Dram in the Desert – Ben Wilder, Sonoran Desert Extraordinaire
What happens when you sit a passionate Tucsonan (desert ecologist) down in a room with a crew from David Attenborough’s Green Planet to get ideas for a show episode? Four years of work shooting all the things that make the Sonoran desert special resulting in an episode called Desert Worlds that aired on the BBC. Our very own Stephen Paul interviewed Ben to learn more about the work he does with Next Generation of Sonoran Desert Researchers (N-Gen), his work with Sir David Attenborough, and much more.
Ben has dedicated his life to exploring the desert and his CV will make you rethink how you have spent your time. It is simply incredible how much he has been able to fit in during his lifetime so far. When you do an interview with someone and get a quote like:
Julio exclaimed, “Ben, this is sheep shit.” I replied, “Well this sure could be interesting.”
you realize you are with someone with a deep passion for their work. Ben mentioned that, “Oftentimes, some of the most interesting stories in science come from just being out there with eyes wide open.” It truly inspires our passion to get out there and explore the desert. He is still making new discoveries every day and it is people like Ben who remind you that nature is still very much wild and there are still many new adventures to be had by all of us.
Below is a teaser for the segment Ben worked on for Green Earth (full episode below)
For the next week (starting August 23rd, 2024), we will be contributing 10% of online sales to N-Gen to Support their work.
What is the Dram in the Desert series?
We love the Sonoran Desert. It’s a place rich with compelling stories and incredible people doing great things. We love to share stories over a dram, so we started this series as a way to showcase the interesting people we meet here and the stories they have to tell. Some are from this desert, some might just be passing through, but they are all the kind of stories that go great with a glass of the good stuff. Cheers.
Interview By:
Stephen Paul, Founder, Whiskey Del Bac
Ben Wilder
Director and Co-founder
Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers
Born and raised in the Sonoran Desert, Ben is an avid explorer of his desert home. Ben is a biogeographer, botanist, and desert ecologist whose research looks at the origin and future of the Sonoran Desert. His scientific and conservation efforts strive to combine multiple disciplines and perspectives to better understand and care for the desert that drives his passion. He lives with his wife Dr. Erin Riordan and their son Eli in the Tucson Mountains.
On David Attenborough’s Green Planet: Desert Worlds
Stephen: I’ve known you since you went to high school with Amanda. For years you’ve been one of my heroes for all your work as a desert ecologist, but it seems I’m not the only admirer of your work. The world renowned biologist, Sir David Attenborough tapped you for his Green Planet series episode Desert Worlds on PBS to interview on location here in the Sonoran Desert. How did that happen?
Ben: That is a really fun story. The producers, Paul Williams and Lance Featherstone, reached out to me at the suggestion of legendary plantsman Mark Dimmit (thank you Mark!!) for story ideas for the desert episode. We met in my office on a hot June day in 2018 at the Desert Laboratory with the saguaros starting to fruit outside.
We proceeded to talk through many story ideas, including rare wildflower blooms in the middle of the Gran Desierto, cactus forests on desert islands of the Gulf of California nourished by marine nutrients and frequented by blue-footed boobies, the incredible cirio or boojum of Baja California, saguaros and repeat photography, and more. Many of these stories ended up making it into the final film. But more than that, that day started a friendship and one of the most rewarding and exhilarating collaborations I have been a part of, which lasted for the next four years and included many trips to some of the most amazing corners of our desert.
Stephen: He’s such an icon. Did you feel any kind of simpatico with him, was he approachable?Did you tell him anything that he didn’t know? Or that surprised him?
Ben: I was able to meet and spend the day with Sir David when he came to Tucson in November of 2019. That was when I knew the episode was really going to happen, since they were filming him in many of the scenes. That day really was one of those incredible life highlight days. We started in Saguaro National Park East filming the scene about nurse plants and saguaro boots. I was there on the sideline in awe when he was reviewing his lines for the first time, minutes before shooting, rewriting much of it on the fly.
They asked, “What stories would you want to tell the world about the plants of the Sonoran Desert?” As I picked my jaw off the ground, I said, “Well, I hope you don’t have to go anywhere for the next several hours.”
