Our Wild Lives
Our Wild Lives takes listeners into the heart of wildlife conservation, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. Each episode dives into the wild lives of diverse species, explores complex ecosystems, and unpacks the urgent issues facing wildlife conservation.
Our Wild Lives
The Wildlife Society Legacy with Wini Kessler, Carol Chambers and John Organ
This conversation brings together three Aldo Leopold Award winners and past presidents of The Wildlife Society to explore how a profession found its purpose and how we keep it honest, relevant, and resilient.
From there, we unpack what TWS really is: not just a membership, but a community of practice that transcends workplaces and fuels collaboration. You’ll hear how standards and journals legitimized wildlife management as a science, how policy engagement turned research into action, and how the annual conference built a durable network of peers who can challenge assumptions, share methods, and solve problems together.
Along the way, we trade field stories—from face-to-face bear encounters to cultural wake-up calls in India and the delicate craft of radio-tagging endangered jumping mice—that translate directly into practice: safety, ethics, cultural competence, and adaptive learning.
If you care about wildlife science, conservation policy, and the next generation of biologists, you’ll find perspective and practical guidance here: invest in your network, step beyond your comfort zone, and be an honest broker who pairs evidence with empathy. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway—we’d love to hear how you’re carrying the land ethic forward.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Our Wildlife Podcast, brought to you by the Wildlife Society. I'm Ed Arnett, and I'm here with my co-host, Katie Perkins. And Katie, we have got some very special guests to kick off our podcast. We're being joined by past presidents of the Wildlife Society who are also elderly Leopold Memorial Award winners. So TWS royalty, if you will, and really excited. I've known all these folks for a long time throughout my career. They've been mentors and colleagues, and I would say friends as well. So it's great to have everybody with us. I'd like to introduce our guests, uh, Dr. John Organ, who was president in 2006 to 2007 with the Wildlife Society, and our 2020 recipient of the Aldo Leopold Memorial Award. Dr. Winifred Kessler, who goes by Winnie. She was our president in 2012 to 2013, and won the Aldo Leopold Award in 2017. And I might add only the second woman to win that award will be the last by any stretch because we have the third woman who was our Aldo Leopold Award recipient in 2023, uh, longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Carol Chambers, who also was the president in 2020 and 21. Welcome to all of you. Really great to see you and uh glad you're with us today.
SPEAKER_00:Carol, can you take us all the way back to the beginning? What sparked your interest in the wildlife profession and a desire to be a wildlife biologist?
SPEAKER_02:I I love thinking about that question. I I've been thinking about it because I often talk about it. I loved animals when I was a kid, but at that time there weren't a lot of role models in wildlife. I remember watching Wild Kingdom, which you may not have heard about. It was a TV program. It was in a documentary on nature and wildlife, and every week. Um, I think it was Marlon Perkins who would go out in the woods with a colleague who would jump on crocodiles or wrestle a snake or somehow demonstrate and different animals and where they lived and talk about that. And I really enjoyed that show. I didn't see very many women doing that kind of job. So I really didn't know that wildlife existed in the profession. So because I loved animals, I thought I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna become a vet. I'm gonna work with animals. And working through a biology degree, I volunteered with my local vet and I discovered I don't want to be a vet. I don't want to, you know, spay in neuter animals. And um, you know, they you knock them out and they wake up and they hate you. Not deep really, but so I thought I would be a zoo vet, because that would be more with wild animals. And then I thought the odds of that are pretty long. And then I realized I want to go to Africa and see those animals out in the wild. And it wasn't until I finished up my my undergraduate degree in biology, and I was looking for a master's program and I discovered forestry at the University of Kentucky, and there was a wildlife biologist there. That's when I learned it was a profession. So I think we still have one of the greatest professions that people don't tend to find out about easily. But there are certainly more role models now than I had when I was a kid. So I don't know. I loved animals, I love being outside. Any day outside is a better day.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's amazing how profound of an impact that one show had on generations of people because I hear that common thread when I talk to people and I ask them that question. John, what about you? What sparked your interest?
