1 00:00:00,690 --> 00:00:07,470 I've never done that before. Don't worry about it. You can you can direct me because I've been what was which being on anyway. 2 00:00:08,430 --> 00:00:12,390 Could you just start by saying your name and. Okay. And your title? 3 00:00:12,480 --> 00:00:17,820 So my name's on a Garland tested event as professor of biodiversity in the Zoology Department. 4 00:00:17,820 --> 00:00:23,790 Who else? That's lovely. And can you just give me a brief account of your career up to the point that you got to where you are now? 5 00:00:24,630 --> 00:00:30,720 Yes. I've always been interested in country, countryside and nature because I was brought up in in rural Sussex. 6 00:00:32,490 --> 00:00:40,230 But also being interested in science. And so and then aged about 13, I decided I, I really wanted to save the world. 7 00:00:40,890 --> 00:00:44,670 And those two things kind of came together in an interesting conservation. 8 00:00:44,670 --> 00:00:48,120 So I've been working conservation, you know, my entire career. 9 00:00:48,630 --> 00:00:52,380 I did my undergraduate degree in pure and Applied Biology here, Oxford, 10 00:00:52,890 --> 00:00:59,490 and that was a really nice course that fitted my interest because it had the pure side of behaviour and evolution and things like that, 11 00:00:59,490 --> 00:01:06,660 but also the applied side of kind of agriculture, forestry and development, economics, that kind of thing. 12 00:01:06,660 --> 00:01:10,020 That would allow me to think about how to apply biology in the real world. 13 00:01:10,860 --> 00:01:15,900 Then I did my PhD on on the wildlife trade elephants, 14 00:01:16,350 --> 00:01:23,970 rhinos and saiga antelopes using population models to think through sustainability of wildlife trade. 15 00:01:24,030 --> 00:01:31,230 And, and that was really great because from my Ph.D. when I first arrived for my Ph.D. in the first term, 16 00:01:32,820 --> 00:01:37,920 the ivory trade was being talked about as could it be banned in international conventions. 17 00:01:37,920 --> 00:01:42,360 And my supervisor was given a consultancy which allowed me, 18 00:01:42,360 --> 00:01:50,100 as a 21 year old to go and present my models to CITES the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. 19 00:01:50,640 --> 00:01:57,780 And ever since then, I've had this kind of interface and job in which I've done pure science, 20 00:01:57,780 --> 00:02:06,060 but also been involved in international and national policy and working with NGOs to try to implement the solutions that we've been thinking about. 21 00:02:06,480 --> 00:02:09,390 And that's been just a great privilege. 22 00:02:11,100 --> 00:02:21,780 So and you arrived in Oxford in 2015 in your current post, having been at Second Imperial from Imperial before that. 23 00:02:21,780 --> 00:02:28,290 Yes. Yeah. So let let's just go to an example of the kind of work that your group does. 24 00:02:28,290 --> 00:02:31,559 You mentioned that you've been working in Cambodia quite a lot. 25 00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:34,500 So what what have been the issues that you've been interested in that? 26 00:02:34,980 --> 00:02:42,210 So Cambodia's been this wonderful long term project with a with a conservation NGO, big one called the Wildlife Conservation Society. 27 00:02:42,690 --> 00:02:50,309 And they had a very enlightened policy towards research because, you know, not all and JS necessarily want to engage with researchers, 28 00:02:50,310 --> 00:02:58,110 but they had implemented a programme to protect critically endangered bird species in the northern plains of Cambodia. 29 00:03:00,150 --> 00:03:05,280 But what was the threat to these species? Hunting, cutting down trees and habitat loss. 30 00:03:07,380 --> 00:03:13,080 And they designed this a payments for ecosystem services scheme for local people to pay 31 00:03:13,080 --> 00:03:18,270 them to to guard these birds and to do aquaculture that was more environmentally friendly. 32 00:03:18,690 --> 00:03:23,790 And also they were helping the government to put protected areas in place. 33 00:03:24,990 --> 00:03:34,050 And so our research was trying to find the ecological and social impacts of those programmes and help the NGO to design them. 34 00:03:34,470 --> 00:03:43,410 So they started in 2008. We came in in 2012, the guy who actually designed the programme came and did a Ph.D. with me to evaluate them. 35 00:03:44,010 --> 00:03:49,979 And ever since then we've been working closely with them to evaluate the and the 36 00:03:49,980 --> 00:03:56,160 progress and and that has then fed into the design and improvement of those programmes, 37 00:03:56,160 --> 00:03:57,600 which has been really good to see. 38 00:03:57,600 --> 00:04:03,780 So we get very independent advice, but we're working very closely with them so that so that it really changes things on the ground. 39 00:04:03,780 --> 00:04:10,620 And I've had numerous Ph.D. students and Master's students working with us and in other parts of Cambodia as well now. 40 00:04:11,070 --> 00:04:14,130 But it's all been around how do we do conservation better? 41 00:04:14,550 --> 00:04:16,230 And that's what I really like to do. 42 00:04:16,470 --> 00:04:29,040 I've had a long term projects as well in Central Africa, working with wild meat and how to improve sustainability for wild meat consumption. 43 00:04:29,040 --> 00:04:32,639 What kind of animals are we talking about here? What is hugely varied. 44 00:04:32,640 --> 00:04:37,030 So it goes all the way from kind of frogs and snails and through crocs. 45 00:04:37,650 --> 00:04:44,610 Most of the world meat is actually mammals, so forest antelopes and then going up to kind of pigs and things like that. 46 00:04:44,610 --> 00:04:48,480 Much of the wild meat is actually sustainably harvested. 47 00:04:49,200 --> 00:04:57,820 So local people are catching, for example, cane rats in their crops who are eating their crops so that the crop pests and. 48 00:04:58,050 --> 00:05:01,860 And then eating them or selling them. Some of it isn't sustainable. 49 00:05:01,860 --> 00:05:07,559 So some of it is things like this, some primate harvests, which are pretty unsustainable. 50 00:05:07,560 --> 00:05:12,170 So we took chimps. Monkeys? Well, yeah, more monkeys and chimps. 51 00:05:12,170 --> 00:05:15,810 So colobus monkeys, for example, and civets. 52 00:05:16,380 --> 00:05:20,160 And the great apes aren't particularly harvested for me, to be honest. 53 00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:25,229 But, you know, elephants, you know, there's various things that get hunted for various reasons, 54 00:05:25,230 --> 00:05:28,530 some of it for food, some of it for trophies, for export. 55 00:05:29,430 --> 00:05:35,880 Things like pangolins were traditionally harvested in Central Africa for meat at relatively low levels, 56 00:05:36,330 --> 00:05:42,330 but are now obviously subject to a rather large international wildlife trade, which is very much unsustainable. 57 00:05:43,500 --> 00:05:53,070 And and then I've also had a big research programme in in Asia, China, Vietnam and Singapore, places like that, 58 00:05:53,850 --> 00:06:05,070 working to understand the motivations of consumers and how to intervene to reduce illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade into Asia. 59 00:06:06,240 --> 00:06:14,640 Can you give me an example of that? Yeah, sure. So for example, we and we did a programme in Singapore recently, 60 00:06:14,970 --> 00:06:20,879 so I've had a long term other interest in Saiga Antelope, which lives in Central Asia, in Glass, 61 00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:25,260 in Central Asia, and the horns have for thousands of years been used in Chinese traditional medicine, 62 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:33,390 and they're used for something called heat illness. So it's like a fever and liver disease as well. 63 00:06:33,810 --> 00:06:38,550 And actually kind of similar to rhino horn in some ways. 64 00:06:41,450 --> 00:06:49,070 So that species now critically endangered is still legal to use like a horn in Singapore because they have a domestic stockpile. 65 00:06:49,850 --> 00:06:55,639 And we did a study to find out what proportion of people were using it. 66 00:06:55,640 --> 00:07:04,910 And we found out that 20% of Chinese Singaporeans had used the cyclone as their preferred treatment for illness in the last year. 67 00:07:05,300 --> 00:07:10,760 So that's huge, you know. And so we then thought about like, what is it that motivates them? 68 00:07:11,240 --> 00:07:15,500 And so we did a lot of focus groups and detailed research with, 69 00:07:15,500 --> 00:07:24,139 like with people in Singapore and understood that, you know, the main reason is because it it works for them. 70 00:07:24,140 --> 00:07:31,160 It works to reduce heat illness. And because they're being recommended by friends and family and delving further, 71 00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:36,770 it was clear that middle aged women were particularly important in that because they were given their children and grandchildren. 72 00:07:37,400 --> 00:07:42,380 Singapore for a ward, just like you would give someone Calpol in this country. 