Robin's Nest from American Humane - Conservation in Action with Dr. Dante Fenolio

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

In this episode of Robin’s Nest, Dr. Robin Ganzert sits down with conservation pioneer Dr. Dante Fenolio, whose innovative work is saving some of the world’s most endangered—and overlooked—species. From breeding rare amphibians in the lab to launching Project Selva in the Amazon, Dr. Fenolio combines science, sustainability, and community partnership to protect biodiversity. A finalist for the prestigious Kiessling Prize, Dr. Fenolio shares how innovation, education, and the human-animal bond are key to effective conservation—and why hope is at the heart of his mission.

Welcome to Robin's Nest. Many of us feel a deep bond with animals, from the pets we cherish at home to the endangered species in nature. Join us for lively, informative conversations where together we will build a more humane world. Today we're excited to welcome Dr. Dante Fanoglio, an acclaimed conservation biologist and herpetologist to the show. As the Vice President of Conservation and Research at the San Antonio Zoo, Dr. Fanoglio has pioneered efforts to save some of the world's most endangered and overlooked species. We'll be discussing his passion for biodiversity, his work in ecosystems, and the innovative

techniques he's using to protect threatened wildlife. I'm so happy today to have in Robin's Nest one of my heroes in the space of conservation, a voice for animals who've had no voice. And that is so needed now as we look at the sixth mass extinction. And really one of the most amazing men ever, Dr. Dante Finolio. Don't you love that name? Dante Finolio. Dante, is that that name Dante Finolio? Dante is that a family name? It is. Wonderful. So where are you from? My family is from

northern Italy, Lagomargiore. Okay wonderful because you know and someone's gonna have to ask you that that's for sure. I love that. Dante your your background has been extraordinary and you're here because you're a finalist for the Kiesling Prize recognizing your incredible contributions in the space of conservation, animal protection truly, and what you do is extraordinary because you talk about creatures that nobody ever talks about and they should. They really, really should. So tell us a little bit about your love for animals and what are those animals who need

a voice? All right. So I grew up in a family-owned business that had a lot to do with freshwater fish. And my dad had business partners all over the world, and when fish would come in, aquarium fish, little bags of gift frogs would show up with the fish. And I grew up raising frogs from all over the world. Oh my goodness. There wasn't the internet.

There weren't a lot of books. It was kind of a DIY. So it was a lot of self-training, learning how to culture fruit flies and all that sort of thing. But I fell in love with wildlife from a very young age. My dad and my grandfather were avid outdoorsmen. We spent tons of time hiking and fishing and camping and they really instilled in me a love for wildlife and wild places from a very young age. I had no choice but to go into what I'm doing now. I love that. I

can't imagine though that your your father would get fish and they'd give a gift of frogs. I've never heard of that, have you? Well he told his business partners that he had a kid that liked frogs. Oh, okay, good. And so they, you know, for example, I had Darwin's frogs as a child and I got a group of them and bred them for years and years and years, the irony being now, as a professional conservation biologist, I'm in Chile working to conserve Darwin's frogs.

And we built a lab to breed them and set up a situation where Chileans can work to conserve their own critically endangered amphibians. I stacked the deck a little bit. We wanted to make sure that we could breed the first species that we took into the lab. So we brought Darwin's frogs in because I remembered from my childhood how to do it. I think that's extraordinary.

You know, when we have guests in Robin's Nest, we hear a lot of those multi-generational stories of where the love for animals, animal protection, conservation came from. Dad was a scientist. you know, or studied birds, or, you know, mom took them, made, made, made promises about animal protection. All of that, you hear that over and over. So I love your story about your father.

And then, of course, you take those Darwin frogs and you breed them later in life. Yes. And, and, and the, the whole point in, in that program, we spend a lot of time in Chile. When I say we, I'm talking about my team at the Center for Conservation and Research and my international partners. It takes a team to get anything done. This is not me. Yes.

And we work in Chile and we set up conservation breeding labs for critically endangered Chilean amphibians. They're living in a temperate rainforest, which are one of the rarest habitat types on the planet, and there's very little left of it. So these are rainforests, so they get over 100 inches of rain annually, but it's not a tropical rainforest. The temperatures can drop and be very cold for a sustained period of time. They have winters, but it's a very rare habitat type, and all of the frogs that are found there are all endemic.

