 December 4, 2012 will be the first ever Wildlife Conservation Day. Our goal is to inform more people about this global conservation crisis. Attacks on rhinos and elephants are multiplying at an alarming rate. Species around the globe such as tigers in Asia are endangered. By some estimates, the black market for wildlife trafficking is rivaled in size only by the illegal arms and drug trade. A slaughter of endangered species robs communities of income from tourism, reduces biodiversity, encourages corruption, undermines good governance. That's why we are training officials and educating prosecutors about wildlife crimes and helping countries strengthen their enforcement laws. But we can't do this without you. Please join us, become part of the solution. You have the choice to refuse to purchase products made from endangered wildlife. Together, we can save these animals before it is too late. Stand up and speak out and stop this trade. Visit www.wildlifepledge.org Take the pledge to respect and protect the world's wildlife. Through Tales from the Wild, Wildlife Q&A with Wildlife Biologist and Conservationist Jeff Corwin. My name is Jeanette Himley and I am Senior Vice President for Conservation Strategy and Science at World Wildlife Fund. It is my pleasure to introduce this program in today's guest speaker. Here with me is Jeff Corwin, an American Documentarian and Producer of Wildlife Programs, best known as the host of globally broadcasted shows which have reached over 130 countries, including Animal Planet television programs, the Jeff Corwin Experience, and Corwin's Quest, as well as his current ABC series, Ocean Mysteries, which is number one in its time slot in the United States. He is also the author of over ten books on wildlife conservation, including his most recent, 100 Heart Beats, The Race to Save Earth's Most Endangered Species. Since he was a teenager, Corwin has been an environmental activist and has worked on the conservation of endangered species and ecosystems around the world. In the next hour, Mr. Corwin will share his personal stories about wildlife conservation and take questions from you. For those of you tuning in, welcome. We especially welcome all the participants at posts. Please submit any questions you have for Jeff Corwin any time throughout the program. Also, recording of this program will be made available online within about five days and we look forward to sharing that with you. Jeff Corwin, welcome to this virtual discussion. Thank you. To start off, I know you have a video to share which will give us a perspective on wildlife, our connection to wildlife, and the need for conservation of endangered species. Let's take a look at that right now. Try to imagine a world without cheetahs or orangutans, a planet void of elephants, sea turtles, or even rhinos. The thing is, this is not a worst case scenario. This is happening now to many of our planet's incredible species as they face what many scientists believe is the sixth extinction. For 400 million years, you've had these sharks in our waters. They've survived five mass extinctions. They've survived the dinosaurs. And it's only been in the last few decades that man has been fishing and overfishing that has caused the shark populations to plummet sometimes by up to 90%. Take a look at your watch. In the next 20 minutes, one species on our planet will become extinct. This year alone, some 20,000 species will fall prey to extinction, gone forever. I think the governments around the world have got to wake up to man's position on this globe. And when we're on a suicidal course, if we stay the way we are, forever to invade and take and take and warn more of nature's bounty, we risk not just the collapse of these beautiful wild creatures, we risk our own collapse as well. Wow, that's a dramatic video. So tell us a little bit more about what we saw there. And in fact, what got you involved in conservation in the first place? Well, there were two great folks that I was interviewing for a documentary I did, which was based on a book that I wrote called 100 Heartbeats. And really, the premise behind this book was we now live in a time where one could argue is potentially the dark ages of conservation, where we have many species of our planet, iconic species, emblematic species that have been reduced in some cases to 100 animals or less, 100 individuals. So I wanted to explore that sort of tenuous equation when you get to that level. And we followed it through in the book and then in the documentary. So we were hearing just now and watching some of the leaders in the conservation community. That was Ann Douglas Hamilton, who's a great elephant expert and with African elephants and Allison Cock, who does this incredible work with great white sharks and other sharks. But for me, my passion has always been wildlife. And ever since I was a little kid, I've had a fascination and an addiction to nature. And I remember being a six-year-old kid growing up in the inner city. And my only access was to those precious moments where I would visit relatives that lived in more rural areas. So today as an adult, on my tenth series doing documentaries and wildlife, the core of what I do is ultimately is I want to spark the catalyst in everyone so they themselves can find their places as a steward of natural resources. And that's kind of where we are today. As the documentary and the book alludes to, we lose a dramatic amount of life on our planet. And it's largely the result of what I call a perfect storm. A perfect extinction storm. And hopefully we'll explore those factors tonight. That's a great intro and great backdrop. You have such a unique perspective. So let's start by taking a few questions from our audience. So the first question, pretty basic one and important one, are there ways we as individuals can get involved in wildlife protection and conservation? What can we do uniquely in our own lives? Absolutely. I think there are many things all of us can do in our own lives to be active when it comes to conservation and good environmental stewardship. And in fact, I don't look at it as a luxurious opportunity. I really look at it as something we are required to do. And