Saving Wildlife with Sam

Jen Miller: Sea Otters, Eco-Grief, and the Conservationist's Path Back to Hope

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Jen Miller is Senior Manager of the Sea Otter Fund at the Wildlife Conservation Network, and her path has been anything but linear. A PhD from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies studying tigers and livestock depredation in India. Wolves and jaguar reintroduction policy at Defenders of Wildlife. International wildlife trafficking grants at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And now, one of conservation's most genuinely hopeful comeback stories: bringing sea otters back to 800 miles of coastline where they've been absent for over a century.


Sea otters were once called "soft gold," hunted so relentlessly in the 18th and 19th century maritime fur trade that 99% of their population was wiped out. Today, with 3,000 in central California and real momentum building around reintroduction, they're at the center of one of the ocean's most important ecological recovery stories. As a keystone species, when sea otters return, kelp forests follow, and when kelp forests return, everything else follows too.


But the biology might be the easy part. Getting to yes with fishermen, tribes, state and federal agencies, and coastal communities is where the real work happens.


Jen also speaks honestly about the emotional interior of conservation: eco-grief, climate anxiety, burnout, and the working group she co-founded called Revive, a global community of practice helping conservationists build the resilience to keep going for the long haul.


Bonus 5-Minute Guided Resilience Practice with Jen

Feeling eco-grief, climate anxiety, or the everyday weight of change? Jen leads a short guided body sensing practice you can use anywhere, anytime.


About the Sea Otter Fund

The Sea Otter Fund at the Wildlife Conservation Network supports research, community engagement, and the logistical groundwork needed to reintroduce sea otters across their historic range. With 3,000 southern sea otters in central California and an 800-mile gap to close, the fund is focused on the science, the stakeholder relationships, and the socioeconomic research needed to get to yes, with tribes, fishermen, and coastal communities leading the way.


In this conversation:

  • 0:00 - Introduction
  • 16:10 - Sea otters: from 300,000 to near-extinction and back
  • 24:10 - Why great white sharks are accidentally blocking sea otter recovery
  • 37:00 - The Sea Otter Fund: closing the 800-mile gap
  • 43:20 - Revive: building emotional resilience in conservation
  • 58:50 - Guided 5-minute emotional resilience practice with Jen


Learn more:


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SPEAKER_00

Hope and sea otters actually feel so light and bubbly as a species. I mean, to work on sea otters has really rekindled my sense of joy as a conservationist because I came from working on songbird trafficking, which was a very dark and depressing topic and really was quite challenging emotionally to navigate as a conservationist because of the mortality involved, the number of birds we would lose being trafficked and moved in such brutal conditions.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to Saving Wildlife with me, Sam Williams. This is where we get to hear from amazing conservationists about their life and work and all the incredible things they do to save wildlife. Jen, I've got to know you for your work with sea otters, but when I chatted about having a podcast with you, I realized there's so much more that you've been involved with that we're going to talk about. I don't feel like I can do an introduction just this. So how about you introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_00

Sure. I'm Jen Miller. I'm with the Wildlife Conservation Network and I direct the Sea Otter Fund. I am a scientist by background. I'm an ecologist, a wildlife conservationist, but I've also worked in policy and now in grant making. So I've covered a suite of different ways that we do conservation in the world. I am from Northern California. I grew up in Sebastopol, which is on the coast. It's in Sea Otter range. Uh, and found my way to college in Los Angeles working in organismal biology. So an entryway into ecology and birds was my first entree. Great! Uh yeah, I love bird watching because you can see them everywhere in contrast to big cats, which is the other passion that I worked on. So I see myself as a human wildlife coexistence specialist. And I worked on a lot of different species around the world. So I did my PhD at the Yale School of Forestry in India, focused on tigers and leopards and livestock depredation and the conflicts with people around that. I worked on thereafter my postdoc with uh the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, with Panthera, the NGO, and with UC Berkeley on lion trophy hunting in South Africa. And then worked as a scientist with Defenders of Wildlife in Washington, DC on wolves and rancher conflicts, uh, as well as drag wire potential for reintroduction in the Southwest. And then found myself moving to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, our government agency in the US focused on wildlife, on wildlife trafficking and policy. And I managed grants on the international front.

SPEAKER_02

Going all the way back, what was it that led you into the into conservation? Were you into animals as a kid? Was there something anything in particular that got that caught your attention and was formative for you?

SPEAKER_00

So I grew up in a family of people who loved nature. My grandma really loved taking me out. And so grew up in both the Redwoods as well as the coast. And so she took me to a nature center started by Elizabeth Twilliger, who here in Northern California is a very famous elder who started a nature center for children. And so I remembered my, I don't know, fourth grade, third grade birthday party at the Twilliger Center, looking at the giant grizzly that used to be in California there holding snakes and that kind of introduction, that hands-on introduction to wildlife. I later worked as a camp counselor. And, you know, that entryway really helped me connect to nature from an early age. I think I decided to become a wildlife biologist in college when my dad took me to India. And we went on a tiger safari in Corbett National Wildlife Park there. And that was the first time I heard about tigers and leopards living in people's spaces. And people there in India coexist with them, not to say that it's easy, but they don't remove carnivores from their landscapes in the way that we do here in the US. And I was so curious by that. And so that really committed, like helped me commit to wanting to know more about how people share spaces with wildlife.

SPEAKER_02

That must be quite challenging. It's hard to imagine having never really been in that situation where you're living with an apex predator that can take you out. That must be a very different mindset for people living in that way and um farming and living on the land in those areas. How how does that affect people and the way that they approach dealing with like nature around them?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and in India, the religious and cultural values are very different than here in the US. You know, our dominant culture is based on a Christianity approach. And so there's a different relationship with nature. And in India, there is a level of tolerance for having big carnivores in your backyard and just accepting that you'll lose some livestock to those animals. Um, it's like sort of a natural nature tax, if you will, or just a part of being connected to and sharing space. I mean, you are part of nature there. And so that's the way that they see it. So not to say that that's easy, like they do have challenges. It definitely affects their livelihood. And the Forest Department has set up different mechanisms like livestock compensation. And so that's what I was studying when I was there. But it is a different approach than when we'd removed our wolves, for example, or our coyotes, like we continue to remove the today.

