Gabi Fleury is a conservation biologist and an 'interspecies diplomat' But how do they use games to help educate the world about human-wildlife conflict?

Music Intro

Hi, I'm Dhruti Shah. And this is my podcast

Have you thought about. I'm a writer, journalist, and poet.

And I like to find out about what other people are doing,

especially if they managed to blend together skills in unusual

ways. In each edition, I'm going to chat with someone I find

interesting, and who's managed to fit things together in their

life or profession that you just might not think of as an obvious

match. You're about to hear me chatting with Gabi Fleury, a

conservation biologist, who's also a cancer survivor, and

video game designer.

I'm a conservation biologist by training, and I

work on something called human wildlife interactions. So

basically, how humans interact with wildlife. And that

intersection there, which is sometimes positive, sometimes

neutral, and sometimes negative. And I focus a little bit more on

the negative side on something called human wildlife conflict.

And there's some controversy about whether we should be

calling it conflict at all, but basically how humans and animals

kind of need to work better together. Because there may be

conflicting goals. So an example of that would be elephants

eating crops, or carnivores eating livestock, and I focused

kind of more on the carnivore side in Sub Saharan Africa,

specifically within southern Africa at this point. So other

fun things. I'm a board gamer. I'm a cosplayer. And I'm a

professional writer as well. So I try to do a little bit of

everything,

There's like loads and loads of things to think

There's a good question. Yeah. So I'm actually

about. This is basically where this has come from in terms of

people are doing amazing things out there, you're clearly not

just doing one thing, two things, you seem to be doing it

designing a video game with a friend to address fast fashion

all. How much brain space have you got left? Have you got any

capacity to add on extra? Or is it at full capacity right now

with all these different interdisciplinary things that

you talk of?

consumption. So that's kind of my other side project. So I'd

say there's a little bit of brain space left, but I tend to

kind of relax by watching TV when I get a chance. I am behind

but I am watching The Last of Us right now. And yeah, and hanging

out with my kitten who may interrupt this interview. So

hopefully not, but possibly.

We love a kitten. Sometimes I have like, you know,

family members decided it's okay, we'll just we'll just get

involved and like, that's fine. But I came across you because I

was on Twitter. And it came up with this thing called Black

mammalogists. What is a mammologist? Is it to do with

boobs? I keep thinking it's to do with boobs, but it's not.

It's something actually quite serious. But also, what is it?

Because it sounds super, super cool. But I don't... I think a

lot of people would be asking, what is this? In fact, I asked

some children that I know. I said, Do you know what one is?

And they were like, No, you need to ask that. So here's your

chance to educate.

Yeah, so it's the study of mammals. Which you

know, lactate. So that's actually pretty close. So I've

never really thought of myself as a mammologist until I get

involved in, in that group. And in that kind of campaign,

because we all come from very different backgrounds. Like I

come from a very interdisciplinary background,

some people are kind of more like pure zoology backgrounds,

some people actually came through calling themselves from

mammologists. So it's interesting that because we all

found ourselves under this umbrella, but it's just people

who study mammals, essentially.

And I mean, you say you've got a kitten, but having

like, I did a little bit of reading cheetahs. Cheetahs -

came up quite prominently in relation to you. Yeah. I mean, I

guess my key thing is, how do you go from perhaps, you know,

growing up, you know, domestic pets, maybe kittens to getting

like proper full on hardcore into figuring out what's our

relationship with these sometimes scary creatures that

are out there? When you're in the field? Right?

