Instant Genius - When humans become prey, with Adam Hart

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

What happens when fearsome predators like tigers, lions and crocodiles live alongside humans? Ecologist Adam Hart explores how conservation works when the species we want to protect also happens to be deadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and high-end materials, delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. From BBC, Science Focus, this is instant genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Daniel Bennett, the magazine's editor. And today we're talking about what happens when humans become prey. Now, the idea of a person being preyed upon by a large predator might sound like something we would have left in our distant past, but increasingly, large carnivores like lions, tigers and crocodiles

find themselves living right alongside humans. To explain what happens when these two worlds collide, I'm joined by Adam Hart, an ecologist and BBC broadcaster, and his new book, The Deadly Bannibal, explores how conservation has to protect both humans and endangered predators when it comes to life on an increasingly crowded. Called the deadly balance. And within it, it's essentially just exploring this kind of tension between humans and predators in places where they kind of clash. And I just wondered, is this something that's on the rise now? because it definitely sound, you know, when I talk about predators preying on humans,

it sounds like something from a very, very distant past, but is it something that's becoming more common? Yeah, it seems to be in some areas with some species. So it's a complex pattern across the world. But of course, we are starting to see some conservation success stories. I mean, we're always, we tend to focus a lot on doom and gloom, and we tend to focus less so on conservation successes, actually, which is perhaps a communication mistake. But what we've seen in some parts of the world is actually a resurgence of some predator numbers.

So India is a good example. We've seen in India and Nepal, for example, over the last decade or so, tiger numbers have doubled, which is good news. We've seen leopard numbers, particularly in urban areas of India, have risen. And this is a wonderful story if you're focusing on the animals. But of course, what we have in many parts of the world now is a human population that's somewhat different than it was, say, 200 years ago. And when you get the rise of predators, when you get predative resurgence and an increase in numbers, inevitably, what happens is that you start to get this interface between sort of people and the wild, if you like, tends to break down a little. And you tend to get much more interactions between people.

So, I mean, tigers are a good example. They're in the forests of India. But as they become more numerous, young males, for example, get kicked out. They get made more marginal in those territorial areas. and they tend to be areas which instead of being nice connected forests that allow them to move into new territories tend to be butted up against human settlements. And these sorts of juxtapositions, if you like, are what can cause increased conflict. So we are sharing the planet.

We are much more numerous than we have been at any point in the past. We are fragmenting and removing habitat. And if we end up with increased predator numbers, then inevitably we're going to end up with these. levels of conflict. I mean, crocodiles are another interesting example. We tend to abuse watercourses quite badly and extract water and things. And that can concentrate animals in particular areas. So the way that we're using land are patterns across the land, are conservation successes or failures, all of those patterns sort of come together to create and underlie some of these conflicts. And yet, in some parts of the world, those conflicts are becoming greater

as some of these predators increasing numbers or as our patterns and their patterns change. So that's really fascinating because perhaps it was cliched thinking or you know ignorant to my part but I suppose I would have thought the image I get when I think about

you know a tiger or a lion or even a crocodile sort of attacking a human is one of a kind of a beleaguered animal perhaps desperate and then encroaching on human into human spaces, is that a kind of a bit of a naive sort of way of thinking about it?

It can be part of the picture. And certainly historically, in India, for example, with some of the tigers that became quite famous for their level of human predation, the injury hypothesis, if you like, the idea that they were somehow weakened does seem to hold some water. And there are certainly some examples in the modern day where predatory attacks by large predators have been instigated and probably motivated by the fact the animal is weak. So a guy was attacked and a predatory attack, actually a chap that I had interviewed about a year before was attacked and killed by a lion that was in a very bad way, very moth-eaten kind of creature on its last legs.

And it's easy and tempting to think, well, we're so weak and whatever, you know, we're easy prey. And certainly that can be the case. But actually what we've seen a lot of attacks is not that. There's also perfectly healthy, perfectly normal, perfectly normally behaving, predators that are seeing us very much as part of their predatory, you know, the prey landscape, if you like. We are the right size for them. We're in the right place. And so, yeah, in many cases, they will see us as a target. I was speaking to someone in India recently and quite an interesting kind of, he's got quite an interesting perspective on it. He's sort of saying that in the Indian forests now, what you've got is a sort of a generation of tigers that is increased in number.

and that has no reason to fear humans. In the past, when tigers, you know, sort of a hundred years ago, tigers were being actively persecuted by people, which of course led to their decline. They were being hunted and killed. Tigers were much more secretive and much more wary of people. And so you've got this generation of tigers that has no real reason to fear us.