They're not found anywhere else on the planet. But the interesting thing, there's a group, a subgroup of those frogs. Their next closest living relatives are Australian and they are Gondwanan relatives. When Australia was attached to South America in the landmass that was Gondwana, that was when this group of amphibians diverged out and then Australia went one way to South America in the landmass that was Gondwana. That was when this group of amphibians diverged out. And then Australia went one way. South America stayed there. And so genetics is showing us that Gondwana really did exist.

Isn't that fascinating? And the science is always amazing, what we learn every single day in science, right? Science does not lie. It doesn't have a political agenda. It doesn't have any. Not the least. No, it doesn't even have geographical boundaries, really.

It's just the science. I think that's fascinating. So you've had a love for these creatures at a very young age. Absolutely. And then tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you get to be where you are today? So one of the other things that my dad did

that really influenced my career is he would keep an eye on when biologists were coming into town into the Bay Area of California to give seminars and lectures. And he would take me to them. And he took me to one where I met a biologist that was working in the upper Amazon basin in rainforest proper. For some unknown reason, this biologist took me under his wing and I ended up spending the next 15 more or less summers

working for him in rainforest, but on indigenous held lands. And that ended up influencing really the rest of my career because when you started young age you developed lifelong friendships and trust, right? You can sit down and you can have very productive, safe conversations because you know the person. Over the years, I wanted to know from these indigenous community members that were now friends, I wanted to know why rainforest conservation in the Amazon Basin is so tough. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed into that region of the world under the guise of rainforest conservation, but at the end of the day

there are some things to show for it but not the amount of money that was spent. And I didn't want to presume that I would know what the problems were, so I wanted them to tell me they live there. And so over many conversations, what I got was, you know, we're fine housing, food, transportation, we've been here a lot longer than foreigners have. Where they get into a bind and a pinch is when they need cash for something. Cash is in short supply in the Amazon for indigenous communities, so if they have a malaria outbreak or they have a dengue outbreak, they have to pay for Western medicine or Western medical attention, doctors visits and such. So the issue there, the problem is the weak link

in the chain, if cash is in short supply anyway, and then some calamity hits your community, that's where you're inclined to sell off something like logging rights, mineral extraction rights, oil extraction rights. So once I understood that, the conversations went a slightly different direction. I said, okay, understanding that, what was it that didn't work in the past with big groups that show up with big bags of money and it's like, hey, I'll give you this if

you don't cut the forest down. And it's not what it boiled down to. It's not fair. It's a cultural mismatch. So in some of these languages that these indigenous communities use, there's not even a word for contract. But in Western culture, we sure know what it is. Yes, we do.

And it means big things, right? Yes, yes. And it has lasting consequences when you sign these things. So what we're doing is we're taking Western culture and we're superimposing it over Indigenous culture, and we're expecting Indigenous community members to understand, right? So if they did understand, they would have to also then grasp the idea of taking money and putting it into a bank account or investing it so that there were dividends over time. I mean, there's a lot of stuff there that comes with our culture that doesn't exist there. It's not fair in any way, shape, or form. So a lot of times what ends up happening, you have this mismatch, these cultures that clash, and the money will go, but then

at the end of the day a family still gets sick, there's a malaria outbreak, whatever it is. And they're going to do exactly what I would do. They're going to sell logging rights or mental rights because you're going to save your family. So it's not fair to superimpose cultures like that or cultural things onto another culture. So not wanting to do that, I can remember a conversation where I asked an indigenous leader, so what is it that we could do to better support you?

And the answer was really simple, and it was amazing. He said, you know, coming down with a bag of money is cool, but what we really need is a scalable revenue stream so that it's predictable through time. You're going to show up regular and we're going to have whatever transaction that we have, but it's got to last through time and it has to hinge on trust that this is going to continue. Right. And he said, you know, if you would show up once a month and buy carved little wooden animals and such from us, we would know on our end how many we need to sell you to scale

appropriately for that month. Yes. So the Center for Conservation Research at San Antonio Zoo and my team set up on organizing a program. We open an office in the Amazonian city of Iquitos, have a team there. We have a boat so that we can reach these remote indigenous communities and once a month we'll show up. And if the indigenous community wants to sell us 50 little carvings, we'll buy 50.

