(dramatic music) - Good afternoon and welcome to the "Healing Power of Nature" presented by the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut.

We're thrilled to dive into the program today.

So nature heals, nature restores and nature provides.

Coming into spring, nature is an escape for many.

Today, we'll take you to one of our favorite places to unwind, explore the ways nature contributes to our mental and physical health and learn how our supporters interact with nature.

We'll start with Sophie Duncan's story, a land steward with the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut.

In her role, she works to ensure that some of the most amazing places in Connecticut remain great places to visit.

- [Male] Sophie Duncan is a land steward at Nature Preserves across the state.

- What's really been on my mind is the land that we inhabit and our relationship to it.

We can see the history going back thousands of years in Connecticut in terms of who has been there and who continues to be here, but who has power?

What does it mean to have an honest relationship with the land?

And what does it mean to have wonder and awe and these incredible experiences outside?

And then the realities of how these places came to be and who has access to them and how to hold both of those truths?

That something can be truly special and wonderful and also have a really dark history of how it came to be.

(gentle music) Hello, welcome to Burnham Brook.

I'm Sophie and I am a land steward with the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut.

I'm so excited to share with you one of my favorite hikes today at the Burnham Brook Preserve.

Burnham Brook has over 1,000 acres of protected land and includes the headwaters of the Eight Mile River.

In the Eight Mile River, it's an important habitat for Atlantic salmon and this preserve is home to over 180 bird species.

In addition, there's all kinds of woodland habitat, which includes trees like cedars and hemlocks and oaks and hickory and maple and all kinds of other species.

Burnham Brook is located in Eastern Connecticut in East Haddam and is an incredible area to come for a picnic with your family, to walk the two mile loop through various habitats and just enjoy wildlife, plants and nature.

This is the preserve entrance.

It's right next to a meadow that is home to many bird species.

Along the path, you might see trees, like this one on the right with lots of holes in it.

These are made by woodpeckers, one of the many species of birds that live at Burnham Brook.

Although the trees aren't as green as they usually are, it's incredible to go hiking in the early spring because there's lots of sunlight that filters through the trees.

This is one of my favorite parts of the path because the trail goes parallel to the Eight Mile River so you get to walk alongside it.

Listening to the Eight Mile River with the sound of birds in the background is one of my favorite things to do on a warm sunny day like today.

While I'm hiking, I like to look at the big stuff as much as the little stuff.

This is one of my favorite trees on the trail.

Look how cool the base of the trunk is.

It's all wide and then carved out in the middle.

Stuff like that is super neat and all along the trail.

In this part of the hike in the southeastern portion of the preserve, you might come across a boulder with a poem on it.

This poem is by Dick Goodwin, one of the co-founders of the preserve, along with John Ide.

It indicates an important moment for the Nature Conservancy because it was the first piece the Nature Conservancy protected in the Connecticut River Watershed, one of our important areas for conservation.

So this plaque and poem, if you see it, is for Dick Goodwin, and the trail continues and passes a vernal pool.

This is a vernal pool and it's the home to wood frogs and spring peepers and there were some ducks here earlier.

It appears in the spring time as water collects.

And earlier today, I saw some ducks and heard some frogs.

Well, thank you so much for coming to Burnham Brook Preserve.

We really hope you enjoyed your time visiting it virtually and we encourage you to come visit in person sometime.

Whether it's a drizzly day like today or a beautiful sunny day, it's always a wonderful time to be outside.

Just make sure to bring water, bring a mask, stay safe, and check the weather before you leave.

- Remember to follow the latest guidance for remaining safe outdoors when you visit and check out nature.org/burnhambrook for more information.

Thank you, Sophie.

So one of the main ways we think about how nature heals us is through our mental health.

But how and where does that happen?

Joining us now to discuss is Dr. Kiki Kennedy and Dr. Petros Levounis.

Dr. Kennedy is an assistant clinical professor in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, where she teaches psychotherapy and physician advocacy and has a private practice in New Haven, Connecticut.

Dr. Levinous is a professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Rutgers University, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and is the author of an upcoming book "Nature Therapy", which will be out spring of 2022.

Thank you both for joining us.

First question, well let's outline some of the ways nature contributes to our psychological wellbeing.

Dr. Levounis, you mentioned this falls in two primary categories, correct?

- Yes.

First of all, thank you so much for having me in this program.

And I'm delighted to be talking about nature therapy.

Two major categories.

One is the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

Depression, stress, aggression, these are things that have been shown, not as well as we would like, but have been shown to be quite helped by nature therapy.

So we use nature therapy as one of the tools that we have in treating psychiatric disorders.

And the second part of mental health has to do with the general mental health of pretty much everyone.

It seems that nature therapy can be helpful in raising the, the mental health and wellbeing of pretty much anyone, including people who do not have any psychiatric problems.

So these are the two major categories that we're working on.

- Thank you.

And for Dr. Kennedy, could you describe how nature works as a treatment in conjunction with medication and psychotherapy?

- Well, Andrew, that's a great question.