ultimately, I think it begins though in your backyard, in your community. One of the things I find that's interesting is a lot of the stuff I do around the globe and you share that information with the audience that watches my TV shows or reads the books that I've written. People are always thinking about that far-flung conservation project and they forget about cleaning their own house. So one of the things I would encourage you to do is to connect within your community, you know, if you're in Hong Kong or other parts of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, Thailand, all these areas which is often looked as the hot zone or ground zero when it comes to our planet's biodiversity, it faces some of the most stark conservation challenges. So I would say it begins really within your own community. Number two, you don't have to be a scientist or professional wildlife biologist to be a good conservationist. Ultimately, you need to have a tremendous amount of passion and you need to have a true sense of driven commitment. And look within your own world, in your own life, in your community and identify the talents that you have, whether it's being an accountant or being an artist or a communicator and engage and interact those skill sets that you have within that community. And also find something that you are passionate about. So if, you know, World Wildlife Fund is, as you know, is this great plethora of all things that they're doing to try to protect our planet's natural resources. But not one specialist at WWF is doing all those things. Each specialist has their own or her own passion. So I would say, what is your passion? If you're living in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, are you concerned about water quality? Is it the future of tigers? Is it the black market trade of reptiles? Find what it is and become very active in that movement. And I suppose another thing is that we can all be careful consumers. You know, we may sometimes inadvertently come across wildlife products in a market that may be illegal or from an endangered species and we just need to become more aware of that. Absolutely. And that's, you know, the whole other side of it is our responsibility as consumers, exploiters and users of natural resources. And ultimately, you are responsible for what you purchase. And today, many urban areas around the world and growing communities with a higher standard of living around the world, including Southeast Asia and other parts of Asia have become major consumers for a lot of wildlife products that have been harvested through the black market wildlife trade. Let's go to another question. What do you think is the best way to rally the international community around wildlife conservation, keeping in mind other challenges that countries face daily, such as poverty and the economic downturn? That's really an interesting, excellent and complex question to answer. For me, as a communicator, I made a decision early on going through graduate work and doing my graduate work at Bats in Central America and becoming a scientist and anthropologist that really where I wanted to focus in on is as an interpreter of the natural world. My vehicle for using that is television or books. And I look at that as the stepping stone to build a bridge that ultimately gives information and powering people to make wise decisions when it comes to the conservation of our natural resources. So I believe those are immediate steps we can make is how we communicate. But ultimately, I think what we really need to do is recognize that the true measure of the health and success of the society is often done under the matrix of a healthy environment. So while all of us dealing with economic issues globally, recessions and downturns, we have a tremendous amount of political challenges and civil challenges and all these sorts of things that are happening to societies and countries around the world, I would argue that where we are in the world with the state of our planet and the natural resources and endangered species is equally important. And I would also argue that if you go to places in the world where you see a lower standard of living, you see a higher level of mortality because of diseases, a higher level of mortality amongst children, a lower quality of life where some people within that society don't have the rights that they should have, have the equal opportunity of rights, you will often find a compromised environment in those communities. So you want a healthy society and a functional society, the blanket to envelop that experience would be a healthy environment. That's right. And while life and natural resources are natural assets, right, we need to treat them as such so that they can help us support generations well into the future. Absolutely. So another question, how do we begin to stress to the average person that our extinction is very interwoven with the extinction to the other species that we are allowing to disappear from the planet? How do we better help people connect those dots? Interesting question. That's sort of I think the ultimate price we would pay as a species is that we would drive all the resources defined within the habitat and ecosystems which individual pieces of that living community are species, the plants and animals and insects and other life forms that live there. And is it possible that we could push ourselves to that point where our own species becomes in jeopardy? And I think it's very, very possible. In the United States, for example, there are many organizations that argue that for the first time in the history of our evolving nation, we may potentially have a generation of young Americans that are less physically healthy and more vulnerable to disease than the generation before them, despite all our efforts to provide them with what they need to be productive future adults. And I believe not having a healthy connection to nature is a big part of that. But the great question is, is our own species in jeopardy? And I personally believe it is. For example, a group of creatures we could look to just off the top of my head would be amphibians. Amphibians, frogs, toads, salamanders and newts, they have