Plants And Prejudice

Undiscovered

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Wnyc, Society & Culture, 805813, Science, History, Friday, Studios

4.6 • 768 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2018

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are non-native species all that bad, or are we just prejudiced against “the Other”? In the San Francisco Bay Area, one particular foreign species has been dividing environmentalists for years: the blue gum eucalyptus. Eucalyptus opponents say it’s a serious fire hazard. Defenders say there’s no good evidence it’s worse than native plants. Which is it? And is the fight against non-native species grounded in science or xenophobia? In this episode of Undiscovered, Annie and Elah investigate.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:07.0	This is undiscovered.
0:13.0	I want to show you this picture out of Florida, these pictures out of a Burmese python. So we're looking at a CNN news
0:22.5	clip from a few years ago. Yeah, a bit of soft news. A Burmese python was loose in the Everglades.
0:28.0	And these snakes, these Burmese pythons, they're usually actually pretty good at hiding, but this one was
0:32.5	bound to get noticed eventually. Because it was huge. 16 footer. It was the length of three people sent end to end.
0:40.3	Yeah.
0:41.3	And as thick as a telephone pole.
0:43.3	Yeah. Local work crews spotted it hanging out by some trees,
0:46.3	killed it with a shotgun.
0:48.3	And then they noticed that it had this big bulge in the middle.
0:51.3	They cut the stomach open. We won't show you that picture.
0:53.3	Oh. I may tweet it if you want to take it.
0:55.5	What was in it?
0:57.1	A deer.
0:58.3	Oh.
0:59.3	Yeah.
0:59.9	Like a, you know, 70-pound deer.
1:02.1	That thing ate a deer.
1:03.6	That's right.
1:05.1	I do not like snakes.
1:06.6	I do not like snakes.
	...

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