Making Conservation Tools Accessible, Using Data Responsibility in Conservation, and a New Chapter for Conservation Leadership with Sunny Fleming

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Sunny Fleming, Esri's Director of Conservation about Making Conservation Tools Accessible, Using Data Responsibility in Conservation, and a New Chapter for Conservation Leadership.  Read her full bio below.

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Sunny Fleming at https://www.linkedin.com/in/littlemissesri/

Guest Bio:
Sunny Fleming serves as the Director of Conservation Solutions at Esri. Her career has been shaped by a consistent theme of applying GIS to solve real‑world challenges across conservation, environmental regulation, and parks and recreation management. From monitoring species and natural resources in the field to supporting agencies in policy development, asset management, and strategy, GIS has been central to her work at every stage. She has a passion for uniting these interconnected disciplines and advancing their role in conservation efforts around the world, and she is committed to building a global community of GIS practitioners who collaborate, innovate, and support conservation through shared expertise and geospatial insight.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiast, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about what's changed over the course of our environmental careers. We interview Sunny Fleming about making conservation tools accessible, using data responsibly in conservation, and a new chapter for conservation leadership. And finally, since Sunny works at Esri, here are some fun facts about geographic information systems or as we all lovingly call them GIS. Esri was first founded in 1969 by Jack and Laura Dangerman, inspired by early computer mapping work and a desire to use geography to solve real world problems. AC Info was released in 1982 as one of the first commercial GIS software products that helped move GIS from academic and governmental labs into broader use. Bonus fact, the term GIS was first coined in 1963 by geographer Roger Tomlinson. While working on a land use project for the Canadian government, earning him the title of the father of GIS, how about that? If that music. We are super grateful for Esri sponsoring today's episode. Esri is the go-to for science and conservation mapping. Check them out at Esri.com. 

This year, NAEP is hosting their annual conference and training symposium in Anchorage, Alaska from Monday, May 11th to Thursday, May 14th. The conference is a great opportunity to learn about new projects, share technical knowledge, network with other industry professionals, and engage with environmental leaders. Not a member yet? Join NAEP with a special limited offer using discount code EPR for $25 off your membership. Register now at www.NAEP.org. So, we're going to start right away? Just dive right in. I mean, why not? Yeah, sure. 

So we were just talking about what's changed in the course of like our careers, and you know we're talking to Sunny today. It's great to have her back and we're talking about, I remember it was the AC 3.1, Arc map 3.1 is the first one I worked on and Like we said, that was like, I don't know, 25 years ago, 20 years ago, yeah, it's 20 years ago, which is the same one I started on actually, yeah, and it was a long time ago, but it's just trying to kind of got us thinking about like what has changed in the environmental space from when we started. Well, that version of RTS was like add a road and add the wetlands and then put a little triangle here and then, you know, like drag and drop the layers in order a lot different. There was no cloud. No, and you know, the processing power of that by itself was really challenging. I remember trying to do a map over the course of like, I don't know, the entire Midwest. It was like 9 states, and I would basically have to run that overnight, you know what I mean? Like that's like it does not. And like I'm literally it's millions of points which can be done so fast now, but I had to leave it overnight on a special computer. It was like it didn't shut off, yeah, and it always did. So, you'd have to plan for it to take like 1 week or 2 weeks to actually get it done and. You know, if you sneeze near that computer, it froze. Yeah, that was one of the first things that I did as a manager was, I oversaw our GIS or one full-time GIS person, and it was taking him so long to do everything. One of the first things I did was advocate for a higher power computer for him. I was like, he can't have the same computer as everyone else. This is crazy. 

Yeah, that by itself is kind of a miracle. It is funny, uh, you know, you remember Trembles, you know, and it's just like this like basically TI 83 calculator like that you took into the field that could connect the satellites everywhere and that was really cool. It was really neat, but it is like ancient. Like the screen on that thing was, I mean, I think they're still pretty old in that regard, but like the screen on that was so. Um, it felt like a Game Boy, and I'm dating myself even more because who even knows what that is anymore, but that's what it felt like. It felt like I was taking a Game Boy into the field to play. Yeah, exactly, and the accuracy was not crazy close. It was better. It was better, you know, like, hey, this is better than hand drawn or whatever our estimates are, but it's not nearly as good as it is today. Yeah, and, and yeah, and those are it's pinpoint. I remember like it was like subcentimeter accuracy was one of those things that like everybody wanted, and if you had to have a like a full backpack with like spears that you'd have to shove into the ground, and that sounds. Just absolutely hilarious because now everything, every device can do that, right? Or you can just take a drone, yeah, like there weren't drones. There were no drones. There definitely weren't drones you were taking in the field, yeah, I mean there were helicopters, but that's not the same. Yeah, exactly, and, uh, yeah, I couldn't afford those on like 99% of the jobs and now it's, there's drone programs at most companies, you know, most larger companies, and that's new. That's cool. LiDAR didn't exist when I started, so that like, you know, dot mapping, you know, none of that was there. Yes, you know what else wasn't there though, switching from technical stuff. Yeah, everything, like there was no influencers, there was no vegan restaurants, there were no. 

