Adventure, Conservation, and Climate Change with Steve Backshall

This guest was someone I was equal parts terrified and excited to speak with.

Steve Backshall is one of my literal heroes, and I still can’t believe he said yes to being on the podcast.

You may know him as the presenter of The Deadly 60, Lost Land of the Tiger, or Lost Land of the Jaguar. He’s an explorer, naturalist, scientist, presenter, writer, and so much more.

In this episode, he shares:

• How his childhood prepared him to be confident in adventuring

• The dumbest thing he did in his early days of adventuring

• His favourite place he’s visited

• His scariest experience

• How he prepares for his remote explorations

• The clear signs of climate change he’s seen over the years

• His opinion on palm oil and why he believes we need some palm oil

• A pressing conservation issue we’re not talking about enough

• His suggestions for how we can help the environment

• The importance of picking your battles in environmentalism

• Why he thinks it’s hard to get people on board with climate change

Key Quotes

“We are having so many problems with the simple storytelling aspect of climate change.”

“With young people, if you can get them excited about an idea, they get empowered, they get enthusiastic, and they are unstoppable.”

More about Steve Backshall

Check out his website, his live shows and his instagram.

You can get involved with the podcast online

Find our full podcast via the website here: https://www.nowthatswhaticall.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nowthatswhaticallgreen/

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Transcript

Brianne

0:00:00

Kia ora kaitiaki and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green. I'm your host, Brianne West, an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I am. I'm all about creating a scientific approach to making the world a better place without the judgment and making it fun. And of course, we will be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we share our

Brianne

0:00:24

planet with. So if you are looking to navigate through everything green or not so green, you have come to the right place. I am equal parts terrified and excited because we're talking to one of my literal heroes. I cannot believe he said yes. On a whim, I saw that he was in Australia for a dive expo. So I asked my PR lady, “hey, could you reach out and see if, you know, this is a likely possibility, even though of course it's not."

Brianne

0:00:53

And they said yes. So you're about to hear an interview with one of the coolest people in the world. His name is Steve Backshall. You may know him as the presenter of a TV series called The Deadly 60 or Lost Land of the Tiger or Lost Land of the Jaguar. He is one of those, I don't know, how do you describe him?

Brianne

0:01:10

He's an explorer, a naturalist, a scientist, a presenter, a writer. He's amazing. And he has done some really like insane stuff. Steve, you hardly need an intro, but for those who may know less about you than I do, who are you and what do you do?

Brianne

0:01:26

I know it's the worst question.

Steve

0:01:27

No, not at all. My name's Steve Backshall. I am a biologist and a broadcaster. I have a specialism, when it comes to academia in venoms and poisons and herpetology, and I guess in my job mostly marine biology. I spend an awful lot of time under the sea with the sharks and the rays and the whales

Steve

0:01:47

and the dolphins and I also do a lot of programs for young people, for kids, for families and I've been working in television for 25 years which is, it makes me feel very very old when I say something like that.

Brianne

0:02:02

Yeah, I know the feeling, it's scary. How did you go from science to the David Attenborough life, if you like? How did you make that leap?

Steve

0:02:10

Yeah, so I was working as a writer and was finding it really tough just to kind of pay the bills. And I came up with an idea of getting myself a video camera and going and stranding myself in the jungles of Columbia, which at the time in the late 1990s, yeah, yeah, was the most kind of wild, rugged, dangerous, windswept place I could think of. And I went with a friend who was going to be my cameraman and was going to make the whole thing for me. He got sick and got basically airlifted out. And so I had to make the whole thing on my own, like five, six weeks in the jungle, filming selfie style before

Steve

0:02:43

that was a thing. And I came back with this incredibly rough material, but edited it together, made it into a film, which I sold to National Geographic's television channel, and they took me on as their Adventurer in Residence, which is the coolest job title I have ever had, and I've been doing it ever since.

Brianne

0:03:02

That's amazing. And how do you even have the, excuse the question, but how do you have the balls to go and go to the jungles of Colombia?

Steve

0:03:09

Well, you know, I'm very, very fortunate in that both my parents are passionate about travel. And they both, they didn't come from money. So what they did was they went and worked for the airlines, because they got discounted travel. And so from a very young age, we just went all over the world, and we went to all kinds of crazy places. But when we turned up there, you know, we couldn't afford to get a nice hotel or anything. So they just basically went out to try and find the equivalent of what would now be a hostel or something. And so that was imprinted in us, in my sister and I, from a very, very young age that

Steve

0:03:43

that travel's not intimidating, that new places aren't something to be scared of, that, you know, you will always find a way and even if you end up spending the night sleeping on a park bench, it's not the end of the world. And so when it came down to it, I just felt very kind of confident. I mean, probably too confident looking back at it, to be honest, the things I did in my late teens and my early 20s were just dumb, so dumb. And how I got through them all and survived is anyone's guess, but you know, eventually I got to where I am now.

Brianne

Okay, what is one of your favorite stories from back then? What is one of the dumb things you did? Oh, so my first major expedition on my own,

Steve

0:04:21

Oh, so my first major expedition on my own, I tried to walk across New Guinea, across the western half of New Guinea on my own with just a backpack with very little money, with no connection to the outside world at all. I mean, this was kind of before, you know, sat phones and things were really a thing. And I just totally, totally underestimated how hard it was going to be. I got lonely, I got sick, I got lost, I spent nearly three months wandering through the jungle on my own, and I didn't get even halfway there. It was an absolute catastrophe, you know, there was nothing good about it, but I guess I learned from my mistakes, I learned from the things I didn't plan, didn't prepare, didn't put in place, and so the next time I did an expedition I was just a little bit better

Steve

0:05:09

at it, and the next time a little bit better. By the time I'd done five, six, seven expeditions, I was starting to almost become an expert. I'm making sure that I got trained in all the things I wasn't good at and I got better at them. Yeah, I mean, that start,

Steve

0:05:28

because I managed to survive and I didn't get just like carried away into the forest and never to be heard of again, was a big part of me developing into someone that was able to do this for a living.

