Gabi Fleury is a conservation biologist and an ‘interspecies diplomat’ But how do they use games to help educate the world about human-wildlife conflict?
Transcript
Music Intro
Dhruti Shah:Hi, I'm Dhruti Shah. And this is my podcast
Dhruti Shah:Have you thought about. I'm a writer, journalist, and poet.
Dhruti Shah:And I like to find out about what other people are doing,
Dhruti Shah:especially if they managed to blend together skills in unusual
Dhruti Shah:ways. In each edition, I'm going to chat with someone I find
Dhruti Shah:interesting, and who's managed to fit things together in their
Dhruti Shah:life or profession that you just might not think of as an obvious
Dhruti Shah:match. You're about to hear me chatting with Gabi Fleury, a
Dhruti Shah:conservation biologist, who's also a cancer survivor, and
Dhruti Shah:video game designer.
Gabi Fleury:I'm a conservation biologist by training, and I
Gabi Fleury:work on something called human wildlife interactions. So
Gabi Fleury:basically, how humans interact with wildlife. And that
Gabi Fleury:intersection there, which is sometimes positive, sometimes
Gabi Fleury:neutral, and sometimes negative. And I focus a little bit more on
Gabi Fleury:the negative side on something called human wildlife conflict.
Gabi Fleury:And there's some controversy about whether we should be
Gabi Fleury:calling it conflict at all, but basically how humans and animals
Gabi Fleury:kind of need to work better together. Because there may be
Gabi Fleury:conflicting goals. So an example of that would be elephants
Gabi Fleury:eating crops, or carnivores eating livestock, and I focused
Gabi Fleury:kind of more on the carnivore side in Sub Saharan Africa,
Gabi Fleury:specifically within southern Africa at this point. So other
Gabi Fleury:fun things. I'm a board gamer. I'm a cosplayer. And I'm a
Gabi Fleury:professional writer as well. So I try to do a little bit of
Gabi Fleury:everything,
Dhruti Shah:There's like loads and loads of things to think
Gabi Fleury:There's a good question. Yeah. So I'm actually
Gabi Fleury:about. This is basically where this has come from in terms of
Gabi Fleury:people are doing amazing things out there, you're clearly not
Gabi Fleury:just doing one thing, two things, you seem to be doing it
Gabi Fleury:designing a video game with a friend to address fast fashion
Gabi Fleury:all. How much brain space have you got left? Have you got any
Gabi Fleury:capacity to add on extra? Or is it at full capacity right now
Gabi Fleury:with all these different interdisciplinary things that
Gabi Fleury:you talk of?
Gabi Fleury:consumption. So that's kind of my other side project. So I'd
Gabi Fleury:say there's a little bit of brain space left, but I tend to
Gabi Fleury:kind of relax by watching TV when I get a chance. I am behind
Gabi Fleury:but I am watching The Last of Us right now. And yeah, and hanging
Gabi Fleury:out with my kitten who may interrupt this interview. So
Gabi Fleury:hopefully not, but possibly.
Dhruti Shah:We love a kitten. Sometimes I have like, you know,
Dhruti Shah:family members decided it's okay, we'll just we'll just get
Dhruti Shah:involved and like, that's fine. But I came across you because I
Dhruti Shah:was on Twitter. And it came up with this thing called Black
Dhruti Shah:mammalogists. What is a mammologist? Is it to do with
Dhruti Shah:boobs? I keep thinking it's to do with boobs, but it's not.
Dhruti Shah:It's something actually quite serious. But also, what is it?
Dhruti Shah:Because it sounds super, super cool. But I don't... I think a
Dhruti Shah:lot of people would be asking, what is this? In fact, I asked
Dhruti Shah:some children that I know. I said, Do you know what one is?
Dhruti Shah:And they were like, No, you need to ask that. So here's your
Dhruti Shah:chance to educate.
