Nature's Archive Podcast

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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: My guest today is Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. Dr. Wynn-Grant is the co-host of mutual of Omaha’s wild kingdom. And is also a wildlife ecologist and affiliated researcher at the university of California Santa Barbara bren School of Environmental and Science Management. She’s also an author and her new memoir entitled Wild Life is coming out on April 2nd.

[00:00:21] And I have the great privilege of reviewing an advanced copy. Today we discussed Dr. Wynn-Grant’s unique and inspiring personal journey into wildlife ecology, her awakening to the world of environmental justice, which was triggered by Hurricane Katrina, as well as some of our active research pursuits, including her work with bears and mountain lions that seem to have a propensity for visiting the beach. I really enjoyed both the book and the conversation today because Dr.

[00:00:45] Wynn-Grant has so many facets of her story that I can relate to and that I find inspiring. And I think you will too.

[00:00:51] And just a quick warning. Dr. Wynn-Grant joined us from New York City and you can hear some of the New York City ambiance in the background, like car horn honking and. Maybe some sirens at times I tried to edit those out as much as I could, but they do crop up occasionally.

[00:01:05] I don’t think it’s too distracting, but I wanted to give you a heads up. So without further delay, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant.

[00:01:11] Dr. Wynn-Grant , thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:01:14] I am extremely excited to have this opportunity to talk to you.

[00:01:18] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Thank you for having me. This is really fun for me too. And I’m a big fan of your work and your goals with your work too.

[00:01:24] Michael Hawk: Thank you. I that makes me feel great and I, I was recognizing I’m not as nervous as I thought I would be speaking to you, and I think it’s because I feel like I’ve gotten to know you through your podcast and now through your new book, and it’s such a deeply personal review, and exploration of your life to this point.

[00:01:43] thank you again for putting people like me at ease through your openness.

[00:01:48] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Oh, you’re so welcome. And I have to say, you’re not the first person to say that to me. There’s actually a couple of folks who are like, believe it or not, like moms at the school where my daughter goes, who said, I feel like I know you so well because of your podcast and because of, the stories that you tell and how open you are.

[00:02:06] So for me, it’s just my way. It’s what feels most authentic for me to show up. But I do get that feedback sometimes and that, that makes me happy.

[00:02:15] Michael Hawk: And you’re joining us today. You have such a crazy schedule and we’ll get into all the things you do. You said from your book publisher, and I think based on the, what I can see out your window that it must be New York City.

[00:02:26] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Do you wanna see? Yes, I am in, oh, I’m in Soho.

[00:02:30] Michael Hawk: Okay.

[00:02:31] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Soho, downtown Manhattan, and I’m at my book publisher where you could see this is just one of their conference rooms. But I’m in New York for the day, and it’s not a place that I spend a lot of time, although I lived here for many years. So it can be fun for me to return and just get a little New York moment.

[00:02:50] And it’s extra fun to be at my book publisher because the book is done. The last time I came to visit my book publisher, the book was not finished. I was still writing it. I was behind schedule. So now I’m great, I’m here. We have a lot to celebrate.

[00:03:03] Michael Hawk: What a relief that must be. And I guess we’ll get a little bit of that New York ambiance in the background too, perhaps. So jumping right in, where did you grow up and when did you first realize you had such a deep interest in wildlife and nature in general?

[00:03:18] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: I grew up in several places, so I was born in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area is where my dad’s side of the family is from and where a lot of those folks still live. So the Bay Area very much feels like home. But as a kid we moved around a good amount. So we lived in Ohio when I was little and San Luis Obispo, California for a long stretch.

[00:03:38] And I went to middle school and high school in Norfolk, Virginia. So a number of places, but mostly like kind of urban places or if we didn’t live in an urban place like San Luis, Obispo, we lived in urban lifestyle in that place. And the way that I got connected to nature wasn’t through spending time in nature. So my family didn’t go on trips, to national parks or go camping or hiking or fishing or hunting or any of that. So I found a love of nature through watching television, through watching nature shows on television. So a lot of the classic ones, I distinctly remember watching PBS.

