, they've also been decimated by persecution because they are often seen as at odds with cattle grazing and competing for forage. They occupy less than 1% of their former geographic distribution in abundance. The same is true of beavers. So you have a long way to go, is what I'm trying to say. When you're talking about, have we arrived there in terms of rewilding now? How do you get there? And that's what I'm trying to say in terms of the vehicle of rewilding, like. Rather than focusing on a lot of individual constituent species, if you can put back some of the key pieces in the ecosystem in place, in particular keystone grazers, the bison species that are ecosystem engineers and create all this other habitat for other species through their burrows, the prairie dogs, et cetera, if you can focus on those and. And what? And just continue to allow the expansion of those species, ultimately the benefits that they will bring will expand as well. And you'll. I think, I think that's. That's sort of the end goal. So are there other species to focus on? Certainly, like I mentioned, we're starting some new rare plant pilot studies and stuff like that. But I think if you focus on the keystones, I'll give you one example for prairie dogs. Prairie dogs, are they. There just are not very many large acreage colonies of prairie dogs in the Great Plains in general. And in our area, we have probably one of the largest colonies in southern Colorado. But the colony that we have have, because these prairie dogs are susceptible to plague and they, they can go through these plague events that kind of wipe out a lot of their. A lot of their numbers. Only in 10 years ago, in 2015, when, when Heartland first started coming together, there were only a few hundred acres of prairie dogs left. And right now, Today, as of 2025, we're probably at about 3,500 acres. So you've seen an enormous growth of this prairie dog, this prairie dog colony, acreage and the ecosystem that they create. And with that, you've seen species start up the landscape. These especially these rare species that you know, depend on prairie dogs for survival. One great example is the mountain plover. So mountain plover is a nondescript plover. I think they're beautiful, but they're, they're, they're often called the ghosts of the prairie. They're really hard to see. They blend in incredibly well with the background. And they, you know, they, they depend or a lot, a lot of mountain plovers breed on prairie dog colonies. They like the, the grass clipped really short and they like, they like that prairie dog habitat. And since we've seen this growth in our prairie dogs, we've seen the recolonization of Heartland by mountain plovers. And last year we had multiple breeding pairs on multiple colonies. So again, as you work on the keystones and rewilding the keystones, you get all of these cascading benefits that come along with it.
- [26:50]
Podcast Host
How would you characterize the approach of split in terms of active versus passive rewilding?
- [26:57]
Henry Pollack
Yeah, I think you draw attention to an important dichotomy in the rewilding world, which, as you mentioned, is this passive versus active rewilding. The general idea there is that passive rewilding will just occur on its own, and then active is more what we've been talking about with reintroducing the species to the landscape and stuff. And the reality is we do a fusion. I, I do think that when you, you have to think about the ecosystem in which you're trying to rewild. Right. So if you take, if you take a land trust based in. We have friends at the Northeast Wilderness Trust which do a lot of similar type of rewilding stuff. But a lot of they, they're focused on the Northeast, northeastern United States. And a lot of the work that they do is passive rewilding. You know, it's forested areas. The forest will recover over time if left. And so they've had tremendous success over recent decades of just allowing passive or wilding to eventually regenerate these forests and start to approach these sort of old growth forests which are so important for, for biodiversity on the Plains. It's a little bit different. And I think that the thing that you have to consider on the Plains is that the plains is, is, is in many ways a bioengineered habitat. The indigenous tribes, the Plains tribes of North America, were, you know, setting fire to the plains for hundreds of years. It was a critical part of, of keeping the habitat open for bison. You know, they were managing that habitat a lot. And since, you know, bison have declined on the landscape, bison, they will also prevent woody encroachment from occurring. When you're talking about a grassland, you know, grasslands could turn into forests or savannas if they're not maintained. And the ways that they're maintained are through grazing and ecosystem engineers like bison that will uproot, you know, young junipers trying to encroach on a prairie, for example, people or fire. And since the westward expansion of, of European populations In the late 1800s, fire has been suppressed pretty much across the Great Plains because it's dangerous to people. And a lot of the, the, the, the bison and the species that were maintaining these grasslands are removed. So there is some inherent need when you're talking about rewilding in, in the Great Plains for active restoration. If you look at the eastern part of the Great Plains, getting into Kansas and, and eastern Oklahoma, there's been millions of acres of grassland lost encroachment because there's just been no fire occurring in these landscapes and all the native grazers are gone. And so you're losing a lot of grassland habitat. So if you want to restore grasslands, I think a lot of it is going