And on top of that, you've actually got a generation of people who haven't been used to living in an environment where there's large numbers of tigers, as they would have been perhaps 200 years ago or 100 years ago. And so they've lost the sort of ability and the skills, if you like, to interact with them and to avoid them and so on. So you've got this sort of both sides of the balance, if you like, are finding new ground. And unfortunately, very often this ends badly for both parties because humans get killed. And as a consequence of that and the fear that that generates, predators get killed and we end up back at square one.

And that's why it's so important actually to find this balance and to find out and to work out ways that we can live to. together with predators in the landscape. Because if we don't, we are going to end up, I think, in landscapes where we have sort of national park type setups, if you like, areas where predators are and then everywhere else. And that's an important thing to point out as well. A lot of what we kind of rather arrogantly, I think, think of as habitat. People are calling home. These tigers in India, for example, are living in forests that people live in and use for

their natural resources. The lions that live in in southern Africa, well, many of the tigers. them are in national parks, but a lot of them aren't, and a lot of them are roaming around the landscape where people also live. And so finding, and crocodiles are a great example. They're found in the Nile crocodiles, found it's a safe, it's a reasonable assumption and certainly a good working assumption that if it's a body of water in southern Africa, you know, sub-saharan Africa probably contains Nile crocodiles. So, you know, when we've got predators in the landscape, where people also live, we must find ways for us to live together. Or

ultimately it will end badly for the predecessors because we have the ability as we've seen sadly to really really hammer these animals and reduce their numbers to virtually nothing so we want to avoid that but we have to think about people if we're going to do that and it's interesting because you go to you know to some some great lengths to sort of give the reader a sense of the scale of this, like through the numbers involved, you know, how many attacks, you know, in some cases there are 100, sometimes thousands. But I get the sense that, for you, that doesn't really tell the story here. And I wondered if, what, are you able to give a sense of what it's like to live alongside a predator? You know, if you're in one of these places, or Tanzania is one

that you mentioned on the lines we've talked about India. Is it something that most people in these communities think about day-to-day, that they have to be mindful that if they are in the wrong place and the wrong time, that, you know, they're very much, their life is at risk. Yeah, it's a really interesting one when you start getting into the numbers, because once we deal with either large numbers or sort of small numbers, people will discount them or ignore them or not really regard them. And, yeah, I think the first point with numbers is that we can talk about the numbers

of people that are killed or attacked, for example. But then we start thinking, well, it's a big country and there's lots of people, so probabilistically your chances and so on. But actually, attacks don't happen even across the population. What we see is that certain communities, particularly, are far more prone to being attacked by predators than others, which is largely related, actually, to being poor. So in Tanzania, it's a very good example. We've got so many attacks in Tanzania, actually, that it's possible to start analyzing some

the factors that go into making people vulnerable. And particular factors are things like having to sleep at night in your crop to protect them from crop raiding pigs, having to walk to your crops rather than being able to travel in a vehicle or living alongside them, having to cross rivers, having to defecate outside, not having no sorts of facilities, living in very flimsy dwellings. And all of these sort of triangulate down. And it's the same for tigers actually and crocodiles as well, triangulate down to the fact that being poor and living in rural areas is definitely putting you more at risk.

And there have been a number of studies that have been done looking at people's attitudes towards predators. And there was one done in Tanzania where it showed that almost 70% of people lived in fear, had an existential fear of being killed and eaten by a lime. Now, when it's balanced against the percentage of the probability of that actually happening, that fear would seem to be, you know, out of kilter. But that's not the way that we protest and deal with fear, particularly fear of sort of dying,

but also dying in terrible ways. And I'm always thinking back when I think of these percentages, back to sort of the COVID time, when it was really rampant and people were talking about vaccinations and the first vaccinations came out, I actually did, and I talked about it in the book, I did a COVID risk analysis, online. And, you know, I have no risk factors to die of COVID. And the only thing really

against me is my age because I'm 48 and that makes me more vulnerable than being, you know, 40 or whatever. But the chances of me actually dying from contracting COVID were very, very small indeed. And in fact, not dissimilar to the chances of being attacked and eaten by a lion, according to some of the studies. And yet the second I got that text message through, literally, ping, I was online booking my COVID vaccination. You know, The way that we process risk is very different. And when you do surveys and you look at the research done from people that live alongside these predators, you realize that living in fear like that is a huge burden.

