The Trail Less Traveled

Join us for an interview with Matt Misicka, the Executive Director of Ohio Conservation Federation. Matt is an avid hunter, angler, and overlander who also works as an instructor for the Overlanding Expo. During this interview, Matt discusses the Farm Bill, Public Lands, Chronic Wasting Disease, the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, and other conservation issues he is working on in Ohio. 

Follow the adventures and interviews in real time at TrailLessTraveled.net and be sure to checkout our visual series on YouTube!!!

If you feel like supporting this work, we really appreciate it. By donating as little as $3/month, you are helping us complete work in the fields of wildlife conservation and cultural preservation. Thanks for considering :)

This episode was recorded on location in collaboration with Xplorer Maps. We want to extend boatloads of gratitude to Xplorer Maps for their generous support of this podcast and international outreach programs paired with conservation projects. Learn more at XplorerMaps.com and be sure to follow the adventures of their story maps on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Xplorer Maps is a small family business based in Missoula, Montana with deep roots in Africa. Xplorer Maps has over 60+ hand drawn story maps of destinations from all over the world, including our national parks. Xplorer Maps and The Trail Less Traveled both share the vision of connecting people and place through storytelling, conservation, art, history and culture. We're collaborating to Bring Cartography to Life through story maps, podcasts, live presentations and a multimedia visual series on social media.

#travel #podcast #travelpodcast #adventure #adventurepodcast #adventureradio #thetraillesstraveled #xplore #xplorermaps #connectingpeopleandplace #conservation #wildlife #wildlifeconservation #publiclands #storytelling #inspiration #outreach #stewardship #bethechange #giveback #travelmedia #mandelavaneeden #traillesstraveled #smallbusiness #supportsmallbusiness

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Part II of II featuring Larry Evans, aka The Fungal Boogieman!! We just couldn't get enough... so we're featuring him on two episodes.

Stay tuned for a BIG announcement regarding a new partnership which will allow us to continue connecting people with place through storytelling, art, history, culture and wildlife conservation! We will make the announcement on Monday, September 25th. Be sure to follow the show on IG and Facebook in order to stay updated and follow us as we record on location around the world.

Larry Evans has taught mycology since you had to explain what that is. He’s authored dozens of articles, notably, “Soil Carbon and You”. His YouTube channel Fungal Jungal samples his adventures in Russia, Asia, and North and South America; after 15 years of visiting and nearly 2,000 collections placed in the Bolivia National Herbarium, he wrote a Field Guide to Tropical Amazon Mushrooms, republished this year in Spanish.

 In 1991 Larry co-founded the Western Montana Mycological Association and he has been instrumental in organizing festivals and forays around Colorado and the Pacific Northwest since. In 1997 he began operating the Black Dog Cafe, and in 2001 he became the first approved commercial mushroom vendor in Montana. 

An American diplomat dubbed him the Indiana Jones of mushrooms after an encounter in a taxi in Khabarovsk when he was there buying non timber forest products. He spent 5 years furthering remediation agendas in Ecuador and has developed myco-remediation projects with Amazon (CoRenewal) and Garden City Compost. He wrote and produced 2 CDs of mushroom music; Fungal Boogie and Fungal Boogieman, and was featured in his Telluride Mushroom Festival role in Ron Mann’s 2009 come-documentary, Know Your Mushrooms. 

100% of financial support for this podcast and our educational outreach programs comes from Patreon donations. Please help keep the podcast ad free by visiting www.Patreon.com/TrailLessTraveled & seeing which donation tier suits your budget. We make $210/month as of June 2023... please help us reach our goal and thanks for considering!

#travel #adventure #travelmedia #adventuretravel #travelpodcast #adventurepodcast #podcast #storytelling #culture #inspiration #traillesstraveled #thetraillesstraveled #wildlife #conservation #wildlifeconservation #mushrooms #fungi #mycology #montana #missoula #larryevans

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Larry Evans, aka The Fungal Boogieman, has taught mycology since you had to explain what that is. He’s authored dozens of articles, notably, “Soil Carbon and You”. His YouTube channel Fungal Jungal samples his adventures in Russia, Asia, and North and South America; after 15 years of visiting and nearly 2,000 collections placed in the Bolivia National Herbarium, he wrote a Field Guide to Tropical Amazon Mushrooms, republished this year in Spanish.

 In 1991 Larry co-founded the Western Montana Mycological Association and he has been instrumental in organizing festivals and forays around Colorado and the Pacific Northwest since. In 1997 he began operating the Black Dog Cafe, and in 2001 he became the first approved commercial mushroom vendor in Montana. 