Gabi Fleury:Yeah, so it's the study of mammals. Which you
Gabi Fleury:know, lactate. So that's actually pretty close. So I've
Gabi Fleury:never really thought of myself as a mammologist until I get
Gabi Fleury:involved in, in that group. And in that kind of campaign,
Gabi Fleury:because we all come from very different backgrounds. Like I
Gabi Fleury:come from a very interdisciplinary background,
Gabi Fleury:some people are kind of more like pure zoology backgrounds,
Gabi Fleury:some people actually came through calling themselves from
Gabi Fleury:mammologists. So it's interesting that because we all
Gabi Fleury:found ourselves under this umbrella, but it's just people
Gabi Fleury:who study mammals, essentially.
Dhruti Shah:And I mean, you say you've got a kitten, but having
Dhruti Shah:like, I did a little bit of reading cheetahs. Cheetahs -
Dhruti Shah:came up quite prominently in relation to you. Yeah. I mean, I
Dhruti Shah:guess my key thing is, how do you go from perhaps, you know,
Dhruti Shah:growing up, you know, domestic pets, maybe kittens to getting
Dhruti Shah:like proper full on hardcore into figuring out what's our
Dhruti Shah:relationship with these sometimes scary creatures that
Dhruti Shah:are out there? When you're in the field? Right?
Gabi Fleury:You have to be respectful. I guess I term them
Gabi Fleury:I wouldn't really think of them as scary, just respectful,
Gabi Fleury:right? They're, they're powerful animals. Right. So I think that
Gabi Fleury:it's kind of a hard question to answer because I've wanted to be
Gabi Fleury:in this field since I was three. So everyone asks the question of
Gabi Fleury:like, why do you want to be a conservation biologist? So I'm
Gabi Fleury:like, before I had conscious thought. So um, yeah, I think a
Gabi Fleury:lot of it is - I'm a cancer survivor. So I had osteosarcoma
Gabi Fleury:when I was a kid, and I loved African wild dogs and cheetahs,
Gabi Fleury:specifically, because they could run really fast. So it kind of
Gabi Fleury:started in this innocent in like fascination of like, these are
Gabi Fleury:some really cool fast, you know, animals. And then when I got
Gabi Fleury:older, I realised, you know, apart from habitat destruction,
Gabi Fleury:which we're all trying to address, human wildlife conflict
Gabi Fleury:is the second biggest impact on carnivore populations. So that's
Gabi Fleury:kind of where I got interested in that. And because I'm
Gabi Fleury:naturally kind of a very interdisciplinary person, kind
Gabi Fleury:of, like I mentioned, it's a very interdisciplinary field,
Gabi Fleury:right? You have, you know, animal behaviour, you have
Gabi Fleury:political ecology, you have anthropology, you have cultural
Gabi Fleury:things, and all these things kind of tie together to be able
Gabi Fleury:to work on mitigating this problem. So it's one of those
Gabi Fleury:things where not only would I be able to do some good, you know,
Gabi Fleury:about the wildlife I care about, hopefully also reduce losses to
Gabi Fleury:farmers as well, which I also care about, as well as being
Gabi Fleury:able to - from an intellectual perspective - you know,
Gabi Fleury:constantly be engaged because there's always something to
Gabi Fleury:learn. It's a very difficult problem. It's one of these,
Gabi Fleury:what we call wicked problems. So problems that are incredibly
Gabi Fleury:difficult to solve. And I always like trying to solve the hardest
Gabi Fleury:problems. So I think that's why I'm in this field.
Dhruti Shah:But that's the thing, like you talked about
Dhruti Shah:sort of solving hard problems, you know, we're gonna go go back
Dhruti Shah:to the gaming in a bit as well. But you're like, I want to do
Dhruti Shah:this since I was three. I mean, I wanted to be a journalist
Dhruti Shah:since I was like eight. But three, I was probably like still
Dhruti Shah:thinking about biscuits. I'm always thinking about biscuits.
