Bravery in Action: Pushing Boundaries to Protect the Planet
Given the dire state of the world on many fronts, retaining hope can feel like a constant struggle. But, as Vaclav Havel, the legendary Czech poet, playwright, dissident and eventual president (an inspiring trajectory if there ever was one), described it, “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
It is this understanding of hope that keeps visionary and practical leaders engaged and working toward the change they know is needed in the world. Knowing that the work needs to be done, regardless of how monumental the challenge, takes a certain amount of will, self-belief and confidence. It takes real bravery and courage, terms that tend to be overused as gauzy platitudes. But as Bioneers celebrates 35 years, we are certain that these essential values represent a throughline across the thousands of brilliant activists and leaders who we have highlighted and worked with over three and a half decades. They are doing some of the most important work on the planet today.
This week, we feature four fearless innovators speaking truth to power in distinct ways. Wildlife ecologist Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is breaking barriers and working towards the integration of social justice within the biological sciences. Civil liberties attorney Cindy Cohn’s work supports the digital infrastructure and rights that we all use in our work on behalf of people and planet. And two brilliant ecologists, Suzanne Simard and Monica Gagliano, share their experiences of being professionally attacked for simply following the evidence that humans may not be the only “intelligent” species on earth.
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Rae Wynn-Grant – Wild Life: How Personal Journeys are Essential to Sustainable Leadership in Environmental Science
Growing up in the diverse and bustling California Bay Area, renowned wildlife ecologist Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant always felt worlds away from the white male adventurers she watched explore the wilderness on TV. As Wynn-Grant set off on her own journey in the wild, finding her way in a profession where there were few scientists who looked like her, she saw nature’s delicate balance in a new light. Hers is a story about a career in the wild spanning nearly two decades, carving a niche for herself as one of the very few Black female scientists in her field. Today, Wynn-Grant is a Research Fellow with the National Geographic Society, serves on The North Face’s Explore Fund Council, co-hosts Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild on NBC, and hosts the podcast “Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant,” produced by PBS. Her book “Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World” came out this year. In this talk, Wynn-Grant shares some of her experiences as she embarked on a quest to study the ever-shifting relationship between humans, animals, and place.
Cindy Cohn | The Climate Fight is Digital
With climate advocates subject to surveillance and censorship and giant companies controlling the ways information and knowledge flow around the world, the fight to save our climate is now inextricably intertwined with our digital rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has long been at the forefront of protecting those rights, has helped environmental activists protect their emails from Chevron, understand the surveillance they are under and develop “Security Self-Defense” practices to protect themselves. Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Executive Director, one of the nation’s leading civil liberties attorneys specializing in Internet law, explains why EFF’s push for open access to scientific information, net neutrality, open-source patents, “creative commons” licenses, and more, are critical in the fight to prevent climatic unraveling.
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As Recognition of Intelligent Forest Systems Grows, So Has Pushback
University of British Columbia Professor of Forest Ecology and bestselling author Suzanne Simard has been at the forefront of research on plant communication and intelligence. Simard is globally renowned for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks and has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles as well as the bestselling book “Finding the Mother Tree,” but with this recognition has come some intense pushback from sectors of the forestry establishment that feel profoundly threatened by the paradigm-shifting implications of her research. Simard discusses this resistance to her work in this excerpt from an interview with Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies.
Plant Intelligence and Why Imagination Is the Key to Understanding the Natural World
Monica Gagliano believes she was born to be a scientist. She grew up in the city with parents who thought nature was something to be kept outside, but Gagliano thought otherwise. She started a journal tracking the growth of her bean plant and created her first data-set at age nine. Now, Gagliano is a research associate professor in evolutionary ecology at the University of Western Australia and a research affiliate at the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney. Gagliano has blazed the trail for a brand new field called plant bioacoustics, showing that plants respond to and make sounds. Her studies have led her to author numerous groundbreaking scientific articles and to co-edit “The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World” and “The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, and Literature.” View her full Bioneers presentation here, and read an excerpt below.
Upcoming Bioneers Learning Courses
We’re excited to announce that our new season of Bioneers Learning is online, and registration is open! You can register for our first-ever self-paced courses, along with courses covering topics such as the Rights of Nature movement, regenerative herbalism, and sacred activism.
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