SPEAKER_04:Well, Katie, I grew up in a time in a place where I could spend a lot of time outdoors, uh unsupervised. I grew up in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts, where we we had some land that went down into the meadows that flooded every year from the river. My grandfather's farm was on what at one point was uh an island in the Connecticut River, the Oxbow. And so I spent an awful lot of time outdoors, and wildlife were the bonus. You know, they were they just fascinated me and my friends, and we talked about them all the time, whether it was a red fox, you know, whether it was a black bear, whether it was a snapping turtle when you were waiting and wondering if you're going to get your toes chewed off. And then I think through National Geographic magazine, I followed the Craighead brothers. And John Craighead was the leader of the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit. And of course, you know, their uh landmark work on grizzly bears in Yellowstone just fascinated me. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to chase grizzlies around Yellowstone. And then when I was in high school, I was watching a local program where they were interviewing a man by the name of Chet McCord, who was a wildlife biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, and he was talking about the bobcat research he was doing in west-central Massachusetts. I said, that's what I want to do. And so I entered the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as a wildlife biology major. And never looked back. I was very fortunate in that I was able to live some of my dreams, you know, in terms of uh long-term study on Canada Lynx, worked with bobcats, worked with black bears and uh Andean bears in Peru, and got trained by a grizzly and had an up close and personal coming. I think I told you about that, Ed, just within the last week at the end of July with four grizzlies. I was in Alaska that I was within 10 feet of. Not the most comfortable situation. But yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It's an amazing and frightening experience all in the same baron.
SPEAKER_00:I love how casually wildlife professionals will just drop little tidbits of that, like, oh, I got treed by a grizzly bear. You know, like and it's just totally normal. Nobody bats an eye.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I got charged, charged by a brown bear on Abuchi Island up in Alaska. So I'm in I'm in the the bear encounter club too.
SPEAKER_02:My closest encounter to anything like that was waking up after uh I guess I'd been uh doing telemetry all night, and and there was I startled a bobcat that was sleeping near the tent. But that's not like having a brown bear charge you. I'd like to hear that story sometime.
SPEAKER_03:But winning what sparked your interest in wildlife.
SPEAKER_01:So my colleagues are usually surprised when I explained that I was a city kid. I was born and raised in San Francisco. However, we didn't even have a car to get around, you know, everything was on foot or bus, but the location was great because we had Golden Gate Park across the street and the Pacific Ocean, literally at the end of the block. So, like John, we were free-range kids. We wandered. We were allowed to in those days. And the wildlife in the park was really of interest. And my mother was quite tolerant. She let us bring home snakes and wounded ducks and caterpillars to metamorphose and tadpoles to grow out into frogs, and that that all sparked that interest. And the other advantage of the city location was that the California Academy of Science was within walking range and the zoo. And we were able to get in for free in those days. That was important to kids. So spent hours and hours in those places. So when I went across the Bay to Berkeley to go to university, I just decided to follow my interests, which was animals. So I majored in zoology. No clue what one could do with that. No clue. Maybe work in a zoo. Who knows? But my brother was in forestry, and he told me there's a professor here you might want to meet. His name is Starker Leopold. And of course, Starker was Aldo's son, right? And he runs a program called Wildlife Management or Wildlife Biology. And apparently there's jobs in this field. So I went over, overcame my shyness, met with him, and he was wonderful. He got me on the track, told me what my deficiencies were to get prepared to pursue this career. And I'll be forever thankful to him for that.
SPEAKER_03:That's amazing. I forgot that you had studied under Starbert Leopold. That's pretty amazing. Well, hey, let's shift to the Wildlife Society. What does TWS mean to you personally and professionally?
SPEAKER_01:I have a quote I made up and I like to share with people because it's absolutely true. Without the Wildlife Society, I might have had the same jobs, but I would not have had the same career. And by that I mean I've had some great jobs, but they were what I did to make a living. The wildlife society, on the other hand, was um the backbone of my existence. It's kind of defined me as a professional, defined not only what my profession was, my what my community was, you know, but as well gave it defined my purpose. So there were the jobs, what I did, and then there was the wildlife society was who who I was and what I was a part of.