lived on our planet for 350 million years. And they have survived five major extinctions. But because of factors such as environmental degradation, pollution, habitat loss, climate change, and new novel diseases like Kitrat fungus, this deadly disease that's wiping out amphibians from Africa to Asia to the United States, we are losing these creatures at an unprecedented rate. We have today approximately 6,000 amphibian species. And it is likely that we will lose 3,000 of these species, half of them within the next two or three decades ahead. So we're talking a group of creatures, these iconic life forms that have been on our planet for 350 million years. So the question I would ask you is, why should you care? What does that mean? Number of reasons. Let's look at our own health and our own survival. Many of the medicines we use in our lives originate in amphibians. The chemicals in a poisoned heart's frog skin that it uses to ward off predation, we then use in manufacturing to a potential anesthesia. The bufo toxin from a toad becomes the alkaloids become a potential fungicide. We have medicines to fight everything from AIDS to Parkinson's to cancer that originate in amphibian skins. Number two, they're keystone species. There's nothing more surreal than to walk into a postcard perfect rainforest. It's very hard to say, a postcard perfect rainforest in Panama. And you see the weeping lycopods and bromeliads and the babbling brook. You're like, what's wrong with this picture? You realize it's perfectly quiet because all the amphibians have disappeared and all the animals that depend upon them disappear. So without them, that connective tissue that binds that ecosystem together through that chain of life collapses. And finally, the third issue is that they are the ultimate canary in the coal mine. They're the indicator species. Because of their sensitivity to water quality, air quality and temperature, when they start disappearing, this creature, time tested for 350 million years, it tells us we're in trouble. And I could name, we don't have enough time to find that scenario which unfolds constantly throughout our animal kingdom. And increasingly, it seems like an example. But it's just one example of just how a little onicuous, innocuous group of life forms that we wouldn't think are so important, literally may be the building block to the future of our own survival. Yeah, you gotta pay attention. Here's a question from a student at IRC, Manila. In what ways can we help as students in conserving and protecting wildlife? That's a great question and I want to answer it this way, I think. I think the most dangerous element or adversary to conservation, to protecting habitat and species and wildlife, these natural resources, that we all depend upon around the world. I think the most dangerous adversary to that is a sense of not having power. The moment where you think you don't matter is the moment you stop caring and it's the moment you don't make a difference. So whether it is your power as a consumer with the power of the purse, the power as your political powers and the leaders that you choose will be creating the environmental framework for how your countries will be managed with regard to the natural resources is incredibly important. What you do as a community, I have seen, and I imagine you're probably a university student, I've seen younger students, high school students, even younger elementary school students come together through the power of the community led by a teacher or a leading student. They literally through the power of this group come together and have actually made a big difference in saving a species, protecting a rainforest. When I was a student in college, an undergraduate student, I was very active in rainforest conservation in Central America and it was from those initial experiences as a student that I do the work that I do today and my life has taken the journey. So I would say, as I said too early on in our conversation, look to the challenges within the community and the environment that's around you. What are the issues? Is there a river that needs to be cleaning? I know there are tremendous challenges in the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia when it comes to the tremendous amount of trash that gets dumped into the sea and it's not limited to your part of the world, all of us. We each produce about five pounds of unbiodegradable waste every day. If you're drinking from a plastic water bottle, you may get what, an hour or two of substances from that water, sustenance, but in the end it's been presented to you in a vessel that may take 400 years to degrade. So that's a power that you can exercise through sustainability of the resources you use through your being active as a wise consumer. But look within your community and see how you can be an advocate and how you can be a steward and I think you could make tremendous change. Absolutely. Another question from a student in the Philippines. What government or country is the most vocal when it comes to animal conservation? I think one of the greatest joys I've had in my job in the various series from Animal Planet to Travel Channel to work that are done with NBC or even now with ABC channels in the United States is when you go to a place, a remote place, Madagascar or maybe the streets of Jakarta and you are there with a person from that community that in some cases has given up a chance for a robust livelihood, a fancy job, has in some cases put their own security and life in the line to protect the natural resources that their community needs and have a responsibility to cherish and protect. So for me I find while I go to many places and for example I've spent some time in eastern Africa and I have seen the terrible, awful result of poaching. I've seen rhinos freshly poached. I've been to Cambodia and many Malaysian, Indonesian. I've seen what happens when an animal loses its limb from a snare or I've seen turtle eggs stacked up for sale as an aphrodisiac that just doesn't work in a market somewhere in the world. But so that while that takes me down, really lifts me up is that chances are I'm seeing that with someone who is on the front