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Home As Habitat, Garden As Wild with Tanya Loos
640 Plays7 days ago
I tell a story about how Jord and I narrowly avoided getting shot before introducing Tanya Loos – local treasure and legendary naturalist – for a deep and meaningful chat about wild life, and all life. We cover:
- How to be a nature positive pet owner
- Are cats evil?
- How to save a bunch of lives
- Gardens as habitat
- The housing crisis facing possums (and other critters)
- How to recklessly pursue your passion and make it your profession
- GETTING THE ANIMALS ON THE ARK
- How to avoid roadkill (even frogs)
- Bee feelings + monogamous lizards
- The intersection between conservation, permaculture & animal welfare
- Patreon Qs
- 24/7 nature connection
- Beetle Pace
LINKY POOS 🧙♀️
Living with Wildlife ~ Tanya Loos
Daylesford Nature Diary ~ Tanya Loos
Tanya on ABC Radio ~ Backyard Critters (every second Friday 9.50am)
Zoos Victoria Safe Cat, Safe Wildlife
***Support Reskillience on Patreon***
Frog sounds care of markushablizel -- https://freesound.org/s/32394/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 THANKS M8
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Transcript
Introduction to Resilience Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey, hey this is Katie and you're tuned into Rescilience, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't. These sound waves are lapping your way from beautiful, blustery Jara country in central Victoria, the unceded lands of the Jaja Wurrung people.
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm stoked to be back with you after the break and have so many splendid guests in the queue for this season.
Katie's Near-Miss Experience
00:00:36
Speaker
Before I introduce you to today's guest, I thought I'd share a tale about a little situation that occurred just a few hours after I recorded this interview.
00:00:45
Speaker
Jordan and I had gone to a nearby reservoir for a picnic dinner. One of our favourite bodies of water, vast and brown and windswept with soaring white-bellied sea eagles and pelicans, silver gulls and every genre of duck. We sat on the banks with a warm breeze ruffling our feathers and without another human insight.
00:01:08
Speaker
The reservoir is surrounded by farmland so it wasn't that much of a surprise to hear the crack of a shotgun somewhere behind us. It's pretty common around these parts but still mildly unnerving given that we were out in the open like sitting ducks. I turned in the direction of the sound to see a wallaby bounding across the hill fleeing from the danger. Then a few seconds later another shot was fired.
00:01:33
Speaker
louder closer and to my complete surprise pellets thuddered and scattered across the mud just meters to my right while others splashed into the water. Jordan and I dropped to the ground like some kind of dramatic action film mouthing to each other what the actual f*** We still don't exactly know what happened, but it's likely that whoever was shooting didn't realize we were there and just let a couple off without a clear line of sight, breaking every rule of responsible marksmanship.
Introducing Tanya Luz and Wildlife Themes
00:02:07
Speaker
But regardless of intent, the feeling of being shot at was interesting, especially in light of the conversation I just recorded with today's guest, Tanya Luz. Tanya is a bit of a local treasure and a long time hero of mine.
00:02:23
Speaker
She's a field naturalist, nature writer, and science communicator who also calls Jarrah Country home, sharing her passion for the wild world in books and columns and panels and on radio. Her latest book, Living with Wildlife, is the FAQ manual every household needs for those times you discover a frog in the dunny, a possum in the roof, or a koala in the swimming pool, which does happen. It is the guide to compassionate and practical coexistence.
00:02:53
Speaker
What I love is that Tanya champions a radically kind connection with wildlife, caring about them not just as markers of biodiversity or natural resources, but as individuals with rich inner worlds and important shit to do, just like us. We should, Anthrope amorphise, she says, that is, put ourselves in the shoes of the more than human community.
00:03:16
Speaker
asking what it's like to lose your tree hollow or your wetland or your mate beneath the wheels of a car and answering those questions with real and respectful changes to our homes and behaviours.
00:03:29
Speaker
The near miss at the reservoir shattered my intellectual empathy, if I can call it that, and offered a visceral animal taste of being in the firing line. I was the wallaby, the rabbit, the duck, the rue, the fox, the possum, the cockatoo, meeting with human carelessness. Humans have many weapons at our disposal.
00:03:50
Speaker
weapons like fences and cars and sparkling clean windows and even our bare hands if you're a frog. We have great power indeed and you know how that saying goes.
00:04:03
Speaker
I was deeply moved by this conversation with Tanya, rife as it is with helpful information and heartfelt sharings of her own. I couldn't think of a better way to ring in Season 4 of the podcast, and if these strong wildlife themes have your ears pricked, I've linked all things Tanya in the show notes.
Coexistence with Wildlife in Residential Areas
00:04:22
Speaker
Thanks to Tanya Luz for joining me, the podcast's patrons who keep the show afloat, and all of you excellent listeners. I'm really excited to share this one with you. Enjoy.
00:04:37
Speaker
Gorgeous. Ah, and it's so wonderful to have you here, Tanya. It's, as I said, a complete treat for the guest to come to my little part of the world. Thanks, Katie. Yeah, and you've already interacted with our one and only one-eyed cat, and he has given his approval for you to be here. And I was thinking, oh, this is ironic that um we have this free-ranging cat, and I'm going to be speaking with you about making room and being considerate people re-wildlife. So yeah, I mean, what are what are your thoughts on having a cat? Maybe that's a good place to start.
00:05:13
Speaker
Ah well yeah that is a good place to start because I'm all about animals you know and how we share our lives with animals and I'm a massive like pet owner so I have a dog and people like um hate on cats for their effect on wildlife so much but dogs also have such a sometimes negative effect on wildlife like I keep my poodle on a lead pretty much all summer because of the skinks and the snakes and the wobbies and stuff like that so if your cat wasn't one-eyed I'd probably be like oh please keep it inside because all the research they put these cameras on cats and people say oh my cat only
00:05:59
Speaker
kills something occasionally. And they worked out with the cameras is that the the trophies are just the tiniest proportion of what the cat actually kills. Like the thing they proudly bring to the back door and say, meow! Yeah, exactly. yeah But having said that, read reading all the studies, it's true, we all know cats have really different personalities. And when they did these cameras on the cats, they did find that some cats actually didn't catch anything. It was true in that case and then other cats were just like roaming 10 to 15 kilometers and just catching the most huge. array Some cats prefer like ground mammals like skinks and b lizards and stuff and then others are just obsessed with birds and so a one-eyed cat is a really like I think that's fine.
