Fancy Scientist with Dr. Stephanie Manka

When most people think of conservation, they tend to think of faraway animals like tigers, elephants, and jaguars, or faraway places like the Amazon rainforest, Serengeti plains, or Yellowstone National Park. But conservation can start in your own backyard!  Historically, we tend to think of protecting animals in parks and other protected areas, putting animals in a separate space than humans. But...

The inspiration for all of my writing and videos stems from animals. So often people want to become a wildlife biologist because they want to help animals. They envision themselves conducting important research to grow populations or captive-rearing animals for reintroductions. But I’ve learned through all of my years of research, that to really help animals we need to take a look at ourselves.  A...

This week I talked to Dr. Mark “Merriweather” Vorderbruggen about foraging for your own food. I’ve  blogged  and  podcasted  before about having a more sustainable diet, but foraging is not something that came across my mind until Mark reached out to me. I’ll have to add it to my posts! In brief, foraging is the practice of people going out and collecting their own food from the wild. Usually it i...

In today’s podcast, I talk to academic Coach Dr. Katy Peplin of Thrive Ph. D. Katy founded Thrive PhD in 2017, where she started out coaching acquaintances to now having a thriving business with clients all over the world and in all disciplines, who have achieved all kinds of success. Katy helps academics going through grad school because “she gets it.” She is an advocate for students and prides h...

In this podcast, I interview PJ Beaven, a zookeeper for over 15 years. PJ created a program called ZooFit where she incorporates health and fitness with conservation.  First PJ and I talk about what it was like for her to be a zookeeper. PJ worked with elephants and talks about how she took care of them and trained them for medical purposes. But because she gave so much of herself to the animals,...

I invited my friend and colleague Rebecca Mowry for a conversation about her job as a big game wildlife biologist on my podcast. Rebecca is the Bitterroot area Wildlife Biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. I’ve been seeing her photos of mountain goats, moose, bighorn sheep and more pop up in my Facebook feed for years now and thought it would be great to have her on the podcast to talk...

My colleague and friend, Dr. Mike Cove reached out to me to have a discussion about something he had been thinking about for some time: how mammals of the past impact mammals today. He was especially interested on the impacts of mastodons on today’s smaller mammals like rodents and small carnivores. Because I researched African forest elephants for my Ph. D., he wanted to get my thoughts on this t...

This episode is a must listen-to for anyone who wants to go into wildlife or conservation careers. I interview Dr. Nick Askew, founder of Conservation Careers, an organization dedicated to helping students find the right career for them in conservation.  We chat about Nick’s background; how he pivoted from a Ph. D. research project in barn owls to working for a consulting agency, nonprofit, and th...

Communication is huge in conservation and wildlife biology careers. People tend to only think of the species, ecosystems, or research that scientists work on, but this research is always communicated in some way – to other scientists, the public, and/or various stakeholders. In this interview, I sit down with Director of Facilitation and Planning at Impact by Design, Inc., Ben Christ. Ben was an u...

A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a Facebook Live entitled, “Are You Too Old for a Career in Wildlife Biology? When I advertised for this event on my social media, I got quite a few comments.  One of them was from senior program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association, Jeffrey Hunter. He responded with “this was me,” meaning he started his career later in life. I knew I had to invite...

This podcast features a fantastic interview with science filmmaker Rob Nelson. Rob is a friend of mine and we both appear together on the Science Channel’s What on Earth. He transitioned from research into filmmaking and has a YouTube channel with almost 150K subscribers and multiple videos with millions of views. In this episode, I chat with Rob about why and how he decided to turn to science fil...

This podcast features an amazing interview with scientist and founder of Nova Conservation: Laura Marsh. Nova Conservation is a brand new organization dedicated to connecting scientists and non-professionals to conservation and research opportunities.  Laura and I chat about so much – how and why she founded Nova Conservation, how it will change ecotourism and provide opportunities for scientists...