[00:04:16] They have a show called Nature and I used to watch it and love it. Wild Kingdom I used to watch. And then eventually as I started growing up, animal Planet became a channel and Discovery Channel, came up and I was so into nature shows to the point that when I was a little kid, I would say to my parents and my teachers I want to be a nature show host when I grow up.

[00:04:37] And the main reason was because there was no one in my life that I knew of that spent time with wild animals. And I mean wild animals, not like animals in captivity at the zoo, which is a really cool career, but that wasn’t interesting to me. I saw on TV that there were these like British and Australian white guys who would go be with wild animals in the wilderness.

[00:04:57] And I, I remember thinking like, who wouldn’t want that? This is fascinating. And it’s thrilling and it’s adventurous and it’s also purposeful, right? These animals like need some help and need some protection and they’re talking about how to do that. And, I thought at the time, the only people in the world that do that for a living are nature show hosts.

[00:05:17] So that was how I articulated what I wanted to do. And I really held onto that to the point that I showed up my freshman year of college and said to my advisor, hey what would I have to major in in order to be a nature show host? ’cause that’s what I wanna do. And my advisor was wow, I’ve never had that question before, but maybe.

[00:05:36] Acting or maybe journalism. And then finally she landed on how about environmental science? And I said, great. Never heard of it, but let’s give it a try. And there’s much, much more to the story. It wasn’t a hit right away, but it wasn’t until I entered college and had someone suggest maybe it’s science that you’re seeing on those nature shows, like maybe it is the science of the environment that you’re ultimately interested in.

[00:06:04] That helped me lock in what it was because again, the community where I came from, the family that I came from wasn’t attuned to nature in that way. And I come from like smart, educated, dynamic, fascinating people. Community and family. And yet, nature, the natural world and wild animals in particular was just this total mystery.

[00:06:27] Michael Hawk: Yeah it’s interesting, our, society separates us from nature and I guess that’s, partly why I’m motivated to do what I do to help that reconnection. I had a guest here just recently talk about how we’ve domesticated ourselves in a way, which I really like that phrasing.

[00:06:42] It repositions our relationship with nature in a, in an interesting way. Now I know you talk a lot about this journey and even on your own podcast Going Wild, the very first episode, there’s a, I recommend that people go listen to that ’cause it gets into, the story a little bit.

[00:06:59] But for context here, maybe we can just touch on those early days just a bit. So, maybe pick up where in, in the early years you did a study abroad program, you can give as much context as you want, but I wanted to ask, how close were you to, to maybe quitting or giving up or diverting your focus to some other endeavor based on your experience there?

[00:07:21] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Yeah. The story goes that once I was routed into environmental science as a freshman in college I really hoped like, great that’s gonna be my thing. I’ll, I will have found my thing and I can just move forward. And instead, , I really didn’t enjoy my environmental science classes very much. I really didn’t enjoy majoring in environmental science.

[00:07:41] It was a drag and I felt really different from a lot of my classmates. For one, I was the only black student at the time in the department. But also it just seemed like everyone else in my classes was an environmental science major because they spent a lot of time in nature and they loved nature ’cause they were super familiar with it.

[00:08:00] I thought to myself like if you guys know all this stuff about nature, why are you taking the classes? I thought it was for people that, don’t know anything like I thought. It’s just you’re supposed to learn fresh. And what I realized early on is that I did not enjoy learning about nature, the wilderness environments, ecosystems through a textbook or through a PowerPoint, right? It’s hard to get jazzed up about like forests when you’re in the center of Atlanta, in a dorm room reading about it. And I really decided to challenge myself that before I quit environmental science and tried something else that I would give myself like a full on experience in nature, I really felt that’s what I needed.