It's a sublethal burden of this. I mean, there's lots of other similar things as well. Hyenas, spotted hyenas, when they attack humans, which they do for predatory reasons, particularly in places like Zimbabwe and Zambia, they have a tendency to attack the face and neck. And if people survive those attacks, which they may do if there's people around to protect them and help them, they're usually very badly, facially disfigured. The same with crocodiles can need the most horrendous scars, but they usually cover the facial disfigurement carries with an enormous stigma in most societies, if we're being honest. There are other sublethal effects in India, for example, in the Sundaband's region, which is on the border with Bangladesh. It's historically, and in the present day, a really focused area of Tiger, huge.

human conflict and tiger attacks. I think some estimates suggest that there's a tiger-related fatality every 12 days or so in this region. And the people there have all kinds of cultural links with the forest. And there's a particular deity that they worship to protect them when they're in the forest. And the reason why they worship this deity is that her arch nemesis comes to earth in the form of a tiger. And so they believe by benerating the goddess, they'll protect themselves against the tiger. Well, if someone is attacked by a tiger, and that's most commonly an older man, so probably the breadwinner or patriarch of the family, his family are deemed to have done something wrong. They must have offended the goddess. He must have offended the goddess. And you can end up with all

kinds of ostracization. And the phenomenon there of the tiger widow, where widows are widows of people that have been attacked and eaten them killed by tigers are monstrously ostracized from society. They're often the victims of physical and sexual abuse and all kinds of other things. So there are lots of sub-lethal effects as well that ramify through societies. You know, when someone is killed by a predator, often, if we take the examples of sort of lions, tigers, and crocodiles, which probably are the most, you know, the top three, if you like, many of their victims will be people who are working in the regions where these animals live.

So going to the forest to collect firewood or to hunt or fish, being on rivers and watercourses, washing clothes and so on. What that means is that quite often victims are breadwinners of a family or leaders of a family. And when they are taken away, you know, that has ramifications through the whole community. If children are taken, obviously that's its own separate, you know, dreadful outcome too. So these are community costs that are born. So when we see these tiger numbers increasing, we're like, yeah, that's amazing. Yes, it is.

It's a conservation success story. But people on the ground may be thinking somewhat differently. And I think that's one of the key points of the book, really, is that we need to develop some empathy and understanding of what it's like to live alongside what we would consider to be a conservation success. Because if we don't, I think we're going to struggle to help with the right solutions to make that kind of balance work. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. With over 100 years of combined expertise, Name and Focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this mantra has shaped every innovation in high-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering,

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sort of grisly and visceral nature of it at times. What pulled you in the direction of this subject and this area? Because you've had a long career as a conservationist and in biology. And I just wondered if there was, you know, as well, I know you mentioned in the book that you have these kind of different groups that you get pings when there's been an attack. can, you know, there can be quite disturbing images. And I just wondered, was there a, was there a, was there a, a kind of moment in your career

where it kind of drew your attention to this or any, you know, a particular, a particular bit of research or a, just an occurrence? Yeah. So, I mean, I've been going down to sort of Southern Africa and, and particularly South Africa for the last, well, more than a, quite a bit more than a decade now, actually doing research and involving myself with various different things in those areas. And through conversations there, it became quite clear that the way that we view predators is not necessarily aligned with the way that others might view them.

So, I mean, if you go to Southern Africa in areas where there's lions, for example, every tourist there, everybody, including me, everybody wants to see a lion. They're incredible. But of course, if you're speaking to people who work or are those people that live alongside them, then they will have stories to tell about people that have been attacked by, lions, close shades with lions and so on. So I started hearing those kind of stories a little bit. I had a conversation actually with someone called Amy Dickman, who is a, she's the head of wild crew and spent most of her life studying lions. And she happened to mention some stories about

some lion conflict and things that was happening in Tanzania. And in particular, stories of lions entering people's dwellings at night and eating them and attacking drunks and eating them and actually singling out drunk people. And I had the same sort of view, I think that a lot of people would have had that, well, these attacks, you know, they're incredibly rare and they're mostly when animals are cornered or, you know, the sick animal hypothesis. And, you know, she sort of said, well, no, that's not what's happening at all. And so I started reading around a bit more about that. And then spoke to people at Radio 4 and said, actually, there's quite a lot of this going on. I started speaking to Rishiv Matthew and