SPEAKER_02

And there's very little tolerance for that. You wouldn't just accept that half of your animals get taken or something. That wouldn't happen either. I can't imagine it.

SPEAKER_00

I'd say we're building back our tolerance for nat for big carnivores here in the US. Um, and very consciously shifting more towards a stewardship mentality and more reconnecting with nature in that way. And so, yeah, recognizing that they have a place in nature. And some of that is driven by science and understanding the benefits of those carnivores because carnivores do have a big impact on shaping the ecosystems and they play a strong role in that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, they're super important.

SPEAKER_00

They are.

SPEAKER_02

So when you've been there studying them, I assume you got out into the field and had some experiences. Is there any particularly memorable experience that you that has really stuck with you?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, so many. I remember one time we were walking into a site where a where a cow had been killed. And this is usually how I collected my data. So I say I work on tigers, but it was really working on dead dead cows and goats and following in the wake of the tigers and leopards as they killed. Um, and so this was a very fresh kill. It had only been killed the day before. And so I went in with the forest department. So I had, you know, a forest guard with me, and I had two of their assistants, and I had my research assistant. We had about four or five other guys besides me. We were walking through a very dense habitat. So there was uh lantana bushes all around us, big forest trees, very dense. And they knew that the cow kill was ahead of us. And so the tiger was probably in the vicinity.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And there was this moment where all the guys started singing because they wanted the tiger to know that we were approaching its kill and try to flush it off so that we could take our measurements. And that was such a powerful experience because we could all palpably feel the fear walking towards this animal, like potentially this tiger that was probably feeding on its on its kill. And they started singing and they started singing in Hindi. And I was at the back, you know, following and and we got to the kill, and there were pug marks, there were paw prints around the animal. So we knew the tiger was around us. We took our measurements as quickly as we could, and then we got out of there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

But knowing that tigers, and I mean, I especially tigers, many other big animals too, but especially tigers, when you see a tiger as I have on safari, usually, thankfully not by foot, but gone out as a tourist or as a researcher in a Jeep to see these animals, you get goosebumps because never else will you see such a large animal. Tigers are the biggest big cat in the whole world and they are beautiful and they are strike fear in your heart because you know, evolution has made it such. So it's pretty incredible to be working on animals like these where you know they could kill you if they wanted to. But, you know, in that case, we were safe in a Jeep. I really do recommend if you've never been to India, going and seeing them because it's fairly easy to see tigers when you're on safari.

SPEAKER_02

All right. I've worked in zoos as a teenager, and and there was one occasion I got to get behind the scenes in the in the tiger area, and they were darting some tigers and just being within a meter or so of tigers. I mean, now modern zoos have got glass and you can get that kind of thing, but you it's glass, whereas this was just wire, and and it was just like, holy cow, you know, this is this is really quite scary.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So and it's good. I think that that sense of fear, that's we're human, right? So it's a like a reminder of that innate sense of the predator prey.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think I think if we get those experiences more often, we probably worry about the small stuff a lot less. Yes. So so, but it's not just tigers. You've worked on other species as well. Uh ferrets, I think, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, black-footed ferrets.

SPEAKER_02

Tell us a little bit about those guys.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, black-footed ferrets are also an incredible carnivore. They're a weasel in the Mustelid family, and they're found in the Great Plains of the U.S. So those flat grasslands around Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska. And they are an incredible species. They were thought to be extinct, but in the 80s were rediscovered in one population. And so since then, the United States Fish and Wildlife, as well as state agencies like in Wyoming, have been captive breeding them through a network of zoos across the country. And so they release a few hundred ferrets every year, and that helps supplement a suite of populations. And so they're still very threatened and are being brought back. Um, but they all came from this one, because of that bottleneck of them, you know, nearly going extinct, uh, due to ranchers concerned about their livestock. The thought is that black-footed ferrets create holes or their prey. The prairie dogs create holes that livestock fall into, trip over, break their legs, yeah, break their legs. But actually, ferrets are an important driver of the ecosystem. So they manage the prairie dog populations so that they don't, you know, explode in number. And so they help limit prairie dogs, which actually eat the grass that livestock graze on. So yeah, it's all part of the ecosystem. But black-footed ferrets are really cool. They're weasely, they are so cute, and they will bite your face off if they get at it because they are ferocious carnivores. And so handling them is is you only do it under sedation, just like with sea otters. Um, they're actually in the same family of weasels.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and so yeah, so working on black-footed ferrets was a treat because it was uh, you know, the ability to see this captive bred breeding program and how important that is for the system.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, because they are still quite vulnerable to plague, which is a pathogen brought from outside the US, an invasive pathogen. And so plague as well as challenges with prairie dogs being killed and poisoned means that they have fewer prey and they're vulnerable to these diseases that have been brought in. And so very difficult for black-footed ferrets right now.

SPEAKER_02

And that that work was more hands-on management, whereas you the tiger work, there's more research in human wildlife stuff. Was there a human wildlife conflict? Uh I mean, you've talked about that issue, but was that part of your work again? Was it as a continuing theme as well as the hands-on stuff?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Yeah, black-footed ferrets again, like there there are some biological challenges of how can you limit plague and how can you bring back prairie dogs, but it really is a social challenge. That's the biggest challenge for black-footed ferrets is working with ranchers and helping ranchers understand and be open to having black-footed ferrets come back on their land, working with tribes in the same way, and then of course with state and federal land as well. So reintroducing them in different places so they can come back. That is the the challenge, that relationship and understanding that nature is is there and can help help the ecosystem stay strong and give benefits to people as well.

SPEAKER_02

What comes after ferrets then? What's the next chapter for you?

SPEAKER_00

So I worked on ferrets when I was at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the service, I was also working on international grant making around wildlife trafficking. And so I was managing and we actually launched a program on songbird trafficking. So going back to birds again, songbirds are trafficked from South America, from the Guiana Shield, which is Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil. And they're brought into the US, Canada, and the Netherlands actually for their song.