There was Sierra Club and there was World Wildlife Foundation, like, that was, that was what most people knew about the environment. So I think one of the, the best and worst things is like, the environment still has a long way to go and there's a lot more work and there's all these problems, but also people know now, you know, there didn't used to be, because even when I started my career coaching and started my Instagram page, I followed everybody I could follow, and it wasn't that many, and now I could probably follow as many new pages in one day. As I could when I first started, that was from the entire lifetime of people who've been on there. Now there are people with plant-based recipes and how to repurpose and how to do this and like none of that existed. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, gosh, like even strange things. I remember when I first started working in the industry with NEA, for example, we would print every major document and we'd have to like bind it in a comb binder, you know, which required a special, really, there was the My first company there was the good GBC binder and the bad one and you had to really hope that no one else was using it so that you could use the good one because that's way it was way faster you would be able to actually close up this document we printed all this stuff out and you know that's tons of paper, it's tons of ink, it's all of these things and one of the, you know, greenification of businesses you know that's not at all what happens now we don't print anything, um, it's almost the exact opposite and I remember mailing out. 150 boxes for an EIS or or more because you're trying to get this out to the people that will read it and that's crazy. It is completely different now, you know, it is just this tiny little file. Right? Yeah, at EPC they had a whole wall of wall and more of like, like a big thing was like, where do we put all these documents? There's 40 years of maps. And permit plans and all these things that you just can't get rid of. And so it was like, OK, well, it's gonna intern and have them scan them and then, OK, but we still have to keep them because just in case the scans go away cause we're still not sure what this cloud thing is. And so now we have like both, and I'm sure they're probably gone now. They had a flood last year. 

If they had any, they probably got destroyed. And, but yeah, that I remember that being like, and then there was the people who like for sentimental nostalgic reasons, like didn't want to get rid of them. You know, because, oh, it's a beautiful old map, you know, but, but it's, you know, it's funny. I remember the inflection point for me was there was an EIS that I was doing an admin record for, and I found out because I didn't work on the project, I just worked on the admin record and I found out that it was actually cheaper for them because it was an 11 volume EIS. It was humongous. It was huge. It was like, you know, you can imagine like it's like a gosh, Encyclopedia Britannica dating myself again. It was like 11 of those, right? That's how big it was. So it was actually cheaper to buy a computer and put it on it than it was to print. And so that's what the company did. They're like, well, we're gonna buy several computers that people can go to their library and look at this on. That's what happened and that's kind of a, to me it's like right almost like on the edge of that, right? Our first public meetings had fax numbers like when I first started, what even is that? You know. So yeah, it's crazy when you actually sit and think about in 20 years, how much has changed. The cloud was a huge part of that. Yeah, I mean there's still some things that don't. I think that's kind of the the joy of, of this work, you know, wetlands are still wet, still hot outside in the summer, you know, mosquitoes, and there's still people that don't want you to be on their property. That has not changed. Yes. 

The people parts have not changed much except for that maybe more people have an understanding of what the work is, yeah, not that they want it. And then like you said, the work itself still needs to be done. It still involves a lot of some happy people, some not happy people. Yeah, and yeah, I think collaboration too has, has changed a lot. Yeah, I mean, like, I spent most of my career working with people across the country, like most of it, like that's really changed in the last few years, but that was happening for me for a long time, but I know not everybody was doing that. A lot of companies were very region locked and they're like, well, we're only. Working with these people that are in the office, we're not working with anybody else and, you know, that's what was the exception is now the norm, so that's been kind of cool to see too. Yeah, cause I think also the cloud and then also, you know, Zoom and and COVID. And the explosion of digital meetings and stuff has really changed as well. So like there's just, there's so much, you know, like we can talk about this. This is just part one in-person meetings and now we are on digital all the time and it's a different world out there. If you're just getting started, it's very, very different. So keep that in mind when you're working with your more seniored professionals world for us out here. Yeah, I know it. I do feel like a dinosaur sometimes, but not, not too bad yet, not too bad. Yeah, I'm so grateful that we went along with it as it grew and not prior to and have like, you know, I don't know what this is. But let's get sunny. She knows who, what all of this is way more than me. Yeah, it's a great segue. Let's get to our interview.

Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we've got returning guest and fan favorite, Sunny Fleming on the show. For our new listeners, Sunny is the director of Environment Conservation and Natural Resources Solutions at Esri. Yeah. Oh, but you say that with a question. Yes, that seems a little different from the last time we talked to you. Well, now it's going to be just focused on conservation. So, that will be a big shift for us. Yeah, I've been kind of this generalist the whole time. And now we've really got a lot of momentum in this conservation space. We, through the work I've been doing, recognize that conservation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It requires Kind of everyone to be on board, and I have that public sector background. I partnered with lots of nonprofits in that work. Um, we had private industry that would help us as well. So yeah, so I'm going to be focused on conservation and kind of telling a little bit more of that story, which is really cool. And I would love to dive into that exact thing in a moment, but I have to know, like, what made you apply for that job? Why is it different? How is it different? Tell us a little bit about that process. Also, is it new or is this a new role but not a new position? So Ezri's had this role for a long time. Ezri, conservation has been in our blood since day one. It is, you know, the number one kind of passion and priority of our president and vice president, Jack and Laura Dangerment. So we've long had a conservation practice, but it's really been, you know, we are still a mom and pop company. 

Jack and Laura still own us. We're still privately held, and so, you know, what started as something that they really love, it started as good intentions. Now that we're this big company, you know, we've kind of got to wrangle it and put some structure around it. So, you know, there's been a few. iterations of folks that have been in this role, and they've all played their role in getting us to the point we're at today. And I'm excited to kind of lead the next chapter. So I am just a new person in an existing role, if that helps. Yeah. And so like, what made you apply for it? How did you think it would go? And I know you're excited I did to start getting doing it, but how did you even think, yes, this is for me? Yeah, no, it was a journey when the role became available. I immediately reached out to some folks on my team, and I was like, no, I'm not applying for it. Like, don't even. Not, not that they would ask me, but I was just signaling, because I think a lot of people expected me to apply for it. And I didn't want people to hesitate to move forward, looking for someone to fill the position, assuming that I might. And so I was very quick to tell people, no, I'm not interested. I'm very content. I'm very happy. And I think deep down, that wasn't necessarily true. It is true that I'm very happy in this role. It is true that I'm very content in in my, my existing role. But what I knew deep down in my gut is that conservation is where I come from. It is also my passion, and that I do have a lot of opinions on and a vision for where I think we can take it. So, I spent the better part of a year, not taking the role. And we had some great interviews, and we've learned from lots of folks, the community, there was a lot of folks that responded to this open position. And I remember it was, I think in November, prior to Thanksgiving, I was out at our headquarters in Redlands, and I said to myself, you know, I think I do want this role. It's been long enough. I do have a vision here. I didn't feel like that myself that I had the personal maybe panache that maybe the company wants or expected, you know, I'm not very flashy. I don't think I'm a super well-known entity. I'm, you know. Um, and so I thought, well, you know, there's some weaknesses on kind of maybe that front. But on the vision side and on understanding Ezri and how we work and on being passionate about our community and having a vision for this, darn if I don't have that. So I did. I threw my name in the hat and that precipitated very quickly and I think my application was received very well and it moved very quickly. 

So, we just sent the announcement out today, the first week of January. Wow, yeah, well, officially congratulations from us. Thank you. Yeah, and it really is neat, and I love that you talk about that because I think vision and passion, if I had like to choose two words to describe you, I think those are kind of pretty good ones. So, OK, what is your vision for this role? Where is Ezra on conservation? Where do you want it to be? Gosh, well, where we're at now, we've always been very committed to conservation, and we've always had programs in place to help facilitate and make our tools and our knowledge and whatever else accessible to the community. But I think because, you know, we started out as a mom and pop company, these things. Started out as more well-intentioned and they were easy to manage in these ad hoc manner. But as that program has grown, we've tried to put frameworks in place, but there's still, I think, a lack of transparency around what it means to participate in that with Esri, what those expectations are, and that's not fair to our community, but it's also not fair even internally to Esri, our staff who work with these customers, and they need to understand also what their expectations. So this is on both sides of the equation. So, I do have some thoughts on the necessity to put a little more framing around that, so that we are transparent there, and also to expand it. You know, a lot of our work has been focused on certain geographies, and we have a lot of distributors globally, and the conservation happens globally, it has to happen globally. And we have a lot of partners in this space too. And so, I want to make sure that We are developing an environment that feels inclusive to our partners, to our customers, and is accessible globally to a wide variety of entities with wildly different kinds of resources. Yeah, and I mean, how do you, I mean, because you're mentioning that, like it's a global thing, so that means that different areas are going to have different wants, needs and interests. They're going to have different motivations for requesting support or for what you could provide for them. How do you balance all of that? 

