WildTechDNA, Big Cats, and Why Connection is Key to Conservation with Natalie Schmitt

Nic and Laura interview Dr. Natalie Schmitt, an ecologist, conservation geneticist, explorer, filmmaker, and founder of Wild Tech DNA, to explore rapid field-based DNA technology, big cat conservation, and the power of making conservation tools accessible to frontline communities. From snow leopards and blue whales to Indigenous knowledge and the need for deeper human connection with nature, this episode examines how innovation and collaboration can shape the future of biodiversity protection.

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Connect with Natalie Schmitt at https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-schmitt-64877968/

Guest Bio:
Dr. Natalie Schmitt is an ecologist, conservation geneticist, and documentary filmmaker whose work is driven by a deep commitment to ethical and transformative approaches to biodiversity protection. With a background spanning Antarctic whale research to Himalayan snow leopard conservation, Natalie has spent over two decades exploring innovative ways to address the root causes of biodiversity loss — and to empower the people at the heart of its solutions.

Taking inspiration from the Indigenous principle of two-eyed seeing, Natalie is passionate about trying to weave together Western science, Indigenous knowledge, and creative storytelling to foster collaboration, connection, and justice in conservation. She has worked alongside communities in Nepal to help restore harmony between people, livestock, and snow leopards (with the Pangje Foundation), and has contributed genetic insights to policy change through the International Whaling Commission via her research with the Australian Antarctic Division.

As the founder and CEO of WildTechDNA, Natalie leads the development of a groundbreaking real-time DNA detection technology that makes species identification rapid, low-cost, and accessible — even in remote, non-lab settings. Her work aims to transform how customs officers, law enforcement, citizen scientists, and local communities monitor biodiversity and combat illegal wildlife trade.

In 2022, Natalie was honored as one of the Explorers Club 50: Fifty People Changing the World that the World Needs to Know About. She currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at McMaster University. Her mission is guided by the belief that the biodiversity crisis is not simply ecological — it is deeply human, relational, and personal.

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, we give advice and words of encouragement for recent grads. We interviewed Natalie Schmitt about Wild Tech DNA, big cats, and why connection is key to conservation.

And finally, in light of our fun and delightful conversation, here are some fun facts about snow leopards. Snow leopards actually possess the lowest genetic diversity of any big cat species because of their small population size and their isolated location. However, they also have a very unique ability, unlike cheetahs, they actually naturally purge highly deleterious disease causing mutations that allow the species to survive despite low genetic variants, which I think is super cool, um, and a testament to their absolute uniqueness, and we have a really fun interview about that and many other things, so how about that?

And they're just the cutest.

Yeah. For sure. I let their tails, oh man, just big fluff balls. Gotta love it. Hit that music.

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Let's get to our segment.

All right, well, I think we had a request from Melanie, our new executive producer, to talk about advice for recent grads.

Yeah, and we don't have any good luck. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Uh. You'll figure it out. You'll be fine.

Yeah, yeah, you'll be totally fine. I mean, that is true. That's how the boomers deliver it, right?

That is true, but that's, that's not advice, right? It's just the truth. Um, I actually had a thought about this because, you know, there's a, uh, you've seen a lot of commencement speeches and you've seen, I've seen all kinds of stuff recently talking about, you know, the future of AI being in almost every single one of those talks, whether it's make sure you know how to use it or don't forget to be creative or whatever it is, but there's this, you know, I remember when I graduated, I came into a recession, so there's just the economy was weak and there weren't a lot of jobs, and that was terrifying and that's kind of stressful, and I think. Right now there's a sense that companies aren't hiring junior staff because, you know, they're using AI to replace them. There's that that fear and that concern. I don't know how true any of that actually is, but there, there is like a concern about that, and I don't know if you have thoughts on what you've seen and what you see going forward.

But I think it's, like I say, everything will be, will work itself out in the end. I think people will, will be OK, and I think we'll find a way to incorporate technology like we always have into the workforce and so I'm, I'm a little optimistic on how we'll navigate all of that, even if there is a sense of concern in the community.

Yeah, people always find something to be concerned about. The job is not, like, factually, doesn't matter what industry you're in, the job market sucks, but finding a job sucks. Like, it's not fun. I don't, there's never been a time in the history of the world where people were like, oh, it's so easy to find a job, this is cool, you know, like, that's not realistic.s are. Yeah, now, let's not say AI and all like things are changing, but they've changed before, you know, you used to have to apply on paper and now. You have all these other avenues, and which is great, but I think the challenge is more on the hiring side. People don't know who's real and who's, you know, like everyone's using AI to write their resumes. That's not on the, it does make it more difficult maybe to stand out, but that's where networking comes in.

