153. Changing the Story, with student Neeve Blackham-Jennings, Mandy Bamford & Nicki Mitchell

Neeve Blackham-Jennings is a school student who wrote and illustrated what ‘accidentally’ became an award-winning book when she was fifteen. It’s a story that hoped to change a story – the story of Australia’s most endangered reptile, the Western Swamp Tortoise. But that’s not the half of it.

Last September’s Quantum Words Festival in Perth opened with Schools Day. I was fortunate to host Bruce Pascoe later in the day, which you may have heard on episode 140. But opening the festival was this session, featuring Neeve alongside a couple of brilliant women whose chance encounters with Neeve continue to reverberate, as they work to bring this species back from the brink of extinction.

Mandy Bamford is an ecologist and environmental communicator, fascinated by innovative ways to engage people with nature. And Nicki Mitchell is an award-winning tertiary educator and Associate Professor of Conservation Biology at UWA.

Their work includes the rehabilitation of wetland habitats, and the translocation of zoo-bred animals to nature reserves – joining forces with passionate community members, including young people like Neeve, to enable more positive stories of change. We talk about all this, and related topics of voting age, media and more, with some terrific student questions.

24.00 - Q&A starts with Lyn Beazley AO, on the effect of global warming ‘feminising’ the genders of many species
24.45 - Student question on the ethics of species translocation
26.00 - Question on some of the pioneers in this space
27.45 - Anthony asks Neeve her thoughts on the voting age
28.55 - Student question on how literature can affect social issues besides conservation
31.30 - Student question on other endangered species like the numbats
32.30 - Anthony asks if anyone’s studying journalism - and what we need and might do in media
35.50 - Student question on what’s driven the Western Swamp Tortoise decline

Head here for automatic cues to those chapter markers.

This conversation was recorded in the theatre at John Curtin College of the Arts in Walyalup/Fremantle, on 16 September 2022.

Title slide: Nicki Mitchell, Mandy Bamford & high school student Neeve Blackham-Jennings (pic: Olivia Cheng).

See more photos of this & other events including some behind the scenes stuff by becoming a subscriber via the Patreon page.

Music:
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, off the soundtrack for the film Regenerating Australia.

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Transcript

AJ 0:00

You're with the regeneration, exploring where and how the regeneration of life is being enabled by changing the systems and stories we live by. It's entirely listener-supported, ad-free, and freely available because of people like you, Maria Larrett, thanks for your very generous donation, and a year-long subscription with David. And Penelope Gross, thanks for buying the book of my old mentor Frank Fisher. If you two sense something worthwhile in all this, please consider joining Maria, David, and Penny. Part of a great community of supporting listeners, with as little as three dollars a month, or whatever amount you can and want to contribute, you can get all sorts of benefits, principally, of course, continuing to receive these episodes every week. Just head to the website, via the show notes, regeneration.com forward slash support. Thanks a lot.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

It was a school project originally that like challenged us to do something to give back to the community or the environment or just the world, I guess. So I like drawing and I like reptiles and stuff. So I was like, let's just put it together.

AJ 1:15

This is The Regeneration, and that was Neve Blackham Jennings, the school student who wrote and illustrated what accidentally became an award-winning book when she was 15. It's a story that hoped to change a story. The story of Australia's most endangered reptile, the Western Swamp Tortoise. But that's not the half of it. Last September's Quantum Words Festival in Perth opened with School's Day. I was fortunate enough to host Bruce Pasco later in the day, which you might have heard already on episode 140. But opening the festival was this session, featuring Niamh alongside a couple of brilliant women whose chance encounters with Niamh continue to reverberate as they work to bring this species back from the brink of extinction. Mandy Bamford is an ecologist and environmental communicator, fascinated by innovative ways to engage people with nature. And Nikki Mitchell is an award-winning tertiary educator and associate professor of conservation biology at UWA. Their work includes the rehabilitation of wetland habitats and the translocation of zoo-bred animals to nature reserves. Joining forces with passionate community members, including young people like Neve, to enable more positive stories of change. So join us as we delve into these matters and on to related topics of voting age, media and more with some terrific student questions. Introducing our session was the first woman to be a state's chief scientist here in Australia, Professor Lynn Beasley. Thanks, Lynn. It's an honor to follow you. Welcome to everyone to the Quantum Words Festival for 2022. It takes a monumental effort these days to get festivals like this up. So let's spur a thought for the organizers who've gone through all sorts to get us here. And it's great to see you here. Welcome to, of course, to the first session, changing the story, making a positive difference. My name's Anthony James. I host a podcast called The Regeneration. It's got a little play on the words. It's regen narration, like story, because it's all about people who are changing the story. So it's a real pleasure to be here today. I'm wondering who you are as much. With that monumentally being school students here, I wonder if there are any primary school students amongst you.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Down the front.