00:06:55
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I mean he's old, he's got one eye. He's adorable. He's adorbs, he's ginger. We need more recognition of ginger people and entities in the world because we've been through a lot. I have seen him cowering in the garden while the sparrows berate him and he hates the Corellas. They fly over really low from the fields over here and he he's like hunched down and yeah terrified so I think I think he's a bit of a softie. But yeah, I did have that conflict around wanting to attract small birds into this backyard and not wanting to magnetise them towards, you know, some kind of ill fate. But yeah, that that's really um an interesting aside tenure around like dogs also being a big threat to wildlife and in your book Living with Wildlife, of which we have two copies here because it's
Insights from Tanya's Book on Wildlife Conservation
00:07:44
Speaker
just that good. And I hope that everyone can have a copy on hand because it's also a reference book, a manual.
00:07:50
Speaker
um for Australians in particular but um yeah I was really intrigued by that the canine pressure on our wildlife yeah can you talk a bit more about that yeah sure so with the cats everyone it's like how many wild how much wildlife does a cat kill kind of thing it's all about the kills And that's a big problem, you know, with ring-tailed possums and stuff like that. But with with the dogs, it's not just the killing, it's also the chasing. So I did a bit of a thought exercise a few years ago at my place because I live on a bush block near Dalsford.
00:08:25
Speaker
And at the time I had two dogs and I live on six acres and my neighbor had two dogs. And then I looked at an aerial photo and I was thinking about the Wallaby mother, like Wallaby with a baby and in her pouch and she's like, when, when I'm home, the dogs are inside and then the wildlife can be in the garden. They're never, any dogs aren't allowed out without supervision.
00:08:52
Speaker
that's at any time of year but I was thinking about it what it must be like for this this female wallaby because if you look at an aerial view there was like my neighbors got a few dogs the person up the road's got five dogs because they're that they do rescue and there was 22 dogs within just a couple of streets and so some of those dogs would chase the mother and interrupt her feeding and stuff like that and it's the same with like dogs chasing wildlife on beaches or any nesting birds and so because like people would understand who are listening that it's stress can cause a lot of health problems and issues for wildlife and I think that's the big thing with
00:09:38
Speaker
with dogs and so generally a wildlife friendly dog is one that is under 10 kilograms and either trained to leave wildlife alone which I hear is possible but I haven't actually done that myself or supervised or contained and so there's a lot of talk about containing cats could be equally applied to dogs because there are responsibility they shouldn't be wandering and they shouldn't be left to their own devices because as people know dogs also team up in little gangs and you get the naughty dog taking the other dogs out to go and chase kangaroos and yeah that can end pretty badly as well yeah yeah that putting ourselves in the the shoes of the wildlife in question i was at the beach recently i was watching i think it was a german pointer
00:10:32
Speaker
ah an incredible athlete of a dog just running back and forth and back and forth chasing the welcome swallows. ah yeah And they were obviously feeding along.
00:10:43
Speaker
the you know the shoreline. And it's kind of you know on first glance, oh, that's look at them playing. That's so cute. That dog is incredible. But I was like, man, that bird is being so stressed right now. And I know that especially little birds, they have a finite amount of energy or their energy requirements are really high to kind of maintain functions. So yeah, that that perspective that you bring in around like educating, helping us understand the life cycle and the way that other beings are living. And then how our chosen friends, our pals, our best buddies are affecting those beautiful creatures is so refreshing. And I love that about your book. And I mean, yeah, what was your, what was your intention writing, living with wildlife? Oh yeah. I've always taken an approach with animals that they've got in their lives,
00:11:35
Speaker
shit to do there's shit to do. They're trying to um operate um like we've got a shared landscape and when you observe wildlife and then see how your actions are interfacing with their lives and the the list that they've got to do which if people aren't aware that's things like finding food.
00:11:57
Speaker
finding shelter, seeking a mate, raising their young, staying cool, getting warm, all of those things and yeah so I'm pretty animal-centric but um I was writing a column for a local paper for many years so as happens in small communities I was getting a lot of questions from people going I've got an injured animal, what
Human Expansion and Coexistence with Nature
00:12:22
Speaker
do I do? Or there's a snake in my garden, what do I do? And so there were these sort of FAQs, Frequently Asked Questions, and I realised that there wasn't really any book out there. The last one was um Wild Neighbours by Ian Temby, who actually helped, was a great mentor with the book, and that came out in 2008.
00:12:45
Speaker
So it's a bit of an update in in that regard. and But the core reason I've written the book is simply to save lives. Some of the simple actions that people can take in the book will help wildlife, whether they're endangered or common. And so, you know, I did a talk for Camp Aspie Valley Landcare and there was a guy there who'd been living in the same house for over 20 years, every spring.
00:13:12
Speaker
dozens of birds hit the windows um on his property and die and he's never had the, he's really intelligent but he's never had the skills or wherewithal to find out what to do about that and in the talk I just talked about how if you can put simple patterns on your windows with soap then that reduces the strike by 99, 100% and so when he said to me after the talk, oh Tanya I'm gonna do that now, I was like that's why I've written it. Yeah, yeah. And it is beautifully simple, some of those recommendations and
00:13:49
Speaker
like common sense seems to be, it's not always common and I know I've been in situations encountering an injured animal or an orphan duckling or a duckling without its parents in the vicinity and just not knowing what to do and kind of all I had to reference was little kids books about ducklings. Do I put it in water? yeah Do I try and feed it? like The basic literacy isn't there for a lot of us.