73 00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:51,350 And so, you know, that's a very difficult thing to think through how to change if a treatment works. 74 00:07:52,460 --> 00:07:54,890 And, you know, I guess from a Western perspective, 75 00:07:54,890 --> 00:08:01,220 I would say that I couldn't quite understand why other than the placebo effect, because saiga horn is keratin. 76 00:08:02,030 --> 00:08:13,310 But has anybody done a controlled trial? Knows there have been trials in a kind of traditional medicine context that showed 77 00:08:13,730 --> 00:08:18,380 some effect of both the buffalo and cyclone and rhino horn in reducing fever. 78 00:08:18,990 --> 00:08:21,650 So, you know, maybe we haven't got to the bottom of why it works, 79 00:08:22,820 --> 00:08:29,809 that there are alternatives available which are less preferred, but there's different kinds of herbal tea. 80 00:08:29,810 --> 00:08:31,970 There's also Western medicine like paracetamol. 81 00:08:32,750 --> 00:08:43,879 And so then we talked to our demographic who we wanted to change the behaviour of the middle aged women and asked them, 82 00:08:43,880 --> 00:08:49,370 you know, what kind of messaging would, would make you think twice about cyclone. 83 00:08:50,030 --> 00:08:56,720 And they said the conservation message that this is a critically endangered species because we're not aware of that and we're not aware 84 00:08:56,930 --> 00:09:02,959 a lot of people weren't aware that these hormones were coming from the wild and that the animals were being killed to get the horns. 85 00:09:02,960 --> 00:09:11,030 They were thinking it was found sustainable. So that conservation message was something that we then put out in a controlled way as the researchers, 86 00:09:11,030 --> 00:09:15,410 through the media, that these people engage with and trust. 87 00:09:15,860 --> 00:09:20,240 And then we could monitor the engagement with that message and then see how it change behaviour. 88 00:09:20,870 --> 00:09:27,349 So that's one example. We've also done work in in Vietnam with pangolins as well to try to understand who's using pangolin products. 89 00:09:27,350 --> 00:09:32,329 And the answer there was, you know, there's a number of different pangolin products that are used, 90 00:09:32,330 --> 00:09:41,719 meat scales, kind of other products in tonics and being used for different reasons. 91 00:09:41,720 --> 00:09:48,680 So for example, the meat is eaten a lot in restaurants by people out socialising business partners to impress them. 92 00:09:49,250 --> 00:09:57,680 The scales are used in a tonic as a to try to improve wellbeing for example, and that's different people. 93 00:09:58,070 --> 00:10:04,570 And so all the messages we've got from these long term programmes, you know, 94 00:10:04,580 --> 00:10:11,000 both working with local people who are eating meat in Africa and working with people who are eating wildlife, 95 00:10:11,630 --> 00:10:17,270 imported wildlife in, in, in Southeast Asia is you have to understand legislation to people. 96 00:10:17,270 --> 00:10:24,680 Those motivations are complicated and there is no way that you're going to succeed in changing, 97 00:10:24,800 --> 00:10:30,650 unsustainable wildlife use without the consent and understanding and engagement of people. 98 00:10:31,970 --> 00:10:35,540 Maybe one final example, which is in what we've been doing in Cameroon, 99 00:10:36,380 --> 00:10:42,370 which is with villagers who live around the reserve and the how do you spell that? 100 00:10:42,380 --> 00:10:49,310 D. J Yeah, and it's a real jewel of Africa's crown. 101 00:10:49,310 --> 00:10:59,300 It's got amazing wildlife and elephants, chimps, gorillas bear some things and these local people are hunting. 102 00:11:01,370 --> 00:11:05,810 So long term work by by my researcher Stephanie Britton. I kind of led into this. 103 00:11:06,350 --> 00:11:11,450 And the the the name of our last project that's just finished was called White Wild Meat, 104 00:11:12,050 --> 00:11:15,620 which was trying to understand motivations of different people. 105 00:11:15,620 --> 00:11:18,770 Because a lot of people come in with alternative water products. 106 00:11:18,780 --> 00:11:24,409 They the NGOs will perceive a problem and say, all right, unsustainable wildlife consumption. 107 00:11:24,410 --> 00:11:28,790 We'll come in with some alternatives, like fish farming or, you know, 108 00:11:30,050 --> 00:11:35,210 chickens or basket weaving, and then we'll give that to the locals and they'll stop eating meat. 109 00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:38,780 And those alternative projects routinely fail. 110 00:11:40,190 --> 00:11:45,819 And so. Arthur was. Nobody ever asked people why they were eating the meat in the first place. 111 00:11:45,820 --> 00:11:50,100 So without asking that, how could you alternative possibly succeed? 112 00:11:52,100 --> 00:11:57,329 And so that was a long process of engagement with people to try to think through, you know, 113 00:11:57,330 --> 00:12:03,690 what are the preferences that people have, but what did they actually eat and how do the preferences relate to actual eating? 114 00:12:03,690 --> 00:12:07,559 And then why of alternatives fails, you know, and sometimes, for example, 115 00:12:07,560 --> 00:12:14,340 it's that the market conditions aren't right or that the eco gods are asking for a bribe, for the work, for the for the alternative. 116 00:12:14,340 --> 00:12:23,640 Therefore, it becomes impossible for them to sell it at the market and they can't eat and the chicken or whatever because it won't grow. 117 00:12:23,670 --> 00:12:28,260 You know, you can't actually raise those in those conditions, enjoyable job conditions, all sorts of reasons. 118 00:12:28,560 --> 00:12:34,530 But until you understand those reasons and until you're working with local people to devise things 119 00:12:34,530 --> 00:12:40,050 that they want and that that will work with them and to take away the barriers to success, 120 00:12:40,830 --> 00:12:41,820 conservation won't work. 121 00:12:42,360 --> 00:12:49,769 And so that's just another example of, of the main message we've had, which is that unless you need to engage with people as well as wildlife, 122 00:12:49,770 --> 00:12:53,009 you need to think about the system as a whole and not just the local people, 123 00:12:53,010 --> 00:12:57,660 but the systems within which they're sitting that might be causing those issues. 124 00:12:58,920 --> 00:13:02,670 So clearly your main focus has been on conservation, but before COVID came along, 125 00:13:02,670 --> 00:13:10,680 had you thought also about the the dangers of disease transmission when people come into close contact with wildlife, 126 00:13:10,980 --> 00:13:14,700 I would say that that's had been relatively peripheral to what we do. 127 00:13:14,730 --> 00:13:18,450 So obviously it comes up because, for example, Ebola, 128 00:13:18,690 --> 00:13:24,719 there's been quite a lot of work about trying to understand why people continue to eat wild meat in 129 00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:31,770 Ebola areas when they know that Ebola would come from Wyoming and which was done by my colleagues. 130 00:13:31,770 --> 00:13:41,909 And that's that's a kind of interesting one because and Ebola that the evidence shows that once Ebola is in the human population, 131 00:13:41,910 --> 00:13:46,710 it doesn't come from well, it comes in as occasional species jumps, but they're very rare. 132 00:13:48,450 --> 00:13:52,019 And that's been true with kind of disease that's come from wildlife in general. 133 00:13:52,020 --> 00:13:55,770 You know, you get a species jump, but then it transmits within the human population. 134 00:13:55,770 --> 00:14:03,930 So if you say to people, stop eating wildlife because otherwise you'll get Ebola, that's patently not true in the vast majority of cases. 135 00:14:04,740 --> 00:14:14,400 And so, you know, there were some very interesting studies that were done in Guinea where they'd been public health, 136 00:14:14,610 --> 00:14:17,310 health messaging that went out saying stop eating wildlife. 137 00:14:19,510 --> 00:14:26,969 And local people then lost their trust in the public health authorities who were trying to control this Ebola outbreak, because they said, 138 00:14:26,970 --> 00:14:33,030 well, you know, actually, we eat more meat and we've been eating it for ever and we don't get Ebola from it, generally speaking. 139 00:14:34,680 --> 00:14:38,430 And you're messaging that saying stop eating wild meat is just conservationists 140 00:14:39,390 --> 00:14:43,170 trying to jump on the situation and stop us hunting in the particular area. 141 00:14:43,170 --> 00:14:49,470 And by which was actually a fairly accurate portrayal of the situation on the part of local people. 142 00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:53,610 But the unfortunate side effect of that was it led to less trust in the authorities, 143 00:14:54,060 --> 00:14:57,020 public health authorities, who were trying to control the outbreaks. 144 00:14:58,830 --> 00:15:03,450 So, you know, I was aware of all this and I have worked on disease in the past, wildlife disease. 145 00:15:03,810 --> 00:15:10,290 And so I'm not completely unaware of those kinds of issues. 