Creating Conservation Podcast is out there!

Hi Friends,
If you have any interest in checking out my podcast on Soundcloud, I would really appreciate it.  Episode 1 is live at https://soundcloud.com/user-619395201

I created the podcast for my masters capstone (Goucher College - Masters in Environmental Studies) because I thought it would be a unique and totally challenging project for me.  It definitely proved to be.  I have much respect for all of the podcasters out there who work so hard to produce free content for listeners.  Podcast producing is a difficult project, especially for some one as...shall we say...technologically challenged.

If you are new to podcasts, don't judge them by mine!  There are many gems out there that are far better produced, better hosted, better written... That being said, if you are a podcast warrior, then please cut me some slack!  I'm a total newbie :)

Creating Conservation Podcast Summary:

Creating Conservation is a one-on-one interview style podcast with informal, friendly, and
sometimes funny conversations about wildlife conservation topics, and tips for living an
environmentally conscious lifestyle. In the show, I will speak with "real" people that I meet at
environmental, wellness, or wildlife focused events, as well as researchers and other
conservation professionals. I will be speaking to my guests about their lives, their inspirations,
their education, and their unique career paths. Additionally, I will be asking them about their
feelings on the state of conservation in the modern world, and their feelings on how the state
of conservation in the modern world makes them feel on a personal level. Creating
Conservation seeks to provide an entry-level look at the lives of conservation conscious
people and serves as an invitation to the public who may be curious or even anxious about the
topics. No matter the level of education the listener might have, they will never be made to
feel inferior or in over their heads when listening to the episodes. Most importantly, Creating
Conservation will take an in depth look at compassion fatigue and how it can profoundly affect
caring and empathetic people. Experts on the subject will provide helpful tips on how to
remain sane amid all of the bad news, and offer tips on how one can become invigorated about
collective efforts to create conservation whenever, and however, we can. I’ve named the show
Creating Conservation to indicate that it can serve as a starting point into the conservation
world, can introduce creative ways to be involved in conservation, and can help a listener who
might be suffering with compassion fatigue to create wellness in their lives.

They say “the nose knows” but I don’t think they (whoever they are) really knew how “right on the nose” they were.  Ok, I’ll stop with the nose jokes now.  What I mean to say, is that while our human noses, with a measly 5 million olfactory receptors are sufficient for us to determine when to eat, when to avoid, when to stay and when to run; the dog’s nose, with a whopping 220 million receptors is really a work of art and humans as domesticators and breeders, have designed lovable noses on 4 legs.  Evolution gave the ancestors of dogs, the grey wolf, a powerful sniffer, and the wolf’s nose combined with her teeth and hearing and pack mentality created valuable companions to early humans.  We were given the benefits of guard dogs and hunting partners in exchange for food scraps, warm fires and belly rubs.  As wolves and humans continued to develop strong relationships, amazing things happened.  Natural selection molded the friendlier and more protective wolves into our best companions and eventually wolves and people began to innately understand the other’s emotional state and intentions.  Just hang out with a dog owner and her best friend for a while and you’ll see what I mean.  Somewhere along the line, some wolves formed lineages that began a new subspecies, and the dog was born.  From there, the rest is history (as opposed to prehistory) and humans began to design dogs to suit specific needs or to present specific features and behaviors.  Consider the bloodhound, the poodle, the German shepherd, the greyhound, the Australian cattle dog and the Pekingese for examples of the amazing diversity in the dog world.

Many dog breeders saw the benefits of utilizing the extraordinary canine nose for working purposes and certain breeds evolved to possess many more scent receptors than the grey wolf had as well lips, ears, coats, and high-drive temperaments that aided the dog, and consequently the human, in searching and sniffing endeavors.  The bloodhound for instance is thought to have been bred around 1000 AD and was commonly used for man-hunting by the Middle Ages, as they still are today.  German shepherds, commonly used today as police sniffing and protection dogs were bred around the 1850’s to be herding dogs expressing intelligence, protectiveness and a keen sense of smell as breed traits.  The Labrador, which are used heavily today as gun-dogs, therapy dogs and tracking and detection dogs,  were bred around 1830 to have an excellent sense of smell, a kind demeanor and strong work ethic.  And the Australian cattle dog, my personal sniffer dog’s breed, was bred for its courage, agility, intelligence, sense of smell, and love of working.  There are many other dog breeds, as well as mixed breeds that are utilized today to work with humans wherever their noses and temperaments are needed.

