The Good Nature podcast comes to you from conservation optimism and its founding partners simply see Earth and giving the best Rocksmith.
Welcome to Good-Natured podcast, where you can join us for uplifting chats that shine a light on conservation challenges.
In each episode, we interview an inspiring conservationist.
A fascinating guest come from many backgrounds, artists, scientists, activists and many more.
I'm Sophia APHC student focussing on marine conservation. I love doing science and telling stories through film writing, improvised comedy.
And now. And I'm Julia, a science communicator and journalist.
I'm passionate about sharing what people are doing to make the world a better place. Today, we're failed to have with us Jesse Panopto Zolo,
an Australian young conservationist who started an online community called Lonely Conservationists,
and the goal of this community was to bring together young and struggling conservationists to share their stories.
I think it's gonna be great to talk to Jesse because she does a really great job of acknowledging some of the difficulties within conservation.
And she considers conservationists to be just about anyone who cares about issues in conservation.
But for her personally, after years of hurdles, trying to start up a career in conservation to get a job, she found she was really struggling.
So she decided to form the support of community where other conservationists could share their own stories of struggle, of loneliness, of difficulty.
And one thing that is really interesting as well is that the community really grew quite quickly and quite organically.
So she's got people from all over the world joining the community to share their stories.
And I think in a way that really shows that there is a space in conservation for
talking about mental health issues or just struggle and failure in general.
That is just not there. So I think that's what made it so powerful and so enticing for people to share their stories on there.
She takes a really positive view on it in terms of having this catharsis and this ability to share these difficult stories.
Actually, that means that people feel better and feel accompanied and can maybe have more energy to do other things.
And we also really interested to hear a bit more about what Jesse things about
the feeling of guilt and pressure that exist in the conservation sector.
This idea that you have to be perfect if you're a conservationist, you need to save the planet every single day.
And so I think she'll probably have a really interesting perspective on these issues.
Absolutely. Well, let's get talking to her. Hi, Jesse, we're so excited to have you on the podcast today and start the episode.
I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about your background and also what led you to start learning conservationists?
Sure. Well, I have been passionate about nature and the natural world since I was three
years old when my mom came back from Canada and handed me a stuffed toy gorilla,
which may seem ridiculous to bring a gorilla toy back from Canada. But that's what happened.
And it sparked this lifelong obsession with animals and primates, especially great apes.
And when I was five years old, I asked my mom and my mom's friend, who is the mom, how can I save the orang-utans?
And that's when I realised that adults actually didn't have the answers to everything.
And I kind of went on this lifelong quest to find out myself how I could save the orang-utans.
But then I ended up when I was 24, I was doing my honours degree in North Sumatra,
working with the top orang-utan scientist and conservationist in the area.
And I looked around at the reforestation site and I saw all the mothers with the children planting in the nurseries,
and I saw their husbands watering the plants and growing the forest.
And I realised that as long as I was a Western woman coming in from another country,
that I could never be a part of that long term, sustainable behavioural change needed to actually conserve the rainforest habitat.
And thus the orang-utans. And so I went back to Australia and tried to find conservation jobs here.
But every job, it was like Groundhog Day. I always faced professional bullying, low wages, really remote locations.
And I noticed that all throughout my conservation career, it was the same.
It was so hard to get a job. And when you did, the conditions were so lacking.
So I decided for my New Year's resolution in 2019, I was going to pick a reputable Australian NGO.
I was gonna volunteer there as if I had a full time job and I was going to really
put in a lot of time and effort in volunteering until I actually got a job.
But it turned out that as long as I was working for free, they were never going to hire me.
So my friend. He hates me saying this, but I felt like he was giving me an intervention when he explained this to me.
And I thought my future and my life in the conservation industry was over.
And then I was moping on the couch because I decided that's it.
I'm not going to work for this organisation anymore. There's just no future for me.
And my friend from Spain actually message me saying that she was having issues with visas and she was feeling frustrated with the industry, too.
And for the first time in my life, I wondered how many other conservationists could relate to me.
And so I got up, I went to my desk and I started the Blokland.
Conservation is where I told my authentic story of how I was feeling in the industry with the call out that if anybody felt the same,
they should submit this story alongside mine.