SPEAKER_02

I always thought of that in a European context, but I didn't realize it was a thing here. Yeah. So is it is it competitive or is it just it is, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, singing competitions are are the reason. And there's a big market for different species out in Asia as well. Indonesia is a really big hub for singing competition. And as colonialism brought people around the world, that same culture has come to South America. And so, yeah, so these are seed finches. They're beautiful little brown birds that are from the grasslands of the Amazon. Um, and so those are moved, those are caught in the wild grasslands of Guyana largely, and then moved into the cities, and then even trafficked across the oceans to the US, especially New York City. And what was cool about that program is that we found that the birdmen, as they call themselves, the the keepers of the birds, are really strong stewards of birds. They want the birds to be healthy in their populations. Unfortunately, right now, the level of demand is driving 15 bird species to near extinction.

SPEAKER_02

I spent some time in Brazil studying Lia's macaws, and I was working with local guys that would have been hired and were kind of just laborers working on the ground, but some of them were previously poachers. And and I came to realize that they actually loved the birds, and it was just the the only way they could make money and sustain themselves and maintain that love of the birds was to trade, you know, to poach them and sell them. And they didn't really make that much money, but I mean they were it they were living in poverty basically. But it was fascinating for me to have my eyes open to the fact that they're these are not bad people. It's just there there's a circumstance where that that just is the combination of factors that comes together.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the same in Guyana. The Americans that we visited told us when they have to send their when they want to send their kids to school, they kids have to wear shoes. And so when they need to buy a sh buy shoes, they'll go and capture birds. So it's you know directly connected to the cash economy that sometimes they need to take advantage of. Um, so really it's coming from that place rather than some malicious need. Perhaps different than the ivory trade in some ways, because the scale of cash isn't isn't the same, you know, they're not selling for that degree. And it's really the middlemen from the bigger cities that are driving the trafficking and this opportunity for them to catch the birds, sell them. Um and these aren't, you know, very old traditions, they're just a few generations old. So it's a relatively new practice, at least in the Americas.

SPEAKER_02

Interesting. There's a couple of things there that make me jump to sea otters now because the there was the thing that endangered sea otters way back was the trade in their furs. Right. And I my unlimited understanding was that was like a big boom industry at the time. And people were making a lot of money from selling selling furs. That activity decimated sea otter populations. And do you have ideas of numbers of what they were and what the lowest point was?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the thought was there were 300,000 sea otters across their range from Japan through the Alaskas down to Baja, Mexico. And the maritime fur trade in the 1700s and 1800s wiped out 99% of them. So over a million sea otters were killed in that period. Um it left only 11 remnant populations of say 30 or very few individuals across that range. Um, and one was in Big Sur, California, and that is the population that has recovered down south in the southern part of their range. We're sitting here in San Francisco, and you can find them just two hours south in Monterey, California. There's a population of 3,000 there. So that is the southern sea otter. It's one of the three subspecies. Oh, the subspecies.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And so the other two subspecies are the northern sea otter, that's the one in Alaska, where we have a hundred thousand sea otters, and so those populations have come back uh quite well. And then the the third subspecies is over in Asia.

SPEAKER_02

If you look at the Pacific, we'll we'll put a map on uh and it's kind of the arc of the Pacific around the Aleutian Islands.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

And and I'm actually gonna go to Hokkaido in about two weeks, which is where the sea otters are.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, fabulous.

SPEAKER_02

Um that's an amazing range, and it's cold. Like that's cold, those are cold places. Yep. So how do they how do they cope?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so the northern sea otter is a slightly bigger animal. It's got you know warm fur. You can see if you look at photos, it looks like a bulk, it looks like it's wearing a big fur coat.

SPEAKER_02

They look very cuddly. They do, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um and the southern sea otter is a little smaller, a little more trim, a little, you know, probably a little different coat. But you know, sea otters in general, they're the only marine mammal that doesn't have blubber. So they keep themselves warm entirely through their metabolism and that very thick skin and thick, warm coat that they have. And that's why the fur traders were were wiping them out because they wanted to benefit from those fur coats too. So they used to be called soft gold, and that they were very valuable. And so if you ever get a chance to touch a sea otter's fur, it's very soft and and warm, and you can imagine it would make a very nice coat.

SPEAKER_02

So what was it was coats, people were making coats and just for keeping warm in those places. Exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So today we have, you know, the Southern Sea Otter, we've got that population of 3,000, and we have a number of different big gaps in their range, including an 800-mile gap from central California to northern Washington. And that is the first priority for the Seattle Fund, and it's a really big area of momentum around for Seattle partners right now in terms of restoration and recovery.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I'm stuck on the the fact that they heat themselves by metabolism. So I want to just ask about that because that must mean either like their heart rates are just like hummingbirds, they're racing, but they must also, I mean, they they're they're a carnivore, so they're they're eating urchins and mollusks and things like that.

SPEAKER_00

Over a hundred prey species.

SPEAKER_02

Oh really?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they love crabs also, clams, uh, snails, all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. The stuff that's not moving very fast, which is helpful because they've got to find a lot of it. Because presumably they've got they, if they're if it's metabolism, they're burning through a lot of food.

SPEAKER_00

They do. They eat 25% of their body weight every single day. That's a stuff. So for you or me, that'd be like crushing, you know, 30 pounds of tofu or 30 burritos or something like that. Yeah. So quite a lot of food, which means the life of a sea auditor is eating, uh, sleeping, and grooming.

SPEAKER_02

So now back to the range. I'm glad to just take that one. I was kind of that was in the back of my mind was uh bugging me. There's this gap. And what what does an individual utter how far do they roam in a day or or do they have a territory? They they're not they're kind of communal, aren't they? They kind of hang out together.

SPEAKER_00

They're highly social. Yeah. Um, they do have territories where a male will hold down a certain area. And males, of course, are the largely the ones that will venture out and like distribute to a new area. So they'll try to find that. And we so we occasionally see actually individual otters that go farther north or south, and those are the males usually looking to find trying to find a a new territory. But uh so a group of sea otters is called a raft. Okay. And so you can see those in either in the central California or up in Alaska when you go, you'll see them. And those can be a mix of males and females, or a group of females with pups, or a group of males, and so they mix their sociality in these rafts at different phases of their time.