You have to be respectful. I guess I term them

I wouldn't really think of them as scary, just respectful,

right? They're, they're powerful animals. Right. So I think that

it's kind of a hard question to answer because I've wanted to be

in this field since I was three. So everyone asks the question of

like, why do you want to be a conservation biologist? So I'm

like, before I had conscious thought. So um, yeah, I think a

lot of it is - I'm a cancer survivor. So I had osteosarcoma

when I was a kid, and I loved African wild dogs and cheetahs,

specifically, because they could run really fast. So it kind of

started in this innocent in like fascination of like, these are

some really cool fast, you know, animals. And then when I got

older, I realised, you know, apart from habitat destruction,

which we're all trying to address, human wildlife conflict

is the second biggest impact on carnivore populations. So that's

kind of where I got interested in that. And because I'm

naturally kind of a very interdisciplinary person, kind

of, like I mentioned, it's a very interdisciplinary field,

right? You have, you know, animal behaviour, you have

political ecology, you have anthropology, you have cultural

things, and all these things kind of tie together to be able

to work on mitigating this problem. So it's one of those

things where not only would I be able to do some good, you know,

about the wildlife I care about, hopefully also reduce losses to

farmers as well, which I also care about, as well as being

able to - from an intellectual perspective - you know,

constantly be engaged because there's always something to

learn. It's a very difficult problem. It's one of these,

what we call wicked problems. So problems that are incredibly

difficult to solve. And I always like trying to solve the hardest

problems. So I think that's why I'm in this field.

But that's the thing, like you talked about

sort of solving hard problems, you know, we're gonna go go back

to the gaming in a bit as well. But you're like, I want to do

this since I was three. I mean, I wanted to be a journalist

since I was like eight. But three, I was probably like still

thinking about biscuits. I'm always thinking about biscuits.

But how then do you go, actually, this is how to have

that to have gone through what you've gone through, and then

still have that drive to get to where you are now, bearing in

mind that I'm sure - no disrespect intended here - it's

probably not the most well paid profession either. Like, how do

you just sort of make sure that you sort of stay on that path?

And your thoughts? You know, have you been thinking about

this, you keep heading towards this, which has a lot of impact,

actually, what you're doing.

Coming out of osteosarcoma, I think it was

hard. But one of the things that it did give me was a sense that

life is very limited, and you don't know what will happen in

the future. So that gave me a sense of mission. So I knew I

cared about these species, I knew I cared about the people

affected. And I think it was kind of like, you only have one

life, and you gotta go for it. Because I, the last thing I

wanted was regret. And to be fair, I mean, like, I didn't

know if the cancer would return or anything like that. So it was

one of those things where I just kind of was like, this is what I

want to do. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes, and

obviously within reason, to pursue this goal. And to keep

working on it. So that kind of kept me on a pretty single path.

Why carnivores? Why not like a tortoise like

something with a little bit less teeth.

To be honest, they're cool. So when you're a

little kid, like they are really cool animals, I think everyone

kind of is attracted to carnivores, just because they're

very interesting, and they're beautiful and a lot of the time

are fascinating. But as I got older, you know, they're the

lynchpins of ecosystems. Carnivore goes down, they affect

herbivores, which affects the plant life, which affects the

ecosystem. So if you take a carnivore out of the

environment, they have a disproportionate impact on

everything that happens. It's what we call a trophic cascade.

That's one of the things that really interests me, because I'm

like, this is a way that I can have an outsized impact, by

protecting those species that have trickle down effects if

they're removed. So as both kind of like, 'they're awesome, and

I'm really interested in these species in particular', but also

I can protect the grass and the antelopes, and everything else

that gets affected when a carnivore is removed.

But what's also really interesting is that

people talk about conservation. Now they talk about climate

change, you know, nature is now no longer at a distance, like

you know, even if you're in urban areas, if wherever you

are. But you've been on that path since you were a kid, as

you were, when you talk about the creatures that you're

talking about, you know, it's actually just reminded me

watching one, you know, one of the BBC shows where they had, I

have a feeling it's leopards, but I could be talking rubbish

here. It was a leopard in Mumbai, where they're sort of

wandering around, and you know, they've sort of, they've got the

footage of them, but you don't necessarily realise that they're

there. They are living in these urban areas alongside people.

And that's the sort of, if I'm right in thinking that you're

also looking at, it's not just like, oh, let's look at

wildlife, you know, human wildlife conflict, far away from

like, urban populations. No, actually, this is something that

is infiltrating a lot of different spaces that anybody

could end up falling into.