lines of conservation fighting the battle every day. So I say many nations around the world while we all face our challenges we do in the United States, we do in the Philippines and Thailand. The hope is I believe there are a generation of young Americans in the power today that are on the cusp of being the next cohort of world leaders and they see the world differently. They don't see the world as something to exploit beyond what it can provide but they see the role of what they can do as basically as self-empowered officers of sustainability. We certainly had a big boost here with Secretary Clinton elevating this issue politically in a way that we've never seen before which has been terrific and bringing attention that is so needed to this crisis. Absolutely. Related to that, a question coming in is what animals are at most risk from wildlife trafficking and what are the reasons that we should care about this issue aside from the emotional ones. So sort of a two-part thing. Interesting. Beyond the emotional and the aesthetic connection we have to species that are exploited are there other reasons why we should be concerned and there are. Unfortunately there is a tremendous radiation of species that fall within the cookie cutter of exploitation. You can find the large charismatic flagship species as World Wildlife Fund has worked on. Tigers for example. A friend of mine is one of the top tiger biologists in the world just informing that they are now starting to think that the tiger population is probably a third of what they thought it was just four or five years ago. We know for example in Cambodia, tigers have been reduced to the point that they may likely be regionally extirpated no longer existing in those areas. In some areas of the world there are more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild. That's just one example. You can look at the plight of rhinos from around the world. From rhinos of Africa, the northeastern races of white rhinos, rhinos in South Africa are in tremendous jeopardy. We can look at iconic creatures like manatees, the Amazon manatees from the south. There are creatures all around the world from reptiles to mammals to birds to fish. Large fish. We need to look at our commercial exploitation of fish to the point we're exploiting without having the science to know what the carrying capacity is which is literally how the measure of quantity of fish within an ecosystem is sustained to the point where we hit it and then it begins to plummet and fall. So there are many many species that are exploited. So the question is why should we care? Well first of all it's an interesting formula that allows for the exploitation to take place. The black market trade, the wildlife trade is really second only to the narcotics trade and to the gun trade. A conservative estimate say that it may be 10 or 11 or 12 billion dollars a year. There are other folks out there that are saying it may be as much or more than 20 billion dollars a year and it may find itself from bushmeat, you know, things that we're eating. It may be a prestige cultural meal that you have in a restaurant. I've been to restaurants where endangered species have been served and maybe for the illegal black market pet trade. It could be for the medicinal trade which is a big problem in many parts of the world. So for example you could have one animal like a tiger or a rhino go get killed for multiple reasons. The horn, the sheath of the horn may end up as an ornamental dagger sheath in the Middle East someplace. The central core of that may be ground up into a tablet for medicinal use. Then the flesh may be consumed. So it's a big deal. Why should we care? I believe, and unfortunately I think it's sad to say this, I believe we are, if things stay in its present course we are probably within a decade, maybe even less, of losing a flagship species of animal. Maybe it's a Samaritan rhino or a Javan rhino. Maybe it's one of the unique types of tigers out there. We're very close and when we lose a species like that, it's not only a piece of legacy that we've lost. We pay a terrible price because it's a piece of our global natural heritage that is lost forever. Javan rhino is something like 40 left in the wild. It's incredible. Yeah, just really down to the final numbers. Okay, we're going to take a call now from our embassy in Hong Kong. I believe the embassy is now on the line via Skype. Hello Hong Kong. This is a question from Natasha. More than 3 million worth of ivory was recently shipped illegally through Hong Kong. What is your take on this issue and how can one make it possible to convey the message that going completely against the sale of ivory? Well, it's interesting and really tragic because today the trade of ivory is at an all-time high. For the last two and a half decades, we've seen a steady decline in the trade and sale of ivory, which has been promising. But within the last few years, it has just spiked up tremendously high and it's really only matched by the dark days in the 70s where ivory was trade. And there's a number of reasons why this is occurring. Many regions of the world where ivory is deemed as a culturally important decorative element or ornamental element have seen an increase and their revenue and resources to purchase this material. So there's a market for it. So number one is we have to deal with the market and that requires education. Number two, it becomes down to law enforcement. So we need to have on both sides, both on the area and in the regions where animals are killed for their ivory, specifically in Africa, we need to make sure that those folks in the front lines of this dastardly trade are empowered with what they need to do at the legal level at the law enforcement level and at the international legal level to make sure that that industry is suppressed. And then at the consumption side, for example, in places like China and Hong Kong and other parts of the world where this ivory can be consumed and sold to make sure that there is accountability, that that market is extinguished and it has done that through enlightenment and education and law enforcement. I think those are the critical factors that need to come