Today, dogs are being used for a wide range of service purposes and the categories grow all the time.  It may surprise you to learn that dogs, using that wonderful nose of theirs, have been trained to detect cancer, diabetes, a forthcoming seizure, a panic attack, blood, bed bugs, buried explosives, hidden drugs, and electronics such as cell phones hidden by prisoners.  Additionally dogs have been trained to search for wildlife and wildlife products, which is what interests me most.  As unbelievable at it may sound, a group in Washington state, the Conservation Canines, has trained two dogs to smell whale poop (referred to as scat by researchers) from a mile away while riding on a boat.  Wildlife detection dogs, sometimes referred to as conservation detection dogs or wildlife trafficking dogs, have been taught to detect scat, carcasses, burrows, eggs or living wildlife, various plant species, and parts of wildlife (referred to as wildlife products) such as ivory, bear bile, rhino horn, fish bladders, sea turtle shells, furs and skins.

As you might imagine, these dogs have so much to contribute to conservation.  Scientists and field researchers are now employing groups like Conservation Canines or Find It Detection Dogs, or training their own dogs to detect wildlife that is otherwise hard to find because of size, habitat, temperament or small populations.  For example, one researcher used a sniffer dog to locate the elusive and rare Argentinian bush dog to establish whether the poorly understood population was in need of government protection.  In another study, scientists wanted to know how wind mill farms were affecting bird and bat populations.  Detector dogs were brought in to find carcasses of tiny animals hidden within the shrubbery that were virtually impossible for the human eye to find.  As for the whale poop sniffer dogs, they have contributed greatly to the understanding of the health and habitat use of the pacific right whale, formerly a needle in the haystack kind of search (or a whale in the ocean kind of search).  These working dogs also contribute to saving the Earth’s endangered species by detecting smuggled wildlife products like ivory, and living animals such as the

pangolin, which is highly endangered due to the illegal pet trade.  Currently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service have dogs that work in airports and shipping ports and at border crossings for that very purpose.  Since the US is the largest consumer of wildlife products in the world, these dogs have become massively important in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade.  Sadly, due to budgetary restrictions, USFWS employs only a tiny amount of wildlife detector dogs compared to the 12,000 canine detectors that work for Homeland Security in search of drugs, explosives and so forth.



For now, the use of wildlife detection dogs is in its infancy.  Roughly seven professional organizations have sniffer dog teams for hire in the US and there are a few others scattered throughout the world in places like Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Africa.  Additionally, a handful of governments employ dogs for wildlife product detection, such as Kenya and the U.S.  I have “sniffed out” roughly 40 scientific articles related to utilizing detection dogs in the pursuit of ecological studies, and these studies include mammals, fish, invertebrates, birds, reptiles, amphibians and plants.  The majority of scholarly articles that I have seen have all reported favorable results when utilizing dogs in field research, most often because of their abilities to cover a great deal more distance than people, to work in difficult terrain, to aid researchers in collecting data in a non-invasive way (without causing stress to the target animal) and to find target scents that are difficult to visually detect.

Given the blessings of scientists and wildlife agencies around the world, I can only imagine that the field will continue to grow as the word gets out and the funding becomes available.  Many organizations adopt death row shelter dogs because their high energy temperaments make them difficult pets, but excellent working dogs.  Dogs take roughly 12 weeks to train initially and then only about a week or so to train on a new scent.  My point is, there is no shortage of available dogs, and they just need jobs! So now you know what they know, what scientists know, what governments know and what I know.  The dog nose knows and it’s capable of changing the conservation game.

For more information on wildlife detection dogs check out:
conservationbiology.uw.edu
finditdetectiondogs.com
wd4c.org
http://www.odumagazine.com/wildlife-detection-dogs-nosing-out-the-bad-guys-video/
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jul/02/finding-poop-has-its-rewards/
and
cslzambia.org

Photo credits in order:
"Iris" by Allison Ballentine
Conservation Canines - no credit
Conservation Canines - Amanda Phillips
Conservation South Luwanga - no credit
USFWS - no credit
Working Dogs 4 Conservation - no credit

The Dinner Party with 7 Billion Guests

I live in the United States, and we are a nation of consumers in a world of consumers and hopeful consumers.  As I sit in front of my laptop and look around my home, I see very few items that I actually need.  The roof is one, the water in the tap, the food in the fridge, and the electricity that made all of that possible, and makes this blog possible.  Those items are needed.  Much of the rest simply is not.  Most of my items belong to the trappings of a modern life.  A life of comfort and convenience and ridiculous excessiveness.  In case you’re wondering, I am not rich, at least by American standards, and I don’t own much that I purchased new. Compared to those in a developing world though, I am rich beyond measure and likely live by a desired standard.  And this poses a real problem.  Those in developing nations deserve to live just as well as all of their fellow humans, but if the entire world, 7 billion people, live exactly as we do in the U.S., with our rampant desire for new and better and more stuff, what of will become of our home?