My advice to anyone, every time I coach anybody, we talk about networking. When I, when I get to the part where we're like, OK, we've looked at your resume, we talked about your cover letter, we've talked about, you know, where you look and and what you're looking for. How's networking going?

Yeah, uh, I have to do that, yeah, you do, yeah, and you know it's, it's late in the game now, you know, I remember they would tell, telling me in grad school, and it's still true, right? It's like if you want a job, it takes months most of the time, right? It just does. It takes time and they're like, you gotta start working on that like your last semester. Um, I didn't do that at all. I didn't do it at all.

Oh, and a lot of people, most people don't, it's normal, yeah, and I, I didn't want to. And it just seemed like this dreadful thing out on the horizon because I, you know, I knew, I knew what the economy was like. I didn't have any misgivings there, and I actually ended up being able to be an adjunct faculty member at the university I was at because I was networking there as well as trying to think about my future. So I didn't even think I was marketing. I was just kind of like, well, I need to get paid for something, so I'll try to find out if I can teach classes here, and I ended up doing that. To start for a little while and that was kind of, I didn't even think of it as marketing because it wasn't, it was just me talking to people that I liked that liked me and they're like, yeah, we'll we'll we we'll absolutely keep you on for the summer and Help me kind of sort out some of that, and I hated doing it. I hated doing that. Like it was so stressful and it was really, really is like the job search starts well beyond before you start submitting a resume.

I got hired my first job because I was working in the lab and I, people liked me and I had built relationships, and then someone said, hey, they're hiring, why don't you go over and talk to them? Like, I'm not gonna say it can be that easy, but It's not just about submitting resumes, like, go volunteer, go hang out where other working environmental professionals work, like, start putting yourself out there and just have conversations and don't even worry about submitting the resume if that's not where you're at yet, you know, and then. You avoid all the AI nonsense because you're meeting people in person, but to that point too, I just put a video out the other day about how when my career started 10 years before yours, almost, um, I actually advanced really well because I knew technology, I knew data, I did database. Management. I knew how to code. I mean, I'm back in the coding game now. It's amazing. But I was able to, I got promoted 7 times in less than 10 years. And it was because I was constantly building new processes and systems. So someone asked me, you know, should I learn GIS? And I was like, you know what, right now, if you like technology, start. Building up your skills in AI. You can still be a Bugs and Bunny person. I was, but when I came back in the office and saw opportunities to make improvements and streamline, that's what was valuable, and it wasn't cutting my job, it actually made me more valuable as a hire.

Yeah, and you know what I mean, I, knowing you, I know that's also something you liked to do, like you've enjoyed doing that coding and doing that, that solving those problems that way. And knowing that, the sooner you know that, the easier your job gets. Some of this stuff doesn't make sense in a way until you're older and you can look back and be like, oh, you know, I, I also did a great job of being available and being consistently approachable. In a way that I think sometimes that can cause you some challenges in your career if you're not open to kind of learning how people are and getting to know them, being genuine about that, when you do those kinds of things, it makes it really easy for them to advocate for you. So when you do have a promotion coming up, it's much easier for you to get it justified. Oh yeah, Nic, yeah, I love that guy. Of course we want to hire, of course we want to promote him. He's doing great work and it's not just the, the work. I mean, you can be, right, super good at the technical side of things and that does matter. But yeah, if you're that and you uh connect with people, your career takes off in great ways. It's super fun.

Yeah, the last thing I would say to people, you know, if you've just recently graduated, and the clock is ticking and you're, you know, feels like your graduation date is getting further and further behind you, that's normal for one, but don't pay attention to the people around you and you're like, oh, everyone else is getting hired and I'm not. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It's luck is a huge part of it, and some of that luck is tied back to. That invisible work that people were doing. If they were in a sorority and they have connections, they might get hired what looks like really fast, but connections make it faster. And so, you know, just keep focused on your own goals and paths and don't get discouraged by seeing other people get jobs and thinking that, you know, it's not there for you or something.