In this episode of the Fancy Scientist podcast, I interview scientist and blogger Charlotte Hacker. Charlotte is a Ph. D. candidate who uses non-invasive genetics through scat (poop) to study snow leopard populations in China. We talk all about her snow leopard research and journey to become a scientist. This is a fantastic episode to listen to if you are an aspiring wildlife biologist or scientis...

This podcast features an amazing interview with conservationist and founder of Lonely Conservationists: Jessie Panazzolo. Jessie is a conserves conservationists; in other words, she works to save those who are saving the world. In episode #41, I talked about how important self-care is for scientists and how easily we can become burnt out and quite honestly, depressed. Jessie felt this herself, whi...

In this podcast, I really wanted to talk about self-care for scientists because we are so bad at it! I wanted to talk about because we are still experiencing the pandemic, which limits what we can do and certainly takes an emotional toll. So what is self care? Some people don’t even know how to do self-care. You may have heard that it’s getting a massage or taking a bubble bath, but it’s so much m...

Today’s episode was inspired by some people that started trolling me on Twitter and provides valuable lessons for conservation (and dealing with trolls).  Palm oil, an ingredient in tons of food, cosmetic, and personal care products, is bad for biodiversity. There’s no doubt about that. I wrote a post explaining how it is bad and created a YouTube video on it. But the shocking thing about that pos...

t’s getting close to the end of the year. In normal years, this is a time when everyone says their accomplishments. In which case, if you didn’t feel like you did that much or didn’t meet your goals, you can feel like a failure. This is how I felt a couple of years ago when I didn’t publish any first author papers. Maybe it’s different this year because of COVID. It may even be worse because of CO...

In this episode, I talk all about imposter syndrome. Part of the reason why I am talking about imposter syndrome is because we’re starting off in a new year! I also just started my second cohort of students in my Confusion to Clarity course and it’s really clear they are struggling. It just makes me so sad how rampant imposter syndrome is in our community, our science community, our conservation c...

Why do I care about connecting people to nature? Well, it is incredibly important for me to get people outdoors, connecting to nature because that is so important in raising future conservationists to get adults to change their behaviors, change their attitudes, to be more pro conservation and pro wildlife. And if you ask anyone who is a wildlife biologist, they will say they become a wildlife bio...

Hey everyone. I am so excited about today’s episode. I really truly mean that today I interviewed a special guest. Her name is Lisa Mills and she is the founder of  elephant origins tea . I love this for so many reasons. One, I am obviously an elephant lover. If you don’t know, I studied African forest elephants for my PhD. I’m all about tea now. So I love this because it’s about elephants. It’s a...

I interviewed Master's student Hannah Som on her journey to becoming a student and what she learned as a student in the first round of my Confusion to Clarity program. We talk about how she transformed and the value of getting super clear on what you want in your wildlife biology career. For more info on Confusion to Clarity and my webinar on the 7 Tips to Find Your Wildlife Biology Career Pat...

The holiday season is here! Here in the US, I’ve seen it shift massively towards consumerism over the past few decades – gifts of course, but also more gifts than ever before, massive yard displays of santa, lights, and snowmen, and of course lots of eating. Some estimate that  waste increases by 25% over our normal consumption . BUT it doesn’t have to be this way! Can you celebrate the holidays a...

Black Friday is the official kickoff for the holiday buying season. As a conservationist, I know that buying stuff is inherently bad for the planet. But as the daughter of a family business, I know the holiday season is essential for people. In fact, many businesses depend on the holidays for their survival. I also know that regardless of the environmental message I present, that people will still...

What’s the deal with coyotes? It seems like people are seeing them more and more and some coyotes have unusual behavior. What’s going on?  People also seem to really hate them, but do they deserve such a bad wrap? This is so interesting to me because so many people love dogs! In this episode, I talk all about coyotes with a focus on coyotes in the eastern United States. This is a wide-ranging conv...

This week Colorado citizens voted to reintroduce grey wolves on their prey. Historically, grey wolves were all over the west, but currently they extirpated (locally extinct) through most of their range. Voters are now letting these apex predators come back.  Given my recent cougar episodes ( #29  and  #30  on the viral cougar video and eastern cougars) and this new ballot proposition, I thought it...