SPEAKER_02

So when we look at reintroduction with macaws, although there's been examples of macaws flying over 70 kilometers in a day, but when we do the reintroduction, we find that they don't actually go that far. And and it's actually been very slow for them to uh disperse and and recolonize areas. So the reintroduction actually has to be on several kind of dots on the map to cause that uh recolonization. Is that kind of how that's going to have to be across this gap of habitat?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's actually what Seattle conservationists are are trying to think through right now. Um, so the thought is to ideally you'd reintroduce over that long of an extent, 800 mile gap. You'd probably want to reintroduce into a few sites so that they could then naturally expand beyond that and establish, you know, their their populations to be connected. What's really special about that particular gap in their range is that it kind. Covers a hybrid zone between the northern subspecies of sea otter and the southern. And so Oregon is a hybrid zone. So you could, in theory, reintroduce either the southern sea otter or the northern sea otter. So that's also a topic of conversation.

SPEAKER_02

Is there a selection pressure on that? I guess as it gets the the northern is bigger and so can endure the cold better. So that probably is a selection pressure that's a good idea. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So the question is, you know, the Oregon coast is thought to be more similar to Washington or even to farther north in Canada or Alaska. So there's definitely, you know, those who believe the northern sea otter would do better, reintroduced into Oregon, and those who believe that the southern would probably. There are some um political challenges with reintroducing the southern sea otter because it is listed as a threatened species on the Endangered Species Act of the US. Whereas the northern, only a few stocks, only a few populations that are in decline out on the Aleutian Islands are listed as threatened. So here we start to move into the policy realm of things, which can complicate uh conservation and also help conservation. But the thought is to reintroduce the northern sea otter, probably because it'll be a little bit easier and because tribes are really the ones who are interested in taking a leadership role, especially in Oregon. And so for tribes to be able to reintroduce, it'll be a little bit easier in terms of the management to reintroduce a species that is not listed or a subspecies that is not listed on the ESA.

SPEAKER_02

In terms of like moving individuals around and needing permits and things like that. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Because if you say, well, yeah, the whole suite of of issues. But that's the that's the thought. So the the reintroduction right now is there's a lot of excitement around it. There have been some interesting progressions led by tribes and led by an organization called the Alaka Alliance that is tribally informed and was founded by tribal members of the Silets tribe. They're based in Oregon. And so they have sort of encouraged the federal government more to think about reintroduction, as it probably is the only way you'd see that 800-mile gap re-established. And that is because I think you were maybe getting at this too is why haven't the southern sea otter, that 3,000 pop, you know, member population in central California, why hasn't that expanded? But what we found that is in the last 30 years, it it hasn't expanded. We're basically at carrying capacity, but the challenge for sea otters there pushing north is sharks. Oh, really? So great white sharks are expanding their distribution with climate change and coming up into colder waters. Exactly. And what is just north of you know Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay is Año Nuevo, which is a really incredible elephant seal colony. Oh, yes. Tons of big pups coming into the water, really big density of sharks. Same with the Farallon Islands just off the bay here in San Francisco, really dense shark area. And so it's like a band of sharks that sea otters are having trouble passing through. And sharks don't eat sea otters, but they nibble at them, and those bites cause mortality that's quite significant. So that is like their biggest challenge in terms of pushing north right now. And we found that that's the thought is that that's the that's the limit, that's the limitation pushing them.

SPEAKER_02

Is there an interaction between the seals and the otters? Do they have any No, they coexist mostly. Okay. Yeah. So we like seals, but sharks are a little bit pesky.

SPEAKER_00

We do. I mean, you were asking about the metabolism, and I want to come back to that because sea otters, like we said, you know, they eat 25% of their body weight, which means they eat a lot of food. And so when sea otters are in a system, they drive and influence the ecosystem significantly because they're eating things like urchins, which nibble on kelp. And so uh one of the challenges off the coast of, you know, the west coast of the US is we're seeing kelp collapse due to marine heat waves and other influences. And so one of the ways to help bring back kelp is to reintroduce sea otters.

SPEAKER_02

Because then it lowers the urchin population, which gives the kelp a breather. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

And that's called a trophic cascade. And so sea otters are considered a keystone species. They're a species that if you take them out, the ecosystem will significantly change. But if you put them back in, it restores its balance. And so the same in estuan systems in salt marshlands, where we've got crabs overgrazing seagrass. And so when you introduce otters, you'll see those seagrass come back. And that's actually what they've seen in Elkhorn Slough, which is in Monterey, where near Monterey, where that's that southern sea otter is. We've seen there's been an invasive green crab. And when you've reintroduced sea otters, like the Monterey Bay has used that as a site to release some of the stranded pups that they've then raised in as through their surrogacy program in the aquarium, and then drop them into the Elkhorn Slough, as that population has re-established there. Uh, we've seen the crabs decrease and the eelgrass, seagrass come back. Oh wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's that's fantastic. Is there a cultural aspect of what they eat? Do they eat different things in different ways in different places? So in the world.

SPEAKER_00

So individual sea otters do learn from their from their mothers, and they tend to specialize in just a few of the 100, you know, prey species that they they could avail of. So in Elkhorn Slough, there's an animal called Ruby, and she an individual otter. Okay. And she loves birds. That's a very rare species to beating birds. Very rare prey, prey to be selected. I'm not sure I like Ruby and but she she learned how to how to how to catch birds, seabirds, especially gulls and um really cormorants. Yeah. So she's that's actually the way they identify her, in addition to her her red bands, which is why she's called Ruby. She's got flipper tags that are red.

SPEAKER_02

How does she catch a cormorant?

SPEAKER_00

Amazing, right? I know. I'd like to see that in action.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think I actually would. That's that's pretty amazing because their cormorants are big, big birds.

SPEAKER_00

It is, and then so that's remarkable for Ruby, but very rare. Mostly we see sea otters, you know, specializing on maybe they like crabs because they acquired the taste of it from their mom, or maybe they're specializing in clams or worms.

SPEAKER_02

Just taste, but also like the techniques to open those animals up and that they get that learned behavior.

