Ruby.
Hi, I'm Rick Schwartz. What is the world?
I'm Marco Went and this This is Amazing Wildlife, a podcast where we cover unique stories of wildlife from around the world and uncover fascinating animal facts. This podcast is in production with iHeartRadio's Ruby Studio and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, an international nonprofit conservation.
Organization which oversees this beautiful.
Place, the San Diego Zoo where we are now and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
You know, every time you do that monel like my friend.
Which it's an intro, but you know, I tend to like get in sync with our surrounding area. Guess where we're here at the zoo again. There's a robin flying behind you. There is a red shild or hawk cruising around.
We're lucky that we get to go on locations of this podcast. I know a lot of podcasts are in studio and sound control and all that, but I think we're lucky we get to places.
And I was remembering, like we were talking about and Panda last and we were here in the area at the zoo right, like we learned a lot of really cool things and it made me think of like even just like bears in general and where bears live, and even like some people live really close to maybe like a grizzly or a polar air.
It's actually a big part of the conservation world that we have. Yeah, there's humans. They're a big part of why we need that conservation yea.
Yeah, hundred percent.
I mean even being a native San Diego you know, I know they're mountain lying in the area, but it's something we have to think about. And you know, while we were talking about it, we brought this wonderful journal, right.
So for those who.
Video yet, we brought our scenes a wildlife journal, a wildfe Lions Journal. Excuse me, Yeah, that came out in July and August partly only dropped mine.
Sorry mind so pristine and beautiful.
But even in the cover, man, I means like there's a beautiful species right here, like a leopard, right and then in the middle here there's a really cool title, which I want to get props at Peggy, who actually I learned later came out with the title and we can talk about a little more. But it's a common ground, right, and a lot of really interesting facts and stories about community and wildlife.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's two articles that I want to make sure you know. And this is the benefit of being a member of the San Diego Zoo and the Safari Park is not only do you get the free entrance with every visit and guests get all sorts of extra things that way too, but you get these great stories that come in and talk a lot about the inside of
what we do as an organization. And there's one article in here about the jaguar and human conflicts that occur in South and Central America and the work being done to help mitigate that, to help change that from being a conflict to be living in coexistence. And then the other one you mentioned, common Ground, of course, which is about all the elephants there in Kenya and work being done to find common ground for humans and elephants to live together there.
I know, I mean, I think we should talk about it more.
I think we should.
But instead of you and I just talking about the articles, why don't we ask the experts that we have with Oh, I.
Know, we got the experts. Hey, good morning, experts.
Good morning extnie y, good morning.
Go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience.
Let them know who you are and what your title is here with this organization.
I'm doctor Christy Rupert.
I am an Associate Director of Community Engagement on our Conservation Science where on Life Health team, I get to work on the human dimensions of conservation, so understanding how people interact with wildlife, how they affect by wildlife conservation, and how our conservation hubs can support human wildlife coexistence around the globe.
This is a small job, that's awesome.
And I'm doctor Schiffer Goldenberg and I'm a scientist also within our Conservation Science and Wildlife Health department, and I work mostly in ecological fields and mostly on megafauna, so large animals that he plants.
Oh wow, that would be.
Here.
Okay, fair enough.
I mean there was a lot to talk about. Can you guys highlight a little like what's succor this article for you? What impressed you so much about it?
Yeah? Sure, so I can start.
I think part of a collaboration with social science is really understanding how important those long term relationships are and the process of conversation about what the problem is and what the context is for that conflict and coexistence. And this work in particular grew out of human leopard coexistence work that Kirsty and her colleagues have been leading for many years, and it was that collaboration that really allowed us to expand into this space of human elephant code systems.
And part of the reason the conversation really emerged to the top is reflective of broader trends and patterns in Kenya, where a lot of our work is centered. The challenges to elephant populations historically have revolved around ivory poaching, so in global demand for ivory products, and over the last ten or so years, Kenya and many other countries have really stemmed ivory poaching as the main pressure on elephant populations. That is a major success for conservation and thinking about
overall populations. Though the rates that elephants are illegally killed has actually shifted more so over to conflicts with people and so in Kenya, trying to better understand human elephant conflict as a challenge to people and elephants has helped kind of emerge this as a focus for us in our work.