Interacting with nature is a great way to reduce stress.

Even before the pandemic, stress has been a major problem for millions of Americans.

And over the past year, increasing numbers of us are reporting feeling even more stress.

It's important to note that research has not shown that spending time in nature can prevent, treat or cure any medical conditions.

But we do know that interacting with nature can help calm us down and improve our sense of wellbeing.

It's important to address stress before it interferes with our lives, with our work, with our jobs, with our relationships.

And we do have already many other wellness practices to reduce stress, like eating nutritious food, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep.

And we can kind of think that engaging with nature is just another wellness practice that you can try to incorporate into your daily life.

Some researchers have found that as little as five minutes outside in a natural setting like strolling in a park or sitting in a garden, can improve your mood, self-esteem and cognition.

And in fact, there are many studies that provide and point to this positive correlation between engaging in nature and enhanced mood, self-esteem and cognition.

And like Dr. Levounis mentioned, some studies have even shown that that calming effect of being in nature can actually lower blood pressure and decrease physical aggression.

We don't quite understand the underlying mechanism or how it works.

Perhaps it helps to simply restore our perspective and anyone who's ever spent an evening gazing at the night sky knows what that can do to make a big problem feel much smaller.

Or perhaps it's just that as human beings, we long for connections beyond ourselves and engaging in nature can make us feel that somehow we belong to something that is greater than us.

- Awesome, thank you.

And for Dr. Levounis, what ways do you incorporate nature into your psychotherapy practice?

- I'm gonna get to that in a second.

I just want to add something to what Kiki was saying.

First of all, I couldn't agree more that that's where the state of the science is at this point.

One of the more prominent theories about how nature works is through increasing the tone of the parasympathetic system.

When we increase the parasympathetic nervous system that results in relaxation.

It just cools the whole body down.

And that's one of the more prominent theories about how nature therapy really works.

So how do we use it in everyday practice?

The way I do it is I write it on a prescription pad the same way that I will prescribe an antidepressant medication or any other medication.

I write it down and I say spend two hours a week outdoors or five minutes a day, depending on what the situation is, give some more specific instructions which are specific for the patient.

For example, taking a walk from home to the train station or sometimes from the train station to work or whatever it is that makes sense to the patient instead of taking the bus, let's say.

And I hand that piece of paper to my patient as a physical extension, in some ways, of the doctor to the patient and giving some gravitas to nature therapy so the patient takes it seriously.

- Certainly, yeah.

And in our pre-conversation, we touched on that and the importance of that.

We framed it in terms of using nature as a clinical intervention and getting patients to kind of follow the instructions that you're giving on that prescription itself.

Are there any other techniques that you can offer for guiding patients to apply it in the most beneficial way?

- Yes, there's an emerging use of technology in our work.

And of course, we use apps in terms of teaching people sleep hygiene and helping them with all kinds of healthy habits.

We can also use technology to motivate people to go outside.

MapMyRun is a very useful one.

It gives you a beautiful map of exactly where you went and how long it took you and how much you walked or you biked.

You can see the river, you can see the park, and this has a motivating effect for the patient.

That combined with social media.

You can easily upload your path and you can boast about it to your friends.

So be it.

It sounds a little vain but it's for a good cause, and we like that.

- Anytime we can brag on doing something for a good cause, we love it, especially members of my generation.

Kiki, in our pre-conversation, you talked about travel.

And when you travel, in what ways do you incorporate nature into your plans?

I know for at least me, whenever I'm planning out my day, I make sure to include times within my schedule just to step outside, take a quick walk and just kind of take a deep breath that way.

And I find that like it creates intentional moments within the day so I'm less stressed.

And I'm able to focus, I'm able to absorb information in a better way.

It just restores me.

So when you travel, do you have any specific routines or things that you do leading up to it to make sure that you have those moments in your day too?

- Well, I do travel a lot for medical conferences and I'll let everybody know I'm a runner, I run daily and I love to run outside all year no matter what the weather is.

And so when I do travel to medical conferences, I often find myself in a hotel that's in a very urban and built environment.

And I'm gonna, Dr. Levounis mentioned this app, which I don't have.

I usually just look on my phone and use the map function there and I look around to see, is there a nearby park?

Is there a river?

And then I intentionally run to that area.

And if those aren't available, I just kind of try to identify any tree lined streets that I can run along.

And I find that besides having kind of a more enjoyable run, I come away with a feeling that I have a deeper connection to the city because I've explored it's green spaces.

So it really makes me feel connected to a place.

And certainly, you know, when I'm lucky enough to be able to travel just for pleasure, I always make sure that I choose a destination where I can spend at least a part of the day outside.

- It's certainly, certainly helpful.

You know we define nature in a number of ways.

What if someone has limited access to parks or the large natural areas?

Can they still feel that sort of restorative power of nature?

- Studies have shown you don't need vast expanses of wilderness to experience the psychological benefits of nature.

Even if you just walk along an urban street that has trees growing along the sidewalk can make a big difference than picking a route where it's a completely built concrete environment.

