Field Notes
Field Notes
Ep 63: Simon Stuart – A life in conservation
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Dr Simon Stuart is one of the world's leading conservation scientists, best known for leading the development of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species into the world's most authoritative assessment of species' extinction risk. Awarded the prestigious Blue Planet Prize in 2020 for his contributions to global biodiversity conservation, he has spent more than three decades advancing species conservation internationally, including as Executive Director of A Rocha International. We were honoured to have time with him and the chance to mine him for wisdom, stories and reasons to stay hopeful.
Hello, and welcome to the Field Notes Podcast from Arosha. I'm Joe Swinney, and I'm Director of Communications for Orosha International.
SPEAKER_03And I'm Rick Fah, and I've been with Arosha for 20 years as part of the Arosha Canada team.
SPEAKER_01Laliba, the rapid loss of our planet's biodiversity, increasing inequality and poverty, and the changing climate can feel overwhelming.
SPEAKER_03So it's our hope that in this podcast you will hear some remarkable and original perspectives from people we know who are working to care for creation around the world.
SPEAKER_00You won't believe how hard people fought to preserve their power, even power about how you list a species. Everyone was trying to achieve conservation, but they were abusing the red list both ways. It says nature has a value in its own right, whereas I think we would say nature has a value because God made it for his own glory.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to FieldNotes. And today we had the great privilege of time with Dr. Simon Stewart, who has a long and incredibly illustrious and impactful career. I was gonna say behind him, but he's still running at full what would count as full speed for normal humans. He is the winner of the Blue Planet Prize, which is an enormous um accolade in the world of conservation for his work with the IUCN RevList that he established along with Georgina Mace. He was chair of the IUCN Survival Species Survival Commission for a long time. He's been an executive director of Russia International. Also, I mean, we'd have to just go on and on and on really to try and recapture the phenomenon that is assignment to do it in the world. And we just wanted to get a sense from him of his life in this field, um, the big kind of trends that he's seen, um, stories. Yeah, just we wanted to experience some of his wisdom. And I feel that we did. What does anything that stood out for you, Rick?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, a few things that stood out to me. One is um, like I remember the first time I met Simon, which has to be like 20 years ago or so. And uh in the conservation world, he's something of a rock star, and yet you'd never know it. Like he's so unassuming, I find, in that, in that in you know, when I look at his CV and compare him in conversation, it's just wow. So that's one thing that stood out. Another is um I love the way that he he bridges these worlds and he's been committed and active, not just in his fascination for amphibians or snakes or birds or anything, all kinds of creatures, but also in like shoulder to the plow of the hard work of engaging with people and policy and and all of that side of it. Um and so he's he's done all that, and yet when one of the kind of noteworthy bits of his comments for me was he he was really supportive and affirming of like grassroots efforts. Uh the he's been involved with both, but certainly at like really high policy levels, and yet he recognizes the need and value and uh effectiveness of people, as he says, caring for their local patch. And uh I don't know, there's something about that inspires and encourages me about Jujo.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and he's also a a very um deep and sincere Christian, and that's indeed been um something that he's I think been quite courageous in speaking about in fora that aren't necessarily easy to easy to be a Christian in. And um I do really admire him for that.
SPEAKER_03So that's true.
SPEAKER_02But I also I think he's a he's a great storyteller and um I just enjoy I enjoy listening to him. I enjoy setting him off in a direction and seeing where he'll go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. In that regard, he's he's a good combo of someone who knows all the data. In fact, he probably came up with some of the original data, and yet he can he can spin that into stories that are caprivating.
SPEAKER_02So we'll get out of the way and uh well, we'll still be sort of in the way when we get to the main bit of the interview.
SPEAKER_03Yes, indeed.
SPEAKER_02We'll crack on with the with the meat of this episode.
SPEAKER_03So, Simon, when we get to talk to our guests, one of the things we like to start with is to grasp a bit of a sense of where you're coming from. Um so maybe I'll pose the question this way: like if I was coming to visit you and we had an afternoon to spend, and you're gonna take me to one of the places near where you live that's like you can show off some of the local creatures, where would we go and what would we see?