Brianne

0:05:40

Yeah, amazing. And New Guinea is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world, isn't it?

Steve

0:05:43

It's an extraordinary place. Even now, it still has corners where people have just never been. Vast cave systems that stretch through the limestone cast centre of the islands that no light has ever illuminated, ever. And it's an extraordinarily exciting place. One of the things about New Guinea that's really interesting is that when I first went in the late 1990s, when I did my big trip across the island, I got to some of the southern marshy riparian forests and they looked like they were going to be absolutely devastated. A lot of the really economically important

Steve

0:06:24

big hardwoods were being selectively taken out and it just looked as if it was going to be decimated and turned into an absolute desert. And then I went back for an expedition to the exact same area in about sort of 2017 or so and after the big hardwoods had been taken it had just been left and now there was just this absolutely pristine tangled secondary forest that went on forever that was still absolutely packed with life. And it's one of those rare occurrences where you go to a place thinking,

Steve

0:06:54

oh, that's such a shame, you know, this paradise is going to be destroyed, and then come back and it's got better. So, yeah, I think that it's a very, very exciting place.

Brianne

0:07:04

Well, that's a nice optimistic story, because you don't hear very many of them at the moment, do you?

Steve

0:07:08

Well, you don't, but you know what, I think that in my position, as someone who is broadcasting often about conservation and often to young people and to families, you know, as long as there are fish in our seas, as long as there are rainforest trees, we have a duty to be optimistic. We have to find that positivity and that hope because, you know, particularly with young people, if you can get them excited about an idea, if you can put the tools of change into their hands and make them feel like they have the opportunity to

Steve

0:07:40

do something big. They get empowered, they get enthusiastic, and they are unstoppable. If you go too far, if you make it too bleak, if you make it sound as if essentially we are thundering towards a post-apocalyptic world where everything is gone and destroyed, it's too much, it's too bleak, it's overpowering, and that young person is not going to be engaged. They'll probably switch to a completely different topic, you know. So I think that it's really important that we find the hope, we find the positivity,

Steve

0:08:11

and we find the ways that we can do something.

Brianne

0:08:15

Yeah, totally agree. What's the saying? Action is the antidote to apathy?

Steve

0:08:19

Yes, that's a good one. I think you should claim that for yourself.

Brianne

0:08:23

Okay, I'm sold. I'm pretty sure I'm stealing it from someone else. What's your favorite thing to do, educate or explore? I guess they're sort of, you do both at the same time, but you know.

Steve

0:08:33

Yeah, do you know what? I would love to be able to claim that I started off doing this out of some kind of altruistic desire to educate a generation or some nonsense like that. That would be a total lie. I got into this because I wanted to have amazing expeditions and I wanted to have the greatest adventures, see cool parts of the world, you know, work with all sorts of amazing animals. That was it. That was all I wanted to do. And then when I started making programs for kids, and you start getting them coming along to your live shows, and you see youngsters who

Steve

0:09:10

they may not have had particular role models setting them off down this path. And now all of a sudden, they're kind of like, yeah, that's what I want to do. That's the thing that excites me. There is a kind of an opportunity that you see there. And then also quite a heavy responsibility as well, because you've got this chance to take a whole new sort of realm of young people who haven't decided what they want to do with their lives yet, haven't decided what their passions are going to be, and if you can get even one

Steve

0:09:42

of those young people and make them think that nature is going to be their thing, that conservation or wildlife or science or diving or kayaking or any of those things, if you can just ignite that fire in one young person, then you know, job done, life well lived. But having the opportunity that I've had with making these programs that go all over the world to like 150 different countries and you know lots and lots of different channels, it's a massive, massive responsibility and one that I don't take lightly and one that I consider

Steve

0:10:18

to be a massive privilege.

Brianne

You must have seen the most incredible places. I'm endlessly envious. Where's your favourite? That's probably an impossible question.

Steve

No, no, I mean there's lots of different favourites that I have for different reasons. I love the Arctic and I love the the Himalayas for the fact that they are an environment that is always changing minute by minute, second by second, where at one minute it can feel like the most tranquil, calm place in the world and the next second it can feel like somewhere that is trying to rip you apart with, you know, the elements and the wind

Steve

0:10:54

and the, you know, the, I mean, it's a place where you as a human being can feel very, very small, very overwhelmed by the environment. And I like that. I love the seamounts of the Eastern Pacific for a view of what our oceans were probably like in the past, these places that have a fabulous aggregation of life in many places, sanctuaries for life. So you see explosions of huge fish, shivers of sharks, hundreds of animals strong, you know, giant tuna fish twice the size of a cow. That's pretty amazing. And then I think that the rainforests are places where for me as a

Steve

0:11:32

broadcaster, it worked really well because if I'm going to, for example, let's say I'm going to Brazil and I want to go and find a jaguar and I don't find that jaguar, then I know that I'm going to be able to find a bushmaster or a third-large snake. I'm going to be able to find some crazy frog that I'm going to be able to talk about and make my program about instead. So it takes the pressure off. Whereas, you know, if I'm off in the Arctic looking for a polar bear and I don't find it, then you're just a bit, what do I do now? You know, I could make it on the skewers,

Steve

0:12:00

I guess, but that's...

Brianne

0:12:02

It's not quite as fun, really.

Steve

0:12:04

No, no, exactly.

Brianne

0:12:06

Have you been face to face, well not face to face with a polar bear, but have you ever been in a polar bear's proximity?

Steve

0:12:10

Yeah, a couple of times. A couple of times. So, I tend to talk about animals as being, you know, their danger to us as being massively overstated. The polar bear

Steve

0:12:22

is one of the very, very few exceptions. So, you can be around American black bears, American grizzly bears, which are, you know, they're pretty, pretty much the same sort of size as a polar bear. They have just as much potential to do you harm, but they rarely if ever do. You know, you could be stood next to a salmon river with bears pulling out great giant salmon over and over and over again. And once they're finished,

Steve

0:12:45

they'll just stand up and walk past you and they could not care less that you're there. A polar bear will try and kill and eat you if it can. And there's there's so few animals on the planet that you can say that of. And I've encountered them when I've been out in a kayak on my own in amongst the ice flows and had a polar bear swim straight at me and come to within mere meters of me. And you never feel more alone, more vulnerable, more stranded than when it's just you and a half a ton of bear that could make a right mess of you. And they'll find you from miles and miles away. They have an incredibly acute sense of smell, which they can use to find you in amongst the barren tundra and ice flows.

