Episode:
38
Modern Zoos, Orangutan Habitats, and Palm Oil Solutions with Amy Robbins
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I am so excited to talk to Amy Robbins, a self-declared “jack of all trades, master of none,” but honestly, an incredibly impressive person.
Amy is the Deputy Curator of Mammals at Auckland Zoo and the founder of the Sumatran Ranger Project. She has been working with animals and finding innovative ways to help them for decades, and it is an honour to share her story with you.
In this episode, she shares:
Key Quotes:
"Whatever we do, consume, and use has an impact."
"You have to work with these communities. And it can't be me as this white girl coming in saying you should do this. It's me being well-connected... But the people doing the work, the real conservation heroes, are those on the ground, working day in and day out."
"We sit there and talk about these incredible animals that live in trees and how well they're adapted for life in the trees, and yet a lot of zoos still provide environments where orangutans have to live on the ground."
More about Amy and the episode
Check out the Sumatran ranger project website, the Palm Oil Scan app.
Also check out the Eden Reforestation Project.
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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. Kia ora, welcome back. Today we are talking to the Deputy Curator of Mammals at Auckland Zoo. Amy Robbins has spent about 24 years at Auckland Zoo, which I didn't even know people stayed that long in roles at all, which is a testament to her commitment to conservation. But not only that, she also runs a bunch of non-profits, has started her
Brianne
0:00:53
own business and is looking to donate all of the profits to those non-profits. She's an absolute force of nature, a legend of conservation and I'm delighted she's made time for me. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. When did we first meet? It was a long time ago and then more recently at a couple of events. It was at the zoo and I think you came in to do a behind the scenes with orangutans, I think. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. And one blew a raspberry at me and he was told that that was bad manners. I think that's when that first came to mind is how clever they truly are. So first, who are you and what do you do?
Amy
Who am I? I have some major imposter syndrome. So, I'm Amy Robbins. I am a jack of all trades, a master of none. I have my finger in many pies, fingers in many pies, but my day-to-day job, my bread
Amy
0:01:50
and butter is at Auckland Zoo. I've been here for 24 years and my role is deputy curator of mammals. So I manage all the mammal teams. I manage their team leaders to make sure that we're delivering on best animal welfare and making sure that teams are meeting all their goals and meeting the zoo's objectives and things like that. And I specialise in orangutan. So they're my one true love, my true passion. And so I've also been really fortunate to be able
Amy
0:02:21
to work in Indonesia quite a lot, in Sumatra with the Sumatran orangutan conservation program. I volunteer my time there to help train staff in how to care for orangutans. More recently, particularly with orangutans that can't ever be released because they have a disability or have been impacted by humans in some way. So I spend a lot of time doing that. I also run a not-for-profit in Sumatra called Sumatran Ranger Project, which I set up in 2016. I have a team of 11 rangers, a total of 15 staff, and they patrol the border of the Gorongosa National Park, which is a really key hotspot left, area of forest left, that has some of the
Amy
0:02:59
last remaining viable populations of Sumatran tigers and orangutans and elephants and rhinos. So really important work that they're doing there. And then more recently, I set up a business, finally, which has been something I've been wanting to do for a very long time and something that I spoke to you about to get a few tips and tricks running conservation-focused adventures in North Sumatra. So I've done that for a very long time.
Amy
0:03:23
I used to do it for someone else, and now I've kind of gone out and gone on my own looking for that little niche, I guess, where, you know, I worked in ecotourism for a long time, but something about that just didn't sit right with me, or I saw that there were opportunities to expand on that and to really enable people to have really meaningful connections with communities and with wildlife. And so that's kind of how I've crafted out this path with Raw Conservation Adventures
Amy
0:03:50
is really focusing on working alongside programs that are really impactful and meaningful either to communities or conservation or both. So yeah, I'm busy.
Brianne
0:04:02
Yeah, imposter syndrome, really. It's not often you chat to someone who's doing so many genuinely impactful things, which is why I am really stoked that you made time for me. So I do appreciate it. But I want to dig into all those things individually. But first, I want to address the elephant in the room.
Brianne
0:04:19
If you'll pardon the really terrible pun. I'll leave now. There is a lot of discourse still that zoos are bad and shouldn't be required and animals shouldn't be in zoos. And I don't think there is a single person on earth who disagrees with that statement, right?
Brianne
0:04:37
Obviously, wild animals should not be in zoos. They should not be in cages. And unfortunately, we have managed to bugger up our planet and the wild in general so much that we don't have any other option. What do you say, beyond what I've just said I suppose, to people who give you that? And do you get a lot of flack about it? I hope not.
Amy
0:04:55
Not so much in recent years because Auckland Zoo has a really strong reputation and a really good brand and we are actually doing really impactful, meaningful work in the wild for our wild work. Yes, there are terrible zoos. I've been to a lot of them. I've been to some awful zoos that just, you just leave in despair. You're just walking around bawling your eyes out because there is no animal welfare. These animals are just rotting away in cages and that does give zoos a bad reputation.
Amy
0:05:23
But there are also really good modern zoos and I think I'm really lucky to work for one of those. And one of the reasons I've stayed at Auckland Zoo for so long is that we are seen as world leaders. We do set the standard in terms of not only animal welfare, but really using the science behind that. So we don't just say, oh yes, we have good animal welfare. We're actually using legitimate research and science to make sure that we're providing the very best for all of the animals in our care, but also too, the impact that we are having
Amy
0:05:56
because of our community and our visitors, the impact that we have on the wild and on the thousands, literally thousands and thousands of hours that our staff spend in the field, whether it's releasing New Zealand species back into the wild that have been bred at Auckland Zoo, or lending our expertise to really critically endangered programmes in New Zealand, but also around the world. So we've done a lot of really hard mahi to get, to build that reputation and to really
Amy
0:06:21
set that example. And we are seen as world leaders and we're getting that feedback more and more. And we do have such a fantastic community that really continues to support us in that respect. So, yes, I do not disagree with you that there are some awful Zoos out there, but there are also some really fantastic Zoos doing some really important stuff. And a lot of people don't always see all of that.