SPEAKER_00:I love that, Winnie. And I think that's such an important part of what we are at the Wildlife Society, is all about building that community because you know, a lot of times you're traveling and you're out in remote areas, and it can feel like you're a little bit alone in this profession from time to time. And and that's what we really strive to bring here at the Wildlife Society is a community that you can always come back to.
SPEAKER_03:Carol, what's TWS mean to you?
SPEAKER_02:The first thing that came to mind is family. I I think when he's put forward a lot of really nice ideas about how it provides something beyond just your job. And I feel like over the years, you know, the first conference you go to, you don't know anybody, and you stand on the sites thinking, I wish I knew people. The more you invest, the more you get back. And so I see people that I've known for decades at our meetings, or I can contact them and ask questions, or um just check in with different people. And so I feel like we have this shared vision, which makes us a family. In that at our dinner table with a bunch of wildlife biologists, we can talk about finding roadkill for bear bait, or sticking a needle in some animal to draw blood, or you know, any of the other things that we do with wildlife that end up maybe sounding off-putting to people not in our profession. So I I feel like that those shared experiences, you know, like we all have probably done telemetry or we've done things that made us get up really early and we were out in the cold or the rain or the dark or whatever it was, and that we all, because of who we are and how much we love being outside, we all remember those times with great joy and what we learned, what we saw, what we experienced out there as we're trying to help conserve and manage wildlife. So I think family is how I view the wildlife society. And the more you put in, the more you get back.
SPEAKER_03:John, a couple tough acts to follow there. What's TWS mean to you?
SPEAKER_04:DWS means many things to me, but I consider it a community of practice that goes well beyond your organization or agency. And in that sense, it gives you perspective on cultures within our profession. For example, you know, I worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 35 years and the U.S. Geological Survey for another five years. And those agencies have their own culture. But by being engaged in TWS, going to chapter meetings, section meetings, and annual conferences, you meet and become engaged with people from other organizations and agencies. And it just broadens your perspectives so that when you go back to your own agency and your culture, you can uh better critically think about issues and things and maybe question what were assumptions that were ingrained in your organizational culture. And uh the friendships and colleagues that I have gained my decades with Wildlife Society are absolutely irreplaceable. And I think as both Winnie and Carol have expressed, it's allowed me to gain knowledge from the experiences of others as well as you know what was part of the original purpose of the Wildlife Society. And, you know, when folks convened in 1936, where they wanted to basically communicate and share information. So the you know, the society has done all of that, and uh in the last few years it's amped it up considerably. Uh and you know, under your leadership, Ed, I'll give you real kudos because the communications that we receive today on a regular basis are just so beneficial. And I think of the early professionals who are getting the kind of exposure that uh was difficult to get in back in the Miocene when you know I was first in the profession, where you just didn't have that kind of communication. But but for me, it's just that broadened community of colleagues and peers that I have tremendous respect for, that's just given me knowledge and perspectives that are that are just invaluable.
SPEAKER_03:I certainly appreciate those kudos, but I can say to the world, we have an incredible staff. And they're dedicated to our members and they come up with new ideas. And so I really appreciate that perspective because that is the platform of TWS, is to bring people together. So it's a great, great view of how you can bring people in their different agency cultures together to go back, critically think, solve problems, and have a network to call and discuss things with.
SPEAKER_00:Each of you have had such a storied career in the wildlife profession, and you've been members of TWS for much of that, I would say. How do you think that you have seen TWS the guide and shape the profession, either you know, you being involved in it or as part of our large international network?