Dhruti Shah:But how then do you go, actually, this is how to have
Dhruti Shah:that to have gone through what you've gone through, and then
Dhruti Shah:still have that drive to get to where you are now, bearing in
Dhruti Shah:mind that I'm sure - no disrespect intended here - it's
Dhruti Shah:probably not the most well paid profession either. Like, how do
Dhruti Shah:you just sort of make sure that you sort of stay on that path?
Dhruti Shah:And your thoughts? You know, have you been thinking about
Dhruti Shah:this, you keep heading towards this, which has a lot of impact,
Dhruti Shah:actually, what you're doing.
Gabi Fleury:Coming out of osteosarcoma, I think it was
Gabi Fleury:hard. But one of the things that it did give me was a sense that
Gabi Fleury:life is very limited, and you don't know what will happen in
Gabi Fleury:the future. So that gave me a sense of mission. So I knew I
Gabi Fleury:cared about these species, I knew I cared about the people
Gabi Fleury:affected. And I think it was kind of like, you only have one
Gabi Fleury:life, and you gotta go for it. Because I, the last thing I
Gabi Fleury:wanted was regret. And to be fair, I mean, like, I didn't
Gabi Fleury:know if the cancer would return or anything like that. So it was
Gabi Fleury:one of those things where I just kind of was like, this is what I
Gabi Fleury:want to do. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes, and
Gabi Fleury:obviously within reason, to pursue this goal. And to keep
Gabi Fleury:working on it. So that kind of kept me on a pretty single path.
Dhruti Shah:Why carnivores? Why not like a tortoise like
Dhruti Shah:something with a little bit less teeth.
Gabi Fleury:To be honest, they're cool. So when you're a
Gabi Fleury:little kid, like they are really cool animals, I think everyone
Gabi Fleury:kind of is attracted to carnivores, just because they're
Gabi Fleury:very interesting, and they're beautiful and a lot of the time
Gabi Fleury:are fascinating. But as I got older, you know, they're the
Gabi Fleury:lynchpins of ecosystems. Carnivore goes down, they affect
Gabi Fleury:herbivores, which affects the plant life, which affects the
Gabi Fleury:ecosystem. So if you take a carnivore out of the
Gabi Fleury:environment, they have a disproportionate impact on
Gabi Fleury:everything that happens. It's what we call a trophic cascade.
Gabi Fleury:That's one of the things that really interests me, because I'm
Gabi Fleury:like, this is a way that I can have an outsized impact, by
Gabi Fleury:protecting those species that have trickle down effects if
Gabi Fleury:they're removed. So as both kind of like, 'they're awesome, and
Gabi Fleury:I'm really interested in these species in particular', but also
Gabi Fleury:I can protect the grass and the antelopes, and everything else
Gabi Fleury:that gets affected when a carnivore is removed.
Dhruti Shah:But what's also really interesting is that
Dhruti Shah:people talk about conservation. Now they talk about climate
Dhruti Shah:change, you know, nature is now no longer at a distance, like
Dhruti Shah:you know, even if you're in urban areas, if wherever you
Dhruti Shah:are. But you've been on that path since you were a kid, as
Dhruti Shah:you were, when you talk about the creatures that you're
Dhruti Shah:talking about, you know, it's actually just reminded me
Dhruti Shah:watching one, you know, one of the BBC shows where they had, I
Dhruti Shah:have a feeling it's leopards, but I could be talking rubbish
Dhruti Shah:here. It was a leopard in Mumbai, where they're sort of
Dhruti Shah:wandering around, and you know, they've sort of, they've got the
Dhruti Shah:footage of them, but you don't necessarily realise that they're
Dhruti Shah:there. They are living in these urban areas alongside people.
Dhruti Shah:And that's the sort of, if I'm right in thinking that you're
Dhruti Shah:also looking at, it's not just like, oh, let's look at
Dhruti Shah:wildlife, you know, human wildlife conflict, far away from
Dhruti Shah:like, urban populations. No, actually, this is something that
Dhruti Shah:is infiltrating a lot of different spaces that anybody
Dhruti Shah:could end up falling into.