AJ 3:58

Some are hankering for the old days. And who are the legendary teachers who brought you here? How many have we got? There we go. Good. No, welcome to you all. And um who would consider yourselves concerned about the state of the world? That's probably, I don't know, 80%? And who considers themselves directly involved in some way in trying to improve things? Maybe 20%? Who would like to be more directly involved? Yeah, that that's a good 50 to 60% more, I'd say. Terrific. Oh, well, you've come to the right place, haven't you? It's great to see you all. Welcome. Let's ground ourselves first in Walialap, Free Manual, and acknowledge the Wajaknunga culture and country, and all First Nations people here today. It still astounds me to think that they, or you, have been our first custodians of country, knowledge holders, storytellers for tens of millennia. Every time I say that, I feel like we have to sit on that for a second. As Bruce Pasco rightly points out, what a triumph of human endeavour. So here's to come in together with our respective gifts from here. So today's session. The Western Swamp Tortoise, endemic to a small portion of Western Australia, is the most endangered Australian reptile. The effort to bring this species back from the brink of extinction is one that involves a range of strategies, including rehab of wetland habitats and the translocation of zoo-bred animals to nature reserves. This work is being done both by scientists and passionate community members, and in this conversation, you'll hear about how this combined effort is bringing about positive change. Neve Blackham Jennings is 17 years old. Any moment she can spare, she can be found writing, drawing, painting, or reading a book. When she was 15, Neve wrote and illustrated Wally's Way Home. It's a beautiful book about Wally, the Western Swamp Tortoise, and his journey to find a safe home. She did it to raise funds and awareness for this critically endangered species. And her book was then awarded a Whitley Award for Young Authors in 2021 by the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales and has sold many copies with proceeds going to support the rehab of habitat and breeding programs for the species. But why stop there? Neave has recently written the fantasy novel and aims to write and illustrate more children's books to support endangered species and to continue to use her writing and illustrative talents to make a difference. Please welcome Neve. And Nikki Mitchell turned 50 years ago. That's worth a cheer, though, don't you reckon?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Thank you.

AJ 6:51

Nikki is an award-winning tertiary educator and associate professor of conservation biology at UWA with a focus on threatened fauna and their vulnerability to environmental change. She studied amphibians and reptiles for the past 25 years, ranging from frogs in sub-alpine Tasmania, tuatara on offshore islands in New Zealand, and flatback sea turtles in the Kimberley. Conservation strategies such as assisted colonization are a major research interest. And since 2010, Nikki has led an initiative to translocate the Western Swamp Tortoise into higher rainfall zones near the south coast of WA as a response to climate change. Please welcome Nikki. And Mandy Bamford grew up near the Swan River, watching the creatures that spilled over into the suburbs from urban swamps and bushland. As a child, family camping trips fueled Mandy's passion for nature. Since graduating from UWA, she's worked as an ecologist and environmental communicator in research and industry. Mandy is active in community organizations, and along with her husband Mike, she runs Bamford Consulting Ecologists, a collaborative team of ecologists who specialise in wildlife research and science communication. Mandy's fascinated by vertebrate ecology, urban nature, biodiversity, waterbirds and wetlands, and innovative ways to engage people with nature. Please welcome Mandy. All right. Neave, let's start with you. Because it's the obvious starting point in a way. What's the story with you and this tortoise? Like what triggered essentially this whole session?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

I like turtles.

AJ 8:42

And how did it come about though? How did you end up writing a book and how did all that happen?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Well, it was a school project originally that like challenged us to do something to give back to the community or the environment or just the world, I guess. So I like drawing and I like reptiles and stuff. So I was like, let's just put it together.