SPEAKER_04:TWS, I believe, has done many things to shape the profession, including helped to create the profession. Back in the 1930s, the American game policy of 1930 called for the creation of the profession where there was none. And TWS filled that niche. And what it's done, I think, over its many decades is kind of break down the silos that are within the profession, from agencies and organizations, and provide a voice that goes beyond the politics of particular agencies and organizations. It's something that we as wildlife professionals can look for to represent us when we may not agree with the policies within our own agency or organization. It's something that we can look towards with pride. And I'll give you an example. Back in around 1990, when there was talk about some infrastructure development for oil in Alaska, Alaska Game and Fish had to tow the party line and say, you know, there's going to be no impacts on Caribou. Fish and Wildlife Service under George H.W. Bush had to say that, well, there might be some impacts, but it's not going to be great. Well, the leader of the Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit uh represented the Wildlife Society, and he was uh you know foremost Arctic biologist that studied caribou all over the world. He said, No, this is the real story representing the wildlife society. And so it's you know, TWS has that strength that it can stand up and be an honest roper on issues.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Uh similar to John's thoughts, the way Minor organizes that, I I recognize three phases for the wildlife society and how it shaped the profession. And in the beginning, it established the profession. Like like John noted, there was no Holly uh profession. So it legitimized the practice as a profession by setting standards and also became a conduit for the science through the creation of journals. That happened very early on. It's not enough just to be inward looking. We need to play a bigger role, we need to bring the science beyond the journals. That's when the Waller Society began to involve itself and encourage its members to be involved in informing policies and decision making. So to play that role. And around a little bit after that, we had our first policy staff member. So that's the second major step in this shaping. And I think the third one happened. We used to not have an annual conference. And well, I just thought I didn't know if there'd be much demand for that. But they thought, well, we'll try it out. And so the first um the first annual conference was held, and the droves just turned out for that. And it completely changed the profession and the Waller Society by creating this community, this gathering, this opportunity for folks to interact face to face, form networks, very importantly, that they used throughout the year and that carried them forward in their own careers and that build and build and build on one another. So that was an absolutely pivotal point in the Wildlife Society's history, is that formation of community and networks.
SPEAKER_03:Well, let's talk a little bit more about Leopold. Thinking about your award, your experiences, and if Leopold were actually alive today, what do you think he'd be most proud of since he helped form the Wildlife Society back in the 30s?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I can't claim to be a Leopold expert, that's for sure. But I was thinking I I have read some short stories or some it was excerpts from writings he did back in the early 1900s, right after he graduated and came out to Arizona to work. And so it's been interesting to me to see how he described Arizona and his work here and how he sort of came to realize that exterminating predators was not the way to go to provide more hunting opportunities. And he described areas that had basically no wildlife, no huntable wildlife in Arizona. And that's certainly not the case now. I can drive those same areas and see a number of ungulate species in a day, sometimes bears. So I I think to me, I think he would be proud of the conservation and management that we have been able to do to bring back some of those populations that were not regulated for hunting at the time. I think he'd be pleased to see how state agencies are helping conserve wildlife.
SPEAKER_03:What do you think, Leopold, would be most proud of?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'll offer you two thoughts there. You have to remember what he was dealing with at the time when he got when he started this profession. And I think he'd look around and he would see that populations of elk and moose and deer and turkeys and everything, you know, all these species that were on the brink, they were expected to go extinct. He would say, My God, you've done it. You've pulled it out, you've turned that around. And he'd be very proud of that. The other thing I think he'd be very proud of, one of the most poignant quotes I remember that he ever said was that an ecologist lives alone in a world of wounds. And what he meant by that, it reflected that at the time he was doing his thing, there weren't many people who had the same understanding. There were very few who understood what was going on in terms of um to the natural world, the hurt that was happening, and they felt kind of alone. So I have this fantasy that he would come and go to one of our conferences and he'd say, Oh my God, look at this. You know, all these people, they're thriving. They're no longer alone in a world of hurts, you know, just so many of them, and they're supporting each other and they're interacting. And yeah, I think that aspect would would also be something he'd be just tickled about and very proud and pleased.
SPEAKER_02:I like knowing that, you know, he he was hired to be a forester and to cruise timber in Arizona, and and he got distracted and started thinking about ecological relationships and not timber values. I I really liked reading that about him.
SPEAKER_04:I think he'd be incredibly proud uh at the maturity of the profession. You know, when he died in 1948, and of course, you know, the war years really set a number of things back, but the profession was still in its incipient stage. You know, it started the process of restoration and science-based management. But if if you were to look at the profession today and see the breadth of it and the accomplishments that have been made in terms of restoration of species and active uh management of species and the focus on landscapes and ecosystems, which you know he presaged with you know his work, I think he'd he'd just be blown away, you know, given where the profession was at when uh uh he was active.