So I want to ask real quick so we can kind of set the common ground for our audience, what are the actual conflicts someone listening to this, who might live in, whether it's rural Middle America or a big city like San Diego or Los Angeles or somewhere like that, may not really have a clear picture as to what is human elephant conflict, what conflict could possibly exist, because I don't know if that's a clearer image as to how people might have to coexist with them in Kenya.
Yeah, yeah, so what are some of the problems.
It's a really great question. And so if people have heard about human elephant conflict, they've probably heard about crop reading, which is elephants going into agricultural fields and just eating their fill and trampling crops in the process. That's not as much of an issue in the area where we work in northern Kenya because it tends to be a very dry area where it's not supportive of very large
scale agriculture. So we do see some crop reading, and we do see some you know, destruction of kitchen gardens, but we also see a lot of conflict emerging in other cases, some cases where trees are being ripped down by elephants when they switch to brows in the dry season, going after water resources that are shared, and then you know, things sort of change in space and time where people are walking to community resources like a school or a
clinic and they're bumping into elephants and it escalates from there. And so those are some of the issues that we see and that we hear about from this community.
I mean, it seems like it's so vary too.
I mean, I'm a TikTok scarlier you guys, And sometimes I get on some videos where I see a video of maybe a rhino that went into a suburban area and for good reason, the mother is very worried about her child. And I imagine it's extremely specific and nuanced. Even just Africa alone, I would imagine different communities where the north or south and we have to listen, right,
we have to work with those communities. Can you talk a little bit more about that, like how do we as the Alliance help out those communities in those kind of scenarios.
I think this relates to something Triffer is just touching on, which is that the conflicts are varied. Yeah, conflicts are not singular and they're not static. And so when we approached engaging with these communities in Northern Kenya, a lot of it was about understanding the diversity of interactions and challenges, as well as priorities for coexistence where people see elephants and where the interactions are not negative so that can
be maintained and supported. And really it was about prioritization too, so we tried to be open and honest and that conflict is never going to be eliminated, is never going to be zero. These conflicts are going to fluctuate as conditions change over time, and so part of the process was developing one that was a trusted and transparent process to rate and prioritize what types of conflicts communities wanted
to address first. And we did this by pulling information from different channels, like said for scientists, we want information
to guide some of these decisions. Data data that's generated by these community members, and I think that's really important because the decision making around what's selected to pursue, having that come from voices within the community at different levels, so not just people informal power, but pulling those different perspectives to understand as a community what to approach first
was really important to us. So we started with mapping exercises to understand again spatially, where people are really dependent on natural resources like water sources, or grazing blocks for their livestock. We did a number of focus group discussions and that really illuminated some of the seasonal aspects of human elephant interactions that were really pertinent to our decision
making process. And then also a representative survey, and that was to get at some of the voices within the community that maybe aren't always at the community meetings, So how do you get a representative sample from these areas? That helped us rate and prioritize if we can't address everything, what's most important to address first. And this helped us identify human safety, particularly for children walking to school, as something community members certainly wanted to address first.
I love that.
I mean specifically on the really hit home for me was those people who can't go to those certain meetings as an example, get that data, ranchers. I'm thinking out in the back of the country and there are opinions matter.
Greatly as well these scenario.
So that's really great that you guys are trying to invest in all manners of community in different walks of life.
So that's really cool.
Thank you so much.
It was important to us as well to gather that information before any of these strategies started, so we can monitor that over time, learn what's working what's not, so that our conservation strategies could be adjusted.
Yeah, you had mentioned that it'll never go to zero, that there's always going to be fluctuations of different things going on in the environment. Populations of course as well, can change things. There's so many variables. But of course the goal is to mitigate it as much as possible, and it being of course the conflict between the elephants and the people.
When it comes to doing this, and we've talked.
About this for in fact, they just came up in pandas that conservation isn't just to go in and solve the riddle and you're done.
It is a long game. It's a long process.
When you look at the riddle of elephant human conflict, knowing it's going to be a long game, what are some of the more important things you look at going into that. We've talked about really addressing things within the community, listening to them, leaning on their knowledge and expertise of the environment and the weather patterns and the elephants and all that.
But for this long game of mitigating.