SPEAKER_00Uh thanks, Rick. Um, well, I'm talking to you from Bath in the uh UK. I'm British. Um we're in the southwest of the UK here. Um, it's it's a famous tourist city. Um if you came to visit me, um I think this time of year, it's the spring, it's warming up, we've had some lovely sunny weather. I think I'd probably take you to just a very nearby place on the edge of Coom Down, which is the part of Bath I live in, um, and probably go and look for some butterflies. It's been interesting this year because we've had a species of butterfly that used to occur in Bath, disappeared about six or seven years ago, and has come back this year, a marsh frotillery or colonized. So I'd probably take you to see them. They're very pretty.
SPEAKER_03Now I know that you're you've had a lot to do with frogs and amphibians. Are there any amphibians near you that would be worth uh worth a look-see?
SPEAKER_00Probably not, if I'm totally honest. Um, the the UK has six or seven species of amphibians, and they're all very abundant. Um and uh there's some pretty ones, especially some of the uh newts. Uh, but um it's not a particularly good area for amphibians around yes. I don't really know why I'm living here.
SPEAKER_02Well, I live around the corner from Simon, and um Simon's wife runs a charity called Wild About Bath, and there's a Facebook group, and people often are posting uh photos of nice wild things, maybe not amphibians as such.
SPEAKER_00No, we've had um this year we've had um one person who's joined Wild About Bath, and she has been monitoring the nearby heronry, and she's given names to every single heron. Um wow. And uh it's been quite fun to watch since. That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02So digging into our topic for today, um, which is to mine your entire life's worth of memories and experiences in conservation.
SPEAKER_03Or just that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just that. Starting starting way back, Simon, am I right in thinking that conservation and a love of nature and a desire to protect it goes pretty pretty far back into your childhood? And is there a particular memory or an occasion or an encounter with something that you can trace it back to, or more just you were kind of boy who liked to be out in the in the wild?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was just always interested in wildlife, and um I can't remember a time when I wasn't, so I can't uh give you a moment when suddenly, boy, that uh sparked an interest that I didn't know I had. Um I know that's true for a lot of people, and it might be true for me, but I can't remember it uh because it um was so early on. What is true is my parents hugely encouraged this interest in wildlife once they discovered it and they um found someone to take me out bird watching because they knew I was interested in in birds, and yes, it was I was I was very fortunate. And um when I was, I don't know, maybe 12 or something, um I got into catching snakes, and um I uh caught some um used to go off into the local railway line, which you're not allowed to do, and uh catch snakes. And one day, well, to get to this railway line, I had to go through somebody else's field, and I so I climbed over a uh a gate and went through the field to the railway line, and one day I got caught red-handed by the owners, who were a couple of very scary uh spinsters, and I came back and told my dad that I wasn't allowed to go and catch snakes anymore because I couldn't get through. And he said to me, all this was breaking the law, by the way, but he said to me, Well, why don't you go around to their house and apologize and see if you can negotiate a deal for going through their field to get back onto the railway line, which was interesting. So I did that and I went to apologize, and they were completely dumbfounded. Um, but in the end I did reach a deal with them and I carried on catching snakes. So that will that wasn't an early event, but I guess that was bringing together negotiating with uh wildlife somehow.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no doubt. That's an excellent story, and sort of pre prefigures so much of what your career has has taken you to. And when I think of all your other uh teachers or mentors on your on your learning curve when in your younger years, teachers or or you know, through it could be school school teachers or even in your college and PhD work. Were there any particular lessons that oh you look back and go, that was really formative and has stood the test of time uh throughout all my experiences?
