Conservation Leadership Across Continents: Dr Howard Nelson | Fauna & Flora / University of Cambridge

My name is doctor Howard Nelson. So my job title is lecturer in conservation leadership, for fauna and flora.

And, with that title also comes a role at the University of Cambridge. So I'm I I work in the geography department, at the University of Cambridge, and my title there is affiliate lecturer in conservation leadership. And like with most things at Cambridge, most Cambridge academics usually have a college affiliation. So there are 31 colleges that make up the University of Cambridge, and so I'm affiliated my my college affiliation is with Lucy Cavendish College, where I'm a fellow and, oftentimes, as now, acting vice president of college. You're wearing so many hats.

That's, like, the longest job title ever as well. So I know. I know. Well, you ask one question, you're gonna get a lot of answers. That's good.

That's what we're here to discuss. Great. Well, thanks for jumping on the podcast. We've known each other, for a few years now, which is great. Yeah.

I should mention that I help out a little bit on the masters in conservation leadership, which I really enjoy, and I'm pleased to be invited to kinda teach on that. But we're here to talk about you today. Yeah. So let's start with your role as lecturer in conservation leadership at Fauna and Flora Yes. Alongside the other things.

Like, yeah, what does that what does that role look like? Like, what's the typical day? How would you describe it to one of your friends who have no idea what you do? Yeah. That's a really good question.

I think I'm I'm really lucky in that my role, is mostly to teach on leadership in our discipline, in the geography department. So it's a kind of unique position within Fauna and Flora. So Fauna and Flora, we have, a relatively big team that work on, capacity development, that work on people and development. And, you know, we've got, quite a few of us that have very specific kinds of roles, whether it's educational or organizational development, etcetera. And, one of the one of the interesting things with with Fauna and the team that I'm in, for instance, is that this role really arose from the relationship between the Department of Geography and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative of which Fawn and Flora is a part of.

Mhmm. And what that sort of means is that the role of lecturer in conservation leadership is a role that's been rotated over the last, it's been about thirteen or fourteen years now, around the different, NGOs that make up the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. So Fauna and Flora is the second of the organizations to hold a role. Previously, it was UNEPWCMC. And, basically, that person is an employee.

The lecturer in conservation leadership is an employee of of one of the NGOs, but ostensibly a lecturer in the department of geography. So the idea is that there is this direct connection between conservation and, you know, the conservation practice represented by the NGO and the actual teaching of leadership and conservation done by the department. So to come back to your question about what my day to day is, my day to day is I spend most of my time interacting with my, on any given year, 20 or so graduate students. Mhmm. So today, for instance, I had a meeting with my program lead, Chris Sandbrook, where we were discussing student exam results and comparing notes about this and thinking about what we might do differently, for that particular module.

And, you know, we'll spend, you know, or spending time, you know, grading assessments or designing the next next set of teaching. So right now, we're we're thinking about how we're going to use a new kind of case study that we'd, been developing with one of our, alums. So, so basically, a mixture of teaching, assessment, developing new ways of teaching, and, shepherding relationships between all the different people that we have coming to teach on our program because our program is kind of unique because we've got something like 60 different lecturers that come to speak to the students over the course of a year. Wow. Yeah.

It's a great program. Paints a bit of a picture then. What is the master's in conservation leadership? You've mentioned there already. It's, like, 20 different graduate students Yes.

From all around the globe, aren't they? Yes. How do you pick them? What were their sort of typical kind of yeah. It's so funny because What do they learn?

Yeah. Go on. Yeah. That's that's a great question, Nick. I think, the students ask me this all the time when we get them in the room, you know, by the time they're at this point in the year, they're getting ready to do their placements and they they always, say to me, well, how do you decide about all the people that come to us?

And so, you know, we've got between twenty and twenty five places in the room. We're really constrained by the space that we have to teach, and COVID really put a, you know, put an exclamation mark on that because of the challenges we had to do, you know, teaching spaced out and that kind of thing. And it really made us think about, okay, how big is the class? Can the class be if we had a big disaster like COVID? So usually we have between twenty and twenty five students, and we try as much as possible when we look at people who've applied to find people who do have real experience in conservation.