And now today, about 19 months later, we have a community which hit 4000 land conservationist last night, which was really exciting.
And we have about 80 blogs submitted alongside one of global conservationists.
So, yeah, it just was a way larger need than I ever thought, considering I thought I was going through all of this all on my own.
That's amazing. I'm interested to hear more about the named Lowney Conservationist.
I feel like so often people think of loneliness as an individual problem, something that they have to deal with by themselves,
but sad circumstances like a pandemic or like the difficult job market that you were
talking about can mean a lot of people actually experience loneliness at the same time.
What have you learnt about loneliness for more of the blogs and testimonies that you've received from Different Conservationist's?
It's interesting in the pandemic,
because it's interesting to see how people connect and experience exactly what you're saying, like a loneliness together.
When I created Learning Conservationist's, I created it out of feeling that I was the loneliest person,
that the loneliest conservationist that I could think of. I couldn't conceive that so many other people were sharing this loneliness with me.
So now it's really interesting to have a community of over 4000 people that all come together with that shared loneliness.
But I think because conservationists work in such remote areas,
even if loneliness is shared by others in the physical space, it just seems like we're so isolated,
especially if we have bosses or mentors that are not very nice or there's cultural isolation
and people who we can't understand around us with customs that maybe don't make sense to us.
Even knowing that there's other people out there experiencing the same thing in the moment may not make it easier to experience.
So I think what the pandemic has showed us is that if we can come together,
despite how lonely we are in a physical sense, it can make it easier to deal with those feelings of loneliness.
And I think I'm really thankful that I created lonely conservationists before the pandemic,
because now since the pandemic and we've all been isolated,
we've all been out of connect over a digital space, whether it be via Zoom or the blogs or via social media.
So I feel like trying to regain that connectivity can really help with the feelings of loneliness we experience from a systematic problem.
I mean, I can't be expected to solve big global issues of how conservationists are treated worldwide,
but I can help create a community that at least knows that they're not alone when they experience the issues faced by the system.
I love what you said about being the loneliest conservationist. I think that we can all feel that way sometimes when you're feeling lonely.
It feels like you are the only lonely person in the world and everyone else is like best friends, having the best time.
So I think there is a real relief in recognising that you're not alone.
Right. And the other people are kind of sharing these issues. It's true that that no one can solve these larger systemic issues.
But I do feel like there's a sense of power and kind of momentum in at least knowing that
there are others around that that could maybe help start to address things in a larger way.
Yeah. And I really think that because of the glorification and glamorisation of the conservation industry on social media,
I feel that that really contributes to how everybody perceives what the industry is like from the outside.
And it's interesting because when I've had articles released about Leweni
conservationists and they've been accessible to the wider media or the wider public.
People have commented saying I had no idea that Conservation's conservationists even experienced anything like this,
because I think we feel like there's so much pressure to be perfect to get the couple of jobs that there are.
Nobody talks about the downfalls or their failures or the way that life is hard because we want to be the most resilient,
perfect candidate for whatever few jobs are available.
So I think that by me naming it, it made it really accessible for others to start naming it like, oh, it's okay.
Nothing happened to her because she told her story. Maybe I can chime in.
And it's really interesting to see how people submit similar stories because they're like hard.
That person story was really like mine. Therefore, it's safe enough for me to come forth and tell my story.
Nothing bad is gonna happen. But I think the most rewarding thing that has come from land conservationists is actually from a girl in the UK.
She went to a job interview and she broke down halfway through the interview,
whether it be from stress or pressure or climate anxiety or the state of the world.
And her employee that was actually hiring her reassure her that everything was okay and that there was a group of people who felt exactly like her,
who they directed her to and then ended up hiring her for the position.
So I think if more people are aware of the pressures that people are going through and they are empathetic and understanding to the situation,
then only good can come from the situation. That's amazing.
And I think really there is so much power in creating these spaces where people can share their stories.
And actually that links to something else that I think conservationists experience as well,
which is this idea that you have to be walking the walk in your day to day life as well.
You have to be perfect. You have to avoid plastic. You have to fly less.
And having to save the planet every single day can end up being obviously quite a heavy burden to carry.
So I was wondering if you also had, from all these testimonies and experiences,
some tools that conservationists can use to fight this perfectionism in it and the guilt that comes with it.