Certainly, you know, some people live in a neighborhood where there aren't even trees on their block.

And so then you can just try to bring nature inside your home, in your home.

Bring plants in, put them around, make sure that your desk or chair is facing a window.

Maybe you can have a peak of greenery or a river through the buildings.

And honestly, if worst comes to worst, just have paintings or images of nature around your home.

And my last suggestion would be if you don't have any nature around your home, consider engaging with your local community and maybe there's a vacant lot nearby that you can restore and make into a community garden.

Try to bring nature into your community if it's not there already.

- One more trick of the trade here and that's college campuses.

If you are in an urban setting and on the map, it may show everything to be buildings, buildings, buildings, usually the college campuses have more open space, they do have more trees, they do have more grass.

So that's something to always remember.

- Always finding hidden gems on the map there.

It's so great, that's always good to be able to find, kind of read through the lines a little bit and figure out where to go.

Kiki, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you if you have something to add.

No, I love learning from Dr. Levounis.

I've gotten so many great tips today.

I'm gonna start writing my prescriptions for nature too.

- Most definitely.

We can all have a prescription for nature and we can all learn something.

And kind of to that end, Dr. Levounis, you have a book coming up soon kind of around this.

Do you want to describe that and when it comes out?

- Yes, it's essentially the birth child of one of our residents here, Dr. Jonathan Kaplan, Johnny Kaplan, who is a wonderful birdwatcher.

And he is the one who motivated me and a number of our colleagues here to put together our thoughts and our research on nature therapy.

- So rounding up the conversation here, is there anything else that either of you would like to mention that we haven't touched on today?

- I just want to add that architecture, architecture is also very interested in the beneficial effects of nature.

And not only are they bringing plants inside, they are breaking the inside outside barrier.

They are very concerned about light and views and so on.

So it's not just psychiatry that's fascinated and uses nature therapy.

It's also other disciplines.

- Certainly.

And thank you both for joining us and we'll look out for Petros book "Nature Therapy" this coming spring.

So it's time for us to put what we've learned in practice.

There's many ways one can connect with the outdoors or even forge that relationship.

Teona Williams describes her path.

- [Male] Teona Williams spent her 30th birthday rock scrambling in Shenandoah National Park.

- [Teona] After the fact, as we were like walking back, sore, dragging our bruised body, I realized that was just the first day I had that was like a truly sort of like full meditative experience.

You know, when I'm doing these scrambles, when I'm summoning, when I'm doing all those things, all I can be is in the moment.

I have to actually be fully present.

I have to like be in constant connection with these boulders, these rocks, these trees, these birds, like I have to get myself through this.

I truly believe there's like mental and physical restorative capabilities, even if you're just like forest bathing.

It doesn't have to be anything intense.

But there's just so many ways to get out into nature, to reconnect and just really force yourself to be in the moment.

- Thanks Teona.

Forging that connection definitely requires some intent.

Fortunately, we have people standing by ready to help.

Joining us now is Monica Maccera-Filppu, executive director of Common Ground located in New Haven.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thank you.

Hi Andrew.

- Well first, could you describe Common Ground and the ways that it supports local community?

- Sure, so Common Ground is a community nonprofit in New Haven and we operate the Common Ground Charter High School, Common Ground's Environmental Education Center and an urban farm.

So members of the community experience Common Ground often through summer camps, field trips, sometimes birthday parties that we've hosted on campus, as well as students who come to our high school and folks who benefit from the workshops and the food shares and things that we do through our farm.

- Well, the pandemic upended so much of our lives.

And could you describe how things changed at Common Ground and how nature supported the reopening of the school and summer camp?

- Sure, so like with everyone else, things ground to a halt really quickly at Common Ground, the high school closed.

But even in those first weeks of the pandemic, our farm was operating, our community program staff was on site as essential workers because we have crops and animals to take care of.

And we immediately pivoted to food security work.

So starting with food that was in our school kitchen and then moving towards food from our farm and then even partnering with local organizations and other farms in the area, we built a pretty robust food box program that was initially just supporting our students.

But as it grew, was able to support families in New Haven that were connected to our school in other ways, as well as a lot of families in our neighborhood of West Rock Senior Center that's up the street, and we partnered with our alder.

So we really worked on food security for awhile while things were really shut down.

And, you know, in the late spring, we started thinking about what it would mean to operate our summer camps.

Common Ground summer camps are quite an institution that people in this area really love and children really benefit from.

We serve children as young as age three going up to like 15 and 16 year olds.

And it was a big decision, right?

Should we open in person?

And we all knew that outdoors was the place to be.

Right, if they're gonna be safe anywhere, outdoors in nature is the place to be.

And Common Ground sits on a 20 acre site at the base of West Rock State Park.

So we thought we had something that would, where we could really address some of the mental health challenges that young people were facing by bringing them back on campus in person in a safe way.

So we were one of the first summer camps to declare that we would be opening.

We were able to serve a smaller group of campers this summer safely, as well as doing a small in-person summer school for students who'd been really disengaged.

And then that gave us the confidence and the practices to open the school in the fall.