Steve

0:13:32

They are quicker than you are. They are incredibly resilient, very, very well camouflaged, obviously. And one of the few animals that, yeah, genuinely, if it gets the chance, will try and catch you.

Brianne

0:13:47

Yes. I'm going up to Norway for the first time in a couple of months. And obviously, it's too late to see bears then, but I've read a lot about the things you really have to take seriously. Because I'm a little bit too cavalier with animals in a stupid manner, maybe like you were as a teenager, but obviously with less sense about it. But that's the one animal I'm told you don't take any risks with at all.

Steve

0:14:04

No. It's a tricky one as well because if you spend any time in polar bear territory, the attitude to that animal is so different to what you and I would have as nature lovers, as wildlife lovers anywhere else in the world. You carry a gun and you know that you might on occasion have to use it. And although places like Norway have, you know, significant fines, if you do find yourself having to kill a

Steve

0:14:35

polar bear, everyone knows that, you know, you carry that gun for a reason, you'll probably carry other things as well, like, you know, flares and pepper spray and stuff like that to, you know, have as a last resort. But you just hope that you don't encounter one when you're on foot or when you're, you know, in any way where it's got the edge over you. If I can see one in a tundra buggy when you,

Steve

0:14:58

or on your jet ski, when you can get away, lovely, really nice. But you don't want to be encountering one on foot.

Brianne

No, is that the scariest experience you've had?

Steve

I would say it's definitely up there. I had another one where I was diving in the Okavango Delta in Botswana and we had a huge Nile crocodile, a good four and a half meters, come straight at us underwater in between my camera operator and I. And it was, I mean, it was a meter or so away from me. And then as it hit the bottom, this big cloud of sand came up and it obscured my view of both the crocodile and my camera operator. They were

Steve

0:15:40

both inside this big cloud of sand and I was for a few seconds 100% sure that he'd been taken and eaten. And he's someone that I've worked with for 15 years, you know, I know his kids, I know his partner, and I just had all that flash through my mind of, oh my god, he's gone, he's done, this is it, this is, you know, the end of days. And then at that second, the croc came out of the sand cloud and swam, you know, in between the two of us. It's somehow, I don't know how he did it, but he managed to get this incredible shot of the croc just cruising in between us both. And then we

Steve

0:16:14

all just panicked and swam in different directions and climbed out the water. But yeah, that was one of the only times that we've all looked back afterwards and gone, yeah, you could have flipped a coin as to whether we lived or died then. And we never went diving with crocodiles there again.

Brianne

0:16:28

I thought you were going to have a hippo story, actually.

Steve

0:16:31

I have got quite a few hippo stories, but, you know, they all kind of end the same way with us all, you know, swimming off very, very fast.

Brianne

0:16:38

They’re so cute, though. They do not seem to match their reputation. It's very bizarre.

Steve

0:16:44

I see that all of a sudden there's a pygmy hippo that's caught the attention of the news here in Australia. I can't remember its name but yeah I mean.

Brianne

0:16:52

It means bouncy pork which is hilarious.

Steve

0:16:54

Oh really? They are incredibly cute looking, incredibly cute and cuddly and adorable looking but you would not say, if you saw two male African hippos going at it tooth and nail with these giant tusks that are as long as my arm and the blood and the spit just flying everywhere, you would never use the word cute about a hippo ever again. Seriously. They are incredibly intimidating.

Brianne

0:17:23

Okay. So that's ruining the feeling I have about hippos. Moo Deng is his name? Moo Deng. Yeah. Adorable. I think you already answered this, but what is your favorite dive spot then?

Steve

0:17:34

So, I mean, I'll tell you what my favorite dive spot in Australia is Tasmania. Really? Yeah. Oh my days. It's absolutely astounding.

Steve

0:17:43

Oh, Ningaloo? Ningaloo is amazing. Don't get me wrong. It's fantastic. But for me, I do love a bit of temperate water diving. And to be diving with the fur seals, the weedy sea dragons down in the kelp forest with

Steve

0:17:57

the plumose anemones and the gorgeous encrusting sponges. I mean, it is sensational and massively underrated. I think some of the most incredible places on the planet, places like Freycinet Bay, are utterly world class. And so, yes, got to love the Barrier Reef, got to love the Yongala and Ningaloo and all these other much better known places. But for me, given the choice, it'd be Tassie every time.

Brianne

Okay. I've added that to the list. Have you ever gone down to the Neptune Islands with Great Whites?

Steve

0:18:28

Off of South Australia? Yeah. I haven't actually, no. I've done Great Whites a few places around the world and we did try off South Australia back in, oh my gosh, this is going to really date me now, it was probably about 2008, didn't see anything.

Steve

0:18:45

Yeah, I know, but then again, I have had the extraordinary opportunity of being able to dive outside the cage with great whites in Guadalupe in Mexico. I know it's quite something. I mean, it's a whole different ballgame. So you've got like 50 meters of visibility underwater. You can see the sharks from a distance. You can assess their body language, see if they're going into a predatory mode or if they're more kind of reticent or if they're just cruising past. And yeah, it's

Steve

0:19:13

one of the only places in the world where you could relatively safely dive alongside Great Whites out of the cage. At the moment it's it's closed to any any outsiders and it's a shame because it is one of the very finest wildlife encounters in the whole world. I had to say there is not a chance on earth that I would go out of the cage in some of the other hot spots you know places off of South Africa or South Australia you know anywhere where the water has any degree of turbidity or the visibility

Steve

0:19:41

is low, close to sea lion colonies, not a chance. But Guadalupe is one of the only places that it works.