SPEAKER_03:That's a global impact. It's very clear to me that that is a timeless treasure of the San County Almanac that everybody reads around the globe. What do you think he'd be most disappointed in if he was alive to see some of the current situation and and some things surrounding science and conservation?
SPEAKER_01:I I think there's a a couple things. I I think he would realize there's a lot in decline. He was very concerned about the pressures of development on the natural world. And even though there's certainly been so some successes, particularly for the species that were in deep decline in his day, I think he'd see that there still is a lot of degradation of environments happening and which threaten wildlife. So that hasn't changed. But uh the other thing I think would affect him deeply, because he he was pivotal in making wildlife management a science-based profession. I think he'd be very disappointed at, particularly in the the present time, this distrust of science that's going on, this kind of disregard for science that's driven by misinformation. And he would be he would be hurt by that, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's what I've been thinking about too, is that yeah, he seemed to really value science and how we are moving away from that. And yet that's a lot of what TWS is trying to do is provide the best science for managing wildlife and habitat loss, things that you mentioned, Winnie. The other thing I was thinking about is he proposed a land ethic, and I think he'd be disappointed to see that we still don't really value natural places, lands as we should. You know, we still are losing habitat, we're losing lands. You know, there's a giant garbage patch in the ocean. You know, we are doing things that are not supporting the natural environment. So I think you'd be disappointed with that.
SPEAKER_04:Well, you know, it's Carol referenced the land ethic, and this he didn't write this in the land ethic, but one of his writings in a, I believe it was a forestry periodical, uh, he said that we will not have achieved conservation until destructive uses of land is uh ostracized by society. And we're a long ways from that, an awful long ways. And I think he would be really disappointed in the fact that, you know, wildlife conservation, land conservation is not on the political spectrum at all. You know, and I wrote about this in my Leopold address that if you look at the platforms for the major political parties and what really inspires the general public, I mean they will check off a box on a survey saying, Oh, yeah, I like wildlife, but the willingness to pay for conservation is is lacking, and it's and it's not on the political agenda with the major parties, which reflects what people are going to vote for. And I think he'd be very disappointed.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, economics still drive our land use.
SPEAKER_03:What I think he'd be really disappointed is the fact that he was warning us about this disconnect with nature and with wildlife when he wrote in one of his essays the quote on the danger of not owning a farm is that one thinks heat comes from the furnace and breakfast comes from the grocer. He was warning us about this disconnect with nature and the general public. And I think he'd be disappointed that got so far away from us because it shifted so far with the values and the and just that disconnect.
SPEAKER_00:So definitely. Thinking about this idea of the distrust of science in today's age and moving away from science, as as researchers and scientists that have dedicated your lives to this, what message would you give to people who just don't really understand just how important science is to us?
SPEAKER_04:Well, you know, people rely on a number of professions to guide their lives, whether it's the medical profession, whether it's the legal profession, whether it's the financial profession, and you know, they and they take stock in what the experts say, right? And I guess my message would be you know, wildlife is no different. Yet there's all sorts of information that's out there, and there's all sorts of pundits and advocates that talk about wildlife and the environment and ecology. But trust the professionals, because that's a community that has you know gone through the mortar and the pestle to grind out what is as close to truth as possible.
SPEAKER_03:Well, it's tricky, right? Because we we don't get trained as wildlife professionals very well anyway on communicating our messaging to the public. And so having the right messenger is important. And we're trying to put training programs together to help scientists. But I always tell biologists, if you don't you better have your one-floor elevator speech handy when someone asks you what you do, and they say, Oh, I study sage grass, and they're gonna say, Well, why should I care about that? You better be ready, because if you start fumbling around or get too science-y, you've lost them. You got to relate it to something that's important to people, the ecosystems that are provide clean water, clean air, and the species is part of it, however you message it, but it's not about the data you gathered, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I agree with all of that. I've kind of been um a squeaky wheel calling for better communications of what we do to the public. Um, we've got great stories, you need to share them. But at this particular point in time, I guess the the message I want to give to the public is don't be duped. There's so much misinformation out there now. And the people Spreading that misinformation have their own purposes for doing it, you need to be skeptical, you need to be critical, you need to verify the information. You, you know, take the time to do that. And there are forces that wish to dupe you. Don't let that happen. And people just need to to follow the facts on their own and convince themselves of what's right. And that's unfortunately critical thinking is is appears to be on the decline when it needs to be prominence.
