Hope for the Wild: Stories From the AZA, Part 1

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:00:01] Back in September of last year, Peter, you and I found ourselves in a pretty atypical place for us. We weren't on the ocean, or roaming a desert, or in a rainforest, or a bat cave. [00:00:11]

Peter Gros: [00:00:12] No, we were in a crowded convention center in Calgary, Alberta, about 50 miles east of the Canadian Rockies. [00:00:19]

AZA Spokesperson: [00:00:20] Yeah, we're super excited to host the AZA Conference here in Calgary. It's the first time it's been outside of the U.S. in like 40 years, so that's fantastic. Over 2,300 attendees from all over the world coming together to share expertise, knowledge at the top end of the Zoon Aquarium business. So very excited. [00:00:36]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:00:37] We were there to talk with experts about how to better care for the animals housed in North American zoos and aquariums and how that work relates to these same species in the wild. [00:00:47]

Peter Gros: [00:00:48] On today's show, we meet with experts at the AZA conference to hear stories about conservation efforts that are helping to save some of the world's biggest animals. I'm Peter Gross, wildlife expert and educator. [00:01:03]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:01:04] And I'm wildlife ecologist, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. And this is Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, the podcast, episode five, Hope for the Wild, Stories from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Community, part one. The AZA is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. It's made up of member institutions from across North America and beyond. They do great work on behalf of animals, from preventing wildlife trafficking to spearheading conservation efforts for endangered species, researching challenging issues, and educating the public about the importance of wild spaces. [00:01:52]

Peter Gros: [00:01:52] In fact, a lot of the stories we tell on the podcast are about conservation work being done by people at AZA accredited institutions to protect wildlife and their natural habitats. [00:02:04]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:02:05] The 2024 AZA Conference featured a wide range of people and workshops, from seminars on reintroducing endangered red wolves and whooping cranes to the wild, to panels on how to include Indigenous voices in knowledge and conservation. And there was even a trade show floor, with vendors selling items tailor-made for this crowd. We create [00:02:25]

AZA Spokesperson: [00:02:25] 3D sculptures like what you're seeing here. You can't see it, but it's a polar bear. [00:02:29]

AZA Spokesperson: [00:02:29] We are a souvenir photo platform. Consulting, traveling exhibits for museums, science centers, zoos, aquariums, indoor exhibits. [00:02:36]

AZA spokesperson: [00:02:37] of diets that go from anything from cricket food to supplements for sharks and rays. [00:02:40]

AZA Spokesperson: [00:02:40] We do animal enclosures for zoos and aquariums. We go from 400 pound capacity up to 5,000 pound capacity. [00:02:47]

AZA Spokesperson: [00:02:48] It feels like a community, which is really nice. So we're excited to get to know everybody. [00:02:52]

Peter Gros: [00:02:52] We're excited for AZA and looking forward to a good show. We had a busy four days at the conference. We presented the new season of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, protecting the wild to a crowd and later hosted a Q&A about the show. [00:03:06]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:03:06] And for the podcast, we got to interview scientists, educators, zookeepers, and even a few mermaids! [00:03:12]

Peter Gros: [00:03:13] We've been sharing some of these stories with you all season long. But for this week and next, we're devoting two entire episodes to longer conversations we recorded at the conference. [00:03:23]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:03:25] Today, we take a look at two of the largest land mammals in the world and how partnerships between zoos in the United States and conservation projects overseas are helping protect these species for generations to come. [00:03:36]

Ben Jones: [00:03:41] Gorillas are amazing and I've been a huge fan since I was a kid. I've. Been lucky enough to see him three times on three different gorilla trucks in Rwanda and each time was magic. That first time I just, it felt surreal really. [00:03:55]

Peter Gros: [00:03:56] This is Ben Jones, the Vice President of Conservation and Education at the Houston Zoo. [00:04:01]

Ben Jones: [00:04:02] you climb up these mountains and it's cool and it can be really rainy and the thick of the plants and the trails and everything can just be so immersive and the vegetation so thick that you just it's difficult to see then we go around the corner and there they were this beautiful family group everybody was just relaxing and there were some noises i wasn't sure where it coming from, I look up. and a little juvenile gorilla was 20 feet up in the bamboo. And when she saw us approach, she was so curious. She dropped out of the bamboo just super fast and you could hear snaps of the Bamboo crashing. She lands right in front of us and she's just looking at all of us. I was wearing a shirt with a big gorilla, a mountain gorilla on the front of it. And she sees the shirt and starts kind of crawling towards me. And the ranger was saying, back up, back up, because we want to keep always at least six feet between us. Her name was Sangua. Her name is Sangua, and I just, you know, that image of her being curious about me and wanting to see me and see that image on my shirt has me kind of bonded to her in a way I'll never forget her. [00:05:17]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:05:18] I love this story from Ben. The way he tells it makes me feel like I'm right there in the mountain forest with him. And the shirt Ben was wearing was actually from the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund. Diane Fossy was a pioneering primatologist and advocate for gorillas, and in the 1960s she began observing them in Congo and Rwanda. [00:05:36]