Brianne

0:19:49

Right. Okay. I'll have to add that to the list whenever they reopen, if they do. I have heard they were closed for some reason.

Steve

0:19:55

Yes. Yeah.

Brianne

0:19:56

So how do you prepare for going to these remote places? What do you do then? How do you even decide what's next? I know you're old hat at it now, but it seems kind of unfathomable in today's day and age.

Steve

0:20:10

I think that now the process is one that I've been doing so long that I don't think about it quite as much. I've got a storeroom at my house, which is just like boxes and boxes of Arctic, Arctic, desert, desert, jungle, jungle, jungle, you know, three season sleeping bags, four season sleeping bags. And I just, you know, I kind of got all the stuff, jam it into a bag and go. The thing that we think about far more is how we film it, how we capture it, because that has changed so dramatically, even over the last couple of years, the technology has just got so much better, that what we're mostly thinking about is what are the kind of things we're going to

Steve

0:20:52

be seeing, how are we best going to capture them, what are the ways that we can have a minimum impact, get a maximum distance, not encroach on animals' personal space if possible, make sure that there are cameras rolling organically all the time so that you know we're not doing things for the camera but the cameras are capturing us doing what we're doing because that's a much more authentic way of making these kind of programs. Those are the challenges that keep us up at night. Because, you know, you

Steve

0:21:22

want to be able to, you know, work with absolutely anything that might happen. But at the same time, you want to have the minimum amount of stuff you can so that you can move relatively quickly. You can't just go, “oh, let's, let's just take that extra camera just in case”, because then you need to carry the thing. So that's the thing that I guess we spend most of our time on

Steve

0:21:40

logistically is how big a lens can we take? How many people are we going to need to carry it all? You know, are we going to take a massive drone or a teeny, teeny, tiny one that pops in your backpack? It's those kind of things. Do you have a big team on these expeditions usually? No, no. So the only time that we've had big teams was about sort of 15 years ago, we did with the BBC this run of programs, which were, I think, I mean, they were quite groundbreaking for their time. They were called the Lost Land Expeditions. So we had the Lost Land of where we went to Guinea, another one to Bhutan, one to Borneo, and one to Guyana

Steve

0:22:15

in South America. Essentially, we're going out looking for new species and also trying to get areas of unprotected forest protected. It was a big success, but that one we did have big teams for. I mean, we might have had as many as 40 people living in a makeshift camp in the middle of a rainforest somewhere. And it was great because you'd be surrounded by all these absolute world experts.

Steve

0:22:38

We had people on the team who were the number one person in the world at working with Papuan fish species. And he'd be able to quite literally put a net into the water, get it out, go through all the fish and go, that one there, that's a new species. That's never been described before. And, you know, being surrounded by all these big brains is such an amazing learning experience.

Steve

0:22:58

You have so many opportunities to take their knowledge and just, you know, absorb as much of it as you can. But like I say, those were big. So we would have maybe 40 people all in one place at one time, it was chaotic, it was exciting. But now, if I'm working with more than four people, I would consider it to be a big team. Because working with animals,

Steve

0:23:23

you want to have as light a footfall as you possibly can. You want to be, you know, traveling light, traveling with as little stuff as you can, making as little noise and impact on the environment, because that gives you your best chance of finding stuff. So classically, it's me, camera operator,

Steve

0:23:42

Soundie, and then a director, researcher kind of person, and everyone doubles up. So we're all going to be doing more than one role each. And it just works brilliantly. And they all tend to be like really, really good friends, people that I've worked with, in some cases, for 15, 20 years,

Steve

0:24:00

and are incredibly close.

Brianne

0:24:02

Yeah, because you need to trust.

Steve

0:24:04

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We wind each other up, something rotten, but at the same time, we all love each other very dearly.

Brianne

0:24:12

Yeah, well, that's the best kind of relationship, isn't it?

8

0:24:13

Yeah, okay.

Brianne

0:24:15

I don't want to belabor this point, because as you pointed out, going on about the downsides and what you're seeing out with environmental destruction and climate change is not going to help, but you will have an interesting insight.

Brianne

0:24:26

What are some of the obvious things you've seen over the years? Perhaps you've been back to the same place twice and seen a difference. What are some of the issues you've seen associated with climate change in particular?

Steve

0:24:38

Yeah, that I think is the thing that now, at my stage of my career, now that I've been doing this job for such a long time, I am starting to see change over time. And change over time is the thing that has the greatest impact with you. So, for example, I did my first expeditions in Southeast Asia, some of which were in Borneo. And back in 1990, you know, I could travel across Borneo, fly in a light aircraft over the top of, you know, what is now Sarawak and

Steve

0:25:08

Kalimantan, and you'd look down and you'd just see forests, just pristine forests stretching off off in every direction as far as the eye can see. And then I came back in 1997 during the year of the Great Burn, when most of Southeast Asia was covered in a thick, dense smog and fog from the burning of places like Borneo. And it was overwhelming. It was just completely incapacitating in places you couldn't see more than 100 meters because the smoke was just so intense. And then I came back again for my next big expedition series in 2005. And you'd go up in a light aircraft and look to the horizon, and all you would see would be palm

Steve

0:25:46

oil plantations, just this endless undulating expanse of monoculture of nothing but palm oil. And while you would wander through the rainforest and hear the extraordinary calls of the gibbons, you know, just echoing over the top of the forest and the giant cicadas and the frogs, this wonderful orchestra of sound, you get into the Palm Oil Plantation and it would be silent, not a single sound because, you know, nothing can thrive there. And that is one of those things that seeing somewhere perfect, seeing paradise despoiled is really, really hard to live with. It is one of the realities that you can't allow yourself

Steve

0:26:29

to be crushed by it. You have to look for the positives, but there are ways that becomes hard.

Brianne

0:26:35

Yeah, yeah, it would be a horrific example. Palm oil is a very complicated issue, but the way we're going about it is incredibly wrong.