Yeah. And it's interesting, because like, we

think of human wildlife conflict, as like I mentioned,

elephants, or leopards, or something, you know, exotic

maybe, but, for example, deer, eating people's gardens,

rabbits, eating people's gardens would be considered human

wildlife conflict. It's something that we deal with

every day, like, you know, maybe you know, an animal runs across

the road, and you have to swerve to miss it. That's human

wildlife conflict. So I think that it's kind of like a broader

field, when people understand. It's basically just how do

humans and wildlife interact that have potentially negative

consequences for one or either party. So the work I kind of

call myself doing is like, I like to call myself an

interspecies diplomat. It's like how you find the best middle

ground between these, you know, these different parties. And the

complicated part of my work is coming in as an outsider, and

trying to make sure that I'm, I know my place as a scientist, in

terms of like, I consider myself a specialist in the science, but

in terms of the cultural aspects, I will never know as

much as the people who live there. So knowing, you know, let

them take the lead, and know kind of where my abilities can

be best used. So there's also kind of a sense of humility that

I think you have to have in this work, and knowing that you don't

have to know at all, and that you aren't an expert in that

particular system in the way that the people who are from

there are. And being able to work within kind of those

cultural boundaries is really important,

what you're saying that's been quite sort of

central to the way that you process and the way that you

sort of move forwards. I guess at what point did you realise

that that has to be one of your top criteria? Because as I said,

not everyone does that. It's just like, okay, I'm here. I've

done my studies. I know this, I know that this is the way to do

it. But that's not how it should be right?

No because when you think about just sustainability,

right, it's there, the people who live there, like I might do

a study and I hope to be engaged in those communities for the

rest of my career, but I don't live there. Or it's not they're

not my wildlife. Does that make sense? So I think like I kind of

addressed it from that, where it's like, I'm fascinated by it,

I want to help. And I've devoted my life to it. But I don't know

what they know, in terms of how that system works. And I think I

came to it pretty early in my career. Luckily, before I

actually started doing a lot of field work, because when I was

at my undergraduate degree, which is in James Madison

University in Virginia, there was actually a sizable Maasai

population, which was really interesting. So the Maasai are

people who live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. And

a lot of the time like, you know, they, they're livestock

owners, they have cattle, and cattle is really important to

the culture. And there was a Maasai who was doing a master's

degree in my university in my programme. And he was associated

with my undergraduate thesis advisor. So I got to talk to

him. And I think that was the moment where kind of like, the

real light bulb came on of like, oh, wow, people really are

affected by this, because it wasn't just the sense of like,

Oh, I could lose my livestock. It's oh, losing my livestock has

cultural connotations affect my standing in the community; oh,

my kids might get attacked when they're walking, you know, when

they're herding my animals, or I have to live in fear of

elephants that could hurt me or my family. And kind of like the

the other costs, the opportunity cost of that right? And the

stress, and he was able to kind of explain to me kind of

scientist to scientist, like what he seen people in his

community go through and then connect me to other people in

the community within this little Virginia town, which was

fascinating without even stepping foot in Kenya yet, so I

think that was a point where I was just like, wow, like, I

really need to listen, and learn and slow down and not just rely

I love that. Yes, you did something about like lights

on what I'm reading.

like lights flashing. Ages ago, I did a story while at the World

Service and came across lion lights and came across the

Maasai boy who created lion lights. And we went back to find

out what happened to him. Because we're interested in

these stories of innovation. And it's like, hold on, people are

coming up with ideas. But then what happens? What happens next?

In his case, he got a bit screwed over trying to do a

patent. So it's, it's a little bit weird how this is all very

sort of circular in terms of like, Yes, I know what you're

talking about. Oh, my gosh, it's making me think. You're so super

cool. It's too much. I can't deal with it. But in terms of

being able to deal with it - can we talk about the games? Like

have you not made a video games? Am I making this up?

Yeah video games is something I'm working on right

now with, with a colleague and something I've done in the past,

I enjoy... I enjoy gaming, I think interactive education is,

is the future and trying to, you know, share information and also

get people engaged. And it was interesting, because so my mom

is an opera director, like she used to direct operas. So I came

from kind of a theatrical background, my dad's a

genealogist, so I came from kind of science and art. But it was

really cool, because it's coming from that theatrical background,

I would see how helpful skits were in outreach. So how she

would so she, we lived in Alaska, for my middle school

years, and we would go, she did outreach into Inuit communities

to do opera outreach. So we'd fly in, and these little planes,

and I'd go in the middle school, and she would do opera outreach

and be like, hey, kids, this is what opera is. And they could,

they would sometimes share kind of like their cultural and their

musical traditions as well, which is really cool. But there

is a point to this. But basically, what was really cool

is that I would see that when they were engaging, when they

would do skits, and when they would kind of like bring people

in, that's kind of when the light bulbs were on. And these

kids were just sitting there kind of crossing their arms

like, oh, this is so silly. Like, 'why are we being made to

do this' would suddenly get into it? And I was thinking back

about, okay, how do we get people interested in

environmental education? And it's like, we just, we can't

just talk to them. Like, we can't just rote say the

information, or have them regurgitate it, we need to get

them engaged. And some one of the best ways to do that is

through interactive play. So that's kind of how I got into

that side field.