So not people who volunteered necessarily, primarily people who are working in in conservation, but that work in conservation can be in multiple different, dimensions of our field. So for instance, we take people who've, work in conservation communication. We take people who are hardcore foresters or wildlife biologists. Mhmm. We take people, who work in conservation finance.

Mhmm. We look at folks who have an interest in design. So, you know, structural design or whatever in conservation. So we try to maximize the diversity of different kinds of experiences in the field. People, for instance, who've worked in international negotiation around conservation.

Mhmm. And so we expect the folks that come to have some level of professional experience because the idea is that we really want our students to learn from each other in the classroom. Mhmm. Yes. We've got this fantastic situation where we're we're based in Cambridge, and we can pull on the 11 or so NGOs that are based in the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.

So we've got all these people with all this experience coming to lecture. But, actually, we say that the students learn more from each other than they will learn from either myself or Chris, the program lead, or even the lecturers that come in because because we're putting together, like a jigsaw puzzle, people from as many different backgrounds as possible. We look at people from many different, age classes as possible. So we have really young conservationists in our room, so people in their mid twenties. But we also oftentimes have people that are approaching retirement, who want to, change the degree of focus, the things that they've been working on.

And so we try to, mix that demography in the classroom. We try and get people at different stages of their careers because as you as you know, you know, somebody could be, you know, really advanced in age, but really just starting off in our discipline. So, you know, age doesn't necessarily isn't necessarily a prerequisite for for having experience in in our field. So we try as much as possible to really mix, age, experience, geographies. You know?

We were talking about having 20 students in a class. On average, we tend to have, of those 20, people from 18 different countries in the class of 20. Yeah. As you know, Nick. So I mean, you've been in the classroom to see them.

So we really kind of, do this jigsaw puzzle to try and get all these different dimensions of diversity in the space because we know that when we put these people together because, you know, because we know that they're excited and engaged and they really want to, to learn about how to lead in conservation. We know that if we we choose these levels of diversity, that that will improve the learning experience for these people. Yeah. Yeah. That's so nice.

And I find just hearing it makes me so excited as well, actually, just thinking about, yes, you know, people teach, you teach, I teach, others teach, but it's really about that melting pot of the people in the room. And also, like, the the cohort that they've formed, I see it with my own eyes. They really come together as a group, don't they? And they bother for years together as their usual, you know Yeah. Context.

They come in, boom. Yeah. And there they are. Well, yeah. Absolutely.

They because, you know, for me, I think, the the the, real experience every year is, you know, you get to a point usually at the end of the first term where, you know, the students, they really start gelling as a cohort and, you can see long term relationships. And one of the things that we we tell the students when they come in is that it's import more important to us. I always say this and, I I know my colleagues will cringe, but, I always say that for me, I'm not really too concerned about the grades that they get. You know? They you know, we've gone through a rigorous process to select them, and they're here because we think they show some kind of exceptionality in their application and in their interview.

So this is not about smarts. So when they come here, I say to them, listen. I'm less interested in a grade that you get and more interested in the kind of relationship and relational things that you do with the people in your cohort and with the other, professionals that you're gonna meet. Because if you look around you in the classroom today, the people that you see will probably be the movers and shakers in our disciplines around the globe for the next twenty or thirty years. And so here is an opportunity for you to build your network.

Mhmm. And so we spend a lot of time on that. Yeah. And that is so important. Something we've talked about here and in lots of different ways, but conservation is a small world.

You know, you Absolutely. Want an almost nine times out of 10, you have people and connections in common. Almost a %, to be honest. Absolutely. I see that.

I wanna broaden the conversation out a little bit around conservation leadership and I guess the thrust of the program. Like, how it's tricky question, but how do you define conservation leadership, you know? And what qualities do you think are essential in conservation leaders? Like, what are you trying to instill in these students that also other people can learn from? Well, the first thing I'd say is that, you know, back in the day, when we when you talk about leadership, most people have in their mind, you know, a single individual who really stands out as being eloquent, as, you know, being a forceful forceful speaker, etcetera.

And what we try to convince our students is that, actually, there's many different ways to lead. You know? There's leaders of opinion who don't necessarily wear a title. So you you know, this idea of not necessarily having to carry a title to lead in your area, to lead in the thing that you're doing in conservation. So first to begin with, we say, you know, leadership can be situational.

