Nuanced. - 70. Erin Ryan: What is being done about ANIMAL CRUELTY?

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Erin Ryan and Aaron Pete sit down on episode 70 of the Bigger Than Me Podcast to talk Erin developing a passion for nature, attending UBC for a degree in biology, her graduate research on rodent pest control, the Jane Goodall Act, having tigers as pets, and so much more.Erin Ryan is a Wild Animal Welfare Specialist with the BC SPCA’s Science & Policy Division. Much of her work focuses on urban wildlife, including wildlife and rodent “pest” control. She has experience in research, communications, stakeholder relations, fundraising and event planning. Erin holds a BSc in Applied Biology and an MSc in Applied Animal Biology from the University of British Columbia. Erin is a proud member of the Syilx nation.Erin has been a passionate follower of The Fur-Bearers for many years with a shared passion for improving wildlife welfare and ending inhumane trapping. In 2019, she was a co-recipient of the Clements Award for “Outstanding Organization”, awarded to the AnimalKind program.Support the BC SPCA: https://spca.bc.ca/ Support the Fur-Bearers: https://thefurbearers.com/ Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name is Aaron Ryan. My pronouns are she-her, and I'm from the Silks or Okinauga Nation. And I work right now for the BCSBCA in our science and policy team, specifically on wild animal welfare. Interesting. So what made you interested in biology? Was there someone in your family that inspired you? What was sort of the background of saying biology is the path? Yeah, definitely my granddad. So my granddad, Len Marchand, he had a career in politics, but despite everything that he did and everything he accomplished, I think he really thought of himself still as a humble scientist. So he was a plant biologist through now the same faculty as me at UBC. And I remember growing up learning about all the

plants and animals in the beautiful forested gully of their backyard. And I think that's why wildlife has always spoken to me. Interesting. So were you watching him? Were you shadowing him? How did that kind of start for you where you were like, this is a path I'd like to, because we see other people in their professions. Maybe you see your family member and they're an accountant, but what really pulled you in to say this is something I'd like to follow through on as well? I think so much of it was implicit. You know, when I was a kid, we moved to Caloops because my parents split up and we wanted to live close to my grandparents. So both my mom's parents and my dad's parents both lived in Camloops. And I spent most of my days after school in that forested galley of my grandparents' backyard and helping my granddad garden.

We got to see lots of wildlife there. There was a summer where we had fox kits under the deck. We've had squirrels in the shed. And all of those things really piqued my curiosity. And as a kid who loved animals and knew for sure that I wanted to work with animals, it just felt like all those childhood experiences kind of drew me in this direction. Interesting. So there's like a challenge that people have, though, when they're considering going into, going to veterinary school or going down that path, which is you see the beauty of the wildlife, but you also see the most tragic parts. Was there a point in your childhood where that was a struggle to think about having to see animals suffer, to see them struggle?

Oftentimes when you're working with them, it is in the dark period of their life. And so was that ever a challenge? Yeah. I think like most kids who loved animals and wanted to work with animals for a long time, I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian for a long time. And part of that was I just didn't know what else was out there. You know, when you're a kid who likes animals, everybody says, you're going to be a vet. And I thought I would. But, you know, my time spent an undergrad and meeting some mentors and learning what else was out there. I also had the opportunity to work part time in a vet clinic. And as someone with two cats, I love my veterinarian more than words can say. But it was also clear that it wasn't. exactly what I wanted to do. Right. And I think a lot of what I experienced in childhood kind of guided the work that I do today, even little things like when we had squirrels in the shed, for example.

I remember my granddad was furious that squirrels had invaded our shed. But, you know, we waited until the babies had grown up, and then they had left, and then I was up on the roof, re-shingling the roof, to make sure that the squirrels couldn't get in. And now I spend a lot of my time at work telling people how to do that kind of humane coexistence work. And that was just an implicit value from a young age. But for a lot of people, they didn't necessarily have that same experience. Where do you think that comes from? Do you think I had that opportunity to speak with elder Eddie Gardner.

And it's interesting to me that indigenous people describe like bugs as the ones that crawl rather than bugs. Because there's almost something implicitly derogatory about the idea of like, a bug on you. It's something you want to get off of you. And then you have products like off that kind of tell you that that's the goal. So what was it like growing up with somebody who actually cared, who had like a certain level of empathy? And what do you think the difference between your growing up experience was, in comparison to so many others, who do look at trees as just a resource and not as something that's living and that can live for hundreds of years? there was definitely a lot of that influenced for my granddad in the Silk's cultural values in that

the world wasn't just something for us to manipulate it was we were just one being that existed in this whole space of beings it wasn't you know our shed that the squirrels weren't invited to it was we'd made a space for them they'd made a home we waited until they were done with it and then we moved on but it's just there's always a been this fundamental understanding in me that these animals are living, breathing, thinking creatures, and this space is as much theirs as it is ours, and we need to respect that. What is it like to come across people who don't share your philosophy? Maybe growing up and developing and developing a passion, it's often so clear when somebody has a disconnect from

nature or the environment. Was that a challenge, like feeling like you need to shake people's heads to see differently or going, wow, like I really see these things differently. It felt confusing. Every time it happens, it feels confusing for me because it's so different than what I experienced or what I grew up. And for anybody that's ever loved a cat or a dog, how could you look into their eyes and think that they're an it or that they're a piece of your property? And I extend that same value to foxes and bears and birds and fish. I know a lot of people don't, but I think if you get to know someone enough, if you get to know any animal enough, you'll see that they have a personality that when you look in their eyes, somebody's home. Do you think other people are missing out? Do you think that the world is a more meaningful place when you see the value in life all around you, whether it's grass, an animal, a bird, whatever you see, that there's some sort of intrinsic value that we live in such a material.

realistic world where everything is at our disposal that we can buy products and we can throw them out and there's no other than monetary there's no consequence yet there is a consequence on a grander scale and that we miss out on so much of the world when we simplify it down to I can just sell this I can just get rid of this I can just like one of the craziest ones to me is when you hear that there's like puppies that have just been left on the side of the road or kittens and it's like what switch do you have to turn off to think that that would be okay? Like, what part of yourself do you have to detach yourself from

in order to give yourself permission to do something like that? Yeah. It's such a divide from the way that the first people's lived. And I was talking a lot about this past weekend, but just this whole idea of living in a primarily capitalism-driven society is that it's hard for people to make room for other things when they're so busy just trying to survive and just trying to exist versus if you're more in touch with the land and you're practicing gratitude for all the things that the land gives to you. I think it certainly makes

you feel more optimistic to realize how much we have and how lucky we are. But I think it also changes that perspective and that's how you get much more of that thinking of future generations. It's one of the things I think is missing from like our Western culture, which is indigenous culture. I always talk about this creation story that we have because there's an idea that humans are like weak and pathetic. And that's, that makes everybody feel uncomfortable because we have our car, we have our gas, we have our cell phones, we have our TVs. And so we've got this life thing figured out. And it's like, for the most part, you don't. If you come across a grizzly bear, it doesn't care about any of your material goods.

it could rip you apart. It's the same with even smaller animals. It makes us uncomfortable to think of our mortality and that we're vulnerable to these things. And so to me, the more you go into a city, the more everything is always safe, the harder it is to connect. It sounds like your granddad was more connected with the land.

So you had more of that awareness. And I'm just interested into how that developed you, recognizing that while a coyote might be a beautiful thing, thing, it could also annihilate you if it wanted to. And cougars can attack you and just, it would take very little work for it in comparison to us to really put harm to it. And so I'm just interested, there's like a humility that has to come with caring for these animals, which is that they are apex predators in a lot of respects in comparison to us.

And I'm just interested in how that sort of shaped your relationship because they're both beautiful and majestic yet dangerous. Yeah. We definitely had our share of bears, deer, coyotes all in that backyard. But I think about it with the fox kits a lot. So there was a family of foxes living underneath the deck in kind of a hollowed out area. And they had four little kits. And of course, I named them all because I was seven and I had to.

But, you know, my granddaughter was pretty strict. When the kits were out and playing, we were not in the backyard. We were not harassing them. We were not chasing them. that was their space. We were recognizing their wildness. And, you know, foxes are, of course, they could deliver a bite or a scratch if they were feeling threatened. But for the most part, they don't want anything to do with us.

And it was instilled in me from an early age that we were letting them be. We were keeping a safe and healthy distance. And it's funny realizing as an adult how much that played into my life because now that is, of course, primarily what I do for my job is telling people how to respect wild animals and how to coexist with them. That's one article that I saw that you were involved in, which was bears and social media. We have, we're perhaps so disconnected now that we do it for the gram. We have this idea that we can just go take photos. There's tons of videos, not maybe here in BC, but of people abroad going to like a lion

exhibit and going up to the lion and trying to like take a photo with it and getting way too close and then fleeing back to their car as that lion decides your lunge. There's, like, we're forgetting those traditional ways of recognizing the power of the animal. There's, we just, we don't even view it as a thing anymore. It's just a photo to be taken. And you talked about that. Could you tell us more about that and what you, from your perspective, what you're

seeing in people that they're able to do these things? Social media has definitely changed the way that we interact with wild animals. I think there was some research showing that people are just as motivated as sharing a photo of a bear as they are of actually experiencing a time with a bear. So that motivation to get a photo and share a photo is extremely important to them in today's day and age. And of course, it used to be that wildlife photographers were super qualified, very experienced, had the long zoom lens cameras and all the parts and, you know, photography bags. slung over both shoulders and they were out in, you know, really remote areas, whereas now wildlife photographers are anybody with a cell phone. And of course, we were just talking about how high quality some of these cell phone cameras are and suddenly everyone is now able to

capture beautiful images. What advice do you have for those people? Because it almost seems like not only do they need to be more careful, but they also need to, if they want to get these photos develop like a philosophy, a moral code around, like I interviewed Chris Koo, and he talks about how people will just march through wetlands to go get a photo of a bird and destroy ecosystems just to get that one photo. And even some of the most trained people who do this for a living will disrespect the environment around it. What advice do you have for people? Is there people you can look to to learn about how to interact with these animals in a better way? There are some. So I think primarily the thing I would recommend most is if people just remember

to keep their distance and to be careful. I think the reason people are so drawn to taking these photos is because we're naturally drawn to it. You know, like a moth to the flame. We love to admire wildlife and the environments that they live in. But it's important to remember that they are exactly that. They're wild animals that retain all of their wild instincts, and they might not realize how much harm they can do with just a simple photo. I know the BCSBCA runs an annual wildlife photo contest that just closed for the year, but one of the things we recommend in our rules is that you follow the North American Nature Photography Association's ethical principles of wildlife photography.

And it touches on all those things you said. It talks about keeping your distance, knowing the natural behaviors of the animals so that you can recognize signs of stress, but it all talks about damage the ecosystem as well. That's really interesting. Can you tell us more about that contest and how that sort of came about? Yeah. So the contest started in, oh my gosh, 2009, I think, was the first year of the contest. And I've been involved with it since 2012, which has been amazing. But the whole idea behind it was we really wanted to celebrate animals in their natural settings. And for that reason, we've sort of divided into two categories. There's the backyard habitats celebrating the wild animals that live and coexist with us in our urban spaces. And then the

wild settings category, which really shows the majesty of those truly, truly wild untouched spaces. Right. And what is some of your favorite photos over the years that have stood out to you? You know, it's funny because our judges are always so excited about the wild settings photos, but for me, it's the backyard ones that really speak to me, because I can use those for a lot of education and how to coexist with wild animals. And there's often this misconception that for, you know, a raccoon living in the city, well, wouldn't they be happier back out in the wild, not realizing that for them, the city is the only home they've ever known.

And it's where they find food and water and shelter, and that if you just tried to uproot them and move them to a forest, they wouldn't know what to do. So that's one of the trippy things, is we were talking about birds a few days ago and how we like to think, like there's certain birds that need space and they, it's the Albatross that just go out to sea for like months on end. But then there's others that have figured out seagulls are a good example that they're now accustomed to these living circumstances. they wouldn't be happier. There's dangers to them living, coexisting with us, which is we leave out garbage and plastics,

and it can be dangerous for them to live. But so many crows, so many, like seagulls, have figured out a way to coexist with us. Evolution is like a primary principle within biology. What have you seen? And is there anything that stands out to you in terms of our relationship with wildlife? There's so many changes in living in these giant cities now.

Should we have hope that some of these animals are adapting? Should we be concerned that bears are now being forced into communities, that cougars are being found around people? How do we think about our relationship with wildlife as we continue to grow and expand and build new high rises? Is this perhaps positive? Can we mitigate the damage? As human beings, we seem to think that we can, address all of the issues that we can fix everything. Yet so often it's us just taking a step

back and getting out of the way that seems to fix so many of the problems. How do we think about that issue? I think we should be concerned about continuing human encroachment, but I don't think that means, you know, kicking all the wildlife out. I don't think that's going to be ever possible. So I think it's up to us to learn how to live alongside all of these wild neighbors that have now adapted to these urban lifestyles and also bring benefits to us too. You know, skunks will eat garden slugs, lots of invertebrates, raccoons. Yes, they can be dumpster divers, but they also clean up, you know, a lot of the unwanted debris in the environment.

And I think part of what makes our lives so special is these fleeting interactions with wildlife. And it's really just about learning how to exist together more than it is trying to relocate every wild animal back to the wild, which, you know, doesn't exist for them. So there's this weird relationship so many have. I have with like, I hate mosquitoes. Yet, it was, I think, Chris Koo, who was like, well, wasps eat mosquitoes. And like, they play a role and they feed other animals around them and they play an intricate role. There's like a part of us that wants things to be simple, good or bad, annoying or helpful. And so many of these things, so many of these ecosystems rely on a complex relationship.

