History of Environmental Policy in the US, The Future of Data and Mountain Biking with Sunny Fleming

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick!

On today’s episode, we talk with Sunny Fleming, National Solutions Engineer at Esri about The History of Environmental Policy in the US, The Future of Data and Mountain Biking.  Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
2:36  Nic & Laura discuss where do we go from here
9:51 Interview with Sunny Fleming starts
12:41 History of U.S. environmental policy
16:36 The future of Data
41:37  Mountain Biking

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Sunny Fleming at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunny-esri

Guest Bio:
As the National Solution Engineer for state environmental agencies, Sunny is responsible for supporting some of Esri’s longest-standing customers: fish and wildlife agencies, environmental regulation, agriculture, state parks, historical preservation, and natural heritage programs. She loves helping our customers shape their vision and innovate to meet their business challenges.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Nic  
Hello, and Welcome to Epi with your favorite environmental enthusiast Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talked about where do we go from here, which is basically to food apparently. We have sunny planning back on the show to talk about the history of the environmental policy in the US the future of data and mountain biking as a metaphor for life. And finally, in honor of our mountain bike conversation, here are some fun facts about them. Mountain bikes were invented in the 1800s. The longest downhill run starts at around 17,000 feet and has a 10 Kilometer no fall zone, which means if you fall, you fall off a cliff, I'm assuming to your death, so I will not be doing that. And finally, the fastest speed ever recorded on a mountain bike was 141 miles an hour, which also seems equally reckless. So there you go.

Laura  
Mountain bikes for me thanks for me. Music

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Nic  
All right. And let's see we're off. Okay, I know Laura, you know, you go into work and there's no there's no inclement weather. It's a nice day. And you were thinking maybe maybe this is too easy, right? I'm having too much fun. I'm not even thinking about my commute. I'm not worried about getting to work. Now. If you want it to worry. We have the product for you. It's called hurricanes for me, and that is absolutely guaranteed. hurricane force winds no matter what you're doing or where it is. That is right both inside and outside. We will literally blow your socks off. Okay, I'm telling you right now. It's the newest product everyone's gonna love it. I think my microphone just died. I'm not sure why. But there we go. hurricane force winds so strong. It'll even mute me.

Laura  
Bam, right on time. How did it go with Sunny? I can't believe it was her again.

Nic  
Of course, it was great. It was an effort

Laura  
to reschedule her so you would be there and then I'm like, No, I'm not here.

Nic  
And then yeah, yeah, it was fantastic. She was really fun. She had of course we talked about the history. of environmental policy. But then we really started focusing on like, where, where we're going from here and we talked a little bit about biodiversity and resiliency, and where we went missing the mark on some of those things. And one of the very interesting conversations we always seem to have with her is you know, like what should we be doing now? Should we be conserving the planet based on how it was or where it's going? And so, it's a really interesting conversation, as always, so it's really fun. I think everybody's gonna enjoy the end.

Laura  
Where do we go from here?

Nic  
I don't know. But I mean, I don't know. It's like, but we're at the beginning of the year, new year's resolution time. It's always kind of like a philosophical thing. I mean, my brother is about to have his first kid and so I talked to him yesterday for less exciting when did that happen? Eight months ago, they started the journey. So we're about a month away. And yeah, he got all philosophical on me.

Laura  
How am I going to do about this? Oh, I

Nic  
don't know. Yeah, I'm bad at saying that kind of stuff. But no, it's really cool. It's really neat perspective especially to see him talk about you know, like me in life on and he's just not that person. He's never been it's always been me. I'm always introspective. So it's really fun to see him be very introspective before he becomes a dad, you know. And you start wondering and thinking about like, the things that you would do differently in your parents and then realizing that no matter what you do, there's still going to be quirks and flaws. And you know, there's no perfect way to parent and yeah, yeah, you know, it was kind of funny to talk about we we had a good time. That's cool. So you're gonna meet uncle the first time? Yeah, first time. Yeah, yeah, it's exciting. So yeah, very very excited to visit while the child up and then leave and have them deal with the temper tantrum afterwards. I did do this to my best friend's kids as well. So I'm at least used to it. I'm not gonna be totally shocked. But it was funny. He's like, my best friend has three kids under the age of six. Right? And I wouldn't I was visiting them after their first kid was old enough to like know who I was. But the two things right one he thought every every man was named Nick, which was adorable. So he's Uncle Nick. That's just those are random people. And then like one time like he literally had a temper tantrum. The second I laughed at me. He was like, keeping it together for me. And then when I left, he lost his mind and it's just like, yeah, that's kids. So very fun. That's