146 00:15:12,040 --> 00:15:23,859 So I was working in this area and then I saw the messaging that was coming out around the very early discussion of COVID, 147 00:15:23,860 --> 00:15:32,890 which was around the role of the who and what market and wildlife in there in COVID and the role of pangolins in COVID. 148 00:15:35,890 --> 00:15:43,210 And I and my colleagues were immediately uncomfortable with the messaging that was coming out. 149 00:15:45,140 --> 00:15:51,320 Why was that so? Firstly, wet markets. 150 00:15:52,370 --> 00:16:01,940 What is a wet? Yes. So firstly, wet markets are widely distributed around the world and really know your local farmers market is a wet market. 151 00:16:02,480 --> 00:16:10,640 Really. So so the term wet market was coined by British colonial settlers who saw in places like Singapore 152 00:16:10,850 --> 00:16:15,170 that people with rain water on on the fresh produce that they were selling in order to keep it cool. 153 00:16:16,120 --> 00:16:24,739 And so these markets in in Asia, just like markets in Africa and markets in Europe until very, very recently, 154 00:16:24,740 --> 00:16:30,860 which is that they would have a mixture of dry and wet produce, fresh produce, domestic produce and wildlife. 155 00:16:31,160 --> 00:16:32,150 Some live, some dead. 156 00:16:33,740 --> 00:16:42,350 And so we had is no exception to that said, there was an area in Wuhan market where they were selling live and dead wildlife and domestic animals. 157 00:16:43,530 --> 00:16:46,969 And different markets have different kind of speciality. 158 00:16:46,970 --> 00:16:54,770 So some of them were wildlife than others. I was concerned that the word wet market was becoming a really kind of pejorative term for, 159 00:16:55,080 --> 00:16:59,540 you know, you know, these backward people are just selling wildlife and that's the problem. 160 00:17:01,640 --> 00:17:05,090 So I was keen to kind of disabuse people of that. 161 00:17:05,660 --> 00:17:10,040 And that's not to say that there wasn't a problem with wet markets in Asia or around the world. 162 00:17:10,370 --> 00:17:17,329 You know, there are problems because you do get protective wildlife there, you get endangered wildlife there. 163 00:17:17,330 --> 00:17:26,510 You do get live wildlife that's crammed up against each other in very unsanitary and conditions that are also really bad for animal welfare. 164 00:17:26,510 --> 00:17:30,290 And as someone who loves animals, very unhappy to see that kind of thing. 165 00:17:30,770 --> 00:17:32,959 But it is also a public health risk when you do that, 166 00:17:32,960 --> 00:17:38,390 because if you bring different species together from around the world, they all have their own viruses. 167 00:17:38,750 --> 00:17:45,229 And when they're stressed in unsanitary conditions, that is, and they're kind of shedding bodily fluids, 168 00:17:45,230 --> 00:17:50,720 whatever that is, then that is a recipe for viruses to jump the species barrier. 169 00:17:51,380 --> 00:17:55,220 And when fast is species bad, they can continue to just be spread potentially into us. 170 00:17:55,220 --> 00:17:58,670 And there have been cases in the past of that happen, say civets, for example, 171 00:17:59,570 --> 00:18:06,590 it's pretty clear that cells came from civets in a in a market situation, maybe not in market. 172 00:18:06,620 --> 00:18:09,950 They came from civets through the wildlife trade and into humans. 173 00:18:11,210 --> 00:18:15,200 And so that is of concern. 174 00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:22,729 But that doesn't mean that the Wuhan wet market was where COVID was transmitted, and there's actually no evidence that that is the case. 175 00:18:22,730 --> 00:18:26,840 The evidence suggests actually that it was circulating in the human population well before 176 00:18:26,840 --> 00:18:32,660 that and that the wet market was probably just a transmission event between people working. 177 00:18:33,620 --> 00:18:37,010 And do you think it was wildlife origin? Yes. 178 00:18:37,250 --> 00:18:40,290 So it's pretty clear that that kind. 179 00:18:41,370 --> 00:18:46,460 It's like to come from a bat and other coronaviruses have come from bats into humans. 180 00:18:46,470 --> 00:18:50,850 Other viruses have come from bats into humans and from bats into other species into humans. 181 00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:59,640 So, uh, Nipah virus is, you know, there's, there's a number of previous incidences where it's clear that you've got that transmission rate. 182 00:19:00,060 --> 00:19:08,520 So I'm pretty certain that it came from a bat. And there have been COVID like viruses found in research that was done in Yunnan province in China. 183 00:19:08,850 --> 00:19:11,250 So that's the likely place where it would have started. 184 00:19:11,460 --> 00:19:17,520 But these detective stories are incredibly hard to piece together post hoc, and so we may never know where COVID came from. 185 00:19:17,520 --> 00:19:22,320 It certainly didn't come from pangolin and even as an intermediate. 186 00:19:24,510 --> 00:19:32,010 So. So how did the government of China react when it initially thought that it was the origin? 187 00:19:32,280 --> 00:19:36,700 It closed in what? It closed the wet markets and all of them across the whole community. 188 00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:47,400 Yeah. And it puts in place stronger, it now has stronger measures around wildlife trade and as a result of this and and international pressure. 189 00:19:47,880 --> 00:19:52,320 What was your view or what would you come to about that kind of blanket response? 190 00:19:53,610 --> 00:20:03,490 So. I mean, the first thing is so kind of maybe I'll just go back to the story of what got me really concerned. 191 00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:07,240 So not just the wet market thing and the blaming pangolins, 192 00:20:07,240 --> 00:20:15,850 but also that conservation NGOs were kind of jumping on the bandwagon and seeing an opportunity to do something they've been wanting to do for ages, 193 00:20:15,850 --> 00:20:19,390 which was to put a ban on all wildlife trade in place. 194 00:20:20,470 --> 00:20:25,360 And these were welfare, animal welfare organisations and conservation organisations. 195 00:20:25,390 --> 00:20:33,280 It's worth making the distinction because conservationists think about biodiversity in general and species and populations and diversity. 196 00:20:33,760 --> 00:20:40,180 Welfare organisations think about the welfare of the individual animal. And there's a bit of a grey area where there are welfare organisations who 197 00:20:41,350 --> 00:20:44,829 talk about conservation and conservation organisations and the welfare aspect. 198 00:20:44,830 --> 00:20:47,560 But the two are actually quite conceptually different. 199 00:20:48,790 --> 00:20:56,470 So welfare organisations and some conservation organisations were talking about this is our chance really to ban the wildlife trade, 200 00:20:57,700 --> 00:21:01,749 which they see frankly as a threat to sustainability. 201 00:21:01,750 --> 00:21:06,010 But as I hope I've explained, it's a bit more complicated than that, that, you know, 202 00:21:06,670 --> 00:21:16,629 people in Africa trap Kmarts around their fields as crop pests in order to save their crops, but also to feed themselves and to sell. 203 00:21:16,630 --> 00:21:19,690 And that's there's nothing unsustainable or there's nothing illegal about that. 204 00:21:22,810 --> 00:21:34,510 So I and my colleagues were incredibly concerned that something as blanket as that was going to cause irreparable harm to people across 205 00:21:35,020 --> 00:21:47,320 the world that estimate perhaps a billion people who rely on wild meat for protein and and wildlife trade for their livelihood. 206 00:21:47,350 --> 00:21:56,110 So, for example, in Central Africa, it's women who most of the trade is the market traders, and they're supporting their families of this trade. 207 00:21:57,970 --> 00:22:01,660 So you can't just ban wildlife trade like that. 208 00:22:02,080 --> 00:22:09,100 And so it seemed like governments were taking notice of that as a as a as a message. 209 00:22:09,100 --> 00:22:15,220 And we got very concerned and quite angry that people were being opportunistic about it. 210 00:22:16,250 --> 00:22:21,760 And just like the example I gave about Ebola in Guinea, the same kind of thing. 211 00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:36,760 So I guess we started to mount an information campaign to try to help people to understand the nuance and the complexity of what they were saying. 212 00:22:37,090 --> 00:22:41,890 The other thing was that they were talking about wildlife ban, wildlife trade for consumption, food. 213 00:22:42,340 --> 00:22:43,479 That's what they were talking about. 214 00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:51,670 And actually that is absolutely full of loopholes and would actually either solve disease transmission or unsustainable trade. 215 00:22:51,970 --> 00:22:55,450 Because as I think as I've explained, trade is not just for food. 216 00:22:55,450 --> 00:22:59,290 Trade is for medicine, trade is for pets, trade is for, you know, ornaments. 217 00:22:59,290 --> 00:23:04,300 And all of those things are bad for wildlife, potentially bad for animal welfare, potentially, 218 00:23:05,950 --> 00:23:09,870 but also potentially sustainable and also potentially the source of livelihoods. 