Is there any animals that you thought you could hate that you were like, this is not the animal for me, I don't see what other people see in it, and then you started to appreciate it, or has it just been love for all of it? No, I am guilty, too, of some of the misconceptions. You know, you brought up a good example with mosquitoes, but one that I recently learned a little bit more about was was wasps, right?

So it turns out that only the juvenile wasps are, are the meat eaters. And as they get older, they are less meat eaters. But of course, they're also really important pollinators. You know, people give all the credit to bees. And of course, bees are incredibly important. But there's other pollinators, wasps, hummingbirds, bats, these all play a role in our ecosystems that we don't often appreciate enough. Yeah. Wasps are, my partner cannot stand wasps because they have a tendency to be violent. They, I think it's, when it's wrapping up in the season. I think it's in like fall that they're so hungry they're trying to get ready for the cold season that they will they will attack unprovoked. And I think that that's another

struggle for us is we always want there to be a logic in why something does something. And sometimes there's just not. It's I can maybe compare it to like when you're driving down the road and the other person clearly made a mistake and then they give you the middle finger and you're like, I don't even understand. Like, I don't even understand what you could be mad about. You cut me off. And like, that weird, they're just reacting. And I think there's a point to be made that they're moving so quickly that when you're

driving down the road, your mind is trying to take in 100 kilometers an hour worth of information that it doesn't matter. It's threat. I'm going to get angry. And so it's hard for people to connect with nature in some regards when we don't understand what's in their mind. And we get so used to being able to prescribe and think that we understand other people's thinking that you can't do that with an animal. But do you think that there is a level of connection you can have with most animals?

Or is there some that we just were never going to be able to understand on that same level? I think empathy is a muscle and you have to flex it to make it stronger. So when people are practicing empathy with people and working on that with animals is even just the understanding that you don't know what's going. going on in their head. And a lot of times, especially with coyotes, we see this a lot in the media is that you talk about, you know, coyote attacks, whereas if you actually read the article, you'll see that the coyote was attacked by an off-leash dog. And can you imagine if you're a mama coyote who's got two kids waiting at the den, like, you're going to be terrified. And yet this is blamed on the coyotes for saying that they fought back. But if you

think about it from their perspective for a second, they were afraid. They felt threatened for their life. And they did what was necessary. We've co-evolved with some animals, dogs, cats, some bunnies. We have a really tight relationship with dogs. We've co-evolved with them. They all come from wolves. And I think that that is such a trip to think about because there are some of those traits within it. But we have like an empathetic bond with them that you don't really have with cats. And from my understanding, a lot of that is because cats would be outdoors going after the rats and the mice and stuff like that in agriculture. What are your thoughts on how we've co-evolved with some of these animals? It's certainly interesting to see how we've co-evolved over thousands and

thousands of years. But of course, that co-evolution means that, you know, they got benefits from us from protection and table scraps, but also the benefits that we get from them. And including some as basic as companionship. So they provide so much benefit to us. And I think one of the issues that I'm working on personally, but is also a goal of the BCSPCA, is really changing the way that people think about cats. Because they haven't received that same type of attention as dogs,

and it's had impacts on their welfare, too. Say more. I love cats. It's true. There's a lot of this idea that, dogs are so valuable and so meaningful to us, a lot of people inherently understand that. But animal shelters are much, much more prone to take in cats

because there's so many more of them. We've had issues with overpopulation. Cats tend to stay longer in care before they're adopted, but they are just as loving and affectionate as dogs are, just in a different way. Can you explain that because I'm not, we have a cat. His name is Mo. He's a very sassy cat.

But it's not the same in that you can't take the cat for a walk. You can't trust it around children all the time. Some people will come over and Mo will just flip out and just be like, I do not like you. A lot of the time, I think it's the person's energy. People who are particularly anxious, they're not confident in themselves, they don't feel comfortable in their own skin. those are the people I see him not like that much. And it's not that they're aggressive or anything. It's just that there's an uncalming presence.

And I find that particularly fascinating because to think about what people feel when they're around you. Because most people don't say, hey, when I'm in a room with you, I feel X. But people give you a vibe. And I know it's overused. But the idea that there's like Karens out there, that there are people that stress you out, whether or not your McDonald's employee or a grocery store clerk, that they're going to unnecessarily make your life hell. That there's some people like that,

and then there's some warm people who make you feel comfortable and relaxed, and they don't have to say a whole bunch of things to make you feel that way, but animals seem to be able to pick up on that. So what are you seeing in cats that I'm perhaps missing? You know, when we first started talking about the difference, it's kind of like that old saying

that if you judge a fish on their ability to climb a tree, you're going to think they're stupid their whole lives. But I see it so differently in dogs and cats and even bunnies. You know, they all have these ways of showing intense affection, but they all look so different versus in dogs, it's very

it's so obvious, right? You see the happy dance. You see the tail. It's so clear whereas cats, it's much more subtle and even bunnies more so because you know, as an animal that developed, as kind of a prey mentality, they don't really like to be picked up or pet, but, you know, they'll nudge you and they'll jump in the air for joy when they see you. And I think, I think of cats

as being truly an exercise and consent because they have zero tolerance for their, you know, somebody pushing past their boundaries. And their signs are so, so subtle. You know, I always say to people, if you're petting a cat, like, you should always be looking at the cat. Because if the cat's off to the side and you're not really looking at them, their opinion may change. You know, you're watching for the ears, the tail, whether or not they're enjoying it. Interesting. So you need to pay more attention because I have noticed that when I'm more gentle, when I'm using a finger rather than my whole hand, he's much more comfortable. He's much more relaxed. And there's like a pressure that some people put on where it's just it's like there's like sanding a wall or something and they don't

they don't have that relationship with their body they don't because it's not something i was thinking about like what is good pressure what is going to work and so it's almost like you need to be more intentional it sounds like with cats where with a dog as long as you have your hands on it it's a pretty happy camper yeah yeah one thing that people forget too is that even though cats are, we think of cats as predators, and they do certainly display some of that, but a lot of their history of evolution is sort of as prey. So they have a bit of this split personality where they're both predators and prey. So I think that's why we see them more hesitant with new things. So they're more cautious. Where do cats come from? Do they come from a predominant type

of other cat, is there, because like all dogs come from wolves, but do we know where, are there different types within, like, the cougar family? Like, how do we get cats over time? That is a great question. Thank you. I don't actually, no. I mean, I could think about some of the earliest domestications that we saw were in Egypt, but, you know, it's so, so long ago. I have not spent a lot of time on the evolutionary history of cats. Yeah, that's got to be. fascinating crazy to think about because like cats do have and that this would be an interesting question you said bunnies are more known for prey animals human beings were a mixture of both we're almost I would guess that we're nearly 50 50 that we like that feeling that you get of awe when you're like

the back of your hair stands up on your neck or however that saying goes that's the moment where you realize that you're so small and we we as humans have gotten a lot of that from looking out at, like, the water and going like, wow, this is both one of the most beautiful things. And if I was in it, I could drown and die. We get that when we look up at the night sky, which a lot of people are missing out on now, which is, oh, I'm just hurtling through space. And I'll be here for 100 years. And the odds that in 500 years, somebody's going to remember who I was is almost 0%. Touch of the cosmic dread. Yeah. And, but like, that humbles us. And we go, oh, wow.

I'm just a prey animal. I'm not all-powerful, all-knowing. I'm none of these things. I'm just this little piece of a puzzle. And I can contribute in my own way, but unlikely to withstand the test of time for the average person. Animals have different relationships with how much their prey and how much their predator. What has that been like to see?

Is there animals that stand out to you where they're maybe misunderstood? Actually, I'm thinking about a colleague who I met from South Africa, and when she came to visit BC, she's very outdoorsy, loves camping and spending time in the wilderness, and I asked her if she was going to go camping. She said, no, you have bears. And in my head, I'm going, you're from South Africa. You have elephants. You have baboons. Baboons will tear your arm off if they're angry, and you don't want to camp with black bears? Because I just, I can't imagine. You know, Black Bears, in the areas where she was thinking she might camp, are so flighty, right? They want nothing to do with us. But yet, there's this perception in South Africa that, you know, they're a bear. They are big and they are scary and they're much more scary than elephants or baboons. I just think that's so wild. Yeah, the other one that I think of is like cows.

I've known people who we live in the Fraser Valley. And so I know people who've had their fingers bit off by a cow. or had their ribs broken because the cow decided to kick in a certain moment. And statistically, more likely to happen than being attacked by a bear. Absolutely. I personally, not a huge fan of horses because I think of them as like their leg is like a gun. And although odds are not going to happen, but if they decide to kick me, they will break every single bone in wherever they kick instantaneously.

and that's what I see when I see a horse. And other people go, no, it would never have. We're so close. We've got this strong relationship. But there's that capability that seems to freak us out, that idea that we are a prey animal. I love horses. I respect their distance. Right.

So what was going to school like? You attended most of the time at UBC, and you talked a little bit in an article that I saw about how you chose to stay there for your graduate. degree because there was a sense of community. There was a sense of camaraderie. I'm just interested, can you tell us about what that journey was like to go through school? Because you're bringing in your passion, your love for animals, but they're giving you tools. And I'm just interested, what tools did the university provide you? So I actually started my first year at the University of Victoria. And part of that was that Yuvic accepted me in October the year before I was set to go to school. And my first preference was UBC, but they send their admission letters

quite late. So I was antsy. I was nervous. I just, I accepted. Then of course, once I paid the $300 deposit, I thought there was no changing my mind. So when the UBC letter finally came through, I, I flip-flop back and forth, have I made a mistake? Am I going to be fine? And I went ahead and I was absolutely miserable. And a big part of it was just that sense of isolation from the island. I was so much further from my home than I thought I was. And while I have friends and family in Vancouver and in Cameloups where I grew up, which was so much more accessible, I felt like I just didn't have anybody in Victoria. And that was hard for me. So I did decide to transfer to UBC. But part of what made that transfer great is I was already thinking about the process. And then I attended

sort of a wine and cheese event that was there I was there representing my grandfather who was receiving an award but he wasn't able to attend. So my mom and sisters and I were down for the event and that was where I first met my graduate supervisor now,

David Fraser, who spoke all about the animal welfare program and as he was talking about it, it was, you know, like the fog clearing before my eyes, this is what I want. This is all I've ever wanted to do. is like science to take care of animals. What was that program about?

What was he saying that was standing out to you? Even just the title, Animal Welfare Program, like there was a scientific degree that was talking about the well-being of animals. And I think growing up, I had such a mix of worlds. I had the science and, you know, I had a lot of the arts background from my mom

and the biology influence from my granddad. And it was hard for me to reconcile out, you know, which direction I wanted to go. But I knew without a doubt that I wanted to take care of animals. So learning about this program really changed my perspective. So I made the transfer to UBC enrolled in this undergraduate applied biology. And it was everything. It was everything for me. So finding a good mentor is something I don't think we're in this weird crisis in my opinion where we don't have like kind of a journey to adulthood and I really hate the term adulting because it almost belittles the self-growth and self-development that a person

can go through to feel confident in their decision-making when they speak to a room being able to do this podcast I get to kind of see people who are very intelligent but have no self-confidence in themselves, where they go, I don't know anything. Like, I don't know what I'd say in a conversation with you. And it's like, you're an expert. You have lots to say. And so there's this challenge. And we, in the past, like, indigenous cultures, we have ways of kind of a spirit quest

walks you into adulthood. And it's a milestone in your life. And you say, wow, now I'm fully fledged, grown adult. We've sort of started to go away with that and said, you are an adult when you're 18. and that's that's it and since there's not these milestones that really stand out to people it's hard for us to feel confident that we actually know something so having a mentor sort of support you and then one day say to you like hey you're you're good you've got this you've you know most of what I know maybe I know a little bit more in this area but you've got this

and you're going to take this places and who knows where you'll go that seems to mean a lot to human beings. And when we're children, we're mimicking. We're constantly trying to copy. And so having a good mentor, someone to look up to is really important. Was that David Fraser for you? Who were the kind of movers and shakers that inspired you to continue that helped support you in your professional development? I have been blessed with many great mentors in my life. And of course, a guiding light has always been my granddad when it came to biology. But throughout the animal welfare program, even when I enrolled, I was still doing that. mental dance of whether or not I was going to be a veterinarian, but it was through those

upper-level courses when I started third and fourth year that I met some of the people that I still work with today. It was the first place I met Dr. Sarah Dubois, who's one of my direct supervisors now, and I met people like her and said, I want to do what she's doing. And David Fraser similarly was such an influence to me. He was so smart and so articulate and so knowledgeable in so many areas of animal welfare that I was just in awe and I was so grateful that I got to stay in touch and that he agreed to be my master's supervisor and I get to stay in touch with all these amazing people. And I'd be remiss if I didn't throw a shout out to my parents, especially my mom, who is the number one phone call when I have that feeling of imposter syndrome. Because

all the smartest, most wonderful, articulate people I know never think that they're as much as they are. And I even had, I will admit, I had a bit of a mental crisis last night when I was thinking, you know, I'm not a scientist enough. I'm not indigenous enough. I'm not even a real person. I'm just a woman, according to this society. It's hard to fight those mental battles, but it's important to have the supportive mentors so that you can fight through that wall. Can you tell us more about that? Because I think that, It's something we underestimate when we talk about. When you see, when I saw your credentials, very intimidating to think of what people are able to display how we see them if you're working at a gas station.