And gosh, we were so grateful for, certainly for nature and the space that we had to use, outdoor classroom spaces and prioritize outdoor time as much as possible for our young people.

- Now there's a number of threads within that that we'll touch on within our conversation, but I'm interested in the food justice portion of it and transitioning efforts to food security.

Could you talk a little bit more about that and how Common Ground integrates food justice into its programs?

- Sure, so we have a farm onsite, like I said, and people know about the farm, but contrary to what some folks might assume, we are not an agricultural school.

We're not here to teach our students to be farmers, but the farm and the land provides such an incredible resource to educate young people and to provide access.

And that's the primary focus of our farm.

And in doing so, we're really thoughtful about the history.

So we're in New Haven which is a very rich, diverse community and we're really thoughtful and aware of the, like the historical trauma of black and brown people associated with land, land ownership, working on land.

And that is something that we take very seriously and think a lot about in our programming.

So what we really strive to do to is make sure that we provide a space for young people to start with just like wonder and discovery on our farm, learning about food, learning about land and how we can grow our food, really celebrating some of the ethnic foods that our diverse community loves and making sure we grow the ingredients for some of those ethnic foods.

And then over time, some of our students do choose to take paid jobs on the farm.

And that for them is an act of reclaiming the, you know, reclaiming the land in a way that's empowering for them.

So that's a little bit about the food justice work.

And then I guess also one of the things that we work on is like just consistently exposing and giving access to, you know, healthy, locally grown produce and teaching our students recipes and ways of using that produce that again like celebrate their ethnic backgrounds and their cultures and sort of making sure that they see, you know, farm grown foods as a very natural part of their diet and their culture, not as something that's other than or foreign to them.

- Awesome, makes sense, makes sense.

So, Common Ground works closely with schools in a few capacities.

Can you kind of walk through those and tell us how?

- Sure, so Common Ground has been part of the New Haven community since the early 1990s and has partnered with, very joyfully with New Haven public schools in a lot of ways.

One is through field trips.

So before the pandemic, we always had field trips on campus, multiple a day.

And our field trips are educationally themed.

Things like teaching maple sugaring, we have maple sugaring onsite, or teaching about bees and honey production 'cause that's also something we do.

So educational field trips is a big part of what we've always done.

We also have over the last few years developed what we call our School Yards Program, which is a program whereby Common Ground works with schools in New Haven to plant school gardens and create some habitat spaces and maker spaces.

And really has worked with 21 public schools in New Haven to teach teachers how to use outdoor spaces in education.

And interestingly, we found both on our campus and in the schools that we've partnered with, that those spaces, one, they're amazing for just education, but they're also really amazing for socioemotional learning and development.

We found that he, again here on campus and off in other sites, children who are escalated, who are having a hard time, really respond to spending time outdoors.

And that's another practice that we've been able to bring out to our partner schools.

- Definitely interested in talking more around how nature is used in social and emotional learning, particularly at schools.

I know in our pre-conversation, you gave an example of how one school's using it.

Could you dive into how some schools that you're working with are using nature to aid in that SEL?

- Specifically, I think it is through using those outdoor spaces as spaces that children can go to with an adult to take a walk, to talk about their feelings, and really acknowledging that the, you know, outside fresh air and the presence of green plants and insects and small animals, those are things that really like bring peace to a troubled heart in a moment when children are escalated.

There's a big difference between walking a student up and down the hall of the enclosed school building, then taking a child outside, and letting them breathe some fresh air, and really take a, you know, think about what they need to do and support them.

So we definitely have seen our schools do that.

Here on campus, we have a couple spaces that we consider sort of sacred spaces for that.

Our wetlands and our children's garden are spaces that children come back to.

And it's funny, now that school, you know, we have a lot of students who are virtual, they continue to talk about how they want to come back to those spaces and how much they miss those spaces.

- Now also in our pre-conversation, you talked about kind of the cycle and kind of the process of offering moments of success for students to kind re-engage them back into their educational learning and kind of academic course load I should say.

Could you dive into that a little bit of how that works?

- Sure.

So like I mentioned earlier, we do have a program by which we can provide paid jobs on campus for students.

Again, part of our social justice work.

Right, making sure that students who are providing labor are getting paid for that labor.

And we found that some students who don't naturally gravitate towards academic learning do really enjoy, you know, the opportunity to earn their own money, the skills that they learned by working on the site or on the farm.

And what we found during the pandemic is for some kids that was the hook back in.

When a student maybe disengaged and wasn't participating in their virtual learning classes, et cetera, that we were sometimes able to get them back by sort of saying well, come back to your job on the farm or come back to your job on the site crew.

And then maybe they would come back for a couple of, and in fact, today is a Wednesday.

We have several students downstairs who are in the process of this.

They came back, they were here this morning, they did their farm job or their site crew job and now they're sitting downstairs in the gym supervised by a teacher who's supporting them like catch up on work that they missed or attending their virtual classes.

So we've really found that getting students in that situation, one, they come back, and two, they feel successful there, and that allows, that success transfers to other things that are harder.

