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Ep 131  |  Joe Roman

Joe Roman: “Eat, Poop, Die: Animals as the Arteries of the Biosphere”

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TGS131 Joe Roman The Great Simplification

Show Summary

If plants are considered the lungs of the Earth, cycling CO2 into oxygen for animals to breathe, then animals act as the heart and arteries, spreading nutrients across the Earth to where it’s needed most. 

This is the metaphor that today’s guest, conservation biologist Joe Roman, uses when describing his work studying how animals such as whales, otters, salmon, and midges provide vital ecosystem services, and how destruction of their populations – caused by modern industrial systems – affects the livability of the entire planet. 

How has human activity drastically altered the balance and mass of species, and subsequently their ability to spread nutrients across the biosphere? What consequences must we face when biodiversity is diminished and nutrients are no longer dispersed as equally, leaving ecosystems with either extreme concentrations or scarcity of essential minerals, such as nitrogen and phosphorus? If we could “re-wild” diminishing species into their native habitats and aim for zero human-caused extinctions, how would this support a more resilient Earth for future generations of humans and animals alike?  

About Joe Roman

Joe Roman is a conservation biologist, marine ecologist, and “editor ’n’ chef” of eattheinvaders.org. Winner of the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Listed: Dispatches from America’s Endangered Species Act, Roman has written for The New York Times, Science, Slate, and other publications. Coverage of his research has appeared in the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, BBC, and many other outlets. He is a fellow and writer in residence at the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont. His latest book is Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World. 

In French, we have a motto that says that a simple drawing is often better than a long explanation. Jean-Marc Jancovici Carbone 4 President

That’s very understandable because with left atmosphere thinking, one of the problems is that you see everything as a series of problems that must have solutions. Iain McGilchrist Neuroscientist and Philosopher

We can’t have hundreds and hundreds of real relationships that are healthy because that requires time and effort and full attention and awareness of being in real relationship and conversation with the other human. Nate Hagens Director of ISEOF

This is the crux of the whole problem. Individual parts of nature are more valuable than the biocomplexity of nature. Thomas Crowther Founder Restor

Show Notes & Links to Learn More

00:00 – Joe Roman Works + Info, Eat, Poop, Die, Eat The Invaders Blog

03:20 – Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

06:10 – Midges in Iceland and their connection with the grasses and the sheep

07:11 – Nitrogen, Phosphorus

08:08 – Wild mammals are 4% of all biomass

09:28 – Chris Doughty, Global nutrient transport in a world of giants

09:33 – North American Pleistocene Megafauna

11:35 – Guano, Alexander von Humboldt

13:30 – Megafauna’s importance for long-range nutrient transfers

14:10 – High concentrations and deficiencies in nutrients across ecosystems

14:47 – Haber-Bosch

15:35 – Guano’s importance to agriculture in the 1800s

16:28 – Modern bat populations, bat guano

17:03 – White Nose Syndrome

17:26 – Decline of insect populations

18:10 – Humans use 30-40% of Net Primary Productivity

20:26 – Pee-cycle

20:49 – Night Soil

21:12 – Surtsey Island

26:07 – Ocean fish populations could swifty bounce back from overfishing

26:43 – It doesn’t take a lot to regenerate an ecosystem

27:05 – Denmark’s release of elephants in a nature preserve

28:27 – Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis

30:15 – Importance of animals to a forest

31:45 – 70% drop in animal population since 1970 as of 2018

33:28 – Increase in whale populations

34:28 – Warming of ocean and effects on animal populations

35:21 – Lifting baselines to address the consequences of conservation success: Trends in Ecology & Evolution

36:42 – Whale Pump

37:17 – North Atlantic Right Whale

38:11 – Biological Pump

38:48 – Jim McCarthy

39:37 – Sir David King + TGS Episode

40:33 – Whales and carbon sequestration

42:33 – Lynx and Snowshoe Hare population links

43:24 – Daniel Pauly + TGS, Gill Oxygen Limitation Theory

44:11 – Whales need to eat 2-4% of their body weight in the summer and fast in the winter

48:52 – Aleutian Sea Otters and Nuclear Testing

49:18 – GreenPeace

50:44 – Trophic Rewilding

53:27 – Whale Fall Communities

55:15 – Plastic pollution, PFAS
55:52 – Rice’s Whale

56:33 – Everglades whale washed up killed due to a credit card sized piece of plastic

57:36 – Bird deaths from plastic consumption

1:02:30 – Velvet worm

1:04:32 – The White Tailed Deer is the most abundant species by biomass

1:06:47 – John Fullerton, Regenerative Economy

1:07:26 – Planetary Boundaries, Peak Phosphorus

1:09:14 – Cicada hatching and nitrogen/phosphorus nutrient flows

1:10:53 – 2021 Cicada hatching

1:11:21 – Change in views of cicada hatching

1:14:39 – Vermont amphibian road crossings

1:15:20 – Animal Underpasses and Overpasses, reductions in mortality

1:19:22 – Josh Farley + TGS Episode part 1 and 2, Ecosystem services: The economics debate

1:30:10 – Elevated human caused extinction levels

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