You know? You can be a leader in a particular situation. And so to then focus on what are those key skills that good leaders have, you know, abilities to address things like, conflict. How do you you know, you know, good leaders are able to to see see, emerging issues? So how do you vision?

You know? How do you go about building consensus? How do you communicate? You know, bearing in mind that, today, our our conservation leaders have to articulate their positions to many different kinds of audiences that may not be experts in the area that they're an expert in. And then how do you communicate the insights that you have as a conservation professional to these diverse audiences and diverse age groups and, people across different cultures?

You know, if you're if you aspire to work in an international conservation space, you might be working in in, you know, in in my organization, 40 countries, you know, potentially. And then how do you communicate your message to all these different people? And I think, for us, we kinda focus on these skills of, not only being able to communicate, to find ways to stay on top of those areas in our discipline that that are emerging really quickly. Of course, most people are concerned about artificial intelligence. The big discourse today in, conservation is around the, the the the, global global targets for biodiversity and how do we achieve those things.

And and how do you how do you communicate all these, different nuances to these different audiences? You know? So a lot of the stuff that we do tends to focus on developing those skills that are necessary to allow those things to happen. Yeah. Yeah.

And I guess what connects all those threads for me is, like, how do you create impact Yes. Absolutely. As a conservationist. Yeah. Which is why we're communicating and why we're challenging various issues.

What sort of impacts do the students go on to have Yeah. Post graduation, if we can call it that? They many of them go back to their previous roles and go to new roles, but what are what are you seeing from the cohorts that have that have graduated? Yeah. I think, you know, for me, you know, so our program has been going for more than a decade now.

Mhmm. And, you know, almost a decade and a half, actually. And I I think when I think about impact, I think about, generational impact of the students. As you know, you know, when you when you teach on a master's here in The UK, a master's is one year, so a generation of students is a short period of time. And when I look at those students' impact, I look at how are they, say, impacting the discourse around, important areas of our discipline.

And what I mean by that is so for instance, at the last, convention on biological diversity, Chris, our program lead, went to that meeting. And he was sending sending us, you know, basically, daily updates on on what he was seeing at this meeting as a team. And it turned out that a quite a significant number of our alums were there at the CBD COP, either representing their NGOs, representing their national governments, and leading a lot of the discourse around these key issues of figuring out what would be our goals for, for the next, ten years of the conventional biological diversity. Seeing our our students engage with local communities and their work on communicating, you know, threats. You know, for instance, we, maybe it was two months ago, we we had one of our our, alums from, from Brazil showing a video that, she and some colleagues, they'd created a film about, changes in the Pantanal.

And this was so impactful, such an, an eloquent tool, and it makes you really proud to be able to say, yes. That was, you know, somebody came put came through our program. And here, being able to communicate in a forceful way, what they see to be as the, you know, key issues for the country that they're living and working in. And that's real impact. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's interesting to reflect that you've got these big conservation partnerships. You've got BirdLife International, you've got Fauna and Flor International, obviously, where you're based. You've got IUCN. You've got many others.

All these different organizations working together in different ways. And in some ways, you're creating, like, another network within that, aren't you? Absolutely. And a way to kind of work together very quickly because you have that bond of we all came through this program. Yeah.

We did this together. Absolutely. And we've got a really, vibrant alumni, group. So we've got, you know, Cambridge Conservation Alumni Group, that, we've got a staff member working on that half time, Shelley. And she spends a lot of time, you know, facilitating communication between between the different regional groups because we now have hundreds of students, you know, that have graduated through the program.

And, we can see them, you know, still ten, fifteen years later, wanting to collaborate with each other, always wanting to to get to know the the next cohort of students and to help shape their development. So we've got alumni teaching on our program. We've got alumni hosting placement projects for the students, and and, you know, together, across cohorts working on on projects, conservation projects in their regions. So it's just you know, it's amazing to watch. So it's not just, you you come to us and and you do this degree and for a year and then you're off, and we don't see or hear from our students again.

It's nothing like that. We have such a strong, community Mhmm. Across the alums. And the, you know, the alums, they work really hard at keeping in touch with each other. And, you know, across the cohorts, I you can see, like, they're almost like family.