Amy
0:06:44
And that's where I think Auckland Zoos has done a really fabulous job over the last few years, is to be really visible, really honest, really transparent, and to have those really honest conversations, share stories, highs and lows, and all sorts that shows the breadth and depth of our work. It's not always smooth sailing and happiness and joy on the outside. We actually show what goes on behind the scenes and the real hard work of our staff.
Amy
0:07:10
And we've also shared a lot of the real lows that happen, like, for example, when we might lose an animal close to us or a high-profile animal. But I think what we do really well is to be very honest and share our journey with our community, and that has had...enables the community to have a lot of buy-in and really trust what we're doing and what we're saying. And so that, you know, the conservation side of things is really visible now, whereas previously in the past, perhaps, it wasn't in a lot of zoos.
Amy
0:07:35
But more and more now, people are coming to realise that the role of a good modern zoo primarily is conservation. We are a conservation organisation.
Brianne
0:07:44
Yes, I like that. You are a zoo, but that's not first and foremost what you're all about, right? And without question, you're one of the best zoos I've ever been to. I've been to Auckland Zoo many a time and every time I just think it's wonderful.
Amy
0:07:56
People should know that when they do visit, or by visiting a good modern zoo, they are directly contributing to conservation in the wild. So, you know, at Auckland Zoo, people come and part of their ticket clip goes directly into our conservation fund, which all of that money goes into supporting projects in the wild. So people often feel like they can't have an impact or they can't make a positive difference. But by visiting us, that then facilitates us to be able to support these programs so they are having a direct
Amy
0:08:30
impact on what happens to the wild by visiting our zoo, by visiting any good modern zoo. I think that's a really important take-home message for people who wonder, what can I do? Or who might think, oh, I don't want to visit a zoo. By visiting a good zoo, you are directly having a conservation impact, and that is a really easy thing that a lot of people can do. It's a really achievable thing that a lot of people can do.
Brianne
0:08:52
And a wonderfully educational thing to do.
Amy
0:08:54
That's right.
Brianne
0:08:54
How did you get started? When I was a kid, I would do anything to work with animals, to narrow down what you started with, right? Zookeeper was never on the list of things that I could ever be because I didn't even know how you got into it. How did you start?
Brianne
0:09:09
You obviously have a degree, I know you do.
Amy
0:09:10
Yep.
Amy
0:09:11
So, yeah, I always wanted to be either a zookeeper or a vet. And my dad tells me, yeah, like when I was three years old and we were visiting Auckland Zoo and I said to him I wanted to be a zookeeper and I was going to be a zookeeper. And again, like you say, like when I was at school, there were no courses that trained you to be and how to be a zookeeper. That didn't come until much, much later when I was already a zookeeper. So you kind of had to forge your own path. So I had a couple of years off after school finished. I knew I wanted to work with animals, but I wasn't quite sure
Amy
0:09:40
what the course was because it didn't actually exist. So I ended up just doing a general science biology degree, and I then got my job at Auckland Zoo, and I've also done other studies as well. I've done the certificate to be a zookeeper and a few bits and pieces. But the key thing is really getting the experience to be able, especially nowadays because it's such a competitive industry to get into, and we're getting, well I've seen in the time that I've been here, such really skilled graduates and really well-educated graduates that have masters or PhDs and they want to be zookeepers, and that's I think a lot of the work that we've done
Amy
0:10:20
to kind of highlight and demonstrate that this role isn't just picking up poo or cuddling animals, which are the two things that people think zookeepers do all the time. Whereas this is a science-based job, and more and more now people are starting to understand that. And so I just got into it through the university route and the work experience. When I was young, I volunteered at SPCA and all that kind of stuff that you do to get experience. And then, yeah, I was lucky enough to study and volunteer at Hamilton Zoo and got a role here, which has changed throughout the years. But always, yeah, just always being really focused that this is what
Amy
0:10:58
I want to do and this is what I love and I've stayed doing it because I love doing it. And not only do I love the animal side of things, that's still my primary passion and why I'm here, but I also love the people side of things now as well. I love developing younger zookeepers. I love watching them grow into a role. And I’ve been here long enough now that I've seen and worked closely with the people that have started as a trainee keeper and I've helped to mentor and coach them.
Amy
0:11:26
And now they're senior keepers and that's so incredible, that's so fulfilling to me. So yeah, so that's kind of changed over the years and I thought perhaps I wasn't a people person, but I am, it turns out.
Brianne
0:11:37
There is nothing quite like seeing someone you've trained grow and develop their own career and go on to do things. It is a really cool feeling. A bit sort of cliche sounding, but it is nice. I know Auckland Zoo has a lot of conservation programs and I appreciate your favourite orangutans. If we put those to the side, what is your favourite conservation program that people
Brianne
0:11:56
may not know about?
Amy
0:11:57
Are you sure I can't talk about orangutans?
Brianne
0:11:58
You can talk about them in a minute, I promise.
Amy
0:12:03
So, yeah, so Orangutan is the one that I've worked with the most, but I think there's recently we've had projects out in the Pacific, and so one of them has been on the island of Fatu Hiva to try and help save the last few Fatu Hiva monarch, which are a small songbird. So there's been some incredible work going out there. It's really remote. It's a really hard place. I mean, it's a tropical island, so it's amazing, but the travel there is incredibly tough, and being isolated and without a lot of the comforts is really tough. And there's a lot of those sorts
Amy
0:12:44
of examples both in New Zealand and particularly around the Pacific where we tend to focus a lot of our conservation portfolio, our keepers are going out and they are living really rough and they are doing it really tough to try and have an impact on these last few birds. We do a lot of different work in a lot of different places, but that was one that's been particularly interesting to follow or to watch our bird and our...