to have to be active restoration. Now that being said, I still think that there's a role for passive restoration as well. And I can give you one example. We had a spring on Heartland Ranch which was this beautiful area. There's just a grove of kind of old growth cottonwoods surrounding the spring. It's shaded, it's, it's a total little climate refuge. It's just chock full of leopard, frogs and all kinds of rare amphibians down there. It's just an amazing little spot on Heartland. And this area up until cows were removed at the end of 2023, if you looked at the age structure of the cottonwood trees in that area, they were all probably 60 to 80 year old, like old cottonwoods that had been around for a long time. There had not been any regeneration of cottonwoods in that area for the last, last 60 to 80 years. And in the first growing season after removing cattle from that area, there were about 50 cottonwood seedlings that popped up and were, some of which were four feet high in just a matter of three or four months from removing cattle from the land. And there were still bison around, the bison were still using the, the spring, but just not, they don't loiter like cattle do in, in riparian areas. And, and, and it was just the. I, I was astounded by the passive recovery that we were seeing at this spot in just a few short months of having cat. So I'm not trying to say that active restoration is the only answer. I just think that when you compare it to other ecosystems, just given the history and the, the ecology of this ecosystem, disturbance is inherent in the, in the sort of optimal functioning of grassland ecosystems.
- [30:52]
Podcast Host
So for people who might be thinking about man, you seem to have a really cool job. I'm thinking about changing my major or sticking to my major, but I don't know know how to begin to do work like this in wildlands philanthropy or with land trusts. I mean, it probably was a really weird thing how you ended up with this job to begin with. Right. It probably wasn't a normal route. This is just off the radar kind of stuff. But in general, what led you to this point that might be instructive to younger people, maybe going into graduate school or undergraduate?
- [31:30]
Henry Pollack
Yeah, that's a great question. In my particular case, I think, as you mentioned, I did not have a, I think a typical path to this, this job. I was sort of on the tenure track. I was in the academic world for a long time. I did tropical bird stuff, lived in Panama, lived on the island of Guam, bounced around and was really intent on getting a tenure track position. And I struggled with that for a couple years. It's really competitive to get professor positions nowadays and I struggle with that for a couple years. And then through an old sort of family friend, I ended up getting put in touch with Split, the Southern Plains Land Trust, which is where I'm now working. And as, as an ecologist or as a scientist. And my experience with a lot of the work that I did was that it would take a long time to see the fruition of the fruits of your labor, so to speak, to bring a project to fruition. So you go out and you collect data for years, you spend years analyzing the data, you spend years trying to get it published. And finally you had this publication. And I'm not trying to say I don't firmly believe in science. I mean, I am, I am a scientist through and through. I firmly believe the best conservation comes from good science. But I often felt that in that world of academia there was a disconnect between being able to see the fruits of your labor in a reasonable time period. And I think the difference that I've experienced since working at Split is it's a really empowering feeling to be going out there and saying, hey, I'm going to pursue this thousand or several thousand acre property and I'm going to try to create a refuge for this particular threatened species or whatever it is that you may, that, that you know, that you may be doing in your capacity to land trust. I mean it's, land conservation is really rewarding. And so I think that, that, that has been a paradigm shift for me and something that I've really appreciated is working towards something that's concrete that you can see in real time. And the way that we protect land, which is putting on perpetual conservation easements, is going to protect that land forever, ever. And so that's, that's really powerful. And so just to address the second part of your question for those who are listening, who might be interested in a career in the land trust world, to be perfectly frank, when I joined the land trust world I was skeptical. I didn't know anything about land trusts. I was, I was an academic and I thought, well, maybe I'll just see how it goes and maybe apply to more professor jobs. But I've been here for a year and a half and I just absolutely love it and I don't think I'm going to be going anywhere anytime soon. And I think that, like I said, the power of being able to see what you're accomplishing in real time is really, really amazing. And for those interested in getting involved in the land trust world, I think a good place to start would just be the Land Trust Alliance. The Land Trust alliance is sort of a national group of associated land trusts and they provide a ton of information both on what goes on in the inner workings of land trust, but they also have a job board where you can look for careers in land conservation. And that's, that's again across the, across the U.S. so, so I think for those who are curious about what does the world of land trust really look like and how could I get involved? I think starting with the Land Trust alliance, or LTA as they call themselves, is a good starting point.