AJ 9:00

Were you thinking to write a book then or it just sort of emerged?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Um yeah, I thought about writing a book because I'd written a book the year before as part of another project. I was like, well, I can do this again.

AJ 9:10

That is amazing. I'm curious then, going back a step further when you wrote that book, and even the one before that, I believe. The one you're not so keen on seeing.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Oh, um, my dad's in a marketing company, so they make books a lot. So yeah.

AJ 9:34

You just saw it and thought, I know how to do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Well, I kind of had like a cheat way too. I didn't like actually publish them, like I just printed them.

AJ 9:44

Yeah. This one sort of took off though, hey.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, that was accidental.

AJ 9:49

Yeah, how did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

I have no d no idea.

AJ 9:52

This has something to do with you, Mandy.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Yes, look, it did. I think at the point that I first saw Neave's work, I was uh on the Council of the WA Naturalist Club, which is a a community organisation of volunteers who are passionate about nature and bringing nature to the wider community and promoting conservation. And when we saw Neve's work, we saw that what an amazing uh thing to have done and an amazing opportunity to promote Australia's rarest reptile to a broad audience. And Neve's definitely underselling her work because there was the most beautiful illustrations in this book as well as the story. And it was such a wonderful example of what anyone can choose to do. Now, Neve has special talents, obviously, but you all have special talents that you can use for conservation, and so that's what we saw. And so the WA Naturalist Club do some publication of particular works that they can see have a conservation benefit. And we just thought this is a a book that should be published and should be circulated widely, just to raise the profile of this animal and help in its conservation. So, yes, it was a definitely something that a lot of people beyond even her teachers saw as a as a real opportunity to help wildlife and and what a unique thing to have done as a young person.

AJ 11:19

It is such a beautiful book, you're right. And Nikki, your connection to being here today came through Mandy and Turnhouse. So you guys have known each other for a while.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Oh, how many of those 50 years, Nikki?

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Oh, I think 15 or so. Yeah.

AJ 11:32

And how so? What's the connection and the and the work you're bringing to the table?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Well, I guess Mandy and I have known each other because we both were associated with the University of West Australia, but um, and we do a lot now to we now actually work on an advisory group for um I mean one of their local Labor members who's um won a seat in Churchlands, so we help her. Um but my link to the Western Swamp Tortoise is partly because I knew I was a colleague of Gerald Cookling, who is the a very famous turtle biologist across the world. He's been involved in recovering a lot of critically endangered tortoises, and he was employed by the government about 15 years ago to focus particularly on this species. So we wrote a rose, we wrote a research grant together about climate change and how we could think about how we choose where we would relocate this species, not acknowledging that the rainfall is declining and the temperature is getting warmer. So that was sort of the scientific um project I led, and that's led to us now going into trial phases where we've done just done the fourth introduction trial, about 300 kilometres south of where the tortoise is known to occur.

AJ 12:30

It's so interesting. Let's come back to that. I'm curious as much about like the the changing the story aspect of this, the the positivity that's coming out of this whole effort from what is really, you know, I guess it doesn't get any more dire, does it, than critically endangered, like verge of extinction. So how does that turn into a positive story? How are you managing that?

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Well, I think with any of these endangered species, it the first step is for people to care. Because if people don't care, there's not political will, things don't change. So I think changing the story is people choosing, this is an amazing creature. We want it to still be in the world, what can we do? And the minute people start thinking that way, that's when the positivity kicks in. Because it's amazing when there's the will there, people write books about it, researchers start finding ways to get money to relocate it to safer places. So a lot of it comes from the people and that will to make a difference.

AJ 13:32

Okay, so what's happened in this instance? What sort of I mean, it's its habitat was here, right, originally around Perth, but the destruction of that wetland habitat is sort of at the core of the issue. And that's being worked at too, is it in some way, the restoration of that?

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Yes, well, Nikki, you probably should talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah, so so it was it was actually an extinct species. I don't know if you know this backstory, but it was one animal was found in the 190 or 1800s by someone in West Australia, and it went to a museum in Vienna, and um no one knew really where its core habitat was. And so it was thought to be extinct, but then found in the 1950s by some school kids who'd collected them in Ballsbrook. And so that prompted surveys, and they found them hanging on in some swamps which are near the Vines or Ellenbrook, that suburb. So there's two nature reserves which were sort of the core habitat for the species when it was rediscovered. But those reserves are not so good. One's pretty well not useful anymore, and the other one's good, but it's very small, and it's being encroached by suburbia and a new freeway that's going. I think it's Perth Darwin Highway's being built right next to it. Um and we had the Wooleroo bushfire went through uh last year and burnt 95% of the reserve as well. So it's just very risky to have all your um all the remaining species in one tiny spot.