Amy
0:13:11
Mostly our bird and our ectotherm keepers are the ones that do the bulk of the field work here at the zoo. The mammals would sort of get involved where we can. I do a bit of penguin stuff, and also we've got a few keepers doing some stuff with New Zealand bats. But yeah, primarily the birds and ectotherm keepers. But fairy terns as well, there's been some incredible work with New Zealand fairy terns
Amy
0:13:30
where they've been hatched and reared here at the zoo and then released. We do a lot of breed for release, but just the methods and the evolving science of how they are hatching and rearing these birds and preparing them for life in the wild and then going out and seeing them be successful in the wild, that's pretty impressive. That's pretty, yeah, you know, I think a lot of people don't think twice about a bird. For example, they're not often high-profile animals like our charismatic megafauna that
Amy
0:13:57
we have, like orangutans or tigers, but the bulk of our conservation work actually involves New Zealand birds.
Brianne
0:14:03
Yeah, it's kind of funny that we don't, and sea life is much the same, apart from whales, maybe dolphins, we don't look at birds with the same level of empathy. It's very strange to me. I don't understand, but I sort of put the fact that fish seem so different to us, you know, from every other possible biological facet, they are so different, but I don't totally understand why we are almost, well, we are, we're negligent for birds.
Brianne
0:14:28
I know we had a big win for albatrosses, WWF we're talking about, so that's something, but our treatment with birds is odd. Now you talk about orangutans, because one of my favorite aspects of Auckland Zoo is the aerial, climby, habitat-y thing.
Brianne
0:14:44
What happens if they fall? I know that's a stupid question, because you're going to say they're not going to fall, but my brain's still, you know?
Amy
0:14:52
Yeah.
Brianne
0:14:53
Tell me about that.
Amy
0:14:54
If someone hasn't been there, explain what it is and how you even brought it about, because
Brianne
0:14:57
I imagine you had quite a lot to do with it.
Amy
0:14:59
Yeah, so this has been the best thing I've ever done in my career, aside from all the work that I've done in the wild, but just being involved in the design of our South East Asian precinct. So, the area for the siamangs and orangutans is called the high canopy habitat. And so the whole focus there was to design a totally arboreal environment for our apes. Historically, zoos have housed and presented orangutans in really sort of horizontally organised terrestrial
Amy
0:15:29
environments, and that is not what they're built for. It doesn't do them any good. It doesn't do our visitors any good. You know, we sit there and talk about these incredible animals that live in trees and how well they're adapted for life in the trees. And yet a lot of zoos still provide environments where orangutans have to live on the ground. And there's enough research now to show that it has not only psychological consequences, but it does have a physical impact on their health.
Amy
0:15:51
And so we'd known for a long time we needed to redevelop our orangutan habitat, and we wanted to do it properly, and we wanted it to be the best in the world. So it did take a lot of research and a lot of collaboration from a number of different people all over the world. But essentially what we've created are two sort of core habitats that have live trees and what we call canopy climbers, which are like live trees.
Amy
0:16:15
So one of our design principles was around biomimicry and we wanted to copy nature and not other zoos. And it didn't mean that everything we built had to look exactly like a tree. We weren't trying to go for sort of fake trees that we tried to make look authentic. We were looking for things that behaved like trees and that had a tree-ness to them. And so to take some of the pressure off the live trees, we designed these canopy climbers,
Amy
0:16:38
which is just one component of their habitat. But even then, that was just so much design just in that one little element, one little aspect, and that was looking at the type of paint that we used and as it, you know, they had a texture and it's heat reflective so it doesn't get too hot. And the diameters of the kind of branches, I guess, that they sit on and hold onto and looking at the size of orangutan and climbing hands and looking at different
Amy
0:17:02
ages and stages of orangutans. So, again, this is sort of talking to the science behind it. But in addition to the two key core habitats, we have over two kilometers of what we call aerial pathways. And so those are the pathways, the ropes that are connected between a number of towers, which is called the towers, that are between 20 and 25 meters above the ground. And so that really represents the emergent layer of the rainforest, like that, above the canopy.
Amy
0:17:31
And so all throughout this whole, the whole of the high canopy habitat, the different levels of the rainforest are represented. So you've got sort of your canopy climbers, which are 7-ish to 8-ish meters high, and then we've got live trees, which are a little bit higher, and then that goes into the aerial pathways. And they're pretty incredible. It's not a novel concept. The concept has been done a lot around the world, but the feedback that we've had, in my personal opinion, is that we do it better than anybody else in the world. Because of the softness, how they sit softly within the landscape, yes, they're
Amy
0:18:04
big steel structures and they had to be engineered incredibly. The engineering on them is insane. It's outrageous. And yeah, just unbelievable. I learned so much on this project. But they have a softness to them. And we do a lot of landscape borrowing and landscape immersion in this recent. We've got lots of amazing backdrops of trees and natural plantings and things that soften the landscape. But then also too, these big towers really sit softly within that landscape as well because of the design. They've got curves and they're painted a gentle colour and you can see through them.
