Owls, Cows, Duplicity and Deception with Jack Gescheidt

Hope Bohanec (0:08)

Welcome to the Hope for the Animals podcast, a project of Compassionate Living. I'm your host, Hope Bohanec. So today on the podcast, we have a conversation with Jack Gescheidt about an issue that I've been following now, now that I live up in the Pacific Northwest, and that is a new program of killing half a million barred owls by what we will learn is basically by the timber industry. So we're going to learn all about that. Jack is a long-time environmental activist, and we talked about the intersection between environmental and animal advocacy, as he is now a vegan activist as well.

And I, too, came from the environmental advocacy work. My first activism back many, many, many moons ago in the 90s was with Earth First here in the Pacific Northwest, doing tree sits, blockading logging roads. For those that might not know, a tree sit is where activists go up and climb trees, up in the trees, 50 feet, 75 feet up. And we live there.

You live there so that they can't cut the trees. You're up there 24-7 and we would build platforms to live on. I did ground support where you bring food and supplies to the sitters daily. And the one that I went up in and lived in, I was up for about two months. I didn't put my feet on the ground for about two or three months. I was actually living in a rope hammock.

There was a hammock-like rope structure that was about 15 by 15 feet square between four trees. It was attached to four trees. And basically, we just kind of rolled around. You couldn't stand up. It was really life-changing. I feel it was what made me, what guided me to be such a hardcore activist and also deeply connected me to nature to the point where I have to live in trees. I've lived mostly in rural areas or in forests whenever I can. And even though I loved that forest work, I was vegan at the time and a lot of the kids in Earth First back in the 90s were vegan as well. But the farmed animals were calling me. They were calling me. I felt that the farmed animals got the least attention. And they needed me the most. So I came back into civilization to work on vegan issues and for the animals.

So just a quick aside, Jack will be speaking at our Sonoma County VegFest on Saturday, September 26th. If you are in or can get to the Northern California area, I hope you can join us at the Santa Rosa Veterans Building. All right, let's get into the conversation today with Jack.

Okay, today we have Jack Gescheidt joining us. Jack created his TreeSpirit Project to use art, advocacy, and activism to raise awareness of our interdependence with trees, forests, wild animals, and the natural world. A lifelong nature and animal lover, Jack turned professional photographer four decades ago, environmental activist two decades ago, and in the last decade, he is now a vegan activist. Welcome to the podcast, Jack.

Jack Gescheidt (3:56)

Thank you, Hope. Excited to be here.

Hope Bohanec (3:58)

Yeah, we've known each other for a little while. Yeah? How long have we known each other?

Jack Gescheidt (4:02)

Well, it depends if you consider at my age. I'm now over 35 officially. Ten years, is that a long time? Maybe 15 years. I think we met through maybe Ray Cooper in Petaluma?

Hope Bohanec (4:13)

Yeah, in Petaluma, yeah. No, we've known each other for over a decade, I think.

Yeah, and so it's been cool to see your trajectory because back then, you were kind of on the cusp. You were vegan, but I think, we'll actually find out in just a minute, but you weren't really a vegan activist. You were more of an environmentalist and I love seeing the trajectory and now you're all in on the vegan thing and the animals, I love it. So I do want to hear your story. So why and when did you go vegan?

Jack Gescheidt (4:45)

Simple answer. I mean, of course, there's gradual build up to when you receive the final straw that breaks your cultural conditioning and that for me was in 2014, the documentary film for which I'm now known as, oh, you're one of those Cowspiracy Vegans. Yeah. I was a forest activist and I stood up on stage and waxed poetic about how I love forests and trees and we essentially need them for creating oxygen and sequestering carbon and cooling the earth and for where animals live and all that, on and on and on and I didn't know what that movie Cowspiracy in 2014 taught me, which is that the number one reason we cut down, especially trees and forest in the Amazon, the lungs of the earth as it were, was to raise cows for human consumption. I didn't know that and it took 90 minutes of a documentary, not a 10-second or 60-second TikTok video to edumacate me. Like, oh my God, all these different voices, they can't all be false. And I did my research and of course backed up what I heard. And that was quite a blow and made me feel ashamed and ignorant. And, you know, of course, once you go into the vegan world, then you, there's an expression, don't go pulling on that thread. The whole universe will come unraveled.