Adam Ruins Everything - How Humans Altered Entire Ecosystems to Create National Parks | truTV

After John Muir kicked the Awahnechee people out of Yosemite to create what he thought was "pristine nature", the Park became more prone to rare but extreme wildfires.#truTV #AdamRuins

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In Adam Ruins Everything, host Adam Conover employs a combination of comedy, history and science to dispel widespread misconceptions about everything we take for granted. A blend of entertainment and enlightenment, Adam Ruins Everything is like that friend who knows a little bit too much about everything and is going to tell you about it... whether you like it or not. 

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Adam Ruins Everything - Why National Parks Aren’t “Untramelled Wilderness” | truTV

[patrickblanchette]

Thank you for pointing out the importance of controlled burns!

[shushuyu]

"only WE can start forest fires" so badass hahaha

[AtarahDerek]

And we shouldn't try to have zero impact. We should try to have a POSITIVE impact. Like those controlled burns.

[jonbilgutay]

The moral of this episode is humans are here, so we can't have zero impact on the world. However, that doesn't mean we can't have a positive impact. I have heard of cities that are planting trees on balconies, and in Singapore there are these giant metal towers with all sorts of plant life growing on them.

[darthlazurus]

I'm a Highlander. The highlands of today are nothing like what they were a few hundred years ago. There used to be larger forests, greater diversity of flora and fauna and a healthy culture.

What happened? A few things. One being the Highland Clearances.

Because of the industrial revolution, cities needed more food and material for clothing. So Highland landowners realised they could make more money off the sheep than the people who lived on those lands for generations. It's not a happy story.

To give the sheep more grazing, and because Britain was an expanding empire before it named itself one, wood was harvested in a big way.

And since the ruling class of the United Kingdom loved to holiday up here, it was made more tourist friendly. Since the toffs love shooting Groose (as they are easy as Hell to shoot), birds of prey and the like were decimated and a few breeds went extinct.

The highlands now is a beautiful desert compared to it's wild past. No more than a garden for the rich.

[bioshockbrat]

I took a fire fighting class in my last year of high school and learned a lot abt controlled burns. They help a lot and not enough people know abt them and how they are conducted. So just saying "yeah we just burn down a part of the forest to help clear dead plants." Then some fire bugs are gonna get the wrong idea. It is a supervised and contained burning of select areas

[MargaritaOnTheRox]

Do people still believe the myth that all burns are bad?

[aaronramos]

Option 2: start reading the comments and weep for humanity 😂😂😂😂

[avalazem]

The natives mastered living in harmony with nature. We tend to try to compartmentalize and separate ourselves from the “natural world, ” but we ourselves are part of nature. We have a lot to learn from natives and early societies about how to live sustainably and harmoniously with our environment.

[sebastiangardemeister]

Our ability to transform nature, i find a gift and a curse

[chaotixninja]

I actually recall watching a forest documentary years ago and a some point, fighter fighters show up in order to set the forest on fire. It was a controlled fire meant to help preserve the forest so more intense ones won't show appear later. I saw that when I was a kid by the way, so it's a wonder how this detail isn't more well known now.

[LanieDeadrock]

"David Atten-boring" is a savage insult that I love so much lol 🤣

[AdamYJ]

Controlled fires are actually very important to pine barrens like the New Jersey Pine Barrens and the Albany Pine Bush.

[christopherjustice]

That David Attenborough impression was hilarious.

[sapphirewingthefurrycritic]

Well, now we know that controlled burns are good and do that to protect people. If people in frequently drought prone areas burned vegetation before a forest fire happened then they'd be fine because there'd be nothing to burn by the time the fire got there and it would save lives. I highly doubt the people at the time knew that. Well, the natives did because they spent enough time in that area to know how things worked and how to survive there.

[vladtheimpaler]

I knew about the controlled fires. Not far from my house there are large agricultural fields which are set on fire from time to time. I thought that it was a dangerous wildfire the first time but I learned it was done inteltionally to clear the field of weeds and left over plants. The ash actually nurishes the soil and leaves room for new plants to be planted.

[dominopicamation]

It was pretty much the same for Australian Aboriginal people. When they were living off the land they spread seeds, “farmed” the land and did burnoffs. Many native plants need fire to germinate seeds. But in recent years, there weren’t so many controlled burns in the bushland, and that’s why last year Australia had wild fires that burnt for months.

[SlendisFi_Universe]

Here in Finland we still use controlled forest fires to give natural growth and man made growth more room. Been doing that for ages. Keep doing that for ages.

[Birthnote]

"Have we started a fire?"





"Yes. The fire rises."

[tieflingcorpse]

we should put natives in charge of preserving nature and just trust them. I mean they've been doing it longer than literally anyone else, and they care for it more than literally anyone else