And then you see someone like yours credentials. So to hear that there's a human being and they have hesitations or struggles, that they're not 100% on who they look like they are, that we all have. a sense of imposter syndrome in certain regards that we're all trying to develop and feel a sense of belonging and confidence that we've made the right decisions. Can you just tell us about what that journey has been like because the role that you play, that Sarah plays, that these individuals play, it's in a very specific area that people might not always get to hear about yet can have a vast impact when policies go through that act in the best interest of animals in our environment. And so I'm just interested, what has the weight been like to develop and then to

have these fears of what you're sort of just describing? It's heavy. I think a lot of people struggle with it because so much of the weight that society places on us, as women, as indigenous people, as anybody existing in the world, saying that, you know, it's important not to be too ambitious or not too assertive because then you come off as bossy or unlikable. Sometimes it's hard to be indigenous because there are a lot of people, and I never get this question from fellow indigenous people, but from other white people asking, you know, what percent? What percent native are you?

And, you know, I know that they don't mean it maliciously, but what they don't realize is that's really elimination-oriented. Those systems are so ingrained in us to try and assimilate us to not exist. And I won't apologize for surviving. Yeah, absolutely. I do get it from indigenous people, particularly not around blood quantum, but around experiences. Like you didn't grow up on reserve, so you don't know what it's like. And to a certain extent, that's true.

But that isn't, when we're talking about being indigenous and the traditions and the values and the language, That's really not what we're talking about, which is where did you grow up? Because that's an experience in and of itself, but it's not the end-all and be-all. And so I think that that can be a challenge. I know historically, First Nations people have sort of not appreciated Métis people as much. And I think Métis culture has a lot of wisdom to offer, because we like to see, we're looking at indigenous people right now as if we're 100, victims of Europeans coming over, but French people came over and we have Métis people now.

And that's an example of how things could have been across the board if there weren't some bad actors involved that made huge decisions like John A. MacDonald to roll out Indian residential schools across Canada. We could have had a symbiotic relationship. And I think that's the example you can use of how things could have been and how things actually went for so many people and so I think Métis people give us an inkling of what the best path could have been for so many.

Yeah. I think a little bit of that perspective, I was reflecting on some invasive species biology questions recently and I was diving into the indigenous perspective invasive species, you know, particularly invasive plant and animal species because the Western traditional view of invasive species is that black and white.

Invasive, bad. Let's kill it all. Whereas this particular paper was looking at it from an Anishnaabe perspective, but that to us, invasive species aren't inherently good or bad. When we are presented with a new species in a novel environment, we look at it from a much more holistic perspective in how is it impacting the environment, what gifts could it potentially offer us, whereas the Western View is very much centered. This doesn't belong here. It needs to go.

That's really interesting. Have you heard of John Burroughs at all? So he's a legal expert at the University of Victoria, and he wrote this really insightful paper on what indigenous people do their best to learn from the wildlife around it. So he described his mother, and his mother had these butterflies. that come in, and it's a reflection of them and their environment and how they're treating the environment if the butterflies don't return. And so there's knowledge within the ecosystem. There's information about how to live a meaningful life that you can draw out if, like, we have

salmon ceremonies, and so we pray that the salmon return. And so if the salmon don't return, it's a reflection on us as human beings that we've overfished, that we've made poor decisions, that we've made. the ecosystem difficult to inhabit, and so it's like a failure on our part that we need to grapple with, and that there's something to learn about when, like within Christian culture, it's the idea of the flood, the idea that who are you when the flood comes? And so a good example would be here in the Fraser Valley. When that flood came, there were some people who hoarded, who took, who selfishly thought of only themselves in their family, to

give them a bit of grace. When a moment like that happens and you don't know what's going to happen, it's very hard to act in the community's best interest. And it's very easy to go, these are my people. This is my mom, my grandma, my aunt, and I need to take care of them. They're in my life and they've been there for me through thick and thin, so I've got to look out for them. But then the other argument is always think of the community, act in the best interest of not only yourself, but your family, your friends, the people within your area, your neighborhood, and try and do that so everybody benefits long term. And so there's like knowledge that some of the ecosystems can provide us on if we do a little bit too much of this, then we cause this. If we don't do this,

then this happens. And so we have to think so broadly about these complex ecosystems. But John Burroughs argues that there's such education in that. There's, so, much to learn about yourself, on your impact on other people, your impact on the world, that you can start to walk a very fine line to try and live a good life. Has that been your experience? What are your thoughts on what we can learn from these very complex ecosystems? I think a lot of what you touched on made me reflect just on how indigenous people we tend to see ourselves as stewards of the land, not the managers or the monarchs of the land, right?

We're not the people who need to manipulate everything, control it. We're just people who are helping to take care of it. We are participating in these systems and taking care of it rather than having control and dominion over it and being the best or the person in charge. So that sentiment seems to echo through so much. And a lot of your research is around, like, pest control, specifically rodents. and it was really interesting to hear I already forgot the guy's name I'm terrible with names

what was his name again oh Michael Howie yes Michael Howie they host a podcast for the furbearers and he was kind of you were both talking about this idea that when you have rats or mice that the goal is just to eradicate and there's very little thought

on how much is it out of control is it something that could be managed in a different way I had Paul Van Westendor Bonn, who's our provincial apiculturist, and he talks about how we've had the same problem historically with bees, which is you just kill everything that isn't a bee. And his argument in the podcast was once it hits a certain threshold, once you start to have

more pests than the things that can kill the pests, then you need to do something. If you've got no birds around and you've got all pests, well, then, yeah, you need to take action. But until you breach that threshold, you don't need to do anything. yet we like things to be simple and his argument was it's much easier for people to go, I do this every year on this day, easy peasy

rather than circumstantial and really thinking about when you should make a move, when you shouldn't and particularly with rats, my understanding is that we're maybe biologically, evolutionarily we look at rats differently.

We look at that little tail differently than we do. Think of a squirrel or a chipmunk. We look at the tail and we go, oh, it's fluffy, that's all good. But when we see that, that sharp tail, we go, ew, like, and we have a different relationship. How does your work look at this? How do we go about making these steps in a better direction? It's funny. I mean, rodents have followed humans to every corner of the earth, right? They really thrive in our environments, and we absolutely facilitate their transfer. But you touched on a good point, is that I don't think there's any

out there who reasonably expects that we could eliminate every roof rat or every Norway rat or every house mouse in the province, we are past that point. It's not possible. But I think what we can do and what we should do is we have a responsibility to make sure that we can still coexist. So we can all agree that mice and rats don't belong in our homes because of, you know, disease and health and safety risks. So we should be improving our homes and trying to exclude them from those spaces. And there's things we can do to eliminate attractants and start at a preventative approach. But so much of what we see is that step just gets skipped. And people call their local pest control company.

The pest control company shows up and says, yep, you got mice. And they set up these redundanticide bait stations that they refill every month in perpetuity with no further attempts to try and actually address those structural issues. That's really interesting. You talked also about how you didn't want to just go back and do a graduate. program to say you did a graduate program. You wanted a question. You wanted a question that interested you. You wanted to engage with a topic that meant something to you. So often people just want the credentials. They want the end digits on the end of their name that give them some

sort of status. Why? Why did you feel like you needed a real question? You know, there's a number of ways to go around it, and that's not to pooh-poo people that want to go back and get those credentials because it can help them in a lot of ways. But for me, I think a big part of it was that at the time that I'd finished my undergrad, I was not in a good way. I was struggling with a serious anxiety disorder that I hadn't medicated, which I do now. And I needed a break from academics, because so much of our academic system is about the grades and this sort of toxic perfectionism that you need to achieve, achieve, achieve, and if it's less than an A, it's just not good enough. And that's not the way that the real world works. There are a lot of people

who pursue graduate studies with the goal of teaching. And that wasn't really the path for me, but what I wanted to do was find a research question that I deeply wanted to ask. I didn't want to go back and, you know, just kind of pick up a random question that somebody had. And through my work with the BCSPCA, I spent a lot of time working on these sort of urban wildlife coexistence issues and how to humanely handle wildlife issues. I felt, you know, for raccoons and skunks and squirrels, I had all these good, humane coexistence options that I could offer people. But when someone called and said, you know, I've got mice and rats on my home, what do I do? I just felt like I didn't have a good option for them. And there wasn't a good option. So that was

part of what drove my master's back to school was try to answer this question of, you know, when it is time for lethal control, how can we make it as good as we can? I really want to understand more about your journey through your undergrad and why you felt like you weren't in a good place because it scares me. I've had a few people kind of describe that who just dropped out when it hit that point, when they felt like the human element of them wasn't the thing that was as valuable. And you see it so much where people, have to basically commit to, I'm not going to have a family, I'm not going to do anything else, I'm just going to focus on this in order to get these grades so I can go on to do X.

And it seems like we miss out on people who might not be the fastest, who might not check certain boxes, but who have an empathy about them that we're not scoring on a test, an aspect of their humanity that we're missing out on. And it's, I spoke to Daryl Plexus, who's worked a lot with policing. And he asks, like, why can't we have people in wheelchairs be police officers? Because that's always what we've thought. They need to be able to run and chase a perp. They need to be able to hike up a mountain to go get somebody. But there's lots of police officers who work every day in an office. And so why can't they fill that role? And so we set, like, this is the ideal. And then anything that's not that, we seem to miss out on. And

grades are a really good way of dehumanizing a person and saying, well, based on merit, you're not qualified. But if the person who climbs up the hierarchy doesn't really care hypothetically about animals, they're just in it for the status, they're able to get to the top. But the person who cares and who is not able to dedicate themselves to animals because they're working with them, because they're in communities, because they're learning from hypothetically elders and hearing stories, that person not going to reach the highest of heights. What was that like? Because UBC, for all of its good, for all of the things it delivers, has been the typical example of pushing students really hard

and not taking in that human element as much as it perhaps could. Absolutely. The one thing that I've liked about UBC is they have changed their admission policies even since I've come and left to be a little bit more, they call it broad-based admissions, so where they're counting more of that experiential component. but of course where they suffer is the actual university experience and trying to get into it, if you don't know, all of these universities operate on the same principle is that good grades

equals good, smart, competent. But, you know, once you leave that world, every job I've ever applied for, nobody's looked at my grades. What they want to know is what I studied, what my experience was, they want to talk a little bit about more my attitudes behind that. And I think having that, you know, they call it a merit-based system. but your academics isn't the only way to measure that. We do a great disservice to people who would otherwise be incredibly thoughtful and performative, and we probably need to encourage them more.

The system also tends to favor extroverts because they're more assertive about their abilities, but introverts make great CEOs, right? They're thoughtful, they take their time with decisions, and it usually leads to a better outcome, but, you know, they're maybe not as comfortable in front of a camera. Therefore, they might be passed up over somebody who's a little bit more forward. So what were the challenges you were going through? Was it just constant studying where you have, like, for so many, they don't even know what, like, a biology degree might actually look like.

What you have to study, what you have to remember, like, I'm thinking of, like, nucleus and these words that we have, like, a grade 10 memory of. The powerhouse of the cell, the mitochondria. And so is that what you're studying that you're having to remember? those terms because that's what the trope is about specifically biology, which is a lot of remembering terms, remembering definitions. And there's certainly a role for that. But is that a lot of the stress that you're going to bed every day, trying to remember these things, trying to make sure that you answer every question just perfect? What were the challenges that a degree brings? I think one thing that's really difficult about the university system for a lot of people is

especially in those first and second year, early years, you have to get all those prerequisites across this wide variety of things that your degree outlines that it needs to be. For biology, that's a lot of math, it's a lot of chemistry, both things that I've never touched since. And I think it's important that people get that breadth experience, but it's really discouraging. For me, it was math, because first year, math, EBC, different than what I did at EVEC, First year math at UBC is all calculus-based. Do you know how many times I've had to do an integral in my life?

Only in that class, right? And it just, it seems so discouraging in people that perform poorly now think that that D on their report card reflects on them as a person and their performance in their life overall. And for me, that course was second year organic chemistry, where I wasn't sure that I was going to be cut out for this. The failure rate was so high, I cried in my professor's office. after each success of failed midterm, and ended up passing the course with a D. So I think I've finished with maybe 53%. And honestly, that D was one of the proudest that I've ever had in my life.

Because you put everything into it. I put everything I had into it. But what's disappointing, too, is that, you know, I had a lot of support networks. My husband's first degree was in biochemistry, so he knew what was up. He was up with me till 2 a.m. studying and helping me do that. I had family that I could lean on for moral support, and when it came down to crunch time for the exam, I was able to pay the, I think it was $150 for a prep course to help me study for the exam.

Those resources aren't open to everybody. I also, during my first and second years, I didn't have to work to put myself through school, and that's a huge privilege that's just not a reality for a lot of people. What did it mean to you? Because one of the things I think is so important that we're maybe missing out. on at certain points in our life is the idea that there are people you need to lean on when times are dark when things are tough and that that actually a lot of the time the person needing the support feels like a burden but there's a reward to be found in the connection that that builds that you go you were there for me when I was at my lowest and now I trust you

and there's there's like gold to be found in that there's like a resource that you can't tap into until you hit that point. One of my concerns is that for so many, life is tough, but it's not so tough that you have to go to those people. I know a lot of people who's their life really sucks based on like all

our kind of rubrics for are you close with your family? Do you have a lot of money? They're not checking any of the boxes but it's not so horrible that they're willing to reach out. Can you tell us about what that was like to be able to reach out to loved ones and actually receive support and love and

reassurance. I mean, it made the difference for everything. And I think that's probably why my experience at Uvick was so hard for me, was that I just felt so isolated. I didn't have anybody that I trusted to that degree. Versus in Vancouver, even though my parents didn't live in Vancouver, they lived in Camloops. They weren't that far away. A phone call was still comforting. My boyfriend at the time, now husband, also lived here in Vancouver and was a huge support to me. At that time, I don't know how much it has or hasn't changed. UBC's counseling services were not free. There was an immense waiting list.

