Projects for Wildlife Podcast

National Geographic Explorer Sandesh Kadur is a Wildlife Film Maker and Conservation Photographer known for his contributions to Planet Earth II. Sandesh's films have been shown on television networks including National Geographic Channel, BBC, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Sandesh is a Senior Fellow of The International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) and co-founder of Felis Creations a visual arts company based in Bangalore, India, which work on a variety of projects ranging from natural history documentaries to art and still photography. Sandesh exposes the need for conservation and encourages protection of the world's biodiversity. Over the years, Sandesh's work has garnered many top awards including the CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year, Nature's Best Award, International Conservation Photographer Award, as well as twice being nominated for a Green Oscar at Wildscreen. In this episode we talk about his projects, the techniques he uses to plan a wildlife conservation project, and how to communicate the message to the right people to implement change.

Dr. Jennifer Brandon has a PhD in Biological Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Through her research in microplastic pollution, she became passionate about teaching the world that our daily choices have lasting impacts. We talk about new technology to reduce microfiber and micro plastic pollution along with her research and how she developed innovative ways to study the smallest plastics in the world. This episode is full of innovation and inspiration

Doug is a professional conservation, wildlife and animal welfare photojournalist, whose clients include National Geographic Creative, BBC Wildlife, Australian Geographic, The New York Times, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. He initially trained as a zoologist, and later completed a Masters of Environment and then a Masters of Bioethics. Together, these two qualifications really helped shape his way of thinking as what type of issues he should be focusing on and why. In this episode we talk about his work with platypus, flying fox, and penguins that live within the cityscape in Melbourne, Australia. His hope is that the images, information and skills he shares, will help engage people to care more, and so behave differently, towards the world around them.

In this episode Stephanie Arne shares how manmade penguin nests are helping South African Penguins stay cool in the hot sun and protect their eggs and young from predators. Guano on the island where they nest was mined by man. This left the penguins without any place to hide from the sun. Even more importantly there is no shelter to protect the eggs. With extreme temperatures the penguins sit on their eggs and stay with chicks to protect them. A group of scientists created mock nests and found one that works perfectly. For $50 you can donate to this effort to build a penguin nest. Penguin populations are extremely low and with these nests there is an opportunity to bring back the penguins to South Africa.

Goal setting sounds horrifying to some and fun to others. As a project manager, or if you strive to be one, you know that goals help you stay focused and move in the direction you want to go. Setting goals is taking control of your life - kinda. I say kinda because we know all things change and that we actually don't have exact control of the outcome. The goal setting process starts with careful consideration of what you really want to achieve and ends with hard work to achieve it. This is why many people have trouble succeeding. In this episode I help make it simple and hopefully you will be motivated to start working on your 2020 goals!

One of my favorite topics in project management is stakeholder engagement. I love working with different stakeholders and finding ways to work together. There are 10 steps to engaging stakeholders effectively and a few checklist items that will help you streamline your engagement strategies. A stakeholder in a wildlife conservation project can be practical or financial supporter. They can be advocates or researchers, a large nonprofit, farmers or a cooperative of farmers, hunting organizations, government agencies, sanctuary or wildlife refuges leadership teams, or general community members. These are the people you will work with to get buy-in for your project or the project you are managing. ​ Stakeholder engagement is important because the engaging part of the process helps translate stakeholder needs into conservation project goals. This process of translating needs to goals creates the foundation of effective strategy development. Taking the time to discover the point of consensus or shared motivation in the engagement process helps the group of stakeholders arrive at a decision and ensures that all are invested in a meaningful outcome.

Dr LoraKim Joyner is a wildlife veterinarian with 30 years working with avian species. She helps lead the efforts to protect the Scarlet Macaw Parrot in Honduras. Today we are going to talk about the current human-wildlife conflicts, poaching, and international trafficking. We are also going to talk about the amazing conservation success created by the Mosikito people in Honduras. She is also a Unitarian Universalist minister, certified in nonviolent communication which aids her in promoting the health of humans, for without the flourishing of people the parrots don't stand a chance.

Dr. Nathan Robinson is a sea turtle researcher and storyteller. He connects people to the ocean and it's wildlife through adventure and stories. He was the researcher who pulled the straw from the sea turtle's nose and its created a global ban on straws. Somewhere in the depths of the sea is the most famous turtle in the world - most likely never knowing that it changed humanity forever! "Ever since I can remember, I was always fascinated by two things: the ocean and dinosaurs. It is therefore fitting that I eventually began working with sea turtles" says Dr. Robinson. In this episode we talk about sea turtles, his recent video of the giant squid, and much more.

This is the fifth and final episode in a project management series I set up to help leaders like you with the terminology and applications of project management for conservation research and projects. Project management is a lot like the scientific process is similar to… instead of having a hypothesis to test you have a set of objectives to accomplish. The best part of project management is that there is an end to the project. It's the defining feature of a project - All projects have a final due date. If you are one of those people who love accomplishing something then project management might be for you because as you know finishing something feels really good! You can find the project management series by going to episodes 023, 029, 036, and 038 on the projects for wildlife.com website. I created this series because to address a fundamental flaw of conservation research and something that holds us back from accomplishing what we are trying to achieve and this is it.. … it's that recommendations from conservationist research get stuck in papers and never find their way out of a paper and actually implemented. As you may already know, many times these research papers are full of amazing mitigation recommendations that were proposed and agreed upon by all the stakeholders... and then nothing happens after the paper is published. There are lots of reasons why, and really this area is not well studied… although it happens ALL the time. It's my belief that we can use project management techniques and tools to take those recommendations out of the paper and implement them in a way that will benefit humans and wildlife. Instead of creating the dream… let's make the dream reality and we can do it with project management. This series focused on human-wildlife conflict, coexistence, and projects that have taken different mitigations and applied them for the benefit of both humans and wildlife. From lions, to wolves, bears, and now elephants you have seen how a large variety of people from government to academia and from rancher to advocate there are a lot of people involved in finding solutions. It's my hope that over the course of the last four episodes that the use of project management tools and strategies can easily be used take recommendations in a paper and apply them and grow ideas and collaborations. This is my favorite phase of project management, the closure. All projects should end with a celebration!

This episode is dedicated to the implementation phase of the project management lifecycle. There are four phases to the lifecycle, initiation, planning, implementing, and closure. In the implementation phase it can be broken down into two sections 1. Execution. 2. Monitoring. For this episode I am going to focus on Monitoring - where in episode 036 I focused on execution. This is the fourth episode in a project management series I set up to help leaders like you with the terminology and applications of project management for conservation research and projects. Project management is a lot like the scientific process is similar to… instead of having a hypothesis to test you have a set of objective to accomplish. To me the best part of project management is that there is an end to the project. I don't know about you, but for me the accomplishment of finishing something feels really good! You can find the first three episodes in this series by going to the projects for wildlife.com website and looking for episode 023, 029, 036. Let's start exploring the ideas to reduce human/wildlife conflict in populations that are severely threatened by using the mitigations recommendation provided by these studies. I want to demonstrate with project management tools and strategies we can easily take recommendations in a paper and start to apply them. With that being said let's get started on the Monitoring phase!