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EWN On The Road

Podcast Miniseries

S4 – The Heartland Tour: Five Rivers in One Day

About This Episode

Air Date: August 17, 2022
Left: The restored confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers and the created park. Right: Todd at the Source of the Missouri River. Credit: Todd Bridges.

In Episode 3, Todd Bridges talks with host Sarah Thorne about part of the trip that he and his wife Anita—the unofficial EWN driver—took in the summer of 2021, traveling across 14 states from Mississippi to Montana and back in what Todd calls the Heartland Tour. On one day of the tour, August 7, they visited five rivers in one day—Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers near Missoula, Montana, and the Jefferson, Madison, and Missouri Rivers near Bozeman, Montana—experiencing a wide range of history between people and rivers, as Todd says, “damming, contaminating, undamming, restoring, exploring, experiencing.” He adds: “That day made a strong impression upon me, to see so many different contexts and to link together a whole range of human activity. We’ve seen that whole progression over the last 150 years, and it was revealed in that day when we visited five rivers. . . . I was thinking a lot about what the rivers had been before people began to, if you will, ‘mess with them,’ engineer them for a variety of purposes. I was also thinking about what the future of our relationship will be with rivers and how we can apply the principles and practices of Engineering With Nature to recover some of the services and some of the values that rivers can provide to us, while at the same time reduce some of the challenges that climate change and other pressures are bringing to our rivers.”

Keywords

Engineering With Nature; EWN; N-EWN; natural and nature-based features; NNBF; nature-based solutions; NBS; natural infrastructure; ecosystem restoration; ecological engineering; ecosystem services; climate change; collaboration; sustainability; extreme weather events; community resilience; urban landscapes; flood risk management
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