Peter Gros: [00:05:37] We were privileged to have Diane Fossey and her work with gorillas featured in two episodes of our classic Wild Kingdom series with Marlon Perkins and Jim Fowler. [00:05:47]

Marlin Perkins: [00:05:48] High on the densely vegetated slopes of the Virunga mountains in Rwanda, Diane continues her reunion with the gorillas of group five. As with all juveniles, all they think about is playing. [00:06:00]

Ben Jones: [00:06:07] When Diane Fossey first arrived in Rwanda, the conditions were so bad through poaching, habitat degradation, that she didn't think they would be around in the year 2000. She thought they'd be gone. And so those threats through the actions of amazing conservationists working in that region have been reduced and have been mitigated. And because of that, the mountain gorilla population has grown significantly. When she first arrived there, the estimate was maybe 250. And today, total, there's 1,200 mountain gorillas. [00:06:42]

Peter Gros: [00:06:43] Unfortunately, Diane gave her life protecting these gorillas. In 1985, she was murdered, most likely by poachers for her work with gorillas [00:06:53]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:06:56] And while Diane may be gone, her mission lives on in Ben Jones, the Houston Zoo, and the many organizations that they sponsor on the ground in Central Africa. One of these is the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund, which is responsible for monitoring and protecting mountain gorillas in their habitat 24-7. [00:07:13]

Peter Gros: [00:07:15] Funds raised by the Houston Zoo also support the Gorilla Doctors, a program that administers medical aid to mountain gorillas. These funds also go towards an initiative that incentivizes people in the area to live harmoniously with these majestic animals. [00:07:31]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:07:32] Ben personally works closely with a program called Gorillaz on the Line. [00:07:36]

Ben Jones: [00:07:37] With Gorillas on the Line, we make the connection between mobile phones and small electronic devices and the minerals and components within them that are mined from gorilla habitat and sometimes mined illegally, which can be really devastating to the ecology of that region. [00:07:53]

Peter Gros: [00:07:54] Sadly, the mining practices used to extract these minerals can poison the water and ruin the pristine forest that mountain gorillas need to thrive. This is where gorillas on the line can help. [00:08:06]

Ben Jones: [00:08:08] nationwide and even beyond the United States initiative through Gorilla Safe, an AZA program, is to engage as many people in recycling their old mobile phones, where they can be broken down and their components recycled and reused to lessen mining pressure in gorilla habitat. And then finally, the funds that are raised from those mobile phone recycling campaigns that happen in zoos and aquariums across the United states are directed to gorilla conservation. [00:08:37]

Peter Gros: [00:08:39] We ended our conversation with Ben by asking, What gives him hope? [00:08:43]

Ben Jones: [00:08:44] I just think the story of the mountain gorilla coming back from the brink of extinction because people cared and they stepped forward and took action. Diane Fossey gave her life for these animals. And then all of us now through AZA Gorilla Safe, through the work of the gorilla doctors, through these super amazing and heroic conservationists around the world, that gives me hope. It's an extraordinary conservation success story. an incredible element of conservation optimism that you don't sometimes hear all the time. But at 1200 instead of 250, it's just evidence that we can do this. You know, we can focus and we can take action and we see these animals be restored and thriving. [00:09:32]

Peter Gros: [00:09:38] Ben's enthusiasm for the mountain gorillas and their conservation is infectious. [00:09:42]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:09:43] And the way that his zoo in Houston collaborates with people on the ground halfway across the world perfectly embodies the global effort needed to protect vulnerable species because we all have a part to play. [00:09:55]