India who's trying to collate some of the attack figures there for things like tigers and lions, tigers and leopards, well, and lions actually in parts of India. And, you know, suggested that there might be a documentary in this and something we could look at because this notion of sort of, if you like, man-eating tigers and man-eating lions, we're kind of thinking about, we're harking back to things like the Savo Railway and the late 1800s and Jim Corbett in the early 1900s where we're thinking of them as issues of the past. and, you know, they're very much issues of the presence. So that was commissioned.

It was called on the menu, which actually I think is a title I probably wouldn't be happy with now. I think it has a certain flippancy about it that I don't think is particularly helpful. But, yeah, in that program, we started to explore some of these things. And it was really from talking to Amy, talking to regime and talking to other people that I thought, you know, this is something that I think we need to explore a bit more because it's not just a sort of, Oh, isn't it weird and wonderful in a way? Inverted commas, we still live in a world where, you know, predators,

you know, we're not the top predator. Well, actually, no, that's not the way to look at it. We are living in a world. We're increasingly wanting to share, or at least for a conservation perspective, trying to share with wildlife. But some of that wildlife is existentially dangerous to us. It can kill us. And it's not just like being killed by a venomous snake, for example.

You get killed by a venomous snake. it almost certainly is a defensive attack. It may not have been your fault in inverted commas, right? It may have just been an unfortunate accident, but it's happened. You are dead, yes, probably quite horribly, but it's very different, viscerally different, I think, to the notion of being stalked, killed,

and eaten by a large predator. And that is a very different thing. And something that unfortunately tends to release very different behavior you're in humans. I mean, people persecute venomous snakes all over the world, but the persecution of predators has really been something else over the last few centuries, and they're probably actually much longer in, well, definitely much longer when we look at persecution of things like wolves in Europe and so on. So, you know, these sorts of questions and this sort of interaction,

I suppose, if you want to call it that way, between predators and humans, has a really key place, I think, to play in the modern conservation narrative, right, the way we think about. how we want to conserve the world because of the top, someone did a fantastic study of the most charismatic animals, basically they looked at movies and advertising and all this kind of stuff. Predators occupy six of the top ten places, right? We love predators. But we very often have a very slim view, if you like,

very shallow view of what they're really about. And that was really the driver behind writing this book, really, was just to try and introduce people to the reality of them and to think much more deeply about. about how we can try and resolve some of these conflicts and achieve conservation, because the number of people I've spoken to recently who have either read the book or I was speaking about the book

and they'll come up to me and say, I never really realized how important it was to include communities. I didn't really think about people in conservation. And you think, well, why would you? Because I've never seen a documentary on television really to do with nature or anything where there's people. People are cast as villains, the poachers, the farmers encroaching on land.

You know, infrastructure like pylons and power cable, and the notion that people live in habitat and that animals can live in our homes, so I think people in the UK where that's simply not the case, right? It seems like a very strange thing. We go and look at wildlife. We'll wander down to the local nature reserve with its fence around the outside and its car park. Well, that's not the world I'd like. I've been very fortunate to see parts of the world where that's not the case.

But if we don't consider the needs of people in the way we think about these things, we won't have those places in the future. and that would be a great shame, I think. And is that reflected also in the sort of, at the cold face of conservation? Totally agree that you don't see these sort of, you know, the humans in the conservation stories that we see on our TVs, we don't often address the human place within that. And there's even, you know, there's some quite famous, you know, the guerrillas and the pygmies and the congmies and the congos where that they, you know, they end up wide.

out huge numbers of the pygmies there. But I just wonder, is, are the human community sometimes forgotten even at the coal face of conservation? And when you're going out to Africa and you're working with the people there who are trying to manage these populations and look after them, like perhaps not the people on the field, but at the higher levels, are they thinking about it at a more holistic sort of scale and level? I think lots of people are. Yes, I think not everyone, it's but lots of people are. What I find interesting is that, you know, when you look at sort of, if you like, big conservation organizations, big NGOs and charities and so on, and the big campaigns, they're very, very focused around animals. Animals are front and center. But if you dig deeper into what they're doing, it's all about communities and it's all about people. There's lots and lots of really cool stuff going on, but obviously what they don't feel, and I think they're probably right, but I think it becomes a horribly sort of self-reinforcing spy. is that they don't feel that those stories can be put front and center because people won't engage with them.