SPEAKER_04:One of the great things about Leopold and Rachel Carson was that they could communicate and they could write in it in a narrative form. There's a great book by Roger Pielkey Jr., who's also in Arizona, Gerald, the climate scientist. And he talked, it's the book is called The Honest Broker. And he talks about to have conflict with opposing goals. And people will cherry-pick, they'll they will they'll ignore the facts, but they will cherry pick the narratives that seem to speak to their or beliefs. Uh you know, we're humans, you know, we're basically pro-Maticans, right? And that narratives are are what appeal to us. And I think you know, we we need to find within our profession the people and the means to create narratives that are going to appeal to people and get those messages across. And and that part of that is telling us the story because that resonates with people.
SPEAKER_02:You know, that takes me back to the college classroom now, too, although I've just retired and I'm not in class today. Thinking about helping students differentiate fact from belief was something I liked doing in sophomore level classes and having students evaluate, okay, here's a question, is it true or false based on these data? What do you think and why? Getting people to get past what they believe in and understand here's the factual basis, and maybe it aligns with their beliefs, but if it doesn't, helping them understand that they need to shift their beliefs to follow fact and and science. I think that's something we can do at all ages, you know, starting with our children.
SPEAKER_03:Well, that's a great segue, Carol, but that was sage advice for the public. Uh, give us one piece of advice each of you would give students in, you know, in early career professionals that are getting into the profession.
SPEAKER_02:Experience as much as you can, volunteer if you can afford to, but but build your networks, get to know people, join the wildlife society, you will meet more people that way. The more you give, the more you get back.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I would encourage people to um step outside their comfort zone, particularly when it comes to experiencing different cultures and how you know you develop an understanding in how wildlife and the importance of it and how everything works in North America. But the relationship humans and wildlife varies a lot from place to place. And all of that will affect the future of wildlife as well as the future of people. Set a goal throughout your career of experiencing the world more largely, and and that will enrich your life and your professional competence considerably.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I would I would emphasize expanding your network outside of your own work culture and learn the value of collaboration and the synergy that comes from that. Creating time to think, which is, I think, rare in people's lives today. Embrace diversity in thinking, what others think, and be respectful of those with counterviews, and strive to be an honest brooper. And what I would like, what I tell people, I I go back to Alvis Murray in 1954 in the journal Wildlife Management, in a classic paper he wrote called Ethics and Wildlife Management. And I'll paraphrase what he said, but essentially he said, give our profession the dignity it deserves by helping the public interpret facts that will contribute to human understanding of all in nature.
SPEAKER_00:Can you think of a moment in your career that just you always come back to?
SPEAKER_01:Well, of course, the proudest moment is when I was informed that I was picked for the Leopold Award because that is you are picked by your peers, and essentially your peers are saying your career has not only been worthwhile, it's been exceptional, and nothing can top that. However, I have my own things that I feel real accomplishment having having been part of. One of them was in my career with the Forest Service, at the time the agency was starting to make its important paradigm shift from traditional sustained yield management to ecosystem-based management. I was in a position to help that happen, a position in Washington, D.C. where we helped that. And I take great pride in that. And the other thing is what I often say the hardest job I ever had, but the one I'm proudest of, was building a brand new natural resources program, forestry and wildlife program, and fully interdisciplinary program at a brand new university, which was the University of Northern BC. Very, very tough. Yeah. But uh but looking back on it and looking at the the people we graduated from that program and the difference they're making, uh great sense of accomplishment.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Winnie, it sounds like you've had a real lasting impact, and it's no wonder that you were selected to be a recipient of the highest award that we can give. John, what about you?