Laura  
great. I love my aunt Raul. Rolton have a good time. Well, yeah,

Nic  
I've talked about this at all. I mean, how many nieces and nephews Well, we have it I have six you have six Yeah, she's sick

Laura  
time auntie and then I have like my other families that I'm adopted into that I you know, some some others that are all becoming adults, which is crazy, but there's four others there. No, five, sorry. Yeah, the six blood nieces and nephews. Yeah, they're between four and

Nic  
16. Geez, yeah, that's fun. Yeah,

Laura  
my brother was three My sister has three. And yeah, my two nieces were the ones that I took care of. I think we just talked about that before I took care of those right? Yeah. Yeah, they're my niece. Yeah, she's was four now she's 14. She's boyfriend. Wow,

Nic  
crazy. Wow. Yeah, I don't think I haven't handled that. Well. I Yeah. I would love to say that. I would say Oh, yeah. But then you know, your kids starting today. This is such a strange phenomenon. You know, it's just I can't even imagine.

Laura  
Yeah, they grow up fast. I think about myself at 14 And I'm like, No, I know that I was doing what when I was 14. How do my parents live?

Nic  
I know how they sleep at night. Yeah, golly. I remember. Like I was in like, I think it was like post grad school. I think it was in my mid or late 20s And I'm visiting my my dad, we're just sisters, two of us at a Mexican restaurant and there's a group of teenagers in high school sits right behind us. And they will not stop. They won't shut up. First of all, they're just like, literally rolling through the Dominus conversation I've ever heard in my life. It's irrelevant, isn't it? But they think it's the most important thing that's ever happened, right? It's just like, Wow, you guys are really okay. You know this is just bad. And I'm looking at my dad Mike was I like that when I was in high school and he's like, to me to be honest with you are

Laura  
yes, yes, of course you were.

Nic  
Everything they've ever said is the most interesting thing that's ever been said. Yes. You were exactly like, Oh, I'm sorry. That's not to say yeah, you know, I say we all have, you know, there's great things about being young too. And as a you know, so I don't want to I don't want to come across like old people and all these good you know, it's hard for yourself. Or you do want to compromise

Laura  
you really own speaking as an old person,

Nic  
right? Oh, that's right.

Laura  
I'm sure when I hang out with my nieces and nephews. They just think I'm super cool.

Nic  
Mm hmm.

Laura  
Absolutely.

Nic  
So my best friend's kids. I saw them a few months ago, and they were like, Uncle Nick's new car looks fast. And I'm like, yeah, it does look fast.

Laura  
Yeah, well, my niece wants to travel with me. So I'm like when that's like, yeah, life is good. I can't wait to travel with

Nic  
them. That's really cute. Yeah, I know. Right then. I mean, 14 is close to being what's

Laura  
actually the 12 year old 14 year old. She's like, boyfriend video games, anywhere. Yeah. My 12 year old niece is she's the one who's like, where do you go? I'm gonna go and I'm like, where do you wanna go? She's like, Italy.

Nic  
I'm like, yes. Yeah, of course. Oh, my God, I

Laura  
just gotta sell her mother.

Nic  
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the joys of travel is you get to have all these wonderful experiences. You know, it's like, being in Luxembourg and having which is a really international city. So there's a ton of people from all over Europe living there. And then you just have I just eat it reminded me of his great Italian meal they had their they literally had like Parmesan, like a parmesan wheel and they will literally shave off pieces of this wheeled into your pasta and it is just magical. So like that. I love that, you know? Like every day

Laura  
it was all about where do we go from here? Apparently it's to food to food. Yeah, that's where it always goes.

Nic  
I do love a good pasta and kind of gotta be honest. So

Laura  
let's get to that interview. With Sonny that I'm super sad. I missed.

Nic  
Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Sonny Fleming our ESRI GIS correspondent back on the show. Welcome back, sonny.

Sunny Fleming  
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be back. I know

Nic  
it and of course we want to start in the very obvious place like we always do with puppies. So yeah. You got a new dog.