Yeah. I I was gonna say it's family. Yeah. He he almost jumped out your mouth as I was thinking it. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's shift gears slightly then. So I'd like to talk about you and your career, actually. Yeah. Like, you know, yeah, you've been working in a variety of different roles.

We've even just heard about your roles today, but Yeah. Going back in your career today. Paints a bit of a picture of Sure. Briefly, if you can, you know, just like what are the what are the kind of key roles you've got? Key roles.

ry Division as a biologist in: 1989

I as an undergraduate, I came out and I got this job with, a woman who was going to turn out to be one of my most important mentors, doctor Carol James. She was the first woman to to head the wildlife farm at the forest department in Trinidad. And that was really, it was a really important and formative relationship that to this day remains important for me to have this this female leader, in, you know, in my part of the world. And, she really helped me think about what it means to be a leader even in an organization like the Forest Agency. So for most of us that have worked in the civil service, most civil service ministries and and divisions and agencies tend to be very top down institutions.

Even whether or not you could speak in public is a really regulated thing. And so, for me, the five years that I spent at the forest department was really influential, and I was very privileged to have her as a, as my first boss and as my mentor. And so so my first five years as a professional, we started off as a a biologist. And, again, very lucky in terms of where I was. So being in a small country, it meant that I, had opportunities to work on, you know, globally important in globally important, networks, for instance, like CITES.

troubles, in, I think it was,: 1991

My boss, she wasn't able to go to the meeting, and I, wound up being vice chair for that meeting of the standing committee. And I was young. I was 26. And so that was quite a quite an introduction to, international conservation politics. How did you find that?

Yeah. What was that like for a 26 year old being put into that position? Really intimidating, but at the same time, really exciting to learn from all the people around and just, you know, an amazing, learning experience about that kind of nexus between politics and, and nature conservation. Yeah. So, yeah, it it was really, really interesting, you know, to start off that that early.

But it then did affect the trajectory that I took. So, you know, after doing my my five years at the forest department, I went back and did, a master's degree in zoology, and that focus was on, my focus was on hunting and hunting. And then that led me to a PhD in a double PhD in forestry and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Mhmm. So I, did my research in, Trinidad And Tobago for my PhD.

And then after that, I got headhunted for a conservation manager role back in my home country. So this was at a place called the Acereich Nature Centre, which at the time was the kind of largest land owning conservation NGO in Trinidad And Tobago. They had about, I wanna say, about between twelve and thirteen hundred acres of forest, tropical forest in the, Northern Mountains Of Trinidad under conservation management. And so I spent, I spent five years in that role. And after my first year as conservation manager, I became CEO.

, because it was set up since: 1967

So that was another thing. And then subsequent to that, I I went back to the University of the of the West Indies, through a circuitous way. I I'd worked, I went back to government for a couple years working in environmental policy at the Ministry of Environment where, a lot of my job wound up being going to international treaty meetings like, the Convention on Biological Diversity Mhmm. What was then the UNEP Governing Council meetings, that kind of thing, a UNCCD, the UN Convention on Desertification. Mhmm.

So, basically, my desk assignment was a whole bunch of these nature conservation treaties and representing the country and voting at these meetings. Mhmm. And then that, I went back to the University of the West Indies where I taught for five years. I basically led, online master's in biodiversity and sustainability. Then I came to UK, and I've been here for, just about eleven years now.

Mhmm. So I I spent about, six years at Chester, at the University of Chester, where I led their master's in wildlife conservation, program. Mhmm. And then I came here to Cambridge, and now I teach on the conservation leadership masters. And here we are.

Yeah. It's a great positive history. I got so many questions to ask you of that. I think one that I'd like and you still you started touching it there, which you'll find really interesting. Like, what are the kind of key differences between working in academia, in government, kind of civil society, and also NGOs?

Yeah. Yeah. You talked about how government can be very bureaucratic, top down. I love to compare and contrast them. I'd you know, what are what are your views of the key differences?

And how people thrive within the different within the different Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, I, you know, I started off by saying, I think I was really lucky to start off working in civil service because it provided a lot of structure for my kind of understanding of, of management of natural resources. Because a lot of times I see with my students today, they, they turn up in the classroom very enthusiastic, about nature conservation.