Actually, I created a new tool for this yesterday after.
Look at a panel on failure. And it was really interesting to do workshops and talk about how we fail and to normalise that,
because I think of celebrating our failures really give rise to combating both imposter syndrome and perfectionism.
So just yesterday, I established on my Web site a failure wall so lonely conservationist's can come
forth with their failures and what they've learnt from and grown from them.
And so we can celebrate the ways that we've messed up,
but how that was an opportunity to learn and grow and and do better, more improved things into the future.
And for instance, like, I wouldn't have this amazing community of global conservationists if I didn't
fail at getting a job in the conservation industry for 26 years of my life.
The fact that I failed so much made me have this wonderful future and feeling like I have my
purpose and my drive of transitioning from a conservationist to a conservationist conservationist.
And I really think that we should be shedding the light and celebrating the times that things didn't really go as planned,
because often they are the wonderful learning and growth opportunities that we experience in our lives.
I completely agree with that. I think that so often in conservation,
there are all of these failures as like your fieldwork plans or your experiments don't go the way that you wanted,
and then you just have to kind of like realise that maybe you didn't come out the problem in the right way.
And you need to kind of regear to figure out what to do next or or to learn from it.
Supporting other conservationists might take a toll on your own mental health.
What has it been like for you to do this project? And what are some of the coping mechanisms you use to keep going?
I created this because I felt like I was a failing, lonely conservationist.
So still today I just have the experiences of anybody else in my community.
It's like the blind leading the blind. So I think it's been an experience because I, I think by accident,
I've done a lot in trying to establish and grow this community because I've seen a huge need for it.
But I think there's the imposter syndrome that I'm just a conservationist and that I'm not any different from the people in my community.
But by running the community and by developing it,
I have actually accumulated all of these skills that are really impressive to people that I talk with.
So I think more so. It's interesting just feeling the same as everybody, but expected to step up and lead and that is challenging.
And the way that I do that is just I'm really honest with people.
And that's actually been a huge hope in the community where I went to a conference last year and I was
really scared of going to a workshop because it was about something that I didn't know anything about.
But I chose to go to the workshop because I didn't know anything about it.
And I wanted to learn more. And instead of it being a lecture and something I could passively take in.
I knew that I had to be involved.
And there's always that fear that people will know that you've never done this before or a fear that you'll be a huge embarrassment or something.
But by talking about the fact that I was scared in this situation, but I did it anyway,
or if I failed at fieldwork or if I was feeling really sad or overwhelmed, I would always talk about this on social media.
And I got a lot of positive compliments from my community saying thank you for being human.
And every time I talk about a way that I am struggling, another conservationist can relate to that and they feel less alone.
So now I feel like if I am doing it tough and I share it, I feel like I'm actually helping them more.
So it's kind of turned my like the failure will it's kind of turned the times that I'm not doing well into real learning
and growth opportunities and opportunities to make other conservationists feel not that alone in their struggles either.
But I think the hardest thing for me has actually been when I talk to people and they're like, oh, you actually do have all these skills.
I can a professional sense. And I just I feel like maybe I could have achieved more if I acknowledge them instead of just seeing
myself as just the saddler and the conservationists that was on the couch when I created this,
because I don't think I'm that person anymore. I've seen various posts where you're very transparent and I agree,
I think it makes the community even more of a safe place because you know that the
person who created it as well is sharing the struggle and sharing the challenges.
And I think that makes a massive difference for sure.
And I think it's just interesting to see how people expect to be the loneliest and the worst person and they beat themselves up.
So much for that perfectionism. It's so shocking and enlightening to see somebody else be like that.
But from my perspective, I would feel really bad if I was just exploiting everyone, making them tell me their deepest, darkest concerns and stories.
And then I was just like profiting from that.
So I feel like I owe it to the people in my community to give them what they give me and to show that vulnerability back.
That makes a lot of sense in terms of what your community looks like, what kind of conservationists are in it.
I think it's important for me to talk about my perception of what a conservationist is,
because in my experience with the term conservationists is not like neurosurgeon,
where you wouldn't want somebody without neurosurgeon qualifications to be performing surgery on you.