together in concert to try to put this terrible fire out. And somehow making it unfashionable. I mean, there seems to be a surge in interest with increased economic growth in China, Hong Kong. People want ivory. How do we make them not want it? I think that comes down to the awareness factor and having three or four questions ago from saying, what is a young person I can do? What is a young person? You are the catalyst of fashion. It's your mission and your responsibility to make sure that this stuff isn't being consumed. In the United States, it's incredibly strict. We have very, very strict laws when it comes to ivory consumption. Even for example, like anti-gyphery, in some cases may require certain permits. So I think you need that sense of not only to have the laws in the books, but they need to be enforced. And I think as you said, we need to find a way to reeducate ourselves and what is fashionable, especially when it comes to ivory. And one thing you need to know is no one elephant dies alone. When you take an elephant out for its ivory, chances are a whole clan of elephants will pay the price. From the orphans that may never get to live in the wild again because they have to be hand raised if they survive. To all the elephants that come together, all the sisters and aunts and cousins that protect each other when they are being attacked by poachers. That's very true. Hong Kong, you have another question, I believe? Thank you, yes. Our second question comes from Charlene. Charlene's question is, most of the shark fins imported into Hong Kong come from Spain. But how many sharks are caught by Chinese fishing vessels for sale in Hong Kong and mainland China each year? Why do you think it hasn't been reported as often? Well, it's become a big topic for conversation in the United States. And I'm not in Hong Kong and I haven't been there for a while, so I don't know how much of a volatile issue it is there. Many people around the world look to shark fins as a prestige meal. Shark fin soup is very, very expensive and there are many reasons why people consume it. Sometimes it's eaten because there are beliefs that it has a medicinal value. The truth is there's no medicinal value from shark fins. Nothing more than cartilage and you can't absorb the nutrients from shark fin. You could get a better result from eating gelatin than you would from eating shark fin. And the other problem with a massive industrialized factory harvest of sharks is that it really can't be sustainable. It's interesting and I think it's really not just an Asian conversation or a Hong Kong. It's a global conversation because shark finning is not limited to China. It's all around the world. You can literally see sharks that are being finned off of Ecuador. Those fins will find their way in a marketplace, not just in China or in Hong Kong but in other places. So what's the conundrum here? What's the challenge? Well, we are just now learning about the complex biology of sharks. But like amphibians, sharks have been on our planet for a very, very, very long time. They have been on this planet for almost half a billion years. They've been on for over 400 million years. Sharks. And what we have now learned about sharks, and of course historically many cultures, human cultures have had an adversarial and not always happy, lovely relationship with sharks. But what we've now learned is that sharks are keystone species. And when you see sharks disappear from the environment, it's a sign that's an ecosystem, an aquatic habitat that's out of balance. Number two, the reason why sharks are, it's very hard to sustainably harvest them as a resource, is because we now have learned that many shark species are long lived and really bank on a long life before they reproduce. So you have many shark species that may not begin reproducing, replacing themselves until they're 20, 30 years old. Greenland sharks are sometimes hundreds of years old. So how can you wisely manage a species and take it if they are in a completely different equation when it comes to replacing themselves? Number two. Now, the other thing that's interesting about sharks is that, and tragic, is today 90% of shark species are in trouble, which is really terrifying. Again, groups of animals that have been on our planet for millions and millions of years and now are in true jeopardy. And to me it's quite sobering to think that we may lose a species of shark because of ignorance, because of overhunting. And we may take out a species that has been on an evolutionary journey for tens of millions of years. I know there's some recent good news, modest good news, in the shark fin trade. A couple of major hotel chains in Hong Kong have banned the sale of shark fin soup in their restaurants, which is great. And the Chinese government has announced that they will no longer serve shark fin soup at official banquet. So those are at least good steps in the right direction. That's an important step, but we need to make dramatically bigger steps to ensure that sharks stay on our planet. Again, incredible. I think there's maybe 400 species of sharks, maybe a little bit more on our planet. And they're all incredibly important and incredibly unique, and we would pay a terrible price if we lost sharks. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I think we have one more question from Hong Kong. Thank you. We have a combined question from Natasha, Charlene and Taku. And the question is, your work involves getting up close and personal with wildlife, including some animals that can be dangerous or even deadly. Do you ever worry that something bad might happen to you, and how do you deal with the risks involved? Thank you. Very interesting and excellent question. Truth is, there's always risks in anything you do. And I work with a team of professionals. I'm often working with a professional scientist, a woman or a man that is an expert at what they do. And we take a tremendous amount of precautions because ultimately our mission is to tell a story. A story that takes the audience, the viewer on a journey, a roller-coaster ride into the natural world. And I want them to have a great time. And I want them to feel like, I always imagine