219 00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:16,930 And, you know, people value wildlife and wild places for many, many reasons. 220 00:23:16,930 --> 00:23:23,979 And part of that is including if they're able to make a livelihood from it. So just walking in with your big boots and saying, oh, 221 00:23:23,980 --> 00:23:35,080 I would just ban wildlife trade for food because of COVID is really jumping on the bandwagon without understanding what the consequences might be, 222 00:23:35,980 --> 00:23:47,950 good and bad. So we I the first thing I guess that my group did was that we put out a position statements and wrote some open 223 00:23:47,950 --> 00:23:54,760 letters explaining some of those complexities and calling for a risk based approach to the wildlife markets, 224 00:23:56,140 --> 00:23:57,219 saying that, you know, 225 00:23:57,220 --> 00:24:04,030 there are public health risks of wildlife markets, conservation risk, welfare risk and livelihood risks which are positive and negative, 226 00:24:04,030 --> 00:24:13,090 and that we should we should assess each species and each kind of trade on its risks and its benefits and try to do something a bit more nuanced. 227 00:24:13,510 --> 00:24:21,730 And also that and. These blanket calls could have terrible impacts on local people. 228 00:24:22,300 --> 00:24:27,879 Interestingly, the NGOs never accepted what we said, 229 00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:39,730 but we did see a shift in messaging after we started kicking up a fuss and to say that local communities 230 00:24:39,730 --> 00:24:44,830 and indigenous groups could use wildlife sustainably and that was okay for food in their local areas, 231 00:24:45,670 --> 00:24:49,540 which was nice. Again, you know, it's all very top down. 232 00:24:51,220 --> 00:24:58,930 That doesn't address the fact that it doesn't address that trade is actually part of the livelihoods and that local, 233 00:24:58,930 --> 00:25:04,180 you know, the cane rat example, they all traded in local markets. So do you Barnat or do you allow that? 234 00:25:04,450 --> 00:25:11,230 When does trade start becoming something that's a problem? When it isn't. But at least they shifted to say, Yeah, okay, local people can go and eat. 235 00:25:11,290 --> 00:25:17,769 You want me to be sustainable? And we talked to the UK government. 236 00:25:17,770 --> 00:25:23,079 I gave kind of evidence to All-Party Parliamentary Groups to try to explain to them what the 237 00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:29,590 wildlife trade is and what wet markets are and and what the consequences of bans would be. 238 00:25:30,070 --> 00:25:34,150 Try to explain to them the risk of disease and where the risk is and isn't. 239 00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:40,930 And then also it's in several research papers, some of which were kind of perspective pieces, 240 00:25:40,930 --> 00:25:47,829 trying to explain the wildlife trade, some of which we're talking about, and some of the knock on effects. 241 00:25:47,830 --> 00:25:54,790 So we did some work trying to think through and what impacts both COVID itself, 242 00:25:54,790 --> 00:26:04,359 but also all the mitigation measures for COVID were going to have on African economies in particular and on local people who are hunting. 243 00:26:04,360 --> 00:26:14,020 So what is the kind of long term sustainability outcome of all the COVID by-products basically. 244 00:26:14,290 --> 00:26:21,280 So for example, in a place like Gabon, which is huge, reliant on commodity trading and oil, 245 00:26:21,610 --> 00:26:31,870 the big drop in oil in oil use and big drop in tourism and therefore big drop in incomes both in urban and rural areas, 246 00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:38,860 leading to people moving back home from the cities into the into their country areas and then hunting more. 247 00:26:39,310 --> 00:26:46,120 But then at the same time, there's much less demand for wildlife, partly because of the perception of risk, 248 00:26:46,390 --> 00:26:49,360 but also partly because people can't afford wildlife in the urban areas anymore, 249 00:26:49,360 --> 00:26:54,790 because it's luxury said drop in urban demand, increase in rural demand. 250 00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:58,290 You know, it was quite complicated trying to think through in a given country. 251 00:26:58,300 --> 00:27:04,930 We did that with our with our African colleagues. So that was really nice to have a collaboration with our African colleagues to try to think through. 252 00:27:04,930 --> 00:27:07,870 And and then that's led to some further work. 253 00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:18,280 We also did some detailed work in our place in the GI Reserve in Cameroon to try to understand again what on the ground has happened to what meat, 254 00:27:18,820 --> 00:27:21,219 trade and consumption as a result of COVID. 255 00:27:21,220 --> 00:27:28,750 And again, the answer seems to be mostly it's to do with trade is not coming anymore because of fuel, because of dropping out of demand, 256 00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:34,630 people not being able to send their kids to school, people not being able to do their livelihoods, 257 00:27:34,900 --> 00:27:38,650 falling back on wild meat as a kind of fallback food security. 258 00:27:39,610 --> 00:27:45,490 And so that's been good as well because then we can start to think about how do you support those local communities pre-COVID? 259 00:27:46,540 --> 00:27:48,910 And so, yeah, I guess those two different things and. 260 00:27:52,190 --> 00:28:01,819 Trying to put some experience on the wildlife side into the debate so that it gets a bit more nuanced. 261 00:28:01,820 --> 00:28:06,530 And it's difficult because people don't want nuance, they don't want grey areas, they want black and white. 262 00:28:08,660 --> 00:28:16,040 So what do you think? This is a very big question. Is it possible to give some kind of overall sense of what you want to talk about? 263 00:28:16,340 --> 00:28:20,750 I think I think it is taking itself, you know, a you. 264 00:28:30,770 --> 00:28:36,890 Is it possible to say whether COVID has on balance, been good or bad for the world life? 265 00:28:37,190 --> 00:28:41,120 That's a terrible, terrible. Oh, is it? 266 00:28:41,150 --> 00:28:45,440 I mean, you've been talking about New Orleans. Obviously, it's going to be different in different places, in different contexts. 267 00:28:47,740 --> 00:28:56,319 I think it's too early to say so. So the the measures that governments are putting into place in Asia, it's not just China, 268 00:28:56,320 --> 00:29:00,940 it's Vietnam and other places to kind of clamp down on the wildlife trade. 269 00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:14,080 Um, they, I think they are so, so people have done some polls, the public about what they think about what they see wildlife now. 270 00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:19,960 And people are much more negative about eating wildlife in China now, which is a good thing for wildlife. 271 00:29:21,940 --> 00:29:23,560 The actual legislation. 272 00:29:23,810 --> 00:29:29,850 Well, firstly, I think in many countries it won't be followed because most of the wildlife that is actually of disease risk is already illegal. 273 00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:38,889 So, you know, people have been carrying on eating pangolins in these places in the situation where it's not been legal. 274 00:29:38,890 --> 00:29:44,620 And so only if they do more enforcement will there be a difference. 275 00:29:44,620 --> 00:29:49,269 But I guess if perceptions change, if the sections of governments about the enforcement changes, 276 00:29:49,270 --> 00:29:54,849 then they will, um, they will enforce more and people leave this endangered illegal wildlife. 277 00:29:54,850 --> 00:30:02,560 And that might be good. Um, there's massive loopholes in the Chinese legislation because it is a lot of different wildlife, 278 00:30:02,830 --> 00:30:06,520 including wildlife that's not being used for food is not, is not included. 279 00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:15,969 I think it's potentially a bit sad that the little bit worrying that it includes captive bred wildlife because 280 00:30:15,970 --> 00:30:22,930 captive bred wildlife includes things like frogs and includes things that are not a disease risk and that were, 281 00:30:24,250 --> 00:30:29,590 um, lives for many people. And I don't think, you know, personally I'm a vegetarian, 282 00:30:29,590 --> 00:30:35,530 but I don't think that keeping domestic livestock as long as you keep it appropriately, is wrong. 283 00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:42,460 So if you're keeping frogs or your hunting pheasants in this country or hunting deer in this country, 284 00:30:43,210 --> 00:30:48,650 um, I don't think that most people would say that necessarily is unethical. 285 00:30:48,670 --> 00:30:54,879 I think they see what people do. People in this country see what people do in Southeast Asia is different and 286 00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:58,060 they might dislike the fact that people would be keeping frogs or something. 