If they want to sell us 5,000, we'll buy 5,000. But they scale the revenue stream. Then there was a second function we never anticipated, and this was really interesting. When COVID hit, nobody from the Peruvian government showed up to tell the indigenous communities what was going on. They just knew something was happening

because the ecotourism dried up and vanished, right? The tourists weren't coming in. Well tourism is important to these communities too, right? Tourists visit, they buy knickknacks, they'll pay to see traditional dances and song and things like that, and all of a sudden there weren't tourists. So through my team, the indigenous community reached out and said, hey, we're concerned. Yes, we haven't seen any. Right. From your team, we learned about this global pandemic.

But here's the problem. Our gardens aren't big enough to sustain the number of people that we have in this community. Right. We could be facing starvation. When the river, seasonally, when the waters rise, it's a lot harder to get fish. Right.

So when the rivers are down, you can fish, and that's great, but when the water is high, it's not like that. They were literally facing starvation. I don't think we knew that or understood that. You know, COVID brought a lot of different issues to the forefront, as we know, and I never understood how it would affect the indigenous people.

In fact, I probably would have thought the opposite, that they were happy not to have the tourists there or even the mining interests there, et cetera, because the world did shut down. But I had no idea that their existing gardens or infrastructure did not provide them with food security. Who would have thought that? And it's fascinating. So they basically sent this message.

And of course at the zoo, the gates are closed. Yes. It's COVID. Absolutely. So this was one of those moments where you kind of sit back and you learn whether or not you made the right career choices. Yes. So I go into the CEO of the zoo, Tim Moro, and I say, Tim, we've got a problem.

Our conservation partners in the Amazon are facing maybe starvation, at least at minimum folks are going to leave and flee to the cities because there's just not enough to eat. And as soon as they go, you lose your culture, right? The community, the fabric of the community starts to fall apart. And you lose the eco warriors who are there fighting on the ground for the biodiversity. You do. And so we didn't want that to happen. And without hesitation, Tim turned around and said, come up with a budget.

And I did, and we sat down and we met. So what we ended up doing and what we still do to this day, when our team goes out to visit these indigenous communities every month, we bring food and water and medicine. And drop those things off. We brought them PPE, so they've got little San Antonio Zoo masks and all the things that they would need.

And then we'll buy whatever carvings. So it's kind of a two-way thing at that point, but I'm proud of it because, for one, the CEO of the zoo never hesitated, right? He... Well, Tim Mora is a stand-up gentleman. Yes. And he does the right thing.

Yes, he does. And you did the right thing too by championing these incredible people as well. Well, they're family. Absolutely. You know, you do what you need to do for family. Yes. So, it's worked out, and the ecotourism really still

hasn't come back completely. Iquitos is a different place now, but we're gonna stick by our partners, and they're gonna stick by us, and the whole goal, really from the zoo's interest, these incredibly biodiverse forests that are so important with all of the wildlife that lives in them, but not the plants, the animals, the interactions among and between, true definition of biodiversity. But you can't do it without

the people living there. You can't do that. You have to involve them and I love this because they designed Project Selva. We didn't, they did. And I think that's the only way forward is to let the locals tell you what would work rather than assume that you know, because we've got over a century of doing something that didn't work. And having unintended consequences. I always say all conservation is local,

and you've just done the most brilliant example of what I believe. That's incredible. Yeah, so lucky to get involved with that at a young age and have a biologist take me under his wing and make these lifelong friendships and relationships with indigenous community members. And now it's expanding, right?

So indigenous communities talk with one another and maybe some others from the region that maybe wouldn't have gotten involved, have heard from this indigenous community that we're working with that this is what's been happening and this is how long it's been going. And so we're looking at incorporating additional indigenous communities and then all of their land and help them through time when they need it. We need to be good partners and be there for them.