when I'm addressing the camera that that individual, whether it's someone in New York City or a kid in Thailand or South Africa, I imagine that they're my adventure companion and that this person is there with me, a part of this journey. But truly, beyond the adventure and the discovery and the jeopardy, I want people to be armed with information that they comply and apply in their own lives. And that's really my greater mission. But there are always risks. You can dot your eyes and cross your T's and put it on a seatbelt and still not walk from an accident. So I consider myself very lucky. I have a job that allows me to fulfill my life passion. And as a scientist and as a conservationist and as a communicator, I never forget that. And we always put a tremendous amount of work when it comes to safety. And even in moments that feels dangerous, just like a few weeks ago I was diving with a scientist in Alaska actually capturing giant stellar sea lions that weigh up to 2,000 pounds, putting satellites on them, satellite transmitters. And they're doing this to try to understand why that population has collapsed by 80%. So yes, there's some jeopardy involved. But the experience that I get from that and that experience I can share for me is incredible. And that's why I do what I do. Very exciting life you live, boy. So an online viewer asks, what do you think is the biggest obstacle to the U.S. government making simple changes that could have a massive impact on the planet? How can we get better laws in the U.S. to promote the environmental policies we need to make a difference? Excellent question. It's true. In the United States, as with many countries, we face obstacles when it comes to protecting our natural resources. And the other sort of tenuous unknown is that the mission and the goals we have when it comes to our environment change with the political environment. So we sometimes have politicians that aren't pro-environment and we some have politicians that do a good job when it comes to protecting natural resources. And that's why, as we alluded to before, it's so important that you exercise your power politically and putting leaders in place that will make sure that they are being good stewards for the natural resources that we all depend upon. So yes, while we face tremendous challenges with the global impact of climate change and as we deal with fossil fuel use and all sorts of things in endangered species, I also like to pat our back a little bit. And I'm very proud of our country. United States is wonderful in that, for example, you can become a professional wildlife biologist and potentially have a career. A lot of the laws that are used around the world today originated from the founding brothers and sisters of the American modern of conservation. Folks like Aldo Leopold and John Muir and Rachel Carson, these were the pioneers that helped generate the experiences and information that literally become the building blocks of how we look at our world today. The concepts of national parks and endangered species. These were all things that were created within our community and have basically been shared globally. So yes, we do face many challenges, but at the same time, I am confident to know that we have a tremendous sense of community amongst the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I am always amazed when I go out into the field with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Conservation Biologists and just see the incredible work that they do. Just two days ago I was in Puerto Rico with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Biologists that took this bird, basically the Puerto Rican Amazon Parrot and took it from about just a little over a dozen animals to 400 animals today, 300 living in the wild. We have many challenges we face with saving species. We will have species in the U.S. that may face extinction, like polar bears for example. But we also are the same nation where we took bald eagles from 450 pair to over 10,000 and lower 48, took a creature that was considered extinct in the books, the black-footed ferret, and reintroduced them back into the short grass prairie. Whenever I feel like our country is facing a challenge, I look to the heroes of conservation and I look to the successes that we have, the American alligator. It is easy to argue to save the symbol of your country, the bald eagle, but sometimes it is challenging to argue to save something that may eat you when you are in an inner tube. But yet we recognize the value of alligators and we brought them back. So we have a question about your book, Clark DeHard from Virginia. 100 Heartbeats was an inspiring and also saddening book. Is there a particular wildlife story from the book that had the largest impact on you as a conservationist? Well, we looked at so many species and for me there were many stories of extinction that were just so disheartening because you realized as the bald eagle went this way to a successful story, as the black-footed ferret, as on its journey to a success story, it had many species that didn't make it. And I try to imagine my two daughters, Maya and Marina. My daughter, Maya, who was sometimes my own sidekick, I was filming Sturgeon. Such a powerful story because we were in Maine with the New England University and short-nosed Sturgeon and Atlantic Sturgeon had become regionally extinct and they were critically endangered and they were extinct in this river system. But lo and behold, when they stopped with the paper mills and they took down some of the dams and they came back on their own like a sea that magically germinated and they just appeared. And I remember being there with my daughter, she's helping me put a transmitter on a big colossal sturgeon thinking, wow, what an awesome experience for her. But you know, I'll never be able to show her a stellar sea cow. A stellar sea cow was a manatee that lived in the Arctic that was the size of a whale. She will never be able to see a Tasmanian tiger that almost made it into the world. There are frogs that she will never get to see in the wild. There are species that will be gone, that are gone forever that she will never get to see. But if there