AJ 14:46

There is some attempt to rest restore what's there.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yeah, and there've been a bit of land acquisition as well. So we've had fundraising from like World Wildlife Fund, except other groups have got involved with purchasing, um helping to purchase extra bits of habitat, but it's quite hard always to sometimes persuade people to sell as well. So really would love that reserve to be about three times as big because the turtles actually need a lot of area to move around in the summer when they're looking for um sort of retreat sites. We know that the reserve's too small for the even for the home ranges of some of these um animals.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

But and there was even a community link. So those school children that Nikki mentioned in the 50s who discovered them brought them to a wildlife show. And in those days, the wildlife show was co-run by the WA Naturalist Club and the Gould League as an opportunity to show West Australians the wildlife that was in their bushland because city people didn't get to see that. In those days it was in the Perth Town Hall, and these children brought in this specimen that they had, live specimen, and the the naturalists who were there were gobsmacked because they just that's not our usual long neck.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah, we have a long-neck tortoise that everyone knows, and the swamp tortoise has a short neck, and that was its other common name.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

So that was community discovery by children. And then so that was one of the reasons why the Naturalist Club, of course, have had a long-term link with the Western Swamp Tortoise because they were instrumental in helping to rediscover it through having a public event and getting people to be aware of these animals. So it's really lovely we interweaving between community and science that's that's helped. And there's a long way to go. Obviously, this is a work in progress, gradually reintroducing them, looking after those environments, fencing them so the foxes don't dig up the the tortoises because they bury themselves and in the dry seasons that they're just buried under plants and and soil. So, of course, if you're a fox with a very good nose, they can dig them up and and eat them. So they're in fenced reserves where the foxes can't find them.

AJ 16:47

I'm curious, Neave. I mean, hearing what Mandy says about it's really care in people is where it all starts to be able to turn some of these dire trajectories around to positive stories. Where did yours where did your love of turtles come from?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Um I really like reptiles and um me and my friend had like matching reptile books when we were little and would go out and um try and find all the reptiles that like lived around our area and stuff. So in the turtle section of this book, the Western Swamp Tortoise was my favourite because it's cute.

AJ 17:16

Even back then, so that was an even younger age.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

When I was about like seven. Yeah, a while.

AJ 17:22

Perhaps the value of books too, partly, eh, in that sense as well. Like hence worth writing them too. And then with your the book that's really taken off on this, yeah, um, how have you seen that affect people?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Um I mean it's good that it's like in a story format, so it's like educational but also good for um younger children at the same time. So I think that was the main plan with um writing it that way.

AJ 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

But yeah.

AJ 17:48

Uh even for us reading it, I think I was saying this to you last night, wasn't I, that even as an adult reading it with our child, we're learning stuff we had no idea of. Yeah, the power of the story. All right, Nikki. This what seems on the surface to be an ambitious effort to translocate, because it's almost all you're left with. And knowing the horrid history in Australia of transplanting animals.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah.

AJ 18:14

Give give us the gist of how this is looks like it's coming off.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, well, it's it's a it's a mixed story. So translocation is that just means re putting animals, I guess, humans going and introducing things to other places. And most cases you put them back to where they've known to occur before. So we do that all over all the time in Australia for our threatened species. As soon as we've got like a safe place with no predators, translocations happen. But the swamp tortoise stories are quite different because we're actually acknowledging we're putting them into somewhere that's habitat they've probably never ever occurred in. So that's kind of in that's a sort of dangerous space to play in because it's you if you think about all the things that have been introduced to countries where things have gone badly wrong, this is potentially something that could happen with an introduction of a swamp tortoise into a different habitat. So uh it's it's sort of a we're we're doing it because we think climate change is going to be a long-term threat that really can't be mitigated in the Perth area because they really need lots of winter rain, and that's just getting harder and harder to um will be less and less likely. So we've sort of said the only place you're going to have a similar climate in about 30 years, which is going to be like Perth's climate, is going to be down around East Augusta, which is where we're doing these trials.