Gabi Fleury:Yeah. And it's interesting, because like, we
Gabi Fleury:think of human wildlife conflict, as like I mentioned,
Gabi Fleury:elephants, or leopards, or something, you know, exotic
Gabi Fleury:maybe, but, for example, deer, eating people's gardens,
Gabi Fleury:rabbits, eating people's gardens would be considered human
Gabi Fleury:wildlife conflict. It's something that we deal with
Gabi Fleury:every day, like, you know, maybe you know, an animal runs across
Gabi Fleury:the road, and you have to swerve to miss it. That's human
Gabi Fleury:wildlife conflict. So I think that it's kind of like a broader
Gabi Fleury:field, when people understand. It's basically just how do
Gabi Fleury:humans and wildlife interact that have potentially negative
Gabi Fleury:consequences for one or either party. So the work I kind of
Gabi Fleury:call myself doing is like, I like to call myself an
Gabi Fleury:interspecies diplomat. It's like how you find the best middle
Gabi Fleury:ground between these, you know, these different parties. And the
Gabi Fleury:complicated part of my work is coming in as an outsider, and
Gabi Fleury:trying to make sure that I'm, I know my place as a scientist, in
Gabi Fleury:terms of like, I consider myself a specialist in the science, but
Gabi Fleury:in terms of the cultural aspects, I will never know as
Gabi Fleury:much as the people who live there. So knowing, you know, let
Gabi Fleury:them take the lead, and know kind of where my abilities can
Gabi Fleury:be best used. So there's also kind of a sense of humility that
Gabi Fleury:I think you have to have in this work, and knowing that you don't
Gabi Fleury:have to know at all, and that you aren't an expert in that
Gabi Fleury:particular system in the way that the people who are from
Gabi Fleury:there are. And being able to work within kind of those
Gabi Fleury:cultural boundaries is really important,
Dhruti Shah:what you're saying that's been quite sort of
Dhruti Shah:central to the way that you process and the way that you
Dhruti Shah:sort of move forwards. I guess at what point did you realise
Dhruti Shah:that that has to be one of your top criteria? Because as I said,
Dhruti Shah:not everyone does that. It's just like, okay, I'm here. I've
Dhruti Shah:done my studies. I know this, I know that this is the way to do
Dhruti Shah:it. But that's not how it should be right?
Gabi Fleury:No because when you think about just sustainability,
Gabi Fleury:right, it's there, the people who live there, like I might do
Gabi Fleury:a study and I hope to be engaged in those communities for the
Gabi Fleury:rest of my career, but I don't live there. Or it's not they're
Gabi Fleury:not my wildlife. Does that make sense? So I think like I kind of
Gabi Fleury:addressed it from that, where it's like, I'm fascinated by it,
Gabi Fleury:I want to help. And I've devoted my life to it. But I don't know
Gabi Fleury:what they know, in terms of how that system works. And I think I
Gabi Fleury:came to it pretty early in my career. Luckily, before I
Gabi Fleury:actually started doing a lot of field work, because when I was
Gabi Fleury:at my undergraduate degree, which is in James Madison
Gabi Fleury:University in Virginia, there was actually a sizable Maasai
Gabi Fleury:population, which was really interesting. So the Maasai are
Gabi Fleury:people who live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. And
Gabi Fleury:a lot of the time like, you know, they, they're livestock
Gabi Fleury:owners, they have cattle, and cattle is really important to
Gabi Fleury:the culture. And there was a Maasai who was doing a master's
Gabi Fleury:degree in my university in my programme. And he was associated
Gabi Fleury:with my undergraduate thesis advisor. So I got to talk to
Gabi Fleury:him. And I think that was the moment where kind of like, the
Gabi Fleury:real light bulb came on of like, oh, wow, people really are
Gabi Fleury:affected by this, because it wasn't just the sense of like,
Gabi Fleury:Oh, I could lose my livestock. It's oh, losing my livestock has
Gabi Fleury:cultural connotations affect my standing in the community; oh,
Gabi Fleury:my kids might get attacked when they're walking, you know, when
Gabi Fleury:they're herding my animals, or I have to live in fear of
Gabi Fleury:elephants that could hurt me or my family. And kind of like the
Gabi Fleury:the other costs, the opportunity cost of that right? And the
Gabi Fleury:stress, and he was able to kind of explain to me kind of
Gabi Fleury:scientist to scientist, like what he seen people in his
Gabi Fleury:community go through and then connect me to other people in
Gabi Fleury:the community within this little Virginia town, which was
Gabi Fleury:fascinating without even stepping foot in Kenya yet, so I
Gabi Fleury:think that was a point where I was just like, wow, like, I
Gabi Fleury:really need to listen, and learn and slow down and not just rely
Unknown:I love that. Yes, you did something about like lights
Unknown:on what I'm reading.