287 00:30:58,870 --> 00:31:04,150 But if they're kept in appropriate conditions and it's sanitary and it's the welfare is okay, 288 00:31:04,630 --> 00:31:07,300 then I don't think it's incompatible with us eating chicken. 289 00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:13,930 So the fact that that's all been shut down with potentially the loss of I think there was an estimate of, 290 00:31:14,470 --> 00:31:21,490 you know, $14 billion a year or something for this kind of wildlife farming, millions of people involved. 291 00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,920 What are they going to do and what are the consumers going to do? They going to go out and get more wild, folks. 292 00:31:27,940 --> 00:31:32,360 Is that good for wild folks? I don't think so. Is that good for wildlife in general? 293 00:31:32,380 --> 00:31:38,680 No. So, you know, I think there could be some really quite intense unintended consequences. 294 00:31:40,430 --> 00:31:46,040 Yeah. And also for people who are trading wildlife in in in Africa, in other parts of the world. 295 00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:47,150 Mm hmm. 296 00:31:47,900 --> 00:31:57,950 So just coming back to the sort of mechanics of doing research, did you have to raise funding to pivot your work towards the these kind of questions? 297 00:31:58,310 --> 00:32:02,510 So we already had projects that were working on, well, meat. 298 00:32:03,020 --> 00:32:10,670 And so the research is on those projects, like the White Whale Meat Project that I mentioned before, we just kind of pivoted. 299 00:32:10,850 --> 00:32:18,770 But then we got a couple of rapid response grants to several. The UK government and other people put out rapid response calls and we got a 300 00:32:18,770 --> 00:32:22,430 couple of those too that would allow our research to spend a bit of time on this. 301 00:32:23,630 --> 00:32:29,690 So no, I think part of it was that we could just be nimble and we worked really, really hard. 302 00:32:29,690 --> 00:32:33,169 So I think that you now had a department that's not quite true. 303 00:32:33,170 --> 00:32:36,799 But I thought at the time that the amount of work I was doing in April, May, 304 00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:41,410 June was the hardest I'd ever worked because we were really just trying to to 305 00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:45,860 get our science and our understanding into this debate before it was too late, 306 00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:50,630 before, you know, horrible unintended consequences had happened. 307 00:32:51,470 --> 00:32:55,670 So we did a lot of work on engagement and budgeting. 308 00:32:56,390 --> 00:33:01,520 And you talked about working with with a number of NGOs of different, different kinds. 309 00:33:01,910 --> 00:33:06,320 And did you also collaborate with people in other institutions? 310 00:33:06,350 --> 00:33:12,050 I mean, I think I think I've got a general question as to whether you found your work on COVID, 311 00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:17,450 was more involved, more collaboration than work had previously. 312 00:33:17,690 --> 00:33:22,700 So we didn't actually collaborate a lot. So our work is actually very internationally collaborative. 313 00:33:23,150 --> 00:33:29,660 We already had people who we were working with in all of these countries, in both in Asian countries and in African countries particularly. 314 00:33:31,130 --> 00:33:40,550 But I'm I made a real point of bringing collaborators from the countries concerned 315 00:33:40,550 --> 00:33:46,640 into my work because part of the problem with what was going on with this, 316 00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:55,130 it was people who didn't really understand the issues from northern countries, rich countries, trying to get these kinds of bans in place. 317 00:33:55,700 --> 00:33:59,099 You know, and the last thing I wanted was to have just a north north debate, you know, 318 00:33:59,100 --> 00:34:02,840 a debate of us Europeans with other Europeans about what should be done in Africa. 319 00:34:02,870 --> 00:34:03,920 You know, it's not right. 320 00:34:04,460 --> 00:34:15,380 And so we leveraged our current collaborations to to bring in researchers working on wild meat and disease in the countries concerned, 321 00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,940 to be part of the perspective pieces and particularly early career researchers. 322 00:34:19,970 --> 00:34:27,860 So yeah, I think we had a really good set of people in that has built new collaborations with the early career researchers in particular, 323 00:34:27,860 --> 00:34:30,290 and has helped them to to kind of boost their career. 324 00:34:31,010 --> 00:34:35,989 And I just think it's so important that when you have a dialogue about something that's going to affect people in one country, 325 00:34:35,990 --> 00:34:40,040 that those people, people in that country should actually be involved. 326 00:34:41,570 --> 00:34:45,139 And that we were talking earlier about grass roots. 327 00:34:45,140 --> 00:34:49,370 So you've presumably collaborations with people who are already in academic institutions in those countries, 328 00:34:49,970 --> 00:34:54,680 but you work very closely with people who are living in rural areas or urban areas. 329 00:34:55,250 --> 00:34:59,630 To what extent have you been able to engage them in the kinds of ideas you're working on? 330 00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:05,180 Yes. So I guess our fieldwork in Cameroon on the Rapid Response Grant was an example of that, 331 00:35:05,180 --> 00:35:09,829 where we were already working with local communities to understand how best to implement 332 00:35:09,830 --> 00:35:14,900 alternative livelihoods and protein projects for them with them that they would actually like. 333 00:35:15,590 --> 00:35:25,970 And so we went back to them and as part of our project to ask them how could we to change things for them? 334 00:35:26,150 --> 00:35:32,510 And I hope that that will then be a kind of those understandings from what they were saying to us, 335 00:35:32,510 --> 00:35:37,970 will be integrated into the alternative projects that are now being devised. 336 00:35:39,980 --> 00:35:48,150 Into the long term going forward. The best example any. Um, so I've got a question again. 337 00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:55,510 It's another terribly broad question. Is the, is there currently, do you think, an effective mechanism for effecting change worldwide? 338 00:35:57,930 --> 00:36:08,820 Changing what sent in in the direction of improving conservation and protecting livelihoods and disease outbreak health. 339 00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:12,180 Yeah. Yeah. And so. 340 00:36:12,660 --> 00:36:15,930 No, but there's definitely work towards that. 341 00:36:15,930 --> 00:36:20,020 So the World Health Organisation has been think has been thinking now about wildlife much more. 342 00:36:20,820 --> 00:36:27,030 Um, there's some thinking in the kind of international convention space, 343 00:36:27,030 --> 00:36:35,249 the UN space about how do you make sure that all these different strands of concern are actually talked about by the same people in the same forum. 344 00:36:35,250 --> 00:36:41,920 So I think the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, which does kind of domestic health, I still have no. 345 00:36:42,390 --> 00:36:46,650 Oh. I.e. another kind of domestic livestock health organisation. 346 00:36:47,100 --> 00:36:51,509 And the conservationists are now thinking about how do we set up dialogues into 347 00:36:51,510 --> 00:36:56,910 the future internationally so that we engage all these different stakeholders. 348 00:36:58,410 --> 00:37:06,549 Um, but. In itself, that's not going to work because what you need is this on the ground work. 349 00:37:06,550 --> 00:37:15,280 So how are we actually going to make sure that wildlife market X in Country Y is adhering to the hygiene, 350 00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:19,750 public health, welfare conservation standards that it needs to adhere to? 351 00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:22,990 So you can have all the international commitments and dialogue, if you like. 352 00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:32,050 If you don't have those markets being properly patrolled, enforced and sensible rules in place, then it's just going to happen again. 353 00:37:35,270 --> 00:37:43,170 Yeah. And it will happen again. So the other thing I'm thinking about is when we're thinking about how do we do pandemic preparedness and uh, 354 00:37:44,060 --> 00:37:51,170 how do we make sure that our preparedness doesn't start with the point at which the first person is infected with the disease? 355 00:37:51,800 --> 00:38:01,100 We need that preparedness to go way back into the kind of the environmental drivers of disease transmission. 356 00:38:01,100 --> 00:38:09,410 So what we see in the literature is a really large increase in emerging infectious diseases in the world in general over the last ten, 20 years. 