[00:08:39] And so my junior year of college, I signed up for the most extreme nature wildlife study abroad program that I could find. So I wanted it to be really intense and push me and give me an immersion in the wilderness, but it also needed fit within my financial aid package. I had a scholarship to college and I couldn’t spend any extra money, so it needed to also be like cheaper than my semester would’ve been.

[00:09:05] And I found a program and it was through the School for Field Studies, which is a group that still exists. Although this was a long time ago, almost 20 years ago, 19 years ago, to be exact. And, it was a wildlife management program in southern Kenya, so we lived in a little camp site outside of Amboseli National Park and adjacent to a Maasai tribal community.

[00:09:31] We spent a semester there. It was about 12 of us, American students and Kenyan professors and the first week of that program was the first time I pitched a tent, and the first time I went on a hike and the first time I ever saw a wild animal I was 20 years old when I had my first experience in the wilderness, and it was magical.

[00:09:53] It was everything I had been missing in my studies. It was everything that I wanted to do. I thought a lot about those nature shows that I watched and I realized I’m doing the nature show host stuff, but without the cameras. And it’s just as good and it’s maybe even more purposeful, and

[00:10:10] Michael Hawk: Did you have a little Marlin Perkins dialogue going in the back of

[00:10:14] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: In my head all the time. How can you not, we were like out in the savannas with the elephants and the giraffes and the, lions and the zebras and wildebeest. It was wonderful. It was a wonderful experience for a lot of reasons. One, it helped me solidify that I’m really happy doing this and I have a path and a future. Two, it offered me something that I hadn’t seen in those nature shows, which was black representation. So my professors were four , black Kenyan men who were from that area, who had gone off to Europe and the United States to get their PhDs and returned back to Kenya to teach wildlife ecology and conservation.

[00:10:57] I didn’t see that in the nature shows. I didn’t see black leadership. I only saw white male leadership, and so being taught by folks who were from the same racial background as me, although not the same cultural background or ethnic background, but people who were black helped me feel a sense of belonging.

[00:11:16] And because I was the only black student in the program, I was only the only black student that program had ever had. Those professors also gave me a different kind of attention, I don’t wanna say extra attention, but a different kind of attention where they were able to see like, we’ve never had a black student come through this program before and we’ve had many years of students and it is really special that you’re here.

[00:11:36] And the fact that you’re here means that perhaps, since America, kind of like at the time and in a lot of ways like has dominated conservation projects around the world. They began seeing like, maybe we can have some diversity in leadership eventually. it was a, really distinct kind of mentorship that even went outside of kind of the sciences.

[00:11:57] And so I have these wonderful memories. I mean, there was adventure, there was danger, there was like intense experiences. There was a lot of learning. One of the other things that I’ll say is, I wrote about this in my book that is coming out April 2nd, Wild, Life, and I spent a lot of time writing about that semester in Kenya because not only did it launch me fully into this science that is my supreme passion, but that experience also helped me realize that my science, the way I view science, the way I do science is always going to be extremely intersectional, meaning my identity is gonna play a role in it. And the example that I have, is that the study abroad experience in Kenya took place when I was 20 years old. It was in 2005 and this was before Kenya had, Wi-Fi.

[00:12:48] And before there were smartphones. And saying yes to this program meant saying yes to being completely disconnected for, four or five months. So we had a

[00:12:57] little truck. We were committed. All of us, and saying that today sounds a bit extreme, but in 2005 that was the expectation.

[00:13:04] If you travel out of the country, you’re gonna be disconnected. That wasn’t a wild idea. But we had a, a mail truck that would go to Nairobi about six hours away once a month and pick up mail and bring it back. And so there was like, so it was every two months you might get a response from your letter, from your family.

[00:13:25] About a month into my program, the mail truck came from Nairobi. We all had care packages from our families, and my package from my parents had a magazine and it was Time Magazine. And this was September of 2005. And in August, hurricane Katrina had happened. And we were in Kenya and we didn’t know about it.

[00:13:48] And so all this time had passed and we had no idea. I had no idea that Hurricane Katrina happened and it was, that was a natural disaster. That was very distinct in terms of the racial disparity of who experienced harm. And also for me, at that age, it was. The second big catastrophic event.