00:14:13
Speaker
No, that's right and a lot of people turn to social media or their friends or they just act on their intuition and it usually involves feeding the animal. An analogy I like to use is if when a human is in a car accident the paramedics don't arrive with cups of tea and some snacks.
00:14:34
Speaker
they're not like oh wow you've been injured would you do do you want honey with your tea they're actually looking at you knowing you're highly stressed in a stressful situation and you need to be examined by someone like i was gonna say a vet but no So it's the same with wildlife. It's not what what do I feed it, it's who do I call to get the animal into the care that it needs because there's some pretty specialized knowledge like I saw her on Facebook and I didn't want to say anything because it's always with the bestest of intentions but this possum had turned up a ringtail possum that they felt there was something not quite right with it and so they were feeding it fruit.
00:15:16
Speaker
and built a home for it and then it died a couple of days later and these people are super intelligent amazing people they they are really cool people i love them but um ringtail possums have a really specific dietary requirement in that if they eat what i call human fruit like melon or these rich tropical fruits their um gut flora can't handle it and they get bloat and they just die and my feeling was is that if the possum seemed tame then that means something's wrong with it and often cat attacks occur to ringtails and they're so it' it's the tiniest little scritch and then they they get infected
00:15:59
Speaker
and so that possum needed to be taken to a vet immediately to go on antibiotics and they fact in fact the wildlife people say if there's been any interaction between a cat and a possum it needs to go to ah a vet um as soon as possible but yeah again it's that ah people have that have really good intentions yeah yeah yeah So I love that that motivation of saving lives, which your book has at its core. But is there a bigger story around us being in these spaces to begin with and the loss of habitat that's occurring and the reason that maybe we're interfacing more with some of these creatures now? Yeah yeah so in the introduction I talk about when I was a kid bird watching this is in Queensland in Caloundra it was the 80s so I just toddle off on my bike every day by myself and just go wandering around in swamps and mangroves and just loving on nature and one day I drove to um cycled to my favorite spot and it had all been bulldozed for a another canal style development
00:17:09
Speaker
and you know what 11 year olds are like they are so moral and I was just crying going this is so wrong and I knew it was for houses so I knew that it wasn't like got we love you van bush um I knew it wasn't like it wasn't like people going out and and being cruel to animals or willingly destroying habitat it was just a factor of the it was like ah a byproduct of modern civilization or whatever you'd call it where
00:17:46
Speaker
Houses are built on what we would call natural land. And so as an 11, 10 year old, I was looking around at all the streets and roads and houses and shops and servos and going, oh my God, all of this was natural habitat for wildlife before.
00:18:06
Speaker
And so one might think, oh, well that's really, really, really depressing. But it actually spurred me to think more broadly about how humans and nature can share the landscape that we're in. Because humans aren't going away, unfortunately, if I could say that. We're not going away. that But there's so much wildlife here. and so There's a couple of different things that happen. There's those new style developments around Melbourne you can see them growing across the grasslands and so there's a weird thing happening where you'll actually end up with possums and flying foxes coming to those new areas and so I think it's a responsibility of people who live there to make sure is that no harm comes to those animals coming and then the other
00:18:57
Speaker
thing is that, and we see this with koalas and southeast Queensland and stuff, we're going into their habitat, so the but bushland, and it's happening in Ballarat as well, you can see it. That housing is encroaching on existing wildlife habitat and so again it's like in the book talking about animals having lives and stuff that they've got to do, they've also got a home range And that can be that can intersect with our garden and their home range in in such an interesting way, like for ah like a a skink. Your garden might be their entire world. So then you are like almost like this overlord or goddess of their world. And so look at this amazing opportunity to make sure you're hosting this lizard so that it can live for its full 20, 30 years.
00:19:48
Speaker
And it may have even been living there before you moved in. And then the other thing is, it's like a great head of flying fox. you can ah They go all the way from um Far North Queensland to Adelaide and it's one continuous population. So your garden could be like a stopover. So then you're like a friendly host for them.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, being a friendly host is just, it's such a beautiful reframe. What was the creature, is it like a type of possum in WA, the endangered? Oh yeah, yeah. And that idea of like, if you've got this, this critter, the cat's now climbing all through the van, um he wants to participate, this is his special day. But yeah, if if you have this beautiful creature in, in your environment, this is, this is a marvelous thing, and you can be part of the the protection yeah hes yeah so people often think that wildlife needs natural areas when i say natural areas like bushland um like a reserve or a national park and the animal you're referring to is the critically endangered western ringtail possum
00:20:52
Speaker
which is much like our the eastern ringtail possum but its numbers have fallen massively mainly because of you know the usual things that affect so many of our wildlife and vehicle or car strike but they did this amazing study where they're like hang on these possums are really in people's gardens in Albany WA And they worked out, um they assumed with the radio tracking of these possums that these possums would be going from people's gardens to the reserves and back that would be their home ranges and that the possums would prefer gardens that had more native plantings or indigenous locally occurring plants.
00:21:33
Speaker
And what they found is is that it was really the habitat structure. So if a garden had the right amount of bushiness from whatever plant that might be, then the possum was happy there and was living its whole life.
00:21:48
Speaker
within people's gardens. And it's the same with koalas in southeast Queensland. Their whole life is going across people's gardens. And so, you know, you you're you're like, I'm a land manager for an endangered species, but you're just talking about your backyard. Yeah. I'm the possum sheriff. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, some fascinating insights around even how we can create those structures and not even necessarily having to know every single thing about the type of native plant that's gonna facilitate this being's life. It's more about having something there at all and even our own attitude to sharing.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. um I like the phrase, if you don't mind, they don't mind. so ah So much of the book is about just trying to work out. Yeah, is it a problem? And if it's not, then it's not, you know, and you're coexisting. And so um we have two species of possum living at our place.