Steve

0:26:43

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I think that if we'd been having this discussion five years ago, six years ago, seven years ago, then we would probably both be saying that palm oil should be banned and it should be taken out of every single product possible and that it's an absolute catastrophe for the environment. But actually, when you start looking at it as an oil, it requires considerably less space to make than an awful lot of others. You can have multiple crops during a year, actually the trick is to try and find a proper responsible

Steve

0:27:19

palm oil solution. I've been to places that claim to be responsible palm oil plantations and have been your absolute pet subject, just greenwashing, just utter greenwashing. But there is a way that it could be done properly. If you could maintain corridors of forest in between the palm oil plantations, if you could allow palm oil plantations, when they start to degenerate, to properly recover with forest, if you could absolutely treasure the forest that exists and make sure that it is

Steve

0:27:52

completely buttoned off from development, then responsible palm oil could be the future. I've never seen it. I've never seen it work. I've never seen anything that comes even close to it. And that's a problem. It's a real problem. And it's difficult because, you know, we're having this conversation now, and it has so many nuances and so many complexities. And it was one of the topics that I would have been encouraging young people to embrace five or six years ago, that, you know, young people were getting enthused and excited. Let's ban palm oil. Let's boycott palm oil, let's make everything palm oil free. And now I hear that and I'm kind of like, uh, can I really say that? I'm not sure that's necessarily

Steve

0:28:34

the right thing to be saying. But yes, it's tricky. What's your take on that?

Brianne

0:28:38

It's really complicated. Very much the same. So I started a cosmetics company trying to be the world's most ethical, environmentally friendly, plastic free, so on and so forth, cosmetics company. And one of our things was palm oil free. And I tell you now in the cosmetics world, it's very difficult.

Brianne

0:28:53

But as I got to know more and I started speaking to people from the RSPO, whilst I don't believe any of their propaganda, sorry, RSPO people, I'm sure you're trying to do a good thing, I just don't think you're there yet.

Brianne

0:29:02

But when you switch on to something like coconut, which is the next one, right? It's four times less efficient. There is a really interesting company called something… helpful, isn't it? Who are making palm oil effectively the same molecular compound

Brianne

0:29:19

in the lab through fermentation.

Steve

0:29:20

That's interesting.

Brianne

0:29:21

So that might be the future. Yeah. I do think lab-made stuff will help a lot.

Steve

0:29:27

Yeah. I think probably the thing in my career that I'm most proud of is a connection that I have with a charity called the World Land Trust. And what we do is we buy up areas of usually pristine rainforests and we protect them. We usually sequester them to existing national parks or return them to First Nation peoples for stewardship. We've done some massive mega fundraisers over the years. One of those, for me, probably the

Steve

0:29:54

biggest one I did was to raise huge amounts of money to buy a chunk of rainforest in Borneo. Now, because of palm oil, the forest that we bought is radically more expensive than it is in other parts of the world. I mean, it's proper amounts of money to buy a hectare or an acre of rainforest in Borneo because it is so valuable as a potential palm oil plantation. But having the opportunity to buy, to purchase this strategic plot of land alongside a river river that works as a highway and a corridor for everything from elephants to orangutans to proboscis monkeys and to go back there having been a part of its protection to walk through

Steve

0:30:36

the forest and the reverse of what I was saying about walking through a palm oil plantation to walk through it and hear life to hear the you know the things that should be there thriving is one of the proudest things I've ever done and I think that you know palm oil is not going away. It's not going to disappear. There are such vast tracts of Southeast Asia, and now increasingly the rest of the world as well, that are covered in palm oil. What we need to do is break the back of that responsible palm oil thing that you were talking about there. We need to properly make that happen. The companies that

Steve

0:31:07

are making extraordinary amounts of money off palm oil need to start putting their money where their mouth is and make sure that they protect the little of what remains and they treasure it. There's no reason why it can't thrive alongside palm oil, but that's got to start because the little forest that remains in Borneo is just dwindling away and there's so many animals that occur there and nowhere else on earth. Once they're gone, they are gone forever.

Brianne

0:31:35

That story is particularly grim over there. And what I find really galling is how Malaysia and Indonesia are big on how their palm oil is actually particularly sustainable and it's supporting small farmers. But of course, the other aspect of all this is it's not supporting farmers whatsoever. It's the big purchases of palm oil that are winning. It's always the same people.

Steve

0:31:54

Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely true. And until recently, when we did our big expedition in Borneo in the early 2000s, which incidentally is another of the big wins. You've got to hold on to your wins, right? So one of the very, very big wins was this expedition that we did was to an area of rainforest that at the time was completely unprotected. In the aftermath of our expedition and of us passing on our findings to the then Environment Minister, it gained the highest protection status that any reserve can have in Malaysia. So that was a massive win.

Steve

0:32:29

But the environment minister that we were handing those documents to was also the Minister of Forestry and was also the Ministry of Plantations. He had the job of both exploiting the land and protecting the land all at once. And it's not surprising that one took precedence over the other. So yeah, I think that money, money, money, money, and you know, it's something that we constantly battle against.

Brianne

Yep, we're having that problem right here in Aotearoa too. Super fun. Governments who don't get it, right? I was going to ask you what your favourite conservation project is. So that was Land Bank Trust, was that right? The World Land Trust. Is that a little bit like the Rainforest Trust?

Steve

0:33:09

Yes, yeah it is. I mean, I think one of the reasons that I back the World Land Trust is that I came up with this project, which I've been running now for about 10 years or so, where we pick places around the world where the rain, not Borneo, because it's much too expensive, but pick places where the forest is relatively cheap. And then what we can do is we can go to schools and scout groups and youth organisations and say to them, look, for a relatively small amount of money, for an amount of money that you could make washing people's cars or doing jumble sales or bake sales, you can purchase a bit of rainforest

Steve

0:33:44

the same size as your school, the same size as your playground, the same size as your footy field, and that will be protected for all time. And the jaguars, the ocelots, the toucans that rely on that forest, you'll have done that. That's something that you will personally have achieved. And we'll even, you know, send you some photos of the animals that live there. We'll do some camera trapping there and we'll show you the tapirs that can only live there because of the work you did. And that is one of those things, one of those rare things where you can see a six-year-old,

Steve

0:34:13

a seven-year-old go, really? Seriously? You know, all those trees, we could do that ourselves for a couple of hundred bucks. That's crazy. And all of a sudden, a young conservationist is born. And that's the trick, isn't it? That's the thing that we're all searching for that can give us those right, pragmatic, tangible results that young people need.