But I feel like if you are a lawyer and you use a keep cup and you recycle the paper in your office and you make
sure that the recycling bins and the compost bins are in order and you're making an effort to conserve wildlife,
conserve resources. I would say that they were a conservationist.
I would say if you're a mom at home and you've made a lot of zero waste transitions around the household,
you're educating your kids about the natural world. I would say there are conservationists.
So the people in my community are everything from students to professionals to people who just do citizen science or who
are in a totally different career but are practising these conservationists mindset behaviours in their normal life.
So I feel like the more people can own the term conservationists and the more we embrace it,
the more we can have such positive energy going through the community.
And people can be proud of the efforts that they are making because it really disturbs me how full
of imposter syndrome and perfectionism that industry is and that the industry propagates as well.
So I feel like if we just start celebrating the efforts that we do,
then people will feel more comfortable and more confident in celebrating any actions they make to better our world, to conserve our environment.
Because I think the small little impacts that we have.
They all add up. Yes. It's definitely something that conservation optimism as a whole as well really believes in.
And we have this idea that everyone can be a conservationist and that we really need to celebrate all these different peoples.
So, yes, it's really nice to hear that definition. I love that definition.
I completely agree. I know you've done a bit of research as well around the lonely conservationist blogs and everything.
You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I just think it's really interesting how the scientists in me when I started getting a lot of blogs,
I started to see that this could be a potentially useful dataset to help
conservationists and to kind of get the advice that they didn't know they were giving.
So I was working with someone from the University of Colorado and we're putting together a paper
on looniness and conservationists out of the first 70 blogs that were submitted to the website.
And these blogs are from all different kinds of people, ethnicities, diversity, age groups from all over the world.
So it's not just constricted to maybe studies that you would do locally where I am in Australia or in the UK or America.
So it's a really interesting subset of data. So I looked at three different things I looked at.
What inspires us. What constrains us. And the emotional language that we use and the emotional language.
One was really interesting because there's this dichotomy that came up of the two most
frequently used words that we use in the blogs were both love and being sad or challenged.
So it was interesting to see what I talked about before with how I really was passionate about conservation.
I was my lifelong dream, but I kept facing hurdle after hurdle after hurdle that kept coming up in everyone's blogs, that they loved what they did.
They loved the plants. They loved animals. They loved the environment.
But they were so struck with the amount of challenges which led them to feel really sad.
So that was so interesting to kind of see my own personal experiences reflected in the data and the stories of the people in my community.
And what I also found super interesting was what inspires us is our own resilience.
And that kind of disturbs me in a way, because I feel like we shouldn't have to be so resilient.
But the fact that we think that we have overcome her too, after her to other after hurdle,
and we keep making it time and time again, it makes us believe that we can keep being resilient into the future.
So it was super interesting to take a look at these blog. And to see what came out of them and maybe how this this information,
this data could be useful to people in NGO sectors or businesses or companies or even counsellors and how to talk to conservationists in the future,
it's interesting to see what conservationists actually want and not just how society is at the moment.
That's super interesting. And I think it is a relationship that you describe between, you know,
resilience and just having already had hurdles and thinking that you can do it again somehow is quite linked to that.
Having this optimistic vision that even though you had hurdles, you still think that you'll you'll be able to face them again and keep moving on.
And I'm just wondering what makes you personally optimistic about the future of nature?
I'm optimistic because of the amazing people in my community. There's so many people who are so passionate about a diverse array of things.
There might be somebody that's life is devoted to this one small species of ant,
and they will sacrifice their hours in their sleep and their food and everything for this one species of end.
And I just feel like this commitment that we all have to nature all conservationists, it's like we're born with it.
It's like the passion is in our blood and there's no getting rid of that.
And I think that's why companies like to exploit us so much is because we will do anything to protect our planet.
And I think that is just so inspiring that maybe for every aspect of the natural world,
there's just somebody out there that's been so fascinated and encapsulated and just drawn in by it.
And maybe there's one obscure plant that nobody's heard of before has given somebody a whole life meaning.
And I just think that as long as we have such passionate people in the world, then there must be some hope for it.
And that's a beautiful vision. I love it. Absolutely.
It also leads quite well into our next question, which is the question that we ask everyone who comes on the podcast.
So you were talking about how everyone has potentially that kind of obsession with one little part of the natural world.