And they're right, people won't engage with them because they don't realize that they need to be front and center. But people will sort of look at a tiger or a line and say, oh, I need to save this animal. And that is a very strange view, very warped for you, you could say, but also a view that's kind of inevitable, given the way that wildlife has been depicted over the last half century or more. And I think that's really quite interesting that the organizations don't, feel that they can put those things front and center. I've had conversations before with people actually fairly recently in Namibia where they've said, well, you know, people in the UK, you value animals' lives more than you value humans' lives. And that is an incredibly difficult

statement to counter because all the evidence most definitely points that way. It's always about conserving animals. I spent a wonderful few days with a conservationist down in Namibia at the beginning of last year. I was down there for a couple of weeks and we were driving around with her for a few days and we spoke about conservation almost literally non-stop. You know, it was a wonderful, wonderful sort of time for someone like me who was desperate, you know, really wanting to sort of squeeze every last piece of knowledge and experience from the people that I met. But we spoke about road grading and water and electricity companies. We spoke about access rights. We spoke about post apartheid politics, about the rights of women, about language clusters and groups, about

so many things, about access to shops, about medical care, about COVID, about compensation schemes for crop damage. We never spoke about animals unless we saw one out of the window, in which case, oh, there's a giraffe, and we talk about giraffes, we're a big because they're cool. But everything else was non-stop conservation, but animals were very much not front and center because what they've learned in Namibu, or they need to learn it. knew it already because they're very successful at doing it. What they're doing in the media is putting communities front and center.

And that has worked very well. And in Nepal, for example, where we've seen the doubling of tiger numbers, first range country to do that, well, the community forestry program was a major part of the success of the conservation strategy of Nepal, putting people in charge of their resources, allowing communities to work out what they can extract sustainably, how they can develop wildlife, you know, putting control into their hands rather than dictating. And I think we're seeing these programs around the world, but we're not necessarily seeing them on our screens. We're not thinking about their success and celebrating them on the page. What we're hearing is a

lot of doom and gloom, and that's inevitably right. But we do need to hear more about the success, and we definitely need to hear more about the realities of conservation rather than bluntly seeing actors and TV presenters and comedians and things, sort of going out to some place in Africa, because it's always Africa, and driving around in a nice, shiny new land cruiser, and looking wistfully in the distance at lions, with no humans in view,

apart from, you know, the guide, who's probably not even named, which is a common trope, and then wandering back to some animal orphanage, where animals with zero conservation value, because they're not part of a breeding population anymore, they're really just a sink now, of funds that are being bottle-fed by,

by said celebrity, telling us all how we should be doing more and donating more money to help conservation. And you think I haven't seen any conservation whatsoever in the last hour. Do you think, you know, to play there, to sort of channel what those people who make these beautiful documentaries, who I suspect will actually agree with you in terms of. I've spoken to several of them, but they do. But equally, I love watching those documentaries to you, right? Yeah, to channel that side of the argument, you know, the nurseries are what gets, tugs at the heartstrings and gets people on the phone.

Do you think actually people would respond to seeing, as you said, like as conservationists, you go out there and you talk about everything else other than the animal? And we've never, I mean, I think I've seen a couple, but we've almost never seen a documentary that actually shows the nitty gritty of, what conservation is. But do you think we're almost doing an injustice to the public by assuming that wouldn't, they wouldn't be interested in that and they wouldn't, it wouldn't motivate them? I, 100% I think so, because I take groups of people, I mean, not just students, but sort of

groups of private individuals to various different places over the last sort of, well, the last 20 years, actually. And in all cases, I found people to be far more interested in the nitty gritty. Everybody wants to go and see the animals, right? I'll take groups down to South Africa or whatever and make sure when we go to a certain place where we've got good chances to see it because I want to see them with these things too, right?

