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Science Quickly

A Fruitful Experiment in Land Conservation

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2017

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1998 an orange juice maker dumped 12,000 tons of orange peels on degraded pastureland in Costa Rica—transforming it into vine-rich jungle. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcp.co.j.jot.com.j, that's y-A-K-U-L-T-C-O-J-P.

0:28.4

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.7

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:39.0

In the fight to conserve tropical rainforests, here's a tool you don't often hear about,

0:44.6

orange peels, specifically 12,000 tons of them dumped on the land.

0:49.2

You don't normally associate waste disposal with biodiversity benefits, something that's good for the environment.

0:54.4

Tim Truer is an ecologist at Princeton University, and he's talking about a unique conservation story.

1:00.3

It started in the early 1990s when an orange juice producer called Del Oro set up shop near the Guantasta

1:06.0

Conservation Area in Costa Rica. It's a region that contains several national parks and a wildlife refuge.

1:12.4

Deloro needed somewhere to dump their orange peels, and the company also owned forested land,

1:17.5

abutting the park land, that it had no intention of cultivating. So a deal was struck. If Deloro

1:23.6

donated its forested land, it could dump orange peel waste on degraded pasture land within the conservation area.

1:30.3

A thousand dump trucks' worth of orange peels were scattered on the land in 1998.

1:34.8

And within about six months, the orange peels had been converted from orange fields into this kind of thick black, loamy soil,

1:42.9

kind of passing through this pretty gross stage in

1:45.1

between of kind of sludgy stuff filled with fly larvae.

1:48.6

The results of that influx of nutrient-rich organic material?

1:52.0

I couldn't even find the site the first time that I saw it.

1:54.8

He couldn't find it because over 16 years, the orange peel waste had sent the land on a journey

...

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