Sunny Fleming  
We got a new dog. We got a Siberian Husky. We got him at eight weeks old, but he's 12 weeks old. And we've named him Odin after the god of war because I have very specific naming philosophies and that is that whatever you name the dog, the attitude will be the opposite. And so on even the God of War and hope that he's like really peaceful and chill and so far, it's working out in my favor. He and Elsie, my existing dog are getting along so I'm pretty excited.

Nic  
Yeah. Does your other dog also husky?

Sunny Fleming  
Yeah, she's a German Shepherd lab next and she really is not too keen on other dogs. And so we've we've been looking for a dog, a companion dog for her for a long time and we put the bullet on this one took a bit of a risk. And because my my philosophy was that he would be so tiny and helpless, that she couldn't be angry at him. And it's worked. She was like, oh my god, it's tiny and helpless. And so growing up, they're able to like adjust and yeah, so my philosophy worked we tried an older puppy with her and it was not good. And so yeah, I'm really I'm really happy with how it's gone. We just got back from a little family hike. So he's already hiking. He's great.

Nic  
That's so cute. He's like, my perception of huskies and this is what you say we're really diving in here. Is that they're like, loud and they need lots of attention. Is that am I wrong? Or? Yes,

Sunny Fleming  
they're very loud. He may make an appearance today on our podcast. My husband has him downstairs right now and so hopefully he's he's getting plenty of activity down there and won't start screaming but yeah, they screen and make lots of very strange noises. They're very vocal. And and we knew this going into it. We had a husky mix prior to So yeah, we're, we're prepared but they're very active dogs as you can imagine. They were bred you know, to be able to pull sleds and things like that. So he really likes to hike and run. And that's part of the reason that we choose this breed and love it so much.

Nic  
Oh, that's really cool. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear it. So I guess now, I'm going to get into the real meat of our conversation. here but

Sunny Fleming  
oh man, I just want to talk about puppies on

Nic  
me too. Truthfully, I would love to but you know it's funny we whenever we have you on we always like to ask about you know, things that pop up things you're curious about things you want to talk about. And I love my you mentioned something about how the the US basically has led the environmental revolution we see, you know, currently not just here but around the world and I think it's through the national parks and all of our, you know, policy that I love as well. And now we're dealing with a new one with climate change all over the world. Yeah. How are we faring now?

Sunny Fleming  
Yeah, I love this question because I think I think it's actually very appropriate for the fact that by the time that this particular episode comes out, New Year's Eve, New Year's will have happened and that's always the beginning of the New Leaf, etcetera, etcetera. And it's actually really good timing to talk about where we're at in our environmental history. We are two days out, or three days out from the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act here in America and that in America but also globally, was an amazing piece of legislation, environmental legislation. But I want to put it in kind of bigger context, because we've talked a lot before about the infrastructure bill and my thoughts on that. We've talked about it kind of in the micro, but I want to talk about these things now in the macro of our environmental history here in the US, and I think about this Roosevelt era of environmentalism. Right. And we have our American antiquities act in this gave us some of these really iconic national parks. We had these opportunities at that point in time to create these really massive conservation era areas. But the philosophy was still very much that nature is this place that you kind of go to and then you come back from right it was this very separate philosophy. And then you move into more of the Nixon era who he himself wasn't necessarily an environmentalist. I think anyone who's in the environmental fields, knows this history at a high level, but he knew it was politically sound to do this because there was a lot of public outcry on smog and pollution, demanding that our environment, you know, we were interacting with it, and it was interacting with us. And so that moved us into what I call the environmental era. So I think Roosevelt was more of the conservation era. Nixon was the environmental era and we get our foundational environmental policy. But yeah, I think we're moving into a third era of conservation policy and environmental policy in the US. And it's being brought on partly by public demand, just as we saw in these first two eras. But also because climate change is so viscerally in our face now, and these issues are in our face now. And what I think we're moving into is a third era, the sustainability era of environmental policy. And to me the infrastructure bill didn't do anything revolutionary as far as far as like new policy goes, but it set the foundation from a semantic standpoint, talking about how we really need to be more holistic and understand that all sectors have responsibility, and how we steward our environment and so I'm really optimistic moving into 2024 and beyond. To see how this develops. And I don't by any means think that it's going to be a smooth road. But I am really excited. I am very optimistic about how climate change is going to force us to reassess how we can conduct our lives and our business. And I think you know, the countries that are going to survive geopolitically are going to be the ones that tackle it first, and most seriously, I really believe

Nic  
Yeah, yeah. And I it's a great Gosh, it's a great jumping off point of so many different directions we can go and I totally agree. I think a lot of times we talk we we've been talking a little bit on the show without you know, it's one thing to say, you know, we don't have to worry about this, but then you pay attention to coastal cities and they're all coming up with sustainability plans. All of them are doing that because they have to it is not a pie in the sky thing. So what are those kinds of policies going to change? What are we seeing from, you know, we always want to relate it back to data with you. What data are our cities using to enact which kind of policies?