00:22:51
Speaker
and both of them live in the walls. We've got the mountain brushtail possum which is like a hefty cold climate version of the eastern brushtail and we've also got ringtails and um they've been living in our roof in different parts of the house for 20 years and it's been fine but um my husband's on the spectrum and unfortunately there's I don't know which species it
Tanya's Emotional Connection to Nature
00:23:16
Speaker
is but there's a possum coming in above ah around 10 o'clock between 10 and 11 because they have really regular habits and making these really full-on knocking noises and he's you can just see his brain go um so that's a case of like well we didn't mind but possibly we do mind but there is a guy who I'm dying to meet from Blackwood I forget his name
00:23:42
Speaker
But he runs this little business called Compassionate Exclusion and Rescue and what he does is he actually comes to people's houses and works out where the possums are coming in and out and then does the required handyman woman work to um exclude the possum and then helps with mess boxes and stuff like that. So we might give him a call at some point.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think that possums have a particular penchant for doing construction work above one's head just on the cusp of sleep. That's right. They're really good at that. I know, and we're like, it's, there's such strange sounds and it's like, it sounds like he's using tools.
00:24:22
Speaker
That's definitely an impact driver. Yeah, totally. What is the... Just some myth busting here. Are possums messing shit up upstairs? Are they chewing wires? Are they excavating? What are they actually doing?
00:24:36
Speaker
Look, I'd love her like a one of those cameras to see what it's doing because the noise is so weird. But generally, no, they're not chewing the wires. It's not like rats where there's a danger for the electrical wiring. So they get framed, but rats might be more of a culprit in the destruction. Definitely. Yeah. And one of the most important things to do when you have weird noises and annoying things happening in your roof is work out what species it could be.
00:25:02
Speaker
You kind of use a bit of detective work for that sometimes and so it might be recording their calls or watching when they leave and come back and or it might be looking at their scats to try and work out but yeah the the the rats have this distinctive running where they're like running around you know and dooo-oooooooo do whereas the possums are more like um clomp clomp clomp clomp yeah that's right yeah well i feel like just pausing on the possum thing for a minute because i would wager that a lot of folks listening either live rurally or semi-rurally or have experienced the joys of a possum in their walls or a roof at some point and
00:25:46
Speaker
I think there's a lot of erroneous or just like false information out there about how to go about dealing with the possum in air quotes. Yeah, this this compassionate thread that runs through your book is beautiful and I certainly learned something about what happens when we think we can just relocate a possum. Yes, yeah, yeah. So that thing of animals having their to-do list and their lives, it means that they also have a space in which they do all of those things. It could be a territory or a home range. A study in, I think it was the 80s, they measured the fate of possums that were relocated into bushland.
00:26:25
Speaker
into seemingly good habitat and they nearly all died because they didn't know where to find shelter, didn't know where to find water, they didn't know where to find their food sources, they were stressed out of their minds and in ah in a city situation often that means they just go into someone else's roof.
00:26:44
Speaker
um The other things that happens is possums fight as well. And um another thing to bear in mind with possums is that they're actually declining massively out in the so-called natural areas. And so they've sort of come to us for help in a way because our our roofs are providing the habitat that they've lost because of the loss of hollow-bearing trees throughout the landscape. That's the part that i I love in terms of that sentiment but also loathe because it's tragic. Yeah, I was hoping you were going to bring that in Tanya because I didn't realise and even the name common rush tale kind of evokes this sense of abundance and ah whatever like they're just a pest but the idea that things are happening out there that are then pushing them you know closer to us and the plea perhaps for for habitat with us as their their friendly hosts
00:27:36
Speaker
kind of gave me such a sense of heartbreak in a way too. I would love to see the word common taken out of any name for any animal because the common donut is now threatened. kind A little marsupial. Yeah a little marsupial, gorgeous little friend but yeah rarely seen and not doing very well.
00:27:56
Speaker
common ringtail pro possum. They're okay now, but they don't respond very well to heat and i'm I'm afraid for them with the with the rising climate and increase in population and it was more cats and more vehicles. Yeah, that kind of thing. So I wouldn't I'd rather them just be called Eastern ringtail. So a lot of people um a lot of biologists and ecologists are starting to call things Eastern or Western rather than common. And the common wombat is now called the bare-nosed wombat, so that's really good. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating the way that our language shapes our attitudes and behaviours. Yeah. So Tanya, back to your story, which I'm curious to hear more about. You mentioned just being aghast as an 11 year old and seeing that destruction of your beloved habitat. So where did that take you?
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah well I was already a mad keen feared naturalist like obsessed with nature so I was on this trajectory anyway um like so many people that work in the environment sector now it's because of some spark when they were a kid where they went that is so cool or so beautiful, I just can't not look at it or be a part of it. So that's been a huge part of my life, is that noticing. And I've always been an admirer of the work of Gerald Doral. He wrote My Family and Other Animals and a Bible, not a Bible, but ah a book that I refer to as a Bible, which is The Amateur Naturalist. And one of the key
00:29:34
Speaker
things in there. he He goes through all these different habitats like forests and woodland, beaches, seashores but he also includes house and backyard and so from a kid I had this real sense that wildlife and nature isn't out there it's also with us so I've always been interested in the animals that intersect with our lives and these days it's called urban wildlife ecology or urban ecology but it's kind of weird because the urban ecology it occurs it's the interface between humans wherever because the I talk in the book about you know animals in our backyard but that could equally be in capital cities
00:30:18
Speaker
in large regional towns or on bush blocks or farms. So I started doing a double degree of biology and English but I was really bad at maths so bad and so I ended up dropping the science and then yeah I just sort of stayed obsessed with nature and ended up working in the environment industry just from being self-taught as happens for like some amazing leading a degree. It's just their passion and and being self-taught. So I've been a member of field naturalist groups and Birdlife Australia and all of that forever. I went back to uni in 2008 and studied ornithology.
00:31:05
Speaker
which is the study of birds. And so then that gave me a bit more fuel, I suppose, to work in an environment where I was being paid to count the birds. So I was working for Connecting Country, which is based in Castlemaine. Amazing. But I always did animal stuff and communications and and writing in my spare time. Yeah. Yeah. And I i very much appreciate your writing as ah as a writer and the way that you It's such a kind ah kind expression of things I find, like kind to the reader and kind to the the stories you're telling and the subjects of those stories. So I really noticed that as someone who's also very bookish and interested in the written word. It's it's cool to hear that that idea of you kind of doing your dirt time rather than the scholarly time and that kind of guiding passion and curiosity as opposed to a piece of paper qualifying you.