And it also just builds relationships, right?

Our students who do that kind of work have relationships with teachers, with other than just their teachers.

And if you're a student who struggled in school or anybody who struggled in school knows that those teacher relationships are sometimes fraught.

Even if the teacher is amazing, you have your own like anxiety and insecurities you're dealing with.

So now our kids have these adults that they work with in a completely different setting who maybe don't know you as the kid who doesn't do his homework, but instead know you as the kid who like works really hard and is really successful at pulling weeds or, you know, helping the cucumbers grow.

And so those relationships are different for our kids.

And we find that using those relationships, leveraging those relationships to get them hooked back into learning is really helpful.

- Certainly, certainly.

And it's kind of a cool concept and great thing that you guys are doing there at Common Ground.

Another program that we spoke about is the Green Jobs Corps that you have there.

And you've touched on it in a few answers here, but could you talk about the development of that, how it came about, and why it's still important to the New Haven community?

- Sure.

So it's been around for a few years, at least at least 10 years, I'd say.

It is operated out of the New Haven Ecology Project, which is the nonprofit that, you know, is the umbrella nonprofit here.

And it is really like a job corps program specifically for Common Ground High School students.

And it's been great because we partner with other agencies.

So for example, URI, the Urban Resources Initiative out of Yale and other nonprofits in New Haven, we work with them.

And what they do is they, we provide, you know, students apply for jobs, so the agency will say, we have 10, we need 10 students to help plant trees this summer in New Haven.

And our students will have to apply.

They have to go through an application and interview process.

And then while they are doing that work, again, they're earning money, so they're learning all the skills that one learns when one's working on a crew of planting trees, et cetera, but we're also providing leadership development.

So we have dedicated staff here and then we also provide sometimes a stipend to the nonprofits so that they can better support our students.

Because they may be planting trees, but they're also setting goals around their own leadership development and growth and reflecting on them through the process.

So I think through that program we've been able to provide great community connections for our kids and then for community partners to have access to like a wonderful labor force of our young people and also continue like leadership development and coaching through work, which is not necessarily what happens when you just kind of go out and get a job at the supermarket, which is what I did when I was a teenager.

- Certainly, certainly it sounds like a great program and all that Common Ground has going on and something that through our conversation, I've learned a ton more about the organization and the totality of all of its projects and who it's working with.

So is there anything else that we haven't captured within this conversation that you'd like to tell us about Common Ground or about how nature has supported the organization throughout the pandemic and outdoor learning?

- Sure, I think, so I just, it is easy to underestimate sort of like the power of nature to nurture young people's minds and create that sense of wonder.

Young people go on to do many things after Common Ground.

And most of them don't go necessarily go on to careers in environmental education.

But they have learned a sense of like valuing our, the land and the world, really thinking about their impact on the land, that we see really transfer to whatever they do.

And we're just really proud of our kids and our staff here at Common Ground and grateful that the New Haven community continues to support us and think of new ways that we can partner.

- I know I said if there's anything else and I suggested that you would be done with the interview, but we're gonna go for one more thing.

Just because in my personal interactions with Common Ground students, I've always been impressed by their level of focus and the level of just creativity that they have.

'Cause I know when I was their age, just thinking about some of the topics that they're exploring and some of the things that you're doing, it takes a whole other level of focus that I'm seeing in this generation that we've seen in pieces of say my own or generations before.

But this particular one seems to be especially special.

So I can't let you go without asking you is there something in particular about this year's students that have kind of come up through the pandemic that's special or that you've noticed that you'd like to call out and highlight?

- I mean, I obviously want to call out and celebrate all the students who graduated or worked through their high school experience in this pandemic.

But I will say that all children are capable of amazing things.

And at Common Ground, our curriculum, our mission is about activating young people's leadership.

And that means we ask young people for their real opinions and take actions and make decisions based on those opinions.

We have students who are voting members of our board.

So I think when you think about that sort of focus and energy that you see from Common Ground students, it comes from a really deliberate approach to build them up as leaders from the very beginning of them coming to Common Ground and genuinely treating them as valuable members of the community who have their own voice that we listen to.

And I think when we do that with young people, all young people can, you know, rise to the occasion and be those kinds of leaders.

- Certainly.

Well, thank you so much for joining us and for the discussion.

I've enjoyed it, learned a ton, and we can learn more about Common Ground on your website.

You can shout out your website and social media.

- Yeah, it's www.commongroundct.org.

And you can also click on a link at the top and sign up for our newsletter and you can hear about all the great things happening at Common Ground.

And our summer camp registration opens tomorrow, April 1st.

So if you're interested in that, you should check out the website so you can be ready for that.

- Certainly, will do.

Thank you so much, Monica.

So trees are a huge part of a conservationist toolkit for addressing water and air quality in our cities, but they only go so far.

Partnerships and community buy-in involvements are key to ensuring that we work in a way that's truly sustainable.

TNC has the reach of a global organization, as well as the presence to act locally to keep our promise to nature.