This, what's probably some of the more important things you guys have come across so far.
That's a really great question. I think you touched on it. With a complexity. There is so much complexity involved with human elephant conflict for a number of reasons. Elephants, as we know, are extremely smart animals. They are problem solvers and they figure out a bluff. And so what we know with mitigation methods is that they will find the weak points or they will understand when it's actually not that risky to do what they're trying to tell you.
So and of course they're driven to these great resources. Elephants they have these spatial maps in their head. They know where they're going, they know when those resources are ripe, whether it's accia pods on trees or you know, water sources that are ephemeral, and so that's a piece of the complexity. Another piece of the complexity is that the seasonal dynamics of the place change all the time, and so the levels of conflict and the distribution of conflict changes.
And then there are other degrees of come complexity, including whether a community is willing to buy into a particular intervention, whether there are barriers for entry with that intervention, financial sustainability, of the method that kind of thing, and so Kirsty touched on this a bit where she spoke about level setting at the beginning and understanding what we're going to be able to do and what we're not going to be able to do, and so prioritizing and understanding that
there's always going to be some degree of conflict, but where can we prioritize And then to the piece about adaptability. I think it's really important to understand that because you need a suite of tools and you need the adaptability piece within a community. We have really focused effort on training for community members who are dealing with conflict so that people actually are able.
To go and you know, not reinvent the wheel.
There are resources available, there are organizations who are leading trainings, and so the last couple of years or so, we've been facilitating a lot of those exchanges so that there are people embedded within the community who can adapt as the conflicts change well.
And that gives them a sense of ownership too. It's not just you walking in the same Okay, this is what you need to do. I'm going to go back home now. I'll be back in a few months to check on you.
Guys.
But when you do the training and there's other organizations that are involved. The partnerships that we have with other organizations are so important. But then giving ownership to of the individuals who live there, who are dealing with the conflict on a daily basis to then empower them to teach others as well. Really is that sense of ownership where you can go back and check up on them, but you're not needed there every single day.
I would imagine a little more inclined to you know, I definitely know that guy from the other side of the valley, but these I don't know about the es day from the alliance because that could be something that you have to contend with. I would imagine sometimes in certain communities, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, this brings up a point that we always like to highlight, which is the incredible team on the ground that we work with.
Yeah, so I wish he.
Was sitting next to me, our Human Round Life Code Existence coordinator and Kenny his name is Ambrose, led to Luai.
Shout out to Ambrose.
Ambrose, and he is helping to manage this group of community conservation assistants that are going down to learn from save yellowpant since Southern Kenya about the human elephant coexistence toolbox and the point about ownership, I think that goes part and parcel with leadership within these communities and different
roles and opportunities. Something we've learned from exploring this elephant coexistence work is that there are different types of knowledge and experience that can have a role in.
Any collective strategy.
So someone perhaps is formally trained in the toolbox and they can lead trainings about say, reading elephant behavior, and then in addition, they can invite or have an elder from the community to share about their wisdom that they've developed through the course of their life living with elephants. A key part of our process has been sharing results from the different streams of information that we've been gathering
so that any decision making is collective. And I always remember sitting in Lasso Lodge next to Ambrose and next to our other colleague, LExEN, and one of the elders said, I definitely want there to be education days where you're sharing about this toolbox. I want to be there and share what I know too, and that wisdom piece I think is really important for this elephant work. We did ask those questions and some of the surveys about what
do you already do? And that is really important to understand also as we're evaluating any strategies and interventions, because it's not a clean slate, this is not a static laboratory setting, so understanding what people are already doing and how well they think those strategies work is an important component of this as well.
So I want to ask.
Both of you mentioned a couple of times the toolbox, and I know in context what you mean, but for our audience who may be guessing or trying to understand what that means, what is the toolbox?
Right?
Not a literal one exactly.
So it's a book.
It's essentially a manual that our colleagues that Save the Elephants put together, which is a collection of all the different mitigation strategies that people have used.
And the different ways that they work.
And as well, it's really important it's sort of the trade off of labor and costs that's involved, and so obviously not every method is going to work in every community, and so it allows people to really evaluate what might work in their communities, what they're already doing, and so they have trainings along with that manual, and they have it published in many languages at this point, and they're always updating it so visual.
