Ethical Lens's. Navigating morality in wildlife photography and film making with Megan Hockin-Bennett, Natasha Garritty and Ryan Tidman.

This week’s episode is a little different in format. Last week I hosted the first ever Coastal Insights. Over a year ago I had an idea. To bring science, conservation, creativity and community together. To have everyone under the one roof to present, listen, inspire and share collectively our love for this coast we call home.

We squeezed 90 people into one of my favorite places on earth. The Whale Interpretive centre is a museum in telegraph Cove on vancouver Island. Run by the wonderful Jim and Mary Borrowman and it houses the most incredible collection of artifacts from this coastline. Every year they welcome thousands of guests to learn from their knowledgeable team. I first visited in 2012 during my first summer on this coast and 15 years later seeing a full house sitting under the skeletons of whales was a sight to behold.

Six very different speakers shared stories, statistics, opinions but most importantly they shared their passion and the energy in the room was electric and palpable. It was an evening I will never forget and it is certainly the first of many Coastal Insights.

I really hope sometime soon to be able to share more snippets from these speakers as I sit down with them all separately to learn more about their lives, their passions and their stories.

But for this week I wanted to share with you my contribution to the evening.

A few years ago now I found a instagram account called Woodland Orbit run by a local trail cam enthusiast Natasha Garritty. We finally met a few months later through mutual friends and have always kept in touch. I have been so inspired by her work and thoughtful process towards ethics that I reached out about recording an episode. Another mutual friend of ours Ryan Tidman who is a professional wildlife photography and camera operator was also someone I wanted in the conversation. His work on camera traps and his experience in blue chip natural history was something I was also interested in hearing about.

We took a hike in a local forest where they both set some of their trail cams, set some camping chairs down, rigged up 4 camera and 4 microphones and recorded our chat.

What was a 90 min conversation I had to edit down to a 25 minute piece for Coastal Insights.

We really did only scratch the surface here and it feels like it is the start of a much bigger conversation which I feel is becoming more important than ever.

What you hear now is the audio of that edited conversation.

Gorillas are among the most recognizable of the large charismatic mammals, but climate change and poaching has brought them to the brink of extinction. Greg Cummings was the executive director of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund for seventeen years. He shares his fascinating experiences as a “wildlife Robin Hood”—raising money from the rich and famous and redistributing it to endangered gorillas and their habitats. He met and enlisted the help of celebrities such as Sigourney Weaver, Arthur C. Clark, Douglas Adams, and Leonardo DiCaprio. This thirty-year worldwide journey moves from boardrooms in Manhattan and London to mountain treks in Rwanda and Congo. Gorilla Tactics is sure to enchant readers with Greg’s unique experiences, while sharing insight into the work it takes to save a species from extinction.

Show Notes: - https://www.munrobooks.com/item/XxL4J9tRA546NZ0RHwLBeQ

-https://bluegorillagiving.ca/

Dr Christy Hehir is an environmental psychologist with a PhD on how tourism can better aid conservation. Christy is passionate about understanding how tourists engage with the natural world and the long-term impacts tourism can have on individuals’ subsequent pro-environmental behaviour towards our planet’s sustainability. Committed to science communication, Christy was recently awarded a fellowship at the Royal Geographical Society and currently works as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey - researching the future of polar tourism. Prior to academia, Christy had 10 years’ travel industry experience across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Her polar adventures ignited when she travelled to Antarctica with Students on Ice, having been elected as the UK’s student representative for International Polar Year.

Show Notes: - https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/dr-christy-hehir -https://happywhale.com/home -