They were very difficult to access. There was a lot of barriers in place. So it wasn't easy to access professional help, but it did help to have the support of friends and family to lean on. And, you know, my mom and grandmas were always phone call number one when I needed a pep talk. You know, if I was worried about the exam, call them and everything's wrong. And they were just, you are beautiful and smart and so

wonderful. And that's just the kind of person everybody needs in their life. Absolutely. So going back for this research to ask questions about how we, is this a philosophy that perhaps separates you from others who are more interested? I interviewed Peter Ross, who's focused on, he works with Raincoast, and their focus is really that relationship. between the water and the land and what lives on that border. And so it seems like a philosophical difference between yours, which is much more, how do we coexist with this? How do we make steps in the right direction? How do we discourage some of the negativity?

Is that like a philosophical, unique aspect of your curiosity? I think so, because it's funny how much my experience is childhood mirror, you know, what I'm telling people to do today. the experiences with the squirrels in the backyard. You know, now I'm telling people how to, you know, humanely and safely evict squirrels from their chimneys. And that mirrors exactly my experience of how I grew up is now how I'm helping other people live their lives. Right.

But I think what's really important to me is that, you know, these urban spaces and human development are going to keep coming. So we need somebody sort of in the corner for the wild animals and saying this is their home too. We need to learn how to share. Absolutely. So what was the application like? Had this been under-researched from your perspective and it needed more elaboration? Is there a stigma that you wanted to help people kind of grapple with where we really do just sort of see rats as a problem? And it's so not disputed by anyone that there's no voice kind of adding in the nuance of, well, what happens when we put these chemicals in their body? And then, The selling point, it seems like, for so many, is then another animal eats them. And that's where it seems like most people are going to get on board.

It's sort of sad because it's not enough that there's something going wrong with that rat, with that mouse. We need it to be impacting the owl. We need it to impact the eagle. We need it to impact the hawk in order for us to go, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I can get on board. what was that sort of journey to ask that question like is it discouraging to think that people can't get on board for the simple reality that this is harming an animal regardless of where it's coming from or what our history is with it it's definitely what motivated me to take on the topic was that going through all this research about how to coexist with animals and realizing that it just it didn't exist for mice and rats for a lot that research had largely stagnated. anything new that was coming out was sort of reviews of previous research,

but that our pest control methods haven't changed in decades, despite what could have been so many years of innovation. So I was really hopeful that we would find, you know, sort of more answers to this solution. I was also hoping that I could help change people's minds. And maybe if I couldn't change their mind about mice and rats being intelligent and social and amazing creatures, maybe at least I could get them to think about prevention, right?

You know, rodent proofing their home and then they wouldn't have to run into conflict. I will say it's discouraging that all of the redendicide issues that I've been working with, I have been very encouraged to see change, but it's also hard for me when I'm going through the photos and I pick up a photo of a squinty owl who's been poisoned by redendicide, I know that's going to be more impactful than a mouse or rat in the same position. Can you tell us what you see in rats? Because a lot of people will point to plagues that we've been through as to what shapes our mindsets.

From, again, my understanding, a lot of the reason we have cats and we've domesticated cats is to deal with rodent problems. What's the piece that we might be missing? What's the nuance to these animals? Where, again, with mosquitoes, we go, nope, can't do it. They suck. We seem to do the same thing with rodents. even for myself, I don't know what a positive quality about them

other than that they feed other animals might be. Yeah. I mean, for anybody that's had a pet rat, they can witness this up close and personal, but it's been observed in wild rats. They are so, so smart. And a lot of that just goes to show the amount of time that they've spent with us and just followed us everywhere, the way that we are constantly in an arms race trying to outsmart them. there's some incredible videos of rats doing amazing things.

I've seen rats that have been trained to haul up a tiny life raft off a desk. Wild rats will take care of sick or injured family members in their group. You know, they're not just every rat for themselves. They have really complex social lives. They're often, you know, you hear the myth about rats being dirty, but they are fastidious groomers. They are so clean. There's also been some pretty amazing research done right here in Vancouver.

So the Vancouver Rat Project has looked at different rats populations and sort of the pathology of these different rat groups. And even though they have found a number of diseases in rats, what they've also found is that because of their social structures, they're really limited to one city block. So almost what they're doing is by not disturbing. those blocks, they're sort of acting as a pathogen sponge and keeping like all of those in one place rather than having it spread throughout the city. So what we would think is that rat everywhere and that they intermingle and that they don't seem to care. And what you're saying is it's much more focused and that they do try and keep like a community that almost protects us unknowingly by them having that social structure from mixing like all.

the different diseases together in some sort of gross mixture. Yeah, exactly. And where we run into problems is, guess what? It's usually our fault. But when we see things like demolitions on city blocks, something that forces the populations to scatter. Wow. And that's where you can trace those.

When you see demolition projects that scatter the population, you can see outbreaks of certain diseases, Leptospyra, Bartonella, things like that. So what do we have to, like, when we think of mosquitoes, we think of Lyme disease. We think of certain things. Malaria. And so we have like,

I don't want to get bit because of X. What is the things we need to worry about with rats? Because the odds of them biting us pretty low, but we still seem to have this deep fear that they're going to crawl onto our shoe, that they're going to get onto us somehow, that they're going to be on our shoulder or something. Yeah.

I mean, rats like any wild animal biting and scratching, those are all sort of a lot. resort if they're feeling threatened. So a lots of times when people are bit by rats, it's because they're trying to capture them, they're trying to kill them, they're otherwise sort of harassing them or threatening them, or maybe they've stuck their hand in a burrow unknowingly.

The other time that we see rat bites, and this is a bigger issue to deal with, is when we're looking at people without homes that are in sort of vulnerable positions where they're living more closely alongside wild rats. it's also interesting to see that relationship because lots of times they view them as companions, you know, sort of as friends that are with them and take care of them. But with these bites, one of the most common things that gets overlooked is leptospyra.

So it's a bacteria that can be transmitted with bites or close contact. And often what people will present with is a fever and they'll just be sent home, not realizing that what's actually happened is they've had a leptospyra infection. Wow. that is really heavy to think about developing like a relationship with a rat because you're you're struggling with homelessness and to put yourself in the shoes of the person who doesn't have a home who often we think of as outliers people who have made mistakes um we don't know their story but we act like we would understand that we understand the five kind of principles of what makes someone homeless to feel like an outcast. and to have a friend that is also an outcast in so many ways that's really heavy to think about because perhaps the reason that we don't empathize with rats

why it's hard for so many to empathize with people who are struggling with homelessness is because we don't see any common ground. We think that we're so different than them that we would have made so many different decisions than them that we have nothing in common. We're basically different things. and then with rats it's the same thing it's this feeling that they have nothing in common with us we're just different and there's a lack of utility in them and so there's no purpose and it's the same thing we do with people oh you don't have a job you don't work so you're not paying your taxes and now we have to help you and that's the conservative trope for so many which is just get a job and start contributing when the problem is a lack of support of

lack of understanding from perhaps their family or their loved ones abuses. The story is far more complicated, but we like to simplify it down to like social anxiety, depression, addiction, things that we don't have typically, things that we think, oh, they have that, but I don't have that. And so that makes them different when really, if you think about they were bullied, well, maybe I was bullied, well, they're misunderstood, well, how often do I feel? It's like there's a way of connecting with almost anything, that if you could connect with something like a rat, if you can see and empathize and understand that they're just a creature like anything else, they didn't choose that life, that there's common ground to be found. Is it encouraging to try and share that

with people to show them the beauty and something that it's so hard for so many to see? Yeah. Some of that amount of exposure helps. I know when I was a kid, I had a friend who lived up the street from me who was always very into small animals. So that was where I got my first exposures to mice and rats and bunnies and guinea pigs and getting to spend a lot of time with them truly through a lens of love, right? I was also reflecting on a colleague of mine at the BCSPCA. We needed to do some work for a project and there was a few rats that had just come in through the shelter and they were pet rats, but they looked wild just because they had that.

wild coloring. So we agreed to go down and do a photo shoot with them. And we needed someone to handle the rats. And of course, she said, I'll do the photos, but I'm not touching the rats. You've got to do that. They quite scare me. And of course, by the end, she's holding up the rat. She's giving them little kisses. And I said, what happened? I thought you were afraid. She said, I didn't know they could be so cute. I didn't know they were so social. They were, you know, climbing around her shoulders, resting in her hood, sniffing her hair. She just, she'd had never had an experience with them before. I think there's a lot to learn from that because we're in like a time where when we see the difference in another person, whether it's your political views on who should

be the next prime minister or how we've handled certain decisions in this country, we like to other people and say, you don't know anything, you're a hillbilly, you're this. And so you have therefore less value because of these views that you hold that I think are wrong. and the better approach is to spend time with those people and one of my big fears is social media so many people I see say if you have this opinion

just delete me now and it's like well you're not getting that exposure in the same way you might with a rat to something different something that makes you uncomfortable where you go no you're wrong I know you're wrong and it's like okay we'll give them 20 minutes to explain themselves

and maybe they are wrong but at least through hearing that you can break down some walls and see some, at least see their understanding of things. And I love the term steel manning because it's really easy for us to say, you're wrong, I've heard these three things, and so I know that I'm right. It's harder to go, oh, because like the one big one for me is I really struggle with whether or not we should have pipelines in this country. On the one hand, I absolutely hear environmentalists saying, what if we leak, what if it destroys and indigenous land, what about the detriments to the environment, but

then the other part of me looks at it and goes so many indigenous communities, particularly in the north, are in absolute poverty. And there are, as a native court worker, I get to see the sexual abuses that take place, not literally, but I get to hear about what's going on, what the

abuses that are taking place when you're in absolute poverty. The harms that take place against children, the lack of education and understanding, the amount of children that are born everyone I know from my community that I grew up with is a peer

they're all dead now because they used alcohol to cope with what happened to them as children and so it's not as cut and dry for me to pick one side or the other to say no pipeline that's the correct answer for the environment because the counterpoint is

these communities do need to get out of poverty and then they can make better decisions whether that's saying no to all future developments that's their decision but until they're out of poverty, it's not really fair to make them choose. And so I feel like a lot of topics like that are far more complicated. And so there's a logic in why people choose, like the pro pipeline people will say jobs, careers, business, money. And then we go, well, that's a terrible goal.

And to a certain extent it is. But when you're talking about people who have nothing who don't have proper running water, who don't have warmth, who don't have washers and dryers, that's a far more complicated. question. But on the other side, you go, well, do we want to just continue to harm the environment for the benefit of people? Is that fair? The animals in that area, they don't get a vote. And so it doesn't feel like there's a right answer. It just feels like philosophically, you sort of have to lean one side or the other, and you have to live with the consequences of your decision. it's absolutely

it's crippling trying to weigh all those factors and trying to come up with the right decision and I feel you it's hard every time and I think the important part is to look at each project, each piece individually

and saying is this going to be the right move as good as we can because there are certainly projects that I look at and go that's a terrible idea or a terrible location just based on the specific context and it's important to consider

all of those things, including whose land is it passing through and not just whether or not they were consulted, but whether or not they wholeheartedly endorse what's going to happen. Yeah. Do you think that seeing the beauty and something like a rat gives you some sort of enrichment,

some sort of better understanding where, again, I feel like so many people go, I hate this based on nothing. And so when you actually have to reflect and empathize and think about something critically and really understand it as a whole, that you sort of see people for what they are, which is mostly surface level decision making very quick, very, no, I hate rats, they're gross, you just need to get something in here, that you kind of see the lack of critical analysis on certain issues. And so you can sort of empathize and understand like, wow, so much of people miss the full picture. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I think so much of my empathy is what guides my work. And so much my personal life, too, is exploring that. And this is something someone said to me is that it's always good to be curious because when you're too busy being curious, you can't be anxious. Because you're too busy questioning the world around you and trying to make sense of it all. And staying curious also means that, again, you're not shutting out. things before you even gotten a chance to know them you know shutting down people before you've had a chance to understand their perspective and you can't change their mind if you just choose not to talk to them

I couldn't agree more it's one of the things I love about doing this which is I every week get reminded I know nothing that I'm not an expert in rodents I had a leather worker on and he was explaining all the complexities of making wallets and he really prides himself on the heritage on something like we don't make things that last 100 years anymore. And we don't have that pride of like, I'm going to pass on my boots to you. And I wore them for 40 years. And now, yeah, you might have to mend this spot like here, but this is going to last you a long time. We've really lost that. Now, it's like, you used to have a phone that would last you like five years. Now, it's every couple of years, you need the newest phone. Why? Because your phone deliberately stops working as well. And that's

such a trip that they were proven, Apple specifically was proven to slow down their other phones, make the battery life worse, to incentivize you to get a new phone. Like, we have this materialistic relationship, and yet so much of what it meant to be a human for so long was seeing the beauty in a 150-year-old tree. Yeah. And having that connection. Can I ask, what were your findings through your research? What did you learn? Were you surprised by anything? Where do we go from your findings. So my initial goal going into the project was really to evaluate this one type of trap

that had seen a lot of promise. And it was just funny for me that that was the initial goal, but what I got out of it was so much bigger than that. And I was actually trialing this trap at a couple different locations. And it just, it drove home the point for me in that so much of our efforts towards rodent control have been entirely reactive.