Brianne

0:34:35

That's a really lovely story. And I remember looking at Rainforest Trust years ago as a charitable partner for the other company, and I was thinking, surely it cannot be that But it really is. And it's such an obvious solution? simple.

Steve

0:34:44

Yeah, the most difficult bit actually is what you do with it, because while it is cheap to, in the right places around the world, it's cheap to buy forest, if you were to actually be responsible for the upkeep of it, then that would be extraordinary amounts of money. So we don't do that. What we do is we return it to local people, so they can, they, you know, local land that they may have lost that they can then have returned to them to their own stewardship, or we can attach it to existing national parks, extending the remit of a national park which is already being maintained by someone

Steve

0:35:23

else, by the country of origin. And it's a neat model. There's an awful lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to making sure that you've got the right connections, and you've got the right local partners, but when you get it right, it is sweet.

Brianne

0:35:32

Brilliant. So obvious, all the best solutions are, right? They're simple. A lot of people know about palm oil, a lot of people know, obviously you have charismatic megafauna and you're in the country that has a good chunk of them. What do you think is a real pressing conservation or species issue that we're not talking about very much that you may have come across?

Steve

0:35:56

The difficult thing is that as a scientist, I am supposed to acknowledge that actually no one individual species is really the be-all and end-all, that actually it's ecosystems and habitats that are the main thing that we should be focusing on. But then as someone who has worked in the media for the last 25 years, I also realise that that's just impossibly naive, and that actually that kind of messaging is not what works with people. People are much more likely to connect to a charismatic animal. And if you can find

Steve

0:36:35

one that you preserve it by preserving its habitat, and therefore by preserving everything that lives within that, then you're onto a winner. And we've done this with rhinos, with tigers, with pandas, you know, all of these animals that you protect them by protecting the habitat they live in. And so they become an umbrella species for everything that's there.

Steve

0:36:59

The one that we perhaps have struggled with more than any other, and that is in more danger than just about any other is the vulture, the old world vulture. So there are parts of their realm where as much as 98% of their numbers have disappeared,

Steve

0:37:16

particularly across places like India, Bangladesh, the Himalayas, and then over into the Middle East and Africa. The number one reason is an anti-inflammatory drug, diclofenac, which is used on cattle, and then the vultures will consume cattle carcasses, and it either thins their eggs or leads to them getting this loss of

Steve

0:37:37

muscularity, which means that they can't fly and they essentially die.

Brianne

0:37:40

That's urofane, isn't it?

Steve

0:37:42

It's a voltarol, I think it's kind of off the shelf name.

Brianne

0:37:47

It's such a common drug.

Steve

0:37:49

It's an incredibly common drug and farmers will use it on their cattle so that the cattle don't struggle with muscular pains, but the vultures just can't take it. They have absolutely no resistance to it whatsoever. And it has decimated vultures across the continent. And vultures have an incredibly important role to play in the ecosystem. They turn over nutrients, they get rid of carcasses that harbour diseases. They're incredibly resistant to rotting, decaying flesh and all the things that may be within it, but they can't take diclofenac. So yeah, that's probably the one sort of complex vertebrate that we are.

Steve

0:38:34

And amphibians, they're the ones that are just disappearing at a terrifying rate and people are not engaging with it.

Brianne

0:38:41

No, and I don't know how you... frogs are probably the cutest thing on planet Earth. I've just re-homed all mine into a nice new frog oasis. Okay, vultures, I didn't know that. That is fascinating and really disturbing. Okay. So, when you're faced with information like that, what can we do? We all know the bog standard stuff, you know, you don't use single-use plastic, you try not to fly as much, blah, blah, blah.

Brianne

0:39:07

What do you think are the most important things people can do?

Steve

0:39:09

In that specific case, it's just absolutely impossibly hard because that has to come from international pressure, that has to come from governments. That's not something that an individual can really do very much about. You can get involved with particular projects that might be being run by the Hawke Conservancy or by WWF, but how much is that actually genuinely going to impact how much farmers use diclofenac in Pakistan? It's just not. So that I think is a tricky bit. It's learning how to pick your battles. It's finding places where you can have some kind

Steve

0:39:48

of impact. For me, I would say over the last 20 years, the biggest group that I have properly got involved in is the sharks. And I'm kind of patron ambassador of four different shark charities and I give as much of my time as I can to that because my belief, I mean I might be being naive, but my belief is that the sharks as a misunderstood group of animals that people have a general easy aversion to that can be cured remarkably quickly by showing just how awesome sharks are. You can turn someone from a shark hater to a shark advocate probably quicker than with

Steve

0:40:27

any other group of animals. And that simple switch of getting someone to be interested and fascinated by sharks, all of a sudden you've got someone who is willing to bang the drum, to fundraise, to not consume shark products. It is one of the few things where I believe that the media and the media that I'm involved in can help, really can help. You know,

Steve

0:40:52

we are failing dismally at climate change, we are having so many problems with the simple storytelling aspects of climate change. It's an absolute disaster. But with sharks, I think the media can really play a role, we can, you know, sort of reduce the demonising of sharks, we can get people on side, those people may well stop consuming

Steve

0:41:17

shark products, be more interested in where shark products are coming from, and can make a big difference. So yeah, I think that's the one I have thrown myself behind. It's not so much because I've gone, Oh, I love snow leopards. So I'm going to, you know, become an advocate for snow leopards. No, it's because I've gone right, sharks. I think this is one that I might be able to do something about. So yeah, I think that that's it. Picking our battles.

Brianne

0:41:41

Yeah, I think that's fab advice. You cannot do everything. There is no such thing as a perfect environmentalist, but I agree with you. Sharks, probably favourite, oooh, it's very hard to pick a favorite animal,

Brianne

0:41:52

but they're certainly out there. There is nothing quite like being in their presence. And nobody believes you until they've experienced it themselves, right?