Amy
0:18:39
And so that was all part of it as well. We really wanted people to see and hear and smell orangutans and siamangs. And we do that through the use of perforated steel rather than your traditional sort of solid hard barriers with straight lines. There are no straight lines within... They shouldn't build straight lines. That's right. And so I think that's what we did really well was we really mastered that
Amy
0:19:01
biomimicry that we were after. And because we had people who understand orangutans and how they behave involved in that design process, we've been able to make sure that, you know, at the forefront of design with welfare, that was our primary driver and to make sure that we were looking at all the different physical domains. So we follow the kind of science behind it as the five domains of animal welfare model and that was developed in part by Dr. David Meller, who is a professor at Massey University. And so the five domains is sort of the adopted model of really good modern zoos all over the world, it replaces that sort
Amy
0:19:41
of outdated five freedoms. And so we're making sure that we are catering to an animal's environmental needs and requirements, behavioural requirements, physical health, nutrition requirements, and then that all feeds into what we call an effective state or a mental state, and that gives you your overall welfare state. So we know that, you know, along the way, every aspect of their environment, so looking at quality and quantity of space and all of the furnishings within it and the complexities within it, making sure that all of those are catered to an orangutan's inherent needs and how orangutans have evolved over
Amy
0:20:16
time, which is to live above the ground and everything about them is adapted for a life in the trees. And so we have an obligation to provide that for them. And that's where I think we've really excelled and that's why people constantly, constantly are coming to me saying, can I have your plans or your designs for this and how did you do this and how did you do that? And so we're really being held in high regard and adopted as
Brianne
0:20:39
like the gold standard in orangutan habitats for zoos. That's pretty cool. So if you haven't been to Auckland Zoo, there's these big, I'm going to say steel towers, but as you've been saying, they really don't stand out like the proverbial. They do fit in really nicely. And these big wires, cables, right, that string from one to the other. So it's like the animals can leave their enclosure whilst the public are in no danger. I mean, I'm not sure I'd want to... Are orangutans a concern for human? Because obviously they could pull your arms off without even thinking about it.
Brianne
0:21:14
But they're not an aggressive species, are they?
Amy
0:21:16
Not typically, no. I mean, when you see orangutans in the wild, truly wild orangutans don't want a bar of you and they run away from you very quickly.
Brianne
0:21:24
That's a shame because I want to cuddle.
Amy
0:21:26
It'd be a one-time only thing, I think. No, I mean, they can be very aggressive if they want to be, but typically, no, they're not. They're not. Male-to-males, yes, because males are very intolerant of one another. But to answer your... Well, orangutans are very adorable. Let's be clear. To answer your earlier question about them falling, we're not worried they'll fall because we know orangutans and we know that they don't just drop. They're not going to drop 20 meters to concrete. They're not going to do that.
Amy
0:22:02
So we did put a lot of research into what height this should be. I visited zoos all around the world and took all of their best and worst ideas and looked at, you know, one of the things we looked at was the different heights and what's the lowest sort of tolerance there is out there and what does that mean. And for some zoos, you know, their orangutans can come down quite low, but if they drop, it's not a problem. They just walk them back in because that's the sort of zoo they are.
Amy
0:22:30
They have a hands-on approach, whereas that's not what we're about. We want the orangutans to be exhibiting natural behaviour at all times. See, and they don't drop. They just don't. We've designed the pathways in a configuration so there's three ropes, and that's sort of a triangular configuration so that there's one to walk on and two to hold on to,
Amy
0:22:51
so that they are able to locomote in a natural way. And it also allows for the safe passage of other animals along the way as well. So all of that was really well considered, and at no time have we ever been worried that any of the animals will drop or try and jump.
Brianne
0:23:09
No. Well, I obviously, I assumed a lot of thought had gone into it, but it's the same whenever I'm with someone there, they're always like, oh, what if they fall? And I think, well, they're sort of designed for it.
Brianne
0:23:18
But it's always good to ask. Now we could talk about Auckland Zoo for a long time, but because you do so many other things, I'm kind of keen to crack on into your Sumatran ranger project. You talked a little bit about it before.
Brianne
0:23:32
Why did you start it? How did you start it? What is your eventual aim? Lots of big questions in there.
Amy
0:23:39
So I was working in ecotourism.
Amy
0:23:40
So I still, while I've had my Auckland Zoo job, I would travel over to Sumatra several times a year and I would lead these eco-adventures with different groups of people from all over the world. And I did that for an Australian company that has closed since COVID. And my geographic area of specialty was North Sumatra. And so I came to see and get to know the communities and the people living along the forest edge,
Amy
0:24:12
but also see how they were directly impacted by human wildlife conflict and the lack of support that there was and the frustration that they felt around that. And so I thought, oh, well, we could just find some money somehow and pay some people to do what they want to be doing. I was very naive because I thought I'll just do like a Facebook type sponsor a ranger thing and these guys that really want to do this work can actually have,
Amy
0:24:39
you know, some income for it. And then just kind of got stuck into it and created this not-for-profit and it just, yeah, it just evolved into what it is today. We have 11 full-time rangers, three of them are women, which is pretty fantastic for that particular part of the world and that industry. And they are all locals from these forest edge communities that patrol. So within the Gunung Leuser
Amy
0:25:03
National Park, which is about 30% of the wider Leuser ecosystem, which is a really globally critical piece of rain or intact expanse of rainforest left in South East Asia. It's the largest one left in South East Asia and it's hugely important for those species that are named before, particularly for tigers and elephants and orangutans. So more than 85% of the remaining Sumatran orangutans live in the Leuser ecosystem and outside of protected areas. And so you've got the Gunung Leuser National Park within, and that has a team of government rangers that patrol within the
Amy
0:25:35
park. But their sort of jurisdiction or their responsibility stops at the border. And then you've got communities that settle right up against the forest border. So there's no buffer zone. It's just literally forest and then communities. And these are all communities that are either working in palm oil, so plantations have been planted right up to the forest edge, into the forest in many cases.
Amy
0:25:59
Also rubber plantations, a lot of agriculture, a lot of subsistence agriculture, and the land's been divvied up into just a huge number of different landowners. And so you've got wildlife coming out of the forest, moving through communities, crop raiding because it's an easy meal. We've got tigers predating livestock. So really, these are things that really heavily impact livelihoods of locals and that has a really negative impact on wildlife because there are negative attitudes towards wildlife, there are negative attitudes towards the government because
Amy
0:26:33
they don't come and support them when they ask for help. It's just a cycle that goes around and around and around.
Brianne
0:26:37
And you can't blame either party for it. So when people come in with these blanket statements it's just totally wrong. So by working with these organisations and actually the communities yourselves, you've done far more than most people would even consider is the right thing to do. Does that make sense?