SPEAKER_00

Sea otters are one of the only marine mammals to use tools, and they'll they'll dive down, they'll find a rock or a sharp object that they they find particularly useful for that prey species, and then they'll actually tuck it in their armpit because they have a pocket of skin in their armpit. Really? So they'll keep that tool for a number of days or weeks and then maybe find a new tool. But they use the tool, they, you know, sea otters lie on their back. Exactly. And that's actually how you tell a sea otter in the water. Here we go. Um you so sea otters, unlike seals, which of course are swimming like this, and you see their little head. Yeah. Sea otters are, you know, they have their feet up and they have their head up. And so that's how you can tell from a distance when you've seen a sea otter. Um, and so they lie on their back and they have their prey species, their maybe their clam in this case, on their stomach and they bash it with a tool. Yeah. Or they hold the tool on their chest and then they bash the prey again. Okay. And so they're, yeah, they're very good at opening because you know, they they can't use their teeth to always open these very sharp objects that they're eating, these mollusks. And so they use these tools.

SPEAKER_02

And do they ever come out of the water?

SPEAKER_00

They do. Oh, they do. They love to to bask on the on the the shores. But they do most of their behaviors, they mate in the water, they give birth in the water, and so it's just an occasional animal that'll come out and bask. The other way that they love to, you know, soak up the sun is to put their paws out of the water. And so sometimes you'll see them sleeping with their paws out, and that's to to absorb the sun through their through their paws. Cute. They live in this very cold Pacific Ocean.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, really, really fascinating animals. Let's talk about the conservation, their conservation. So the fund is going to be distributing money and to pro supporting projects that are doing reintroduction, working with communities as well, and raising awareness.

SPEAKER_00

So we support research and technology development. And that's a really big part of applying all the incredible science that's been done over the decades to how do we bring back sea otters? So, one of the first grants that we gave out was to UC Santa Cruz, to some researchers who were doing work in the Elkhorn Slough here in Central California, looking at the sociality. And so, if we were to want to pick up some of the wild otters and move them north, which individuals should we move? Should we take an entire raft of animals or should we take, you know, so it's all about understanding the demographics of the animals and what would do well. Another, I'll just, it's related to reintroduction. Uh, one of the challenges of reintroducing sea otters is that they have a very strong homing instinct. So, what we've seen with some of the reintroductions in Oregon before is that they actually left. Uh, they won't, they went home. And so a new technique that's being explored is can we take some of these stranded pups? So maybe I should explain that. Moms, when they are nursing, they leave their pups at the surface of the water in order to dive down and forage for their prey. They wrap their otter, their otter pups in kelps so they stay at the surface and don't move around. But sometimes moms die when they're foraging or get killed. Um, so pups will be stranded and people find them and hear them because they call very loudly when they're searching for moms. And the Monterey Bay Aquarium has over the last few decades learned and experimented and then figured out how to successfully pair stranded pups with surrogate moms. And so all their exhibit animals are females and they do that so they can rotate them to be surrogate moms to these pups. Interestingly, they so they reintroduce these captive-raised pups into Elkhorn Slough, and they found that the pups, when they're reintroduced there, they don't leave. They don't go home because they don't know where else to go home. They've been raised in captivity and they've been released. And so the thought for reintroduction in Oregon or Northern California is to release a combination of captive-raised pups uh with wild individuals. And that will help sort of seed a population that will stick. And so this is an idea that needs to be piloted, but it's been experimented on, you know, in the Elkhorn Slough as a great case study. And so that's another example of the sort of work that we're supporting through the fund.

SPEAKER_02

And is the when you talk about reintroduction, is it a hard reintroduction? It's like you chuck them out and off they go. Or is there a kind of is there a holding pen where they acclimatize?

SPEAKER_00

Probably something like that.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

But these are all, again, this is all the piloting that will be happening. Even before we get so so the fund will support some of the logistics of reintroductions. And so when you think about moving animals, you know, from Central California or from Alaska, the northern subspecies, down to Oregon, say, uh, there's a lot of logistical challenges there. Um, so some of the aquariums are building up facilities in order to hold animals, and we've have to think about transportation. We have to think about technical divers and training up scientific divers to be able to have the sizable crews that would be able to both capture and then move and release those animals. So that's on the logistics side of how you'd actually do it. But we're still in the phase of getting to yes. And so we are at the phase where there are a lot of conversations going on between different parties, so tribes, fishermen, conservationists, the state and the federal government. And we're at a point, the reason we launched the fund last year in 2025 is because there's a lot of excitement and there's a lot of momentum. There's a lot of conversations happening in the way we haven't seen happen over the last few decades about uh closing this 800-mile gap. And so the fact that all of these different groups are at the table talking with one another, trying to figure out how we would do this, do we want this? And there are some significant concerns from different groups of fishermen about the economic impacts. And so the Fish and Wildlife Service, which did a feasibility assessment just a few years ago, identified that the biggest gap in our knowledge is the socioeconomic piece. And so that's going to be a big part of what the Seattle Fund supports is doing these studies, talking with people, facilitating conversations in order to understand what are the challenges going to be, what are the economic and you know the changes potentially in people's livelihoods and lifestyles, because it's important to support fishermen in this transition, recognizing that we all want the marine ecosystems to be healthy. Um, but how to do that in a way that's respectful of lifestyles as well.

SPEAKER_02

Right. It and there's so there's so much there. Uh I've heard you talk about the ground swell, the not the ground swell, the swell that's there.

SPEAKER_00

The tidal swell.

SPEAKER_02

The tidal swell. And there's even celebrities like uh Taylor Swift, that's it, and my favorite artist. And um uh mine too. And it that's just amazing. And then Jane Goodall spent a lot of her last year advocating for this work as well. And to get that kind of exposure's phenomenal. Wonderful that she dedicated that time to this, and it I I think that's just it's just amazing to have that momentum, that interest from all these different parties. I'm just so sort of envious because I look at our reintroduction stuff that we're doing with Macause and lots of similar challenges. The biology of things is actually pretty easy. It's more this kind of the getting to yes, as you you mentioned. But there's a feasibility study that's been done already. That's that's huge. I mean, that's something that a small nonprofit can't even dream of, I don't think, for such on that scale. So, what goes into that and what does that tell you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so the feasibility assessment looked at the biological components and what all would be involved logistically is the capacity in place as well to be able to bring back sea otters. And the US Fish and Wildlife found, I mean, the the main outcome from that is that it is biologically feasible to bring back sea otters, but the socio side is the is the challenge, is is the gap in knowledge at this moment. So, you know, they proposed socioeconomic surveys and also workshops that would bring together different stakeholders to the same table to talk through these different aspects. And so one of the things I'm interested in exploring, especially to support fishermen, are financial compensation, a lot of different mechanisms that could be used for that. It's a pretty common practice with um human wildlife coexistence systems. Um but another element really is you know leaning into supporting tribes and what they their priorities are for restoring their landscapes and bringing back their cultural connections to sea otters. And so that's that's I what I'm particularly interested in supporting based on the priorities that tribes have across the West Coast. We have a lot of really incredible tribal leaders and and they are already engaged and and leading the way. So getting behind them feels very important at this stage.