But they're really interested in all sorts of stuff. And before you know, you're driving out of someplace and you're standing by the side of a fence line, giving a mini lecture on the problems of extended land tenure or more importantly insecure land tenure on developing wildlife areas. the influence of overgrazing and the problems of local politics in doing that. And you're talking about whether or not how expensive 18 wire stock fences

and how that becomes problematic keeping certain species in certain areas. And then you're talking about the problems of fences themselves and fragmentation, but they can protect at the same time. And before you've even managed to get back in the vehicle, someone's asked you what something is and you go, well, actually, this is part of a road grading program because we need access to these areas. And suddenly you're off on it. And I found that people are absolutely fascinated by this stuff.

They want to see the nuts and bolts. And then, you know, you'll go, oh, well, if you're interested in that, we should go and meet this person. And you'll go and meet someone who's, you know, just come back from doing some dehorning of rhino. And before, you know, you're talking about that as a conservation intervention. And then someone wonders, oh, well, you know, how can we get, what's this damn wall all about? And then you go, well, actually, you know, this is about building water holes. But even that comes at a cost.

And then you're discussing salt licks. People are so interested in these things when they're there because they can see them in front of them. Now, I don't think it would be that difficult to get those stories across and to get people interested in ideas about, you know, land and conservation in the conservation stuff that all of us as conservation scientists talk about all the time. None of these things, I'm not sort of sort of suddenly discovered all these things. These are mainstream conservation issues, right? You pulled out any conservation textbook. It's got to talk about these things. But we don't see them and we don't hear them.

We don't think about conflicts and tensions in conservation and how we can resolve them. How you can have, I'll give you an example. I was in South Africa in November near the Krooga National Park, actually, just outside of it. We're staying in a place that had a big golf course. Now, golf's not my sport. It's a good walk ruined in a way,

although I do enjoy thwacking a ball around at the pitching pot sometimes. And I've been known to be all right. at it, but, you know, it's not my bag, right? Normally, golf course is a dreadful. This golf course was fantastic. And the reason why it had one of the richest collections of birds living there, the sort of bird fauna there was unbelievable. We took a two-hour walk around there and saw dozens and dozens of species, including many that we haven't seen before, things like there's some incredible paradise flycatches and all kinds of stuff. And the reason why is that the people that were managing that area had two people to please. They had people that were

interested in wildlife who was staying there because it's near to Kruger National Park. And they had people that like to play golf, who were staying there because they liked to play golf. And they were managing this place for both. And so consequently, they had hippos and crocodiles in the water courses. They were gently and very nicely fenced off in areas to prevent them from coming up and scaring people that were filling in their golf cards, right? But they're there, living perfectly naturally. They're just being very slightly controlled so that they don't cause a conflict. They were planting trees and keeping groves and managing wetland areas so that the bird life was absolutely fantastic. But guess what? It also provides a beautiful scenic back job for people playing golf and some

interesting natural hazards. It is possible to have things that resolve conflict. To manage land in such a way, okay, it's not as amazing as it would be as pristine habitat, but it's a hell of a lot better than it would be as a shopping center, which is what was being built next door. You know, these types of things, we need to, we need to be looking at them much more maturely rather than just sort of standing in the sidelines and throwing fruit about everything. You know, let's think of ways around it. Our brain, let's be under no illusion about it. It's our fabulous intellect that's got us into this problem, right? Our ability to manipulate the environment around us, our desire and quest for novelty, right and innovation. That's what's got us here with all of our petrol-guzzling cars and monstrous

digging lorries and desire to mine and our population expansion and stuff. But it's our brains that will get us out and we are more than capable of thinking of these solutions if we allow ourselves to and if there's political will to support them. But ultimately that comes from people's will and if people don't know about this and they don't realize these struggles, they can't politicise them because they're unaware of them. And I think this type of thinking is very, very easy to just not engage with. And we need to be getting more messages out there, I guess. And, you know, I'm trying with my book, but, you know, with the best world in the world,

that's not going to be read by a whole bunch of people. Oh, that it was. I could retire and devote my life fully to the topic, right? But the reality is that we need much more bigger picture stuff, bigger media things, bigger things with much more reach that can actually say to people, look, this is how we need to go. That was Adam Hart there, talking about conservation in action. If you'd like to find out more about the clash of predators and people

in an increasingly crowded world, do you check out Adam's book, The Deadly Balance. which is on sale now and published by Bloomsbury Sigma. He also presents tooth and claw for the BBC's World Service, which explores the conservation challenges facing the planet's most fearsome predators. You can find that on BBC Sounds. Thank you for listening. The Instant Genius podcast is brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine,

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