Peter Gros: [00:09:56] Our next guest continues on that same theme only with an even bigger animal. [00:10:01]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:10:02] Elephants are amazing animals. They're super alien creatures, if you think about it. It'd be hard to imagine a creature that looks more dissimilar to us than an elephant does. They've got these huge ears, they're huge in size, this long nose, but they're also remarkably similar to humans. They have these complex social relationships with families and friends. They live long lifespans and they're very, very smart. And so in that way, I think a lot of people feel connections to elephants despite how alien they are to us. [00:10:30]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:10:30] Dr. Chase Ledoux is a National Geographic explorer and a conservation scientist at the Oklahoma City Zoo. He's also the executive director of the Sri Lanka Elephant Project, a partnership between the zoo and a university in Sri Lanka, which encourages coexistence between humans and elephants. [00:10:47]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:10:48] There are three different subspecies of Asian elephants and the Sri Lankan elephant is the biggest. Males are larger than females and males can get to be about 12 to 15 feet tall. We actually have a Sri Lanka elephant that lives at the Oklahoma City Zoo. And if I was to go into the same space with him, I could walk under his chin without my head touching the bottom of his chin. So he's very tall and lanky. It's also distinguished from the other subspeces because most males don't have tusks. So when you're talking about Asian elephants, normally you say the males have tusks and the females don't, but because of poaching, most of the males now have evolved to not have tusk. So that's another unique aspect of the Sri Lankan elephants. [00:11:25]

Peter Gros: [00:11:26] Despite growing up in Dallas, Texas, which is about as far away from a wild elephant as you can get, Chase has always had a connection with these animals. [00:11:34]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:11:35] Since I was three years old, I've wanted to work with elephants. And my parents, I like to tell stories of my families would go on some vacation to a beach or something and they dropped me off at the zoo and then at the end of the day, after they'd been at the beach or the pool, they'd come back and pick me up. In high school, I convinced my parents to let me spend summer between junior and senior year at an elephant camp in Thailand working with elephants, it's just always been super motivating for me and I felt this connection with them. I took care of this one single elephant for the whole three months I was there and I was working with a mahout. That's the name for a person who takes care of an elephant in Thailand. There's Mahoot who didn't speak any English and I spoke no Thai. And so not only did I build a relationship with the elephant, but I feel like I built a relationship the person and it really like, I was like, oh, this is where I'm supposed to be like shoveling poop and feeding this elephant and sweating in this hot humidity. But I really found my community, my, my identity on that trip. [00:12:26]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:12:27] Chase's love of elephants led him to get a PhD in environmental science and public policy. He did his doctoral research in the island nation of Sri Lanka, which has the highest density of elephants anywhere in Asia. There, he connected with one wild elephant in particular. [00:12:43]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:12:44] When I was doing my PhD in Sri Lanka, I left for Sri Lanka a week after my favorite uncle died back here in the US. And so it was a really challenging time. I was going to a funeral just a couple of days before I was gonna leave for Sri Lankan for a year, but there was this elephant and I saw him through many different life's changes over that year, but he always seemed to be calm and sort of curious. And so I named him after my uncle, Kevin. And so Kevin's sort of my favorite elephant and I have a portrait of him hanging in our house. [00:13:13]

Peter Gros: [00:13:16] Sri Lanka is home to between 5,000 and 6,000 elephants and 22 million people. The island country is only the size of West Virginia, so, well, conflict is inevitable. [00:13:29]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:13:30] Elephants commonly eat crops and destroy property, threatening the livelihoods of the human communities that live nearby. And meanwhile, human encroachment can harm the elephant's... [00:13:39]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:13:41] habitat destruction is the number one threat to Asian elephants, and that destruction puts people and elephants sort of fighting over the same resources, and that leads to human-elephant conflict. Elephants pose a completely unique challenge because they're so big and so smart. They are also able to evade our strategies to sort of dissuade them from human lands, and a lot of people think that Asian elephants would thrive in pristine for us. But because they're so smart, they're very adaptable to human landscapes. So they actually thrive at the interface of human landscapes and natural landscapes. [00:14:13]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:14:14] This is where the Sri Lanka Elephant Project comes in. The project employs a field team of Sri Lankans to observe and document how elephants respond to different environmental pressures. The project then uses that data to work with local communities, like farmers, to help avoid and resolve human-elephant conflicts. [00:14:32]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:14:33] So it's that combination of information about what elephants do naturally and in response to human activity combined with the information we're getting from the communities about how they experience elephants. We're able to get a more holistic picture that we can then use to inform conservation strategies. [00:14:48]

Peter Gros: [00:14:49] This work in Sri Lanka on the other side of the world is made possible by visitors to the Oklahoma City Zoo. [00:14:55]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:14:56] The Oklahoma City Zoo completely funds the Sri Lanka Elephant Project through a program we have at the zoo called Roundup for Conservation. Whenever a guest at our zoo makes a purchase, they're asked, do you want to round up to the nearest dollar? And that change goes to conservation projects, including the Sri Lankan Elephant project. [00:15:11]