That seems like quite a daunting task. I mean, it can be, you know, one of the fun things, and I think I really enjoy this aspect of the role, and this is true across all of our industry roles, this concept of industry marketing is that we are supposed to be subject matter experts, kind of broadly on what your sector of interest or your sector of responsibility is facing. And when you look at it through the lens of granularity, every customer is going to be unique. But then when we have experiences where we're talking to lots of customers and we see their work globally, there's patterns that start to emerge, and we can start to craft our messaging around those patterns and craft. Solutions around those patterns. But one thing that I'm very proud of at Ezri is that we don't develop one size fits all solutions. We develop tools, and those tools can create solutions, but the user has sovereignty over their data. They have sovereignty over how they use our tools. You know, we don't dictate. That. And so even though I'm kind of thinking about these high level patterns, whatever they need to do, boots on the ground is available for them to do and configured to their heart's desire. We don't dictate that. So I'm very proud of kind of Ezri's approach to how we provide tools and solutions to these customers. Yeah, and it's, you know, I love that we tell you that you've been. Focused on conservation for a long time and I, I don't want to admit how long ago this was, but my first interaction with an Ezri product, I think it was a 3.1, uh, everyone has their, you know, their model that they started with, and then, yeah, and then 9 came out and like this is this is. It is different, but one of the funny things I did as I was working on box turtles, like that was my thesis, and I'm using the tool to map out where these turtles are, and there was a drop down for animals, and you could choose the animals that logo that you wanted. And sea turtles was on there and to me that's kind of like then there were other things. 

There's wolves, there's a whole bunch of other ones too, but I was kind of like really touched that it was there, you know, and it's such a silly little thing, but I had all these maps of like different colored sea turtles representing my box turtles, and it's because of the tool that they were even in there and it was such a great thing and that's when you say you've always had that, that's what I think of. That's the first thing that pops into my head. I'm going to carry that story with me for a really, really long time. I absolutely love that story. And I think it's true, you know, my experience with our tools was also first as a, as a user. And I remember thinking, I think about this a lot, and I'm trying to figure out how I carry this message forward. But I think about my childhood and then college and then my career. And it's so obvious to me that, of course, I ended up working in environmental and conservation fields. You know, as a child, probably like many children, I would, you know, thought I could talk to animals. I remember like sitting in the trees in the forest that abutted my parents' property, and I, you know, would play. I don't know if you all got like the school recorders, those little plastic recorders they give out to you in like music class. Oh dude, I would take that into the forest, and I would play it to the birds like I was talking to them. And I'll never forget, it's kind of a sad story. I'll never forget waking up one morning and my neighbor had clear cut that forest. And the pain that I felt and the grief that I felt was so overbearing as a child, you know, I was probably 8 or 9 years old. And I remember getting sick to my stomach. I was so sick and so upset over this. And it was one of my first experiences with what I felt was environmental injustice. And, and there's a lot of nuances there that I look back on as an adult, and I, I understand why the Neighbor did that, etc. etc. But at the time, that feeling was very visceral. And then when I get to college, that feeling that it starts to have a scientific framework around it. I start to learn about ecology and biogeography, and we start to look at this through systems thinking. And then in college, what emerges, but this opportunity for me to Apply geospatial tools and every technology specifically, to then empower myself to ask questions, not just about my backyard, but at scale. 

And I remember just thinking, feeling intoxicated by this tool. I mean, I was up all night, just tinkering with the tools, trying to figure problems out, trying to ask questions. It was so empowering. And that, you know, I, I want. Your experience with mock turtles. I want my experience in college. I want, I want other people to feel that moment and to feel like they can use these tools to ask really powerful questions and make change in their world. Yeah, the joy of it is that it is possible and it is kind of fun to see, but when you talk about conservation, right, like we've had many conversations about what conservation means just by itself, sometimes like the definition of it can change based on, you know, do you conserve what you. To be here or what's going to be here, you know, like if you talk about a changing climate, is it getting sandier in this area? Does that mean you conserved forest species versus desert species or whatever? There's always these changing things, but what feels really urgent to you? What do you feel like is. Maybe one of the first things you want to tackle on this. Well, I think when we think about a healthy ecosystem, and when we think about adaptation and mitigation and all of these things that sustain our own health and our own economies, well, the units of that are biodiverse. Individual species, protections, understanding how they move. An ecosystem is not a static thing. It is a collection of parts, and those parts are both biotic and abiotic. And we have a lot of opportunity to look at the biotic. 