was one species that really crystallized that was probably booming ben. Booming ben was one of the ones that almost made it. It was a heath hen. And heath hens were this grouse-like, pheasant-like bird. And in fact, in the 1700s, indentured servants that would come over with colonists would actually often have in their contract that they would only be forced to eat heath hen like once a week because they were so sick of it because there were so many heath hen, they were feeding them just heath hens, heath hens, heath hens. Well, incredibly or not surprisingly, heath hen, almost their populations crashed. Over hunted. Over hunted. They were wiped to the brink of extinction. And really early on, we're talking over a century ago, before there were modern laws of conservation people realized like, oh my goodness, this is a species in trouble. We need to make a change. And they did. They made the change. And just a handful of heath hens bloomed to 2000. And everyone got excited and then started to sit back in their laurels and think everything's okay. The heath hen has been saved. Well, lo and behold, a couple of bad winters, a few feral cats and dogs, and all of a sudden the population just collapsed. And it was very sad that people would go to the moors and sit there in their petticoats and their lunches and they would wait for the last heath hen and his name was Booming Ben. And he would appear behind the bush and sing to the crowd for the mate that would never come. And then one day Booming Ben never boomed and that species became extinct forever. So I mentioned Booming Ben because it reminds me that even when we bring species back, we can lose them. American alligators recovered, but climate change is affecting them because there's sex ratios. When they hatch out, the more the higher the temperature skews the ratios. Same thing with certain sea turtles. And so animals are never look at animals like the California condor. 350 something condors alive today. But the truth is all of them live in a constant world of being the alien abducted because they each have a transmitter. The question, will they ever be truly wild again? Will they ever be out of jeopardy? That's a really interesting point. A lot of investment in that, a good recovery back in the wild. We live in a time where many of the bigger creatures, wolves and condors where we don't have that great expansive habitat to support them, will live and be on our planet, but in a different way. Different way. Okay, we have another question from a student in Manila. You love your job so much. It's clear you're very passionate about it. Are there things in your life that you've given up for this cause? I have. In the last few years, my family, we've made radical changes in the way we live our lives. And we just did this for our own. I actually started getting really interested in food. I even had a show on the Food Network that was called Extreme Cuisine. It was all about our connection to food, where I traveled around the world to see what people ate. And specifically, I looked at really unique Indigenous cultures and their connection to sustainability. And we live, all of many of us live in a fast food culture. And we don't know where our food comes from beyond the refrigerator. And I think our failure to appreciate food has a lot to say about our failure to protect our environment, because you are what you eat. So we made kind of a change in our lives. Where in our home, we only eat food where we know it comes from. So we try to have, for example, protein that we eat, animal protein, has to come from a certain radius within our community. We do our very best not to consume animal protein that has been what I consider factory farm. That's my own choice that I've made. And I also have the luxury of making that choice, not everyone does. We also started a farm, started growing around food. So we went from literally an idea about what kind of food will we buy at a supermarket to literally raising our own chickens and bees. And my wife and my kids and we do it ourselves. I got a fishing boat. I learned about sustainable fishing. And it has been such a joy for me. So I wouldn't say it's a sacrifice, but it's a lifestyle change that I decided to make that I felt would benefit me. Was it hard to do? It was. It's a little hard to do. In the beginning it was expensive, but when we started growing it, when you see your kids out in the garden, the truth is for me it's a luxury thing I guess you'd say. But I mean there are people that do this around the world every day. This is how they live. And it's from living with those people, living with a remote community, or spending time with the community in Thailand, and seeing how they harvest, in some case just eating insects. And living off insects and discovering insects can be delicious. Have you had insects to your diet? I haven't. No. But my bees have stung me a few times. Or being with the family in Peru and their joy and the value of potatoes and learning to appreciate potatoes and learning potatoes that they planted and actually planting them on my own farm. I've learned more than I've taught when it comes to being with people and connecting to their environments. That's great. So it looks like we have about time for one more question. Okay, here goes. This is a big picture question. Macroscopically throughout the history of the earth, organism evolution and extinction should be a normal process. So how do we draw the line between what we need to conserve and what we don't? If we protect organisms from human activity, how about natural loss? It's a very curious sort of potentially explosive question. And I believe in evolution 100%. So I even think the concept of what's nature and what's not nature is the idea that there is a sense of direction to nature. I don't look at nature as a sense of direction. I look at things on our earth that have evolved and they have evolved through the trial and error process of being tested by things in your environment. And those genes are selected and those genes are manifested within a species and that species either thrives or fails. In the bigger picture, based on what's going on in this natural world, competition. There