AJ 19:21

As far as we can go.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah. So the key thing to understand is we're not taking them out from their core habitat, because that's the best habitat we have, but we are using the zoo's efforts because the zoo have been breeding them for about 25 years, and I think they've released about 1,200, mostly to sites north of the current habitat, which are quite good habitats, they're going fairly well. But if you think about climate change, the rainfall decline is going to be more extreme in the north. Um, so is the temperatures. So, really, if we're trying to find something equivalent to Perth in the future, you've got to look south. So that's what we've been doing is been um yeah, using the captive bred juveniles and releasing them into different habitats and testing out different areas. So we talk about looking for the Goldie Oxite, you know, not too hot, not too cold, and just the right amount of water. And we're trying to understand if they can actually cope with a slightly colder climate right now. Because reptiles like to be warm, really.

AJ 20:10

Are we observing a natural drift south in general in species?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

We'd like to be, but there's not much connectivity of habitat. So that's partly why this thing is, yeah. So we've all those linking corridors of habitat where species would have shifted their ranges in evolutionary history. Many of them are not there.

AJ 20:28

Well, this is why one of the projects I've come across is Gondwana Link down south, where they are connecting a 1,000 kilometre stretch down in the south of this state through like getting farmland on board, farmers, landholders of other descriptions, and obviously towns, like the whole kit to create the connectivity.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah.

AJ 20:45

That's pretty encouraging, isn't it? That's probably what we need more of.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah, that'll work beautifully for things like birds, things that are very mobile, but something like a swamp tortoise, it does move, but it doesn't move very fast. Climate change is happening probably, even if there was connecting habitat, it's not going to make it to East Augusta in 30 years.

AJ 21:00

So, Mandy, you you helped get Neve's book in the spotlight a little bit, and and it is available, I think, probably over the weekend too at the State Library and certainly online. One of your fields of interest is engaging people in nature. What have you learned over the journey about what helps do that?

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Oh, look, yeah, it's a very good question. I think one of the things that helps more than anything else is cute animals. I mean, the first thing that Neve said to you is, these are an amazing animal. So I think in engaging people, you can quote statistics at them. You can say, you know, 75% of our wetlands have been cleared. Um, you know, we've lost X percent or these number of species. And, you know, that's a bit concerning, but it doesn't engage you emotionally, it doesn't grab you in the heart and say, I've got to do something about this. The thing that does is this is Wally, the Western Swamp Tortoise, and he is an amazing creature. And I want you to think about him, and we need to protect him, and that's that's the way. That you hook people in, and that's the way people start to make change. So I think the more people we have doing that, engaging the people who aren't engaged and getting them interested, that's how we make change. So I've really seen that work incredibly well because once people get caught up in that enthusiasm, then they see things. We've done, say, workshops with something like native bees, where people build a little a little house for a native bee and put it in their garden, and all of a sudden they notice native bees that have probably always been there, but they see them using them, and all of a sudden they come back and they say, Oh, we've got all these native bees in our garden. It's so exciting. Same with the with the Western Swamp Tortoise. There's now a Friends of the Western Swamp Tortoise Group, which works with the the zoo to help raise funds and awareness, and that's the sort of thing that they're doing. We now have people who are involved as volunteers to help that happen. So I think that emotional connection is what you need. And in fact, getting that under 10, if if children are engaged when they're young, and even if it's just going into the bush and and watching a bobtail walking through, or you know, going to the zoo and watching the western swamp tortoises swimming around in the tank, um, going and sitting under a eucalypt, you know, under a gum tree, and and watching the little creatures that come in and out, if you if you feel have that experience as a child, that stays with you. And I think it even if you get busy with other things in school and and and all the other friend things that you might do, later on, it's still there and it it comes back, and that's where you see people coming and wanting to make a difference. So yeah, I think it's the animals and the plants which are extraordinary, and then people caring. Yeah.

AJ 23:52

All right, over to you guys. Who would like to ask a question of our panelists? Lynn, shoot.

Q&A starts with Lyn Beazley AO, on the effect of global warming ‘feminising’ the genders of many species

SPEAKER_03 23:58

I want to ask you, Nikki. We've seen Jurassic Park, and we know that temperature affects the sex of the offspring of turtles and tortoises. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And is that an extra issue for us to think about?