Sunny Fleming  
Yeah, I think it's a fantastic question. And there's a lot of great data out there and a lot of it sits on ESRI is living Atlas. So we have a lot of partners, a lot of federal partners, but a lot of this data can be global as well, who publish authoritative data out. And I think NASA and NOAA and some of our big federal agencies that put a lot of data out there, they know that the way that they publish data isn't necessarily the most easily digestible and so we work with them to publish it in a way that is easily digestible. And part of what came out of that actually, was we worked with the White House on their climate mapping resilience and adaptation portal so camera for short. CMRA. So this is a public facing portal that synthesizes all of that data along with climate predictions. And you can zoom in down to a census block level and understand at a census block level, what the climate hazards are, and this allows communities to be able to understand maybe what they should be prioritizing, right? So I think in coastal cities, it's obviously sea level rise, right? But when you look at cities like I live in, it may be less obvious it may be more flooding or more heat. And so this breaks those things down and allows communities to understand what their priorities should be, what it might look like in the future. And that can really help them understand what grants they could go after that really target mitigation or adaptation efforts. And I'm seeing a lot of states and cities now start basically creating their own climate adaptation portals, right. They may have more authoritative, finer scale data on sensor networks or things like that and creating their own hubs for this and their own climate action plans using things like ArcGIS hub to help engage the community to empower, you know, people in individual households to take action. So things like tree planting and shade equity, but also understanding what trees should go where, right. So native species are going to be more resilient and so really providing the community with the education information, but also the opportunity and the resources necessary to take action on the local scale. So I think it's really cool what I'm seeing now with a lot of climate action plans coming out. Yeah,

Nic  
so it's kind of like to me it sounds a lot like you know, like when we have impaired water bodies, right. We know we have like a 3d 3d impaired water bodies list. That's data. Kind of waterbody it says, oh, it's impaired for these three reasons. And then like, you know, what you're talking about almost sounds like we will be able to, again, look at our census block data, our census data, click on it and says, Oh, climate concerns are you know, flooding or quality or whatever it is. Is that where we're heading, or are you saying we're already there?

Sunny Fleming  
I mean, I would say that there's momentum to head there at scale, but I would say a lot of communities are already there. So I think Massachusetts is a fantastic example of a state who has published a climate action portal en hub. And a local example would be the city of Tucson. They're actually one of the first climate action hubs I ever saw. And again, they're using ArcGIS hub. So you know, we have this great federal example with the White House CMRA we have that great state example, with Massachusetts and some others. I'm just kind of calling these out specifically as examples. And then that great local example with Tucson, and they all have, you know, very different scopes and interests and scale Tucson. They're really focused on heat and tree planting and those kinds of initiatives, Massachusetts you mentioned that already, right? We know flooding and sea level rise. And then of course, the White House wants to make sure that everyone has equitable access and can easily understand these issues at a national level and provide people with directions to the proper resources to help them mitigate those things like federal grants and stuff. So I'm really excited to see this momentum at all scales of government. I know there's tribal examples as well, especially with like specific tribal projects, taking advantage of federal funds out of the infrastructure bill and doing really cool storymaps with things like stream restorations, wetland restoration, so I've seen some really cool stuff out of all sorts of different kinds of communities and levels of government. Yeah,

Nic  
that's really cool. Yeah. And I guess I love it. And I feel like that's the real positive side of things. And I think like one of my favorite things about you is that we get to be pretty philosophical as well, right?

Sunny Fleming  
Yes. Yeah. As read definitely gives me a lot of latitude to think big and be philosophical. And I know I can be a little overly optimistic. Sometimes I wouldn't call it overly optimistic but you know that we work environmental professionals, we're faced with existential crisis every single day. And so if you aren't optimistic, and if you don't see that silver lining, you can really get burnout. So I really, always encouraged environmental professionals to try and be optimistic. I know our jobs are tough,

Nic  
right? Right. Which brings me perfectly to my next question. So like, one of the things we've talked about a little bit is like, you know, climate resilience and biodiversity and how there's some conflict with what is our path for actually changing things, how much change do we allow a community to go through biologically because of the way things are going versus what was historically how this community existed? And it's a fascinating question and something I never thought about until you and I started talking about it. But where are we with this? Right? Now?