So your model is something other zoos and aquariums could actually use too. Yes. We take partners, right? So one of the things that I've really been interested in across my career, I don't believe it's conservation if you build a project that hinges on a person, right? None of our programs can ever be about me.

It's not about me. This is about the habitats, the wildlife, and the wild places. So building conservation projects to last is so incredibly important. And how do you do that, right? So there's pillars that you can put underneath these projects.

One of them, you can build an endowment, which is a good idea because then you do understand Western finances and you can manipulate things so that you have dividends through time. The other is partners, right? So don't ever have it hinge on one institution or one individual. Bring in partners. So one of our great partner organizations is the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Rhode Island. They've been with us for a long time. Their head conservation biologist Lou Parotti is a very close friend of mine. This is a project near and dear to both of our hearts. So those two institutions are partners. The Moody Gardens is a partner and then Texas A&M San Antonio and it's so wonderful to have a university involved because then the doors are

open to all kinds of additional collaborations. Students getting experience with indigenous folks, indigenous folks getting experience with students coming down and then you can really build the momentum from there. Oh it's outstanding. It's a great collaborative that you've built and you've championed. And you're right, it can't hinge on one person. It cannot. No, because that will be failure. Yes. Wow, you've just shared. No, because that will be failure.

Yes. Wow, you've just shared so much, especially with the Indigenous people. Yeah, I'm sorry. That was an information dump. No, I love it. I love it. I love it. You know, there's a whole list of very special projects that you have worked on throughout

your career, and I love the way you designed your business models around these, right, to exist beyond. Tell me one of your favorites, besides the one you've just described. I know that you have so many of them. One of the things that I really love, we have been able to work with some biologists in the mountains of Japan.

And these biologists- I was hoping this story would come up. These biologists are incredibly dedicated to the Japanese giant salamander. So let's take a step back and talk about how cool this salamander is, right? And the giant one. The giant one. So these are ancient, ancient life forms. They diverged from other salamanders a long, long time ago.

They're the largest living amphibians on the planet now. So there are specimens from over a century back that are almost five feet in total length. Five feet? Yes. So they're salamander? Yes. Oh. They're massive. They're massive.

I don't know if I'd call that a salamander. Well, and that's the point. So there are these ancient giant amphibians. Probably the average one that you see out on a given evening is three feet a meter. By the way, I don't know if I want to run into a three foot on an evening. Well they're wonderful though. And you get into the water with them and you've got your wetsuit on and you've got your mask and your snorkel and you snorkel up to one and you run into this dominant male that owns

the pond that you're sitting in and he'll come up and bite you on the arm because you're in his territory. They're just fantastic animals and they need help because there have been, they live in these mountain rivers and streams. The habitat is perfect but humans have a funny way of coming in and changing things even just a little bit and it throws the salamanders off. So a lot of these mountain communities put in dams, right?

Salamanders don't do well getting around dams. So if you think about an entire river and then you chop it up with a whole bunch of dams, what you end up with are a whole bunch of little isolated populations that aren't connected one another, reproductively, because salamanders can't get around there. So you're isolating each one of those groups of salamanders and the genetic diversity is isolated. Anytime you bring into question

the maintenance of genetic diversity through time, you're looking at a potential problem with the population, right? Particularly when you diced it up that many times and you've got all these tiny little populations where they're not mixing at all. So the genius of one of these Japanese biologists was implementing what is essentially a salamander ladder or a salmon ladder, just like we do with the salmon, and it gives the fish, in the case of a salmon ladder, a chute to go around an impoundment and move past it and move up the river. So salamanders will do the same thing if you give them those structures. And we helped fundraise for one of the programs that was going to put the very first one of

these ladders in. There were some studies that had to be done initially. So we funded those studies and then my Japanese colleagues went in and put in that first salamander ladder and sure enough they're using them. Oh, I love this. It's a simple ladder. It is very simple. A simple ladder. And you're allowing...