00:32:02
Speaker
yeah and do Yeah, and I've always loved writing because Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough, I love their writing and I've always written in a journal since I was a kid. I've always enjoyed writing in a way that's conversational, a conversational tone and I really like people.
00:32:22
Speaker
A lot of nature and wildlife people kind of hate people, whereas I tend to like people first. You know, in my audience who I write for are people who are already care and for nature a bit or are curious and they just want to know more. So it makes sense to me to be um to have and thank you for what you're saying about the kindness because that's really important to me bringing it back to cats they've actually done scientific studies that if you shame cat owners or demonize them or just say cats are horrible it doesn't work at all and Zoos Victoria has this great program called Safe Cat, Safe Wildlife and that like works on the principles of like an inside cat is a happy cat
00:33:10
Speaker
and we all love cats and you you saw as I got here I love cats you know I think they're wonderful and so there's no point just hating on cat owners so one thing yeah you asked a lot of questions about the wild world but maybe less so about your inner world and so feel free to take this where you will but in terms of kind of running on running with that theme about our careers and our niche in this world and something I love digging into with people is why they do what they do, how they kind of persist in that and how it feels to do that because this kind of poorly formed belief that I have is the work of our times has something to do with finding out our niches in the ecosystem and kind of expressing something from a deep place of, you know, heartbreak and authenticity and connection as opposed to a desk job that you're that compartmentalizing, which I know is is totally necessary for the vast number of people. but
00:34:08
Speaker
I have that sense with people like yourself that your your life is your work and your work is your your your life and there's an entanglement there. So I suppose what I'm asking Tanya is a kind of indirect question around what that feels like, how other people might pursue their passions with that sense of maybe like you have to be a bit reckless in this world to really kind of follow your heart. So I wonder if there's something in there that you could speak to. Yeah, sure. So I often say with wildlife and nature noticing is that I cannot turn it off.
00:34:43
Speaker
So it's always there, no matter where I am. I'm like, oh, that looks like an interesting grasshopper or um looking at how people are interacting with wildlife and also caring. Okay. So on a deep personal level, have two major emotions, which is joy and love and grief.
00:35:07
Speaker
And the grief is, like, with me all the time about, like, oh, missed opportunity, you know, because interspecies coexistence is so possible, and other cultures did it, and grief that people, a lot of them mean money-hoarding horrid people that are so powerful in the world right now.
00:35:34
Speaker
if they knew the joy of watching birds at the birdbath or what it feels like to, ah you know, a hakea and then the yellow-tailed cockatoos come and eat the thing, if they knew those joys maybe they'd be less mercenary and horrid. So there's a grief at that missed opportunity but then there's this joy and this love where it's basically like if I'm feeling down at all all I need to do is go for a walk and if I've seen a really cool beetle and put it on iNaturalist I'm good, I'm good or ah you know i'm I'm happy again and as you say my work and my life and my my my hobbies and my relaxation and I often think I need to do something different
00:36:21
Speaker
so i'm like okay so i'll do embroidery but it's about a beetle you know it's a beetle or something you know then you know i'll go away and then it's like oh it's an amazing nature experience and so sometimes i joke that if i could turn it all off and not care for a week that would be really interesting to see what would happen but I wouldn't have it any other way because you know that saying it's better to love to have lost than to have never loved at all or whatever I feel that way with having a wildlife and nature connection and so
00:36:57
Speaker
There's a couple of things that I do to try and not freak out because you know things are pretty intense with ecosystem collapse and climate change and I like to look at geological time and think the conservation and coexistence efforts that we do now are almost like making sure there's enough animals on the arc, you know, as we're traveling through, you know, navigating this time together and then that other saying we're all in this together, like that COVID thing, you know, we're all in this
Challenges and Motivations in Wildlife Writing
00:37:32
Speaker
together. But yeah, in terms of giving people the passion and bravery to do what they feel that they need to do, I think in so many cases,
00:37:46
Speaker
If you're fully compelled, you can't not do it, if you know what I mean. I'm fortunate in that I've had a little bit of economic security in that my dad used to work in the oil industry. Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but he was manager of mining and exploration and he died of BP Vietnam.
00:38:07
Speaker
and so he Oh no, he was CEO then. Anyway, he died in in the 90s and left me a bit of an inheritance. And so that and that enabled me to work part time for all these environmental organizations as I was getting more and more skilled in this space.
00:38:24
Speaker
And so it is a privilege to be able to worry about animals all the time. And I just want to acknowledge that. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. ah Is it an addendum? Something you had? I think so. Yeah, or a clause. Just want to point out. yeah Yeah, well, actually, one question I had was the bravery it takes to be an author. And part of that is the economic or financial courage because it isn't it's it's so hilarious this this idea that we have this association oh you've got a book you must be rolling in cash or living on a mattress of money it's like do you know you don't really make anything from writing a book it's I mean why do you write a book it's I know for myself it would be the satisfaction or the creative fulfillment of that process but
00:39:10
Speaker
Does it take bravery to to create something that big? Yeah. So it was a three year project that was in sort of 2021. And I'm the main economic like breadwinner in our family, me and my husband. And so I knew I needed to work as well. And so I worked as a busy biodiversity project officer four days a week.
00:39:34
Speaker
and then wrote the book on the weekends and so I don't like working at night and so for two years I pretty much had one day off a week and I didn't go away anywhere or do anything except for occasional tiny little breakouts but yeah so it's a huge project and and commitment of time and as you say it's not people would say to me oh did they give you an advance no CSIRO Publishing is a not-for-profit publisher you know they need to they they do a whole book on like sea lice of southeastern Australia they're never gonna make their money back or like mosquitoes of Australia. I'll link to these books too so everyone can just rush to buy them. That's right. So um yeah, not for money at all. it's so that I love books though. I love the feel of them. I love the look of them. I've got a groaning bookshelf. I've got masses of these books, CSIRO Publishing Guide books. And so for me, it's the honor and the privilege of joining the authors that I love.
