Talking Feral
Phillip Vannini - What, Where, and When is Wild?
Phillip Vannini is a professor and ethnographer at Royal Roads School of Communication and Culture. His recent work includes the documentary film Life off Grid, and the book (and documentary film) Inhabited, Wildness and the Vitality of the Land. This recent work centers around concepts of wilderness, wildness, and wild, and how these mean different things depending on who you ask where, and when. We spoke about these concepts and what they mean for wildlife and resource management, and peopl...
Sally Gepp - The Environment in the Eyes of the Law
Sally Gepp is an environmental lawyer and has practises as a barrister sole in New Zealand. She worked for nine years with environmental NGO Forest & Bird specializing in environmental law, and since 2019 has been working in environmental law independently. She has appeared as counsel in a number of high profile cases including in relation to the Ruataniwha Dam and the proposed the East-West Link highway development in Auckland. Sally was also a trustee of the Biodiversi...
Eric Eaton - Field Guide for a Career Entomologist
Eric R. Eaton is a writer and is author of Wasps: The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect (Princeton University Press, 2021), and the forthcoming Insectpedia (Princeton University Press, 2022). He is also lead author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007), and co-author of Insects Did It First (Xlibris, 2018) with Gregory S. Paulson. He has contributed to several other books including Wild in the City: a guide to Portlan...
Bram Büscher - Conservation & Capitalism
Dr. Bram Büscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University and holds visiting positions at the University of Johannesburg and Stellenbosch University. His research looks at the political economy of environment and development, including in the politics of conservation, energy and extraction, ecotourism, new media, violence and social theory. He is the author of ‘The Truth About Nature. Environmentalism in the Era of Post-Truth Politics an...
Rachel Engler-Stringer - Industrial Food and Our Future
Dr. Rachel Engler-Stringer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology in the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan and a researcher with the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit. She is currently the chair of the Saskatoon Food Council, has a doctorate in nutrition and her research interests include community food security, food environments and food access, food system sustainability, health promotion, and community...
Chris Todd Pt2 - The Laurentian Collapse and Money for Grad Students.
This episode is part 2 of a conversation with Dr. Chris Todd. We discuss the collapse of Laurentian University, graduate student funding and the economics of tertiary education, and the breadth of expectations for academic positions. Check out www.talkingferal.com for more information and extra content!
Willow Talk - The Roles We Play
A short episode where I chat with my dog, Willow, about defining our roles in society with qualifications, finding the time to think in a doctorate of philosophy, and mechanistic conservation.
Chris Todd - Graduating to Department Head at the Birth of Covid
Chris Todd is a Professor and Head of the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan. He is a plant molecular biologist with a research program focusing on molecular mechanisms driving plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Chris has been with the University of Saskatchewan since 2005 and is a winner of the College of Arts and Science Distinguished Teacher Award and the Provost’s Award for Outstanding Innovation in Learning....
Clara Superbie - How do they do it in France?
Clara Superbie is a PhD student in the McLoughlin lab in Population Ecology (University of Saskatchewan) where she works on understanding how caribou respond to predation pressure and resource availability in an environment largely dominated by wildfires. Clara grew up in France where she completed an undergrad in Biology at the University Paris-Saclay, and a master's degree in behavioural ecology at the University of Burgundy. We talk about undertaking PhDs as international students here in ...
Jessica Hogan - Energy Justice, Comprehensive Exams, and Research Boredom.
Jessica Hogan is a PhD student at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her research focuses primarily on energy justice and what is called distributional justice. She researches how costs and benefits are shared in new energy developments, and specifically aims to investigate how different community benefits may change the experience of the communities living with onshore wind energy. We chat about her PhD experience in the UK, and how this compares with the NA experience, about expertis...
Michael P. Nelson - The Ethics of Managing Wilderness. Grief, Fatigue, and Fallacy.
Michael Paul Nelson is an environmental scholar and professor of environmental ethics and philosophy at Oregon State University. His research and teaching focus is environmental ethics and philosophy including concepts of wilderness, the philosophy of ecology, hunting ethics and theories of environmental education. His work also spans topics in wildlife ecology and conservation biology addressing questions about science and advocacy and the philosophical work of Aldo Leopold. We spoke about t...
Dave Hansford - 1080 Poison and Wildlife Triage.
Dave Hansford is a freelance writer, blogger, editor and photographer from New Zealand. He appears regularly in New Zealand Geographic magazine, where he also pens a science column, Life, and blogs regularly at www.nzgeo.com and www.radionz.co.nz/news. We spoke about his 2016 book Protecting Paradise, which investigated the debate, science, and political controversy around the use of the mammalian poison 1080 in New Zealand. We also spoke about the ambitious Predator Free 2050 plan in New Zea...
Season 2 of Talking Feral is here!
Talking Feral is back with all of your favorite conversations about science, nature, grad school and conservation. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears diced for hot new episodes.
Charlotte Regan - The post-doc transition and an academic trajectory
Dr. Charlotte Regan is an evolutionary ecologist currently researching great tits at the University of Oxford and recently studied life history and movement characteristics of the Sable Island feral horses. We spoke about the challenges of pursuing research positions around the planet and diversifying your training, about establishing research labs and trying to find fundable research niches, and about being productive and thoughtful scientists when under the pump of publishing, funding, teac...
Kerstin Johannesson - Science and marine snails, it's all passion.
Dr. Kerstin Johannesson is a Professor of Marine Ecology and the Director of the Tjärnö Marine Laboratory at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. We spoke about her work studying speciation and evolution in marine ecosystems, and how our view and understanding of these processes influences conservation, for better and for worse. We also spoke about her role as a scientific advisor for policy makers, and what it takes to be a be a productive scientist and remain motivated in the face of end...
Matt Krna - Grass, grass everywhere and not a bite to eat.
Dr. Matt Krna completed his PhD in NZ investigating carbon cycling in tussock grasslands and now works in private industry researching foliar fertilizers. We spoke about our time together working at his field sites in New Zealand, about Matt's MSc research in Antarctica, and about learning to step down of soap boxes to try and keep a few friends.
Branden Neufeld - Family hunting and fighting families
Branden Neufeld is masters student studying woodland caribou and their interaction with predators and productivity in Saskatchewan. Branden originally trained in the arts with a BA in English, teaching for several years before deciding to head back to school to train as a biologist. We also talked about the challenges of raising two young daughters while in grad school, about hunting to feed your family and to try and eat more sustainably, and about whether our years of martial arts training ...
Julie Robillard - Neuroscience careers and robots in your home
Dr. Julie Robillard is Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of British Columbia and Scientist in Patient Experience at BC Children's & Women's Hospitals. She leads the Neuroscience, Engagement and Smart Tech (NEST) lab and her research focuses on the development and evaluation of technologies to support brain health across the lifespan. We spoke about social media and its effects on our brain, how industry is adapting to both the negative and positive effects of apps, social...
Jake Hennig - Studying horses and the days before the defense
Jake Hennig is a PhD candidate at the University of Wyoming where he studies feral horse movements, habitat selection, and their interactions with co-occuring flora and fauna. We spoke about the history and complicated politics of feral horse management in the US, how the population continues to grow through a lack of legal management options, and the ethics of managing animals in this way. We also spoke about the internal conservation contradictions we have both recognized in ourselves throu...
Ryan Brook - Feral pigs on the prairie and growing up farm
Dr. Ryan Brook is an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the man on point for feral pig research in Canada, though studies a number of different species including elk, polar bears, caribou and wolves. We spoke about management and research of feral pigs in Canada, parallels and differences we see with feral horses, caribou and native species, and our role as scientists in communicating and advocating for different managem...
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