I have mice. have rats, I need to do this, this, and this, um, to kill them. But what it leaves out is all of that prevention and exclusion. And it just, it just reinforced so much for me that that area is the one that needs to change the most is when people encounter mice and rats in their home is that the first step they're looking at is not how can I kill them. It's what brought them here. How are they getting here? So we're, we always talk about the word pro-act. and being proactive in things. And it seems like with health care, with so many things,

we know being proactive is better. And so you're saying that if we were able to rethink how we look at things, to really think about what's going on in the environment that's brought them here today, rather than thinking, kill now, we would do better. So would your pitch to people be that even though they might not have rats today to do something to take some sort of action? Yeah, that's definitely one of the arguments that I've made in trying to rally the industry to get more on board is I think there's this idea that so much of their business model has been based on sort of these monthly redenticide baiting programs. That's been the bread and butter for so long, you get somebody into a contract that they just never leave.

So you can spend 15 minutes at a trap site, you charge your monthly, whatever it is, $300, $400, and then you'll just never leave. leave. But I think there's a lot of people that would pay for rodent proofing services, or especially even if they found a mouse for the first time in the kitchen, and maybe it's not a full infestation yet, but you can guarantee that somebody on the other end of that call would pay good money for preventative services. And yes, it might take you longer to visit that job, and you may only visit them once or twice.

But then the joy is that you can keep doing that, people would pay good money for those types of rodentproofing services. what would that look like and what sort of shift do you think is necessary to convince these industries to have a larger kind of mindset because Paul was talking about bees and he was like we can we have like a shortage of bees that are living shorter lives he was like all people all these like farmers need to do is have a few bushes so the bees can live there and they can have food throughout the winter months and if you just left it things would be so much better and he was like we wouldn't have to ship in honeybees you would just have bumblebees around you and he was like

it was a simple solution wouldn't cost them much extra and then he was like but they were like no because i can make money off of those few bushes and why would i lose money there when i can just pay more to have more honeybeats brought in and he was and i was like well that seems silly and he was like that's where we're at. And so there seems to be like corporations like to talk about how they're just money driven. But they seem to be stupid money driven at times where they don't really think about it. They just kind of make a decision that's in line with like, oh, well, whatever is the cheapest option. But it's like if this saves you money over time, it gives your customers a better experience, you can have a broader impact. So what are the next steps? How does industry go

about implementing this? On this particular issue, I'm really grateful that we have the buy-in from government in recognizing that what we've been doing for decades is not effective rodent management. And, you know, I have so much concerns about the welfare of mice and rats that we've treated so inhumanely for so long, but what's going to get them to change is recognizing that it's not effective. So in July last year, the provincial government announced a temporary ban on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides.

So these are the really, really toxic ones that were poisoning owls and eagles because they were eating so many poison carcasses, and that toxin is really persistent in the environment. Can you say what you just said again, a second-generation coagulant? Anticoagulant redenticide. Okay, what? So anticoagulant means it prevents the blood from clotting. So essentially when mice or rats eat this, what happens is they slowly bleed out and die.

because blood doesn't have the ability to clot. How long does that take? With the second generation, it can take days or even weeks. And so they're just dying. It's painful. It is painful. So they are slowly bleeding out or dying. There are other types of poisons out there.

For example, bromethylene is a neurotoxin. Similar, it is very unpleasant. But it's these anticoagulant rodenticides that people are really worried about the environmental impacts. And part of the reason is that, that this toxin is very persistent in the body. So mice and rats eat enough dose. It kills them.

Owls, their diet is primarily rodents. So especially barred owls, we've seen this. They're very, very vulnerable. They'll eat enough of those rodents that they themselves experience the poisoning. So that's called secondary poisoning. So the direct poisoning is when the mice and rats eat the poison. Secondary poisoning is when someone eats the poison carcasses. Another alarming issue that I discovered through my master's research,

is how far ranging these impacts are are still unknown. So we've started to witness redendicides in suspended particulate matter. So now we're worried about our fish being affected by redenticides. Are we now presenting another issue for salmon and their livelihood? We're seeing impacts on songbirds because insects are getting onto the redenticide because it's formulated to smell like food and tasty. And for the insectivores that are eating bugs, they're now experiencing the toxicity. from eating so many poisoned insects.

Oh, no. This is terrible. So can you tell me about what it looks like, put it into context, what does this rats last days look like when they're bleeding out? Is this blood all over the ground? What is it inside their own body? I just, for listeners, you might be uncomfortable, but like, we're doing this all the time. So it's like, it's not something to me that we can just sweep under the rug.

Like, I want to understand so that I know how bad it could be and then potentially how much better it could be if we take a different path. So I think we kind of have to go to hell in order to understand how we can move in a different direction than that. And I think just understanding this would be valuable. So to be clear, the second generation antichrylate rodenticides or cigars for the abbreviation, these are the number one most common tool used in pest control today. If you, prior to the minister's order, if you called somebody to complain about a mice and rat issue, it's almost guaranteed that this is what they would have pulled out, is this exact poison. And it comes in many different brand names, but they all have that same mechanism where it clots the blood and they slowly blout out and die. So what you'll often see with mice or rats that have been poisoned is you might find them with blood coming from the mouth is usually where we see it most. before they finally succumb, they'll often appear confused.

They might be stumbling. They might be walking, you know, kind of in areas that you wouldn't expect to see them. Usually mice and rats kind of stick to corners and, you know, lines where they've got at least one wall of protection. It can be hard to see. I have definitely seen this at sites that I've been. And, you know, when I've been wandering around downtown, most people just walk on by. but if you take a minute to look, it's so upsetting. So, and makes it worse, makes our discomfort worse.

If you see a rat with blood around its mouth, you're thinking, oh, my God, like, we need more pest control. Because now you're thinking, who did it just bite rather than we're doing this to this animal? Yeah. And the sad reality is that there hasn't been a lot of change in the humanness of these tools. So the other options that are commonly used, even glue traps, I don't know if you've heard of glue traps, but it's exactly what it sounds like is a little plastic tray filled with glue that are put out often in food facilities, especially, and the idea is that the mice and rats get stuck on the glue. So there's no killing mechanism in those traps, right?

The best case scenario that a mouse or rat can hold for, which sounds awful, is that they get their face stuck in the glue and they suffocate. That would be best case scenario, because that's the shortest duration for them. But that doesn't often, that doesn't always happen. They'll chew their own limbs off, trying to escape. They'll often die from just dehydration or exposure because they've been trapped for so long. There's any number of ways to die. And I can't tell you how many times I've been on the other end of a phone call because

somebody's caught a mouse or rat in a glue trap. And this is something a pest control company sets and then leaves at your home or place of work. So can you imagine being a home, or an employee, and you're the one that hears the mouse squealing stuck in the trap, and what are you supposed to do with it? What are you supposed to do with it? Just leave it? That's what a lot of people tend to do. If you're feeling really brave, it would be ideal to put them out of their misery. So, which nobody wants to do. It's traumatic. It's upsetting.

And I've had to walk through people what to do for that emergency euthanasia. But it's it's hard to deal with and most people when they've experienced that once they're calling the company to come back and take all the glue traps away and they don't

can you tell us some of these companies that are doing this is there any good companies is there any good actors in this world well one thing that we tried to do and part of what helped

fuel my desires for research was through my work with the BCSPCA we were looking into all these humane wildlife control standards and we realized that there wasn't an easy way to tell, you know, who had animal welfare on the mind. So we created this animal kind accreditation program, which exists already. So we actually accredit, you know, wildlife and pest control companies for mice and rats.

Is there any on that list right now? We have three. Okay. So they are few and far between is the tough part. But the companies that are on the list, including AAA wildlife control out here in the Fraser Valley, alternative wildlife solutions on Vancouver Island and verd and rodent control in the interior. All of them do what we kind of talked about.

They do that exclusion work where they'll actually come and help seal up the holes to make sure that you don't have further problems. A lot of them also deal with wildlife issues too. So if raccoons get into your attic or something, you know, these aren't companies that trap and kill them. They don't trap and relocate them. What they do is more of an eviction.

so they let the animal leave sort of on their own terms and often that'll be used with a one-way door so it's just a little box with a flap so for example a raccoon can leave the attic but once they leave they can't get back in so that gives them that autonomy to move on on their own terms and especially for mama raccoons

they often have multiple densites set up because they're never sure you know what's going to happen so if there's babies inside she will leave and if she can't get back in an animal kind company will take the babies out, put them in like a special heated box and leave them out and then mom will come back and she'll actually move her babies to a new den one by one. Wow. That's really cool. Yeah, that's the goal of

those things is that you're giving the animal the chance to move on on their own terms because when you do things like trapping and relocating, some people think of that as being a humane option because they're still alive, but what they're really doing is kidnapping an animal, bringing into an area. They don't know how to find food and water. They don't know where to shelter. They might get into fights with other animals. And often those relocated animals simply die after suffering and struggling in this new environment. We know that with whales, right? Like we like, there was one whale. I think it was in the UK. And they had this whole mindset of like, I think it was an animal rights group that wanted this whale returned to the ocean and it was going

to be free. And then it couldn't adapt. It didn't have a community to return to. And so it was I think it was trying to join other communities and it couldn't fit in. And then it ended up like starving to death and dying shortly after being released because there was nowhere for it to go. And I'm interested in how do you balance that empathy? Because on the one hand, it's like we want to treat animals well. And then on the other hand, it's like, but there's a line. Is that hard for people in your industry to square?

Is it hard for you to square? which is like, yeah, you don't want rats and we want them to not have to be killed, but once they're on that glue trap, I have to walk them through how to take that life. Is that hard to balance? I think what I've really appreciated about the animal welfare perspective is that sort of balance of quality versus quantity of life, so that an animal's life should be as good as we can make it, but we shouldn't unnecessarily prolong it if it means suffering. Interesting that you brought up the example of whales

because one of the things that BCSPCA is advocating for in the work that I'm very proud of is that we've known for a long time, for example, that elephants don't do well in captivity. They are social creatures with long-ranging home distances and we've created a number of sanctuaries where elephants, even though they can't necessarily be released to the wild

because they're not, no longer equipped with the tools to survive, we do have these sanctuaries. that can meet all of their needs and still allow them to live a good life. And what we're actually looking at now is there's a group called the Whale Sanctuary Project that is looking to develop this for, you know, whales and dolphins that are retiring from captivity.

So rather than being in small tanks that are the size of bathtubs that don't allow them to express any natural behaviors, the whale sanctuary is actually looking for an open sea pen system where they'd be in ocean temperatures, in a natural environment, there's probably going to have to be some supplemental feeding, but they would be given all of that extra space.

And even though they may not be able to return to the wild, they still have that chance to live a good quality of life. Right. That's really inspiring. Does that make it all worthwhile to see sort of the dark place that we're in, to see small steps being taken in a better direction? Does that re-inspire? It definitely feels like light at the end of the tunnel. It can get really easy to feel weighed down by all the bad news in the world and when you read horrible stories, but then, you know, there's always light at the end of the tunnel.

It's easy to hyper-focus on the negative, but there's always positive out there. Do you get to know these business owners that are doing these, taking a different approach, having a commitment to wildlife, is that something you're able to really connect with them to get to know? know what brought that about for them? Yeah. I mean, so many of them we share the same perspective that these animals are intelligent and social and deserve humane treatment. And it's it's so nice to meet people with a common perspective like that. And they all come from different backgrounds, different geographic regions, but it's clear that people want to take care of animals. And for supporters of the BCSPCA, who are also animal lovers, who care, you know, they want to treat all animals with kindness.

and it's nice to see that we can all agree that maybe the rec king doesn't live in our house, but we don't want them to suffer for it. Right. And is this something that they are really able to get the word out, that they're doing something differently, that they're trying to take a different approach? Is that something that's being well received generally? Or is there organizations, businesses having trouble seeing the nuance, seeing the difference? I think for the customers, they really see the value. there are people who are out there looking for humane options

and usually disappointed that there's not more options available to them but I have started seeing over even the last 10 years in this field that people there's more and more of these companies popping up or more companies that are trying to adopt more of this stance and I think they're seeing the need and part of that social shift to the companies will come from a customer demand saying no I don't want you to put out a point box, I want you to solve the rodent problem, or I want you to rodent proof my home and make sure they can't get back in.

Right. And the movements from government, it sounds like we're moving in a better direction that they're being open-minded. I spoke to Lee Harding about the wolf-culling problem, and it was very pessimistic to hear that the BC liberals at the time would form a committee, and then the committee would say, hey, this isn't going to do anything good. and then the liberals would go, okay, disband this committee, let's get a different group of people. They're going to come to a more useful decision that's going to further the policies that we want. It's basically they're looking for someone to tell them what they want to hear and say that the committee found this. We didn't find this. The committee found it. That was kind of alarming to me. Is this what you see? Are people being more open-minded now?

Are we moving in a better direction at a government level? I want to say, yes. I mean, we know the pace of government is very slow because typically they have to be much more conservative with any type of movements and that pace is always slower than we want to see, but that's part of why I think the work that we do is so valuable is that we can encourage government to make those bigger steps.

We can give them the resources. I know with my research and with my work for the BCSPCA, we've been consulting with the provincial government representatives as they develop their new rudendicide policy. as part of the scientific review and seeing what's possible and helping fuel that change. But it's hard. I think we've seen changes in a positive direction, but that's driven by the constituents too, is saying that the welfare of these animals matter to me,

and I don't want to just see change. I want to make sure that animals don't suffer. Right. Can we talk about the SPCA? Such a unique organization that I think instills so much hope, but I think most of us have such a surface level understanding of this is where we go get animals that need a home. This is where all of our mindsets kind of come from.

What is the SPCA, what stood out to you about them? Yeah, so a common misconception, people think BCSPCA, they think adoptable cats and dogs, but they don't realize, you know, our mission work is protecting, enhancing the quality of life for companion farm and wild animals. And that's been part of our mission work, nearly since inception. So our wildlife team is small in comparison. There's really only three of us at the province-wide level.