SPEAKER_00Well, I had a friend who I'm still friends with when I, you know, was quite young, and we um did tons of things together. We used to go on bikes, and uh so we were like peers. It wasn't we were learning from each other, so there was a lot of that going on. Um, but the two of us ended up going to the same uh what we call a secondary school here, I guess you call it a high school, and there we were taken under the wing of a biology teacher by the name of Tim Hooker, and he um he's still alive, he's in his 90s, um, and um uh he taught us lots of things, so we were very, very keen, but of course we didn't realize that we weren't that good, and um, so he taught us bird song, he's taught taught us um tons of different um things about nature, and we had five years really being taught with him extracurricular stuff. Uh so he probably had more impact on me than anyone else, and it was he who arranged for me to go to Africa and do some work with Jane Goodall. Um, so that was that was and and actually uh last month the two of us went together. I drove him up to London to go to Jane Goodall's memorial service. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Oh my um one of the things I've always enjoyed about being able to interact with you, Simon, is your kind of ability to see big trends and threads of things. And I think because you've you've not only had hands-on field experience, but you've also been at the very highest levels of policy. And I'm just wondering about whether you can remember back to starting out in conservation and your understanding of what the biggest issues facing nature were at that point, and if if you would if you feel they've changed or just the same things have got worse.
SPEAKER_00It's a good question, Joe. Um so when I was young, um, I used to go out to various uh places around where we lived in in Dorset. This was in southern England, um, and uh obviously we s saw the sorts of things that we all see of beautiful places being destroyed, turned into housing estates, polluted rivers, all that sort of stuff. Um it carries on sadly. Um certainly around here, but I think I think worldwide that it's carried uh carried on. I guess um what I wasn't thinking about then, um, and we see a lot more now, is is a whole load of threats to nature that we we weren't thinking about then. Climate change is obviously the big one, uh, but but there's an awful lot of wildlife disease that's appeared. Um uh you know, when I was young, the we had Dutch Elm Disease uh came into the UK, and the elm trees were just a key part of the British landscape. If you if you look at paintings by John Constable, you see all the elm trees. They've all gone. The the species survives, the hedgerow thing now, but they don't grow into trees anymore. So that was a disease. And so amphibians, corals, tons of things have been affected by disease. I mean, it sounds a bit depressing, but I think the numb number of of threats and the pressures on nature have in most parts of the world got worse, not better, over my lifetime.
SPEAKER_02I remember um growing up being very, very worried about um the hole in the ozone layer and about nuclear war and about overpopulation. And it's quite interesting that this week in the news there seems to be quite a lot about a cliff edge of aging populations and the birth rates in a lot of places going down. And this is sort of a bit of a tangent, but do you think that a falling population is good news for nature?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I mean I mean, there's the statistic I always give is in the last um was it uh 60 years or so, the global economy's grown sixfold, as it, and the population has doubled. So the um so economic growth has had a bigger impact on nature, I think, than population growth, but they are related to each other. Part of that um uh population growth is driven economic growth. Um I've always been slightly uncomfortable about the population argument because it's one where people in wealthy countries with with slow growing or declining populations have been able to point the finger at the poorer uh countries with rapidly growing populations. Um, and yet our economies have boomed and we've done a huge amount of um of damage. That said, the amount of space is is obviously decreasing, and in some parts of the world we're seeing, especially in East Asia and in Western Europe, um we're seeing um population you know birth rates absolutely tumble. Um, but not in other parts of the world. So I guess the where people are is going to change quite a bit. Um would it help reduce pressures? Yes, obviously it would. Uh but of course what what drives a lower birth rate is a whole set of things that have nothing to do with conservation. And especially women's empowerment, women wanting uh uh careers, women being allowed to have careers, this sort of thing has um I think is very, very highly correlated with falling birth rates.
SPEAKER_03One of the ways that I mean you've been involved in many, many different aspects of conservation over the last over your lifetime. But one of the kind of key ways that I'm aware of is your involvement with the IUCN Red List. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is, what was involved in getting it to exist, and why it's been so significant. What how has it been helpful uh when it comes to nature?