It's illustrations are gorgeous, and it is available online.
So anyone listening to this podcast our members can search the Human Elephant Coexistence Toolbox and find the website that Save the Elephants manages and updates regularly with different languages, and as the evidence base around coexistence evolves and develops. I think that's an important aspect too. Is part of the toolbox development was a call for information about how well these strategies work, so that could be refined over time as well.
I'm curiously when you talked about methods that were successful and we're not successful for listeners who have no idea what's going on out there with elephants in different communities, could you give me like a couple examples, maybe one a little more rule and maybe one a little more urban, if you can think of a certain different situations you know or not, just whatever pops up in your head. You know, some of the nuances of elephant and human interactions and conflicts.
That have fences high. What do you want?
Oh?
Yeah, and actually the one that's a good one because actually there's a really cool picture and I mean I can describe a little bit, but it's a picture.
Actually, you guys describe this picture? What am I looking at right here?
Yeah, so this is a photo that's in the common Ground article within the Sez tw a journal I got to take this photo actually, but yeah, during.
A visit, yeah, thank you. During a visit from or for Chewy Mamas.
They were being hosted by one of the women's groups that say the Elephants work at called Loam Beni. So they were at the women's center that's next to Save the Elephants camp in Savo or in the Voi Savo area of Kenya, and one of the Save the Elephants staff members is describing a beehive fence to these Chewy Mamas.
Be High fences are an incredible innovation that work in that the the beehives are set up around a fixed boundaries, such as around a farm, and there's wire between each of those bee hives, and so the beehives will shake if something touches them like an elephant or in the wind, and be highs and the sound would invoke a few response from elephants. And so that would keep elephants further away from the farm Shiffra, Is that right?
Yeah?
Yeah, And I think this is an incredible innovation. There are some really important considerations though. One is that there's heavy initial cost investment and so it's not a viable option for some household owners that are more resource constrained. So there's a heavy initial cost investment. And then a really important aspect is that bees require water sources nearby and so yeah, so you need bees within those boxes
for it to be an effective fence tool. And so in drought times, which is a natural but unfortunately exacerbated aspect of conditions in Kenya giving climate related drought impacts, if the bees aren't there, then the fence isn't going to work, right, Yeah. So I think that it's incredible to look at where these beehive fences work because it's also producing a product that someone can sell for an additional income stream.
But I think the really important.
Place for us to highlight here is that the behigh fences are going to be fixed spatially.
It's going to be around something like a crop.
And where we work in northern Kenya, the conflicts are not fixed spatially. They are around resource access and use, looking for grasslands, looking for water, walking to school, walking to a clinic, and so something like a beehiveh fence isn't going to be a match for some of the pastoralist communities that we work in, right, and just real quick, pastoral community means what pastoralism is referring to societies that keep and herd livestock. So it's around livestock production. It's
not only an important part of economic security. It's tied to food security, it's tied to cultural significance. And so in northern Kenya where we work in, like Hippia and Sambru Counties in particular, the pastoralist communities are really important partners for conservation. And so all of our conservation strategies.
Are going to involve livestocks that happen.
Yeah, and I have a little more that too, So people here in America that might be listening. It's not like a farm where they bring hay to the livestock. They are hurting their livestock every morning out of the little bomas or areas they create for safety.
Overnight, they're walking through the wilds.
Basically the finals grasslanes you had mentioned that's where those conflicts can happen, and they bring them back in at night time there's no delivery of hay or grains, so they're really very much a part of the habitat that they're living in with those elephants exactly.
And that's part of the decision making around these community conservancies where we work. So community conservancies are such a critical land use type, not only for land rights for pastoralist communities, but because wildlife cannot survive in government protected areas alone.
There's just not enough space.
And so the community conservancies are neighboring some of these formally protected areas or private conservancies and managing landscape level wildlife populations. And so the community conservancies, that's part of their governance is deciding where livestock can graze during different times of the year. What a few minutes ago referred
to a core conservation area or a grazing block. Those are areas where the community would decide, Okay, we can graze livestock here for these particular months until certain conditions change, like the next set of rains come, etc. The other aspect I want to mention is that pastoralism is changing too.