An American diplomat dubbed him the Indiana Jones of mushrooms after an encounter in a taxi in Khabarovsk when he was there buying non timber forest products. He spent 5 years furthering remediation agendas in Ecuador and has developed myco-remediation projects with Amazon (CoRenewal) and Garden City Compost. He wrote and produced 2 CDs of mushroom music; Fungal Boogie and Fungal Boogieman, and was featured in his Telluride Mushroom Festival role in Ron Mann’s 2009 come-documentary, Know Your Mushrooms. 

100% of financial support for this podcast and our educational outreach programs comes from Patreon donations. Please help keep the podcast ad free by visiting www.Patreon.com/TrailLessTraveled & seeing which donation tier suits your budget. We make $210/month as of June 2023... please help us reach our goal and thanks for considering!

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Chris Servheen has been working on grizzly bear recovery since 1975. He is the president and board chair of the Montana Wildlife Federation. 

Chris retired in 2016 after 35 years with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where he served as the agency’s first and only Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator. In that role, he oversaw the management of grizzlies across the lower 48 states, including in the Greater Yellowstone, Northern Continental Divide, Cabinet-Yaak, Selkirk, and the Bitterroot areas. 

Chris has also worked on bear management issues around the world, including chairing the IUCN/SSC Bear Specialist Group for 12 years. Chris has a Ph. D. from the University of Montana, where he continues to work as an adjunct professor of wildlife conservation.

100% of financial support for this podcast and our educational outreach programs comes from Patreon donations. Please help keep the podcast ad free by visiting www.Patreon.com/TrailLessTraveled & seeing which donation tier suits your budget. We make $227/month as of June 2023... please help us reach our goal and thanks for considering!

#wildlife #conservation #wildlifeconservation #travel #adventure #montana #montanawildlife #grizzlybear #grizzlybears #mwfshowsup

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Neva Hassanein is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Montana. For this episode, she interviews her mentor, friend and professor whom she studied with in East Africa. 

Paul’s formative years were spent in the Belgian Congo—ay a time when most of Africa was the possession of one or another of Europe’s nations.  For more than four decades, his life experiences were largely centered in Africa where he lived, worked, and together with his wife, Margie, raised three children. Then for 15 years, he directed a global service learning program at Wheaton College, where his Africa experience was been enlarged to include much of what is being called “The Majority World.”  

His journey in scholarship really began at Northwestern University, where he studied history and was awarded a Fulbright to examine the vulnerability of African communities to protracted drought in the 1970s. His PhD research brought together archival investigation in the U.K. and Kenya, and living oral history from the deserts of the Kenya-Ethiopian frontier, where he spent considerable time walking desert paths and sitting under trees in conversation with Gabra sages, learning how they survived and flourished in one of Africa's harshest environments.  This experience anchored his engagement with issues of cultural change and ‘development,’ as well as his commitment to learning from other cultures.  For four decades, he shared that learning with college students through cross-cultural learning and service educational programs.

Paul’s scholarship and teaching have always been directly linked to praxis.  He continues to work closely with international organizations, assisting with assessment of development initiatives.  High points of this include working for two years with Kenyan communities, helping to facilitate integrative responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the past 20 years involved in peace-building, reconciliation, and reconstruction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through the Congo Initiative. He is passionate about emerging relational and partnership paradigms between North and South to effect changes that improve lives and care for the environment. He gives leadership on several international boards that address global challenges of hunger, poverty, and transformation.

Summing up Dr. Robinson’s teaching, he would say, “Until we begin to recognize how we look through others’ eyes, we will not ‘get it.’" We begin to see with new lenses first through encounter and then into engagement. Then from engagement to relationship.  It is in relationship that we begin to find wholeness and well-being. As we find others, we begin to find our true selves.” Perhaps seeing ourselves ultimately as truly human.  Paul is committed to understanding through exposure to, involvement with, and learning from other perspectives. 

100% of financial support for this podcast and our educational outreach programs comes from Patreon donations. Please help keep the podcast ad free by visiting www.Patreon.com/TrailLessTraveled & seeing which donation tier suits your budget. We make $150/month as of June 2023... please help us reach our goal and thanks for considering!

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Brad Lourens grew up in Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. As a child, he spent most of his free time at the ocean and during the holidays he would spend time in the bush with his father. He was a part of the Junior Honorary Rangers, where he would assist rangers in the parks. He studied to be a guide in 2007. As a level 2 trails guide, he often takes clients out on game walks where he often gets close to the Big Five. 