[00:14:08] I, my community had gone through right, like September 11th had happened. And that was devastating. Yet there wasn’t a racial element to, who experienced the harm. Whereas this one was different. There was inequality and injustice that played a big role, and a thousand people died I remember kind of receiving that magazine and seeing the cover that had like floating bodies of people and really trying to digest it. And I realized I’m here, I’m finding myself, I’m finding my footing. I’m having the time of my life. I’m deepening my presence in science and I’m never gonna be able to escape.

[00:14:48] My dedication to my community from where I come from back home, which is like the black community. And it helped me realize that my science isn’t gonna be compartmentalized into a box. I’m not ever going to find myself caring about endangered species of wild animals more than I care about human beings and their well-being and social justice.

[00:15:08] They have to be linked for me. I have to work hard for both . The work I do in one sector has to benefit the other. It was a profound moment for me at the time because, then we were educated to think of conservation as the most important thing, right? Like wildlife conservation, saving endangered species is it is compartmentalized.

[00:15:27] It is one important thing that is isolated. Science is neutral from anything political. And the way that I describe it now, because I’ve been through like similar examples for now, 20 years of science and societal issues crashing together for me. The way I realize it now is that, okay, science is neutral and I think it should be, I think it is, I think it should be, but scientists are not, scientists who do the science are not neutral beings.

[00:15:58] They are women and black folks, and brown folks and immigrants, and from the LGBTQ communities and people with disabilities, and the list goes on. People are scientists and people are intersectional. And so that means if we as a society are gonna care about science and let’s say care about, the science of wildlife conservation, that means we have to care very much about the scientists who do that work, the communities that they come from and their wellbeing.

[00:16:26] Again, I have this articulation now, but it really all started that day in this campsite in Kenya, surrounded by wild animals that I was so passionate about receiving the news that a thousand people had perished in Hurricane Katrina back home and what that meant for racial justice, for social justice, for environmental justice.

[00:16:47] Now and moving forward.

[00:16:49] Michael Hawk: So that was your, maybe your, initial large realization for you. Now that you’ve been working in the field for another almost 20 years, how else, to somebody who maybe is unaware of some of the racial disparity that exists in the world of environmental justice, like how might you help explain that to somebody who is not really investigated this or has remained perhaps disconnected from it?

[00:17:15] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Sure. Yeah. I have to say, I still feel that I have so much to learn about environmental justice because, my expertise is in wild animals. But being a member, a proud part of the black community, it’s a major issue. And also being someone who is from like a very modest working class urban background. Like, I often think to myself like, do I have asthma? Because we lived in the poor part of Cincinnati, and essentially, I guess what I would say is that although someone might not be very familiar with environmental justice work. They might better understand the problems.

[00:17:52] Environmental justice is solution-focused, right? Like justice is action towards a just and positive outcome. So that can be harder to like, to understand, like, what can the solutions be, what can the action be to fix it or to make amends or to, to achieve justice. But if you dial back to what are the problems.

[00:18:14] That are the root of why we need environmental justice. I think that might be easier for folks to understand. We think about where people live and land and water and pollution is the big one. It’s not evenly or equitably distributed. The places that are toxic and America is unfortunately a great example of environmental injustice.

[00:18:38] The landscapes that are toxic because of air or water pollution are usually the landscapes that have communities of color or communities from other target groups. And the landscapes that are the healthiest, whether it be the most beautiful or just the most functional, clean, are usually for communities that are the most privileged. And that is not okay. It’s not okay to clean up areas so that communities of privileged people can thrive. What our governments and our leaderships and our corporations need to do is really make sure that we are focusing on marginalized communities in toxic spaces.