So in the last few decades, more past oralist communities in the North have been keeping small stock like goats and sheep, and the grazing patterns for goats and sheep is different than cattle, So some of those considerations around where some of these livestock are going is important as well. You'd ask us about different strategies and trade offs. I talked about the high fences, Shifferd. Did you want to
talk about other types of fences too. I think this is another part of the conversation when you think about large scale land use planning.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
So you know, electric fences are another popular intervention for conflict. They don't come without costs. I mean there's very heavy investment to begin with. And then also, you know, elephants can figure out how to bring through a fence either they find a weak point, they figure out their tusks don't conduct electricity and they use them.
No but serious talk about the videos to look at watching an elephant figure out they could use their tusks to get is oh yourritible?
Yeah, and then you get these notorious fence breakers that people know about, like these repeat offenders exactly, and because they're social learners. You know, they're teaching those types of behaviors, and so that becomes an issue. But it also, i think Christy was alluding to it touches on something else that we talk about a lot within conservation sounds and wildlife health, which is landscape permeability. And so senses aren't always great because you want to encourage movement, right, and
it really can restrict movement. And in this landscape in particular, movement is critical Cattle they are tracking those fresh grasses, and so are elephants and other wildlife, and they're changing their land use patterns as there's more ephemeral water on the landscape, and so that movement really allows the habitat to sort of recover in some areas when you know there's not as much pressure on it because the wildlife
have moved elsewhere, and so that's an important one. You asked about other interventions and when they might work and when they don't, and so part of the period when we were looking and talking to people and looking and seeing what people are already doing, were some really incredible interventions that people had done just out of materials that were around essentially trash, so like plastic bottles putting them on wire fences because there's like a whistling sound that comes through and.
Then elephants and it sounds weird over.
Exactly can go so far, I imagine.
Well, that's the point is that elephants figured out they might be freaked out initially, and then they realize, oh, that's at that tree looks really good and.
Say for it that that maybe the sound is repulsive until the acacia pods inside looked just good enough to try it exactly.
On the couch, you know, like, do I get up and get those chips that I know I want to get that I'm gonna so I really really need it, you know. But that's really fascinating and so challenging with such an intelligent animal as well, especially one the history of communities in those areas in Africa. They're ingrained in the nuances of wildlife. Zebra flow in one area and so or they're cattle and whatnot. But then you have a big elephant rollman in and you have to navigate
those things. How does one navigate an area where there is no fence involved?
You know?
Do we understand the movements of behavior the elephant hurts in that area and we try to navigate around those behaviors or what are some of the strategies in that regard.
Yeah, the two things that come to mind have to do with elephant wear behavior, So.
Yeah, why don't you touch on that, and I can touch about tracking elephants.
Sure, So the foot based encounters that are tied to human safety are part of one of our current strategies that's highlighted in the toolbox, and that is understanding elephant behavior, being able to read it as you are on the landscape. And so one way to think about it is almost these zones and thresholds, So if you come across an elephant, making a decision about what you can do given how
aggravated they are or how close you are. So that's one piece is reading elephant behavior, reading their cues, their body language. And the big part of that though, is
trying to avoid it beforehand. And so one aspect that we're working to coordinate with our community partners is a pilot that's going on right now during the school term, which is gathering the students in the morning and having them walked as a group by someone that's trained in elephant or where behavior that's gone to the toolbox training, and that has kind of cleared away based on some of our other representatives that have called in to say, actually,
this path is safe. We're just there and there aren't elephants there this morning. So you're trying to avoid it. You're trying to strengthen numbers with the kids, and you're trying to put into perspective what to do given the situation with that particular elephant. Are there multiple elephants? There is there a baby? There is it a single male?
Exactly? Exactly?
Wow?
Yeah, So elephant aware of behavior and it's again you'll find this in the toolbox that we spoke about earlier. It's learning to read elephant behavior and so what are the signs that they're aggravated, What are the signs that you're too close?
What might you do if they start to escalate? Right? What's the safe way to get away?
And so that's an important one, is just making sure that people are sort of on the same page in reading elephant behavior. If you see a bowl elephant, should you look for other elephants. There's often an idea that elephant bowls are alone, but that's not always true, right, And so little aspects of that and understanding the ecology and their behavior a little bit better, and that's been a focus of the training.
