Straightened channels, dredging, and drained farmland have turned catchments into a delivery system.
1. Wilder Podcast uses this bonus episode to discuss the Monmouth floods and the social-media argument around climate change.
2. Tom Constable hosts, and Tom Johnson from We Are Nature Based joins as the guest because his work focuses on natural flood management.
3. The episode asks whether the Monmouth flooding was just a normal flood event or part of a changing climate pattern.
4. Johnson says Monmouth received just shy of 120 millimetres of rain in 12 hours.
5. He compares that figure with an average annual rainfall of 1,100 millimetres for 1960 to the end of the century.
6. He says the River Monnow overtopped floodbanks in the centre of Monmouth.
7. Johnson says the water volume was so large that the bunds beside the river were inundated.
8. He argues that floods are natural but says the way rain arrives in Wales is changing.
9. He points to longer droughts, heavier rainfall, fewer frosty days, and hotter summers.
10. He says Wales now feels different from 20 to 25 years ago and says the data matches that experience.
11. Johnson traces the flood problem back through straightening and dredging of watercourses over more than a century.
12. He says farming incentives have favoured draining land, converting wet or wooded ground into productive fields.
13. He links that intensification to poorer soils, smaller hedgerows, and bare winter ground.
14. He uses the washing-up sponge analogy to explain how baked soil repels water after long dry spells.
15. He says aerial footage showed floodwater the colour of cheap hot chocolate because of sediment washed off farms upstream.
16. He argues that built flood defences help in some places, but catchments also need leaky woody debris, scrapes, ponds, tree planting, and re-wetting.
17. The conversation is practical and reflective, with Tom Constable pressing Johnson on social-media claims and local policy options.
18. Johnson speaks in a measured, explanatory style and repeatedly connects catchment-scale planning to Monmouth's experience.
19. People interested in Monmouth flooding, land management, and natural flood management.
20. People looking for a short celebrity interview or light entertainment.
