Hey everyone, Darian Woods here. This week we are replaying our favorite indicator episodes

from the year. This is my personal favorite. It combines my two loves, birds and economics.

Here's the show.

NPR.

Eric Hallstein is an economist. But at the Environmental Nonprofit where he works, the Nature Conservancy,

he spends most of his time around ecologists.

Do you dress differently than the ecologists?

It's so funny. You're the first person that's asking me that question. I thought about this

a lot. Do I wear a button down? Sure. Do I not? Like, do I try to fit in? Or is it so obvious?

Because of what I say that I'm the economist.

Unlike a lot of economists and consultants who tend to wear suits, Eric started wearing

t-shirts and fleeces, outdoorwear, which comes in handy because also unlike a lot of economists,

he spends a lot more time near his new favorite bird, the Dunlun.

It's a couple inches tall. It's just, it's got a ton of personality.

Eric spends a lot of time looking at something called the Pacific Flyway. It is a huge

root for migratory birds. It stretches from the Arctic down through California Central

Valley, all the way to Patagonia in the Southern Hemisphere. Millions of birds, over 300

species rely on this flyway every year to feed and to breed.

150 years ago, if we were a bird and we were flying, we would look down and we'd see in

the right seasons a sort of mosaic of wetlands that would be full of invertebrates and bugs

and things that we would be interested in landing and eating. Now what we're seeing is a patchwork

pattern of wall-to-wall crops.

...