Next, we'll learn about a project centered in Louisville, Kentucky that's been used as a model across the nation.

Then, Diana Nguyen here in Connecticut will then take us to Bridgeport to explore a few ways we're working locally to improve the health of our communities.

(gentle music) - We launched the Green Heart Project to obtain clear and direct evidence of the relationship between nature and health.

- We were looking at it very critically as a great opportunity to restore health.

- We are looking at the environment in a much more rigorous way than has ever been done and we're using trees essentially as a pill.

- [Male] Yes!

- [Male] Let's loosen up the roots a little bit.

- [Male] I am one with the earth.

- This is actually a major milestone.

This is the first day we actually get to start the greening intervention, the planting of the community to begin to test the health effects.

- This is a $15 million six year longitudinal clinical trial.

It's unprecedented.

There is no other project like this in the world.

(gentle music) - No one has planted trees the size we're planting out here along the highway in the quantities and the densities that we're planting anywhere in Louisville's history.

- When you look at all the benefits of living near greenness, one of the most profound benefits is in cardiovascular disease.

- There are thousands of cities around the world that are struggling with air pollution issues.

And we know that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of people globally.

We're looking at air quality and the mechanism that canopy plays in filtering air pollution and therefore the health effects on the population and the community that lives here.

- If you don't see the relationship between plants and clean air, then you just haven't gotten it.

- When we first started the Green Heart Project, we thought it was important for improving the health of a community.

Now with this COVID pandemic, we have learned how spending time in nature could improve our resilience, our immunity, our mental health, and our ability to cope with this pandemic.

- We know that we can't have healthy communities at any level, within any socioeconomic branch, without having healthy communities at all socioeconomic branches.

- We have such disparity in our community.

We have one of the most segregated cities.

Our country is segregated.

Our world is segregated, rich, poor, black, white, and then this pandemic comes and now we see how connected we are.

- If we learn the lesson from this pandemic that it is not just our own health and our own little world that they can create an island to exist on, but that we need to work towards making a healthy community where people don't die prematurely.

These things are not difficult to achieve.

They're within our grasp.

We just need the social will to accomplish that.

- How would it feel to a community that feels left out and unseen all of a sudden to be prioritized?

I cannot imagine the difference in life expectancy in that community.

And I don't mean years, I mean quality.

And if you improve the quality, then the quantity will go up too.

- I hope that there will be another Green Heart Project somewhere else in the world.

I hope there'll be three or four more to give everybody, policy makers, the general public, the confidence that this is actually a very real, investible, workable phenomenon.

- Hi everyone.

I'm Diana Nguyen and I'm the AmeriCorps volunteer and stewardship coordinator at the Nature Conservancy here in Connecticut.

A couple days ago, we welcomed in a new spring season.

And today I have the amazing opportunity to share some of our projects under the Urban Conservation Program.

I'm here at the Hall Neighborhood House in the great city of Bridgeport where the Nature Conservancy partnered to plant some trees and bioswales.

The Hall Neighborhood House is a center that provides essential educational and social programming to Bridgeport residents of all ages.

Come on, I'll show you around.

So this here is a bioswale.

And a bioswale essentially collects storm water and filters the storm water before it enters our local waterways.

It runs from the streets and can also allow rain to enter from the sidewalks into the bioswale filtering pollution that is picked up along the way.

A couple of years back when Hall Neighborhood House and Nature Conservancy collaborated to introduce some bioswales to the neighborhood, and we also planted about 19 trees with the help of over 50 community members and volunteers, including some native species like dogwood.

The trees not only provide the neighborhood with a fresh new look, but also provides essential environmental benefits, such as tree canopies that help clear the air from pollution from ongoing traffic.

Over here at the back of the Hall Neighborhood House, we've planted a couple of those trees.

And across the street, we partnered with the Bridgeport Housing Authority to plant some trees on residential properties.

And here we have our second bioswale.

Again, the same systems and just doing all the work we can to help filter the storm water.

All right, y'all.

Thanks for joining me as I walked through our work here with the Hall Neighborhood House.

If you're ever in the area, check it out.

Take care.

- Thank you, Diana, for walking us through a great project at the Hall Neighborhood House there in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Joining us now is Drew Goldsman, urban conservation director for the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut.

He leads our work in cities and works closely to use nature to address many impacts of climate change within those cities.

Can you dive into how those in rain gardens work to reduce localized flooding and clean storm water in our cities?

- Yeah, sure thing, Andrew, appreciate the opportunity.

This project that we have partnered with in Bridgeport is with a community center called the Hall Neighborhood House and really kind of that's fundamental and central to the work that we've been doing in Bridgeport is seeking community partnerships to support health and wellbeing of community residents.

And so the relationship with Hall began as we were doing our community visioning process called Green Connections in the East side neighborhood of Bridgeport, which we had identified through some assessments around access to the benefits of nature and particularly trees, and the east side really rose to the top as a neighborhood that had really kind of inequitable distribution of tree canopy across Bridgeport.

So we got to know community stakeholders from across the neighborhood, and Hall Neighborhood House really became one of our core partners.