SPEAKER_02

Fantastic work. Do you have any idea of if you got yes, how long it would take to bridge this gap?

SPEAKER_00

That's a great question. I think that once we ha had all the general consensus in place, I would guess a a few years only.

SPEAKER_02

Only a few years. That's amazing, actually.

SPEAKER_00

I think we have the system of aquariums up and down the coast that are engaged and interested and already building out facilities to to raise these surrogate raise these stranded pups and build up that part of the populations that would be reintroduced. We do need to do ecological monitoring to look at what the system what the ecosystems are like before otters are reintroduced so we can measure after, but also to understand which sites are the perfect sites. Um so we one of the another one of the grants that we gave initially last year through the Sea Otter Fund is to support researchers looking at modeling out the sites across the West Coast. So especially looking for these estuan systems where there's a little inlet from the coast. They're a little more protected from sharks.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

And there might be a good place to release them so they could get established and then, you know, recolonize and expand more into the marine system. So that model is basically complete at this point. And so we're beginning to look, and this is a way to actually bring all the stakeholders to the table. We're beginning to look at what the model says, which is completely based on biology and ecology and not on social dynamics. And so the social dynamics, you know, play out when you start to have the conversations about, okay, so these sites look potentially good. What would it mean to bring otters back? What would it mean to the economy, to the local coastal communities, to the tribes? How do people feel about that? And how does that look in terms of livelihoods?

SPEAKER_02

You mentioned tech. Is there is there particular tech that's being applied to the the management of the otters?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so one of the tech needs right now is the ability to track otters. So so far, tracking has been done with BHF or radiotelemetry that's actually been put inside otters surgically. And this is because they are one of the most wriggly species you as you can imagine. They don't have much of a place you could put a collar because they groom so aggressively. So they'll take off anything. And they also swim and they need to be able to go into little crevices. There's actually a similar challenge with black-footed ferrets, actually, because they're basically just a long cylinder. They don't have a neck. So putting a GPS tag that usually you'd use a collar to put around their neck, but it's not very, it's not, it doesn't work in the case of otters or black-footed ferrets. Um, so with otters, the thought right now is um the current way to tag them is with just a plastic tag that goes on their flipper. And so if we could develop GPS tags that are the same shape and can be attached in a similar way, the thought is that that would work. But that requires a very small technology that can withstand otters chewing aggressively with their teeth and banging with their tools and grooming so ferociously like they do to keep themselves warm.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and so right now, you know, GPS technology is is one of the things that we're working on with with a team of folks.

SPEAKER_02

What are the next steps with the fund to be able to go to this kind of scale? How how does that all what does that look like?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that reintroduction would cost$40 million over 12 years.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Um, that also answers your question about timeframe. That's once you're ready to reintroduce them. And so our fund has taken on that goal, recognizing that we won't be the only ones supporting in terms of funding all of this work, thankfully. But we are committed to raising about$3 million a year. And we're so thrilled to announce that in 2025 we did meet that fundraising goal. We raised over$3 million. And so that means we can support some of this incredible work that needs to happen at this phase and then warm up to the potential for reintroduction. And so that's that's the focus.

SPEAKER_02

That's that's really nice because I've talked to people that are working where animals are still experiencing devastating losses or have recently or in in the past decade, you know, with elephants and things like that. Actually, I'm not sure if that's within a decade, but anyway, that but it seems like this story is very optimistic. There's a lot of hope there, which you know definitely at times we we need. How does that feel for you? Because that must be uh must be a nice uh experience to be uh in doing this work at this moment. Yeah, how does that feel for you to be doing conservation that's actually making a difference?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thanks for that question. Uh hope and sea otters actually feel so light and bubbly as a species. I mean, to work on sea otters has really rekindled my sense of joy as a conservationist because I came from working on songbird trafficking, which was a very dark and depressing topic and really was quite challenging emotionally to navigate as a conservationist because of the mortality involved, the number of birds we would lose being trafficked and moved in such brutal conditions. Um there definitely are as a conservationist, I think in all of our work as conservationists, there are these highs and lows. There are these moments of joy and laughter when you're you're looking at a species misbehaving or being silly in nature in the wild, and hope for bringing back a species like the sea otter. And then this full gradient of the depression or the frustration when your conservation work isn't being effective. Um, and that is the normal spectrum that we ex that we should experience as humans doing work in the world. What I have noticed as a conservationist is that we often use optimism and hope as a coping mechanism, or it's been normalized within our workforce to say, man, you know, that species is going extinct. Like, but you know, we gotta keep at it because this is the only way to try to save things. Um, and not creating space and allowing space for feeling that full depth of emotion of grief that comes with the conservation as well. And so yeah, I have found that to be a challenge.

SPEAKER_02

Uh so this is an this is getting into an area that I'm very interested in because I've definitely had and seen others that have had difficult times to the point of basically sort of burnout and and giving up. And I think that there's a need for more support for this because I think cons and this is kind of actually partly why I I want to have this podcast because I think there's just amazing people and they're and we're our own worst enemies, and we're so dedicated to some you know, some species or some project that we're doing. People I've spoken to, like you know, Colleen and and her partner Keith and that their work in it's just Amazing that that what they endure, and and I've also seen when you can't endure anymore the the tremendous loss there is for conservation because you're losing somebody that's you know given 20 years and they've worked so hard, they've got such a network and so many so much knowledge, and if we can't look after them and then they burn out, we're back to square one. And it's like they talk about the if you replace a staff member, it's a certain cost, and it and it just seems like it's we just can't afford that loss. So we've got to look after people better, and that links to the work that you've started with. Revive, you've developed this sort of, I think it initially it's kind of the recognition of this stuff and trying to create this space.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so we launched Revive, it's a working group just last year. It's hosted by the Society of Conservation Biology, but it's a global network of people, a community of practice thinking about emotional resilience and well-being in the conservation professional workforce as well as students coming up in this area of work. And so what we're doing is first and foremost, we're trying to normalize talking about this rather than, you know, covering up or suppressing emotions of grief by saying, well, you know, somehow we'll get through it. Um, really creating the ability to talk with your colleagues about grief, about eco-grief and things like that. There just in the last five years, actually, there's been a recognition by different professional societies working in the psychology space that eco-grief, eco-anxiety, climate anxiety, that these are a new, not necessarily new, but newly recognized suite of emotions that are legitimate and are felt by people around the world, but especially people on the front lines, like conservationists.