Sunny Fleming  
It's a really tough question. And I think and this is where I can be a little bit technocratic, because when I look again, if we talk about kind of the history of environmental policy, I don't know if we've talked about this, but when I moved into this new house and Asheville we had to completely renovate the entire house. And it was it was built in the 60s in the very early 60s. And so there's a lot of really interesting original components to this house, and one of them are these very strange doorbells that we have, and these doorbells they're called the gold metal house, and the slogan is live better electrically. And when I started looking into what this was, it was actually an effort by electric companies. To get domestic households to use more electricity, because what was going on at the time was that a lot of households used fire or oil in their homes and polluted the homes directly. And the time they wanted to move people off of that it's partly a marketing scheme right there. Were a lot of dams being built at this time, which is bad for the environment. But the burning of coal in homes was also bad for the environment. So I think we're actually at a very similar crossroads right now, where we can all agree that not burning coal in your home is healthier for you moving and diverting that point of pollution to a more centralized location, right. But we also can all agree that we now understand the impacts that dams have on the environment. And so we're in a really interesting position at this time in history as well. So this is moving into that Nixon era of environmental policy where we have these things that feel like they're at odds with each other. But the fact of the matter is that moving to more electricity and centralizing those point, sources of pollution, did actually help us decrease issues with smog. So I look at that and I think about the current era that we're in and I do feel optimistic, but it's not going to be easy. So look at where do we cite solar fields? Well, these are massive. solar fields, they have an impact on the environment. This is more of an easy one, though, because we do also have places where we've already impacted the environment that are appropriate for solar fields. So can we do solar fields in some restoration? I've seen that that's really successful, but windmills there's a lot of discussion with windmills right now. And, you know, are they hurting bat populations? Are they in their massive, you know, campuses as well, that they put in the middle deserts and deserts are functioning ecosystems, right, you know, and so there's a lot of tension there. Batteries and knowing that we have to mined for precious minerals for batteries. So there's a really interesting question posed at a conference that I was at earlier this year. And it was to all of the environmental commissioners of the states and the question, I won't say who it came from, no. But it's a tough question. And basically, the question was, what are we going to have to give up in order to transition to a clean energy economy and you could hear a pin drop in the room everyone was very uncomfortable with the question. And I feel like what we did not have in the 50s and 60s When my gold metal home was being built that we do have today is technology. And that technology and GIS in particular allows us to overlay different bits of information to understand really sticky, multi perspective complex problems, and come up with the best possible solutions and also predict how those solutions will behave in the future. So I really encourage us though, to embrace this I think we all are individually, but we're almost stopping short in some ways, not, not completely, but I'd say as a community as a whole as a practice as an expected habit. We're stopping short of really embracing that technology to truly collaborate across our different sectors. And I'm excited because it's their technology is not holding us back. We've just got to have the will to do it.

Nic  
That's really cool. Like okay, so this is such a nerd question. I'm gonna ask you right now. When you talk about like holistic data, right, you're getting data from different sources as saying different things. To kind of model out something that gives you a range of perspectives like, like, to me that's like one of the most challenging things data that we asked about data. So like, how do you do that? How do you make sure that you're actually capturing it? You know, we're talking about like, both biodiversity and development or you know, like, whatever it is, however, you're putting things together, how do you capture the natural and human environment? Well?