[00:19:22] And there’s so, I mean, there’s so many ways that this shows up, particularly when you bring it into the climate conversation and climate change because climate change is different from pollution, right? So a lot of the places worldwide where we’re seeing the most climate impacts, or we’re expecting the most negative climate impacts, are places with communities of color and communities that largely did not drive climate change, did not do the behaviors that got us into this problem. And yet, those communities are facing the impacts. First. Hurricane Katrina was a great example, right? Like the places that flooded the places that were extremely vulnerable were the places in New Orleans with very low income black communities.

[00:20:09] Those places were also not evacuated. So there’s a lot, you can take the environmental part almost out and just think of justice, like justice for people who have a history of oppression, harm, and marginalization. That’s what we’re working towards and we can’t, we as a society, that’s what like the good people in the world are working towards and

[00:20:28] we can’t get there without the environment being healthy and thriving. We can’t get there without women being uplifted. We can’t get there without poverty alleviation. A lot of the world’s issues, including climate and environmental issues, are actually tied to the wellness of human communities.

[00:20:46] Michael Hawk: Yeah, and I think, when you start looking at the impacts, like you’re talking about Hurricane Katrina being a great example, it’s easy to see the disparity in, even regular day-to-day flooding, for example or, or asthma rates as you were talking about cancer rates, all these different things.

[00:21:02] And there’s some great resources I’ll make sure to include in the show notes as well, that, that actually map some of these things. And you can see exactly where this is happening in the US anyway. And you start asking why and looking into it. And it’s decades and decades in the making from redlining to lack of representation.

[00:21:16] And it just becomes entrenched and unfortunately, for a long time accepted. So there’s a lot of work to be done to to repair, what has occurred.

[00:21:25] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: that’s right.

[00:21:25] Michael Hawk: We’ll talk maybe a little bit more about that in, in a moment, time permitting. But I want to, I. Talk a little bit back to your wildlife ecologist path, and I know a lot of people recognize you as a carnivore ecologist more specifically.

[00:21:42] So let’s jump into that topic for a few moments and tell me about what it is like, where is your focus of research these days?

[00:21:50] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: I have to say, I will never forget the day that someone referred to me as a carnivore ecologist. It was because I wasn’t calling myself that at the time. I was in my first year as a PhD student at Columbia University in the Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology Department.

[00:22:09] And one of the faculty members, who I didn’t work with, was just introducing me. You know, Again, we were all new. It was the beginning of the program and was introducing me to someone else and said, “oh, and this is Rae Wynn-Grant. She’s a carnivore ecologist.” And I remember thinking. Am I? Like, I, but I don’t have my degree.

[00:22:24] Am I, really? Because that’s what I’m interested in and, ’cause I did a master’s degree and studied lions. Is that what I am? And it was just this like little moment. The professor I’m sure did not ever think of it again. But it was a really empowering moment for me. It was like she named me as a scientist already.

[00:22:46] And anyway it is, it’s just I have tried to do that ever since. So I am now a faculty member and I work with students and I will try to describe them as a scientist already, even while they’re students. I think that’s the right way to do it. It is so empowering and it’s true. These days today in 20 twenty-four, I am a carnivore ecologist.

[00:23:08] My scholarship over the last many years has focused primarily on the movement and behavior of large carnivores, so particularly African lions and North American bears. I’ve done several long-term research projects on both of these groups. That’s included, like putting radio and GPS collars on lions and bears and following their movements over years to find patterns and their movements and understand their behavior under different landscape scenarios.

[00:23:37] And when I say landscape scenarios, I mostly mean I’ve been very interested in how humans impact the landscape. So how human activity can vary, right? Like right now I’m in New York City and there’s a lot of human activity, but as I might go on a drive and distance myself from the city, I would see different kinds of human activity and it would probably lessen and lessen.

[00:23:59] But there is wildlife along that gradient also, and they have different behaviors in different spaces of human activity. And so that’s how I’ve been studying lions and bears and here and there some other large mammals as well. I am a faculty member now at UC Santa Barbara in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, which is a graduate school.