Unknown:like lights flashing. Ages ago, I did a story while at the World
Unknown:Service and came across lion lights and came across the
Unknown:Maasai boy who created lion lights. And we went back to find
Unknown:out what happened to him. Because we're interested in
Unknown:these stories of innovation. And it's like, hold on, people are
Unknown:coming up with ideas. But then what happens? What happens next?
Unknown:In his case, he got a bit screwed over trying to do a
Unknown:patent. So it's, it's a little bit weird how this is all very
Unknown:sort of circular in terms of like, Yes, I know what you're
Unknown:talking about. Oh, my gosh, it's making me think. You're so super
Unknown:cool. It's too much. I can't deal with it. But in terms of
Unknown:being able to deal with it - can we talk about the games? Like
Unknown:have you not made a video games? Am I making this up?
Gabi Fleury:Yeah video games is something I'm working on right
Gabi Fleury:now with, with a colleague and something I've done in the past,
Gabi Fleury:I enjoy... I enjoy gaming, I think interactive education is,
Gabi Fleury:is the future and trying to, you know, share information and also
Gabi Fleury:get people engaged. And it was interesting, because so my mom
Gabi Fleury:is an opera director, like she used to direct operas. So I came
Gabi Fleury:from kind of a theatrical background, my dad's a
Gabi Fleury:genealogist, so I came from kind of science and art. But it was
Gabi Fleury:really cool, because it's coming from that theatrical background,
Gabi Fleury:I would see how helpful skits were in outreach. So how she
Gabi Fleury:would so she, we lived in Alaska, for my middle school
Gabi Fleury:years, and we would go, she did outreach into Inuit communities
Gabi Fleury:to do opera outreach. So we'd fly in, and these little planes,
Gabi Fleury:and I'd go in the middle school, and she would do opera outreach
Gabi Fleury:and be like, hey, kids, this is what opera is. And they could,
Gabi Fleury:they would sometimes share kind of like their cultural and their
Gabi Fleury:musical traditions as well, which is really cool. But there
Gabi Fleury:is a point to this. But basically, what was really cool
Gabi Fleury:is that I would see that when they were engaging, when they
Gabi Fleury:would do skits, and when they would kind of like bring people
Gabi Fleury:in, that's kind of when the light bulbs were on. And these
Gabi Fleury:kids were just sitting there kind of crossing their arms
Gabi Fleury:like, oh, this is so silly. Like, 'why are we being made to
Gabi Fleury:do this' would suddenly get into it? And I was thinking back
Gabi Fleury:about, okay, how do we get people interested in
Gabi Fleury:environmental education? And it's like, we just, we can't
Gabi Fleury:just talk to them. Like, we can't just rote say the
Gabi Fleury:information, or have them regurgitate it, we need to get
Gabi Fleury:them engaged. And some one of the best ways to do that is
Gabi Fleury:through interactive play. So that's kind of how I got into
Gabi Fleury:that side field.