SPEAKER_04:Well, you know, I I guess I think in terms of things that that humble me, you know, as opposed to, you know, pride per se. And I and what I think I'm most humbled by today is when I run into former students that I've mentored, whether they were in an undergraduate class I taught, graduate class I taught, or were my former grad students, and uh and I hear from them and they tell me how much I influenced their their lives and their choices and their careers I've had. You say, you know, I'm where I am because of you, and I think, you know, I I I didn't do anything, you know, and it just it just really humbles you when you when you run into those folks after years and years and years, and they and they tell you these things, and you say, I'm not I'm not worthy, I'm not deserving of that kind of a thing. But it just I think underscores how important teaching and mentoring is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, keeping it in the past, can you think of a of a moment in your career that you just look back and you laugh and you're like, wow, I can't believe that happened to me or that I did that. And you know, tell us what you learned from a blunder or a funny field moment.
SPEAKER_04:Well, it involves a bear. We were going in on a a bear den in the winter, and if this was in western, actually not far from where I live now in western Massachusetts, and this particular female we presumed would have cubs, and she was in a very long brush pile in an old clear cut. And so we were, you know, we snuck up on it and we were digging through the snow and through the twigs, trying to find her, we couldn't find her. So I started to tunnel in from one end of it. And as I was tunneling in, I had a wire saw and I'm cutting the branches, and I come to snow that's that's hardened. I thought, oh, there's something warm on the other side. So I'm getting excited. I'm pounding it with my fist, breaking it, and going in, and I can see within arm's reach black fur that was just undulating. And so I come back out. I said, Oh my god, are you here? And uh I said, Oh, can you can you can you get a jab at her at her butt or her shoulder? I said, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. I went back in with a flashlight. Again, the fur was just undulating them. Looked, what am I looking at? And all of a sudden, this eyeball opens up, and I was face to face with this adult female bear, and I'm shining light right in her eyes, I blinking, and we can't get her. I can't get her from here. And we tried to get in, but the cubs were crying. She was popping her jaws, so we gave up. We were able to capture her following summer with hounds treeing her, uh, but no sign of the cubs. You know, she typically what they'll do is they'll send them up a tree and take you on a jolly chase through the woods. The next winter, she was in a different site in these rocks. And so we went in, jabbed her, and I'm taking her out of the den, you know, trying to be really careful with her legs, you know, and she'd take out this mobilized animal, try not to injure her, and I got whacked in the head. And said, Load up another dart. And so did that, and some one of my colleagues, Mark Sayer, the late Mark Sayer, took that cub out and got whacked in the head. Well, he was taken, it was a yearling point, of course. And so we jabbed that last one, and I tumbled in from the top in those rocks, and that we we had to jab that 70-pound male cub three times before he would go down. But at that point, I was sitting with my snowshoes off in this hole I excavated with the bear's head right between my legs, and it's looking at me. And it's only a 70-pound bear, but I said, This isn't going to be good if he decides to take a break for it. Unfortunately, his eyes started reaching and pull him out. But Mark had a son that was a real uh handful, well, Jake. So we we usually didn't name bears, but we named that one Jake. He was a handful.