This is so amazing. I feel literally like, oh, my

gosh, this is all very, very interconnected in this way.

Like, how do you relax? How do you like? Are your neurons

constantly popping to each other? Like, honestly, what's

going on?

I don't do a lot of relaxing, I'll be honest, I

honestly find working on projects kind of relaxing. I

know. That's like the workaholic thing to say, but I do. But

yeah, I think I'm very lucky that I get to pursue a lot of

really interesting work.

But then also, how do you sustain yourself? Let's

say somebody's like, oh, this sounds super cool. I want to get

into as I say, this is not necessarily the most well paid

field that I'm in we will be pulled together. But no, how are

you sort of able to cope and be like, okay, I'm committed to

this, this is important. Is it things like grants; is it things

like having to do some side hustles? How does it actually

work in real life?

Yeah, it's actually kind of interesting. So in my

field, it does tend to be people from a higher socio-economic

strata to be able to deal with some of the things and it does

tend to be people who are not people of colour. So that is

pretty isolating as well. Going into the field I kind of knew I

was initially at a disadvantage because I couldn't pay to do six

weeks in Borneo. You know, just like doing field work. Because

there's a lot of pay to play opportunities out there where

you can get field work, but you'd have to pay for or they

wouldn't pay you. And then do unpaid internships, where I

didn't get anything would be difficult. I also knew I

couldn't pay to do anything. And there's also the years of

education, and there's huge barriers to conservation. So,

first barrier is you have to be lucky enough to even know what

conservation is, to even know that's a field you can do. And

then at that point, you know, say someone's interested in

conservation, you have to get through at least a master's

degree, which has to either come with funding, or you have to

come up with funding yourself. So this was a mix of good luck

and I think working really hard. So I was engaged at the right

time in my undergraduate career by the right person who kind of

led me in a path kind of towards what I'm doing now, in terms of

like formalising it. But also I had a full ride for my masters

because I had a rotary grant; they usually fund political

scientists, but I made the case that human welfare is inexorably

tied to wildlife and human-wildlife conflict would

fall under their purview. So by being able to do that, I was

able to get a global grant that funded my master's degree, but

hilariously only funded one year, so I had to find an

accelerated master's degree. So I did my master's degree in 14

months in Cape Town, South Africa, and got it fully paid

for. Luckily, once you have a PhD, or you get into a PhD

programme, they're usually fully funded, you don't get paid much.

And yeah, for equipment and stuff, it's, it's all grants. So

you become a really good grant writer, you get really good at

being able to sell your work, and being able to express you

know, the importance of what you're doing. So you can, you

know, buy camera traps and things like that. So I would say

that, and I say this to a lot of people who are interested in

getting into conservation, if it's something that really

drives you, if it's something that you'd like, you can't

imagine doing anything else, this is what you want to do, do

it. But no, it's hard. And it has to be worth it for you. It's

not something to do on a lark, because you think it sounds

cool. It's something that you need to be able to protect your

mental health and protect your time and protect you know, your

relationships, because if you let it, it will eat everything

in your life. Because it just, it's all consuming, right? And

you have to be very focused to be successful, because it is so

competitive. It's like trying to be an astronaut, like you need

to be able to have boundaries. And I think being able for me

carving out time for my relationships is important,

carving out time to do just fun things, like I say a cosplay,

nothing to do with anything I do. But you have to protect that

time. So I'd say that it is possible and to go for it if

it's someone's dream, but it's not just kind of like, oh, I

think I'll study animals. But I always say that, like if someone

wants to do it, they can find a way to do it. You just have to

be creative, and not just kind of sit and wait around for

opportunities. So I always see like, when near the whole thing,

like when a when the door closes like a window will open. It's

like forget that, you know, build a better door. Like don't

just wait for windows open, like build your own. Because you

know, the world's not gonna wait for you.