SPEAKER_00So the IUCN Red List is the official world list of um threatened species, basically, or or how threatened species are. Um as much more than a list, there's a ton of data on each species, um, but it's called a red list. Um it long predates my involvement in IUCN. It was started around the early 1960s. Um when I joined IUCN in the mid-1980s, there was a lot of justified criticism of the list not being um uh sufficiently independent of being subject to abuse by powerful people wanting species listed in particular ways for particular reasons, um, and uh lack of transparency as to how a species ended up in a different category. So you could be in the category endangered, which is more threatened than vulnerable, for example. Uh, but what justified that? Uh so what happened in the late 1980s is that a woman by the name of Georgina Mace sadly passed away a few years ago, uh, was given the task by IUCN to redevelop the whole process for the red listing, and that brought in the quantitative categories and criteria. And I was her point person in the IUCN Secretariat for shepherding that process through. And it took um many years, and some of it was the science, the actual science of measuring extinction risk, on which she was the world leader. And uh some of it was what you might call social science, which was dealing with people, because making the system more transparent um uh broke down the behind the closed doors decision-making um processes that were non-transparent, um, almost entirely populated by eighting men. Um and um and uh yeah, it it took all that away because the system, when it came in in uh 1994, required every species from then on to be listed with criteria to explain why it was listed as it was. And then if anyone thought that was wrong, you have the right, and you still have to this day the right to challenge it. Um, so it made a closed process an open process. And you you won't believe how far hard people fought to preserve their power. People are really interested in power, aren't we? And and even power about how you list a species, that's something that people will fight about. It seems ridiculous now that people were fighting about that, but they were. People don't like change, do they?
SPEAKER_02And I suppose there's implications, aren't there, on um land use and the ability to develop certain things or treat species a certain way depending on their classification? So there would be vested interest in how things were categorized, would there be?
SPEAKER_00Oh well, the the vested interest back in the day typically uh revolved around two opposite pressures. Uh, one was if you had your um species listed as threatened as possible, you could then raise money more easily from some donor to conserve it. So you were exaggerating extinction risk. And the other side of the coin were people who um wanted the species they were interested in to have some sort of economic value so they could be traded and the funds go back into conservation. And so to do that, you wanted them to be underlisted. Um, and there were the everyone was trying to achieve conservation, but they were abusing the red list both ways. To do it. So those were the pressures back in the day, Joe. More recently, the Red List and the uses for it have massively expanded. And the legal um uh consequences of red listing, the funding consequences have become much more significant. I could go into that if you if you want, but that's to be honest, when we were developing the new Red List categories and criteria, we had no idea it would develop the way it did. Um that was uh something that happened later.
SPEAKER_03Does it concern you, like the way that it's been changed? Is it is that concerning to you, or is it like, no, this is an appropriate use of what of the mechanism and the tool that was developed?
SPEAKER_00No, I think generally speaking, they're they're appropriate. So um, so you've got a lot of banks and lenders and stuff like that um who um apply these performance standards, the performance standards of the International Finance Corporation, which is a bit of the World Bank that lends to the private sector. Um those IFC performance standards, as they're called, are actually adopted by tons of other lenders, not just the IFC. And within that is a biodiversity um uh performance standard. In other words, in lending this money to this particular entity, uh they mustn't uh breach the biodiversity performance standards which are tied to red listing. Got it. Um so so that that that that's an example. Um red listing also affects how species are um listed in national legislation, or how or influences the international trade rules for species, or also the red listing affects the designation of key biodiversity areas, which is something um Arosha, for instance, has been involved in in Ghana, for example, um uh which has then been used to fight a bauxite, a planned bauxite mine. Right. So all of those consequences of red listing are massive compared with how it was back in the 1980s. And that has happened because the list has become more independent, more defensible, more transparent, and also more complete. Many more species have been listed.
SPEAKER_02For me, as someone who is in branding and comms, I think one of the genius aspects of this is it's a really effective communication tool. And quite often I'm seeing press releases or things which will be giving good conservation news in in those categories and in the red list terms, like something has changed category for the better. And um one of the things I quote you most often on is you saying um conservation works and we just need to do more of it, which is such a hopeful statement. And I wonder if you could tell us um an example or two or three um of things that have gone in the right direction along the red list categorizations.