If you could make a case for one species, what would it be and why?
My case would be for conservationists.
Obviously, I just feel like people, especially in the conservation industry, we get a lot of flack for caring about humans.
I think humans are the enemy. And we talk about them humans this and like, why did they do that?
But I think that there's such a positive array of beautiful people that are trying really hard to make positive differences in this world.
And my personal belief is that if I can help conserve the conservationists,
then they will in turn conserve all the beautiful plants and animals and landscapes and habitats that we love so much.
So hopefully, I don't know if that's cheating because I don't actually have to go and save every end to plant myself.
But I really feel like it's time that the people who are investing so much into these plants and animals that they get some love back.
I love that answer. I do not consider it cheating personally.
No, definitely not. And, you know, it's still quite a big group of people to save.
So I think it's already quite a big job. It's not easy.
I'm not skimping out on the work. Exactly. You've got your work cut out for you.
And you've done so much already. And I think that's probably a brilliant note on which to end this episode, actually.
Well, it's been a great opportunity to come on and speak with you as well.
Thank you so much for coming. That was such an interesting discussion, Sophia.
I think it was really interesting to hear about the importance of creating safe spaces because I feel in conservation, failure is something we do.
We talk about even in the scientific world in general, you know, you don't publish a paper about having failed at something.
And so I think having the space to just share the struggles and the failures makes it a really important space for conservationists.
I completely agree. I mean, it seems like it has been a really important thing for a lot of people.
But I think there is a risk to sharing that and to being vulnerable.
And I think it's really cool that people are doing that and being brave in that way to share that.
And I think it really ties in with what she described, as well as this idea of conserving the conservationist,
because it's that that space where mental health issues are not necessarily talked about.
And being a conservationist means everyday you have to wake up trying to save
the planet or see species that are disappearing in front of your own eyes.
It can be really daunting. It can be really heavy. And so I think having this space to really be able to talk about all these different things,
which links in a way to the episode with Caroline about Eco and Zayat as well, is incredibly valuable.
Completely. And I love her kind of wide definition of conservationist in terms of you are a conservationist if
you care about the natural world and are taking some kind of action within your life to conserve it.
Right. Like, it doesn't have to be a professional thing.
Even if a lot of the issues that she started out trying to address were professionally related.
So I really like this definition of conservationists because it means that it's not only people who go to the field that gets to be a conservationist.
I feel in my sphere of science communication that when I transition initiative,
there was this question in my mind of am I still considered a conservationist?
Another, I'm not going to do fieldwork on. Another, I'm not, you know, saving a species.
So I think it's is just interesting to think of the diversity of experiences there are within that term of conservationists because it's just so wide.
So I really like this idea of a lawyer doing everything he can with recycling and making sure that he
buys the right thing is is somehow a conservationist because he is making all these different choices.
And I like the fact that that she related that very well in to this idea of perfectionism as well,
that if you if you are especially a conservationist, then you have to be perfect.
You have to walk the walk. But that can be really intense and that can become so much that you end up not being able to make a choice.
You know, you look at this label, but then it's from a different country and you have all these things coming in when you try to buy something.
But I think having this idea that doing something is enough you don't need to do it perfectly is just very freeing in that sense.
The level of love that she was describing that people talk about in their blogs,
I think feels very familiar and caring about something that much can actually make you into quite an angsty person.
And I actually don't think that's massively helpful when it's the people who
already care the most and are most geared towards trying to make a difference.
Exactly. And I think that really can lead to feeling of, you know, burning out.
So I think that's that's helpful to have this concepts in mind.
I also found it interesting in terms of what she was saying about professional conservation and some of the misperceptions that there are about it,
like the way that people think that conservation is. There is a side to being a conservationist, which is really difficult.
I feel like there's this kind of moral high ground that people assume around conservation.
And also they just think that you like out having adventures, like climbing trees, like swimming around all the time.
And there are elements of that. But it's also a bit more complicated.
I also love Jesse's passion. I feel like she feels all of this so strongly and has such a strong commitment to help conservationists.
Well, on that note, Sophia, I think that's it for this episode.
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This episode was funded by an E. S R c impact animation account grounds through the Investor of Oxford.
Original theme music composed and produced by Matthew.