Maybe they've come through, an NGO sector or CBO sector, pathway. But oftentimes, their their questions tend to revolve around why is it governments can't do a, b, c, and d? And that that that question itself reflects a degree of naivete about, politics, governance, and where how policy making and, funding from the state, then is transformed into what we see on the landscape, whether it's national parks or government agencies that manage natural resources or the way law enforcement is done in a particular jurisdiction. And so, I see you know, for me, I still see and again, you know, this is about bias. Right?

We say we are we all carry all different kinds of biases because of, you know, our ontology. Right? So for me, because I started in the civil service, I understand it a lot better. Mhmm. And maybe some of some of my peers who maybe just started off working in academia.

Mhmm. So in terms of the differences, governments are big machines. They, you know, represent the will of the people where they are, hopefully, in a democratic society. And so there's a lot of money behind government. But those the issues of accountability with government tend to require the agencies that work in government to be very conservative in the way they act.

So we need to go to public consultation every time we do a policy change, etcetera, etcetera. And these things slow things down quite a bit. Mhmm. And they affect how we make policy, how we make decisions about how we're going to act on a particular issue. Mhmm.

And because of that, the, you know, the NGO sector and the CBO sector tends to be much more agile. Mhmm. You know? And those folks that work in the civil, you know, the civil sector, so work in government, tend to be way more constrained in terms of what they can say to the public. So people always say, well, you know, civil servants, you know, you can never get a straight answer out of them.

In part, that's because of the way the system is is set up. It's, you know, it's it's set up in such a way that the people that are are, responding to the public tend to be politicians because they're the ones that, you know, ostensibly have, decided the policy. And then we as the civil servants, our job is then to give effect to the policy, the will of the people through their representatives. Mhmm. And so it can be very complex in terms of how us if you ask a civil servant, well, why are we doing a, b, c, and d, and why aren't we doing these other things, then it becomes complicated in terms of responding and, you know, what's, you know, separating out what you have as your personal views as opposed to your, your your job responsibilities and your roles, etcetera.

You know? Whereas for for instance, the NGO sector, there's a lot more passion. So for instance, you know, my my colleagues here at, you know, at Fauna and Flora, they're all really passionate. They've worked in the sector for a long time. Many of them some of them are younger and really passionate about the thing that they do, and people wear that energy and enthusiasm on their sleeve.

And this is not to say that civil servants aren't aren't that way, but this is to say that the, the mechanisms for being able to act on the ideas that you have and convert those into, say, projects, that projects that get funded and, you know, actions on the ground, the distance between the conceptualization and the action on the ground is much shorter for the NGO and CBO sector, community based organization sector, than, say, for the civil servants, because it's a a lot more of a constrained thing. But that doesn't mean that the NGO sector is stay, you know, naturally more impactful. It just means because as we can see, when government makes a decision about, say, some funding scheme, whether or not we're thinking about, renewables in our context, the state through the, government bodies can have huge impacts on the how the whole society responds to a question. It's just that getting to that have that huge response takes a lot more, prep time Yeah. To be able for that to happen.

Whereas if I work in the NGO sector, I can perhaps see my, my impacts, you know, a lot more immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting reflections. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'd love to dig deeper, but actually for time. I Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

I've been shrugging along, but yeah. Another thing I want to loop back on something you touched on there as well that when you, when you were the CEO, of the the park, the Azerite, was it? Azerite Nature Center. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. That you had this income source from being almost like a hotelier, and the ecosystem that came from that. Now we know alternative livelihoods is really important. We know that actually, creating funds that also benefit biodiversity conservation is really vital because there's a real kind of spiral effect of that. You know, we can actually grow a business that that does good for wildlife.

Could you just give us some other examples maybe to kind of fill in some pieces like what are the other ways of generating income from wildlife that also helps to protect it? Because ecotourism is such a clear model. Have you got others for the map? Absolutely. Yeah.

