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From Here Forward shares stories and ideas about amazing things UBC and its alumni are doing around the world. It covers people and places, truths, science, art, and accomplishments with the view that sharing better inspires better. Join hosts Carol Eugene Park and Jeevan Sangha, both UBC grads, in exploring solutions for the negative stuff out there — focussing on the good for a change, from here forward.
[00:00:00] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni you're listening to From Here Forward, an award-winning UBC podcast. I'm Carol.
[00:00:15] Jeevan Sangha: And I'm Jeevan. Quick question for you, Carol. Are you an outdoorsy kind of gal?
[00:00:19] Carol Eugene Park: Not really. Why are you?
[00:00:22] Jeevan Sangha: I mean, I'll dabble here and there. I feel like I don't really do my BC identity justice by not taking advantage of the beautiful outdoors. And I'm just curious, you know, it's something we haven't talked about before.
[00:00:32] Carol Eugene Park: Why would you think I would be more outdoorsy than you?
[00:00:35] Jeevan Sangha: Because you have like an athletic vibe.
[00:00:38] Carol Eugene Park: Yeah. And the confines of a gym I never hiked once when I lived in Vancouver.
[00:00:42] Jeevan Sangha: Well, this might be something that we actually agree on.
[00:00:46] What's your comfort level like with animals, particularly ones out in the wild.
[00:00:50] Carol Eugene Park: See, this might get me canceled because I do not like them. I don't like nature. I'm allergic to nature. I don't see the hype around seeing a little cub. What about YouTube?
[00:01:01] Jeevan Sangha: I think I like it in a controlled environment, and I think mainly it's because I have no survival instincts at all.
[00:01:07]
[00:01:08] Carol Eugene Park: I agree. When people are like, if you see a certain type of bear, you should do X, Y, Z. My instinct is just take me. I'm here in a situation where you, the bear is in front of me. I deserve it.
[00:01:21] Jeevan Sangha: I'm right there with you.
[00:01:22] Carol Eugene Park: Well. This is a great segue into our guest for this month's episode because he would absolutely beg to differ on our hot takes around wild animals in nature.
[00:01:33] Jeevan Sangha: Carol and I sat down with Mateen Hessami a Master of Science graduate and wildlife biologist, currently working in Kelowna out of UBC Okanagan.
[00:01:41] Carol Eugene Park: Mateen has worked alongside several First Nations and indigenous communities, and with the federal and provincial government to operationalize wildlife management and recovery for caribou and moose.
[00:01:52] Jeevan Sangha: He's incredibly passionate about reciprocal community-based wildlife ecology, working alongside communities to build trust and care, and the importance of responsible wild hunting and conservation work.
[00:02:02] Carol Eugene Park: Jeevan and I certainly learned a lot, and we hope you do too. So, let's get into it
[00:02:07] Mateen Hessami: I'm calling in from UBC Okanagan Campus here in beautiful Kelowna, and I am a wildlife biologist, I support. mostly first nation communities as well as provincial and federal governments, and operationalizing wildlife management monitoring recovery mostly for caribou and moose in British Columbia.
[00:02:31] Jeevan Sangha: And can you tell us a bit about when you first became interested in wildlife biology? What first sparked this interest and made you consider this as a potential career?
[00:02:41] Mateen Hessami: I was always into animals, going on road trips, seeing coyotes and elk, and I was always so fascinated by them. But I really became captivated with the wildlife biology world when I moved to the US when I was 11.
[00:02:55] On my mom's side of the family, they hunt quite a bit in Idaho. So, we moved to Spokane, Washington, and I would hunt with my uncle in Idaho, and he really instilled a passion for the outdoors, for fishing, camping, hunting, and I remember we were driving these back roads. My uncle had drawn a moose tag, and we ran into this biologist who had one of those antennas and he was just pulled over the side of the road. And I told my uncle to stop, and we talked to this guy, and he was looking for wolves in the North Idaho back country. And so, talking to him and just realizing that that one could have a career chasing beautiful mammals in the mountains.
[00:03:35] Carol Eugene Park: I understand that when you joined UBC, you created a conservation wild food student group. Is that correct?
[00:03:42] Mateen Hessami: Yeah. The group's called Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. It's a nonprofit that's really about advocacy of wild places, conservation, and the importance of hunting in conservation. And so, I was a part of a university club at the University of Montana, and then when I started my master's, there wasn't anything like that here. So myself and some of my peers decided to start our own program here at UBC Okanagan, and we bring students out, teach them how to hunt and fish.