He asked me, “How old would you say those young saguaros are?” I jumped to and said, “About 10 years old”, and those words went into the script and into the final product, said by Sir David. Not profound words, but what a rush to be a part of the effort in that way as well. That then later got topped when he did the voice over, saying my name and talking about my work for the “On Location” segment at the end of the Desert Worlds episode that featured me and Lance on the cactus island of San Pedro Mártir. I don’t think that will ever get surpassed!
We then headed over to the Tucson Mountains on the west side of town and en route the whole team of about 15 people stopped at my dear friend Trica Oshant Hawkins’ house for lunch. Trica, Robert Villa, and my wife Erin Riordan were the core team that facilitated all the shooting by the team in the Gran Desierto over three marvelous trips that spring. To say it was a special lunch is an understatement, capped off by a double cheek kiss from Sir David to Erin. I think she still has not washed her face since!
After a beautiful late-afternoon of shooting in Chaos Canyon in the Tucson Mountains for what was the closing scene of the episode, Erin and I were able to join the team for dinner at my father’s Downtown Kitchen and Cocktails restaurant. A perfect day was capped by Sir David applauding my father when we came to the table after the meal, for what was a fantastic dinner.
To answer your question more directly, what I was amazed by was that he is the most approachable, down to earth person you can imagine. The relatable, comfortable, and familiar person we know on the screen is exactly who he is. He was so easy going and gentle, and generous with his time and sharing his story. It is pretty amazing when you get to meet your heroes and the experience is even better than you had always dreamed.
It is so fun and heart warming to think and share about this experience.
You and watch the entire episode ON PBS here for free:
On finding evidence Bighorn sheep lived on Tiburon Island 1500 yrs ago
Stephen: One of the first things I read about your career was you were looking at the evolutionary history of plants on Isla Tiburon, and you accidentally found something else amazing. What the hell is a Packrat midden, and what did you find in it?
Ben: This is also a fun one! I started working on islands in the Gulf of California as an undergraduate, documenting the plants that occur there with great Sonoran Desert botanists Richard Felger and Humberto Romero Morales. From that work I kept digging deeper, especially into questions of what were the plants and animals of this island region thousands of years ago? How did the communities we see today become so, and what is their history? Essentially, I wanted to go back in time. An amazing time traveling tool for desert ecologists is a fossil woodrat or packrat midden.
So think of the packrat middens you know that appear under the hood of your car while we are away for the summer (and the thousands of dollars of ensuing repairs needed!) and think of that midden or nest in a dry cave. Over dozens to hundreds of years of continued use and then thousands of years of preservation in dry, stable conditions, the viscous urine of packrats actually acts as a crystallizing and preservative agent on the midden itself. So much so that scientists can go into these caves, remove the “fossil” or paleo middens, take them to the lab and eventually pull out and identify the specific plant stems, seeds, leaves, and flower parts to specific species.
These are the very plant parts that the packrats collected from the immediate environment x thousands of years ago. We can then determine that age by getting radiocarbon dates on the plant material. Collectively, this tells us exactly what species were growing on the landscape at well defined periods in the past up to over 40,000 years ago! It is a powerful and unparalleled proxy for past vegetation communities and climates that exists for desert environments.
So I wanted to find these on the islands, especially Isla Tiburón, to answer some of my questions! I ended up doing two large trips in March 2012 to Tiburón and April 2013 to Isla Ángel de la Guarda, an even more remote large island closer to Baja California in the Gulf of California. These trips were each extraordinary and each consisted of over a week of hiking deep into the mountains of the islands and searching caves. In both cases, I found middens, however they were young, only about one to two thousand years old, which is still in a time period where the climate was very similar to today and, thus they are not able to answer many of the questions of change I had.
However, one midden had some surprises. It was from Isla Tiburón and was made up of different, well shit, than the others. Back in the lab when I was processing the middens with desert ecologist and midden pioneer Julio Betancourt, we opened up this midden. Julio exclaimed, “Ben, this is sheep shit.” I replied, “Well this sure could be interesting.”