Steve

0:41:59

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, do you have, here in Australia, do you still have squalene in your makeup products?

Brianne

0:42:07

I believe...

Steve

0:42:08

Because it's something that's pretty much omnipresent around the world is, you know, shark oils are very much used in makeups.

Brianne

0:42:16

I believe it's used in some, but it's not common in Australian made or New Zealand made or even American made products. It's not common. And I think consumers are beginning to understand, you know, the A versus the E, squalane versus squalene and where it's sourced from. But to be honest, it's not something I see a lot of education about.

Brianne

0:42:34

I've left that company and sold it, but I never did a lot of education about it because we were obviously never going to use it. And I just assumed other companies felt the same, but that was obviously quite naive. But yeah, shark fin soup's a big one, isn't it?

Steve

0:42:46

It is. You know, so that's something, that's another thing that we have, I think, had an impact on. So in the UK, there are diminishing few restaurants that will sell shark fin soup. We managed to get one of the charities that I am a president of managed to get the personal allowance for shark fin being brought

Steve

0:43:08

into the UK abolished. So now you can't bring shark fin as an individual into the UK. We're making it almost impossible for shark fin to be traded in the UK and it has almost shut down shark fin soup in the UK and as a source for trade of shark fin, which is great. That's something that it may not have a massive impact on the global decline of shark species, but again, it's one of those things that has people thinking, yeah, that's something we did. We did that.

Steve

0:43:43

Right. What are we going to do next? And I think that that's vital.

Brianne

0:43:46

Yeah. It's a stepping stone to the next thing. Oh, brilliant. Well, well done.

Brianne

0:43:50

That's awesome. Why do you think we're doing such a bad job? I don't say we, I'm not in the media. Why do you think it is so hard to get people on board with climate change? Is it because it feels like a sacrifice or because it's too big?

Steve

0:44:02

I can't talk about people's personal reasons for not getting on board. I 100% know what the problem is with us in the media. I am someone who has studied climate change for a very long time. I made my first program on it in the year 2000. I've worked with many of the world's absolute best scientists on climate change, as someone who is a qualified scientist, is pretty good at taking complex material, complex scientific papers, and putting them into the kind of language

Steve

0:44:38

that anyone can understand. But I cannot at any point stand up and say, this is climate change. This happened because of climate change. This is what is going to happen if you don't turn your light off right now, because that would be a lie. Climate change is so amorphous and so complex that there is no one x equals y analysis. So, you know, talking about sharks and shark finning, you know, it's pretty simple. We carry on consuming sharks the way we are, they'll be gone, they'll be extinct, you know, bam. It's a simple message, it's something we can tell very easily. With climate change, it's going

Steve

0:45:12

to be, you know, if we still keep consuming energy at the rate we're consuming now, then probably we'll get more storms, we might get more drought here, but you know, probably get a bit wetter over there. And you have to tell it that way, because that's the truth. You can't say, right, you here in Sydney right now are going to suffer from X number of storms in the next year, and your temperature is going to rise by three degrees, because that just, wouldn't be true. And because it is so complex, in a world where,

Steve

0:45:41

you know, a TikTok video has to make its point in six seconds, you don't have that opportunity, you don't have that simplicity. And so it's a really, really difficult job. It's an almost impossible job for someone in my position to tell the right stories the right way about climate change, which we're struggling with almost always banging our heads against the brick wall. You get any decent

Steve

0:46:05

scientist on who has all the stats and has all the figures and they are going to have to put endless qualifiers into everything they say and do in order to be factually correct. And if they're not factually correct, then they're going to have, you know, all the naysayers will just come crashing down on top of them. So yes, it's a tricky one. I don't claim for a millisecond to have the solutions to it.

Brianne

0:46:27

No. We compare it to things like the ozone layer and how that's an example of how we can all come together and fix a problem, but the problem is that much more complex. And yes, it does require a big systemic change, which people think means sacrifice, and to a degree, in some aspects it will do. And then you've got all the really loud deniers, who I don't really think deny so much as there's a level of

Brianne

0:46:54

defensiveness and they just don't want to change.

Steve

0:46:57

I'm not sure I agree. I've been trying to sell a program for the last couple of years which is essentially about the industry of climate change denial. So you know we've heard an enormous amount about how the cigarette industry had a concentrated campaign to try and eradicate all the science and all of the knowledge that showed, that proved what they all knew, which was that smoking killed people. There is today a multi-billion dollar industry around the world of people who that is their sole job, is to try and to always have that kind of that either denial or questioning the facts or or

Steve

0:47:41

just making sure that it's not 100% of the scientific papers that that show that that this is happening and these are the way it's happening and you know because of that because of the questioning because of the throwing in of things which you know people you're faced with the thought of, right, I love big gas guzzling cars. That is my absolute passion. But people say it's killing the planet.

Steve

0:48:10

Oh, but this person over here says that trees will grow better with more carbon. That's amazing. So forget about that. It's all right. I'm going to have my car. You know, if you can create that little bit of doubt, it doesn't have to be saying it's

Steve

0:48:24

absolutely not happening. All you've got to do is create a little bit of doubt and that is enough and that is enough to propel our demand for oil and gas and for you know, all of the things that are driving this catastrophic future, you can continue the economic benefits that come with it. And so yes, we have organisations, they tend to be quite short-lived. So the second that you pick up on one organisation that purely exists to put out

Steve

0:48:53

climate denial, what appear to be peer-reviewed papers, it will last for a few months and then it will change to a different name and they'll start putting out those papers. It's tricky but it would be an amazing subject to make a documentary about because it is so cold and calculating. And evil. And although it's been hard to prove it at this point, you know, it's got to be being funded by oil and gas.

Brianne

0:49:22

Oh, totally.

Brianne

0:49:23

Who are also funding a very similar process in the plastics industry and recycling. Recycling being the big scam that it is largely. It's all a bit grim really, and it is evil by definition, but that's interesting. I hope someone picks it up because I would like to watch it. Yeah, well, consumer pressure, it's what we need more of.

