Speaker: Gregg Treinish, Executive Director, Adventure Scientists
Gregg Treinish: and for other environmental issues. Our community is hikers and bikers and skiers and climbers and people who just love the outdoors, and we empower them to go out and be the change that they want to see in the world.
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Gregg Treinish: Hi, my name's Greg Trini. I'm the founder and executive director at Adventure Scientists. We mobilize thousands of outdoor enthusiasts to collect scientific data and become part of the solutions process for climate and for other environmental issues. Our community is hikers and bikers and skiers and climbers and people who just love the outdoors, and we empower them to go out and be the change that they want to see in the world.
Describe a moment when you felt the real-world impact of your work in climate solutions.
Gregg Treinish: Throughout the last 15 years of our history, our work has had tremendous impacts for climate and other environmental issues. We, right at the beginning of our history had two climbers go up Mount Everest and collect what is now the highest known plant life on Earth, up at 21,247 ft, and the moss that we found up there was living symbiotically with 5 different fungi which today are being used to inoculate crops around the world in more. Than doubles crop yields in the most marginalized environments, including on 10,000 small farms in India without the need for NPK fertilizers. We have put together genetic and chemical reference libraries now for nine different tree species that are illegally sourced or that are subject to tree disease and are helping to combat that issue both through genetics, looking at what genetics make trees more resilient to treat. Diseases and for the timber theft looking at the origins of the pieces of wood that are thought to be and suspected to be illegally sourced, our partners have prosecuted two different cases now helping to make illegal timber harvest a thing of the past. This is a $150 billion a year issue around the world and $1 billion every year in the United States are stolen out of these forests. Our work with Harvard Medical School helped narrow the. Search for the genes responsible for antibiotic resistant infections. Our work to scout and look for cone crops helps to prioritize where we can gather those crops for replanting efforts, and many, many more stories of impacts both for climate and biodiversity and other issues are consistently produced by this army of amazing people who go out for science and go out to make the world a better place.
Who or what inspires/inspired you to care about climate change and climate solutions?
Gregg Treinish: There are countless heroes who have inspired me to care about climate change and climate solutions from, you know, reading Ishmael early on in in my life to, uh, and my Ishmael to being inspired by Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall and George Schuller and Sylvia Earle and so many other amazing heroes of mine. Um, but for me it's the wildlife, it's the habitats, it's the places that I've been fortunate enough to go and visit and see and recognising that every species on this planet has a right and an opportunity to live, and they deserve that opportunity to survive and thrive on this planet, and I'm proud to fight for those, uh, species and for those places that don't have their own voice to make that true every single day.