Yeah, and like, you know, we talked a lot about culture before in the show and Like sometimes you just you'll find a fit that really resonates with you, and so you might be saying, oh, I'm not a A people person or I don't do this, that the other, but like if you had, you have friends, you know, how did you get the friends, you know, that you have and sometimes it's, you don't need to make everybody, you know, be like the most charming person in the room. You just have to be in the right place where people value what you do and who you are. And I think a lot of times people equate outgoing with, you know, like that's how you have to be in order to to succeed, and that's not true. It's just like in that space maybe, but there are other spaces too. And finding the right fit is, it's very hard. I turned down a job that I knew wasn't quite right for me. It was working in a, in a medical lab. I would have been fine with it, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do because it was very, very heavy process oriented. So just, you know, do this 150 times in a row every single day, and I turned down a job in a recession. It was terrifying, but it wasn't the right job for me, which is why I did. So yeah, don't, don't be once you look back and you're like, oh, I thought that year lasted forever, and then you're like, Oh, I'm 10 years in my career already. What is it the best advice I ever got was, you know, Nic, don't worry about how long the career search takes. Once you get it, you'll be working for 30 years. So enjoy the time off.

Exactly. All right, well, let's get to this awesome interview.

Sounds great. Welcome back to EPR. Today we're joined by Dr. Natalie Schmitt. Natalie is an ecologist, conservation geneticist, explorer, filmmaker, and founder of Wild Tech DNA, a Canadian company developing rapid field-based DNA technology for conservation and environmental protection. I feel like we could chat for probably about 4 hours. So let's just dive in and see what we can get to in about 30 minutes. So, you know, we just talked about your work has taken you through so many different cool Species and projects, so, what sparked your love for animals and when did you realize you wanted to pursue conservation as a career?

Oh my gosh, what a big question to start with. I think I've just always known, like since I was a little kid, I mean, watching David Attenborough documentaries, of course, and my father was an, is an avid nature lover, used to take us camping. And I just, I felt most comfortable when I was in nature. I felt strangely, even as a very young girl that I was part of this really big interconnected web of life, so I felt safe, and so I always knew I wanted to do something with animals, but I don't think I knew that I wanted to be a conservation scientist until, In late in my school years, like I, I used to think I wanted to be a vet, you know, I tried, tried that out for a little while, but, no, I, I settled upon being a conservation scientist in the end. And uh this is not here, right? So I, I, I'm Australian, as you can probably tell by my accent. I grew up in Perth in Western Australia, which is very different to where we are here.

Yeah.

Um and yeah, it was, well, back in those days, so you know, in the 70s, um it was much easier to access nature and, you know, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by wildlife. Australia, we're very lucky to have some, so many interesting animals, and yeah, it just all started from there.

That's awesome. I just want to know a little bit deeper on the camping thing because I'm picturing camping in the US I might see some squirrels, a snake. Wish, cross my fingers to see a bear, but not very often. What kind of animals are you encountering while you're camping?

Oh gosh, well, I guess the most common animals that I would find in the WA bush would be, yeah, wallabies, brush-tailed possums, uh, you might get the occasional snake, magpies, and kookaburras, and lizards, and, yeah. Yeah, just the normal stuff, you know, that. Of

Oh, well, this is awesome. And so you're the founder and CEO of Wild Tech DNA and tell us more about what that is and why you started it.

Gosh, OK, so yeah, that's a really big story. So, I'm a conservation geneticist, I've, Always been interested in how genetic tools can be used to help us monitor and learn more about wildlife and so outside of university, you know, I did my zoology degree. I then did my PhD on population genetics of humpback whales. And so genetic tools are really valuable because they can help us determine abundance. We can look at. connectivity and we can even track individual movement, but as useful as those genetic tools are they still depend very heavily on access to centralized labs, which is expensive, it's time consuming, and it's really inaccessible to most of the world. And so I was also starting to study snow leopards as you do.

Yeah, I remember.

Really interested in working with communities around conservation, so I spent some time in Nepal with some really remote communities, and as you can imagine, these are communities that have spent centuries living alongside nature. They hold the most profound ecological knowledge. But they don't have the tools or the technologies to be able to turn that knowledge into conservation outcomes, and they certainly don't have access to centralized labs. And so I realize that there's a big problem here in that the people that are at the front lines of conservation. and biodiversity protection can't be involved. These tools are inaccessible. So at the same time, I stumbled upon this paper that had been written by a biomedical lab at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. And it was literally a random stumble, and they developed these really cool methods that I thought, wow, I wonder if I could incorporate those methods into a little device that could easily detect wildlife from small genetic samples. And so basically I gave up my career with the Australian Antarctic Division studying whales. And with very little funding, I moved across the world to Canada to pursue this idea, and that was, that was 10 years ago, I think I arrived here in 2016. And yeah, the rest is history. Like we are, we're now at a stage where we've developed this little test, it's very similar to a COVID test in the sense that you, you take your biological sample, whether that be fecal samples, fresh tissue, skin, saliva, you add it to one tube that contains buffer, and you remember with the COVID test, you then massage that tube, right?