Absolutely. I mean, these days, there's a lot of interest in, again, because I work in a university, biomimetics and using nature as a source for, new ways of thinking of materials or new ways of thinking about how we develop drugs or new ways of thinking about how we adapt to a particular kind of, challenge, say, biological challenge, you know, whether it's disease or whatever. And so for for many communities, and and I see this with governments and communities, there's there's a lot of focus, today on genetic information and how we make, when we when we take an idea from nature and commercialize it, whether it's some kind of new medicine or whatever, how do we then bring back some of those financial benefits from the commercialization of those ideas that are provided by nature to the places where we have that nature? You know? So whether it's, marine sponges providing some, insight about some new kind of, some new kind of drug or new kind of antibiotic or whatever it is, and then how do you get that money back into the place where those sponges occur, or or, you know, how where those forests occur, etcetera.

It's it's those kinds of, agreements between companies and governments, between companies and local communities. Those things, you know, are really critical, mechanisms for getting back some of the value of nature. Of course, today, there's also a lot of focus on, nature services. So, of course, many conservation NGOs are involved in carbon credits and carbon trading and, providing sites where if I protect these, these forests, then that will allow more for more carbon sequestration. And there's, of course, a lot of, a lot of discussion around whether or not this is working or not, whether or not we can actually track that, and how do we value this.

And, as with most most markets, there's, the cost or the price of that carbon fluctuates a lot. So that's another area that many community groups are interested in and and CBOs and NGOs all involved in that, that ecosystem service. And, of course, there's been a big push to monetize many of the services of nature, and those things seem to be the things that are, you know, getting more traction, in terms of, getting the private sector to invest in nature conservation. In terms of traction then and looking into the future, are you optimistic for wildlife conservation efforts? We all know that wildlife's having a real tough time Yeah.

Without painting too much of a doomy picture, but, you know, we know that Yeah. Yeah, populations are declining across the globe. Yeah. Are you optimistic for the future? Right.

That's that's a great question. Right? I so I would say if you're working in our field, if you're working in conservation, then you have to be optimistic. Mhmm. Because, you know, if you're not, you're gonna have burnout pretty quick.

Because every year, you know, there's a report that will come out that will say, well, we're losing nature at this rate or that rate or whatever. But I like to, you know and maybe this is just, you know, my nature that, you know, I tell the students all the time, well, you know, is this glass half full or half empty? And they'll some of them will either say it's half empty or others will say half full. And then I'm always minded by, a a show I watch watch all the time, the Big Bang Theory. And, you know, I think, well, you know, am I Sheldon or am I Leonard?

And, I think I I tend to think that, you know, maybe the the glasses is all the way full. It's got both air and water in it. And I think that, you know, in terms of the teaching and coming back to your question about, you know, am I optimistic or not, every time I enter the classroom and I see the twenty, twenty three, 20 four, whatever it is number of students that we have in the class, I see opportunity for us to to shift the dial on nature conservation. Mhmm. And as long as we have people that are willing to do the work, then there's hope for us to save some of these things that we've inherited.

Every generation, we you know, I I've been around for a while. And the what I feel sad about is that, you know, some of the nature that I experienced, maybe other people will won't see it. The people that come after me won't see it. And I see as my job to make sure that I get enough of my students interested in doing something about that nature, that we have more of it to pass on to the people that come after us. So I'm I'm optimistic that we have people that are interested, willing to do the work, and it's just there are things that we need to do about the way we relate to nature globally to shift the needle.

And the more people that we have that are willing to do it, then, you know, the closer we are to actually fixing it. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah.

If there are people listening who are aspiring conservationists. Yeah. Maybe they're in the global South. Maybe they're in a small island state even, you know, like like yourself. What advice would you give them that might help them to secure employment, to follow their passion, to have impact?

Yeah. I think so you you use the right right phrase there, follow your passion. So I would say, number one, just bring turn up with that passion, you know, for whatever it is that you you love, whether it's art. You know? It may be that, the thing that you really love is making music or painting or whatever.

And you might go, well, I I want a career in conservation. Well, you know, right there with the thing that you love, you've got a tool for communicating, you know, critical messages. And you'll find that many people in our our field, many people in conservation aren't that good at communication. And so you have a unique tool that you can use to bring your passion to the table. And I think, you know, the thing is to turn up with that passion and and use the thing that you like doing as the way that you you get going in conservation.

