Not All Nature Comebacks Are Equal

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ecologist Gergana Daskalova moved back to the small Bulgarian town of her childhood. It's a place many people have abandoned — and that's the very reason she returned. At the same time as land is being cleared around the world to make room for agriculture, elsewhere farmland is being abandoned for nature to reclaim. But what happens when people let the land return to nature? This episode, science reporter Dan Charles explains why abandoned land has conservationists and researchers asking: If we love nature, do we tend it or set it free?

Read more of Dan's reporting for Science Magazine and NPR.

Want us to cover other about ecology, biodiversity or land science stories? Let us know by emailing [email protected]!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from Bowling Branch.
0:04.4	Change your sleep with the softness of Bowlin Branch's 100% organic cotton sheets.
0:09.6	Feel the difference with 15% off your first set of sheets at bowl and branch.com with code NPR.
0:15.4	Exclusions apply. See site for details.
0:18.7	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:24.3	Hey, shortwaver's Emily Kwong here.
0:26.7	So have you ever been on a hike, maybe in a forest, in New England, and all of a sudden
0:30.3	you see a perfectly laid row of stones and you think to yourself, what is that?
0:34.1	This is a very specific scene you have painted, Emily.
0:36.5	Well, I did grow up in Connecticut.
0:38.1	And Dan, you recently wrote about this for Science Magazine.
0:42.3	What are these random stone walls dotting so many northeastern forests?
0:46.3	They are remnants of fences.
0:48.7	They are like ghosts of vanished ecosystem.
0:52.1	It's intriguing.
0:52.8	Okay, what do you mean?
0:54.0	Well, you see, a lot of the forests in the eastern U.S. used to be farmland.
0:58.4	Settlers cleared that land, and they made fields, they made pastures.
1:03.1	But then more than a century ago, lots and lots of those farmers gave up.
1:07.6	They couldn't make a living.
1:08.7	They abandoned that land.
1:11.0	And I guess a forest came back?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.