You want to give an example of sound.
I feel like this is an interesting specifics of wind sound and maybe something like an auditory noise could help or could hurt given how close you are to the elephant. I'm thinking about the vo voozellas in the toolbox.
Oh you talk about it.
Okay, before we get to that. Yeah, I want to point I love that story. By the way.
It makes me think the kids can actually learn how to read elephant behavior when y're watching the trained individual for true, and I bet a lot of those crosswalkers in the state, so listen to this, like man, I could be read that.
It's a really cool concept.
So anyway, I love that idea, like just teaching the kids, you know, from square one, seeing the kids.
From square one, and then embedding some of that evaluation throughout. So I think that the data that's present and Kenya oftentimes is around incidences when something happens. Is there a crop rating incident? Is there something a really unfortunate safety incident where someone gets hurt or worse, But we don't have data on when something works to keep elephants away from somewhere. And that's what this pilot is helping us to do too, in trying to get that reflection on
how well something's working. So having concentrated effort for a short period of time and then coming back to reflect and learn with that community decide if that's what we'll pursue going forward is an important part of this process as well. It's not a problem solution and then we go and then they go and it works. It's going to be a process and I think that is something that we've committed to and has built the trust needed
to enable any of this work. So that I think is a key aspect of the adaptability piece that Schiffer was mentioning.
That's right.
Yeah, And Marco, you asked also about you know, on the elephant side, like how can we monitor the elephants and there are others on the landscape who are tracking elephants that are prone to come into conflict. We're not doing that work, but it can really inform how they move around these resources and really importantly and touches on something that we haven't discussed yet today, which is the
drivers of conflict. And so We've talked a lot about mitigation methods, but land use is a big, big driver of conflict, and so how a particular space is used,
whether it's a human area or a wildlife area. Are there areas that have been corridors for elephants forever and they're not going to stop even if there's development in there, And so some of those tracking studies can really help identify those corridors and help in those bigger conversations around land use, planning, habitat fragmentation, which increases interactions between humans and elephants.
While you're speaking, actually makes me think maybe some guests aren't aware of like how elephants are so nuanced and their traditions and their culture of what they do. I mean, it makes me think of certain elephant species crossing vast deserts.
But the matriarch Abuelita, how the she.
Knows, you know, in a few miles are going to hit that water source right there. So maybe people aren't aware of that that these antle fins are really committed in their traditions.
They're like, to your point, they're going to go through this town because this is what.
We've been doing for generations, generations, So we have to think about.
Those practices absolutely.
And if you want to see a really cool map and you know, sort of story about Abulita is like you can look at this paper published by Polanski at All twenty fifteen and it showed these elephants in the Namibian desert and you see their tracks. They're wandering, they're wandering, they're wandering. It gets to a certain point when their calves are going to need water and they be lined for the closest water source, even if.
That's kilometers away.
It's remarkable how they do that, so they know very well where that resource is.
Yeah, and to your point you'd said, these elephant corridors, these corridors, they're not super highways in the fact that there's a lot of traffic, but it is this path that they have known for generations and it's been passed
down for generations. So if maybe in the season that they're not using that corridor, something is built there or humans try to move into that space, that's an immediate conflict that's going to occur because the elephant's like, no, this is our road, this is where we've always gone. So understanding the behavior of elephants, understanding the need of the humans. Now, one thing we didn't touch on because I think for us and probably for our audience, it's
kind of an understood why is this even important? Why even address this? Why worry about the elephants? Why do we care to try and make sure everyone can get along? Why not just go, hey, humans need this and is here we are great?
That's a heavy.
Fair and I do think I do believe our audience listens to us, they're fans of this, understand the parts of these conversations of conservation. But also it's a fair question as because let's say somebody who's listening saying, hey, I just listened to this great thing, this is what they're doing for it, and.
Someone's just looking. Why does that matter? Yeah, let's give them that information. Why does that matter?
Let's let our audience have the opportunity to spread the words sort of like you know, you were saying, how we need to teach everyone these aspects of mitigating the conflict by I understanding elephants. Let's teach our audience why is this important? Why does it matter?