00:40:41
Speaker
and And then the frisson of seeing your name on a, you know, I've been going to all the bookstores and like doing promotion standing next to my book like, yeah. And so, and then what the book does then is it becomes a um ah more tangible resource articles or blogs or social media are ephemeral. Whereas the printed book I feel has so much to offer as an ongoing resource for people. Yeah. And so, and then having published the book, now I'm getting the opportunity to speak to people such as yourself and get the message out there in such a big way. So it's 100 million percent worth the time.
00:41:22
Speaker
oh you're just such a delightful wordsmith even in person which I sometimes think I can hide on the page because I've got time to cogitate and like think of my think of my quips but um you're also just as the most in person which is so great. um' nice I wanted to talk about your other book too Tanya which is Delphin's Nature a Diary which I had when I first moved to Hepburn which was completely and surprisingly invaluable to me because I it was in like little bookshelf in the tea house where I was living. And I thought, what is this little book? And it actually became my anchor through the seasons and a way to discover all of these hidden treasures in my local environment. And so I not only wanted to make reference to this just a like understatedly wonderful book, but also this idea of pushing back against universality in terms of creating something that the whole world can look at and and understand and reference and apply.
00:42:21
Speaker
And I thought this book is so close to my heart in its contextualness. Like it is for people living in this area and probably is going to feel a bit odd to anyone outside the region. And I don't know, I just wanted to bring that in around like pushing back against kind of homogenizing everything and making it universal or for for everybody. It's like.
00:42:44
Speaker
this is actually a place based, a work that's come out of place. Yeah. A hundred percent. And so, yeah, I'm so glad to hear how much you enjoyed it. Cause like I wrote, the book came out in 2013 and it's still being sold at paradise bookstore. And I still sell it on my website. Oh, we love paradise books. Yeah. harddise yeah um And Yeah, it's so much about what you see around you every day and what that feels like and what that means. And I'd like to see little books like that written for every area because that's about the wombat forest. So the things that people see, hear, feel from that book, it's completely different to Castlemaine.
00:43:34
Speaker
But what I found was really cool, I mentioned the Holy Goat women before, they would give the the book to all their overseas visitors as a little gift of here's a little bit of Australia for you, you know, because I talk about the so-called common animals as well, animals that people might encounter or see and just and I've really tried to make each one like a little story so it's like I also hear from parents saying I read it to my kids you know and um yeah I love that. Totally, totally and that storytelling is such a huge part of it and just for everyone listening this book runs through six seasons on Jojo war on country and yeah um the season we're in right now I guess we're cusping between the summer
00:44:23
Speaker
sections. Yeah, as you say, there's some familiar friends in there and then there's some other things like little toadlets yeah and critters I never would have, would have beheld otherwise. As a science communicator, as ah a nature writer, as a lover of of all creatures, great and small, it's a simple question, but what do you want people to
Future of Compassionate Coexistence
00:44:43
Speaker
know? Maybe there's a few different things that are the kind of essence of your philosophy and that message that you're really wanting to land with people.
00:44:51
Speaker
with this book or with the other one? With your work. Oh, okay. So main, the main things are notice, learn and understand and then act.
00:45:04
Speaker
So it's that simple. Yeah. And where where does that take people? Well, I know a lot of your listeners are gardeners. And so there's a understanding and underlying premise in my work that we have a responsibility, a shared responsibility to wildlife, to be custodians, to be housemates, to be good hosts and stuff like that. And so the responsibility is like, if you have a problem that keeps happening, like you've got a vegetable garden that is constantly being attacked by and or eaten by possums. The problem isn't the possum, the problem is how you've set up your garden. And so you always look to what can the human do. You know, we've got to put our big girl pants on or whatever and do the right thing by the wildlife rather than
00:46:01
Speaker
acting against the wildlife or demonizing the wildlife and it's like the same with responsibility of pets or how we drive. I think that would be the biggest thing is like, yeah, it's like ask yourself what can we do in this funny old planetary situation that we find ourselves.
00:46:23
Speaker
And if you were to be unreasonably idealistic about this shared life that, as you said, that grief that you hold around has the ship sailed, what if it was still on the dock and we could board? God, i'm I'm taking this metaphor. no i love I'm running with it. But like, where could we go, Tanya?
00:46:46
Speaker
Well I think that's such a great question but I think it's so many levels as a human culture first of all we have to acknowledge that without wildlife and nature we don't exist and I think until all tiers of government and society and culture accept that it's very hard um so in a perfect I used to always dream about what I'd call a benevolent green dictator, which is someone who's caring and lovely, but basically steps in and stops neoliberal capitalism.
00:47:27
Speaker
and basically says this is how we're going to be this is how we're going to act with compassion this is how we're going to treat each other both humans and because once you once once you put a capitalist view on things everything's about money and wildlife and animals or monetary units and And I know the permaculture principles are very much trying to get away from that. um So yeah, that would be the the higher higher arching thing. Then it's about kind of like how we design our cities and suburbs and even houses. So imagine if all houses had to have windows that were treated
00:48:10
Speaker
so that the birds could see the windows and then you could stop but bird strike over the whole world or you know banning things like the things that platypus get stuck in and you know you can't sell them or huge thing is wildlife friendly netting So apparently gray-headed flying foxes and other animals get caught in it terribly. And even though it's banned, it's still being sold and it's still being used. And there's no money for actually enforcing that. So I would also like to see, in the same way you've got the TAC that has that levy,
00:48:47
Speaker
and there should be a wildlife levy in that that everyone or the government someone should pay for it basically so there's masses of education around wildlife how to drive at Mission Beach because of the the cassowaries you know giving everyone money so that they they can build their own cat catio governments and councils and they need to support the people economically to make the changes that are required it's not just the onus even the book is ah even though the books about the individual i can see the way forward for a world where there's a coexistence and a shared landscape it has to come from legislation and economics as well yeah wonderfully said yeah and um just to
00:49:34
Speaker
fill in the detail for a sec, bird strikes against windows, what is the what are the numbers we're talking?