SPEAKER_02

So I've heard of climate anxiety, but how would you describe eco-grief? What does that include?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so eco-grief and eco-anxiety are both the sense of like hopelessness, basically, around the future of the environment. So based on environmental doom, the future of environmental doom, and that can manifest as depression, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of isolation or loneliness, a sense of lack of purpose, or that your your mission and your efforts aren't making an impact. Um, so it can manifest in these different ways. And it really comes from seeing the world as it is, seeing these incredible losses and changes across the planet. I think, you know, social media and our ability to know what's happening across the world in such a transparent way over the last few decades, that's really changed.

SPEAKER_01

It's more than we can handle.

SPEAKER_00

It is more than we can handle. But even as a kid, you know, before all of that came, you know, just looking at the changes in in our local places, you could feel it. And so some of those, the like eco-grief and eco-anxiety are one spectrum of this suite of emotions. There's a few others that I really resonate with. Noctalgia is coined by astronomers. It's the sense of sky grief, losing the ability to see the sky, the night sky because of urbanization and the lights.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Or solstalgia is the sense of homesickness when you're at home because you no longer recognize your home because so much has changed.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And so this it really, those words are for us. Like they really speak to an experience that I myself have felt for decades. Um, and that many of us as conservationists even maybe led us to this work, but we haven't had a word for it. And so these words are helping us access a part of our feelings, sort of open almost like a gateway into understanding and allowing ourselves to feel into this space.

SPEAKER_02

There's there's one, and I'm very curious to know if there's a word for it where just peace, there's there's an absence of peace where peace being natural quiet. There's a fantastic book called One Square Inch of Silence, and it and it's a gentleman who talks about how we don't even have 15 minutes. Uh, there are very, very few places, and I think he almost concluded there was none left in North America, in the United States, where you can be for 15 minutes without some form of noise pollution from man human-made pollution, uh, noise pollution. I imagine if I wonder if there's a there's a term for that.

SPEAKER_00

But it's so it's not you should come up with one say other.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean it's really but it's really a thing where you just you're there and then a plane goes over, and it's just like you know, two people in a plane ruining the soundscape for everybody within 20 miles, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, it's just incredible.

SPEAKER_00

So all of that really can weigh heavy on our hearts. Um, and the the way that revive is has been created, like as a community of practice, we're thinking about how do we build our skill set to navigate emotional resilience, recognizing that as conservationists, even as humans on this planet, we're going to be navigating both the highs and the lows. And that's just a normal part of our work. But if we can acknowledge and have the tools to navigate that and re-center and process also these emotions and what they're leading us to, and if we can have a sense of community and be able to talk about this with friends, with colleagues in the workplace and actually use recognizing and feeling these feelings as a way to do our work better, perhaps more effectively, then it w it won't hamper, it won't lead to burnout as much. You know, there, I want to point out too, there's sort of two sides of distress as conservationists. There is a workplace culture of working too hard, the sense of urgency, because if we don't work hard enough, we're gonna lose the species, and it'll be because you didn't work hard enough, or because we just have so little capacity, so few people in this work, which is why we need more conservationists to do great work and new ideas and fresh ideas. Um but if you don't do that, you know, you'll the moment will be gone and the species will be gone, for example. Um, that is very much a workplace norm that we can change. And we can, if we identify it and we're conscious about it, we can try to encourage each other to work hours that are sustainable and think about approaches for, you know, avoiding burnout or addressing burnout. Um, and the other side of it is this more existential experience of um observing change in our planet and recognizing that as we watch that change and loss, it's actually us that's changing and loss because we're humans, we're part of the ecosystem. And so acknowledging that connection to nature um in a more fluid way uh and recognizing that as we watch the planet change, it's actually ourselves. And so doing some deep self-inquiry about what that means and what that feels like, that is uh where eco-grief is often coming from, is that deeper side. Um but you know, the burnout is also real, and that's really important to address.

SPEAKER_02

The challenge I have with my team, or at least the certainly the the programmatic side of the team, they're also dedicated that I never have to tell them, I never have to crack the whip, I have to tell them to take time off. And and they're all they're because they care so much, and I think that's a sort of just an innate problem with that we have as conservations, because we we want to fix things. It's a it's a complex challenge, a combination of things that leads to burnout, because I think some of the things you just talked about where you know connection and community are actually part of the way you you are become resilient, because resilience is not how you endure, it's how you recharge, I think is the quote. And I think it's what I've learned in my career is is that getting that recharge and taking time to to experience some thrills in my case, or some joy, or whatever it might be, and and that's really important to enable me to go back into work with with the energy that I feel I need to do with my job. But yeah, there's definitely been difficult times, and the wildlife conservation network has been amazing for me because of that sense of community among other conservationists, and I I think there's a there's another term here which which is kind of a bit more structural. I'm not very my thoughts are not very organized because this is new stuff to talk about, and I really enjoy it. But I I think there's a thing called impact anxiety where you if you start a new organization, you've got funders that are expecting results. And I find it hilariously ridiculous that a grant uh organization will ask for impact within a year, and it's like there is no way you're gonna have impact. Not not in terms of not impact in terms of the species, you're gonna have outputs, but to even ask for impact in a year is disgusting, basically. It's like you're you're not that shows that you do not recognize the work that's needed to to reverse a decline that's happened over a century. I mean, it's just it's just ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, unrealistic. And I think the pressures to accept money from organizations or foundations that may not recognize the practicalities of conservation, like that is an aspect that's challenging for conservationists because funding is can be so limiting. So yeah, having the ability to be like more open and transparent about what conservation practice is, how that also manifests in terms of like the emotional response and how we do our work, how we can do our work, what's even possible. Um, it just makes it a more honest and authentic conversation, both with ourselves and the workplace, being able to encourage each other to have more normal, healthy practices of doing our work. So it makes it more sustainable. But yeah, that impact that's a challenge.