Yeah, you remember.

You massage the tube to break open the cells to expose the DNA. You put a few drops of that DNA into another tube that contains all the dried reagents you need to amplify that DNA if that sample belongs to your target species. You then heat that. In a little disposable heating booklet for 10 minutes, and then you add a lateral flow strip, and if you get lines, it means yes, that sample belongs to your target species of interest. And so it's, it gives you a result in under 15 minutes. It's highly portable, very inexpensive, and compared to having to either send samples to a lab or actually do the lab work yourself, it's Yeah, it's amazing.

Faster, way faster, yeah, that's incredible. And OK, so you're doing that for for jumping off and doing that. Yeah, and, and it's uh very, very cool, and you're doing it for snow leopards, right? And like, that's the primary species, or are you doing it for all kinds of things?

Doing it for also initially, so the motivation to begin with was around snow leopards. So I got some funding initially from a, a big cat NGO to try and do this for snow leopards, but I really, um, I got some big funding very soon after from the Canadian government. To develop the technology for caribou fickle detection, so, caribou, as you might know, are are really important species in Canada. And it's crucial for government and industry to ensure that any of their operations are not encroaching on caribou migratory routes, so officers need to be able to know whether very quickly whether caribou are using that particular area. And also caribou are a very important species to indigenous communities. As a species of cultural significance, ah, so for indigenous people, our technology allows them to be able to retain data sovereignty without having to send samples off to a government lab to be processed, um, and therefore they don't own that data. So we, we started off developing these tests for caribou. And then it's just expanded because basically, as you can imagine, a test like this could apply to any species or anything that you want to track that contains DNA. So, you know, we've gone on to use these tests for European eels, for wildlife pathogens like the chytrid fungus. Yeah, really, the sky's the limit with something like this, which is why, why it's so exciting.

That's amazing. And you have like, so, OK, when you're first starting to do this, right, and you're like, hello, I've got this crazy thing and I promise it's gonna be helpful, how do you even begin to pitch this?

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm gonna ask right now.

Yeah, that's a really good question, and I think in the early days, I actually got a lot of enthusiasm from particularly NGOs that saw the potential of something like this, but at the time, it was like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea, but yeah, come back to us when you've made it work. And As always, you have to try funding, you have to try and find funding to develop this, and I found that particularly hard because whilst I had a lot of interest, I don't think that anyone really believed that we were going to be able to do it, so, yeah, very tricky.

But how did you do it then, like what's the process for even developing something like that?

Well, it involves a lot of lab work and as you can imagine, so I'm a population geneticist and the types of genetics that are involved in developing something like this is completely outside my area of expertise, so, Literally the first couple of years I was more or less bluffing my way through it, like trying to learn these methods and, and, you know, kind of, understanding them, but then not really, uh, so I was very blessed when I first was able to get that big Canadian grant funding because then I could actually bring someone on that, that has the expertise in these methods that can then, You know, continue to develop it in the lab, but it takes, it's just a lot of experimentation. There's various components, as you can imagine, to this technology, you know, we've developed a DNA extraction method, for example, that is the simplest extraction method in the world. Like it takes 2 to 5 minutes to extract DNA, whereas usually, It will take about a day, maybe two, using conventional methods. So, it's quite a process, but I, I think I was very blessed to have found like a total lab wizard to work with. Like, he, yeah, he's, he's a wizard for sure.

Wait, wait, wait. The ability, the ability to identify DNA that quickly, that in itself, regardless of. Conservation seems like a wildly radical, cool idea and also something that would be in demand outside of this type of work.

Exactly, exactly. So, one of the, one of the big applications that we're trying to pursue, or that we are pursuing, I should say, is around human health.

Yeah.

And so, our wizard. Rahul, he spent a lot of time in India working on developing methods to detect sepsis and and UTIs. And so, we've now got a lot of interest in this technology around those applications. So, we're trying to pursue that as well, because, as you can imagine, with any type of conservation technology, It's difficult to be sustainable, to make enough money to keep going within the field of conservation. So we've had to, and this is again completely outside my expertise because I'm not a business person.

Mhm.

To find a commercial application or commercial applications for a technology like this that can then feed into really subsidizing this for conservation and that's, I've been lucky to have been joined by two of my co-founders who are very experienced in business so that I don't need to be because I'm, I'm pretty hopeless that no that's.