Reducing Roadkill: Practical Tips
00:49:41
Speaker
There's not much data because it's quite difficult because when a bird is hit when a bird hits a window and it's dead, it's not recorded. yeah So it's recorded by museums and wildlife carers and stuff like that. So I don't know. it's a It's a massive problem. It's a massive problem and it's across all sorts of different species, even you know critically endangered swift parrots. Yeah it's a huge problem over in the US so they've actually and Canada so Canada particularly has got all this amazing um legislation making sure that windows are treated when new buildings are coming up and also all this monetary support for retrofitting
00:50:21
Speaker
So that's that's sort of where we need to go yeah but it's quite a different situation because over in in in Canada and the US you've got those huge migrations whereas here the more bird strike happens when we're living, when we're moving into bushland areas and so we're at the bushland suburban interface and the birds don't recognize the windows. A quick but highly relevant question around vehicles and driving what are some things people can do so they're not running over our friends? Yeah so I live as I said near Dalsford and so you know you go to a gig in Castlemaine and go to the taproom I drive at night about 70 kilometers an hour
00:51:06
Speaker
and that often means you have to pull over because there's people behind you getting really annoyed so then you let them pass. 70 I've worked out is about the sweet spot so that you can scan the sides of the road and slow down if need be because if you're going faster than that and you break, you've got someone behind you, it sort of gets dangerous and people need to remember that you're not supposed to swerve because people die because they're trying to avoid wildlife which is lovely but awful, you know, we don't want that. So you need to drive slow enough and so, and and it's also about what's going on in the environment at the time. So there's certain nights I call frog nights and it's when it's, the temperature's about 15
00:51:54
Speaker
18 degrees and it's raining a bit you get frogs all over the road and so coming back when I was doing uni in Melbourne I'd ring my husband and I'd say Chris I'm not going to be back till after 12 30 because it's a frog night 40 to 50 kilometres an hour between the train station and home because I can see the frogs in the headlights. So I'm driving around them. Okay, so I know that's a lot of people wouldn't do that, but that's just a kind of thing. It's like it's the same with when it's a warm day and all the lizards are out. You got to drive way slower and keep your eye on the on the road above like in front of you so that you can like drive around them or in the case of skinks and that you can help them off the road or long necked turtles on migration. So those things are seasonal.
00:52:46
Speaker
So yeah, the more you can have that sense of place and what's going on in the wildlife around you, like there's certain times of year when the young koalas are dispersing. So slow down is the main thing. They did all these studies and they worked out that if they've reduced the speed limit to 80, everywhere they would reduce roadkill by 80 percent everywhere. So it's just our love of speed that's causing all of that massive carnage. The other thing is to have something ready, have your wildlife rescue numbers ready in your phone for Victorians. That's Wildlife Victoria.
00:53:26
Speaker
And then the other thing is is to have gloves and a pillowcase and stuff like I drove past a dead duck and when I came back there was ah a beautiful bird of prey, a swamp parrier eating it and so that swamp parrier is in risk of getting run over itself so a good idea and this this this duck had already been run over quite a few times so I had to actually peel it off the road so Uh, quite awful if you squeamish, but I got that off the road so that other animals wouldn't be killed as well. So that's another really helpful thing and really important, particularly in areas like Tassie because of all the Tassie devils and the quolls is like, if something's been killed and wedge-tailed eagles, all of that. So moving those killed animals off the road is also, but obviously for any listeners, your safety is very important on a road. So keep aware. yeah yeah I love your commitment to the frog people and I like to engage in some benevolent brainwashing on this podcast around like little things matter too and I don't know what an earwigs perception is or their perspective is but I know they have family structures and when people say oh such and such doesn't feel anything I just don't understand what the logic of that would be from an an evolutionary perspective because
00:54:53
Speaker
our feedback around like staying alive is pain.
Animal Emotions and Empathy Across Species
00:54:56
Speaker
That's right. So I'm just all for the small ones. And I love talking about that on the air because it just seems like the sizest thing that we've got going on. Yeah. Yeah. If anyone's rescued insects from the bird bath,
00:55:11
Speaker
and you you pick it up and you can see them they they they they groom their antennae they get the thing here and then they fly off and they used to say that anthropomorphism was bad which is the assigning of human emotions to to animals that's just so out old-fashioned because now they've worked out that emotions are experienced across so many species and that intelligence and also um yeah feelings even in bees and things like that they just the the science the science keeps coming through and just saying no oh whoops we have to rewrite the book on what we thought we knew about what animals are feeling and you know like lizards you know they have that some of them are really social and have monogamous relationships and the kids stay back and help the raise the new kids and they all like lie together in these like cuddle piles you know so and we thought lizards were you know cord-blooded and didn't have feelings and
00:56:18
Speaker
And same with fish, you know, how we demonize fish and treat them is just appalling because we don't, as mammals, we think, oh, well, they, you know, they don't, they're not the same as us. They're scaly, they're slimy, whatever. But they also have these incredibly rich inner lives and emotions. Oh.