You know? I think elephants are remarkable animals for many, many, many, many, many many reasons. There's the reason that you know, I got into elephant study, which is that they have these incredible social behaviors. They have strong relationships like we do, and those relationships are adapted. They are incredibly important ecosystem engineers.
And so they are tree killers, which means that they open up savannahs for grassland and prevent the sort of bush encroachment that you get in a lot of areas. They also create these paths that are used by other wildlife by people. They dig, they release water from underground. I mean, there's so many ways in which they serve as important ecosystem engineers. One that we hear about a
lot for forest elephants is that they're seed dispersers. And there are tree species that have evolved to be eaten in past the gut of an elephant and depend on an elephant's gut to actually spread. And so there's so many ecological reasons. There are incredibly important cultural reasons and social reasons as well.
Elephants are such an important part of national heritage in Kenya, and so there is a strong societal significance. And I touched on the wisdom that communities have from living with elephants, and that's because that shared space dates so far back, and so the meaningful connection to elephants is there. And it's not to say that even with challenges, people don't
want elephants there. And so a lot of our strategies are also building tolerance for accepting some of these risks, but having the ability and the belief that they can address any of these challenges to continue sharing space with elephants.
Shiftframentioned how elephants can be ecosystem engineers open up space for grasslands to develop and flourish, and people that are living with livestock need those grass resources, and so there's many social and ecological reasons why protecting a future for people and elephants is so important.
Pretty good answers, yeahs.
And it goes right into reminding everyone that we're all interconnected, even in our human bubbles. We can appreciate wildlife, a bird or whatever flying over a squirrel in the park, but we're all connected. And we lose the elephants, the folks over there will lose their entire livelihood essentially because the engineering of the ecosystem. And that's an obvious point there in the sense it was big mammal doing big
things but it's true for all species. They're all interconnected, they all play a part in the world we live in. It's so important for us to have our lives as well, So it's great.
Thank you so much for that.
One of the reasons that we are able to have this conversation is because there are elephants in that landscape, because people have co existed with elephants for hundreds of years, and I think that's an important one to re Absolutely.
It makes me excited.
You guys, they think of communities like in the Amazon dealing with jaguars or maybe leopards in Asia. I mean so many different things, even mountain lion. Here in the United States, we're not.
You're removed from these coplaces as well.
Right, so maybe applications in Africa could be useful here in the United States as well. But I love what you guys are doing community work, engaging everyone together and not just the Alliance alone. Right, We're always saying it over two hundred collaborators around the world.
We can't do it alone.
So this is the stuff that really makes my heart sinks. I really appreciate you telling me these stories.
Is great.
And before we wrap up, I was just reminded we're here at the zoo, of course, and a family.
Just walked by.
Can we ask real quick each of you, how did you get into this line of work? This is this is your lifelihood, this is what you do. Yeah, and we asked this question a lot of.
Our wildlife care specialists and whatnot.
But the level of conservation science where you're going back and forth to Kenya, where you're helping bring communities together and you're listening to communities to bring better information back, how did you get to where you are today?
Either?
When of you go first, think about the little kids here because no shape. But your jobs are the ones people think about when they think about the aligns.
You guys are out.
There sweating it up, getting bitten by mosquito, step on an elephant poop, I'm sure, but you're smiling every second it anyway, it's great.
People ask me if I thought that I would be exactly here, and the answer is no.
I was interested in education. I wanted to be an educator.
I've always loved nature, and so I started my career with San Diegazy Wildlifeliones in some of our environmental education programs. I was evaluating those to understand how people learn about the environment, how they feel about certain pro environraural behaviors. And then that really turned my attention to human behavior as this driver of challenges that species face and also this key that can turn some conservation strategies toward positive futures for people in wildlife. And so I went to
graduate school my degrees focused on participation in conservation. For my PhD work, I studied human draft interactions and poaching is a threat to giraffe in Kenya. That's what really built a lot of my relationships with these pastoralist communities. And now I get to focus on the human dimensions and ensure that our conservation strategies are for community goals
as much as they are to boost species population. And before Shiff introduces herself or maybe after, the reason that I'm so glad that we got to have this conversation together is because our partnership is something I really value in that it's bridging some of the social and ecological perspectives.