Brad works as a game ranger/guide in the most famous of the private game reserves near Port Elizabeth. Shamwari is a 70km2/27mi2 conservation project with the Big Five and, like Addo, five of South Africa’s eight biomes. (Nama Karoo, Succulent Karoo, Fynbos, Forest, Thicket, Savanna, Grassland and Desert) Guests can visit the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre and Born Free Big Cat Sanctuaries and choose between six luxurious lodges and the Explorer Camp. Swapping four wheels for a walking safari, the Explorer Camp comprises three tents, an outdoor bathroom and a plunge pool on a plateau amid basalt and granite extrusions.

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Mandela interviews two of her clients while rowing them across a glacial lake connecting the Alsek River drainage. Scott and Heather have run over one hundred rivers around the world and they reflect on protecting rivers in South America as well as climate change and the importance of connecting with people wherever you go. 

Scott's conservation connection and focus is the Futaleufú River. Based in the town of Futaleufú, nestled at the confluence of the Futaleufú and Espolón rivers, his team works year-round to fulfill their vision of a Patagonia where rivers flow freely, developers are held accountable for their actions, and people and communities have agency over decisions that will affect their watershed, their homes, and their lives.

Futaleufú Riverkeeper’s work is based on the three main pillars of environmental policymaking and litigation, scientific data collection and monitoring, and community education and empowerment. We monitor the watershed and are alert to emerging threats to water and ecosystem health, then take action to combat these threats through policy work and community initiatives. We provide valuable information that contributes to the strengthening and promotion of public policies that protect the rights of rivers and communities. Following the Riverkeeper model, we place special emphasis on developing legal strategies, prosecuting polluters, and taking strong legal action to put a stop to activities that will harm the Futaleufú watershed.

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Dr. Bruce Stein s a scientific expert on biodiversity and wildlife conservation, and serves as the National Wildlife Federation’s chief scientist. The author of numerous publications on conservation biology, endangered species, and climate change, he is also a sought-after speaker and instructor.

Since joining the National Wildlife Federation in 2008, Stein has spearheaded the organization’s work to develop new approaches for carrying out wildlife conservation in an era of climate change. Known as “climate-smart conservation,” these techniques have been widely adopted by wildlife and land managers in the United States and internationally. Stein has served as a scientific advisor to various government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Interior and Department of Defense, and is on the steering committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Climate Change Specialist Group.

Prior to joining the National Wildlife Federation, he helped establish the non-profit organization NatureServe, where he served as Chief Scientist, and he spent more than a decade as a senior scientist with The Nature Conservancy. A botanist by training, Stein received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. from Washington University, St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden.

100% of financial support for this podcast and our educational outreach programs comes from Patreon donations. Please help keep the podcast ad free by visiting www.Patreon.com/TrailLessTraveled & seeing which donation tier suits your budget. We make $227/month as of June 2023... please help us reach our goal and thanks for considering!

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Recorded while floating down the Selway River in the heart of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, we invite you to join us for an interview with Mark Martin. Mark is a river and fishing guide in Idaho who serves as a salmon and steelhead advocate for the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association. Mark is also a writer, conservationist and backcountry skier. Mark is also a fly tier extraordinaire who is known as the "Idaho Guide Bob Ross".

Mark was born and raised in northern Maine: a place and culture where “going for a walk in the woods” is still a legitimate way to fill an empty afternoon. He spent most of his free time fishing, hunting, canoeing, and skiing, and his dad taught him to flyfish and tie flies when he was eleven. Several years of education and work in fisheries conservation led him to a realization that no wild river’s heart and soul could ever be characterized by a series of equations….and right about then he discovered central Idaho and the Middle Fork. It was, as they say, love at first sight. Since then, his natural habitat has become the rower’s seat of a fishing boat.Mark ties all his own flies for fishing, sells a few, and brings a selection of favorites to the Middle Fork for each trip. When not guiding, he finds work as a server at an off-the-grid backcountry ski-in restaurant in the winter in McCall. Somewhere in there he finds the time to fly fish obsessively for steelhead all over the Northwest, and explore Idaho’s mountains on his skis…all while daydreaming about last Middle Fork season, and the next. He is also a favorite amongst our guests and is an incredible fishing guide and has the patience of a sage.

100% of financial support for this podcast and our educational outreach programs comes from Patreon donations. Please help keep the podcast ad free by visiting www.Patreon.com/TrailLessTraveled & seeing which donation tier suits your budget. We make $227/month as of June 2023... please help us reach our goal and thanks for considering!

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