The Native Habitat Project with Kyle Lybarger

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring

Zack Williams

Outdoors, Wilderness, Sports, Fishing, Outdoor, Hunting, Sports & Recreation

4.6 • 853 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 106 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kyle Lybarger, a native of Hartselle, Alabama, is a botanist and restoration ecologist and the founder of the Native Habitat Project. He’s also a father, a conservationist, a lifelong whitetail and turkey hunter, sauger and bass fisherman.

Kyle is a man on a mission: to save or restore as much of the South’s native plants, grasslands, savannahs, limestone glades and open woodlands as he possibly can, and to start a movement of motivated Southerners to do the same, anywhere possible and on any scale, from a tiny corner in a suburban front yard or replacing the sterile turf around a new factory, to reintroducing controlled burns to thousands of acres. He’s racing against time, indifference and outright opposition, working tirelessly as a sprawling development boom overwhelms one of the most biodiverse and rare ecosystems in the world, demolishing not only the wildlife and plants but the history of Native peoples and a whole Southern culture built upon a relationship with wildlife, land, and water.

Follow Kyle’s highly informative and brilliant Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/nativehabitatproject/ and enjoy this interview, recorded at Hal’s homeplace in Alabama, after some adventures identifying rare plants, and a 14 hour day with a controlled burn that got a little, well, over enthusiastic.

The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson.

Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists.

BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You know, so what was once our dominant ecosystem is now our most threatened ecosystem, where we've destroyed 99.99% of them, it's like to even find a remnant grassland in Madison County now, good luck.
0:16.6	You know, it was all turned to cotton. That, you know, I ponder on a lot.
0:21.5	How can I, you know, how can I have a grass in my yard and it be practical and it
0:25.6	look decent?
0:27.5	How can I landscape with all natives and it look decent and my neighbors don't think I'm
0:32.9	crazy?
0:34.5	People may not read it, but they're dying every day for the lack of what is to be found there.
0:40.8	And that's what I think about that, riding that creek or walking that creek.
0:46.8	Ethically, we should be working to manage lands for what they should be,
0:52.7	not what we think they should be, not what makes us
0:55.8	the most money. There are ways to live with it, with the land, and not destroy the land to live
1:01.9	on it.
1:03.1	Hey, everybody, it's Hal Herring, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Podcast and Blast. Thanks for being
1:08.7	here. Hey, I am proud to announce we have a new sponsor for our
1:13.3	podcast, and that is silencer Central. If you are involved in hunting and shooting or both,
1:21.5	you are probably looking at owning or dreaming of owning a silencer suppressor, the same thing for your firearm.
1:30.4	I've got my first one a couple years ago.
1:33.2	It's been a complete game changer for me.
1:35.7	I'm just looking at another one right now for another rifle.
1:39.8	I will never go back to where I was.
1:44.4	So one of the things,
1:47.8	Silencer Central has been around since 2005,
	...

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