That is because bighorn sheep were introduced on the island in 1975 as a conservation measure. All evidence and knowledge at that time held that bighorn had not been on the island before that introduction. So, we ended up morphologically and genetically (with ancient DNA from the pellets themselves) confirming that this was bighorn sheep. Multiple radiocarbon dates showed the pellets were about 1,500 years old, showing bighorn sheep had occurred on the island, went locally extinct, and then were unintentionally rewilded in the 1970s.
Oftentimes, some of the most interesting stories in science come from just being out there with eyes wide open.
Stephen: Isla Tiburon is an island in the Gulf of California. But it’s actually included in the Sonoran Desert, no?
Ben: Yes, it is the largest island in Mexico, over 1,200 square kilometers or 430 square miles in size. It is the homeland and territory of the Comcaac (Seri People) and probably the best conserved portion of the Sonoran Desert. It is the largest tract of desert that has never been grazed. One of the great honors and adventures of my life is being able to explore and study this island with my Comcaac friends and colleagues. We have active projects focused on controlling and eradicating small populations of buffelgrass and establishing long-term vegetation plots based on my mentor Richard Felger’s dissertation plots from the 1960s to track the impacts of climate change.
On founding Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers
Stephen: One last topic Ben, and this to me is probably the biggest thing: At age 30 or so, you initiated an amazing “coming together” of Sonoran Desert scientists.
What’s that group called and why did you think pulling these people together was important?
Ben: I have had the great fortune to develop my career from an early age as a scientist in the Sonoran Desert enmeshed in an amazing community of like minded folks, the desert rat community – which you are a part of too! However, as I entered graduate school, it was not clear if and how this community was being extended to the next generation. Likewise, how would we maintain the critical connections across the U.S.-Mexico border with increasing division? How can we increase the discourse across disciplines and perspectives? To address this, my friend and colleague Carolyn O’Meara and I established the Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers, or N-Gen.
This was supposed to be one meeting, held in April 2012 at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Though at the end of this three day Summit, we were collectively writing a vision statement. We realized that this was much more than a meeting and was really a movement. N-Gen is now a network with over 1,000 members across 21 regions and 40+ disciplines in the broader Sonoran Desert. We just held our third summit in Álamos, Sonora with just under 300 people over four days and 58 session topics.
Stephen: Just in the last week I’ve heard two national stories about N-Gen’s Border Bio Blitz and also your own research on fire in the desert. What’s the latest in your world?
Ben: First and foremost, Erin and I are exploring the world with and through the eyes of our two and a half year old son, Eli. We have been doing a lot of camping and exploration together. These are really special times. Research wise, I find myself focused on several large projects related to issues of global change, specifically fire in the Sonoran Desert, the ecological health of the Gulf of California, and the response of plants to extreme heat and drought. These are all areas where there are very basic outstanding questions where a bit of work is needed to get better answers, and we are getting there. It is fascinating and challenging work, especially emotionally, however, I am finding that better understanding the change around us is allowing me to process and find places for optimism and hope.
On the N-Gen front, we recently reviewed new board member applications and selected 9 outstanding individuals to help lead this next era of the organization. Two weeks ago, we met for a board retreat, where we continued to innovate and explore the best ways to support our members’ efforts and advance our mission to create a conservation ethic that matches the grandeur of the Sonoran Desert.
Stephen: I’m a big believer in the need for what you’re doing with N-Gen. I’ve enjoyed helping you raise a chunk of money for it this year. How can people donate, and what are some things the money would go for?
Ben: Your effort has meant the world to us and made a huge difference, those donations were over a quarter of the funds needed for our recent Summit in Álamos. Right now, we are at an inflection point in our efforts and are bringing in new and diversified voices from across the borderlands to lead N-Gen into our second decade.
Any contribution makes a really meaningful impact. We are a lean and mean operation and every dollar goes a long way. Contributions can be made here:
Stephen: Lastly, I’ve gotta ask about the “ecology of desert whiskey,” haha. Do you have a favorite way to drink whiskey in the desert? Or a favorite desert place to drink whiskey?
Ben: Ok, I swear I am not just saying this to you. My absolute favorite whiskey/location combination is Del Bac classic in a porcelain camping mug with one or two pieces of ice on a winter’s night around a campfire in the middle of the Pinacate or Gran Desierto with loved ones. It truly does not get better than that.