Amy
0:26:57
Yeah, and that's been the key is to work, and it always has been. I just don't know why it hasn't been realised sooner. You have to work with these communities. And it can't be, you know, me as this white girl coming in saying, you should do this. It's me being well-connected in terms of, you know, I have access to Wi-Fi, I have a laptop, I have connections
Amy
0:27:18
all over the world that are potential funding sources. And so I see myself as the coordinator of that. But the people that are doing the work, they are the real conservation heroes here because they are the ones working day in, day out to maintain these positive relationships with communities to continue to allow them to patrol in and around their land. These are communities that are setting snares because they're trying to protect their crops. My team comes in and removes those snares, but we also provide support for the community in
Amy
0:27:50
other ways to sort of help make up for that. So we provide 24-7 human wildlife conflict mitigation. We build livestock corrals, predator-proof livestock corrals, we've built 14 now in different communities to try and help provide safe overnight grazing options for livestock owners because tigers do come out of the forest and because the cows are grazed in the palm oil plantations which are hard up against the forest, it's just this perfect situation for a tiger. You can't blame a tiger for an easy meal. That's right. And so part of one of my trips
Amy
0:28:28
that I run through rural conservation is to actually go and build a corral with rangers. And it's super fun, really satisfying, and actually helping communities in need, but also at the same time not taking away an opportunity for employment for locals, because that's something that my team does anyway. So we do stuff like that, and we've just built an elephant detection hut to try and detect elephants before they come in and start cooperating. So we're really trying to look at these preventative measures
Amy
0:28:54
rather than always having to mitigate. But within the landscape that we're working in, that's very, very tricky because you know there are so many different landowners, you can't have electric fences, chili fences aren't effective, you can't dig trenches all over the show. So, lots of things...
Brianne
As in like actual chilies? Yeah, yeah. So they've been used as deterrents
Amy
0:29:15
to keep elephants out, but there's not a lot of research to show that that works really effectively for Asian elephants. You've got your beehive fences in Africa as well. So there's a lot of things that don't work in Sumatra that work elsewhere, and so we do a lot of mitigation in terms of using noise deterrents and that type of thing. But really the key thing is to be on the ground full-time monitoring. There's a particular herd that my team monitors to make sure that they are maintaining safe distances from communities and that if they are getting
Amy
0:29:48
a bit close, the team will go out and move them on. So, yeah, so they do a lot of things but ultimately, human, mitigating and preventing human-wildlife conflict is key but also supporting the communities. So we do things like we've constructed a bathroom for a community because the kids had to walk a long way to get to a river and they often couldn't bathe because there were elephants in the river and so you know that perpetuation of that negative attitude towards wildlife continued so we were able to help with the community
Amy
0:30:17
bathroom with that. We've provided a kindergarten renovation, we provide school supplies, noise deterrence to lots of different landowners. We've done all sorts of things to help build that relationship and to try and help support them. And at the moment we've got a seedling program going where we're employing a number of women from the community that are growing up seedlings. There are a number of landowners that have expressed a desire to want to move out of palm oil and out of rubber and move into growing fruit trees. And so in that way, you know, they're going to get a
Amy
0:30:48
better income from it as well. So we're just working with communities about how to implement that program and expectations around what we expect in return. And lots of potential. There's so much potential. I just wish I had like three of me to be able to have an impact. I just spend most of my time trying to write grants to try and find funding to keep the program going. But, you know, just imagine if I was paid for this and imagine if, you know, if this was my job, there's just so much untapped potential there
Amy
0:31:17
to really elevate this program and to be able to implement all the, you know, we have all these huge grand ideas, to be able to implement all of this and just have it really self-sustaining as well would be pretty incredible.
Brianne
0:31:28
The trite sentence I always say, but that's the way to change the world, right? Is to use the economy, right, and commerce if you like, and to actually pay people to do these conservation roles. And they're not mutually exclusive. It drives me mad that so many people who are environmentally minded believe that business isn't the solution,
Brianne
0:31:46
and in fact, business is actually the problem. And sure, to be fair, a good chunk of business right now is the problem. Palm oil, we will get to in a moment, is a huge issue. But when you combine them both, as you have, and like Eden Reforestation Project
Brianne
0:31:59
is another example I'm a big fan of, it just works so beautifully. Where do you get your funding from?
Amy
0:32:04
Basically, I just look for grants all over the world and it's just kind of piecemeal. So it's little bits here and there. Some years it's really pretty average and some years we just cover costs. So I've never had one funder that has come along and said, we'll fund your entire project for a year. We've come close, but yeah, it's kind of conservation funds here and there. The Auckland Zoo Conservation Fund has supported us for a number of years and then it's just applying to different conservation funds and grants all around the world.
Amy
0:32:36
They are really tricky because there's, you know, even just for sort of $5,000 or so, there's so much expected. There's so much work in writing a grant.
Brianne
0:32:45
You could just use ChatGPT?
Amy
0:32:47
I need to pay for that now. I've just been notified.
Brianne
0:32:52
How much is, roughly speaking, and obviously you don't want to give away, I don't know if it's commercially sensitive or not, what does it cost to run a project like this annually?
Amy
0:32:55
It's only around about $100,000 a year.
Brianne
0:33:03
Oh, the f***! I'm sorry, I don't like to swear on this podcast, but why the hell have we not got some kind of corporate sponsor in there, right?
Amy
0:33:10
This is what I always talk about. I think it's because I don't have those connections. I don't roll in corporate circles and I don't know how to break into those corporate circles. That's one of my biggest sort of weaknesses or downfalls.
Brianne
0:33:21
We might have a chat.
Amy
0:33:21
Yeah. That would be great.
Amy
0:33:23
That would be great, actually.
Brianne
0:33:24
Yeah, okay.
Amy
0:33:25
Yeah, there are just so many opportunities. Like, we've been involved in bioacoustic surveys. We've got camera traps out. So there's all this incredible imagery and information that we're getting from the project. It'd be great to have some researchers and scientists to be able to do
Amy
0:33:40
something with that. We've got all this camera-trapping data. I'd love to be able to find out more about home ranges of particular tigers or where we can identify corridors with the landowners so that wildlife can move safely between pockets of forest. We have so many ideas, I just don't have enough of me. And that is frustrating, all the ideas and none of the resources.