Dhruti Shah:This is so amazing. I feel literally like, oh, my
Dhruti Shah:gosh, this is all very, very interconnected in this way.
Dhruti Shah:Like, how do you relax? How do you like? Are your neurons
Dhruti Shah:constantly popping to each other? Like, honestly, what's
Dhruti Shah:going on?
Gabi Fleury:I don't do a lot of relaxing, I'll be honest, I
Gabi Fleury:honestly find working on projects kind of relaxing. I
Gabi Fleury:know. That's like the workaholic thing to say, but I do. But
Gabi Fleury:yeah, I think I'm very lucky that I get to pursue a lot of
Gabi Fleury:really interesting work.
Dhruti Shah:But then also, how do you sustain yourself? Let's
Dhruti Shah:say somebody's like, oh, this sounds super cool. I want to get
Dhruti Shah:into as I say, this is not necessarily the most well paid
Dhruti Shah:field that I'm in we will be pulled together. But no, how are
Dhruti Shah:you sort of able to cope and be like, okay, I'm committed to
Dhruti Shah:this, this is important. Is it things like grants; is it things
Dhruti Shah:like having to do some side hustles? How does it actually
Dhruti Shah:work in real life?
Gabi Fleury:Yeah, it's actually kind of interesting. So in my
Gabi Fleury:field, it does tend to be people from a higher socio-economic
Gabi Fleury:strata to be able to deal with some of the things and it does
Gabi Fleury:tend to be people who are not people of colour. So that is
Gabi Fleury:pretty isolating as well. Going into the field I kind of knew I
Gabi Fleury:was initially at a disadvantage because I couldn't pay to do six
Gabi Fleury:weeks in Borneo. You know, just like doing field work. Because
Gabi Fleury:there's a lot of pay to play opportunities out there where
Gabi Fleury:you can get field work, but you'd have to pay for or they
Gabi Fleury:wouldn't pay you. And then do unpaid internships, where I
Gabi Fleury:didn't get anything would be difficult. I also knew I
Gabi Fleury:couldn't pay to do anything. And there's also the years of
Gabi Fleury:education, and there's huge barriers to conservation. So,
Gabi Fleury:first barrier is you have to be lucky enough to even know what
Gabi Fleury:conservation is, to even know that's a field you can do. And
Gabi Fleury:then at that point, you know, say someone's interested in
Gabi Fleury:conservation, you have to get through at least a master's
Gabi Fleury:degree, which has to either come with funding, or you have to
Gabi Fleury:come up with funding yourself. So this was a mix of good luck
Gabi Fleury:and I think working really hard. So I was engaged at the right
Gabi Fleury:time in my undergraduate career by the right person who kind of
Gabi Fleury:led me in a path kind of towards what I'm doing now, in terms of
Gabi Fleury:like formalising it. But also I had a full ride for my masters
Gabi Fleury:because I had a rotary grant; they usually fund political
Gabi Fleury:scientists, but I made the case that human welfare is inexorably
Gabi Fleury:tied to wildlife and human-wildlife conflict would
Gabi Fleury:fall under their purview. So by being able to do that, I was
Gabi Fleury:able to get a global grant that funded my master's degree, but
Gabi Fleury:hilariously only funded one year, so I had to find an
Gabi Fleury:accelerated master's degree. So I did my master's degree in 14
Gabi Fleury:months in Cape Town, South Africa, and got it fully paid
Gabi Fleury:for. Luckily, once you have a PhD, or you get into a PhD
Gabi Fleury:programme, they're usually fully funded, you don't get paid much.