I'm almost feeling like a Venn diagram, you know. I can say these are my skills. This is what I love how to Exactly. As we do in the classroom with you. Okay.

Right. Yeah. Well, actually, so on that specific example, let's say someone is an artist Yes. And they paint. That that's their background, and they'd love to to apply that to conservation efforts.

Mhmm. Like, what specifically could someone do? Like, what role could they play? How could they find employment? What, you know Yeah.

I mean, that that that's a really good question. So, you know, in in people's neighborhoods, if you're based here in The UK, I I like to use Cambridge as an example because, you know, there's lots of small conservation NGOs that, that are members of what we call the Cambridge Conservation Forum. And there are lots of whether it's small birding clubs and, whether it's, the local chapter of the, the the wildlife, local wildlife groups or even local nature reserves or whatever. If you're an artist or, somebody who writes music or whatever, you'll find that there are local, NGOs Mhmm. That are more than willing to have you help them communicate a message that they want to get out.

And you never know. Those things can be the start. You know, you put your your work up on their website or on you on their YouTube channel. And as you know, it doesn't take very much for something to then go viral. And for somebody, you know, somebody else to notice that that work is really impressive or that's really innovative, the way that you've communicated this thing or the symbolism you've used here is so amazing.

And for that to then spin off into a career, and use using this this tool that you love using, you know? Yeah. I love that. And I guess if you're listening, you hear the word artist, just replace whatever skill set you've got. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. And and yeah, and follow that. Yeah. Circling back to optimism, circling back, I'm sorry, to doom and gloom, in terms of wildlife being in decline globally.

Yeah. When you reflect, like, what do you think we as a community of conservationists across all different disciplines need to do more of or be better at? How can we kind of really move the needle? What what were we missing? Yeah.

Yeah. So I think the issue has always been communication. And so we've known that that nature's been declining for for a long time. You you could go back to writings from the the turn of the eighteen hundreds. So the end of the eighteen hundreds, you can find writings where people are concerned about the loss of nature and the rollback of nature.

I'm from The Americas, and many of the, changes that we've seen happen in The Americas in terms of habitat fragmentation, species becoming extinct, species becoming more and more threatened. These things literally have, you know, been happening since about the eighteen fifties or something, you know, when when we really start to see the, the the uptick of industrialization, taking place and then the, dramatic colonization across the whole continent. You know, so so this it's it's such a it it's so difficult to come to terms with the scale of the challenge. But the the challenge that we have as conservationist is the communication bit. And that comes back to that question that discussion we were just having about people who do art or people who do design or people who write.

It's our ability as a community to reach all these different, local communities, national level groups, and particularly businesses, to communicate to them and meet them where they are in terms of the things that they're doing, to communicate why this issue is important and why these values that we place on nature are important for, you know, not just for us today, but for generations to come. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.

Just a few kind of wrap up questions in if I can. Yeah. Sure. While we hand over to our our audience who are listening after we finish our recording, they can ask their own questions. Again, thinking about kind of global south, thinking about small island states as well in your background, like, how can we as a community kind of support underrepresented voices better in conservation?

And and, you know, and get more diversity in conservation too. Yeah. Well, I I I think the issue is, for me, when I think about underrepresented voices, is actually reaching out to those people Mhmm. And to ask ourselves, have we actually asked that group what they think about a particular issue, whether it's conservation, whether it's, access to nature, whether it's the fact that they live in an urban setting even though they're, you know, in the global South, and to understand that, the issues of intersection, you know, not just, you know, gender and color or, you know, race or whatever it is. There's most people have all kinds of complex intersections.

Mhmm. And it's to really recognize that when you speak to to one person, say, from the global South or from an from a particular island, that that person won't necessarily represent all the diversity of views from that place. You know? Yeah. And so, really, it's it's getting as as diverse, number of voices as possible from these underrepresented groups and recognizing that they are all different, you know, that people have multiple intersections, and and approaching it from that that lens of diversity.

Fantastic. Quick question. Mhmm. If we could transport you anywhere on the planet right now and you could see any species, where would you go and what would you hope to see? Well, I would go back to places that I've already seen.