- [34:24]
Podcast Host
You've probably heard people talk about, I know you have about 30 by 30 and really, really big goals about rewilding vast swaths and connecting all the cores and corridors and everything to come up with a total of 30 protected by 2030. Now whether we're in the political climate, it, for that to happen is one thing, but we all work as if. I assume you guys do too. But how big is this land trust thing? How big is this getting?
- [34:52]
Henry Pollack
Yeah, that's a great question and I think it allows me an opportunity to highlight some similarities to what split does with other land tests. But also, also I think there are important differences in the way that we operate. So land trusts are, are they're everywhere. They're all across the country and operating in probably for those of you listening, there's probably a land trust in your neck of the wood. Haven't if you don't know of anything, you should look into it because I think they're pretty common. And there was something that I literally had no idea about until I started working at Split. And so that being said, land trusts do a lot of different kind of land conservation. And so there are not that many land trusts out there that are doing the type of sort of purist rewilding stuff that Split is doing. The majority of land trusts, again, land trusts mostly protect land by working with landowners who will own a particular property and the landowner wants to conserve that property in the future. So they'll put down a conservation easement which usually restricts a certain type of activity. Say there could be no development. So nobody's going to build on this property. It's going to maintain it as an open space in the future. That's just one example. But land trusts can be focused on agriculture. There's a lot of land trusts that are focused on protecting agricultural open spaces. They can be focused on outdoor recreation. There's a whole suite of different kinds of activities and, and, and, and sort of land uses that land trusts can operate in in that space. And so for us again, there's, there's only a handful or only a few out there in that I'm aware of that are doing similar work to what, like what SPLIT is doing, which is rewilding. And I mentioned the Northeast Wilderness Trust. There's also the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust, there's American Prairie. But there aren't a ton of organizations that are doing what we do. And one of the big things that we do, as I mentioned that's different is by buying the land in fee rather than protecting through easement that's owned by another landowner. It gives us a lot of flexibility to be able to do a lot of hands on active restoration work. In addition to all the wildlife restoration rewilding we've done, we do a lot of riparian restoration. The streams are incredibly eroded and in size. So we do a lot of trying to reverse erosion. We do a lot of trying to reestablish native willows and cottonwoods, the native riparian vegetation. So again, owning land and feet really gives you this flexibility to be able to manage it how you want. And in Split's case, that's everything that we do is geared towards trying to again put back the missing pieces of this ecosystem and, and Restore ecosystem functioning and restore this intact landscape.
- [37:14]
Podcast Host
I imagine your supporters, it's by definition not a highly populated region of the country. Therefore you probably don't have a lot of fundraisers right there in a big population center that doesn't exist. So you must be capturing the hearts and minds of people from all over the place. Probably maybe some people from other places in the world that are leaning in and paying close attention and supporting you guys in different ways. Do you get the sense that there's people out there who just need to know this place exists and that you're doing the work you're doing and have no plans to ever visit? They just need to know that you're doing the work?