But that's exactly great, you know, you know, you recognize strengths and weaknesses and you adapt, and that's a really great thing because it's hard to do. People all the time want to be like, well, I can do everything, yeah, not really, you shouldn't.

I'm still trying to let go of things to this day, like I think, uh, especially when you've developed something that has become your baby that you've really put. poured your heart and soul into and really kind of sacrificed a lot for. I found it challenging over the years to just to let go of that control, but you're absolutely right, Nic, it's so essential, like you need to, and you also need to be able to eventually pass the baton onto someone else. Like this is not something that I want to be doing. For the rest of my life, I want to start it and help build it and then hopefully pass it on to someone else that can help go back to snuggling snow leopards, exactly, that's right.

Which, oh man, great segue cause that's actually my curiosity question for you when you're like in the field, you're like, um, excuse me, Mr. Solooper, if you could just stand still for a second, I'm gonna take some fur. How do you actually get the samples? Is it like you're just walking around and like, oh, there's a tuft of fur, and then you put it in a, a thing, or are you just like picking up dirt? What are we doing? What's the actual process?

So we're mainly looking for fecal samples, but if we find hair samples, because they often, you know, rub themselves against rocks, and so sometimes you'll find hair samples that have follicles, which is what you want, um, but it's, it's fecal samples and you just, It's more or less knowing where to look, like where are the spots that snow leopards are likely to be making their mark, but believe it or not, I have never actually seen a snow leopard in the wild.

Oh wow.

Which is, it's disappointing, but at the same time, it kind of keeps you intrigued, because, you know, here we have, like, the ghost of the mountains. And I, and I, and I always have this belief that the ghost of the mountains will reveal him or herself when they think that I'm ready.

Yeah. Oh, that's so, that's so true. It's, and I think it's most animals can be like that, but snow leopards are especially like that. And we, so there was one time that we were in camp and we woke up the next morning and there was fresh snow leopard scat just on the edge of our camp. So a snow leopard came that close to us. And, but when you look at the terrain and you look at these mountains and the rocks and everything, you can see just how easily a snow leopard could blend into that landscape. So a snow leopard could be, you know, like 20 or 30 m away from you and you completely miss it. Yeah, it's very difficult to see.

Oh, and that's like one of those situations where you've never seen one, but they've seen you, right?

Yeah, exactly. They're like, like Natalie's back, we've got, she's here again, you know.

Yeah, yeah, pooping. No, uh, uh, just pooping her tracks. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm gonna do it right by her tent. She won't even see me, you know, that's what they're saying.

Yeah, pretty much. So, yeah, I don't know, like you have like all these things that you're doing and like I guess we're still on cats a little bit, but like you're also working on them, on the global South cats to explore approaches for wild cat cons conservation in like Latin America and such. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is too?

Sure. So Global South cats is an idea that a group of us and, and mostly, yeah, myself and, and some Latin American colleagues who study jaguars. Really saw the issue around, so big cats pretty much exist entirely in the global South, but the problem is that you've got all these players in big cat conservation, and these are not just scientists, these are ecotourism operators, these are government officials in Indigenous communities all hold different knowledge around big cats that can be useful for big cat conservation. And so we wanted to build a forum, an organization that would allow all the different stakeholders around big cat conservation to share knowledge with each other. Because one of the biggest problems in conservation that I've, I've found is that we tend to very much work in isolation, and particularly in science, because it's a product of shortages in funding, like, you know, everyone's very competitive against, you know, we're trying to find funding that very People are willing to work together and also beyond science, scientists tend to kind of stick to themselves and they don't, they think science is the most important aspect of conservation, which personally I don't believe it is. I think it's an important component, but it's not the most important component. And I think more and more, especially for me, I'm seeing that indigenous traditional knowledge is so needed today, and this whole concept around, I don't know if you guys have heard of the concept of two-eyed seeing, the concept which was built, you know, developed by or put forward by indigenous communities in Canada and I think possibly the US as well. But the whole concept of two-eyed seeing is this meeting between indigenous traditional knowledge and, and Western science. Like one is not more important than the other, both are needed. So yeah, that's the concept of Global South Cats really, and we were having our first planning meeting coming up in Nepal in Kathmandu, actually in Chitwan National Park in November this year, so really excited to get that going.

Wow, I need to do more cool things. I gotta, I know, all right, what are we doing with our last Nic?

Yeah, you are doing. This is a cool thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that's very, very great, and we do, OK, so we just need to move it to Kathmandu.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all, yeah, we'll just, you know, I'm just going to Nepal, no big deal, um.