SPEAKER_01 24:13

It is for lots of uh tortoises and sea turtles all have temperature-dependent sex determination, so climate change is increasingly turning into making female turtles. The Western swamp tortoise, though, we're lucky in that sense, it's one that has genetic sex determination. So the zoo have been um wondering about whether they're temperature-dependent and they've incubated at two temperatures just in case, but there's no evidence to suggest that that temperature drives sex in this species, so we don't have to worry about um feminization of populations for this species. We do for many others, though.

AJ 24:45

Go for it.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

Um you mentioned that you test which um habitat for the turtle is best by releasing the turtles into the habitat.

unknown 24:57

Is that ethical considering that to impact their like things?

Question on some of the pioneers in this space

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Is that ethical releasing the turtles into the Yeah? Well we we've tested the habitats really well. We've done a lot of work testing the temperature of the water, the water chemistry, the acidity, and how much food is there. We know that swamp tortoises love tadpoles. That's what they basically chow down at the end of the spring to put on mass to survive the next year. Um so we make sure all those elements are there. So we we do all the you know the due diligence we can to make sure that the site is as good as we think it can be, but there's lots of things you can't control, like predators. So, yes, we do release things and some will be consumed by foxes. Foxes are baited in these areas, but that's the natural part of as tortoises' life is that things get predated at some point in their life cycle. So yeah, we we um I guess compared to their life at the zoo, it's not as um, it's a bit lower, it's higher risk in the wild, but that's also we need them to be out in the wild because that's the whole point of having a captive breeding program. It's not to really be there to show the public the species, it's to actually try and get them back into the wild in lots of different areas so that if we have a catastrophe like a big fire going through one site, at least we've got insurance populations somewhere else.

AJ 26:06

This question wasn't picked up well by the microphones. It was on some of the pioneers in this space.

Anthony asks Neeve her thoughts on the voting age

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Look, absolutely, and I think Gerald and Gundy are a really good example of, well, for a start, a dedication to a life studying tortoises. And certainly Gerald coming here. I remember when he came, it was a huge game changer in the whole um possibility of saving the species. He really was the reason that that this the species was saved. And um Gundy being uh an artist and and writer as well, when they wrote Yaqin, which I read to our children, um it it really did um it did humanize it, well not the humanize, um it it gave that emotional connection to that whole generation of school children. That's absolutely right. So it that in a way set a pattern that then Neve has done again with her story, with a different story but about the same species. So, yes, very, very similar um result and and importance of that that work, and certainly the work of Gerald. Well, in fact, uh Nikki's obviously works with with Gerald as as we do as well in swamp tortoise work. Uh, it's just just huge and yes, cannot possibly be overestimated. So he and Gundy are our mentors and and uh um uh good friends to all of us, actually, and and um certainly we should acknowledge and also the friends of the Western Swamp Tortoise who do an amazing job and the Perth Zoo. So many people, such a collaborative project as these successful projects tend to be.

AJ 27:48

Neiv, I'm curious on a different note, what do you think about the voting age? And I ask that with respect to so much of what we're hearing about the state of the world today, is the generation that you're in will be the ones coming up into this future where we're trying to grapple with these matters and others, yet you don't have a stake at the election table. Is that something you think about? And I know that this voting age, by the way, if you're not aware, is actually a major topic of debate right now and has been a major topic of research, which suggests that it the age might even be considered to be as low as six that people can vote. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Um I think you should definitely be able to vote when you're younger, because it's your future you're voting for. And that that's pretty much it.

AJ 28:37

But what age would you hazard to suggest might be considered?

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Oh man, I'm not really sure to be honest.

AJ 28:44

Imagine your 15-year-old self writing this book.

Student question on how literature can affect social issues besides conservation

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Would you have appreciated I think it'd be good to be able to vote like at least when you're 14, to be honest. Yeah. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

How do you think that literature can affect um things outside of just conservation, like other social issues and things like that?

AJ 29:04

Neve, do you want to show you first on that one?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

I think that's definitely something that like you there's so many issues with this world anyway. I mean, conservation is a great place to start, but like I think I'd love to be able to try and help with other issues as well at some point. But yeah.