Sunny Fleming  
Well, I think that's a fantastic question. And I do think we, in many ways, have a ways to go when it comes to biodiversity data here in the US. We have the world's best and strongest model of it, and that comes from a nonprofit organization called Nature surf. They, they have built in they started in the 70s. They began in the 70s. Having heritage programs in every state and they developed a methodology and a system to aggregate and collect this data up. And what we have actually failed to do in other areas, is we may put policies out there, right, thou shalt record your water quality, thou shalt we're you know, sending reports to the EPA, etc. But we're actually not embracing technology to ensuring that we're really capturing this data at scale, bringing it up systematically. And I think we could look to the nature serve model and the heritage network and what they've done and expand on that in other areas of policy, so that we can actually start capturing this data and we do it some, but it can be really painful. Maybe we have different standards on how that data is collected, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a lot of elbow grease that has to go into collecting it, but also, that's boots on the ground, manually collected information, and something that's coming along, and it's getting better and better every day is remotely sensed information. And that is coming from satellites and it's getting higher and higher resolution every day. So it used to be that 30 meter
________________
Sunny Fleming  
First question, and that is coming from satellites, and it's getting higher and higher resolution every day. So it used to be that 30 meter elevation data was the best you could get. And now, you know, we can fly a drone and get up micro you know, and get down in sub centimeter right? But satellites are starting to approach that quality as well. And so we're starting to see massive amounts of information, different kinds of sensors coming from NASA, but also coming from the European Space. Agency. And they're collecting all sorts of fascinating information about our environment. So moisture levels, not biodiversity yet as far as like a species specific goes, but some level of understanding of the relative quantity of biodiversity in an area. So all sorts of really amazing rich information that are coming from the satellites that are starting to be available more broadly, and high enough resolution that we can ask really interesting, fascinating questions.

Nic  
That's so cool. Gosh, I love nerding out with you. Um, so Okay, well, one of the other things that you brought up that I really want to dive into a little bit is the kind of the differences like both with the US is Endangered Species Act and Canada's version of the same thing. You mentioned they're different, but they have things similar fundamental problems. So what how do they approach endangered species? And what are their pros and cons? I guess,

Sunny Fleming  
I love this question. And at a high level, I'll state this first. Both of them are extremely underfunded. And so I think a lot of the problems that they face are really tied to that. And if we want to get serious about biodiversity here in the US, but also in Canada and globally, we're really going to have to find this and it's become an issue of national security. So I'm going to caveat everything I'm about to say with that statement. Right. Now, in the US. We list a species when we know it's already declining, when we know it's already in trouble. So that is fundamentally philosophically different than what Canada does. With Sarah or Saara they list species. Before they begin to claim with an idea that it's preventative right? We're reactive, they're preventative, right? So it's really great because you have these two fundamental different philosophies to protect species. But then when you actually look at the success of both programs, and they have been successful in many ways, we're still seeing overall declines in species. So we know that there is a missing puzzle piece here and that missing puzzle piece really and there's there's a little bit of language in the ESA about this, but when I was talking earlier about, we're moving towards more holistic philosophies. Both are species specific. They're not really ecosystems specific. They don't really understand the really complex fabric of how species interact and work together, right. And any attempt to just protect a singular species really is missing the forest for the trees pardon the pun, right? And so we're both still struggling to protect our natural processes and our ecosystems and protect ourselves ultimately, from degradation. Of these ecosystems and the consequences that those have on our own health. So I'm, I'm really looking forward to some future and I'll start advocating for it here where we have more holistic environmental policies that understand that and again, I really truly believe that we do have the technology now to really ask and understand those questions.

Nic  
Right. And, you know, I think there's, you know, to even talk about some of those successes. I think that's that's kind of fun for me, right? I know. gray wolves are a perfect example is one most people know about. But there's also a really interesting examples of things that maybe the ESA doesn't really necessarily have a hand and just kind of happen. We have like a mountain lions, cougars, whatever you want to call them migrating, dedicated from the east and so now the western population of those cats are actually moving across the country and that's really neat to see that they're finding ways and some of that I think, is actually related to some of the policies that we've enacted some of the, the land that we've conserved, and that's really cool to see too. So I definitely don't want to feel too bad but that Yeah.

Sunny Fleming  
And I personally been able to, I've had the opportunity I'm struggling to find my words, because when I think about this, it's fascinating. I have both seen a species go extinct. I've witnessed it firsthand, but I've also been involved in efforts to successfully recover and delist other species and that alone tells me motivates me to both continue doing the work, because I know it works, right. It's funded when it's successful when you have passionate people behind it, but it also tells me that we do have a long way to go that there's no reason that that species that I saw go extinct should have gone extinct, you know. And there's so many species we don't even know about these kinds of fringe species. And again, going back to our friends at nature surf, you know, they work really interesting questions around this. And, yeah, there's the work but darn it, they need more funding.

Nic  
They do and it's funny we had Laurie Scott on really recently from nature surf and it was so fun to just gush about the site with her and it was super easy to do. Yes. Cool. I was like, I was telling her basically I had like a this was like the dream when I was a kid. That's the site. I wish I knew it existed. Yeah.