You know? So for instance, I I used to take my graduate students out to a place called Brownsburg Nature Park in Suriname, And it's a place where I've seen, Puma and, jaguar, and heard them, you know. And it's I could never get tired. And, of course, I'm from The Americas, so, of course, I'm biased in terms of the species that I've been, you know, drawn to. But, you know, seeing a jaguar swimming across a river, for instance, I mean, I just I saw that one time, and I I still have that in my mind as, you know, such a profound moment.

You know? And just seeing these, you know, these species in the wild. So I'd go back to, you know, to my old haunts in Suriname and and see some of the wildlife that I've already seen. You know? Fantastic.

And if we could make you a global czar for the day, you're a leader of all humanity. Here you go. Yeah. And you could enact one decree or one law that is designed to help improve the environment at some level. What what Yeah.

Law or decree might you? Gosh. You know, it's it's so complex. Right? That that there many of the challenges that we face today are not simple simple problems.

Yep. The biggest problem I see us facing today, at this this very instant has has to do with the way that we produce and use energy. You know? So whether it's fossil fuels in aircraft or fossil fuels in cars or fossil fuels in trains or whatever. So, you know, if I was czar for the day, I would shift by an order of magnitude, maybe two orders of magnitude, the amount of money that we're spending on alternatives to the liquid fuels that we have to find new ways to make because it is the the energy juggernaut that we've created in in our cent you know, in the last century that is plaguing us, that we can't we we're struggling to shift from these fossil fuels to other ways.

So if I was Tsar for a day, I would definitely, you know, two orders of magnitude spend more money, to try and shift us to something that was more sustainable. And final question, why should anyone care about wildlife? Why should Donald Trump care about wildlife? If you're in a lift and you have thirty seconds with someone like that, what would be that? I I I don't know if thirty seconds would be enough to No.

But to that individual. But, you know, for for me, I would say, you know, if there is, if there is an emotional cord, with regard to any nonhuman organism, define that and and and draw on that in that discussion. So for me, it was the first time my dad took me for a walk in a forest as a as a child. And that for me is a deeply resonant thing because it's linked to my relationship with my dad and because it's my first time in nature. And that's that sticks with me.

And so I could talk about that as the, you know, the point where I knew that, you know, nature was important to me. Yeah. You know, and to find for every individual that point. And for everybody, it's gonna be different. Yeah.

Yeah. Howard, thank you so much for your time, for your energy I love it. For being so open and honest. I really appreciated this. If people wanna find out a little bit more about you or perhaps even the masters in conservation leadership, where should they go?

Where should we send them? Sure. Absolutely. Of course, the Department of Geography has a great site, you know, where, folks can find out all they want about the, about the MPhil in conservation leadership. You can find out about, those of us that teach on the program.

That's also on the the course website. I've got a a page as well on the Department of Geography website that you know, you can also look me up on, Lucy Cavendish website, my my college website. And, you know, if you're if you're interested in, you know, work in a conservation NGO or whatever, you know, do reach out. I'm happy to point you in the direction of, you know in my building, I've got 11 different NGOs. So, you know, folks, if you're interested, just just reach out.

I'm happy to. Yeah. That's that is so kind. And final final question. Is there a time of year when people should be thinking about applying?

If they're listening, think that sounds great. Is there a window? Yeah. Absolutely. So usually in Cambridge, most of the different, degrees tend to be open that that September.

And so, you know, if you look at our course website on the right side of the website in my mind, on the right side of the website, there there'll be a a a little box that says whether or not we're accepting applications. And, usually, it's it's the first or second week of September, and then the deadline is the December when when, we'll be, you know, scrambling to make our choices about who's coming in the following year. Right. Okay. Keep your eyes and ears open.

We'll we'll provide links as well in the show notes. Howard, once again, thank you so much. Oh, no problem, Nick. It was such fun to talk to you. And, you know, I like I say, you know, I really appreciate all the stuff that that you guys are doing and in conservation careers and, really appreciate all the time that you've spent with our students.

So just a a plug for the masters, if you guys are interested, you'll get to meet Nick in person and and have, sessions with him, if you come and come to our master's program. I I was preparing for it today, actually. We're doing it again. Excellent. Thank you so much.

Yeah. No problem. Anytime.