No, but I mean like I, I love the idea. I love the concept because like we've talked about that a little bit on the show in different aspects and even the terminology we use sometimes is very like, you know, Western versus indigenous kind of thing where we say something's a cultural resource, for example. Well, it's not a resource to us, it's different than that. So I don't know, like how has your experience been working with indigenous communities and how have you seen that, I guess maybe grow over time.

I think my first experience of working with indigenous communities in North America was when we were first trying to test our technology for caribou fecal samples, so we did some work with the British Columbian provincial government who were doing some caribou monitoring, and they were working with some First Nations communities that were helping them track caribou from the air, from helicopters, and so, It was really my first experience of indigenous people here and the knowledge of these people just absolutely blew my mind, and these were like some of these people were just so young, like 18 years old, and the knowledge that they carried, and I thought to myself, Why are we not working with them all the time? It made me realize just how essential that is. But to your point, Nic, they look at the world in a very different way to us Western scientists look at the world, and one of the challenges I had in Nepal, which is actually a common challenge for Western conservation scientists and sociologists, is how do you really connect with the people. To build enough trust and pass knowledge on to each other when you actually speak, you know, sometimes literally different languages and they have completely different cultural backgrounds and the standard interview method just doesn't work. So for these communities in Nepal. They would always just answer in the way that they thought you wanted them to answer, so you never really got to understand, you know, what are your needs, what's important to you, what's your experience with snow leopards, blah blah blah. And so, yeah, recently I met, and this is actually through the Explorers Club, I met this artist by the name of Joe Rode, who is the designer of Animal Kingdom, Disney's Animal Kingdom, and he had worked with an Inuit community around Narwhal conservation. By collaboratively painting a big mural with them, and there was no goal for this mural. It was just something that came out organically, but the information that was embedded in that mural was so useful for Western science, but also for the community themselves in terms of passing on that knowledge from elders to youth, and I saw this and I thought my gosh, that could be the answer, and I have to work with this guy in Nepal to see if this is a method that would work really well. And to begin with, so he agreed, and we went on this expedition last year to this tiny little community called Fu on the Tibetan border. When the community found out what we wanted to do, first of all, they were so touched and appreciative that for the first time outsiders genuinely wanted to know them. Like that we had no agenda other than we wanna know you, and they gave us the warmest welcome, they sang to us, they were just so grateful.

Oh, Nic, you're tearing up a little bit. It's very sweet, I'm sorry.

It was incredibly moving and so the whole process was such a beautiful, deeply human, connective process that when we finished this mural, the community did the most astounding thing. They valued this so much that it is now hung inside their monastery. It is Placed Tanka paintings devoted to deities as one of the most important things to them because this mural represents them and so I think we could never have guessed that this would be so powerful and so we really want to take this further because we learned so much through this process and I think the community really learned. So much about themselves also in the process.

Yeah, it's a great idea, you got me, my goodness, yeah.

Nic's very emotional. He's about to have a baby, so he's hormonal right now.

It was, it was really profound. It was beautiful because it's not often, it really isn't often we connect with other human beings on such a deep level, let alone. A community that is so culturally different.

That's awesome. I love when science and art, science is art, they're different applications, but when paired together, I think they, you know, they go hand in hand. There's really, and it takes, it's like rainbow bright power. They put them together and.

I agree. So and it's kind of, yeah, it's that two-eyed seeing again. So I, I love to talk about, I love to expand on the two-eyed seeing and, and talk about multi-eyed seeing because I think there are so many different ways to look at one thing, isn't there, and everyone's going to bring a different perspective, and all those perspectives are important.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, so, what do you think going forward? In your own practice or anyone else, what direction should conservation be going?

I think exactly in that direction. I think we need to be listening to other perspectives and embracing those perspectives. I think science, like I've said, is one part of the equation, but it's not everything. Science, we do not have all the answers. We need to be willing and humble enough to really listen and consider other people's perspectives, and especially today, more than ever, do we need to be banding together to To save our planet, we're at a crucial time where we can't afford to be working separately anymore.

I agree.

Agreed. For me, it's such a, a great and beautiful thing. It is strange sometimes where we, we act, well, we have to really fight for this kind of stuff sometimes. We have to be like, hey, biodiversity is good. Having a biodiversity crisis affects people, and I think sometimes we have a hard time messaging, and a lot of that might be because of how we message, and I think one thing I'm hearing from you is, Yeah, we have to say things differently. We have to think differently sometimes and be open to get our message actually across.