are all sorts of extinctions. There are mass extinctions, maybe a cataclysmic event such as an asteroid slams into the planet and wipes out a lot of stuff. There are sort of slow types of extinctions where something fades off and then there are moments where there's less extinction and something just evolves into something else. And basically extinction kind of is a definition in the scientific sense. Extinction is a measure of an evaluation of a species of life where it says literally that model no longer fits for those environmental challenges. And if you were to really look at life on earth, 99% of everything that's ever lived on earth is gone. So does that mean we should just let things become extinct? And I say, heck no, because the truth is I believe today, humankind is that cataclysmic event that is driving species to extinction. And I said this, you've given me sort of an interesting segue. And the earlier part of our conversation we talked about extinction. And I said there is this perfect extinction storm. The perfect storm is a book that I loved. And it's basically about this terrible event that happened near where I lived in New England where I think it was the Andrea Gale, whatever that ship was, it was a swordfish vessel and it sank because it hit a perfect storm. It was not perfect in its beauty. It was perfect in its lethality where the tide in this nor'easter storm that's like a hurricane mixed with a moon cycle in the right time of year to come together to create a deadly storm where no one could survive and this vessel didn't. So we live in a perfect extinction storm. And like a weather storm this extinction storm is made up of elements that don't work independently but conspire together. And these perfect extinction storm elements would be habitat loss, climate change, species exploitation, environmental degradation or pollution and human population growth. They all feed together. So for example, with an increase in the human species means an increasing demand of resources. When we go into an environment we wipe out that habitat, for example, I've been to Sumatra, you wipe out that rainforest, you then take that 700, whatever, million tons of carbon and send that into the environment and contribute to climate change through the release of greenhouse gases. So when you're denuding or destroying that habitat you then expose those species there to the black market trade. So you can see how that does that one cycle how they all sort of fit together to create this massive level of extinction today which is really unprecedented on our planet since we lost dinosaurs 60 million years ago. So the question is, who's responsible? If you're watching this show in Sumatra should you feel guilty? Is it your fault? Because even though that part of the world has become ground zero for palm oil production which is a leading cause of deforestation today and certain parts of Asia the truth is in the United States and Europe one out of every 10 products on the supermarket shelf is made out of palm oil. So we are all responsible. When we figure that out we work together as a global community. We work together as a global community to ensure that the resources that we have today continue into the future. That's a great way to pull it all together. Thank you, Jeff. I know how I did that. More of this water. So thank you and thank all of you for your engaging questions and insightful comments. We're going to close our session now. If you have any more parting words of wisdom to share with us, Jeff some of my greatest moments in my career as a wildlife biologist and as a TV host has been in your backyards it's provided me with powerful moments of joy and really inspiration and it's the fuel that moves me forward and as I sort of discussed before I think it's incredibly important that we look less about we act locally and it's been said before globally and think globally, right? But the truth is we do have responsibility because a resource that I don't take care of in the United States may impact your survival a salmon that is not protected in a water off the coast of South America or another part or Asia may not make it back to its ancestral waters to replace itself and infect that resource. The dam dammed in a certain part of the world affects everybody downstream so we are all accountable and I think it's so important to remember that we can't it's hard to protect what we do not love and cherish and it's hard to love and cherish what we do not know and that's why I do the job that I do and I would encourage all of you to not only be active in conservation but to learn and unravel and simple and magical natural mysteries of your community because by connecting to the nature that you depend upon you're more apt to protect it and I think it's really important to remember that the world we have today we often like to look at the nature, the habitat and the species that we have in our world as something we've inherited from our ancestors and I don't believe that's the case I believe the natural world we have today we do not inherit from our ancestors but we borrow from our children Thank you We have a request for you to please greet the 36 students and teachers from T. Paez Integrated High School from Manila, Philippines They all enjoy the chat here at IRC Manila Well, thanks guys for tuning in Great to have you Thanks and thanks again everyone for joining us We see in all of you around the world this web chat program is now closed We thank you for the opportunity to really elevate the issue of conservation to have great words and stories from Jeff and thanks all of you for your attention Oh, one more thing, do I still have time to get one more thing in? If you want to know about sharks sharks are a big thing of my mind right now we had that question I just came out with the first e-book an interactive e-book on sharks about Asia and the important species there so check it out Yeah, just go to wherever you buy an e-book it's just coming out on sharks Terrific, I want to remind everyone this program will be made available in a few business days so look for it and thanks again for watching This program has been brought to you by Kinex