SPEAKER_00A group of us looked at all the world's ungulates, which are the sort of deer and the um antelopes and pigs and that sort of thing. And we um looked at their red list status in one period of time, looked at what it was 12 years later, and we saw January uh a deteriorating trend. We then um uh did a thought experiment to work out what would have happened over that same same time period if we'd stopped all conservation action. And what we found, and we we'd set up a load of rules to follow, and the result was that the situation um if you if you'd taken conservation out of the picture would have been much worse than than what than what actually happened. And so we were able to therefore to measure the impact of conservation on these species. So that's a um a I think a um an interesting um example. There have been um quite a few species that have been a subject of targeted conservation that have increased. Um uh the Indian rhino would be a well-known example. Many of the great whales, and many more humpback whales now than they were when any when we were all younger. Um so that's where in those cases the threats were relatively simple and the actions to deal with them um were taken, and and you saw quite rapid recoveries, is much more complicated when you've got all sorts of different threats operating on species, or you have threats that we don't know how to control, such as um well, we don't know how to control within the reasonable timescale, such as warming ocean surface temperatures affecting coral reefs, for example. But uh I still stand by the statement, Joe. Um uh an awful lot of conservation works and we don't do enough of it.
SPEAKER_03I mean, one of the most common questions that I field when I'm engaging with various people, particularly people who are relatively new to conservation and and new to thinking about how it would affect their own lives, is this this question of like, well, I mean, I could change a few things in my life, but it's not going to make a difference. Like we need the we need the high-powered policymakers, they're the ones that need to change. But I've also heard, you know, at least through media reports, a lot of times those decision makers are saying, look, like we can only move as fast as the constituents. Like we can't really push too much harder than we can't pull people very much further than they're willing to go. Now you kind of bounce between these worlds, like the grassroots conservation, the international leadership and policy, the hard science, the some of the social science, like trying to work with people on these sorts of things. I'm curious, what where does real change happen? What sector or area, or maybe how does real change happen? What have you learned about that?
SPEAKER_00I'm not certain I necessarily know the answer, but I can give you a perspective. Fair enough. I think if you if I look back to when I started out in this sort of over 40 years ago, um, and what the conservation scene looked like and what it looks like today, the um amount of grassroots activity has grown pretty much everywhere, pretty much worldwide across all cultures. Um and I think the answer is when someone says that to you, Rick, um, I can't make a difference. The fact is, a heck of a lot of heck of a lot of people, including people who've had very little in this world, have been able to make a difference on their patch around them. Um and um so um little NGOs or civil society groups or indigenous peoples groups have popped up all over the place, including in the most unlikely countries, um uh of people who just care passionately and they're doing something. Um so um I remember when I was early on in my years in IUCN, and we had a number of meetings in Indonesia to do with the dire situation for rhinos in Indonesia, and there were almost no NGOs, no conservation organizing organizations in Indonesia at the time. Um then a few years later, the Suhato dictatorship collapsed and an absolute mushrooming of small groups came up all across the this huge country, huge and diverse country. And that continues to um grow to this day. Um so in Synchronicity Earth, which is another organization I'm associated with, we fund a number of Indonesian organizations now, I think none of which probably existed back when I started out. Um so people might say I can't make a difference, but actually there are a heck of a lot of people out there who didn't, who are they may have asked that question, but actually they just got on with it and they did something. And often these are people with very um few advantages advantages in this world, and yet they've still done it because they had some fire in their belly, I guess. Yeah, and they cared. And uh and uh let's face it, Arosha has a number of most Arosha organizations started in the same way, right? They didn't start big, they started small. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I know that for you, Arosha um has played a role in bringing together or helping you draw the line between your faith and your conservation career. Um, but yeah, you've always been, in my to my knowledge, a very uh open and brave Christian in every circle that you've that you've existed in. But is there um is there a sense in which your faith sometimes has helped or shaped or formed your conservation work in a good way? Or um has it has conservation on the other side deepened your faith?