Yes, exactly. And also, I think one of the biggest struggles that we face is that we've all become so disconnected from nature that we don't, you know, like indigenous peoples, we don't see how important nature is to our own survival and also how Important we are to nature, or we are nature.

Yeah.

Right? And so that is the battle. It's how do we get people to connect with nature again and start really cultivating that relationship, because I think that is at the heart of everything.

Yeah, it's one of the things we love to do on the show, and it's a wonderful segue to a segment we call Field Notes, um. Which is a part of a show where we love to talk about it to our guests about memorable moments that they have in the field doing their work, uh, and we do ask the community to send us their funny, scary, and awkward field stories so we can read them on future episodes and you can do that at info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com, but you have a lot of field stories. Just reading through the list, I'm most furious about this blue whale encounter, so I need to know about that and then, uh, yeah, we'll go from there.

Oh my gosh, oh, what a great segment. Yeah, because I think, I think these connections that we have in nature, these experiences in nature are sometimes life changing, and they can really touch us on a very deep level. And years ago when I, when I used to study whales, I was lucky enough to be part of two, Antarctic voyages to study the largest animal that's ever lived, which is the the Antarctic blue whale, absolute dream come true for me, like I, I've, it's been on my bucket list since I was very little, and you know, we've all been to the maritime museums with the big blue whale skeleton and we've stood underneath it and just thought, no, this, this animal is impossible.

Yeah, yeah.

And so little is known about Antarctic blue whales because they're so difficult to find in the vast Southern Ocean. And so I was lucky enough to be living in a time where we've been able to now find, we can now find Antarctic blue whales using acoustic methods. So these incredible acoustic colleagues of mine developed this method. Where when you are underway on the ship in the Southern Ocean, you drop a sonnobuoy over the side of the ship and that sonnobuoy listens out for a blue whale call.

Mhm.

They will continue to throw these sonobuoys over the side of the ship, and if you can hear a blue whale vocalization with 3, then you can make a triangulation, and that will bring the ship to within 2 nautical miles of that individual whale, which is, and we can hear blue whales call from over 1000 nautical miles away.

Gee whiz.

Like it's phenomenal. We were getting close to A blue whale on this particular occasion. And so our goal is when we find a blue whale we either off the bow of the ship or we deploy a small boat over the side of the ship we want to go and collect skin biopsy samples we want to take photo ID shots and we were also trying to deploy satellite tags to track individual animals and see where they are going basically. And usually we're given a bit of warning. It's like, OK, the acousticians would say, there's going to be a blue whale that's going to pop up to your port side in about, you know, 10 minutes. And on this particular occasion, we thought we still had about half an hour before this blue whale popped up. And all of a sudden we see this massive blow in the distance, and we're like, oh my God, because we have to get dressed and we have to get ready and all the gear prepared and everything. For some reason, I was already half dressed and kind of ready to go, and so my team said, Natt, why don't you go to the bow of the ship and start taking photos, and we'll get dressed and we'll join you there with all the rest of the gear. So I ran down to the bow of the ship, and at that time we were in thick sea ice and, When you're in sea ice, it's like when you're at the top of mountains, it's deathly quiet, it's like so quiet, except for the, you know, little cracks of the ship moving, moving through that sea ice. So I could hear these little cracks and then I heard this, Yeah. Massive blow, and there she was, right at the bow of the ship. Wow. And so I'm at the bow with this blue whale, and I know, you know, everyone's behind me in the, on the bridge, you know, looking at what's happening. But for me, in that moment, you're like, nothing, nothing up here, we're good. I'm fine.

Yeah, nothing. I didn't want any. I want to come. I'm just like, please leave me here because for this short period of time, I was completely alone with this giant, this incredible, beautiful giant, and it really touched me. It was just it absolutely profound, and when we did manage to deploy the small boats and get up close to something so big, That was the other moment that you just gasp, like you cannot believe the size of these animals, like it just like I have no words for it. I think we swore a few times because they were the only person.

Yeah, I don't see how you couldn't. I wanna swear at you right now because I'm so jealous. That's so true. That's incredible it humbles you immediately. You're just like. Honestly, yeah, how could it not? OK, I don't know where we go from here. That was, I know, I know. That, that is so awesome. I think seriously, there's other stories here, but I just want to have you back another time to talk about these things and hear it from your voice because, you know, your accent is way cooler than mine and um I've never understood. Why, why North Americans love Australian accents so much. I don't understand.

I'm from Florida. I love everyone's accents better than mine.