SPEAKER_02

That's yeah. So one of the first endangered species I worked with was the Mauritius Kestrel. And in the 70s, there were four individuals in the world. Wow. And it took 15 to 20 years before the population really picked up, they were bumbling along. And and so to have support for that long to solve, to work out the biology, to work out the things that were needed to manage the species. And then when they got it dialed in, the it's kind of the hockey stick, the population just took off from that point.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and and so if we're gonna start, we're gonna need more conservationists doing more projects with more species, but you know, we don't know all these things about all these animals, and there's there's gonna be this lag of, and and I feel like those early career conservationists need that support or that tolerance from the funding side. But I love that with this revive, there's this drive to to help give them the skills to cope from from a different angle so that they can that it's not necessarily coping with that funding pressure, but with the challenge of doing conservation.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it's really us all figuring out together because there the beauty of this is that there are no experts in this area yet because it's all so new. We're all just starting to recognize that the emotional side of our work is real, it's part of it and it's hard and it's varied, but it is necessary to think through and to support one another in order to stay motivated because ours is a passion-based field, isn't it? It's all based on our love of the earth and our sense of connection to it. And so if we lose the passion, the spark, that's what burnout is. You feel like your spark is diminished. And so it's very emotion-based and to be able to have the energy to go out into the field every day, to go to foundations and ask for money, whatever your role in conservation looks like, it takes passion and motivation. And so we're figuring that out together. We're starting with a webinar soon. We're going to do wellness workshops to look at different and experience different sides of resilience skill building and build peer support groups. And so check us out online. We have a website and we're a global community. We've got, you know, members everywhere from Ecuador to India to Australia. And we're thinking about what well-being looks like in different parts of the world because it does feel different. In the US, we can use therapy. That's one of our tools here. In other countries, therapy is not normalized or as accessible. And so there's different tools for different countries. But yeah, we're just getting started with that work and we look forward to anyone joining us, including you, Sam.

SPEAKER_02

Well, now I know about it and and we'll we'll definitely be linking to it. I'm wondering if we can uh record a practice for for people and we can tack that onto the end of the of this conversation.

SPEAKER_00

We'd love to do that.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, that'll be let's we'll do that. Uh I'm tickled because right now I'm distracted because there's crows walking around on the roof above us, and I can hear their footsteps, uh, which is just it's lovely that there's wildlife uh interrupting us. And and that's actually one of the things that I've found to be really valuable, and I've certainly heard it from others as well, where one of the ways to recharge is to go and spend time in the field with your animals and just to enjoy it. And you kind of get reminded while you are enduring all this other stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, actually, to that point, you know, I think many of us go into nature, we're doing our work, we're doing thinking about, you know, I got to measure this part of the data, get this data on the species, or I'm hiking. But next time you go out into the world, be present. Notice the sun on your face, notice the air, the breeze on your skin, and really be in your body and feel the energy around you. And that is can be called forest bathing, or it's it's just it's being in nature, but really being there, present with nature rather than there for nature or there to save nature, or something that's a little bit more us versus it. So an invitation to you and those listening to think about, you know, taking a moment to be really present rather than just there to do your job.

SPEAKER_02

Wonderful. Well, I think that's a fabulous moment to bring this to a close. It's been wonderful to chat, and there's so much more. Um I've got lots of learning to do. And we'll be putting links to the sea otters and to revive and all that kind of stuff in the notes. And just want to say thank you for everything you're doing, for the support that you're giving other conservationists, and thank you for the for the work with the otters.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Sam, and thanks for your conservation work. Hi, I'm Jen Miller, and I'm gonna lead you through a five-minute emotional resilience practice that you can practice anytime, anywhere, when you're in a moment of experiencing an intense emotion like eco-grief or climate anxiety, or even just really intense frustration or anger or disappointment at work or in your everyday life. So begin by keeping your eyes open or closed. You can practice this seated or standing, or even lying down. But just ground through your feet or the surfaces that are touching the ground beneath you. And notice, begin to open your senses to the space around you. What are the sounds? What are the tastes in your mouth? Notice the air coming in through your nostrils, being drawn in to the lungs and going out through the nose. Notice the air on your skin. Notice we'll do some body sensing. So begin by noticing the sensation in your mouth and the inside of the cheeks. Bring awareness to your forehead, the skin on your face, to your shoulders, your right and left. Notice sensation in your arms, down through your palms. Noticing the feeling in your abdomen, in your hips, down through your legs, your thighs and your calves to the bottoms of your feet. Notice sensation in the entire front body. Feel the awareness in the entire back body. Bring awareness to the entirety of your body, from your feet to your head. What does sensation feel like? What does attention feel like? It might feel like a sparkle or a coursing, a throbbing. Can you name it? That intense feeling. Where is it located in your body? Is it in your stomach or centralized in your throat? Or maybe your hips? Where is it located? Is there a color, a shape, a texture that that emotion comes with? Drop away the label and just feel. Feel it in your body. It may feel uncomfortable. That sticky, intense feeling. Allow it to be present. Maybe even welcome it in. It's here whether you want to acknowledge it or not. So let's allow it to be here. And as you sit with it, continue to breathe. Just ask a simple question. What is this feeling asking you to do? Is it a signal? Is it a thread that you can trace back to its source? What is this emotion asking of you? And there's no need, no need to have expectation. Just a question. A question to linger with, perhaps in the days to come. And in this moment, just continuing to feel that emotion, to welcome it. And you may find as you allow it to be with you here, as you anchor into the sensation in your body, that it evolves, that it morphs. This is a practice that you can take with you. You can invite into the moment anytime you're struggling with the intensity of an emotion. Just ground into your body, do a quick body sensing from the mouth cavity through the body down to the toes, acknowledging the entirety of the body and welcoming in this emotion. And so you're welcome to sit with this as long as you want. For the moment, I'll close out our session and just thank you for your conservation work.