Brianne

0:49:40

Okay, we are beginning to wrap up. You are going on tour next year. Yes, I am. Tell us about it.

Steve

0:49:47

Yeah, so I'm coming back out here to Australia. I'm going to be touring to, oh gosh, let me try and remember this, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, I think. It's a stage show where I try and bring the wonders of the ocean to life. So there'll be life-sized ocean giants on stage. There's a big screen with lots of amazing footage from the most extraordinary animals that we have in our seas. There will be inevitably stuff about the challenges our ocean faces and the conservation and protection of our seas. I work a lot on soundscapes.

Steve

0:50:23

So, you know, we tend to think of the oceans as being silent places. They are anything but, and the noises of the sea, everything from the obvious songs of the humpback whale and the various kicks of the dolphin species through to the fact that fishes talk to each other and communicate and have songs

Steve

0:50:40

that we're only just starting to understand. There will be stuff from exploration, exploration of our deep seas, exploration of finding new species of animals beneath the surface of the seas, and stage science and techniques and tricks and lots of stuff that

Steve

0:50:54

can go wrong and blow up in my face. So it's a lot of fun. I've been doing it in the UK for a couple of years now and it's been going absolutely brilliantly so I'm super, super chuffed to bring it to Aus.

Brianne

We are a little miffed that you're not coming to New Zealand, just saying.

Brianne

It's so, so sad because it would just be the most perfect place to talk about our oceans.

Brianne

0:51:14

Yeah, that's okay. Next year or the year after, that's fine. We'll forgive you. I'm gonna buy a couple of extra tickets and do a giveaway because I do think it's absolutely something everyone should see.

Brianne

0:51:25

It's all ages?

Steve

0:51:26

Very much. I mean, one of the things about it that I like best, and it's one of the big challenges, but we get everything from like four or five year old kids to professors in marine biology rocking up.

Brianne

0:51:35

Cool.

Steve

0:51:36

And so I've got to find ways that I could be sort of like entertaining and interesting to toddlers and to academics. But yeah, somehow it kind of works.

Brianne

0:51:45

That's very cool. Have you got anything else planned other than a tour? Any new documentaries?

Steve

0:51:50

Yeah, yeah. So I've got lots of new stuff coming out. I've got a couple of new kids series coming out. I've got some stuff on, I think, coming out in New Zealand fairly soon I've got a Hippo series, a Croc series and then a new series on sharks that I'm filming early next year. So yeah lots and lots of stuff going on. Amazing,

Brianne

0:52:10

Amazing, love a shark series. Okay, a couple of quick questions for you. Fave book, favourite?

Steve

0:52:16

I would  say it would probably be, oh my gosh, put me on the spot. So I would Okay, so I will go 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Brianne

0:52:32

Oh, okay. I have to add that to the list. It's a long list.

Brianne

0:52:35

Favourite place in the world? You've probably already said it, to be honest.

Steve

0:52:38

Well, I've kind of got to say New Zealand, haven't I?

Brianne

0:52:40

Well, yeah, we do. Have you spent much time here?

Steve

Yeah, yeah. My sister lived in Christchurch for about four years, working at the children's hospital there. So I came out a couple of times and spent a good while kind of wandering around. And then we've been out filming in New Zealand as well, which is, you know, it's just amazing.

Brianne

0:52:54

Good answer. And your favourite animal, which is an impossible question to answer.

Steve

0:52:59

It's not actually. I think my favourite is the orca, for lots of reasons, because they are, they're so successful. They are creative. They have remarkable pod structure,

Steve

0:53:12

a true matriarchy. They are so close to us in so many ways, you know, they have incredible family ties, they fall out with each other, they can be cruel and mischievous, they grieve their dead, they look after their young with, you know, absolute self-sacrifice. And yeah, I think Orca, just stunning.

Brianne

0:53:33

I really, really hope, in fact I'm not coming home unless I see Orca in Norway. I'm told it's the right time of year, so.

Steve

0:53:40

It is, yeah, pretty much so.

Brianne

0:53:42

It's the plan. Okay, my final question for you, and I'll never give people a heads up on this question because I like to know what you think off the cuff. If you were supreme global overlord, voted in of course, no military coup involved,

Brianne

0:53:56

what would be the first thing you would change to try and make the world a better place?

Steve

0:54:00

I would take everything off the people who've got too much and put it all into a mega fund to making everything better for the animals, the environments and the people who don't have enough. And I would just spread it all out. It sounds a little bit communist when I put it like that.

Brianne

No, no it doesn't. That is the perfect answer.

Steve

But yeah, that's what I do. I would even the odds. No, perfect answer. We've had some very strange ones. I said to ban raisins. Mostly joking.

Steve

0:54:35

But you're right. Sorry, Elon Musk. Your quest for, I don't know what the hell he's doing now is over. I like that. Nice. You've been amazing. Thank you so much for joining me.

Brianne

0:54:48

I very much appreciate it.

Steve

0:54:50

Thank you so much.

Brianne

0:54:51

Well, I really don't know how to wrap that up. I just feel a little bit like I haven't really done very much exciting stuff with my life. I'm going shark diving in a couple of weeks in Fiji, but it really doesn't seem to be as cool. Anyway, I am so appreciative of the opportunity to speak to you, Steve. Thank you so much. You're amazing. You have inspired hundreds of thousands of people around the world to care more about our planet and I'm ever so grateful for the work that you do.

Brianne

0:55:19

I do have two tickets to give away to his Sydney show, so I will pop up a competition on social media, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Thank you so much for joining me and I will see you next week.

Brianne

0:55:29

Kia ora.

Brianne

0:55:30

And there you go. I hope you learned something and realized that being green isn't about everything in your pantry matching with those silly glass jars or living in a commune. If that's your jam, fabulous. But sustainability at its part is just using what you need. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to you need. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to

Brianne

0:55:49

drop me a rating and hit the subscribe button. Kia ora and I'll see you next week.