And protect them and make some priorities around that. So that's definitely very top of mind for me. We already have a lot of existing work going on as we related to accessing biodiversity information. There's a ton of biodiversity information out there, but it's in all different formats, there's different platforms. There's iNaturalist, which is more on the citizen science side. There's G. Which is a little more on the kind of science practitioner side. There is, I just learned about the ocean version of GBI OIS, uh, the ocean bio, you know, it's on and on and on. And then of course there's the gardens and the zoos that are, they have collections. I mean, there's so much rich information out there, but I think we take it for granted. I think a lot of people that work in the space just assume this data exists. And maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but no matter what, it can be really hard to access from a geospatial standpoint. So, we have a lot of work and a lot of momentum and a lot of partnerships already going on and kind of coming to fruition to help tackle some of those challenges. And make the urgency of this question requires that we make this accessible and easy for people to analyze. They need to answer questions, and they need to take action. So I think that's been really top of mind right now. Yeah. And so is that making data accessible is, you know, it sounds easy, right? You just, yeah, you just make it accessible. What are you talking about? But I know like you and I've had conversations before too where some government agencies aren't going to give you their data, they're not getting it. There is no, no way, even if they have great information, it's inaccessible to the greater public. so there's that challenge and then there's like, OK, well it's accessible, but what format is it in? How accurate is it? Where did it come from? Is it correct? Theres all these things that come through. So yeah, you have to sift through all that, right? And you can't just get, so here it is, good luck, you know, how do you even sort out which one you tackle first? 

Well, I mean, there's a lot of different questions that we could tackle there. We could, we could spend the whole time discussing that, you know, accessibility of data. Is not just making it usable, but to your point, what is safe to share, and I don't mean safe from the perspective of like, is it dangerous information, but what is the risk to the species or the industry that we're sharing by sharing that information? Just like we don't want our personal, I don't want my address plastered all over the internet, you know, neither do rare species. And so there are ways to Kind of bridge the gap, right? I think one thing that I've been talking about a lot with NatureServe, I talk about Nature Serve a lot, and they just built the insight tool and published that, and they really tackle this question quite a bit. And one thing through their experiences, they've got, you know, over 25 years' experience building tools on rare species information, is that oftentimes people need the data less than they need to actually answer a question. And if we can start to think about, well, what are the questions certain personas or entities are actually trying to answer, can we provide them that answer without risking exposure of the Data outright. Can we actually kind of take that step further for them and automate a little bit of it? So their latest tool insight really seeks to do that more for kind of this corporate biodiversity analysis side of things, which is new for them. But even here at Esri, we have a rolled biodiversity layer that is, it's got tons of data in it, but it's kind of boiled up to a hexagon, you know. Style.

So if you're zoomed out at the whole planet, you only see so much information, otherwise you get overwhelmed. And then as you and it gets a little more specific and it never gives away the underlying data outright, but it still allows you to understand and explore patterns and put them in context. So, there's ways to manage it with modern technology and the ability to interface with these tools. Maps are no longer static. They are things that we. Interact with. So it provides us an entirely new language of how humans interact with technology to communicate science and information. Yeah, and you know, it's funny, we shouldn't have to have this conversation sometimes in some ways, but you know, I used to live in North Carolina and North Carolina has Venus flytraps that is a very rare plant, and if you posted online where all of the Venus flytraps were. People would go to that spot and take them, and it is just a thing it's because people, it's novel, right? It's unique, it's interesting, and it's not, you can't run away from you. You can just scoop it right up and so there is a there is a need to conserve that. Yeah, yeah, poaching is a major issue and so people, people have valid concerns over exposure of data. And conversely, you know, there's a really interesting use case related to poaching that I think it's Tangled Bank Conservation is their name. The owner is JJ Apodaca, and he just got this like genius award, the Roosevelt Genius Award. Have you heard of this thing? I know what a title to have, right? But his work was using, he looks at eDNA. So he's collecting DNA from the environment and able to. To map species to particular watersheds, so that when poachers are caught at the border and they have like an alligator snapping turtle, he can look at his library of EDNA and say specifically what watershed that alligator snapping turtle came back from, which allows them to repatriate it back into that watershed. So prior to his use of GIS in this way, and prior to his use of eDNA in this way. Most of the time when they would catch poaching, they would have to euthanize the animals because they didn't know where they came from. And as you know from your turtle research, uh, turtles and tortoises, and they have very strong hone. Abilities so you can't just put them back in the wild. 