I love that I think yes, building a better door

that... Why didn't you get in, like I tell you where you can

make some extra money. It'll be your hustle, get on a T-shirt,

sell it. But it's also really weird if you just mentioned

Rotary. So I didn't know this before. But I have a Rotary

Peace Fellowship. And it's because I got a mid-career

professional development fellowship, funded by Rotary. So

I'm like, but it's also there that beecause we were doing

peace. And I started understanding more about sort of

peace and conflict and people that are in the field. That's

what triggered my interest in the human-wildlife like

environmental stuff. I was like, why are we not talking more

about the environment? Like what's going on here? That's so

weird, like all these little interconnections that are

happening? Is there anything I should be thinking about; that

you should be thinking about? Should we be thinking more or

thinking less?

Yeah, I think a big thing in conservation up and

coming is the importance of collaboration and the importance

of reducing egocentricity and focusing on the problems. And I

think that's in a lot of fields. So that's just something that I

try to think about is that as I'm building my own career, you

know, how can I lend my skills to multidisciplinary projects?

How can I make connections with people who do other things? So

for example, this video game idea that I did, it was a human

wildlife conflict video game; we designed three mini games around

human wildlife conflict. And it was literally me and a software

engineer friend who did it for free. And we did it over a year.

And we did in PowerPoint in free Unity game engine, because we

were poor. We did that. And then in terms of beta testing it we

literally dry emailed somebody I really respected and said, would

you test this in your environment education programme

in Mozambique? And luckily, she said yes. And that helped us

refine the game. And then we're able to publish a paper off it.

So like, it's one of those things where, you know, we kind

of came from nothing. And we were just like, this would be

cool. And let's spend a couple hours a week doing it. And it

was one of the hardest things I ever did, because the entire

thing had to have no text. We couldn't have any text because

of you know, language barriers. You walked down the street in

Africa, you hit like 15 different languages. And you

know, we didn't want there to be any literacy barriers or

anything like that or to be any complications. So, we had to

explain like what a trophic cascade is, is the thing we just

talked about, in like PowerPoint art. Which took like six months

of our lives, just like, literally, we would do like this

little video where it was all PowerPoint art. And we would

give it to our beta tester. And she would be like, okay, people

got tripped up here. So we'd have to take it back and be

like, okay, okay, how do we explain it better, until

literally, we did it until like the entire 42 people, not a

single person was confused.

That's kind it's like no lingual. But on the

other hand, it's multilingual, because of the fact that it's

able to sort of translate that way. I love it. I haven't seen

any love it. Again, years and years and years ago, I worked on

a project what's called what does freedom look like? And then

we had to create a comic. But it had to be wordless. Because it

had to go across all these language services. So we were

very lucky in that I was able to go and get a guy called Grant

Morrison, who was behind behind a lot of sort of superheroes.

Mandem, he knows his stuff far more than I know it, but he was

able to do it. And it was like, this is absolutely brilliant.

But it's, it's hard to be able to communicate something that

you may be, you know, talk about all the time and understand

quite well, but need to make sure that people understand it,

if they have never even come across the concept before.

And also understanding that other people,

they might not know exactly what you're doing, but they have

their own valuable skill sets. So I think something as

scientists we need to avoid, is being so caught up in thinking

that we know best and acknowledging that there's other

equally important skill sets that we don't have. And that's

why collaboration is so important. So like, for example,

like traditional ecological knowledge, there's so much

knowledge and communities that are essential for solving these

problems. They're not helplessly waiting for us to fix things.

You know, we're coming in from a different angle. So I think

reframing it and saying, you know, we're parachuting down and

we're saving the world. And you know, it's like, we're not, we

are part of a bigger team of people already working on these

things in their own countries. We're the specialists - we're

not running the show,

the wonderful Gabi Fleury, who puts together video

game designing, conservation, biology and more, and makes it

work. Do you have an interdisciplinary life? I'd love

to hear from you. And maybe we can chat on this podcast that

goes with my newsletter, which is called Have You Thought About

and can be found via www.dhrutishah.com. Thank you to

Rian Shah for the music for this podcast.