Amy
0:34:00
But yeah, funding is a big challenge for us. It always is. For any not-for-profit,
Amy
0:34:05
it is hard. It's very hard. Yeah, yeah.
Brianne
And is that a little bit why you went into, because you're clearly not busy enough, is that why you went into raw conservation as well, to use one to fund the other?
Amy
Eventually, yes, that would be one of my goals. eventually when I have the time and headspace to kind of look at how that might work. So for now in these initial years it's setting up the sort of relationships with different projects and getting that sort of established and helping support them in small ways so we can
Amy
0:34:35
get them a little bit financially but also in some of the trips I really encourage the guests to fundraise prior. They don't have to but if they want to they can and that's always for something specific, a piece of equipment or something tangible. And we also are supporting, you know, in kind as well. The programs that we work with have wish lists, so we're bringing, you know, things over with us. So just kind of, yeah, building on that slowly, slowly, rather than trying to do it all at once, which is something I always try and do. I want to do all the things right now, so I'm very impatient.
Brianne
0:35:10
Yes, that's hard, I get it.
Brianne
0:35:13
What have been some of the outcomes or feedback from people who've been on the trips or what have been the outcomes from the organisations you've been working with?
Amy
0:35:21
Everybody loves it. I always seem to get these really fantastic groups of people and I don't know if that's – you know, we're all – these are like-minded people that are attracted to this type of travel. I don't know, but everybody's just so passionate and inspired and supportive. Some of them go on to continue to support the projects long after they've had a trip or I have people coming back multiple times and that's really satisfying that they just have such
Amy
0:35:46
a connection with the place, communities and with the wildlife that they just want to keep coming back and experiencing that. So that's been fantastic. Yeah, people like I just ran one in August with a group of photographers from Australia and you know we just got chatting about equipment and things that the Rangers might need and one of the guys said, oh I can just get you a whole bunch of laptops, no problem, easy. And so I've got another trip coming up next week actually, I've got someone running it for me and they're taking the
Amy
0:36:16
laptops over. So just making those incredible connections to then enable the Rangers to be able to do a better job, that's been a really positive outcome. The main thing for me is connecting our participants with seeing what they're doing and seeing how the things that they're doing are impactful and meaningful to the community. We're not just there, it's not like this white saviour thing where we're there to take selfies or to do this job so that we feel good. It's actually a job that needs doing and we can use our skills and expertise. I tend to take a lot of wildlife professionals, or particularly,
Amy
0:36:54
I do an orangutan trip where we go and work at Orangutan Haven with the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program. So I tend to get a lot of zookeepers on that one, and that's pretty incredible. So we get a lot of feedback from the Orangutan Haven that the furnishings and the things that they're making for the orangutans, a lot of them are blind because they've been shot in the eyes or a lot of them have disabilities. And so we're actually creating things for them that are useful and meaningful and are
Amy
0:37:23
going to have an impact on their quality of life, but also help to facilitate them to be good advocates for the visitors that might come and see them, the local Indonesians that might come and see them. So helping to provide an arboreal environment or helping to provide an environment that makes life a little bit easier for a blind orangutan that can't find its way around. So yeah, people are really understanding how what they're doing is contributing
Amy
0:37:45
and their contribution to the overall conservation, you know, the bigger picture of conservation.
Brianne
0:37:51
You've managed to articulate, as a kid, well, like, you know, early to late teens, I was obsessed with these voluntourism things. You know, I wanted to go to Zimbabwe and Botswana and all these places. But my parents encouraged me to look into it and pointed out that actually these are massively flawed. And you are, it's very much a white-savvy thing. You're actually not helping the community at all.
Brianne
0:38:13
There's often reports of, you know, they're building schools that actually are built to such a poor standard, they're unusable. You know, there's all sorts of examples. So it is nice to see, and I believe this of you anyway,
Brianne
0:38:24
that you have put so much thought into how it actually gives back and how it's actually useful to people because again, it's not mutually exclusive.
Amy
0:38:28
That's right. That's right. Yeah. This isn't just a tokenism kind of, let's go on a jolly. This is, a lot of them are, you come and you're going to work really, really hard, harder than you've ever worked before. So hard that some days you feel like you might die, but it's so much fun. But just the camaraderie as well. Yeah, we just have such great groups.
Amy
0:38:53
I'm so lucky that so far we've just had these incredible people who are so motivated. They want to make a difference, so they want to do as much as they possibly can because they understand why they're doing it. I think that's the key for me. They must understand why they're doing it, and I think that's kind of what we do well.
Brianne
0:39:09
Yeah, motivation is everything. I really want to go, but the one thing that puts me off, I actually told you about this the other week, I know this is ridiculous but I am phobic of spiders. I am trying to get over it but how likely am I to wake up with a spider crawling across my face? The fact that you haven't immediately said no is a massive concern.
Amy
0:39:32
Did I tell you the spider that dropped on my face in the night?
Brianne
0:39:36
You did. I think it's worth repeating.
Amy
0:39:38
Yeah. So I've been doing this since 2013, right? I've had one spider drop on my face at night, one time.
Brianne
0:39:47
That’s one too many.
Amy
0:39:48
I was sleeping, it splattered on my face, it woke me up, I flung it, I then turned on the light and saw it. I don't like spiders. I'm not a fan. I won’t say phobic, but I do not want a spider anywhere near any of this. Yeah, and I've seen it once. That's happened once. So, and I've slept in caves, I've slept in the forest, I've slept on the ground. You're not going to get a spider in your face.
Brianne
But can I go caving? Yes. Because I'm on board if there's caves involved.
Amy
Do you see any bats actually? We do see a lot of people's horror.
Brianne
0:40:27
It's just a little cave.
Brianne
0:40:28
That's the best part.