Sunny Fleming  
That's awesome. And I think you know, something that you mentioned on in one of your discussions with Laurie that I want to emphasize here, we have TNC right Nature Conservancy or Audubon, etc. Their household conservation names yet I think people really understood how often nature serves data was used and by who, you know, the environmental professional has used their data, but I think nature surf would be just as big a household name right? You know, it's interesting to me that things shake out like that, right. But yeah, they're such an important nonprofit in the US here, but also in Canada. They work in Canada as well. They do.

Nic  
Yeah. And it's really cool to see again, another shameless plug for them. Please do go check it out. And

Sunny Fleming  
they're not paying me. I'm just a

Nic  
big dork for the same things. Well, what's crazy to me too, is like you talked about funding, right? And I want to play around with this a little bit. One of the things I read an article about D evolution recently about amount, massive amount of money going towards trying to revive an extinct species and getting no the it's both cool and absolutely frustrating at the same time. Yeah. Because what a neat concept that doesn't, in my mind, in my mind, this is my opinion, doesn't have a practical application other than literally, plastic park like the actual movie Jurassic Park, right, wherever you're like, Oh, isn't it nice to see this weird thing? That's not that's both not the thing that it used to be. And not anything else other than this weird thing. We made?

Sunny Fleming  
You know,

Nic  
so much money and I'm like, can we take that money and put it other places? How do we

Sunny Fleming  
know? It's interesting to me because, you know, in this has been being a little cynical, right? But the ego is powerful thing and people who have money and an ego can be either very powerful or very dangerous, or both. Yeah. And yeah, I see. It cracks me up, right. Because I think what there's a lot of motivation behind the idea of bringing back a dinosaur you know, those kinds of things right. Oh, it gets so much attention. It would be so famous, my name would be tied to that. And I'm like, wow. But you know, what, if you put that money towards conservation efforts, you know, the world and sexier so like, where's that campaign to raise money from these people? You know, so, I'm shooting from the hip here. But I am a little bitter about those efforts. And I find them a total waste of money and time when we could be putting it towards much more successful efforts from a probability perspective, but also something that will directly impact ourselves and our world well into the future. If we were putting that into conservation efforts. Oh, man. All

Nic  
right. I knew but I knew it was 30. Wow. That's why I asked to kind of put it back on a positive spin, though. You know, there's a lot of things like you know, there's some historic you know, talking about the history of policy in the US and there's been a lot of historic novels, books that have been written about policy, what we need, you know, and like, silent spraying is kind of the most, I guess, the most iconic in my mind, anyway. Oh, hey, all this stuff you're doing has consequences. So I don't know, if people want to dive into the history of an IP policy. Like, you know, we got Silent Spring, what other books were the recommendations would you make for people trying to learn more about how we got to where we are? So

Sunny Fleming  
there's a few different books, but I think one of my favorite books that I'm reading right now, so first of all, I love history, outside of just environmental stuff. I really will dive into history and I got into history through genealogy and study my own family and then I realized how interesting history was to me. And so bringing those two loves together for me my love of history and my love of the environment and reading about environmental history. I have fallen in love with this book that came out in 2023 I think or maybe 2022. Yes. 2022 Silent Spring revolution. John Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the great environmental awakening. The author is Douglas Brinkley, and this book is fantastic. It's super engaging, but it talks about Silent Spring as a component but really Silent Spring as more of this metaphor around how there were just people with passion and voice. And this caused an entire generation really to rise up and demand specific environmental policy and then how these different politicians in their circles played a role in this and why. And it's fascinating. It talks about nuclear fallout, you know, I'd never really considered nuclear fallout. It talks about the Cold War and how that shaped it. It talks about it does talk about Roosevelt a little bit. In fact, I think this author has one that focuses more on the Roosevelt era. But I think it's a brilliant understanding of what was going on at the time, and all of the influences and the outcomes of that. And I've just been eating it up completely. I really encourage folks to read that. When's the Silent Spring Revolution by Douglas Brinkley

Nic  
Awesome. That is so great. And yeah, so we have a few more minutes here to talk about almost anything we want to but let's have some more. Let's let's dive a little bit more into the fun stuff here too. Yeah. I want to know because again, you do a great job of posing these kinds of questions. How is Mountain Biking a metaphor for surviving the chaos of life?