Just a little shoot with some water. ... this genetic pool to expand... To reconnect. ... instantaneously. To reconnect. That's spectacular. What a great story. Yeah, and I take no credit for thinking of this, that my Japanese colleagues came up with all of this stuff. They're incredibly dedicated biologists who have spent their

life, devoted their life to keeping these prehistoric things around. And I'm just so proud of them and I'm proud to just help. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have to say I've never seen a giant salamander, but now I have to look it up. You have to meet one. I have to meet one in person because you know I just now I have to look it up. You have to meet one. I have to meet one in person, because you know, I just don't like to look them up. I always like to meet all animals in person, because I'm kind of that way. They're impressive.

Oh my gosh, I love that. Tell us another one of these impressive creatures, because you know, I don't think amphibians get enough air play. We talk about megafauna so much. I love megafauna too, I love all animals, but we don't talk about the amphibians and their important role in all of our ecosystems.

So like the work we're doing in Chile, these amphibians live in these unique temperate rainforests. They're beautiful. Fog shrouded forests up on these really steep mountainsides. And these frogs are singing, and they're not found anywhere else. And I just have the great good fortune to work with Jose Nunez and his former student Jose Grau are two incredible biologists that I get to work with down there. Also Roger Williams Park Zoo is a project partner in that.

Wonderful. So we all get together and we'll go out. A lot of the effort now is focused on figuring out the remaining distribution of some of these species. They're really reduced to these forest fragments, right? So Chile is not a modernizing country, it is a modern country, right? And a lot of deforestation went down in Chile

at the same time that it happened here in the United States. But one key difference, the expensive equipment that's necessary to go log a headwater river valley wasn't available in Chile where it was in the United States. So in the United States we lost a lot of those forests that are in really steep terrain, really hard to get out the logs. In Chile, if you're willing to rent horses and pack mules and go in for a day or two and get up to these remote river valley areas, you literally walk into a forest tract

and it's like walking through a portal in time because you're seeing these forests that are ancient and they haven't been cut and they haven't been disturbed. And all of a sudden you're seeing what an amphibian fauna looked like all those years back before Chile lost the rest of its forests. So we spend a ton of time getting out to these remote forest tracks documenting the species that are there so that we can help wildlife authorities in Chile better protect what's left. Yes. Maybe prioritize some of those

forest fragments. Hey, this is a high value one. We found 10 species here, whereas in this other one we're down to one or two. And then being very, very careful that when we move between forest tracks, the gear is clean. I don't want to be the one who moves an emergent infectious amphibian disease from forest tract A to forest tract B because then I'm the harbinger of the bad things that come with those diseases. So we have to be very very careful and I've been so fortunate to work with incredible academic biologists like Marty Crump. She works with us in the field a lot and she's a very famous amphibian biologist and has dedicated her life also to the conservation of amphibians.

But we're so careful when we do these things because I don't want to be the person who brings something bad in. Yes, it's so considerate. But it's also very important for our listeners in Robin's Nest to realize that conservation is complex. There's a lot, a host of things to think of in terms of this from the genetics to the disease. All of this is very highly complex but it's doable. It is doable. It's kind of like an onion, right? So I wish that the problems impacting each species that we want to save was a single force. But in reality that's not how it is anymore, right? There's deforestation and emergent infectious amphibian disease and poaching and habitat conversion and there's invasive species. There's a million reasons why these species

have been reduced to these tiny little relictual populations, but it's worth it, right? So the message that I want to get your viewers to hear, and this is so important, there's a ton left. There's still so much worth fighting for. Now is not the time to say, oh, work, you know, let's triage, let's cut this out, let's, no, no, no, no, no. Now is the time to roll our sleeves up

and have the fight worth fighting. And this is the time to do it because there's still beautiful rainforests that you can walk in and you can see the components that are supposed to be there, whether it's temperate rainforest, tropical rainforest, or whether it's some other kind of forest, there's still great places out there. There's still so much worth fighting for. And I know I've talked to you about this before, but I get a good question at the zoo and this is really

important. It's a fair question too. Our guests oftentimes will come to me, particularly after a behind-the-scenes tour, and they'll say, you know, this is all great and yeah you work with little blind cave crayfish and these weird frogs and why should I care? And you know what? That's a fair question, right? For someone who didn't have the benefit of the childhood that I did, it's a fair question. And so I learned through years and years and years of teaching at universities and then

interacting with our guests at these big public institutions, you have to have a pragmatic argument. So for me as a biologist, I think every species has the right to be here. They don't have to have any value to humans for me to want to save them. But that's not an argument that's going to carry the day with someone who wasn't raised with environmental ethic. And they're not bad people. They just don't know. And so if you think about it, you need a strong argument.