357 00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:14,420 And that's including in wildlife, in livestock and in humans. 358 00:38:15,140 --> 00:38:20,780 Why do you think that this is because of um, but there's a number of things. 359 00:38:21,050 --> 00:38:27,560 So, so there have always been these transmissions at the kind of wildlife, livestock, human interface. 360 00:38:28,070 --> 00:38:32,180 Now we've got, uh, environmental destruction, 361 00:38:32,180 --> 00:38:39,469 habitat destruction that brings livestock and wildlife into very close proximity and people often in quite unsanitary sanitary conditions. 362 00:38:39,470 --> 00:38:46,670 So at that frontier, uh, you know, you might have small holders who are not able to get proper drinking water, for example. 363 00:38:46,670 --> 00:38:56,090 So who are drinking from contaminated water you're getting, and perhaps which are particular transmitters of viruses in general. 364 00:38:56,090 --> 00:38:59,300 So best lovely creatures. You know, I love bats. 365 00:38:59,540 --> 00:39:05,060 That's very good for pollination. Don't hate bats, but, you know, they do have viruses. 366 00:39:05,450 --> 00:39:10,280 And if you if you take them away from their habitat, they're roosting near livestock. 367 00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:15,830 The droppings are going to the livestock. And you're potentially also eating bats as well. 368 00:39:15,830 --> 00:39:18,730 And there's this kind of just big nexus happening. 369 00:39:18,750 --> 00:39:24,380 So if we have to have a more respectful relationship with nature, we have to not have this environmental destruction. 370 00:39:24,590 --> 00:39:30,320 We have to make sure that those nature, human livestock interfaces are properly managed on the ground. 371 00:39:30,650 --> 00:39:35,090 And then we also have to say, right, okay, so stuff is traded into markets, 372 00:39:35,270 --> 00:39:39,950 let's make sure that those markets are hygienic and we're not mixing species in the way that we're doing at the moment. 373 00:39:41,150 --> 00:39:45,780 So and and also we have to look beyond viruses. 374 00:39:45,780 --> 00:39:49,970 So most of the emerging infectious diseases and actually most of the mortality in humans 375 00:39:50,510 --> 00:39:55,370 is things like diarrhoeal diseases and in the under fives in tropical countries, 376 00:39:55,790 --> 00:39:58,580 which might be coming from these environmental sources as well. 377 00:39:59,060 --> 00:40:06,200 You know, we've got huge issues coming along for livestock with things like avian flu, for example. 378 00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:13,250 Um, and all of this is, is bound up in our general relationship with our planet. 379 00:40:14,060 --> 00:40:19,940 Once you get into the kind of first step into humans, then you have things like globalisation, global transport, 380 00:40:20,690 --> 00:40:29,800 all that kind of stuff that causes the mass rapid pandemics in humans that but we do need to think back towards this one health thing about how, 381 00:40:29,810 --> 00:40:34,700 how do we make sure that we have a healthy relationship with with our fellow creatures? 382 00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:37,729 And, you know, antimicrobial resistance is another thing. 383 00:40:37,730 --> 00:40:48,500 You know, how do you make sure that domestic animals are not incubating, um, microbes that can no longer be controlled by our drugs? 384 00:40:49,070 --> 00:40:53,320 It's all part of the same package, which is where conservation becomes so important. 385 00:40:53,330 --> 00:41:01,909 Yes, yes, yes. And not something, you know, when you watch David, for instance, that's not that tends not to be the message that's coming over. 386 00:41:01,910 --> 00:41:07,309 It's looking it's it's very much, you know, he has a lovely animal and it's habitat is being destroyed. 387 00:41:07,310 --> 00:41:12,560 But the the connexion to humans is a kind of aesthetic one almost. 388 00:41:12,890 --> 00:41:16,400 It's not it's not actually. We are all in this together. 389 00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:27,440 We want this together. And, you know, we rely on we rely on nature for our food and our water, our clean water and habitats and our air. 390 00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:36,530 But also, you know, there is this public health risk. And what I'm concerned about is it's great that public health, you know, so say conservation. 391 00:41:36,530 --> 00:41:41,450 We have these waves of concern and funding opportunities. 392 00:41:41,460 --> 00:41:44,540 So, you know, a decade ago it was with development. 393 00:41:44,540 --> 00:41:48,290 So we suddenly realised that people and wildlife were kind of interconnected. 394 00:41:48,290 --> 00:41:54,619 And so we were trying to get money from development and and kind of looking at the conservation development interface, 395 00:41:54,620 --> 00:41:56,330 which is an incredibly important one. 396 00:41:56,990 --> 00:42:04,010 But you know, it needs to be done in a way that means that conservation is working with people in it, using the best developed methods. 397 00:42:04,220 --> 00:42:10,250 Now we've got this big realisation that there's a public health element to conservation, 398 00:42:10,250 --> 00:42:16,700 and what we don't want to do is have that drown out and reverse some of the improvements 399 00:42:16,700 --> 00:42:22,010 we've made in trying to understand the dependence that local people have on wildlife. 400 00:42:22,850 --> 00:42:33,000 So, um, just trying to not push the pendulum to the extent that public health drowns out everything else and. 401 00:42:33,060 --> 00:42:42,450 That we see with clear eyes. I mean, the other thing that gets me so to go on about this is that is that we don't we blame the local people, 402 00:42:42,450 --> 00:42:49,349 whether they're eating wildlife or buying wildlife in a wildlife market or whether they're kind of killing animals in the forest. 403 00:42:49,350 --> 00:42:57,780 We blame them. We don't blame the system. So think through what's the reason why there might be unsustainable wildlife use? 404 00:42:58,140 --> 00:43:09,750 And some of those reasons include, you know, habitat being destroyed for logging, for our timber habitat being destroyed for our soy and our palm oil. 405 00:43:09,900 --> 00:43:13,470 That means that wildlife and people are in close proximity. 406 00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:17,540 Meaning that people don't have livelihoods in that wildlife to have places to go. 407 00:43:17,550 --> 00:43:23,910 And so we have the conservation issue. We have the poverty and food security issue, we have the public health issue. 408 00:43:24,300 --> 00:43:29,760 And we have a systemic driver, which might be the fact that we are using palm oil from unsustainable palm oil. 409 00:43:30,180 --> 00:43:36,719 How are we in this country actually recognising the responsibility of the system and our need to change the system? 410 00:43:36,720 --> 00:43:41,970 And those kind of very indirect linkages that take us back to COVID or other diseases are not 411 00:43:41,970 --> 00:43:45,660 recognised and they're uncomfortable for us because it's our consumption that's causing it. 412 00:43:46,410 --> 00:43:49,650 So of course, that would be the strongest message to take back. Yes. 413 00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:59,010 Yes. So just going back sort of personally, again, to to what extent did you feel personally threatened by the virus? 414 00:43:59,760 --> 00:44:05,010 Me, myself, the possibility of that feedback to have you caught it? 415 00:44:05,010 --> 00:44:13,739 I mean, I haven't had COVID some obviously a hermit. I didn't feel personally threatened. 416 00:44:13,740 --> 00:44:17,700 I felt familiarly threatened because I've got elderly relatives. 417 00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,570 I felt very concerned for then. Yeah. 418 00:44:21,870 --> 00:44:27,930 Mm hmm. And I still do, of course. Yes. Yes. And how have they been affected? 419 00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:35,040 No. Very fortunate. And I guess you didn't talk about ours. 420 00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:39,180 But did you? Did you work longer than normal hours as a result of the extra work they were doing? 421 00:44:39,810 --> 00:44:43,440 Yeah, we felt very urgent to do something. 422 00:44:43,860 --> 00:44:48,120 I also went a bit mad personally at the beginning because I just wanted to help, 423 00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:53,579 so I signed up for NHS responders and then in the end I deleted it because there 424 00:44:53,580 --> 00:44:56,879 were so many other people in my local area who were also jumping on every call. 425 00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:03,090 I never got a call. And I also started a community newsletter for my village. 426 00:45:03,300 --> 00:45:08,820 And I did stuff the community, WhatsApp for my village because I felt very concerned for my community and wanted to do something. 