Amy
0:40:29
Yeah, that's the best part.
Amy
0:40:30
And that's where you see incredible cave spiders with glowing eyes.
Brianne
0:40:34
Oh, well you've ruined it now.
Amy
0:40:36
They're not going to jump out at you. They're going to stick to that. They're going to stay in their lane in their little spider cave rock, and you're just going to admire it from a distance. There's some incredible wildlife in caves. The cave centipedes are amazing, amazing.
Amy
0:40:49
And again, I'm not a bug person. I don't like bugs all that much, but they're incredible to look at. They are. They're incredible and fascinating. Yeah, yeah. Lots of bats and snakes and things occasionally as well. So yeah, it's fantastic.
Brianne
0:41:04
I would be the one chasing after a snake. I adore snakes. Anyway, we have totally got on top of it. Yeah, we digress. I'll do it one day. I do know you've got a photographer one there, which looks quite interesting.
Amy
0:41:14
Yes.
Brianne
0:41:15
Because of course I'm pretending to be a wildlife photographer. I have all the gear and no idea.
Brianne
0:41:19
I guess that’s the saying, right?
Amy
0:41:24
Well, when I work with the photography trips, I'm working with an actual photographer because
Amy
0:41:27
it's not my forte either.
Amy
0:41:28
I've got the ideas, I just don't have the gear. Yeah. Okay. Well, we can meet in the middle.
Brianne
0:41:32
Yeah.
Brianne
0:41:33
How do you feel about the age old question about conservation and travel comes up a lot, just as a quick thought from you. Flying, does it nag at you?
Amy
0:41:48
It does, it does. And there's guilt, a lot of guilt there. I mean, sometimes I try and justify it in that it's a means to an end. I can't do the work I do without slaying and I can try and help offset that in some small way. But yeah, that's something that I do grapple with a lot is justifying the flying, but I have to.
Brianne
0:42:14
I think it's net positive. For you, it's a no-brainer. I just imagine people listening will have this come to mind. But at the end of the day, it's net positive. The amount of good you're doing versus the small amount of bad for flying, the equation is a no-brainer. Yeah, but yeah, I do think about it a lot. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Okay, final sort of segment is palm oil because it's obviously been a pet subject of mine for a while. Ever since I made Ethique palm oil free, which was
Brianne
0:42:41
a terrible business decision, a wonderful ethical decision, but it's more complicated than just a palm oil boycott. But you must see what that industry does more than almost anybody
Amy
0:42:46
Yes. So Indonesia and Malaysia produce more than 85% of the world's palm oil. And so as you're flying into either of those countries, all you see for miles and miles and miles and miles is just this monotony of palm trees. I have done a lot of research and a lot of work over the years in the palm oil space. I've changed my thinking a lot, the more that I've come to know, but yes, I do see the impacts of it firsthand, particularly the conditions that people have to live and work in and the hold that big plantations and big manufacturers have on
Amy
0:43:29
communities. That can be distressing, but palm oil isn't going anywhere. It's only going to get worse, unless the human population starts to decrease, which I don't see happening anytime soon, that demand for edible vegetable oil is skyrocketing and it will continue to skyrocket. So it's how do we help ensure that the impacts of that industry are minimised? How do we ensure that it is produced in as a sustainable fashion as possible? And so, you know, initially when we started talking about palm oil in the early 2000s, we were all about the boycott. We had participated in a lot of campaigns like Don't Palm Us Off and Palm Oil Free and, you know, there were a number
Amy
0:44:16
of those sorts of things. There was a lot of media around it. It was huge. And over time, as we've come to understand more, as more research and literature has become available. We, and by we, I mean Auckland Zoo, I mean myself, I mean most of the zoos that I work with, has come to understand that boycotting actually has the opposite effect. It has a detrimental effect because we need edible vegetable oils in the world. The world has such a huge insatiable appetite for processed food, for all the things that palm oil can be found in,
Amy
0:44:55
that's never going to go away. So how do we make sure that we drive an industry towards more sustainable practice? There hasn't been a lot of tools available to enable consumers to do that because obviously that's going to come from consumer demand. That isn't just something that the manufacturers and growers are just going to say, oh, we should do this. And the way I see it, it's kind of like the free-range chicken egg industry. I remember not even that long ago, a lot of people didn't know what that... You know, they didn't even know what it was and they didn't know what the impact was.
Amy
0:45:27
And now, we have legislation where, you know, we must buy free-range eggs and we must buy free-range chicken. You know, it's kind of driven towards that way. And that has come from a number of things, but one of them has been consumer demand and consumer pressure, and it's the same for the palm oil industry. How can we try and ensure that these growers and manufacturers are held to account? What
Amy
0:45:50
are the tools available to us as, you know, everyday shoppers? How can we make a difference and how do we even know that it's in our food or whatever we're buying for a start? So a really key thing that I've been involved with in the last few years that is really starting to make a difference is an app called Palm Oil Scan. Essentially what it is is a barcode scanner. I've put a lot of work into this and so have a number of other people. We've worked with Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in the States, Chester Zoo in the UK, and Adelaide Zoo and some zoos in Australia to get this app developed and
Amy
0:46:23
running. So it was an objective that came out of the World Association of Zoos and Aquaria, which is sort of the umbrella, the global umbrella that regional zoo associations belong to and sit under. And so that was sort of one of their objectives. They have like a palm oil subcommittee, and this was an objective to develop this app. So Auckland Zoo helped to fund that and develop that, and I've been involved in the development of that. And what it does is really it just allows us as consumers to go into a supermarket, scan something, and it'll give us a rating on a product, like a traffic light system.