And then we also have the BCSPCA's Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center, Wild Ark, which takes care of injured and orphaned wildlife and returns them back to the wild. So it is a smaller team that represents that. But, you know, as an organization committed to helping animals, it's not enough to look at just one type of animal or one specific set of animals for us. And I think what drew me to the organization was that animal welfare perspective that we might not be able to change everything, but we can continue pushing for better lives for animals and better treatment for wild animals.

Is it an organization that's motivational? Are you all sort of on the same page about the direction we need to go? what does that team work look like? Because it seems like there would be a lot of overlap in terms of the mindset of, okay, if we improve the farm life here, that will impact the city here. Like, as we were talking about, ecosystems are all somewhat connected. And so the positive work, if we can make a difference here, it will eventually have benefits over here that the average person might not realize,

but that all improves the quality of the life around us. Yeah. I think you touched on a little bit. but what we look at as sort of a one welfare approach or a one health perspective, and that the idea is that our health and well-being is so deeply intertwined with the health and well-being of animals in the environment. And one recent example that we saw that just really highlighted this was even the COVID-19 pandemic. And we recently saw in mink farming here in British Columbia that there were several outbreaks of COVID-19 on these mink farms.

So all of these aspects intertwine And we really need to take care of the animals By taking care of animals, we are taking care of ourselves And by taking care of the environment, we are taking care of animals and of ourselves. So that's why it's so important to be such good stewards. Which is like the disconnect you often hear about, which is if we act in the best interest of the environment, then we're costing businesses money, we're losing

on our GDP, we're harming something else. But the philosophy is that if we do all of this, then we have healthier mink. I interviewed Bill Turnbull, and he talks a lot about making sure that your cows, like the meat that you're eating is high quality. The higher quality, the life that your animal gets to live, the better it is for you,

the better it is for the vegetation that the cows are living on until they pass away. And so that there's a balancing act. that can be struck. And I think a lot of people are realizing this, particularly with chickens. When we think of them cooped up in a cage, no space, we go, well, that doesn't sound very good. And people are starting to realize, well, the freer that chicken is to roam around, to exercise, the higher quality that meat. And so we can sort of start to get on board and see a cascading effect that benefits us.

And I think so many just go, well, what's the price of the counter and miss sort of those larger, longer term benefits that you might not see on day one. Yeah. We definitely do have, that's, we as humans have that struggle right now where we have this very Western-centered view of, you know, sort of the individual lifetime and how can I succeed at the individual level. And a lot of that is centered around discussions of wealth versus a much more holistic perspective, how am I setting up this world in a good way for the children and grandchildren

and grandchildren, grandchildren, grandchildren, who I'll never meet? and making sure that, you know, we're not just thinking about ourselves now, we're thinking about what our world looks like seven generations from now, long after we've left. Yeah, I think that that philosophy has been long missing from our culture, which is recognizing we have a finite life and that we could make a difference for future generations and the question on how much of a difference is really difficult to quantify because it's hard to know if we made better decisions, how much better life could be for future. generations and I think we're so discouraged right now because it feels like we're not going to

be able to fix the climate like everything is going to hell in a hand basket that a lot of people feel like it's just never going to be enough but every little step can move us in a better direction and that again can inspire when you see a policy you didn't think was going to get through make it through and start to have the effects so was it a meaningful moment when the government and said, we're going to ban these second generation anti-coagulans. Did I get that right? You did. It was monumental for me.

In the two years that I was doing a master's while I was just working part-time at the BCSPCA, we saw two big legislative changes that, if I'm going to be honest, I didn't expect to see in my lifetime. These were the things that I was working on and things I never expected to see a win on, but I knew was important. And that was the redenticide movement. and also a ban on mink farming in BC. And I know that was driven by the health risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic,

but the impacts of shutting down that industry are going to have positive effects for generations to come. Interesting. Who was driving the rodenticide movement? Was that primarily you based on your research? Who was involved in getting that legislation through? There was a lot of different pieces that came together. And ultimately, that was driven by public support. So prior to the legislation being passed, the BCSPCA, we supported a number of municipalities who made changes at their own operational level and said we recognize that rodenticides are harming local wildlife, we recognize it's not effective pest control, and they passed policies and made motions to no longer permit the use of riddenicides on their operational facilities.

And that's not just one or two buildings. If you think about all the buildings and municipality might own its libraries, it's community centers, it's shopping centers, it's all of their different buildings, and that makes a huge impact. So we saw a wave of, you know, I think we're nearly 30 municipalities now who before that legislation or that temporary minister's order came down had already made changes. So if you can imagine being in the province and knowing this is an issue and now seeing all these municipalities, say on paper, we know this is an issue and we recognize.

So I think that wave of municipalities making support really drove the province's decision. That's fascinating. From a legal perspective, we often talk about how we try and resolve issues at a local level. And so we have the provincial court that's usually in your city or your municipality or a couple of cities away. And then it moves up to the BC Supreme Court. And then it works its way up and it goes into the BC Court of Appeals. Then it goes all the way up to the Canadian Supreme Court. And that's where final decisions are made. And so you always start at that local level. And so is that kind of the rubric for success to say if we can get a municipality to do that, then we can kind of demonstrate changes. We can show what the benefits and the cons are.

And then we can see if this can be expanded out. It's not the only way, but it is a very effective way. So we've seen some of those, you know, the bottom up changes, right? So the community is making that support and then the higher levels of government recognizing that this is an issue that matters. to their constituents. But we've also seen, you know, one of the big successes, I think, of global collaboration was the protection of the ozone layer. So back when we saw crisis levels, we were seeing holes in the ozone.

People realized that CFCs were causing the degradation of the ozone. They believed the scientists who published those reports and governments across the world were banning them. And so that was a very top-down approach where the governments believed the scientist, they made the regulations. It trickled down to the consumers who now had no option but to make an environmentally conscious decision. And we saw a reversal.

That might be one of the greatest global successes we've ever seen. I really love that one. You're not the first, Lee Harding was the first one to sort of bring it up. And it is such a strong example. And it's really unfortunate that we can't seem to get on the same page

as much as we think we are. I'm interested in your thoughts on that. Right now we have, it is very traditional conservative to be skeptical of climate change. And I think, again, I try not to have just one position. Their argument is basically we've always had ebbs and flows in this. The very clear other argument is look at any graph and you're going to see things are just getting worse. It's even if you're struggling with the idea, there's no doubt that. when humans move into an area we seem to just muck it up like we just don't take care of things

we're not experts on everything so we kind of just make decisions and then go oh look at what we did like our bad um you think of the BP oil spill it was like whoops and it's like well that's not very helpful that's we we seem to be very make decisions and then look at the consequences 20 years down the line that at scale around the world is going to have huge consequences long term. The challenge, I think, is we're in this weird conversation about where should pipelines be. In terms of Russia is now, we're not working with them. We saw those prices go up. Some people are skeptical as to why. It was such a steep increase. But there's this feeling that we were sort of just for a long time exporting our problems. And rather than saying, how are we going to make this sustainable? We were like, well, we'll stop doing it and then we'll just have Russia do it or Saudi Arabia do it. And they'll pay all the consequences. And then we'll be over here and we'll feel good that we're moving in a better direction. And we're off of, like, making our own oil.

But we've exported it somewhere else. And now we're kind of alive to the idea, well, we can't do that. Because now we're very vulnerable in terms of energy. I just talked to somebody who was in Germany and they were like, every night on the news right now, it's all about energy crisis. Because they were almost like, they were very reliant on Russia. And now they're not allowed to be. And so now they're like, what are we going to do? And so they're making rules around how much you can use your AC, how much you can heat your house.

And so it's waking us up to the fact that we're on a planet and we can't export the problems that we have off of the planet. And climate change is a planetary problem. It's not a Canada problem. It's not a U.S. problem. It's a global challenge. And we have to figure out the worst actors and start to address it. So do you feel like there's. It feels like it's sometimes 50-50.

There's climate people who are skeptical, and there's climate people who are 100% we're going to hell in a handbasket, and we're all going to roast, like, on a fire, and die. And it feels like there's those two camps. But when you see something like this come through, in Chilliwack, we just started banning single-use plastics on a municipal level.

And so, again, to your point, that can climb, that can reach other municipalities, and they go, hey, well, it's not so bad. We're not dying. We're not not able to drink our smoothies and our slurpees. We figured it out. We're going to be okay. And so do you feel like there's much more hope to be found and that these two kind of camps are not as accurate as we think, where change is happening?

It's more behind the scenes we like to have our philosophical debates about how the world is. And the real work is still getting done despite these two camps that seem to disagree. it probably does slow the progress like change could be more rapid if everyone is unified in that approach but I do think that we are still making progress we could be making more progress and there's things like if we bring it back to the pipeline debate

one of the biggest reasons in favor is that our reliance on fossil fuels and petro products isn't going anywhere But on the flip side, it's not going anywhere if we don't make meaningful investment into those resources. And sometimes those projects arguably may divert resources that could otherwise be used elsewhere. So we have yet to meaningfully invest in a reasonable alternative. And I think the federal government recently announced that they were planning to build an electric car manufacturing facility in Canada. and that's one of the ways that we can

like meaningfully invest in these because the crisis crisis right now we're seeing is that even if people want to switch an electric vehicle, which is a great option in BC where all our power is mostly driven by hydro they are on five year waiting

list just to get the vehicle. Yeah, I think that that is a huge challenge which is people don't even recognize now how close, at least in BC we are, to being sustainable. And we've got to be more proud of that, I think. I think we need to appreciate the advancements behind the scenes that other people made before us that it put us in a different position than so many other people. Because we get kind of, it's depressing to think about that we're destroying the planet, that we're wrecking things.

But here in BC, if you do own a Tesla, you're nearly 100% renewable. You're getting really close to that goal. And that's not the case. the US, like one of the big tropes in the US is that, yeah, you might have your electric car, but what's power in your house? Well, it's usually fossil fuels, and so you're not, and so it can be so discouraging to go, like, well, I did it. I did the thing that people say you should do to help the environment. And then you go, oh, well, it's not as good. Like, talking to Peter Ross, who's an, like, an ocean pollution expert and focused on plastics, he was like,

everybody loves to pat themselves on the back for that blue bin. And it almost does no good in terms of scale to effectively make a difference that a lot of the time we have to burn it to heat it up in order to turn it into something else that's not very useful and then we can only do that to a certain extent and then the rest has to just sit there and so it isn't a big giant leap for mankind it's not the difference that we were hoping it was going to be and it gives me a lot of hope when people like yourself like mr ross who have hope that we're taking steps in the right direction because a lot of these conversations can be very discouraging, a feeling of where, like, the, uh, Chris Koo talked about how, like, I think are

barred owls endangered or getting close? Bard owls are quite abundant, spotted owls who are, uh, cousin are critically endangered. Right. Critically endangered. They're on the ground, right? Which ones are the ones that like to burrow? Oh, burrowing owls. Okay.

Yeah, burrowing owls, they are also a threatened population, but they're local to where I grew up in Camloops. But same thing, they are facing trouble right now. Yeah, and that all can be discouraging to think about all the beautiful wildlife that we could be starting to miss out on. And so what do you think people need to know about the SPCA, about the impact that they're having in local communities? I like to think that we're making impact in local communities. It can be hard sometimes when you spend a lot of time on focusing on what we need to change for things to be good. and not enough time celebrating the cusses that we've had.

But I just, that message of coexistence is one that I wish people would see more of. I would love to see just as an adoption in philosophy across all types of wildlife policies in urban areas. Is that something you learn about in school? Like, is that a biology course coexistence with animals? Like, it seems like we need, if we're not going to have, like, historically we had hunting groups. And you'd learn, like I spoke to Dean work, he runs a fishing business, but like he was explaining, like a lot of years, we have no runs. So I'm not allowed to fish anything under the water. So it's tours teaching people about the fish and how they interact with the bears and how they impact the deer and how everything's connected.

It seems like that's what was really missing from so many biology courses in high school, which is, hey, look at that. we're all connected and treat things nicely and be kind and thoughtful and empathetic. It seems like that's a course that we could use more of, this relationship that we have with the environment, that there is a way to coexist. And it's always inspiring to talk to people who care about nature. But it seems so weird that we need to be told that. That it's something where I didn't know all the birds until I sat down with Chris Koo. I didn't understand all the nuances of bees until I sat down with Paul.

And so it just seems like there's a gap between the average person doing their nine to five and the important relationship we have with nature. Do you think that there's a way to bridge this divide? We are certainly losing that more and more we're time. One of the most fundamental courses for me was in my third year. There's two sort of introductory courses on animal welfare. And even though I consider myself a thoughtful person who loves animals, there was just so much that I learned that year that I hadn't considered or different types of animals that I hadn't considered the ways we harm them. But I don't think it's all about a course.

I think so much of my learning was out on the land and actually spending time outside appreciating nature. And we see that all the time that people are more likely to care when they spend time there. So I think there's almost a case to be made for rewilding people. You know, we need to get kids not necessarily on more playgrounds, but gliming more trees, picking more berries, and just getting more in touch with the land that we live on and the plants and animals that sustain that environment in our lives. Yeah, there's one day kids daycare preschool that's 100% on the Vetter River here. And they don't have a classroom. They just go out and enjoy nature every day, whether it's raining, whether it's sunny out. And I've had Dean, who had his granddaughter on, and then Tim, who had his child on.