SPEAKER_01:So my most serious blunders have been, I'd say, call them cultural blunt blunders, failure to really think about the culture I was in versus my own. Some of them are sufficiently embarrassing that better left for a small group after I've had a pint or two. Some of them are very instructional. So, for example, in the 1980s, I joined a project in India working between the U.S. Forest Service, my employer, and the Wildlife Institute of India. And you have to understand that when I came into the profession, not only were there not really other women, they were very few, but there was also attitudes that women can't do the job, you know. Um, and so I had developed this creed that I would always pull my own weight and be seen to be pulling my own weight. So nobody could accuse me of, you know, not being up to the task. In preparing to go to India, I knew we'd be traveling from park to park and forest to forest on trains a lot. And this is before the days when suitcases had wheels. And so I thought, okay, how am I going to be self-sufficient here? So I found a luggage cart, like a foldable luggage cart, and I said, boy, I'm set. I'm going to show those guys. So we'd pull into a train station, and the local people would swoop in to help with bags, and I'd say, nope, thank you. Whip out my luggage cart, tie all my stuff on, and haul it up the ramp. And my colleagues were looking at me like, especially the Indian colleagues, like, hmm. And so this went on for the first few days, and finally my Indian colleague took me aside and he said, I've been delegated to speak with you. You are total embarrassment. You are just embarrassing us to death. And I went, What? Well, the way you whip out that luggage cart and you, you know, and I go, Well, I'm carrying my own weight. I don't want to burden anybody. He goes, those people that sweep in to get the luggage, that's their job. That's how they feed their families. Everyone understands, except you, that this is an essential thing that they have to do to make a living. And you are depriving them of that source of income to feed their families. And I'm going, oh God. That was a big lesson. So, you know, always when you're going into someplace, kind of park your assumptions behind and kind of figure out the landscape before you start pulling blunders.
SPEAKER_00:I'm glad that someone eventually told you what was going on. But I I I wonder why they waited so long and didn't just tell you right away that this was, you know, how it's done here. Hoping I'd figure it out, which I didn't, right?
SPEAKER_02:I was thinking like, what was something, a moment that struck me with wildlife? And I remember when we were doing a big trapping project, small mammal trapping project up in Oregon. And I hadn't done a lot of work with small mammals before. So, and we were checking a lot of traps every day, and there weren't very many of us. So it was, you know, I was getting to see a lot of animals. And I picked up a trap, you know, a Sherman trap. So one of the small box traps. But picking up a trap and it was warm. And when you pick up a trap like that says it's warm, it's not just a mouse in it, it's something bigger that's filling the trap. And so I I was used to at the time we barehanded things. Um, and and so I I pulled the trap and I peeked in, and all I could do are teeth. And it's like, what type of animal has that many teeth? So I I actually went back to the car, got out a guide, started keying out what this might be, brought my gloves back, and that was the first weasel I caught. So still happy that I was able to, you know, emerge unscathed. I think we'd caught mice in that trap the previous three or four days, and I'm sure it went into this dark space thinking there's going to be food in here. So I remember that, you know, the excitement of seeing a new animal. Um so that was really fun, but but I also thought it'd be good to bring in how we can blunder when we're new to things. But that's okay as long as we learn from those things. You know, Winnie just mentioned what she learned from that situation. She's talked about thinking about cultures and respecting the way other cultures practice that might be different from the way we do. I was thinking about starting to work with New Mexico jumping mice, which are an endangered, listed endangered. So, you know, I have a Fish and Wildlife Service permit. I have a certain number that I can take that I can harm or or kill without my permit being pulled. And when we first started working with the animals, there wasn't a whole lot known about how to do certain things with them. And so I remember when we started trying to radio collar them. So you got this little tiny animal that looks kind of like a little kangaroo. It's got small front seat, but very powerful for pushing, and it's got big back legs and can hop and a long tail. And so I'm trying to put a collar over this animal and it keeps, you know, flicking it off, you know. So we tried putting a little hat covering over it. We tried, we tried many things, and the animal stressed and we recovered it, but it was scary to almost lose this animal. And so that was just that learning, learning how to do this work. You know, you can you can blunder, you can lose animals that way. And so networking with other people, which is the next thing I did, I called up two other people who'd worked with the animal and said, Have you ever done this? And how do you do it? And so the next month I came back with somebody who had put transmitters on other jumping mice and other species. And we successfully started doing that work. And now I have about 80 home ranges for jumping mice. But at the beginning phases, you know, the whether it's the beginning of your thesis, the beginning of a new project, it's the scariest part, you know, because you don't know what you're doing yet. There's so much to learn. Um, so giving yourself a little grace and making sure you're talking to other people, learning what you can, learning about cultures, whatever it might be. You know, just forgive yourself if you have failures. We're all going to have failures, and that's how we learn.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Carol, Winnie, John, thank you three so much for joining us today and for taking us back and showing us some history, telling us your story. We just really appreciate everything that you've contributed to the profession and to our society. So thank you so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.