AJ 29:23

What do you think about?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Oh man, I don't know, there's so many problems with society. Like, where do you start? I guess I'd have to research it more.

AJ 29:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

But I think it is much more accessible for people to use literature of you know, people of any age to use literature and other media because you have access to online publishing but also social media um podcasts like like Anthony does. So any of you, if there's an issue that you feel really strongly about, can actually act. You can make a difference. And if it's through writing a published book or writing an online book or writing a blog or doing a podcast or interviews or writing to Parliament, there are so many ways you can make a difference if there are things that you care about. And if everybody acted on the things that they cared about, then society would go forward in leaps and bounds. So I think we probably would all encourage you to to do that. If there are things that you care about, learn more about them and and share your views and talk to people and write about it. Yeah.

AJ 30:32

Does it sorry, does anyone out there, is anyone out there willing to put their hand up and say that they're trying to write a book right now? Or have done? There's a few. In in progress or happened? In progress. Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_03 30:45

And a book would have been called in it zine.

AJ 30:48

Ah, there you go, Zine Publication, if case you're not hearing it. Yeah, nice one. And it's off the ground or coming?

SPEAKER_03 30:53

Coming next month.

AJ 30:54

Coming next month. Terrific. Will it be online? Can we um what's it gonna be? Do you know?

SPEAKER_03 30:59

It's called uh Dreamlight Zine, and it's uh with a documentary that's putting on Netflix on the 22nd of September as well. Called the Dream Life of George Stone, and then the scene that we published on the website.

Student question on other endangered species like the numbats

AJ 31:12

Terrific. Look out for that. Uh what about podcasts? Does anyone do a podcast? Has anyone thought about doing a podcast? There's a few. You totally should. It's so easy. And and just face up to the fact you'll be terrible at the start. There we go. No, do it. Good stuff. Okay, another hand?

SPEAKER_03 31:33

What's up with the numbets?

AJ 31:35

What was the second part? Say the bit later. What's up with numbers?

Anthony asks if anyone’s studying journalism - and what we need and might do in media

SPEAKER_01 31:38

I can I can talk to numbats a bit if you want. Yeah, so I have a PhD student who's studying numbats in the Upper Warren, which is down in the Pemberton area. Yeah, so Numbats I've been in the news a bit lately because of uh a fire that got it was a bit hotter than expected, and it got me got a bit beyond the area that was planned to be burnt, and there was a lot of negative media about the impact on numbats. The good news is that my student was studying those numbats and that it wasn't as bad as it has been made out to be in the media. Um the Upper Warren is actually got, we've also learned through her research, there's about twice as many as we thought left in the wild, but we've still only got about 2,000. So numbats were once all across Southwest WA and right across into Victoria. They had a huge distribution before cats and foxes arrived. So there's lots of um introductions going on for numbats into fenced areas. One of the problems is we don't have enough numbats to provide for everybody who wants them in these new projects. So Perth Zoo is another thing that they do is breed numbats for release just like the Western Swamp Tortoise.

AJ 32:32

I'm so glad you mentioned media. There's a bit of a problem in that space. I think it's fair to say, isn't it? Who who's I should have asked? Like who's considering journalism as a path? There's there's one hand at least. Maybe a couple. Yeah. I wonder what you guys think we need in that space that would be constructive.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

I think independent media is really important. I think there are some amazing and exceptional journalists and they can make such a difference, but you need to have the outlets to do it. And I suppose setting up your own independent podcast is one way of doing it. And these, you know, working with non-traditional partners is also really good and getting their um information out there. I think we almost need more of those independent sources, but it is very difficult because you do get people within their own bubbles getting their own ideas being reinforced and siloed, and that's a really unfortunate situation because we can all talk about conservation and the people we talk to and the blogs we read and the papers we read reinforce those views. But then you've got to remember that there are a lot of people out there who are not getting those messages and are reading a completely different set of so-called facts. So, yes, I think it's um there's a lot of work. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Yeah, I think it's hard to yeah, there's obviously there's so much choice to what you read, and when if you've got time to find the good information, not everybody does. So, yeah, knowing yeah, knowing who to trust, I I read the conversation a lot, which is something that tend to be written by um academics across the world.