And so we led a series of tree plantings across their campus.

The community center is deeply committed to ensuring that their grounds are as supportive of the community as their programming is.

And so in total, over a couple of years, we ended up planting 19 trees around the campus.

And then we developed the first two right of way bioswales in the city of Bridgeport along Pembroke Street.

And bioswales are a really kind of interesting, innovative means of managing stormwater in a really decentralized way to help relieve pressure on the city stormwater system.

But as with all natural climate solutions and nature-based solutions they're multi-benefit.

And so they provide an opportunity to manage stormwater coming off of the street and the sidewalk, particularly that first flush of really dirty water that otherwise would either be going into our stormwater treatment system or directly into the Long Island Sound.

And so they're really a pretty straightforward system of reestablishing some of the natural water cycles.

So it's depaving a section of the sidewalk, creating a layer cake of really sandy soils on top so water can move into it really quickly, a bunch of stone on the bottom, so that you can store a lot of water and really just help that water kind of return to its natural path, which unfortunately, streets and a lot of impervious area have really kind of interrupted.

And so it's really trying to restore that natural cycle.

All the while, providing opportunity for natural habitat and improved greenery in the neighborhood that unfortunately has a long history of not kind of receiving its fair share of nature and nature's benefits.

- Certainly, certainly.

You know, when we think about emissions, and you touched on cars there and transit off the road and emission in oil and all the little things that gather on the road and get washed off when it rains, and the fact that bioswales kind of help filter some of those things, but you know, when we think of emissions, we mostly consider those from vehicles.

And there are some policy measures underway to address those.

But as we understand, that's not enough on its own.

Could you describe some of the ways we're using natural climate solutions to address air quality within our communities in Connecticut?

- Yeah, sure.

So the TCI, or the Transportation Climate Initiative, is a great undertaking across our region to really try to, simply put, really electrify our fleet in many ways.

And that's gonna be a critical part of the supply of our pollutants, particularly particulate matter 2.5, that's the size of the particulate matter that really can kind of deeply get into lungs and cause asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

And so that's a critical to address the supply side of it.

But what we really see as a big benefit is kind of we need to be coming at this from multiple angles.

And TNC or the Nature Conservancy is really committed to that comprehensive approach.

So while we're going for the policy side to reduce the supply of pollutants and air pollution, we also know that we need to be investing in trees in particular, which is one of the greatest tools to pull out that PM2.5 and other air pollutants, while all the while cooling our communities.

Because the heat island effect is another one of the other greatest kind of impacts in cities as we have elevated heat, and so trees can really help to cool.

And that's gonna be something that while kind of pollution and ozone in particular elevates heat islands, regardless if we take all the cars off the road, we're gonna still have significant heat island effect because of the concrete and pavement.

And so planting more trees is gonna be another really critical part of that approach.

So, you know, we see it as really that comprehensive, coming from all angles, thinking about the suite of co-benefits as we like to kind of discuss, thinking about air quality, thinking about heat, and all of those supporting communities health in particular communities that have been disproportionately burdened by these environmental hazards.

- Thank you so much for joining us, Drew, and walking through how we've operated in the city of Bridgeport and how we're hoping to operate in cities across Connecticut.

Joining us now is Holly Drinkuth, who leads our outreach and watershed projects with the Nature Conservancy here in Connecticut.

And she uses a lot of natural solutions to address climate change and some of the impacts of it.

So Holly, thanks for joining us.

And first question for you is just kind of around the ways that communities in Connecticut are managing wastewater and stormwater.

Can you outline those?

- Sure, thanks so much, Andrew.

Yes, Connecticut, like many of the places, states in the northeast, have been managing wastewater and stormwater for centuries to really protect people's health and safety.

And we've made really great progress cleaning up Long Island Sound in particular through upgrades of technology at sewage treatment plants.

There we're reducing nitrogen pollution that triggers algal blooms, and that really harms the environment through low oxygen dead zones that kind of kill marine life and habitat.

But in addition to that, we've been really able to manage water in cities, from wastewater and stormwater, where the systems are combined.

And we heard a little bit about that from Diana.

The combined systems collect wastewater from houses and industry into sewer pipes at the same time that they're picking up stormwater from rain and snow melt.

And they bring those two treatment plants to be treated before that's discharged into the waterways.

But in some cases when the snow or rain melt is very heavy, it overtops the system and causes untreated sewage and this sort of toxic soup of chemicals and contaminants to get into the waterways.

And that makes it unsafe for shellfish and beaches.

- That toxic kind of mess going into the sewers, certainly something great for us to think about around lunchtime, but it is something for us to consider in making the upgrades to it.

And so you touched on it toward the end there around the impact at beaches.

So when beaches close after it rains, we know that it's due to excess bacteria, but where's that coming from and what's the link to our beaches closing to the much needed stormwater and wastewater upgrades that we're discussing?

- Yeah, so some of it is coming from those overflows, like I talked about.

Some of it comes from things that we do on land.

So walking our pets and leaving pet waste, that sort of thing.