So it's pretty incredible use of the technology. That's amazing. Like my mouth's open. Like I use the word yeah, we'll have to have him on your show. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, for sure that Marley. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, like, but, you know, it's, it's so interesting, like we, you know, and you're right, we really could focus on like one thing and talk about it forever. Um, uh, one of my favorite, other favorite things about you is you have this very global perspective when it comes to what data even means to people and like I think. A lot of times for environmental professionals, they don't really see themselves as data people, even if they're using it, um, even if they ask someone to use it for them, you know, like, hey, make a map for me. What do you wish they understood about it? Because I think a lot of times there's a daunting aspect to it, especially, it's funny, like when I remember when we had the shift to, I think it was ArcGIS 9, it became a little bit more user friendly than it was, and then it became a little less daunting, and I think that's kind of happened over time, right? A little less daunting for the average person to take on. But like what do you wish people would understand about that? Because it, it is sometimes like a, OK, well they do that, not me. I can't possibly pull information together that's interesting. I think you've just touched on, I don't want to speak for our product team. I've never actually directly spoken with them about this, but from my point of view, when the cloud became a thing, it allowed us and other technology companies, allowed everyone, right, to suddenly do things and create workflows that we were never able to do before. And what that meant for RCGIS as a platform and its evolution is that we evolved. From being this very analytical heavy desktop software that required you to have expertise in GIS to use to then having an ecosystem of tools that people can use to complete workflows. 

So if you're using survey 123 or field maps in the field to collect information about streams, wetlands, other environmental aspects, whatever it is, species. Then you are participating in GIS and you become part of a broader ecosystem. And also it means that we have been able to democratize these tools in a way, and I mean that in the sense of making them more user friendly. We still have, and we still very actively develop RGIS Pro now. And, you know, that's one of my favorite babies. I love nothing more than getting really, you know, dirty with data and analyzing. And asking questions and visualization and cartography. I love all that stuff, you know, classic GIS. But also, I really love putting together a, you know, gnarly survey 123, that's automating calculations on the back end or even sometimes just a simple one, you know, we use, we use it in our own work too, like we put a survey out prior to our big user conference every year, and I use survey 123 for that. And it's like 4 questions, you know, and it's so easy to put together. So. Yeah, we've really focused and we've had the opportunity with cloud-based technology to democratize access to GIS and I think the next evolution of that, that of course everyone and their mother is talking about AI, AI, you know, how can we make it so that someone can just ask our GIS pro a question and it spits out an answer, right? Like that's the holy grail and not just us and our products and how do we start building in those tools. To make it even easier and more streamlined and faster, but then how do our customers take advantage of those tools in a manner that is both useful and responsible, right? And it has some, uh, education about how AI works and how to make it work well. So yeah, so I think that's really gonna be the next step and it's already happening. So a lot of our tools already have that, that integration. So yeah, I mean, can you imagine like I remember I had to put. 

That stuff in one at a time. OK. Like I would input the data and I would look at the map and I'd be like, OK, these 7 are the green sea turtle. Those 5 are the, you know, blue sea turtle. I can't even imagine just being like, make me a map with my data and have these things be that, yeah, go answer. That seems wild to me, there. But Nic, because you have that background and that experience and you suffered through the old school way. You know you're better positioned than most to be able to scrutinize the output and make sure that it's right, and I think that's really critical for folks to understand GOAI and AI requires us to be responsible stewards of data, and that's where we need to think about AI not as like this cool. Shiny thing, but when does it make sense to use it in a workflow? And how do we set up our GIS to facilitate that workflow in a way that AI can be confidently used, right? And there is a real responsibility with it because it is very easy for you to take what it says as the truth, um, or make it infallible, right? It's a computer. How could a computer be wrong? It's, and I think sometimes people think of it as a calculator, right? They're like, oh, I say, you know, you, you know, 2 + 2 equals 4, and It's not, and I think that's kind of where the challenge comes, and you're totally right, cause yeah, it's not a calculator, it's not your best friend or girlfriend or your therapist or any of that. I, I'll argue with you on that one. It's totally my therapist, OK. And if he can make me a map while it's telling me how to get my life together, I'll take it. It's so funny. That's fair. That's fair. Well, I mean, it's, I guess to kind of kind of wrap it back up into conservation. One of my other favorite things about you is you always have, right? Isn't it? Isn't it great? We're just, we're just giving you compliments. I every Friday. Yeah, right. I'll be your therapist. Um, yeah, you always have a hopeful outlook on things, even when things are challenging and even when things are difficult. You always have a hopeful thought and idea. And so for, you know, it's been a challenging year 2020. was a really hard year for environmental everything, you know, we've got changes to NEPA, we've got changes to the Endangered Species Act, we've got changes to water, and you know, these are all kind of coming full steam ahead, so you know, the change happens in 2025 and we see it implemented in 2026, 2027, 2028. 

