Wilderness in the Age of Climate Change

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4.5 • 52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Wilderness is a designation of an area intended to be free from human intervention unless it's deemed absolutely necessary. But as climate change increases the frequency and severity of wildfires when does it become necessary for land stewards to intervene?

In Sequoia National Park this question of whether or not to intervene has land managers and environmentalists at odds with one another. Host Ayesha Rascoe talks with reporter Marissa Ortega-Welch about her new podcast series How Wild. In a segment from the first episode Marissa asks: with increasing wildfires threatening giant sequoias, known as some of the world's oldest trees, should we intervene or leave the wilderness to evolve on its own?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is the Sunday story.
0:05.0	This summer has been hot and I'm talking about really hot in DC.
0:12.0	We've had so many days where the temperatures have
0:16.9	been over a hundred degrees and that is not normal for DC and not only was I living through that but for about a month this summer I did not have a C. At times I had to tell my
0:28.8	children to just stop moving because it was too hot to move it was too hot to talk but this year many
0:37.2	places hit record high temperatures Palm Springs reached a degrees. Now that's hot. Las Vegas 120 degrees and
0:50.8	along with the heat there there have been fires. The West has been engulfed by
0:56.4	wildfire. Over the last few years, these wildfires have been burning hotter and
1:02.1	bigger than ever before, a result of decades of
1:06.5	fire suppression and climate change. Today's episode explores what happens when climate-fueled fires like these encroach on areas
1:16.4	we humans have protected as wilderness.
1:19.8	What if these wilderness areas need help because of what we've caused?
1:24.4	Should we step in or step aside?
1:27.1	Marissa Ortega Welch, a reporter with K-A-L-W public Media has been grappling with these questions in her new podcast, How Wild.
1:37.8	She joins me now, welcome to the podcast.
1:40.3	Thanks for having me.
1:41.9	So Marissa, I understand that unlike me you're a big wilderness fan.
1:48.0	You could say that. Yes, I have spent the last 20 years backpacking and hiking around wilderness areas with my best friend.
1:54.0	We go on a trip every year from the Sierra Nevada where I live in California to the
1:58.3	Wind River Range in Wyoming.
2:00.1	I mean it sounds really beautiful. It is it sounds really beautiful.
2:03.0	It is, it's really beautiful, but we have also seen a lot of changes.
	...

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