No, there's a, there's a great, was it Chris Hemsworth talking about how the Australian accent is not sexy, and he doesn't understand it either. He's like, give us a kiss vibe, you know, that's his, yeah, not great. Is it either. I'm with him. But I'll take it though.

Well, all right, we are running out of time, but let's ask about your hobby. I mean, your job sounds cool enough that I don't know if you need hobbies too, but I bet you have some. So, oh, well, we like to talk to people about when they're not working, what they like to do, just because it kind of, it's another thing that just connects us as humans.

No, absolutely, and I would like to have more hobbies currently. Like, I, I do have hobbies that I would like to spend time doing, but I spend so much time working, which is a problem. Like, I think we need balance in life and we need to do more than just one thing, but, I obviously, as you can imagine, I enjoy diving. The ocean environment, when you're under the water, it's so incredibly peaceful and meditative, and it's like you're here you are in a completely different world and universe under the. And my favorite thing to do is to lie on the bottom of the ocean and just watch a little fish do its thing. Like it's, I enjoy that so much. I used to, but I haven't done so for a long time. I used to surf being Australian, like, you know, a lot of us surf, as one does.

As one does.

But I used to, you know, when I went to uni, I would start my day by, yeah, going for a surf and then riding my bike to uni, and it was just so healthy back then. And, and, yeah, now I'm like, gosh, why don't I do that anymore? Like, you try to stand up and you're like, oh, my knees.

Yeah, exactly. Can't even lift the board. Um.

But I think what I yearn for as a scientist, and I know I think you touched on the fact that science is creativity as well, but I yearn to be more creative, so I'm, I used to play piano when I was, when I was a kid for many years, and I, I gave that up because I was so focused on exams for piano that I didn't really get a chance to be creative, and so, When I first moved to Canada, I, I've always been very interested in Eastern classical music. So, having spent a lot of time in Nepal and India and places like that, I really love that devotional music that is, it's more or less ad lib, but it's just playing from. The heart, you know. And so, when I first moved to Hamilton, Ontario, I actually met a sitar player who was giving a performance, and I, I asked him, you don't happen to teach this, do you? And he said, Well, as it happens, I do. And so, yeah, I started learning sitar for a while, which, as you can imagine, is a, a very difficult instrument to learn. And it's a very difficult instrument to make it sound good. But I really want to get, I, I haven't played it for so long and I, and I want, I want that space and that time to be able to get back to things like that because I think it's so important to, yeah, to have these hobbies, right, to, yes, yeah, I feel you. My guitar and my cello are staring at me from the corner, always.

Hello, how long have you played cello?

6th grade. Uh, but it's one of those things where I pick it up here and there. And so my long story short, they cut the program in 9th grade. I didn't get to keep playing, so then I had to pick it back up as an adult. La la la, public schools. What are you gonna do.

Mhm, so I was the 9th grade level is what you're telling me. That's what I'm, yeah, you know, if I could go to the school and play with the kids, but, um, but still, I, I still want to play it and like you said, even if it's just to play it how I want to play it, you know, I just love the way it sounds.

Oh, it's beautiful. I leave a guitar out in the main living room for this exact reason, so that I just, I see it and I pick it up and I'll play it and then I'll put it away and it's like 2 minutes and I'm done.

And you do, so you do do that.

I do that. I did it yesterday. Yeah, I do it all the time as much as I can, you know, I should say it that way. Maybe I need to learn guitar. It's probably a little bit easier than sitar. I would, I would venture to say.

Yeah, yeah, probably. If you know how to play piano, you can play guitar, so that's how I would. The notes are all the same, they're just in a different place.

Yes, yeah. So anyway, we are running out of time. Is there anything else that you would like to touch on or talk about before we send you off?

I think you've covered a lot. Yeah, I really think you've covered a lot, and it's been so fun. Like it's been such a fun interview. The funnest interview I've had in a really long time.

Yes, yeah. Agreed. I mean, that's our goal. We just want to have a good time talking to people. So that's awesome, great to hear. Well, where can people get in touch with you then if they want to, you know, find out more about all these amazing things you're doing?

They can search for me on LinkedIn or they can, yeah, feel free to email me as well. Should I give the email address?

Sure.

So Natalie at wildtechDNA.com. Yeah, I'd love to hear from you.

Awesome. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure and uh we'll be looking forward to having you back on another time.

I would love to join you guys another time. It's been so much fun. Thanks, thanks so much for having me.

Oh, thank you. And that's our show. Thank you, Natalie, 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.