So from on the conservation side of things, what are you most hopeful about in the conservation space? So when things are. are good and going well. I think sometimes we can almost get a bit complacent and lose a little bit of that energy and ambition. And one thing that I've seen from the community, both nationally and globally, is kind of this, uh, just renewed energy, right? And this renewed energy is very realized in action. So we're still seeing a lot of action. From organizations, and I mean that as in they're still doing their work. They're still working on protected areas, they're still working on biodiversity monitoring. And if anything, they've been even more compelled to tell their story and they've generated more interest in the work they do. So, that's one side that makes me really hopeful. The work's not stopping. And also, when we look at life, life is not a series of up, up, ups. It's a series of. And there will be, you know, there will be good things to come at some point as well. I think we always have to keep our eye on the ball there, and I think collectively we have to know that that's true and be part of what we want that to be. So I think there's that. I think that's kind of number one. I think people are. Still doing good work. And I want us to make sure that we know that. And I know that that's not equal necessarily across all sectors that people are feeling that kind of energy, but it is out there. And I think right now, another thing that makes me really optimistic is that historically. I have seen conservation entities, you know, it is a sector, right, and sectors have internal competition. I have seen a significantly greater appetite for collaboration lately, where organizations are coming together and that. That has been awesome. And while not necessarily unprecedented, I do think it's unprecedented, particularly at this scale. 

And I was talking to another friend of mine yesterday. You've had him on the show before, Dr. Wes Knapp. He and I were talking about succession. There has been a lot of succession lately across a lot of different organizations, and there's a renewed energy and leadership of people who have kind of grown up together and, you know, we're friends, right? We all have this hunger and desire to work together, which is a very different mindset than maybe the predecessors that we came up under. And so that's really optimistic as well. And I think all of us on this call, everyone listening has the opportunity to participate in that. It's just a choice. Yeah, that's a great message, and I, I love it too for lots of reasons, but, you know, it's always, it's so often I have said to people, it's like, oh, I don't know how I'm gonna ever do like business development, how could I possibly bring in work? I'm like, OK, reframe that to like, how do I work with my friends? If you put it that way, it's a lot more fun, right? That's all it is. That's all, yeah, absolutely. How do I work with my friends, you know, this work is not dead. I still know plenty of organizations that have federal grants. We also know that, and I'm talking very, you know, US specific here, but yes, I still have friends that still have their federal grants. They're still doing excellent work. I also know that states have an invested interest as well. What's happening at the federal level doesn't necessarily match the needs or desires of state and local levels. Specifically, I think about this, you know, through the lens of Helene and Asheville in our region. So yeah, I think about that really through this lens of local needs. And when we look at Helene and the impacts to our region on that, you know, local governments here, local governments on the coast, local governments in hot environments. They all want to tackle this challenge, and so another source of my optimism comes from the fact that These issues still exist, and people still have a desire to tackle them because we have to. And so we can shift our thinking about our business and our business development and look at local levels, also look internationally. So yeah, well, Helene hit a part of Florida that was my hometown, and the Estuary program there in the Sarasota and the Tampa Bay Estuary program, they've won awards for collaboration. So Helene came into a space that was ready to Be resilient rocket. Yeah, that's also what they needed to do, so that's some kudos to everybody that I know doing the good work. Oh, that's really cool. That goes back to, you know, the spirit of collaboration. Like I'm seeing so much more collaboration than I ever have before, and that's like, that's critical. Yeah, it really is. I couldn't agree more. 

And gosh, we're already getting to the end somehow, which is unbelievable. I want to give you a chance. We love doing uh field note stories. We love hearing stories of people in the field. We love asking your, you know, funny, scary, awkward, or all three of those stories all wrapped in one. So I don't know, Sony, you've, every person who's ever been in the field has more than one story. You've been on the show many times. Do you have another story for us? Oh gosh, OK, I knew you're gonna ask this because I put in some snarky little comment on the form. You did. You were like, I have so many. I have so many. I don't, I don't, and I don't know if I've told this one before, but for some reason it's the only one I can think of recently, and I'm like stuck on it, so maybe I'll just get it out of my head. So when I was working with Tennessee Division of Natural Areas, we were monitoring, God, I don't even know if they know this story. Ah. We'll, we'll tell them not to listen, new listeners. So we had a population of a rare species that we hadn't looked at in a long time. And the reason we hadn't looked at it in a long time is because although the population itself was on publicly accessible right of way. It was surrounded entirely by private land. And the private landowner, who we needed to get access through just, you know, had zero interest, and it passed away. 