Sunny Fleming  
Yeah, so it's interesting. I love this question, because, you know, I moved to Asheville from Nashville, and partly is the way for me to get out of just an unhealthy environment and there was a lot of chaos going on in my life there and I needed to we my husband and I, we both needed to just remove ourselves and go to a healthier place. And ironically, I come to a healthier place and it's healthier because it allows me to do stupid activities like mountain biking that can kill me. And a lot of people I read a lot I'm not an amazing athlete by any means, but I do love following athletics, and I love following runners in particular, even though I'm not a great runner, but there's a lot of runners and a lot of athletes in general and a lot of mountain bikers who really get into their activity as a way to soothe trauma to students. And I think it's because it demands first of all, so much focus. Yeah, it demands so just pushing your body to its limits and just knowing that you can overcome this and so, you know, the best athletes are the ones that have they're the most mentally steely, you know, and I see this all the time even in myself, as soon as my mind starts to like wander and I'm focused on something that's when I crash or that's when I stopped running or running in particular, if I'm running and I do a lot of trail running I hate running on a road roads are just terrible things. But, but when I'm running and I start to go down a rabbit hole and I start to have negative thoughts you know, or I start to get anxious about something coming up at work or in my life. I just I stopped running. It manifests itself immediately into not being able to make it up the hill. But if I'm having a good day and I'm mentally focused then whether I'm on the mountain bike or whether I'm running, you're just able to push through it. And so I think right now especially in needing to reconnect with with the environment. I think environmental professionals we'd all do ourselves a good bit of justice, just to push our bodies through some athletics a little bit. Get out there. get reconnected, push through this chaos, find that optimism and come back home exhausted but refreshed.

Nic  
Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's such a great and wonderful thing. We should in there. But I also have to know you said you've never applied for a job. Is that what you said? Yeah,

Sunny Fleming  
I've never really applied for a job, but I was laughing about this. So this came up just for the the listeners I have. It's I would say it's half true first of all, but some of our listeners were curious about GIS careers, and how to kind of best align your resume with GIS careers, et cetera, et cetera. And my most current boss, first of all, I'll say this, he hates my resume. He thinks it's terrible. And he was kind of making fun of me because it was very academic. I had like a lot of my old publications on there from when I was a second field botanist, and he was like, Why is this necessary? Like, I don't know. It's impressive, I guess. But yeah, but I think the important thing to note here, so most of my jobs and the way that my career has shaped itself has been through a reputation. People knowing me, always having and looking for that open door of opportunity, and going with my heart and going with my gut. And so it's rarely been that I have sat down and said I'm going to apply for jobs or I'm going to leave my job apply for jobs. That never happens. It's always that there's discussions going on and you know, we could really use you in this and Okay, well, let's talk about it and, you know, you start to navigate your career that way. So that time of my, in fact, all of my jobs have occurred. So yeah. And

Speaker 1  
I honestly I love it because it's such a great, great thing because we you know, it's nice to be reminded that there's many different ways to get to the same place. And I think that's really, really important. So I love that you have your own unique story as we all do. And I think that's kind of a great place to end on for us.

Nic  
Is there anything else? Before we let you go? That we'd ask you that we should?

Sunny Fleming  
It's about to be the new year. Oh, yeah. And I think all these things we've talked about actually really shaped that I am very optimistic. about the future of environmental policy. So there's that but also, I really encourage you if you're a young professional listening to this, listen to what I said about you know, navigating your career and making sure people talk about networking. And that's important, but networking isn't just, you know, going to socials and things like that. It can also the about building your own community where you live. So maybe starting a conservation social or a GIS social in your own neighborhood, getting those two three people and then suddenly having you know, 20 or 30 people on really setting up those opportunities and making those opportunities for yourself. So as we look into 2024 I think we can all think about what are those opportunities we want to create for ourselves, both as environmental professionals but as people.

Nic  
Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. And like I say, sonny, it's always a pleasure. Yes, thanks very much. So last but not least, let people know if they want to get in touch with you. Where can they find you? They

Sunny Fleming  
can always find me on LinkedIn. I'm a monster on LinkedIn. I really enjoy that platform. So I'm just Sonny Fleming on there. You can look me up and please connect with me. All right, sounds great. Thank

Nic  
you, Sandy.

Speaker 2  
Thank you. Bye. Bye. That's our show. Thank you so much for being here today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe rate and review. I

Nic  
see everybody

Transcribed by https://otter.ai