So we mentioned these dynamic systems and so being able to approach some of these systems and understanding by pulling information from communities, pulling information from elephant movements is really valuable and so I love doing this with scientific partners as well.
I love it.
And so for me, yeah, my family, I will say it's always been extremely supportive of just following my interests wherever they leave. And so I read everything I could, and you know, as an undergrad like, I realized, oh, if I'm interested in ecology, I should get some experience doing ecological research, and so I cold went up to a professor and he was awesome and he mentored me for the next year and a half and kind of taught me about ecological research.
And then that continued.
As I realized is that I wasn't really interested in pursuing a career in freshwater diatoms. I was, it was fascinating, but I was really interested in animal behavior and particularly an animal social behavior, and so I started reaching out to people who were doing the job that I wanted to do, and eventually I got in touch with who became my PhD professor and who taught me a tremendous amount about elephants and ecology and sort of crossing the
world between animal behavior and applied conservation. And so that was really important and so I like to tell younger people you know, like have a little hutzpa and make sure that you're like reaching out and be okay with rejection because you might not hear back.
All the time.
It's a good word hoodspy or little age, right, a little saw. But that's great.
Yeah, oh yeah, and I agree with that too.
It's like, if you're really passionate about it, a no, it doesn't mean no forever. It just means not that person, not that connection, not the route you're supposed to be on. But keep following that passion and your curiosity, and eventually water finds its balance. Right, you'll get to where you belong. Where you guys are great examples of that.
So thank you so much.
Well, yes, later on.
Exactly exactly, and then find awesome colleagues you can work that keeps you guys.
But again, right, it's that passion you each have has brought you together to become colleagues, to become that cohort that now you can bring others into around the.
World for this work.
So thank you both so much for spending some time with us, sharing your stories and all the work you guys are doing.
Thank you for having us and for highlighting community based work. It's so fulfilling for us, and I hope we're back to share how this work progresses.
I think we need to. This article is really rat so literally everyone can jump on. Get the journal, become a member, and your project does progress. If something comes up that doesn't end up in the journal, give us a call again for an update. Thank you, Thank you some elephant nuckles.
Community was really good. That was really I.
Love when we talk about community, diversity of people over the world, the United the Alliance, all these people together work in and benefiting wildlife.
It's just it's great, right well.
You know, it's definitely an underlying current through every piece of conservation we talk about, no matter what species, no matter what location on the world you're in the US or anywhere else, even like burrowing owls here in San Diego, for example, there's an ongoing part of it, which is community, trusting the locals and what they understand and know, and working with them, collaboration with other organizations, not just doing it ourselves, bringing together these teams to then not just
go Okay, we're done here and walk away, but let that team that's staying there, that lives.
It's part of it.
Grow and become a part of that conservation and the diversity of people that have to come together to make that work. It's been a part of every story so far, yet it's unique.
To each story.
Also, it's wild right now, and just the nuances of human culture and in this case, elephant culture and all these traditions woven together makes me excited of the possibilities of the future for all manners of walking life.
And we're just talked about.
Bees to elephants, but also we got to think about the plants too, and these kind of conversations, right, and that might be something we're gonna touch on that episode.
As a lovely lead in a great you're like a professional podcast you are Amanda.
For that one.
But no, but it's exciting, right. We get we're talking about some orchids.
We're going to talk about a dangered orchid.
Maybe we'll be the orchid house.
That's cool, guest.
Maybe our general audience might think, oh, orchids, I see them in the store all the time.
But these are orchids.
We're like, maybe there's four left on the planet hundred percent, right, And they get just as effected with all these conflicts as well, with human beings also, so I can't.
Wait to talk about them.
All right, Well, there you go.
We're going to stay at the Zoo another episode, but I'm excited about It's going.
To be a good one.
So if you haven't subscribed, please do and tune in next time we talk about and learn more about in endangered orchids right here at the San Diego Zoo.
Can't wait. I'm Marko Went and.
I'm Rick Schwartz. Thanks for listening and for watching.
For more information about the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zuosafari Park, go to SDZWA dot org. Amazing Wildlife is a production of iHeartRadio. Our supervising producers are Nikia Swinton and Dylan Fagan, and our sound designers are Sierra Spreen and Matt Russell. For more shows from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.