So we had an opportunity to go visit the site, and we hadn't been there in years. So we're going, we're going, technically I was probably still trespassing on private property. Um, I, I do want to say that we had permission maybe from like the trust or something like that. I'll put that as the legal caveat in case they're listening. And we make it out there to this power line, and all of a sudden we hear gunshots like super close to us, super close to us. Oh wow. And we're like whispering, trying to monitor the species. We don't want to speak up too loud, but we'd be damned if we were gonna leave that site without doing our job. Right. So we stay there while these guns are just blazing all around us. I think they were like practicing skeet shooting or something like that. I mean there it was within it, it was really close. I don't like that, yeah, yeah. And so it's funny cause there's been, you know, I, I'm sure there's field stories where folks have been intentionally shot. And this is where, you know, I wasn't intentionally shot at in this particular moment, but I was way too close to some gunfire for my comfort. And it had been like a decade since we've seen the species. So we're just like, darn it, we're going to do it, you know, and we didn't care if we were going to get shot. We're species and get that information into biotics, damn it. Yeah, yeah, that is how committed she is to conservation, folks. There you go, right there, willing to die. For conservation, um, OK, get qualified for the new role. Yeah, there you go. That actually should have been the first thing you said. Look, I almost died for this. OK, conservation, yeah. Um, OK, OK. All right. Last bit before we let you go. You've also recently taken up fly fishing. Why on earth did you decide to do that? OK, I don't have a good answer to that question. I will say that for a long time, I have been kind of peripherally interested in fishing broadly and fly fishing in particular, you know, the way the movies make it look, it looks like so romantic and you're out in the middle of nowhere and you're standing. I mean, I ate that up. I was like, oh my God, I want to be that, you know. 

And I've never had really the, I don't know, I've never really had the opportunity, and this past August, I was about to have like a string of travel, and I just wanted some new experience. I wanted to go in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to catch a fish, and I wanted to call it a day and just get to travel, you know, kicked off with some good. Some good experiences. So I reached out to a friend, and he took me, and I did catch a fish that day. It was awesome, and it was a native southern Appalachian brook trout, which is even cooler. Yeah, that is cool. Oh, so now I've gone down. I'm totally hooked, pardon the pun. I've got, you know, my own gear. I've got two different fly rods. One's a tinkara rod, which is like a Japanese style fly fishing, which I'm obsessed with. Oh my God, love it. Yeah, those are great, super simple. Oh, they're so simple. They're easy to throw in my backpack so I can get like adventurous with it. Yeah, I'm totally into it. I just went to my first Pisa chapter of Trout Unlimited meeting last night and listened. The Great Smoky Mountains fishery supervisor, another great person to have on your show. Oh my goodness, so compelling, and it's just been fantastic. It's been a great community, and it's one of the only hobbies. I joked once on the show that hobbies are my hobby, and that's true. It's one of the only hobbies I've noticed where I don't think about anything all day. You were so focused on not busting your butt on what. Fly to use on what's the water doing on the weather, on how to get the fish, on all of the kind of adrenaline that's going through your body from going off trail and walking through these creeks. I don't think about a thing all day long, and I don't think I've ever experienced that before. And it's amazing. I love it. I love it. So, OK, but it's funny, my best friend does it, and now I'm gonna have to start doing it too, because that's, that sounds great. That sounds great. It's great. So, OK, all right, we are pretty much at time, which kills me, but is there anything we didn't cover. Yeah, you will be back, of course, obviously, uh, but is there anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to? 

You know, it's funny you asked me that question. I think every show, and yeah, we could chat forever, but I, I do want to kind of going back to the shift in my role. I just want to let our community know that Ezri is really committed to making sure that our community of both environmental and conservation professionals, does impactful work, feels like they're supported, feels like they're seen. And that's my personal mission here. That's what I plan to carry forward, and I hope I'm successful, and it requires me to be involved in the community. So I always really appreciate you all having me on your show and allowing me to at least broadcast my thoughts for what it's worth. Yeah, of course, we, yeah, I wouldn't have it any other way. Um, but last but not least, if someone does want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that? They can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I am all over LinkedIn. Folks message me now almost daily on LinkedIn, so I'm constantly responding to things there. And then if it gets good, you know, we'll exchange emails, right? There we go. Very cool. Thank you so much for being here, Sunny. Always a pleasure. Thank you. And that's our show. Thank you so much, Sunny, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. See you, everybody. Bye!