Amy
0:46:59
They've been done before, but never looking at the sustainable palm oil side of things. It was either does it have palm oil or does it not? And so this really gives you a range. It goes from green to red essentially. Excellent, good, poor, and so forth. And so what it's doing is it's giving you an idea and understanding that the parent company, so not just the brand itself, but the parent company, what their commitment is to the use of certified sustainable palm
Amy
0:47:43
oil out of their total use of palm oil across the entirety of their brands are they using. And that's all worked out with this, it's a really complex mathematical kind of rubric that it's very hard to understand. It's nearly impossible to explain, but there is a lot of science behind it. And so what it's doing really is rating manufacturers on the use of CSPO, not the brand itself. So you go in and you scan your Weet-Bix or your Corn Flakes or your Toffee Pops or your whatever, and it will give you a rating. And then you can choose as a consumer
Amy
0:48:15
whether you want to support that or not. And it also gives you the tools to be able to send a message to the manufacturer directly. So yeah, so that is really going to help drive a more sustainable industry. And what that means is that it's the growers and the manufacturers that belong to the RSPO, which is the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil. In the past, it's had a lot of criticism because its principles and criteria haven't been upheld or policed or enforced a lot, but every five years, they review and renew their principles and criteria, and they're the most stringent they've ever been and this app also allows
Amy
0:48:53
consumers to directly hold those manufacturers to account. It gives you an easy tool to be able to choose not to buy products from a particular manufacturer and it gives you the ability to communicate that to them as well.
Brianne
We will put a link to that in the show notes because it's a great app.
Amy
It is a great app and it is, you know, it's relatively new so we're always building on it. And what it relies on is volunteers. So myself and one other at Auckland Zoo,
Amy
0:49:20
and we sort of had this team of amazing volunteers that helps us out from time to time. We actually physically have to go into the supermarkets. We have to physically scan every single product. We have to collect the information on the products that aren't in the database.
Amy
0:49:32
And then we have to go away and research extensively and communicate with the companies to find out if they're using Palm Oil and if they are, yeah, how does that stack up in terms of this rating system. So it is a lot of work, but it is actually one that has the ability to have a direct impact on the industry.
Brianne
0:49:49
My final question for you is the one that everyone's always like, because it's always the one I put on social media as well, so brace yourselves. You already do a bucket load to make the world a better place. But if you were a global supreme overlord and you could click your fingers, obviously you were willingly voted in,
Brianne
0:50:07
and you could click your fingers and change something that would make the world a better place, what would be the thing you would do?
Amy
0:50:13
Oh my God.
Brianne
0:50:15
I know, it's a great question, I really love it.
Amy
0:50:17
What would be the thing I would do? The thing that's closest to my heart is orangutan. So it would have to be something.
Brianne
0:50:25
I have noticed.
Amy
0:50:26
It would have to be something that positively impacts orangutan habitat. I mean, that's only a small chunk of the world, but this is where I'm going. There's lots of other things tied up with that. Poverty is a huge thing.
Amy
0:50:39
And palm oil, like we've discussed, a huge thing. magically make sure that we have protection of orangutan habitat, which also provides protection for countless other species, that also affords livelihoods and good quality of life for people in communities that live in the areas where orangutans live. I don't actually know what that looks like. If I could click my fingers, then amazing.
Brianne
0:51:09
That's sort of similar to what you're doing with the Ranger Project, is using commerce in some respect to ensure people have a livelihood,
Brianne
0:51:15
and that livelihood involves protecting land and wildlife.
Amy
Yes, but you know, also tied up with that is governmental corruption and greed and all that stuff.
Amy
0:51:23
So you've got to resolve that as well. So you can't fix one thing without fixing all of it. So how do you do that? Make all of that go away with a clicker, if we're just clicking our fingers, then it's all done. And it all ends. There's so much tied up with that, but yeah, it would definitely be something that
Amy
0:51:45
would impact the preservation of wildlife and habitat whilst allowing communities to thrive and grow and develop and have really good quality of life.
Brianne
0:51:57
Yeah, well, I mean, it's, you know, what would you do, not how would you do it.
Amy
0:52:00
That's right, that's right, yeah.
Brianne
0:52:01
The follow-up question would be, okay, cool, so how are you going to do that?
Amy
0:52:06
We won't go into that.
Amy
0:52:08
Yeah, I'm not.
Brianne
0:52:10
Yeah.
Brianne
0:52:11
Thank you so much. That was fascinating and informative, as I imagined it would be. The fact that you have imposter syndrome is baffling to me because you do more than most people I've ever met in my life. So you're amazing, and I truly appreciate your time.
Amy
0:52:25
Thank you. I appreciate you as well. I'll talk soon.
Brianne
0:52:27
Well, I was sad to cut that short because that was a fascinating chat. She is an absolute wealth of information across a whole bunch of issues. That is very much an off-the-cuff comment. I will have her back to talk about palm oil because it is on my list to dig into because historically I've always been about boycotting palm oil. But lately, much like Steve said last week, it's not the answer because palm oil is of course four times more efficient than any other oil. And whilst we are making inroads in the lab and making synthetic versions,
Brianne
0:52:59
you know how far away is that from actual big commercial use? Probably a few years I'm thinking. So I'm going to dig into that with her. But Amy, I really do think she's going about things the right way. Using the power of commerce to financially incentivise people to look after the environment and look after wildlife. It's the only way that we're ever going to move the needle. I mentioned another organisation who are doing something similar. I know that there'll be plenty, but one of my favourites who I used to work with at Ateak
Brianne
0:53:25
is called the Eden Reforestation Project. I'll pop that in the show notes, but they are well worth a look at too. And if you've got some spare cash, they do some good stuff for someone else to fit some money towards, if you can, of course, appreciating. It is not a good time financially for a lot of people at the moment. Next week I'm going to do a deep dive into everything cosmetics and personal care.
Brianne
0:53:44
I think you'll find it quite concerning. Until then, see you next week.
3
0:53:49
Kia ora.
Brianne
0:53:50
And there you go. I hope you learned something and realised 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 heart is just using what you need. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't keep it to yourself and feel free to drop
Brianne
0:54:09
me a rating and hit the subscribe button. me a rating and hit the subscribe button. Kia ora and I'll see you next week.
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