And they were both like, this is so, like, I wish I had this as a kid. Like, I wish this was how I was taught. But what do we do about adults? We have this terrible saying, which is you can't teach an old dog, new tricks, which I really don't believe. Like, I think universities are doing a better job at telling even older people, hey, come, learn, come be open-minded with documentaries abundant on Netflix, about the environment, about what's going on, about how we can treat it better, about the problems that are taking place. It seems like we're really waking up to the fact that we are stewards. And so how do we

go about getting the word out, particularly on the issues that the SPCA is focused on? Yeah. I mean, social media has made such a change in our lives. And, you know, we focus a lot on the negative, but there's a lot of positive in there, too, in that so many of our supporters reach us or find out about animal issues through Facebook. And so they're getting that coexistence education in the palm of their hand about how to live with different wild animals. Or if they, you know, they see a bear and they wonder, like, what do I do if I see a bear? They can punch that into their phone and have an answer right away. And the hope is that they reach human messaging like ours. It's also, I think,

other benefit of social media, particularly in BC, we see this all the time, is that it's encouraged people to get out in nature. You know, they can share that photo of them on a kayak or hiking in the mountains, and all of those experiences bring them closer to nature. And sharing that photo and getting the likes, if that motivates them to do it, then great. Amazing. You're also, can you tell us just about your work with Sarah? Because I've reached out to her, and I find it so inspirational when somebody's able to share another name and say, hey, this is the person you got to have on. And she communicated that very well. And so I'm just interested to know what role she's played as a mentor, as a guiding person. Yeah. I am so glad that Sarah had faith in me

to refer me to this job. But I have so much to be grateful to Sarah for. She's been such an amazing mentor of mine. So as I mentioned, when I was doing my undergraduate work with the Applied Biology Program at UBC, it was really in the third and fourth years when I was focused on the specific applied biology courses and aspects is when I met Sarah as a lecture, and that was the first time that I understood that the BCSPCA was more than just adoptions. And I immediately thought the end of the lecture is, I want to work at the SPCA, I want to work with this lady, she is doing amazing work and shares so many of my beliefs. And I was grateful. I had an opportunity to volunteer for her over the summer while I was in my undergrad, and I volunteered on the BCSPCA's

Wildlife and Focus Contest, which I now manage as a staff member. And it was between, I guess, between graduation and December, I had been working for a communications consulting firm that mostly dealt with transportation projects. And in my head, that was just, I was employed. Check the box. It had nothing to do with animals. Wasn't super relevant, but I was employed, and that was, that was great work. So in the background, Sarah had been applying for grants to try and hire a research coordinator to do some of this research work on urban wildlife and urban wildlife control standards. And she got it. And she thought of me. So I was honored to have been asked invited to apply. And even still, you know, when somebody invites you to apply for an interview,

there's a pretty good chance that it's because they want to see you in there. But I was going through just saying, you know, I don't know if I'm smart enough. I don't know if I'm qualified enough. I don't know if I'm, if I'm enough in general. And it just, it snowballed from there. It was supposed to be a one-year grant term. But once we kind of opened that kind of worms, we realized that it was deep. It was very deep. And there was a lot of work. do. And up until that time, it was really Sarah representing the BCSPCA and all provincial wildlife initiatives. And that's a lot of work for one person to do. So I am just so grateful that there was space in there for me to grow and work on all these important issues.

That's incredible. Is there other focuses that you have, interests that you have now that you're in, that you're able to have a voice at the table that you would like to see a dress that we might not know about. I think the next big upcoming issue that we're going to see is the Jane Goodall Act was recently reintroduced into Parliament. And so this is an act that would ban the captivity of a number of species. I think it's over 500 species. But it includes great apes and big cats. And today we haven't seen a lot of change. You know, there's still, I think there's something crazy, like 2,300 tigers that live in Ontario as pets? And you think about this.

What? Right? I thought 2,300? 2300. As pets. I think it's nearly 3,000 across Canada, tigers that are still as pets. I didn't even know anyone had a tiger as a pet, other than in Texas. Pretty sure they do that a lot in Texas. They do that a lot.

I mean, the saying goes that there's more tigers in Texas than there are left in the wild. Yeah. And Ontario, too. You know, Tiger King, for example, captivated people around the world. And I, in the beginning, I stoutly refused to watch it. I said, I know what I'm going to see. And I know that this exists not just in these three random tiger sanctuaries

that it exists all over North America. But I did watch it. And I'm glad I did. Because even though I didn't learn necessarily new information, that lens has. Has people questioning what's going on and has them questioning the laws and, you know, how can we take care of this threatened wild species if we're not respecting them as wild animals here in our own country?

I had no idea that we had them in Canada, the same. That's wild. There's a lot of ground we need to cover on exotic legislation. Even in BC, you know, we have some of the strictest exotic animal laws in Canada, but there's still not enough. Interesting. Can you tell us about Jane Goodall for those who might not realize the nuances of her career and the difference she made? There's, I'm just interested, I guess, who are some of the role models within the biology world? Yeah, Jane Goodall, definitely

a personal hero of mine. And even now, you know, she's still continuing her work as a public speaker. But she got her work primarily in primate research. And she was really taking that embedded approach. She was actually living among her research subjects. And we learned so much about their complex behavior structure and their social interactions from all of her work. And at the time, it was also quite unusual to be a female scientist. So she was blazing a trail for female scientists all over the world. And even today, she's still a force of nature speaking out for the protection of wild animals.

So this act was named in her honor. And initially, it was intended for the protection of great apes, which was the primary focus of her research. But it's since been extended to cover all kinds of species, because we know that it's not just great apes that are highly intelligent, socially complex. it's so many of these animals and the fact that we treat them the way that we do is just no longer acceptable to us.

Yeah, I think that's important. Thoughts on people like Charles Darwin, I'm trying to think of other people who have really set an example in terms of changing our perspective on nature, on wildlife. I mean, even David Attenborough is a modern-day hero to a lot of people.

And so much of his work is in film and television, but, you know, he brought nature into our homes and into our hearts. With just such an authoritative voice, I've also been really excited to see over the last couple years how excited people are about Robin Wall Kimmerer's books, spreading sweetgrass and gathering moss, and just bringing that indigenous scientific perspective into the homes of everyday people. Yeah, I have that book. haven't read it yet, but I do have that book. There you go. Next on your list. Absolutely. So what you're also involved with the fur bearers.

So I'm just interested in to know what that journey was like to choose to join the furbearers and what that's meant to you. I think I see a lot of common ground in the organization in protecting wild animals and so much of their advocacy and living with wildlife is about that coexistence. What drew me into it as well was this issue of trapping because I think a lot of people don't realize how much legal trapping goes on and very close. And those issues become very prominent when you're walking your dog and your dog gets stuck in a trap that was set for another animal.

And that's horrifying and traumatic. And people lose members of their family that way, watching their dog stuck in that trap. And a lot of the protections that we've asked for are very simple ones, just labeling the trap so that people can be aware of it. And even that hasn't made any progress. Wow. So that has been, you know, really hard to watch.

And during my time as president for the furbearers, we did see that ban on in mink farming in BC, and I never thought I would see that happen. Can you tell us about that? What is mink farming? What is its effects? Why did we need to ban it? So it's exactly what it sounds like. So it's mink that have been captured, bred and raised in captivity.

and most of these furs don't stay in Canada. Most of them are exported as luxury goods. And it's not as simple as, you know, the fur coats of old where you see a big fur coat covered in just pellets. Mink oil is used for different cosmetics. Mink eyelashes. A lot of people don't make the connection that when we say mink eyelashes, we mean the eyelashes are made from mink.

I didn't even know there was mink eyelashes, but I also don't wear eyelashes. Fair enough. And it's just how pervasive it is, or the labeling laws in Canada are not clear. So most of the time, the labels on your clothing pertain to what's actually in the garment, but that often excludes things like the trim. So it may not list fur as an ingredient of your shirt because it's just on the trim. So the trim could be real fur and you wouldn't know.

Or real fur can be used in dog toys, cat toys. It can be used on the little bobbles on hats. key chains, all sorts of different things. And this is the worst type of intensive agriculture, right? We're looking at wild animals who retain all of those wild instincts who are kept in these tiny barren cages in the worst conditions. So would your perspective be that we shouldn't have any trims with any, what is the position on having clothing from animals?

Is it more just, if they're in captivity and living in these terrible lives, there was a movement for a long period of time, like no real fur. Like, we didn't want that. I have the leatherworking guy, Tim, in my head, saying, like, we used to take care of that better than we take care of our clothing from, like, the gap now, where we wear it once and we donate it and get rid of it. We used to take better care of it. We used to commit and say, this is going to be passed on. And so where is the position here? I don't fully understand how we move forward in the best way. I mean, what I would like to see is the industrial fur farming gone.

I just don't think there's any way to keep wild animals in captivity and meet all of their needs. That said, I think that's where I come into a bit of internal conflict as, you know, an animal welfare scientist and an indigenous person. is that I still uphold the belief that, you know, hunting and trapping and fishing are absolutely vital services, well, services, activities for indigenous people. And, but again, we're not seeing indigenous people running industrialized fur farms, right? It's that more holistic perspective of taking care of the animals in a good way and that we take care of the animals and then they take care of us. There's a much more reciprocal relationship and understanding. And we did see, you know, things that I would not like to see repeated is, for example, with the commercial seal hunt. That is a very controversial issue.

But when people are thinking of the seal hunt, they're imagining the white seal pups that are getting bashed over the head, mostly by white people, in areas of the province where, you know, Inux are not doing seal hunt. And so Europe, past laws banning seal fur, not really. realizing that what they wanted to target was these like commercial fisheries that are in non-indigenous folks making a profit, but what they did was harm indigenous communities whose livelihoods were on harvesting and selling these furs. And not only does it feed them and make food and clothing for their family, but actually the ability to sell it is part of their livelihood and that should be protected. Yeah, that is really inspirational. And I agree it's tough to square those two positions.

for people who aren't looking for nuance, who aren't hearing that, because I interviewed Shay LaRaine, and she had done her first ever hunt, and she was talking about how it's like four years later, and she's still finding a way to honor that animal, to utilize all of the bones and everything, whether or not to make necklaces,

and try and find any small purpose for each piece of it, and to not let any of it go to waste. And yet, when you talk about corporations, oftentimes it's just trying to maximize profits, reduce losses and so you end up with something like fish farms where they're causing harm to the ecosystem around it to such a large extent that we have to look at banning it and if those corporations again were a little bit more open-minded a little bit more considerate they might have been able to survive if they had have done things differently but there's such a resistance

within corporations to environmental movements broadly speaking that it's so tough that they end up having to be banned from it, period, because they couldn't update their viewpoints, they couldn't adapt and go, hey, you know what, we'll take your ideas, we'll try and do the best of both worlds, we're going to try and hear out and, like, give us feedback on how we can do better. That way, I don't go out of business, but it's like either we put you out of business or you destroy nature. It's like, these are untenable positions to hold. Yeah, it is. It's hard, and so many of it boils down to issues with the internalized capitalism structure is that, you know, we've seen the loss of the family farm because it's

not profitable. Therefore, we move into these giant monopolies or giant systems where instead of your farm, you know, providing for the local community around you, it's now these mega farms that are providing for the whole of the province and trying to distribute their products because they need to maximize profit. But it's not, it's not good for the animals. It's not good for the environment but it's what's profitable so it's what's persisted that was what was heavy about talking to mayor henry brawn about um the farmers who had to put down i didn't even think about it until he said it which is again i think a danger in being able to disconnect from the environment which is that farmers had to put down their animals as the water was rising they had to grab out guns and

start shooting and they had to call over neighbors he was like a lot of these farmers had raised these animals and couldn't imagine just killing them for nothing for no it's not like we're using it it's not like we're going to harvest it it's like we're killing it so that when the floods come they don't drown and like prevent future suffering what a horrible horrible thing to have to go through and I think people worry about whether or not we're desensitized from like video games and stuff but it's like part of us needs to be sensitized as to the impacts that the floods had on people, and I really haven't heard much about having to kill an animal

just so it wouldn't drown to death. Like, I didn't hear that. And I think we're worse off for that because then we have appreciation for that farmer in a different way we didn't have before. We have appreciation for the animals. We lost a lot of livestock during that, not just for our food,

but like, what an unnecessary waste of life. And all because we couldn't maintain our dikes. like and this is again where I think people who are climate hesitant struggle is because the province almost wholly blamed it on climate change but you didn't maintain those dikes and so what would have happened same things happen but we maintain our dikes maybe catastrophe still strikes but we can never fully know that because you didn't maintain the dikes and so I think that that's where when I was hearing that it was like it's so unfortunate they can't just own the fact that this was like a level one out of a level four dike. we need level four you had level one we've had scares with this flooding before we didn't do anything about it we deserve the punishment but those animals don't they didn't they don't know our structures we were the ones who drained that like none of this is fair to them to have to go through any of this can i get your thoughts on wolf culling do you have any background in that area it's one topic where i'm still like i cannot believe that there are people who climb in

helicopters with a gun and start shooting at wolves. And I asked Lee this, like I don't understand what part of a human being has to turn off in order to do something like that. There's something to be said for hunting and that does grow you as a person. That is not hunting. That is a dark, almost sadistic thing to have to do. And I just, I don't get it. I agree with you. It's kind of a dark chapter on BC's history and wildlife management. And I think it's exactly what we touched on earlier is that this is not a wildlife stewardship issue. This is a wildlife management issue and a desire for control. And I think, you know, the episode that you did interviewing covered so many of those topics so well, but what people don't realize is this is a

government-funded project. Your tax dollars are going to fund this. And what we should be demanding, we know what the problem is. We know that it's environmental and habitat degradation that are allowing wolves access to caribou and instead of making it's going to be a bigger investment into the habitat restoration but we have evidence that it works so instead of doing that we have this weird idea that we just need to control and maintain control over the wolf population without realizing all these cascading effects that it's going to have to your point i just wanted to pull this up because it's something I didn't get to say with him. According to Rain Coast Conservation Foundation,

over the winter of 2019 and 2020, the BC government spent over almost $2 million to kill 4663 wolves. According to an email from the Ministry of Forest, Lands, Natural Resources, operations and rural development, an average of $4,300 per wolf. In the habitat of a gram herd in the South Peace region, where 16 wolves were shot over the winter, the province spent $175,000, nearly $11,000 per wolf.