And so here's where I go with this. I will challenge our guests, go home, and go into your medicine cabinet. I'm probably dating myself by saying medicine cabinet. But go into your medicine cabinet and take an inventory. Then sit down in front of your computer and Google where every one of those medicines came from. You cannot come out with a list where at least 70% of all of those medicines are derived directly from

nature. Oh I love that. If you think about biodiversity as a whole, and that's where our past medicines have come from, where are the next generations, where are their medicines going to come from? So if we next generations, where are their medicines going to come from? So, if we don't work to save biodiversity today in a very self-serving manner, and again, this is a pragmatic argument, I don't personally buy into a species needing to have value to people, but I understand I have to sell something that's oriented towards people. So there's something I wrote about in my last book, and I call it technological constraint.

And so if you think about today's technology, right now we're really only so, so good at taking, say, a frog skin secretion that could have thousands of different components, putting that into a computer and sorting through there and figuring out, well, which one of these actually kills this antibiotic resistant bacteria? It takes a long time. But think about how your cell phone has changed over the past five years, over the past 10 years, from the very first one you had.

Our march with technology is so fast and so rapid. Tomorrow's technologies will allow us to sort through venoms, skin secretions, plant chemistry so quickly and so efficiently that we will be able to find the thing that cures cancer, to find the thing that cures some other ailment in humans much more efficiently than we can today. But what is the one thread that ties it all together? If we don't save biodiversity? We won't have the pharmaceutical treasure chest to draw from in the future. There'll be nothing.

There won't be anything. So the default for humanity, even if you don't care, even if you're not environmentally minded, you do care about your family and your friends. That's right. Here's one. Do you know anybody who's on an ACE inhibitor? I would argue most of your listeners know at least one person. ACE inhibitors have impacted hundreds of millions of people around the globe

since they've been around. Those were derived from the venom in a little snake in central Brazil, something that a farmer would have hit with a shovel and not thought twice about it. That component of that snake venom has changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. One of the leading candidates for treatment in breast cancer in humans is a component of the venom from a southern copperhead. Another snake that nobody wants around their front door. They're going to do something terrible to this snake because they don't want it around.

And I get that. But now flip the coin. Venoms do very specific things when they're injected into a biological system. You can hijack that technology and you can use those components to do extraordinary things in a human system. Absolutely extraordinary things. So the study of venoms, whether it's snake venom, whether it's scorpion venom, whether

it's venom from a stone fish, it doesn't matter. And none of these species are charismatic. These aren't polar bears and they're not panda bears and they're not bald eagles and they're not gray wolves. But the vast majority of things that need our help are not charismatic. That's why in the Center for Conservation and Research at San Antonio Zoo, virtually every species

that we focus on isn't something that's charismatic that would bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars For conservation funding because the truth is the things that really need our help don't tend to be charismatic But those non charismatic things are where our medicines have come from Yeah, and they're where tomorrow's medicines will too So in a very self-serving way and in a way that I don't, it's not in line with my personal way of thinking, but the very pragmatic argument, the fate of humanity and the fate of biodiversity are attached at the hip. And if we lose biodiversity, humanity

will lose itself. Bravo. I think that's where you do a mic drop. Oh my gosh. So much incredible food for thought, you know? And just a beautiful way to present the biodiversity crisis in a way that should reach everyone's hearts and heads and minds and souls. Fantastic. Dante, this has been such a joy to have you in Robin's Nest today. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, and congratulations on being a finalist for the chosen. We can see why you are, we can see why you are, because you're so extraordinary and your passion and commitment and dedication and you're

inspiring so many people to be on a path like you have been. And some of those people haven't had a father like you had, making sure the tree, the frogs came in, the green, but Darwin frogs came in. But the bottom line is people can hear from your story and be just as inspired to make the world better and to save all species and every life matters. Thank you. And it's an honor. Thank you very much. Thank you so very much.

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