- [37:53]
Henry Pollack
Yeah, it is pretty widespread. I do think that we have a center of support from the Front Range, so the Denver Boulder area. And, and, but, but we have, have international supporters and we are trying to grow that footprint just of awareness, as you said, internationally. We've been involved recently in some kind of global grasslands coalitions to try to unite different organizations that are rewilding grasslands around the world and try to work together to enhance our missions because we're all working towards similar goals. I just think that the concept of rewilding in general is a pretty intuitive and powerful concept. It, it's just, I've, I've mentioned the analogy of having a puzzle with some missing pieces and trying to put back those missing pieces. But the, it, it's really a simple idea. It's just trying to create a space for wilderness, create a space for wildlife to roam free. And I, I, I personally believe that everyone has at least an iota of biophilia within them. This innate sort of human tendency to, to love nature and to want to be a part of nature. And I think that where we've gone wrong in the modern day is that we're losing our connection to nature because we're spending less time outside and people just again, aren't aware of how important this is for us. We've lost touch with how important it is to be in contact with our innate biophilia. So I really do believe that by just getting the message out more like I said, building an education program, teaching kids about what it is that we're doing. There's so many compelling elements of the Southern Plains in terms of hooks to get people excited or interested. I mean, mean, the Southern Plains has the fastest land mammal in North America. The, the, the pronghorn, which by the way is so fast because it used to have to outrun a, formerly a Cheetah, that was a North American cheetah that is now extinct. We have America's national mammal, the bison that is male, can weigh over 2,000 pounds. And they're just such a formidable and, and so supremely adapted species to the great plains of North America, the black footed ferret. I mean the list goes on. So I, I do think that the message is compelling and what we're just trying to do is get it out as, as broadly as possible and, and, and hopefully it resonates with people and we continue to expand our donor base. But, but you mentioned something else important that I'll, I'll end on and I think that inherent in a lot of this sort of appreciation of rewilding and nature in general is the sense of place. And I think that, that that's why I, I think it's so important to try to get people out there as much as possible, whether it's an elementary school student or a donor, whoever it might be, just to expose them to what it is that we're doing. Because I think it's hard to ground, grasp the enormity of 43,000 contiguous acres and what it's like to see bison roaming the landscape. Again, you really have to be there to experience it. So I think that is also an important part of our strategy to get people invested in our organization.
- [40:37]
Podcast Host
So go to southern plains.org and subscribe. Make sure that you're, you're plugged in. If you like the idea of land trusts like this and the rewilding work that they're doing, no better place to keep up on it. The only one in the American Seretti happening. So, and you might want to donate. You also might want to volunteer. You. I'm sure there's all kinds of things on the website where we can, there's different events coming up where volunteers would be very, very welcome and helpful and anything else that you want to remind people that they can do. Because we have an action taking group here, we don't just passively listen to podcasts. This is not a crime, crime series thing. What else do they need to know?
- [41:21]
Henry Pollack
Yeah, well, thank you just for giving us a platform to showcase some of the work that we're doing here. I really appreciate it. And for those listening, there are a couple ways to get involved. So, so, so volunteering we do again five to ten weeks a year. If we get more people who are interested, we'll expand our volunteering efforts and do more. But you know, that's the real way that we do a lot of our land management and stewardship stuff. So if you're interested, feel free to email infoouthernplanes.org to get in touch with us and we can coord on that if you're interested in, in having a bit of more of an upscale experience. And we, we partner with Reefs to Rockies, which is a Colorado based ecotourism group and they offer package deals where you can come and spend several days on our preserves. They have amazing guides who we've worked with for several years who, who know our preserves really well and they know kind of all the, all the hidden secrets. And so it's really, if you want a deeper sort of experience, that's another possibility. We have a gala that we do twice a year. We have the Toast of the Prairie in the summer and the Celebration of the Prairie in the winter where we do fundraising. So if you' interested in getting involved in fundraising or anything in that area, just let us know. And, and yeah, we, we're always looking to expand our audience, expand our volunteer base, expand in all of these different directions. So feel free to get in touch and we look forward to hearing from you.
- [42:33]
Podcast Host
And to all our beaver believers, remember, this is another place that you might not have thought of that you can keep track of beaver progress. Absolutely. Even in southeastern Colorado. So don't forget that.
- [42:46]
Henry Pollack
That.
- [42:46]
Podcast Host
Henry, thank you so much for taking all this time to be with us and to get us updated. We really, really love Southern Plains Land Trust. We should not make it as big of a gap between now and when you come back to update us on progress. I really enjoyed talking to you today.
- [43:03]
Henry Pollack
Thank you so much for the opportunity and yeah, thanks to all for listening. And we, we will definitely have to have another interview to update you before five years is up. So thank you.
- [43:14]
Podcast Host
Thanks for listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. We do what we do because of you. This podcast is supported by listeners like you, who long to live in a wilder world. Please consider donating@rewilding.org and subscribe to our weekly news and article digest while you're there to go the extra mile, you can follow and share Rewilding Earth on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Bonus points for sharing this podcast with your friends. To listen to past episodes, go to rewilding.org pod that's rewilding.org pod.