Gabi Fleury:And yeah, for equipment and stuff, it's, it's all grants. So
Gabi Fleury:you become a really good grant writer, you get really good at
Gabi Fleury:being able to sell your work, and being able to express you
Gabi Fleury:know, the importance of what you're doing. So you can, you
Gabi Fleury:know, buy camera traps and things like that. So I would say
Gabi Fleury:that, and I say this to a lot of people who are interested in
Gabi Fleury:getting into conservation, if it's something that really
Gabi Fleury:drives you, if it's something that you'd like, you can't
Gabi Fleury:imagine doing anything else, this is what you want to do, do
Gabi Fleury:it. But no, it's hard. And it has to be worth it for you. It's
Gabi Fleury:not something to do on a lark, because you think it sounds
Gabi Fleury:cool. It's something that you need to be able to protect your
Gabi Fleury:mental health and protect your time and protect you know, your
Gabi Fleury:relationships, because if you let it, it will eat everything
Gabi Fleury:in your life. Because it just, it's all consuming, right? And
Gabi Fleury:you have to be very focused to be successful, because it is so
Gabi Fleury:competitive. It's like trying to be an astronaut, like you need
Gabi Fleury:to be able to have boundaries. And I think being able for me
Gabi Fleury:carving out time for my relationships is important,
Gabi Fleury:carving out time to do just fun things, like I say a cosplay,
Gabi Fleury:nothing to do with anything I do. But you have to protect that
Gabi Fleury:time. So I'd say that it is possible and to go for it if
Gabi Fleury:it's someone's dream, but it's not just kind of like, oh, I
Gabi Fleury:think I'll study animals. But I always say that, like if someone
Gabi Fleury:wants to do it, they can find a way to do it. You just have to
Gabi Fleury:be creative, and not just kind of sit and wait around for
Gabi Fleury:opportunities. So I always see like, when near the whole thing,
Gabi Fleury:like when a when the door closes like a window will open. It's
Gabi Fleury:like forget that, you know, build a better door. Like don't
Gabi Fleury:just wait for windows open, like build your own. Because you
Gabi Fleury:know, the world's not gonna wait for you.
Dhruti Shah:I love that I think yes, building a better door
Dhruti Shah:that... Why didn't you get in, like I tell you where you can
Dhruti Shah:make some extra money. It'll be your hustle, get on a T-shirt,
Dhruti Shah:sell it. But it's also really weird if you just mentioned
Dhruti Shah:Rotary. So I didn't know this before. But I have a Rotary
Dhruti Shah:Peace Fellowship. And it's because I got a mid-career
Dhruti Shah:professional development fellowship, funded by Rotary. So
Dhruti Shah:I'm like, but it's also there that beecause we were doing
Dhruti Shah:peace. And I started understanding more about sort of
Dhruti Shah:peace and conflict and people that are in the field. That's
Dhruti Shah:what triggered my interest in the human-wildlife like
Dhruti Shah:environmental stuff. I was like, why are we not talking more
Dhruti Shah:about the environment? Like what's going on here? That's so
Dhruti Shah:weird, like all these little interconnections that are
Dhruti Shah:happening? Is there anything I should be thinking about; that
Dhruti Shah:you should be thinking about? Should we be thinking more or
Dhruti Shah:thinking less?
Gabi Fleury:Yeah, I think a big thing in conservation up and
Gabi Fleury:coming is the importance of collaboration and the importance
Gabi Fleury:of reducing egocentricity and focusing on the problems. And I
Gabi Fleury:think that's in a lot of fields. So that's just something that I
Gabi Fleury:try to think about is that as I'm building my own career, you
Gabi Fleury:know, how can I lend my skills to multidisciplinary projects?
Gabi Fleury:How can I make connections with people who do other things? So
Gabi Fleury:for example, this video game idea that I did, it was a human
Gabi Fleury:wildlife conflict video game; we designed three mini games around
Gabi Fleury:human wildlife conflict. And it was literally me and a software
Gabi Fleury:engineer friend who did it for free. And we did it over a year.
Gabi Fleury:And we did in PowerPoint in free Unity game engine, because we
Gabi Fleury:were poor. We did that. And then in terms of beta testing it we
Gabi Fleury:literally dry emailed somebody I really respected and said, would
Gabi Fleury:you test this in your environment education programme
Gabi Fleury:in Mozambique? And luckily, she said yes. And that helped us
Gabi Fleury:refine the game. And then we're able to publish a paper off it.