427 00:45:08,820 --> 00:45:12,760 And then I was also giving evidence to all parties, 428 00:45:12,780 --> 00:45:19,970 paramilitary groups and trying to influence conservation NGOs and and write a ton of papers and get money. 429 00:45:19,980 --> 00:45:23,180 And so I just felt partly I mean, 430 00:45:23,370 --> 00:45:31,439 this the emergency nature of things and the fact I guess I was cooped up at home and that I felt this was a moment when I 431 00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:37,110 had to contribute and I had to contribute to the best of my ability professionally and also personally in my community. 432 00:45:37,620 --> 00:45:41,900 So it did get a bit mad at that. 433 00:45:42,240 --> 00:45:49,530 But because I mean, quite a lot of people have said that, you know, I think I think lockdown and everything got a lot of people very down, 434 00:45:49,860 --> 00:45:53,130 but people who've actually been able to do research on COVID, 435 00:45:53,140 --> 00:45:59,300 a number of them have said to me that the fact that they had that sense of purpose was beneficial for their own well-being. 436 00:45:59,610 --> 00:46:03,150 Did you recognise that? I needed a sense of purpose? 437 00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:10,380 Yeah, but I did feel very worried about how things were going, you know. 438 00:46:10,410 --> 00:46:17,160 So although I had the sense of purpose, I guess with people who are developing vaccines and nature, seeing that you can do good. 439 00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:26,969 And what I was seeing was to some extent 20 years or 30 years of an understanding of the role of local 440 00:46:26,970 --> 00:46:33,900 people in the solution to conservation was being unravelled in a matter of weeks in front of my eyes. 441 00:46:33,900 --> 00:46:42,570 And I was incredibly worried and sad and concerned that the main reasons for this was going to be the people who we were finally, 442 00:46:42,570 --> 00:46:48,330 finally in conservation, starting to bring into our thinking. 443 00:46:48,750 --> 00:46:53,459 So it wasn't a happy time in the sense of purpose of I'm going to do something good. 444 00:46:53,460 --> 00:47:01,200 It was a reality of time, of am I going to be able to make the difference that needs to be made and before it's too late? 445 00:47:01,830 --> 00:47:07,799 You know, it's the old thing of, you know, crisis policy is bad policy. 446 00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:12,240 Yes. Yes. And you said that you talked about being cooped up, I mean, previously your your work, 447 00:47:12,390 --> 00:47:17,820 although I think you told me earlier that most of the on the ground stuff is done by your team nowadays. 448 00:47:17,820 --> 00:47:20,760 But you used to travel a lot. I travelled a lot. 449 00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:26,610 I mean, so I was travelling every month or so, I mean, much less than most conservation professionals. 450 00:47:26,610 --> 00:47:33,000 But I it was a bit ironic because I had my last travel, my last. 451 00:47:33,060 --> 00:47:38,250 Top of work even to this day, was at the end of November, early December 2019. 452 00:47:38,250 --> 00:47:43,979 And I was really tired because I've been travelling a lot and to meetings around the world and I said, okay, 453 00:47:43,980 --> 00:47:49,510 I'm going to have a few months breaks that kind of Christmas and then early 2020 and again in February, 454 00:47:49,510 --> 00:47:54,780 and then I'll start travelling again March, April. Well, that worked out well. 455 00:47:54,780 --> 00:48:00,629 Didn't travel since not even to London for work so. 456 00:48:00,630 --> 00:48:08,850 Yeah. And is that is that hard that not that you've not been able to actually get on the ground in the places that you're interested in. 457 00:48:08,910 --> 00:48:13,799 It's incredibly difficult to maintain your relationships and keep your work going. 458 00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:17,190 And actually, we had a lot of trouble with our field work because a lot of it was cancelled. 459 00:48:17,460 --> 00:48:23,400 I had two people who were out in the field and at that stop people had to rush home. 460 00:48:24,060 --> 00:48:29,740 And I work in Cameroon with local people for a while was was stopped because of COVID restrictions. 461 00:48:29,740 --> 00:48:32,940 So we couldn't even go to the local and see how it was affecting them because we couldn't get there. 462 00:48:33,660 --> 00:48:39,809 And one benefit certainly in our team and maybe in other teams as well was I've heard this with other people, 463 00:48:39,810 --> 00:48:49,049 was that like this comes back to the kind of decolonisation thing local team leaders or 464 00:48:49,050 --> 00:48:56,310 researchers who were perhaps would have been working under the direction of people from my group, 465 00:48:57,270 --> 00:49:01,100 had to take up the baton and do it themselves, you know, 466 00:49:01,130 --> 00:49:09,750 and we were training them remotely and they got much more responsibility than they would have got in the project and stepped up. 467 00:49:09,750 --> 00:49:15,060 Amazingly so, particularly Cameroon. You know, our research field was such a went out, my research couldn't go. 468 00:49:15,300 --> 00:49:22,350 He went out on his own and did the work and blossomed. 469 00:49:23,250 --> 00:49:27,450 And you saw the leadership qualities and research qualities that would otherwise have taken. 470 00:49:27,570 --> 00:49:29,130 I think they would have come out because, you know, 471 00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:35,940 I hope that we were enlightened team that would have promoted him, but he was promoted very quickly by necessity. 472 00:49:35,940 --> 00:49:38,519 And that was great. And that's a lesson. 473 00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:44,880 This is a lesson that you should be able to give people more responsibility and you don't have to be there leading field teams all the time. 474 00:49:45,390 --> 00:49:54,150 You can train people remotely. And, you know, I've spoken to various people who've done that and then they teach remotely as well. 475 00:49:54,900 --> 00:50:04,380 And that's. That's great. Mm hmm. And so in terms of keeping in touch with the team, it was like everybody else at the teams was in meetings. 476 00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:09,000 And that's incredibly hard to some parts of the world. 477 00:50:09,210 --> 00:50:15,240 Yes. You know, because not everyone has an Internet connexion. And also, actually, if you have language difficulties, 478 00:50:15,240 --> 00:50:22,470 if you're sitting in the room and you know you're not so great in each other's languages, you can always just pigeon translate. 479 00:50:23,490 --> 00:50:25,379 You can watch each other's lips much better. 480 00:50:25,380 --> 00:50:34,080 On teams on Zoom, it's much harder for people who are less confident in the language which whether it's me and French or whatever, 481 00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:41,450 it's much harder, strangely, to talk, and especially the connexions that you know. 482 00:50:46,910 --> 00:50:50,660 So when did you become head of department? Oh, God. mid-September. 483 00:50:51,170 --> 00:50:54,920 So. So that means on September 20, 21? 484 00:50:55,110 --> 00:51:01,940 Yeah. Oh, right. Recently. So all the stuff about teaching students remotely and all that had that had happened before that. 485 00:51:02,210 --> 00:51:06,140 Yeah. Yeah. And my position anyway, means I don't have very much teaching. 486 00:51:06,170 --> 00:51:13,410 Yes. Yes. And. So I think I think we've just about got to the end. 487 00:51:13,770 --> 00:51:20,280 How has the work that you've done in relation to COVID raised new questions that you're interested in exploring in the future? 488 00:51:20,490 --> 00:51:28,170 Yeah, definitely. So the work I mentioned about trying to understand the system change has raised some interesting 489 00:51:28,170 --> 00:51:32,909 questions about how do you address systemic change when you've got shocks in a shock to the system, 490 00:51:32,910 --> 00:51:35,640 whether it be COVID or an oil price shock or anything else? 491 00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:45,660 I guess some of the other things we've been doing is another bit of my madness was to set up a website called Pledge for Our Future of Earth, 492 00:51:46,230 --> 00:51:49,530 which is the Pledge for our future dot, dot, earth. Yes. 493 00:51:49,530 --> 00:51:54,269 So it's an open letter that anyone in the world can sign to say, you know, we want to change the way we live. 494 00:51:54,270 --> 00:51:56,459 We want to change the system. We want to sign up. 495 00:51:56,460 --> 00:52:02,850 And, you know, allows because a lot of people said to me, I know there's a problem with climate change, 496 00:52:02,850 --> 00:52:06,659 biodiversity loss and COVID, and I don't know what to do as an individual. 497 00:52:06,660 --> 00:52:13,590 So we set this website up to give people tips and ideas and to allow them to become part of the community by pledging to change their behaviour. 498 00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:16,950 So I did that in April, May 2020 as well as another thing I did. 499 00:52:17,250 --> 00:52:23,190 I also have a and I have a longstanding thing called conservation optimism. 