SPEAKER_00I uh we said earlier how I was I was always interested in conservation. To be honest, I was always interested in religion and specifically Christianity because I went to a really old-fashioned prep school in Southern England in Bournemouth. I mean it would be closed down now. I mean it has closed, but it it it yeah, it was um the Keynesian. Anyway, in this school was a very old man who taught us we have what were called scripture lessons, and and basically he taught us the whole Bible um before we left age 13. And um that was nothing to do with having any sort of confession of faith, but I absolutely loved it, always loved it. And so that was always an an interest. And then later later on uh at university I actually became a Christian. Um, but um, so I had these sort of passions of of um following Jesus Christ as it became, uh, but there was a lot of build-up to that, it didn't come out of nowhere, and um and uh love of um nature uh going back a long long way. And I didn't have any theology to guide any of that after I became um a Christian, and to be honest, I don't think there was much out there at that time. Um, or if there was, it was in circles that I didn't know about. Um but I did come across a Rosha right the year it was founded, and um so uh signed up. That was 1983, wasn't it, when it was founded. But I always knew that my conservation work was a calling. Um even if I couldn't explain why or didn't have any theology. Um and I also knew a number of people in my IUCN world who were Christians, um, especially of course in Africa and the South Pacific. Yeah. What um Christian faith does is it uh I I think for someone working in conservation gives you more of a basis that you don't have to waste time doubting. So you you know, I and an awful lot of people working in conservation are in conservation because they love nature, they absolutely love it, but it it's often become a little bit um seen as a little unprofessional to say I'm in I'm into conservation because I just love wildlife or I I love the scenery or whatever. Um and we we try to have professional answers to make us look like a professional course. I guess this happens in other things, not just in conservation. Um and yet you know we're actually all in it because we it because the the uh um because we love it.
SPEAKER_02You've talked to me before about the debate around intrinsic and extrinsic value of nature. And for a Christian, it's it it has its value bestowed upon it by its maker. And so I suppose your like big why of of of whether what it's worth and why it's worth protecting is is a settled and coherent answer.
SPEAKER_00It's a settled thing, and to some extent the Christian answer isn't extrinsic or intrinsic because intrinsic says nature has a value in its own right, whereas I think we would say nature has a value because God made it for his own glory. Right? And um, and uh and and so um, but of course, that in most people's minds gets very close to intrinsic value. That said, I'm not against extrinsic values because they're true, you know, there is an economic benefit of nature, and that's part of uh I guess of how God made nature. So so in the end, the debate can get a bit sterile because you're comparing two different ways in which we value things, and they're not necessarily opposed to each other, but in the way that policy works out and decisions are made, they can be opposed to each other. You'll say, look, we'll we'll save this place because it has economic benefits, but not that place. Complicated, but Christian faith does stop you having to question your fundamental motivations about all of it. You know where you are, you know where you've been called, and you know it's the right thing, right? And that's saves an awful lot of time and worry, I think.
SPEAKER_03Simon, one of the things we appreciate uh most about our chats with various people is trying to glean from them, and in this case from from you, what is it that helps you uh kind of keep going in the midst of of the trend lines that often are discouraging? There's some that are encouraging, but often are discouraging. And and in particular, what are some practices that you have developed over your career and life that help in this regard? So I'm thinking particularly about the the difference between optimism I think it's gonna work out and hope. I'm not sure what's gonna happen, but I persist with joy anyway. And I'm curious what practices help you cultivate the latter and not merely some whiz-bang new technology that maybe makes makes one or helps one become more optimistic.
SPEAKER_00Well, these days, because I'm supposedly retired, um these days I actually um don't do very much work, but I um I the the bit of work that I do do, a lot of it is around mentoring, encouraging, advising, that sort of thing. Like today, I've been involved in a meeting with a few people about trying to resolve a a big conflict that blew up that um looks like we're 90% of the way through to resolving. So that's and that and conservation will be the stronger for that. So that's encouraging. And we work with a very diverse bunch of people to get us there. Um and we didn't all know each other before we started out. So that's that's in encouraging and reminding ourselves, look, why am I doing this? I I'm not in this uh because I've I've got to succeed, because succeeding is is beyond what uh something any one person can do, right? But I'm in it because I was called to be in it and because I was made to do this. This is how you know I had I had these passions and interests from very early on in my life, as I told you earlier, and that's just how I've been made, right? So that's what I do. Um, and there isn't really anything else I can do.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. It's a privilege and honor to know you, Simon, and thank you for giving us this time for conversation. I know that um we could have squeezed you for a lot more deuce, but realize you have things to do with your time other than chat with us. But thank you so much.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, thank you.
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