Peter Gros: [00:15:12] Meanwhile, Chase and his team in Oklahoma City are also conducting vital conservation research right there at home with the elephants living at the zoo. [00:15:22]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:15:23] So our eight elephants that live at the Oklahoma City Zoo, we know everything about their lives. We know when they were born, who they're related to, how much food they're eating in a day, any health ailments that pop up across their lifetime. And so that's one of the values of having elephants in zoos is we can carefully study these elephants in a way we aren't able to in the wild. So our elephants in Sri Lanka, we see them fairly frequently, but if they go into the forest or decide to move to another park, we don't know where they go. They're not tagged, they're not collared. They can go where they please And so we're learning a lot about the elephants in our care and developing techniques that we can apply to the elephants and the wild. At the same time, we're about how elephants in the wild live and function and organize themselves socially. And we apply that to the management and care of our elephants that live at the zoo. [00:16:08]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:16:12] While Chase is based in Oklahoma City these days, part of his heart will always be in Sri Lanka. He lived there for a good part of his PhD research and is now married to a woman from Sri Lanka, thankfully, he has the opportunity to visit two or three times a year where he continues building his connection to the place, the people, and the elephants. [00:16:30]

Dr. Chase LaDue: [00:16:31] So when you step off the plane in Sri Lanka, you're immediately hit with like a humidity wall. It's very warm and humid in Sri Lankan. And you're also hit with all these sights and sounds. It's a much busier environment than say Oklahoma city is. But at the same time, you see nature intertwined with people in a way that's really inspiring. You see trees and plants and wildlife really interacting with these human structures in a ways that sort of lends insight into what our future with nature could look like. In Sri Lanka, the elephant is generally respected, and we've done surveys of the farming communities, and they want elephants to exist. Like, they really value their elephants, and there's some sort of pride for the elephants, but they're also at dire straits. So in Sri Lanka alone, about 100 people every year die just from the human-elephant conflict. It's a huge problem. I love elephants, and I know a lot of other people love elephants too, but realistically, moving forward, we have to find solutions where humans and elephants can coexist. [00:17:31]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:17:34] When I listen to Chase and Ben talk about their work with organizations in Sri Lanka and Rwanda, I think about compassion and collaboration. Those are really such key elements to these kinds of cross-cultural conservation efforts around the world. [00:17:49]

Peter Gros: [00:17:50] I think what impressed me the most is how when you go to an ACA accredited zoo, you not only get a chance to connect with animals from around the world, but you also could be supporting work that saves these animals in the wild. Thank you for listening to this episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, the podcast. And remember, if we protect wildlife and the environment today, we can ensure magical moments in the wild kingdom for future generations. [00:18:22]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:18:23] Join us next week for more conversations from the 2024 ACA conference, where we'll learn how to connect with some of the smaller animals that also need our help. [00:18:32]

Sarah Bowser: [00:18:33] fan of vultures and opossums and bats and snakes and so a lot of the work that I do is help our guests and our students connect with animals that everybody thinks are creepy or scary and get them to see them kind of a new way. [00:18:46]

Thom Demas: [00:18:47] people like, well, why does one little fish matter? Those fish represent health in the stream. So if we can make sure they stay healthy, we can ensure we have healthy drinking water. We'll talk to you then. [00:18:58]

Peter Gros: [00:19:04] Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, the podcast, is a production of Pineapple Street Studios and Mutual Of Omaha. Our senior producer is Stephen Key. Producers are Elliot Adler and Jenny Van Soelen. [00:19:17]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:19:18] Associate producer is Lisa Cerda. Editor is Darby Maloney. Executive producers are Barry Finkel, Gabrielle Lewis, and Jen Wulf. Pineapple's head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. Senior audio engineers are Marina Pais, Davy Sumner, Javi Cruces, and Pedro Alvira. This episode was mixed by Davy Summer. [00:19:42]

Peter Gros: [00:19:42] production music courtesy of Epidemic Sound and Hearst Media Production Group. [00:19:46]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:19:47] Episode Clips, courtesy of Hearst Media Production Group. Marketing and promotion by Emily Poeschl. This podcast is hosted by me, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. [00:19:56]

Peter Gros: [00:19:58] Peter Gross, a special thanks to Katelyn Williams, Sophie Radmelamich, and Stephanie Diaz. [00:20:03]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:20:04] Today's episode is based on the Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom series created by Don Meyer. Our next episode will be out in a week. [00:20:11]

Peter Gros: [00:20:12] Make sure you listen on the Audacy app, or wherever you get your podcasts. [00:20:12