[00:24:22] It’s a great place to learn. I’m a big fan of the Bren School and my job is actually not to teach, but I am doing research on a population of mountain lions on the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve. And this is a nature preserve that is managed by the nature Conservancy on the central coast of California, around the point Conception area.

[00:24:43] it’s a relatively small preserve, but it is so special. There are multiple ecosystems in that space. So we have, hills and we have oak, woodland forest, and we have scrub brush and sand dunes and coastlines. And then the ocean. That meets the coastline is part of a marine protected area, so we actually have this like land to sea connectivity. This nature preserve, the Dangermond Preserve has a lot of wildlife and a lot of carnivores. So we’ve got black bears and mountain lions and bobcats and coyote and fox, and they haven’t been studied until recently. So there hasn’t been long-term study on these animals. There’s been, just studies that have sprouted up in the last couple of years.

[00:25:28] So it’s going to be really interesting to see what these mountain lions are up to. How do they travel? Where do they move? How much time do they spend on the preserve? And in particular, I’m really curious about what they eat. There’s a lot of anecdotes out there about what do these mountain lions eat?

[00:25:42] There’s an abundance of deer and wild pigs and rabbits, but yet I’m capturing these mountain lions on my camera traps on the beach, like walking on the sand, and they’re not in the business of wasting their time. So I’m really curious, and so are my colleagues of what these mountain lions are eating and is it a marine resource?

[00:26:01] And if it is, that really changes our understanding of mountain lion ecology as well as the importance of protected coastlines around the world.

[00:26:12] Michael Hawk: Have you found any evidence of the beach lions actually, partaking in a in a Marine meal or, I’ve heard about the beach bears as well, either of them.

[00:26:23] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: So we do not have photographic evidence yet, and there’s some other things in the works that I can’t talk about yet, because there’s some research that will be published this year that’s really exciting which is a diet analysis from some poop that we collected. Poop can be an incredible source of data but we’ve seen carcasses of elephant seals in places that we think only mountain lions could have accessed.

[00:26:51] And that is a big anecdote that’s driving a lot of these hypotheses. So I am waiting with bated breath to see what we find.

[00:27:01] Michael Hawk: And that’s a good example of what you were saying earlier about separating the scientist from the science process where you’re taking the science process forward. And being cautious in making the conclusions. Yeah.

[00:27:13] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Yeah.

[00:27:13] Michael Hawk: Yeah, it’s fascinating and such a amazing place in the story of the Dangermond.

[00:27:18] Preserve is also really interesting. So I’m excited to see when the research comes out later and how it progresses even beyond that. Something else that is particularly interesting to me is the element of science communication, which, I can tell and I’ve seen you write and speak about science communication before, and you’re a parent.

[00:27:37] I’d be curious what, for the modern age where people have so many distractions and electronic distractions. And as we were chatting a little bit about at the beginning, before I hit record, just the societal pressures that disconnect us from nature. What have you found useful to engage kids in nature?

[00:27:55] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Yeah, we have a lot of distractions, right? So those of us who are parents right now are parenting in the age of lots of technology and lots of devices. And I really have to say, I have two things to say. One is that there’s nothing like nature, right? There’s nothing like going places where your devices don’t connect to Wi-Fi, and just really being in it.

[00:28:15] And that can be the beach. That can be like a really nice park. That can be a big community garden. It doesn’t have to be the actual wilderness. But really cool when it is. My, my children are young and they’re actually right now too young to have a phone and, that kind of thing. So their devices very much stay in the house.

[00:28:36] And so that offers me a lot of opportunities to like get them, focused and in the moment and present when we are in nature and we do spend a lot of time in nature. We don’t go far. So I have to say we live in a place that offers a lot of kind of nature right. In your backyard or in your neighborhood.

[00:28:54] And the other thing I’ll say is that I think devices are great. Again, I am a person who spends. 90% of my time in the wilderness, I am, a thought leader in environmental science. This is my passion. And I got started in front of a screen, and I spent 20 years not in the outdoors, but in front of a screen, learning so freaking much, right?