Like, that's an incredible amount of money to spend when we're talking about homeless populations. And when we're talking about the fact that it's not even clear that they save the Caribou, and according to Lee, who studied Caribou, his whole career, it doesn't. And that's the reality is that it doesn't work. It's not tackling the root of the issue. I even saw this devastating news float by my inbox. yesterday, but there's a proposal open for a coal mine in the north that's right in this critical caribou habitat. We just keep trying to put the problem elsewhere when it's just us

and its habitat is the main driver. And there have been studies showing that if we actively work on a habitat restoration to kind of block those pathways that wolves have been using and rewild them a little bit more, it works. It saves caribou. And it also means, the wolves get to live their natural lives. Yeah. When Lee said that this is likely in large part due to like ATVs and like exploring on on vehicles and stuff, it was like, there it is. There's the dark part of it where it's not about caribou. It's not about wolves.

It's about keeping this business going and apparently that industry has been growing. And so the government goes, hey, it's good business. It's like, what consequences do we have to pay to wake up? And I'm all for a balance between the two. But there's no person that's going to sell me on the idea that shooting wolves from a plane is the correct balance. That that is the perfect middle ground for us because, again, I think you have to let go of maybe a part of your soul. You have to turn something off to do that to an animal, to not care that much, to fly away two seconds. later and not even see it suffer, see it struggle, like, why can't I remember it? The name of the

the one with the deer, Bambi. It's like, imagine if that person just shot and walked away and like didn't care at all. Like, that's terrible. That's inhumane. It's like, it's the worst aspect of a human being is the capability of like that level of malevolence. The other piece I wanted to ask you about is there's this, um, your thoughts on BC not adopting the Canadian Council on animal care standards that guide the welfare and humane treatment. This might be outdated. I did ask Lee about it in, I think it was November. But do you know anything about that? Is that, are we missing out on something? There's a lot of opportunities for different legislation and regulation.

So where I primarily overlap with the Canadian Council of Animal Care is for research projects and animals used in science, so in research, testing, all of these facilities. So, university institutions are bound to the Canadian Council on Animal Care, and they have an animal care committee and ethics committee that approves projects in efforts to reduce, replace, or refine the use of animals in science, or the three R's, you may have heard. Reduce, refine, replace. So how can we reduce the total number of animals that are used in scientific projects? How can we replace them? So there are there other options that don't involve animals? And if we can't, are there ways we can refine it?

So how can we make sure that they're being better taken care of? And that could be improvements in their housing, in their diets, they're socialized, anything to make them more comfortable. But if you're a private institution, you're not beholden to those at all. So if you're a private biomedical institution, you don't necessarily have that. that standard of care that's being met and that's problematic and we've seen so many so many flaws with animal testing so for example 95% of trials and animals fail in humans so I know a lot of people

that think you know maybe it's a bad thing that we're testing on mice but hey it's going to make it safer for me right it's not there's no reliable way that animal testing is working. And there's so many new technologies that are so much more effective and more translatable to humans, including technologies like organ on a chip. This is the future. This is 2020s. We can be doing all the toxicity testing and skin testing. We can 3D print organs. You know, it's just amazing. And because so many drug trials fail that, you know, pass in animals that fail in humans, are we now missing out drugs that might have been effective in humans because has we tested them on animals and they failed?

And the best way I can describe it now, borrow this from another scientist, is that the bottom of it is that humans aren't 60 kilogram rats. We're not. Even if you scaled a rat up to 60 kilograms, our biologies are different. The way that we process things are different. And that needs to change.

I'm hopeful that there's legislation coming. But there was legislation. introduced in, I'm going to get the year wrong, but it was a few years ago to introduce a ban on cosmetic testing and animals in Canada. And the bill didn't make it all the way through before there was a change in government. So we still haven't seen that bill come through, but I am hopeful that we will soon. Wow. Can you elaborate more on the chips? The organ on a chip? Yeah, you're blowing my mind. I'm just such a weird time to be a human being that were growing organs. Yeah. So these would be, I mean, it's not my primary area of research, but I've seen lots of the alternatives sort of an action and just the idea that we have these cells and stem cells, we can mimic all sorts of different body systems on, you know, something the size of an eraser, basically, that we don't need to test on live animals and we don't need to subject them to suffering.

We don't even test it on live humans, which is incredible. And this is so much more likely to translate into success for people because it's using us. Yeah, I find biology obviously interesting because you interact with it all the time. One person that I've followed is a guy named Brett Weinstein, and one of his research topics was telomeres. I don't fully understand what a telomere is, but he was doing that on rats. And basically a lot of his findings, which was very unpopular, was finding that keeping rats in captivity over time in mice changes the lengths of their telomeres because they're living shorter lifespans.

They're not developing full of rat lifestyles. And so a lot of the rats and mice that they were using were not normal rats that reflected what it was like to live a normal life. And so a lot of the research they were finding was that they were living shorter, I think shorter lives. I'm going to mess this up. If you want to learn more, don't listen to me. But the effects was that it wasn't like a rat that could be replicated in regular populations.

And so that a lot of the studies they were doing on these rats were not useful and obviously failing because it wasn't representative of what it was to be a rat and the regular kind of development over time. And so that we had a misconception. And then it sounds like industry sort of changed that. But to your point, even the best of rats are not going to be. reflective of what it's like to be a human being. Exactly. And you touched on some important points there. Some of the challenges with animal welfare in sort of the animals and science movement is that

if you compare it in people, mice and rats are social creatures. They have pretty wide home ranges. They love to dig and climb and burrow and do all these things. They don't get an opportunity to do that in cages. So if you think about the equivalent of like, oh, well, how would a human behave in this particular scenario, not realizing that human was raised in a padded room, they were given all their meals at a scheduled time, not given anyone to interact with? Like, do you think you can extrapolate what you find to a person who was raised in a family and has all the chaos of a normal life? No, you're not going to see the same behavior. So why do we assume that that's going to be the same case for their animals

and laboratories? Yeah. I really struggle still with the placebo effect. I think it's crazy that we don't have an answer to what the placebo effect is and we like to think that we have this whole being a life form on earth is like and it's like well how do you give someone a sugar pill and then they get x effect like where how what like i don't it's such a weird thing that i felt like in psychology we just want like that's just the placebo effect and it's like that's just a weird miracle that we just don't understand that somewhere in your mind you're getting some sort of benefit it's just such a trip that we have such a limited understanding of so many things,

and yet we live our lives with such confidence on a day-to-day. For people who feel discouraged, for people who don't know how to move forward in a good direction, what would your advice be to them? As someone who sees perhaps the beauty, the magnificence of existing on this planet, what insights can you provide for us on how to, connect with nature, how to coexist in a healthy way. Stay curious is the number one. If you're curious about the natural world around you, you'll never be bored because

there's always so much to see. One thing I bought, and I didn't realize inherently that I was doing this, but it's worked. I bought a pocket microscope off Amazon. London drug sells them too. It was like $25, 250 times magnification. It's amazing. and I can't tell you how many times I've just seen, you know, a skin flake on the counter and run to get my pocket microscope, and I'm just checking out all the things around me.

And what's actually been fun is it's the number one thing I pull out of my backpack when I find myself in a situation where I have to entertain children. Kids love microscopes, and they love getting out in nature. So spend some time with them. They are so curious and they'll keep you alive. That's amazing. You've talked a bit about seven generations. how do you see us doing that in the best way?

What does that look like? How do we balance our wants now with our needs in the future? How do we make sure that we leave this place in a better condition than when we found it? Definitely just adopting that perspective of taking care of the land for seven generations yet to come. If everybody had that perspective, I think we'd see a much different world than we have today. but it's important and I think about that not just with your own personal choices

but with the choices you're advocating to see changes you hope to see in politics with your buying choices purchasing power it just it means so much when you think about

the world beyond just yourself how can people support this work how can people get involved whether it's with the SPCA, whether it's with different organizations like the furbearers, how can people know that they're leaving this world in a better place? Because it's easy to have the mindset. It's easy to maybe recycle. It's tough to make sure that you're really doing it and that you're leaving something in a better position. It's something that we need people to almost have like a metal for.

that we need to reward them in a major way and say, like, hey, you did this. Not everybody else does this. And so pat yourself on the back, put this up in your house, put up a certificate that you give a shit. Like, be proud of, like, taking care of this planet. It just, it feels like so many people, and corporations are doing a good job of putting, like, a green leaf on their product and telling you that you care. And it scares me because, and I interviewed Joel Backin, who talks about the new corporation, and how they're trying to have this socially just kind of approach, and they're not putting their money where their mouth is.

But they put that little green leaf on, and then you as a consumer go, hey, I want the green leaf, I want to know that I'm doing the right thing. And so how do people make sure that they are making a positive difference, whether it's municipal, provincial, whether it's with an organization, how do we make sure that we're putting our money where our mouth is? I think it's important that everybody finds a way to give back that resonates with them. For me, that was volunteering. You know, I volunteered for the BCSPCA before I was a staff member.

I continued to volunteer with the furbearers. I was a long-time volunteer for the Canadian Society for Humane Science, which is recently disbanded, but was promoting non-animal alternatives in science. And voting, you know, getting to the polls and voting for politicians that represent your worldviews or what you want to see in the world. It's also a simple, this is an action that's so, so powerful that not enough people take is when an issue is important to you and you want to see change, just writing to your city council, to your MLAs, to your M&Ps, and saying that this matters to you and that you want to see change.

Which were those municipalities that stood out that were standing by the rodents, that were understanding the deleterious effects, that we're trying to make better decisions? Can we talk about those specific ones and how that sort of. sort of came about for them. Yeah. Unequivocally, the leader in my mind is the district of North Vancouver. So we had worked with them on a number of different partnerships, including practicum students through the UBC's Animal Welfare Program, which we maintain a connection with, had worked with them on exploring alternatives to rodenticides.

They were sort of the first municipality to make a really comprehensive policy. So they may not have been the first, but their operational policy, which is publicly a available online, has a very comprehensive approach to sort of that prevention that we talked about, eliminating sources of attractants, making sure everything's clean, going through that exclusion, making sure that there's no holes and no ways for rodents to get in. And then finally, if a step did come to lethal control, they banned the use of redenticides, all different types of redenticides, on their municipal-owned property, which was huge. And I think they served as sort of a beacon for other municipalities because they thought if a big district or a big city like North Vancouver can do it, then surely we can do it too.

And it also gave that policy, gave them a template something to work with rather than having to draft something from scratch. And I know with some of the work we did with the District of North Vancouver with the BCSPCA, one of the things that we developed was sort of. of resources for municipalities. So for municipalities, we're thinking about making the change, but not sure where to start, we could say, hey, look at this example from the District of North Vancouver, here's some other changes you can make, here's an easy way to do it. And that's, that just gives them more power to make that change. Right. That is really inspirational. Do you think people should join the fur bears? Is there a donation button? How do people make sure that they're making an impact and that they're having a contribution, bigger, small? Yeah. Certainly,

monthly donations or one-off donations to the BCSPCA or the furbearers are so welcome and absolutely fuel the work that we do. So both are non-profit organizations. I know there's a common misconception people think of the BCSPCA as being a government organization and is funded by tax dollars. It's not. We don't receive any core government funding, although we have occasionally received grants for some infrastructure upgrades, but it's all reliant on the generosity of the public. idea. I assume that there were some more sort of government connection there. Yeah, it's a very, very common misconception. But no, it's funded entirely by donation. Incredible. Can you tell people how they can connect with you? You're doing a lot of research.

You're diving into a lot of different topics and sharing that research. So how can people connect with you and stay up to date on the work that you're doing and the difference that you're trying to make. Yeah. I mean, you can find a lot of our educational work in the BCSPCA's by monthly Wild Sense newsletter. You can subscribe by just SPCA.bc.ca.c.com slash wild sense. You can also stay up to date, particularly on the redundant side front by subscribing to our science and policy newsletter, which comes out just twice a year. Same with the fur bearers. You can always sign up for our newsletter to stay abreast of animal issues in BC and just stay well informed and subscribe to the Defender Radio podcast.

absolutely and I believe you're on LinkedIn correct I am on LinkedIn you can always reach out to me there okay perfect I really appreciate you being willing to come all the way out here and share such important knowledge on what's going on in terms of taking care of the wildlife around us we talk a lot about conservation I think steps are being taken but I think highlighting them highlighting people like yourself who took the interest who have pushed themselves to get outside your comfort zone to share your knowledge. I think that sets such an important example for other people to try and get involved, whether it's picking up garbage, volunteering, donating. There's so many different ways people can make an impact. And I think the biggest challenge so many people face is they feel like they

don't matter. Their voice doesn't matter. What they could do doesn't matter. It's not going to make that big of a difference. And so I think people like yourself remind that there is a core group of people who care, who are trying to act in the best interest of the environment, of the animals, and that want to have a healthy relationship with everything around us. So I appreciate everything that you're doing. I found this conversation super interesting, and we just did over two and a half hours. Oh, wow. Well, thank you so much for having me. I was really honored to be invited. It was such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.