Developed Nations’ consumer culture is not one to emulate.  Frankly, we are doing things terribly wrong and our Earth is suffering for it at a catastrophic rate.  Landfills grow at an enormous pace and are filled with our cast offs.  Plastic bottles, torn T-shirts, broken microwaves, outdated cell phones and disposable diapers fester among rotting food, each a testament to our obsession with convenience, our disposable income, our love affair with technology and our wasteful attitudes.  Have you ever really thought about how that stuff in the landfills and the stuff in our homes were made, and how they came to occupy our space?  The answer is that energy was needed to create them and energy was needed to transport them.  Energy is a lovely sounding word and we’re taught to almost revere it in this country.  Energy is light and heat and progress right?  Sure.  Energy is also coal and trapped miners, oil and the Gulf spill, pollution and asthma, nuclear plants and Chernobyl.  Energy can be beautiful and it can be poison.  It can bring us great medical technology and great medical harm.  Energy is all of the above and it’s important to see it clearly. 

The environmental movement and clean energy crusaders offer suggestions and solutions to mitigate the damage we’re doing to ourselves and our plant, and each person has a responsibility to act if we are to slow down our polluting, runaway train.  Recycling, buying local food, eating less meat, using public transportation, purchasing used items, volunteering for river and ocean clean ups, participating in citizen science research, planting wildlife gardens, advocating for clean energy and voting for environmentally conscious policies are so important, and can result in a real impact if we are each willing to do some of these things, even just part of the time.  Just imagine 7 billion people deciding to skip meat at meal times just 2 days a week.  Reducing that much factory farmed meat from our world plate would save tremendous amounts of water, grain and fossil fuels from being consumed and would reduce huge quantities of methane, pesticides and antibiotics from our environment.  Now that you’ve imagined that, take a minute to imagine all 7 billion of us deciding to purchase 50% less stuff next year. 

Imagine us deciding to drive our old cars for a little longer, and then buying a hybrid when we have to.  Imagine us saying no to another pair of dark skinny jeans that were made in a country half a world away.  Imagine us filling a metal bottle of water from our tap before we leave so that we won’t be tempted to stop at the convenience store for a plastic bottle of water that came from some tap in some far away city and then transported to that store.  Imagine us using that old microwave, even if it’s not plated in stainless steel, until it won’t work, and then recycling it when it doesn’t.  Imagine your home with far less junk and embracing the “less is more” attitude.  Imagine a Friday night dinner party where everyone brings a dish with items from the farmers market and swaps old stories as well as clothes and books, while relaxing in your simple, uncluttered space.  Imagine you all agreeing that “this is what life is about”.  Imagine the windows open to allow the breeze to come in and the sound of an owl hooting just beyond your yard.  Imagine your body and mind and relationships growing cleaner and clearer.  Imagine closing your eyes that night and feeling positive about the future.  Positive about your future, your children’s future, that owl’s future. 

And now that you imagined that, I ask you to imagine a Friday night dinner party in your current life.  Chances are, this image will not portray nearly such a relaxing or healthy gathering.  But you can have a life similar to that if you want one.  We, especially those of us in the most developed nations, can decide to have that lifestyle, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.  We can choose better and choose less and choose to make our planet healthier for us all.

World Environmental Day Competition Finalist!

Hi Everybody,
I am so pleased and thankful to announce that UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Programme, has selected my blog as one of their top 10 finalist in the World Environmental Day competition.  I am in a state of shock, as my blog "The Dinner Party with 7 Billion Guests" was my first blog ever.  I think I should keep this up!
UNEP established the World Environmental Day in the 1970's in an effort to raise awareness and encourage everyone to make a positive impact on their environment through action and political activism.  WED is celebrated every year on June 5.  This year, the WED Expo will be celebrated in Milan.  If I am selected as the winner of the blog competition, I will be traveling to Milan to join the celebration with multinational organizations that each contribute to the health and well being of the Earth and it's 7 billion inhabitants.  This would be an incredible experience for me, to say the least!
Finalists are encouraged to share their blog as much as possible on social media and to encourage everyone to visit the UNEP website - http://unep.org/wed
If you like what I've had to say and support WED and UNEP, please pass this along!