[00:29:18] And becoming so passionate. So I wanna make sure that, as a conservation community, we’re making sure to be really inclusive and not poo-pooing any one person or any community’s choice in how to engage with nature. And it’s another thing that I also am trying to work on for myself. As one of the things I’ve been challenging myself with is making sure that my inclusion work, also addresses people with differing abilities and people with disabilities, right? Because not everyone can put on a backpack and go for a hike and experience nature the way that I do. And so screens and technology and devices can be incredibly useful, inspiring, effective, promising ways to connect people to nature.

[00:30:07] It is not necessarily like the mainstream way, but I always think that it’s great for us to keep our minds really open. And, and again there’s a balance. ’cause when you have kids, there’s a lot of evidence that like they shouldn’t spend a lot of time around screens. And so I believe in that. I believe in that. But I also know that the quality of, for example, television programming that’s available for kids today is leaps and bounds ahead of what we had when I was a kid, right? There’s programs that teach social-emotional learning, and there’s programs that teach, ecology and there’s programs that teach, all kinds of skills.

[00:30:47] So it gives me a lot of faith. I think, counter to. The narrative that we have in society that like, oh, everyone’s addicted to their phone and social media’s bad. And what is, what are kids gonna grow up to be? I actually think can’t just let ’em wing it. We can’t just throw ’em a device and say do whatever you want.

[00:31:03] It’ll be fine. But I think that if we as parents or as an older generation, work to curate the experiences folks are having on the internet or on devices, we can actually make some magic there.

[00:31:17] Michael Hawk: And I, as you were saying, that, I realize that that’s what I’m trying to do with Jumpstart Nature is I’m leveraging technology in a way as one element of connecting people to nature. So I’m happy

[00:31:27] to hear your

[00:31:28] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: you would be the person to understand this the best that you know, I’ll use like conservation, wildlife conservation as an example, but there are so many careers that impact wildlife conservation. It’s not just like being a bi a field biologist, right? Like you could be a writer, you could be a graphic artist, you can be a DJ, you can be a teacher, you can be, there you could be a chef.

[00:31:51] There’s so many different careers that intersect with environmental goals, and so whatever your interest is or your skill set is, it could be at a computer, at a desk in the city and you can make a positive impact on wildlife and wild places.

[00:32:08] Michael Hawk: I wanna make sure that we have a moment to talk about your book a little bit more. So you said it comes out on April 2nd, and I, I just want to ask a little bit, what, who was your target audience when you were writing this, like what was your goal that you were, looking to achieve with the book?

[00:32:25] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Yeah, so my book is called Wild Life. It’s behind me. See, it’s like right behind me. It’s has a little glare, but it’s this wonderful, beautiful turquoise book. And it’s a memoir. So it’s a story of my journeys in all senses of the term and my target audience, honestly was everyone. I think there are groups of people who won’t wanna read my book.

[00:32:51] I dunno like oil executives or something like, might not be interested. Maybe they will, I don’t know. But, it’s a book that, that is special because I have a really unique journey. I have a really unique career. I am a ecologist, I am a nature show host. I am a science communicator and thought leader.

[00:33:12] That’s a, that’s really unique for anyone of any background. I had a very unique and non-traditional journey to this field. Again, I am not this environmental leader because I grew up hiking around the forest. But the book is I wrote it for me. I wrote it because in a lot of ways.

[00:33:29] I was feeling that my wildest adventures were maybe behind me and needed to be documented. As I spend more time filming this television show, which puts me in some pretty wild spaces, I’m spending less time like living in tribal villages in the middle of the bush, right? So I really wanted to make sure I was documenting some of these incredibly unique experiences that I had.

[00:33:52] And in doing that I realized wow, there’s, there’s so much swirling around those adventure stories that I think are really rich, and I wanted to just get it on paper, even if it was just for me, even if the one copy was sold and it was me buying it I really wanted to make sure that it was there . it was a big exercise in building self-confidence in writing the book, I realized, wow, I, I’m really special. I have been through some really unique stuff. I, my stories are special. And that was wonderful. And the only person who needs to feel that is me necessarily. So I actually kinda struggle with the suggestion of who’s the audience?