00:56:39
Speaker
I could get started on the fish because this has been an area that we're increasingly interested in by virtue of George trying to learn to fish, but we also are animal lovers and those two things are really hard to put together when you're you're trying to avoid the industrial food system and hunt and procure your like face into the reality of wanting to eat animal protein. And then researching, I was researching the fishing industry. I'm like, well, how do they humanely kill fish? No, there's actually no regulation. Well, that I'm aware of around that. And it's just asphyxiation on the deck a lot of the time. yeah And when you, when you are there with a fish, you can see yeah the emotion in that creature. And I'm, I'm appalled as well at the little
00:57:29
Speaker
questions that are being asked of that whole world and yeah I love fish. I know I love fish too. When I i got a scholarship to do a honours at Federation Uni and it was studying the relationship between a really cool bird, a red-browed tree creeper and fire like planned burning and I was going to look at the insects that it ate on trees that had not been burnt for a really long time, trees medium burnt and then trees more recently burnt. But when I found out that I had to collect the insect biomass with quotes and kill them all to measure the biomass and that there was no ethics
00:58:13
Speaker
requirement I just thought of all the cute katydids and the cute uh the beetles and just all these dudes and dudettes and I and so I dropped out I just went that's that's not for me for that reason because we've all got to decide what level of killing that we want to do you know or how we want to participate I don't eat fish but if I was going to eat fish I'd probably have an aquaculture aquaponics set up and then have fish at home and then kill them ah with a blunt force trauma to the head is always the most ethical way to kill an animal. And I do talk about that in my book when it comes to rodents and stuff like that. It's pretty hard to say no killing never. You know what I mean? I've been a vegetarian in the past and
00:59:02
Speaker
I have to acknowledge that there is killing in the chain and it's whether do I want to take responsibility for that? How do I how do i reckon with that? I know. ah it it It's fascinating ethics. I find it so fascinating. And I love the intersection between conservation permaculture and animal welfare. There's a there's a real um there's a nub in there that we all those and there's people often working in those different sectors but they all need to learn from each other I think. Cool yeah I'll look into that
Daily Connection with Nature
00:59:41
Speaker
nub. All right I'm going to look at the question that
00:59:45
Speaker
My friend Mick has sent through, and Mick is a patron of the podcast, which is a lovely thing to do because I don't ever want to put ads or anything gross like that on the air, but it is so nice to have a community of people who are throwing in some dollars each month to support the show. That's as much of a plug as you'll get from me. But Mick has asked you, we all understand how important it is to be in nature, observe nature, interact with nature.
01:00:13
Speaker
We realize this when we're in it, but time goes by and we haven't been in the bush for months. What strategies do you suggest to make nature connection a permanent part of our being? Isn't that beautiful? That was verbatim from his text message. That is beautiful. I love that. I really love that. So Mick.
01:00:32
Speaker
I think earlier in this session I was talking about how I can never turn off and there's what that means is is that if I'm in Melbourne I'm standing there and I can see common miners cruising around.
01:00:47
Speaker
doing their thing and even though some people hate them, I love them for their quirky crazy antics. So I'm looking at them, you know, if i'm if I'm going to again Melbourne and I'm enjoying the silver gulls or even just driving looking at clouds and just vibing on those and so You don't need to go to the bush. It's funny what you can see on street trees and um roadside verges and depending on where you live, um Mick, I think anywhere there's vegetation or sky you can connect with nature 100%. Sometimes you need to walk
01:01:32
Speaker
slower. So I call it beetle pace, which means that you're walking slow enough that you can see a beetle. I don't know where you live, Mick, but do you reckon he lives in Melbourne? Just down the road. Oh, just down the road. Oh my God. Spend time in your garden because that's nature too.
01:01:48
Speaker
um I know there's a different feeling when you go into natural bush because it's this community of interlocking living beings. But if you just go out and look at a shrub and look at what insects you can find on that shrub,
01:02:04
Speaker
and maybe get into iNaturalist then you are looking at the macro and you're getting into the detail and when you're finding a beetle or some kind of bug on that shrub and taking a photo of it with your phone and uploading it onto iNaturalist that's actually a little holiday for you away from your everyday life that doesn't require you going far away to nature to yeah to have that brain break. Yeah I love it and I know that Mick will totally resonate with that. Great. So Tanya I will link to all of your goodly things in the show notes but is there anything you'd like to point our attention towards as we wrap up the conversation have you got any events coming up or places people can like interact with you or simply where you'd like people to go if they would like to have a copy of your book in their hot little pause?
01:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So thanks, Katie. It's been really lovely. I'm on Instagram as at TansNatureDiary. I'm still there posting a bit and that's probably the most commonly used point of contact and I promote various talks and things like that from there. I've also got a blog which is TanyaLose.com and that's about sort of monthly articles generally. If you listen to ABC Radio, I'm on Every Fortnite. It's a backyard critic segment and we've got a new presenter, Nick Healy. He's lovely and that's on every second Friday at about 9.50am.
01:03:50
Speaker
If you or your community feel that you'd like me to come and give a talk, I'm always happy to do that. I'm talking about living with wildlife, so I've got ones coming up in Ballarat, Kilmore, I'm going to Queensland, and what I do is hook up with the local bookseller because I don't sell copies myself. The book's sold through CSIRO Publishing.
01:04:13
Speaker
And then we have this great little thing where you have the local bookseller because I'm all for promoting you know physical bookselling. I think it's so important to retain that. So yeah just get in touch if you'd like me to come out and talk to your community.
01:04:29
Speaker
Well, can you lose? It is, I don't say this lightly, but it's such an honor to sit with you and meet you today because you've meant so much to me over the past few years and I love what you do and I'm so glad that maybe some people will find you for the first time when they listen to this, so thank you. Thanks Katie, you really appreciate it, it's lovely.
01:04:54
Speaker
That was the brilliant Tanya Lewis, field naturalist, nature writer and science communicator whose books and offerings I've linked for you in the show notes under linky poos. And shout out to new Resculience patrons, Ashley, Rachel, Ren and Natalie. Thank you so much for donating to the show, bringing me ever closer to being able to do this project without going.
01:05:18
Speaker
backwards, sideways financially, community supported careers that support abundant enoughness without cringy advertising for the win. Thank you to everyone who believes in reskillience enough to pledge a small amount each month. You can find us at patreon dot.com forward slash reskillience. And be sure to go via the desktop version, not the app, which cheekily adds a fee that doesn't go to creators. It goes to them. OK.
01:05:46
Speaker
It was such a pleasure to be back recording this week. Next week, we will be hanging out with the one and only Charlie McGee of Fumitable Vegetable, who is a complete riot. And we start with some rather unusual conversational behavior. So I do hope you can join us for that one next week right here on the Risk Illiance podcast. Till then.