Gabi Fleury:So like, it's one of those things where, you know, we kind
Gabi Fleury:of came from nothing. And we were just like, this would be
Gabi Fleury:cool. And let's spend a couple hours a week doing it. And it
Gabi Fleury:was one of the hardest things I ever did, because the entire
Gabi Fleury:thing had to have no text. We couldn't have any text because
Gabi Fleury:of you know, language barriers. You walked down the street in
Gabi Fleury:Africa, you hit like 15 different languages. And you
Gabi Fleury:know, we didn't want there to be any literacy barriers or
Gabi Fleury:anything like that or to be any complications. So, we had to
Gabi Fleury:explain like what a trophic cascade is, is the thing we just
Gabi Fleury:talked about, in like PowerPoint art. Which took like six months
Gabi Fleury:of our lives, just like, literally, we would do like this
Gabi Fleury:little video where it was all PowerPoint art. And we would
Gabi Fleury:give it to our beta tester. And she would be like, okay, people
Gabi Fleury:got tripped up here. So we'd have to take it back and be
Gabi Fleury:like, okay, okay, how do we explain it better, until
Gabi Fleury:literally, we did it until like the entire 42 people, not a
Gabi Fleury:single person was confused.
Dhruti Shah:That's kind it's like no lingual. But on the
Dhruti Shah:other hand, it's multilingual, because of the fact that it's
Dhruti Shah:able to sort of translate that way. I love it. I haven't seen
Dhruti Shah:any love it. Again, years and years and years ago, I worked on
Dhruti Shah:a project what's called what does freedom look like? And then
Dhruti Shah:we had to create a comic. But it had to be wordless. Because it
Dhruti Shah:had to go across all these language services. So we were
Dhruti Shah:very lucky in that I was able to go and get a guy called Grant
Dhruti Shah:Morrison, who was behind behind a lot of sort of superheroes.
Dhruti Shah:Mandem, he knows his stuff far more than I know it, but he was
Dhruti Shah:able to do it. And it was like, this is absolutely brilliant.
Dhruti Shah:But it's, it's hard to be able to communicate something that
Dhruti Shah:you may be, you know, talk about all the time and understand
Dhruti Shah:quite well, but need to make sure that people understand it,
Dhruti Shah:if they have never even come across the concept before.
Gabi Fleury:And also understanding that other people,
Gabi Fleury:they might not know exactly what you're doing, but they have
Gabi Fleury:their own valuable skill sets. So I think something as
Gabi Fleury:scientists we need to avoid, is being so caught up in thinking
Gabi Fleury:that we know best and acknowledging that there's other
Gabi Fleury:equally important skill sets that we don't have. And that's
Gabi Fleury:why collaboration is so important. So like, for example,
Gabi Fleury:like traditional ecological knowledge, there's so much
Gabi Fleury:knowledge and communities that are essential for solving these
Gabi Fleury:problems. They're not helplessly waiting for us to fix things.
Gabi Fleury:You know, we're coming in from a different angle. So I think
Gabi Fleury:reframing it and saying, you know, we're parachuting down and
Gabi Fleury:we're saving the world. And you know, it's like, we're not, we
Gabi Fleury:are part of a bigger team of people already working on these
Gabi Fleury:things in their own countries. We're the specialists - we're
Gabi Fleury:not running the show,
Dhruti Shah:the wonderful Gabi Fleury, who puts together video
Dhruti Shah:game designing, conservation, biology and more, and makes it
Dhruti Shah:work. Do you have an interdisciplinary life? I'd love
Dhruti Shah:to hear from you. And maybe we can chat on this podcast that
Dhruti Shah:goes with my newsletter, which is called Have You Thought About
Dhruti Shah:and can be found via www.dhrutishah.com. Thank you to
Dhruti Shah:Rian Shah for the music for this podcast.