And some of it comes from our leaky and old pipes even from our septic systems.

About 40% of the households in Connecticut rely on septic systems for wastewater.

But those technologies are old too.

And in some places, they don't do enough to really manage, you know, treat some of the things that are coming out of our homes.

And one of the things that we can do in addition to upgrading and modernizing those systems is to use things like natural buffers along waterways, so meadows, wetlands, woodlands, they all help keep pollution out of our streams and harbors.

- Yeah, that's kind of where I wanted to go next with this is kind of the discussion around floodplains and the role that they play in our water quality.

Can you touch on that and some of the restoration efforts that are underway here in Connecticut?

- Yeah, sure.

You know, healthy river floodplains are magic and Connecticut is full of them and we're really lucky to have all of those.

Not only do they absorb those floodwaters and reduce risks to infrastructure, like our streets and houses, but when they're full, they act like natural filters and they can remove sediment and some of the nutrient pollution that degrades water quality and increases those treatment costs.

Along with that, they play an important role in spawning grounds for fish and critical areas for rest and areas to stop from migrating waterfowl and other birds and they are great places to enjoy outdoor activities and recreational opportunities in nature that we heard about from the doctors earlier.

Things like fishing and camping and hiking, boat watching...bird watching and boating, that all really support physical and mental wellness.

And one of the ways that we're working on that here in Connecticut is bringing back the old trees that used to be in Connecticut's riverways, the elms that have suffered.

And they're really making the systems healthier and making it better able to suck up all that floodwater.

- Definitely the elm restoration effort is a big thing for TNC across New England, particularly in the Connecticut River Watershed.

But, you know, we talked about natural areas there and how we can kind of contribute to addressing biodiversity or creating habitat for wildlife, in addition to cleaning our water.

But how can nature contribute to cleaner drinking water for residents?

- Yeah, again, another sort of magic thing.

Forests are an incredible way for us to clean and protect and make sure we have adequate drinking water for everyone in Connecticut.

It's a great way to capture rains and snow melt, as I talked about before.

And they also act as these natural filters.

They treat the water before it reaches areas, like reservoirs and rivers that people depend on for drinking water.

Many people know about the really terrific approach that New York City used in protecting forests in the Adirondacks for drinking water supply for all the people in the metropolitan area of New York City.

But that's happening here in Connecticut too.

And the Nature Conservancy has been contributing to protection in multiple drinking water watershed forests, including Centennial Forest, which protects the Saugutuck River and the Aspetuck River in western Connecticut.

And that helps to keep the water clean for many, many residents of western Connecticut, including in Bridgeport and other parts of Fairfield County.

- Certainly, certainly.

You know, forging that connection, as we heard from Dr. Zerner, you don't have to go too far away to enjoy nature.

It's available just about in your neighborhoods or even you can do, like I have behind me here, wrong side, little Zoom thing, but with the plants in your own home, just to create some greenery around you and just kind of get that nature kind of within your life and within your daily life there.

So I'm curious, we talked about the protection of Centennial Watershed State Forest there and its impacts on drinking water.

But what efforts are underway to kind of help bridge the gap between, help create access to some of those areas?

- Yeah, so there are multiple ways to do that.

We ummm...

The Centennial Watershed Forest in particular is about 15,000 acres and it's managed by the Nature Conservancy, Connecticut Department of Environment and, Environmental.... Energy and Environmental Protection, sorry, and Aquarion Water Company.

And they all work together to manage the forest itself.

But there are multiple ways to access it through some of the trails in the watershed area.

So the Saugatuck Valley Trail is er... Saugatuck River Trail is one opportunity and the Aspetuck Valley Trail is another opportunity.

Also alongside that, TNC's largest preserve in Connecticut is Devil's Den.

And that's a place where you can go and access those trails as well and visit those, those natural areas.

- Certainly.

And people can go online at nature.org/connecticut and explore our interactive preserve guides to find their new favorite place to go enjoy those benefits.

Thank you, Holly, so much for joining us.

We'll leave you with a story and a prompt from Sunny Valley preserve director Wayne Woodard.

- [Wayne] You know what I'd like to do is I'd like to share a sunrise with you.

I'm sitting in the middle of a hayfield on top of a Hill in Bridgewater, Connecticut.

And if I look over to the west of me there's the Housatonic River.

And, you know, because the water's just a little cooler than the air there's like this river of fog that's just traveling right up the river.

This is what I would recommend to anyone.

Go find a good spot and then one morning just get up early, early, early, early when it's dark, you know, get there before dawn and just wait and look and listen.

It can give you peace, it gives you strength and it gives us a new day.

- Thank you all for joining us.

And again, I'm Andrew Benson with the Nature Conservancy and we hope that you took something from this program and apply it in your own life, whether it's creating intentional moments throughout your day to reflect on nature and enjoy its benefits to relax and restore or it's finding a new favorite place, maybe Burnham Brook Preserve.

Again, I'm Andrew Benson with the Nature Conservancy.

Follow us online, on social media, on Facebook and on Instagram and also at nature.org/connecticut.

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