[00:34:32] ’cause the stories are badass. Page one, is a super suspenseful, pretty amazing story about getting chased by a bear and thinking I was gonna die. I think everyone would wanna like read a book about stories like that. I have really suspenseful stories about coming across a bear who is dead and doing a field necropsy, literally pulling out a knife and dissecting this bear in the middle of the forest and then finding out what killed the bear.

[00:35:01] And it’s nothing I could have prepared myself for. I have stories of running into poachers, in the middle of central Tanzania, and being terrified ’cause they were armed and they were dangerous. And then an hour later, finding myself covered in giraffe, blood smiling. And you like have to read the story to understand how that is at all possible.

[00:35:24] And at the same time I talk about, I talk about failed relationships. I talk about like really big, kind of tragic mistakes that I made that I wish I hadn’t. I talk about the way I struggled with motherhood and overcame those struggles, and those are things that are unique to me.

[00:35:42] But I think speak to anyone out there who is living their life, and having ups and downs and backs and forths and success in one area, and failure in others. And I really wanted to capture it and offer it to the world.

[00:35:56] Michael Hawk: I would call it as memoirs go. It’s definitely a page turner, and you’ve done a good job teasing it here today. So I highly recommend checking out the book. I definitely found it very engaging, as I said, and it makes you real. It makes I think for me anyway, it makes me realize that, it’s okay to have areas where you are being successful in other areas where you’re struggling and you can overcome those. So I found it inspirational from that point of view, for sure. Now, before we wrap up I need to ask you this question.

[00:36:26] So if you could magically impart one ecological concept to help the general public see the world as you see it, what would that be?

[00:36:33] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: I love talking about ecological concepts. I really do, and one of my favorite to just discuss to a general audience is called optimal foraging theory. Optimal forging theory kind of sounds complex, but it’s so simple. It’s basically that like an animal, let’s take a bear. Their goal is to consume as many calories as possible.

[00:36:57] While like spending the least number of calories. So basically like eating as much as you can without having to do a lot of work. And that’s what we do as people, right? Like I could, have a snack because I Planted a farm and harvested crops and cooked it myself, or I could order something and have it delivered.

[00:37:17] But I think that when people understand that almost every wild animal is operating under optimal foraging theory, they better understand why animals will sometimes come into human areas in search of food. It’s not necessarily because there’s no food where that animal, in that animal’s habitat, it’s often because humans make different kinds of food, very accessible.

[00:37:39] Whether it’s like the dog food you left out in your backyard, or whatever’s in your trash that smells really yummy. Animals know I will not have to pick through a beehive to get my calories if I just come into this neighborhood on this particular night. And it guides a lot of behavior all over the world, and it’s easy to understand.

[00:38:02] So that’s your little fact.

[00:38:03] Michael Hawk: That’s a good one. it’s the first time I’ve heard this one on the podcast, so thank you so much for that. And just real quick then, before we adjourn, where would you like to point people if they would like to follow you and keep up to speed with all the great things that you’re doing?

[00:38:18] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: Oh, I am super active on social media, so the best place to find me is Instagram. But all of my social media handles are the same. It’s @raewynngrant, all one word, R-A-E-W-Y-N-N-G-R-A-N-T, and I also have a website that I’m pretty proud of, and you can go to raewynngrant.com and sign up for my newsletter and stay in the loop.

[00:38:42] Michael Hawk: Awesome. Thank you so much for squeezing me in today and making this happen hopefully you can see the smile on my face. I’m very

[00:38:50] Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: excited for it.

[00:38:50] I can see this smile on your face. So thank you so much. This was a wonderful conversation. I appreciate it.

[00:38:55] Michael Hawk: And one more thing special. Thanks to Kat Hill for editing help in this episode.