Thanks Again,
Allie Ballentine

I live in the United States, and we are a nation of consumers in a world of consumers and hopeful consumers.  As I sit in front of my laptop and look around my home, I see very few items that I actually need.  The roof is one, the water in the tap, the food in the fridge, and the electricity that made all of that possible, and makes this blog possible.  Those items are needed.  Much of the rest simply is not.  Most of my items belong to the trappings of a modern life.  A life of comfort and convenience and ridiculous excessiveness.  In case you’re wondering, I am not rich, at least by American standards, and I don’t own much that I purchased new. Compared to those in a developing world though, I am rich beyond measure and likely live by a desired standard.  And this poses a real problem.  Those in developing nations deserve to live just as well as all of their fellow humans, but if the entire world, 7 billion people, live exactly as we do in the U.S., with our rampant desire for new and better and more stuff, what of will become of our home?

Developed Nations’ consumer culture is not one to emulate.  Frankly, we are doing things terribly wrong and our Earth is suffering for it at a catastrophic rate.  Landfills grow at an enormous pace and are filled with our cast offs.  Plastic bottles, torn T-shirts, broken microwaves, outdated cell phones and disposable diapers fester among rotting food, each a testament to our obsession with convenience, our disposable income, our love affair with technology and our wasteful attitudes.  Have you ever really thought about how that stuff in the landfills and the stuff in our homes were made, and how they came to occupy our space?  The answer is that energy was needed to create them and energy was needed to transport them.  Energy is a lovely sounding word and we’re taught to almost revere it in this country.  Energy is light and heat and progress right?  Sure.  Energy is also coal and trapped miners, oil and the Gulf spill, pollution and asthma, nuclear plants and Chernobyl.  Energy can be beautiful and it can be poison.  It can bring us great medical technology and great medical harm.  Energy is all of the above and it’s important to see it clearly. 

The environmental movement and clean energy crusaders offer suggestions and solutions to mitigate the damage we’re doing to ourselves and our plant, and each person has a responsibility to act if we are to slow down our polluting, runaway train.  Recycling, buying local food, eating less meat, using public transportation, purchasing used items, volunteering for river and ocean clean ups, participating in citizen science research, planting wildlife gardens, advocating for clean energy and voting for environmentally conscious policies are so important, and can result in a real impact if we are each willing to do some of these things, even just part of the time.  Just imagine 7 billion people deciding to skip meat at meal times just 2 days a week.  Reducing that much factory farmed meat from our world plate would save tremendous amounts of water, grain and fossil fuels from being consumed and would reduce huge quantities of methane, pesticides and antibiotics from our environment.  Now that you’ve imagined that, take a minute to imagine all 7 billion of us deciding to purchase 50% less stuff next year. 

Imagine us deciding to drive our old cars for a little longer, and then buying a hybrid when we have to.  Imagine us saying no to another pair of dark skinny jeans that were made in a country half a world away.  Imagine us filling a metal bottle of water from our tap before we leave so that we won’t be tempted to stop at the convenience store for a plastic bottle of water that came from some tap in some far away city and then transported to that store.  Imagine us using that old microwave, even if it’s not plated in stainless steel, until it won’t work, and then recycling it when it doesn’t.  Imagine your home with far less junk and embracing the “less is more” attitude.  Imagine a Friday night dinner party where everyone brings a dish with items from the farmers market and swaps old stories as well as clothes and books, while relaxing in your simple, uncluttered space.  Imagine you all agreeing that “this is what life is about”.  Imagine the windows open to allow the breeze to come in and the sound of an owl hooting just beyond your yard.  Imagine your body and mind and relationships growing cleaner and clearer.  Imagine closing your eyes that night and feeling positive about the future.  Positive about your future, your children’s future, that owl’s future. 

And now that you imagined that, I ask you to imagine a Friday night dinner party in your current life.  Chances are, this image will not portray nearly such a relaxing or healthy gathering.  But you can have a life similar to that if you want one.  We, especially those of us in the most developed nations, can decide to have that lifestyle, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.  We can choose better and choose less and choose to make our planet healthier for us all.