AJ 34:10

Um that are supposed to write for school age. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

It's meant to be written for a 12-year-old. Um I think with media, some of the problems are things like just you know having time to tell the story properly. Often it's just a quick click uh to say, you know, someone's saving this, they're looking for the kind of short, short version of the story, and that your more interesting stories are longer ones to tell. So we've just been working with the New York Times. They've been with us for the last um about a month ago. They were with us for three days recording this um documentation of this last release we did in the Southwest. So we know that their story is going to break in the New York Times this month or next when it's a quiet news day in the world. Uh so we're not sure what they're gonna say, but they're gonna be focusing on climate change and actually the fact that some country is actually recognising it's a threat and has done something quite dramatic in terms of assist decolonisation. Because it's the only example in the world for a vertebrate, a threatened vertebrate, where this actually been introductions because climate change is the threat.

Student question on what’s driven the Western Swamp Tortoise decline

AJ 35:05

Yes, I it says something in itself, doesn't it, that that that's not news until the negative stuff isn't. Yeah, and and that's uh as much as the bubbles and stuff that occurs to me as part of the issue. It's just that negativity bias that it's called. I had a guest on the podcast a couple of weeks ago who set up a news literacy network, literally for people like yourselves, teachers, parents to get on, and there's filters that you can go and and find outlets that give you the full picture and where things are being tried and working in different ways. And that that's really important. If you don't, the default will hammer your psyche and you can often feel terrible about it with real consequences. And the reverse is also true. It can be really animating, like out of your book, Neve, to have the reverse being introduced to yourself. I think this will be our last one. Yes, go ahead. This last question asked, What's driven the Western swamp tortoise declining population?

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Yeah, why did it we don't know really, because it wasn't we didn't know where it was or even where that first animal was plucked from. It could have been somewhere, you know, really unexpected. But um we suspect it basically lost all its habitat. So it it likes these seasonal swamps that are on clay, nice crack clay, and that clay is great for agriculture as well. So they used to drain all the swamps and turn them into sort of market gardens. So by the time it was rediscovered in the 50s, some of its great habitat was gone, and they found these last little relic populations. And then since it was, I guess, protected in those two sites, um, things like foxes, as we heard about, are predators of the species, and we've also um, I guess, seen progressive change in the rainfall since about the 1970s. One really weird thing that's just another story about the species is that we know Amandy mentioned we put foxes around the fenced areas. Those, sorry, we put fences around them, that's kept the foxes out, but it's actually let the bandicoots boom. And the bandicoots are now a bigger problem than foxes. They're consuming the eggs inside Ellenbrook Nature Reserve. So we now might are in this sort of tricky situation of maybe needing to let some foxes in to eat the bandicoots to. So it's all very complex. Um there's very many threats, but climate change is sort of as a new one that's gonna take longer to impact the population. But we think we need to start addressing it now.

AJ 37:13

It does emphasise for all our best efforts, doesn't it, to try and get the natural systems happening before we need to attempt remediations. On that note, that's all we've got time for here today. But it's probably important to say, though, that you can get Neave's book. I think it's gonna be for sale over the weekend, too, at the State Library if you if you're following up with us. And of course, to yeah, get involved if you want to in this project or others, and maybe even some of those media efforts and writing efforts too. And look out for that New York Times story. I'm really looking forward to that. For now, thanks to the college for having us, thanks to Sharon and Jane and the teams at Writing New South Wales and Writing WA for putting this on. Amazing effort, and please give a huge hand to our guests. Neve Mandy and Nikki. Thank you for being here. I'm Anthony James. See you soon. That was Neve Blackham Jennings, Mandy Bamford, and Nikki Mitchell. For more on Neve, Mandy and Nicki, the Quantum Words Festival, that news literacy network I mentioned, and to get a copy of Neve's book, see the links in the show notes. And speaking of brilliant festivals, a reminder that if you're in or near Brisbane in late March, join me for a live podcast conversation at the World Science Festival. You'll find me at 10am on March 26, talking regenerating country with brilliant First Nations guests Jacob Birch and Xena Cumston. The link for that is also in the show notes. Thanks as always to the generous supporters who've helped make this episode possible. If you too value what you hear, please consider joining this great community of supporting listeners so we can keep the podcast going. Just head to the website via the show notes, regeneration.com forward slash support. And thanks again. As always, if you think of someone who might enjoy this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden of the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.