500 00:52:23,970 --> 00:52:27,960 And another thing I did was I got some money from the university. 501 00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:31,500 I was from my own ego about conservation. 502 00:52:31,740 --> 00:52:35,129 Oh, yeah. So I thought so. So I just remembered all these other things I did. 503 00:52:35,130 --> 00:52:37,350 So it wasn't just the community and it was just the research. 504 00:52:37,350 --> 00:52:42,600 It was also these things that pledge your future is one thing just to help people to to sign up and say, 505 00:52:42,710 --> 00:52:47,790 I feel I can do something to change the system. Conservation optimism I set up in 2017. 506 00:52:48,030 --> 00:52:53,430 Just the symposium has been running ever since. It's a kind of independent entity within the department with my group. 507 00:52:53,730 --> 00:52:59,130 So what we do is we say there are big problems with biodiversity, climate change and so on, 508 00:52:59,730 --> 00:53:08,309 but if we just present things negatively and in a kind of doom and gloom way, people shut off. 509 00:53:08,310 --> 00:53:14,940 People can't cope. People get depressed, people get despondent and just kind of disempowered. 510 00:53:15,510 --> 00:53:18,899 So although we recognise all the issues the conservation have, 511 00:53:18,900 --> 00:53:25,500 what we do in conservation optimism is we share positive stories or stories of solution and ways to cope. 512 00:53:25,500 --> 00:53:30,060 So conservationists burn out the general public burn out, you know, 513 00:53:30,090 --> 00:53:34,650 how do we actually engage people so that they think there is hope, there are things we can do. 514 00:53:35,130 --> 00:53:38,910 There's evidence the conservation works. And that way, you know, you get buy in. 515 00:53:39,270 --> 00:53:43,950 Actually, governments buy and businesses buy in as well. Everybody can buy in and think, yeah, okay, I can move forward. 516 00:53:43,950 --> 00:53:47,729 So that has really blossomed since 2017. 517 00:53:47,730 --> 00:53:51,780 And it's, you know, it's a tiny thing in terms of personalities. 518 00:53:51,780 --> 00:53:54,960 Just one person in my group, but it's, it's, it's a big movement. 519 00:53:55,710 --> 00:54:03,300 So coming back to April or March, April, May, 2020, 520 00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:18,870 I've got a son who is at the time university and obviously I've got teenagers in my family and finding it incredibly hard but really difficult. 521 00:54:18,870 --> 00:54:29,460 And there was a tragedy and one one of my teenage nephews, one of his best friends died and right at the beginning of lockdown. 522 00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:38,340 And and I wanted to do something that helped teenagers with their anxieties, basically. 523 00:54:40,440 --> 00:54:43,379 And so we got some money from Oxford, actually, 524 00:54:43,380 --> 00:54:52,740 for conservation optimism to run a series of teenage focussed things about how to think about wildlife trade. 525 00:54:52,740 --> 00:55:01,950 So I had to think about disease and wildlife trade, but also about how to cope with eco eco anxiety, really. 526 00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:06,540 And so we had a clinical psychologist who works for that. 527 00:55:06,990 --> 00:55:09,810 That's also too who works with clinically for an eco grief. 528 00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:17,790 She did a podcast with us talking to people about about the issues and how to, how to, how to own your grief and before from your grief. 529 00:55:18,060 --> 00:55:24,450 We did some Instagram takeovers with with young people from Nigeria and the UK so 530 00:55:24,450 --> 00:55:27,990 that they were talking together about their feelings and how to move forward. 531 00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:39,350 And that has sparked a whole new set of resources and ways of thinking and engagement with people like Extinction Rebellion, 532 00:55:39,390 --> 00:55:48,000 things like that, through my conservation optimism thing. So I guess that that is something new that we're still taking food from conservation. 533 00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:51,060 And how do you spend much time on social media before that? 534 00:55:51,450 --> 00:55:54,540 Me Yeah, yeah. 535 00:55:56,520 --> 00:56:03,480 So that wasn't new. The conservation optimism wasn't new. It was just the focus on teenagers for this personal video of the tragedy with my family. 536 00:56:03,990 --> 00:56:08,219 And I really felt there's nothing I could do for my nephew. 537 00:56:08,220 --> 00:56:15,950 But what I could do for teenagers was to try. To help them in the time of COVID and in the time of concern about wildlife trade, 538 00:56:15,950 --> 00:56:19,250 and that that nexus between wildlife trade and conservation was coming to the fore a lot. 539 00:56:19,610 --> 00:56:23,810 Okay, well, maybe I can help them to think better about these things. Mm hmm. 540 00:56:23,870 --> 00:56:32,630 I didn't. Sorry. I did as much brief briefing of myself as I could before I started, but I didn't find any of that on your departmental website. 541 00:56:32,900 --> 00:56:41,570 No. Oh, you have to do is look at my and look at my signature in my research email because I've got eight websites there. 542 00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:45,250 Oh. Which these are some. You go back. Yeah. 543 00:56:45,770 --> 00:56:51,169 So finally, that has the experience of Coby changed your your attitude or approach to your work? 544 00:56:51,170 --> 00:56:53,990 And is there anything you'd like to see change in the future? 545 00:56:54,530 --> 00:57:05,089 Well, I think I think new ways of working, obviously, and try I mean, I find it really difficult to keep my group together. 546 00:57:05,090 --> 00:57:08,749 And I think every researcher will say that to you because, you know, 547 00:57:08,750 --> 00:57:13,520 we have a very strong group ethic to try to find ways to keep that group ethic when people are scattered to the winds. 548 00:57:13,520 --> 00:57:21,709 And some people have never even met each other in person, because I'm trying also to coax people that maybe they could come and see each other. 549 00:57:21,710 --> 00:57:26,270 So rather than having everyone in the lab forever, we do have to have ways in which we all get together. 550 00:57:27,180 --> 00:57:29,329 That's one thing. And as head of department now, 551 00:57:29,330 --> 00:57:37,730 how do I think about keeping a departmental ethos and a social ethos where people feel like part of a team when there's scattered? 552 00:57:38,150 --> 00:57:42,170 It's really difficult to trying to find ways to do that has been important. 553 00:57:42,710 --> 00:57:49,730 I always worked remotely a lot because I've had international collaboration, so although it was Skype in those days and not teams. 554 00:57:51,710 --> 00:57:56,840 But I do think that you do need to meet in person occasionally to get those social bonds. 555 00:57:57,890 --> 00:58:04,520 The other thing I guess has been trying to think about reshaping Oxford as a as a global 556 00:58:04,520 --> 00:58:10,549 university is something that is consuming my thinking less at the moment when we you know, 557 00:58:10,550 --> 00:58:15,340 for climate change reasons we can't. I but also because of COVID, we don't need to. 558 00:58:15,770 --> 00:58:20,750 How do you and how do you have equitable partnerships with people in the Global South? 559 00:58:21,440 --> 00:58:22,999 I think there's a lot of thinking that needs to be done. 560 00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:27,799 And my friend Lisa White, who I hope you're going to talk to and has done a lot of this around COVID, 561 00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:35,060 actually put in putting work on on supporting people through COVID. 562 00:58:38,270 --> 00:58:48,860 And the other thing I guess is. I don't know what else there is really. 563 00:58:48,860 --> 00:58:49,910 It's about. 564 00:58:53,640 --> 00:59:02,520 I just I just think we need a complete rethink of the way that we engage with the public and the way that we engage with the natural world. 565 00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:10,140 And now's the time. COVID What's sad is that COVID should have been could have been that recent moment, 566 00:59:11,220 --> 00:59:16,410 particularly with the climate change conference and the biodiversity conference. And I do worry that it hasn't been. 567 00:59:17,890 --> 00:59:25,060 That said, just like the global financial crisis in 2008 was the moment at which the financial markets, 568 00:59:25,060 --> 00:59:28,610 the financial system of this planet could have been reshaped. 569 00:59:28,630 --> 00:59:35,650 There was just that moment, you know, when everything was in meltdown, when it could have been V-shaped, and it really wasn't. 570 00:59:36,130 --> 00:59:39,340 And I think it has been that meltdown moment when it could have been reshaped. 571 00:59:40,090 --> 00:59:45,220 And it really isn't being. And so that's a bit of a shame. 572 00:59:48,650 --> 00:59:50,480 So that's my next place finish.