[00:04:13] We have a gear library, so if a student wants to go ice fishing. They've got this awesome array of ice fishing gear if they want to go duck hunting. We've got duck decoys. We also have tents and we try and make a trip to the lower mainland or southern BC every year and teach students how to waterfowl hunt the importance of hunting in conservation, but also the immense benefits of harvesting wild food and how delicious it is. So, we'll cook up Wild Duck and it's a really awesome program and it's still going strong here at UBC.
[00:04:46] Jeevan Sangha: Can you tell me a bit for someone who's not familiar with what a community-based wildlife ecologist does, what does the day-to-day of that kind of work look like?
[00:04:54] Mateen Hessami: I like to compare myself to maybe a wedding planner but in the conservation world. in the sense that, you know, wedding planners are running around coordinating multiple things all to make the one thing, getting married work and make sure it goes smoothly.
[00:05:08] And, so day-to-day, you know, meeting with multiple stakeholders and rights holders, so people with the provincial government, the federal government, nonprofit partners who provide funding, hustling funds. So, there's a lot of time behind the computer, but every about two months or so, I'm lucky to go up north into these communities and spend a week or so with them doing awesome things. So, for example, just a month ago I was up around Smithers, BC just a little bit east with Lake Babine Nation and we collared 25 moose.
[00:05:42] So we put these necklaces on moose that we can track where they go. We got to jump out of the helicopter and tackle moose, and it was really cool, really rewarding. Good to be on the land.
[00:05:53] Jeevan Sangha: Can you explain what is the importance of hunting and conservation and why is that so important to you?
[00:05:59] Mateen Hessami: I think a lot of us think, you know, hunting an animal that must have a negative effect in the sense that you're killing this individual animal, and we must be like bestowing harm. But in North America there's really highly regulated systems of hunting in the sense that typically it's mature adult males that are harvested and there is just a lot of good science that shows unequivocally that the harvest done by humans can be like one to 3% of the population. And it's usually done, you know, on male, for example, male deer or male moose, and one male moose could breed, you know, 30 or 40 females throughout the year.
[00:06:44] But to really get to the heart of your question, hunters are advocates and champions of the land. They want to see their children the next generation. To experience what they experience. And I think there's a lot of misconceptions with hunters that it's the kill that is what is so important, and that's such a small part of hunting. If you ask most hunters, they'll actually say, harvesting that animal, killing that animal is their least favorite part. That's just a small percentage. The other 95% is learning about the land, going out. there's this incentive from hunters to keep these lands wild and keep the disturbance low and also keep the population strong enough so that hunters can go back year after year.
[00:07:33] So hunters are one of the leading stakeholder groups that say, you know, in Northern British Columbia, we want caribou populations to be healthy. Because they're at the town hall meetings and they're some of the strongest advocates in the room. What that means is that when the time comes, you know, for a potential development or some other landscape change, that hunters are at the forefront of saying, hold on a second we want to ensure this population of caribou do well.
[00:08:04] And there's peripheral benefits to even the average citizen. Like ensuring that caribou populations are strong in Northern British Columbia means that we're protecting, you know, some of the most wild and intact ecosystems in North America translates to clean and cold water that we can enjoy clean air
[00:08:24] We all appreciate nature
[00:08:25] last example I'll give why hunting is conservation is hunters are unique in the sense that they contribute data to those populations.
[00:08:34] For example, if you hunt moose in the province of British Columbia, you're required to tell the province every year what you saw out there, and if you have, you know, hundreds or thousands of these people,
[00:08:46] And throughout time you can develop these long-term data sets where you can see how hunters were successful over time.
[00:08:54] So especially in these remote, vast landscapes of Northern Canada, we need all the help we can get and all the data we can get. Hunting is a very sustainable practice. It's so much better and from a carbon footprint point of view and an animal ethical point of view, for you to harvest a wild animal that's lived a wild, happy life, peacefully died within a few seconds of you shooting that animal versus animals that are in slaughterhouses and live shoulder to shoulder.
[00:09:27] Carol Eugene Park: So, for people who have very limited knowledge about moose and caribou, what are they like in the wild? I'm a city girl. I've never seen an animal besides the odd raccoon.
[00:09:39] Mateen Hessami: Moose are one of the biggest members of the Deer family and caribou are also part of the Deer family. Caribou are a super interesting critter in that they're one of the last animals to have survived the Ice Age that lives in North America. And they're this very like cold ice age adopted critter in the sense that they really thrive in ecosystems that are cold, snowy, and are far away from people and human influence. And caribou are a very sensitive animal and you may have seen over the years that they're in trouble. They're in trouble across Canada and they're in trouble because they are this relic of the ice age and they, they haven't evolved and adapted as well as moose, elk, and deer in the sense that they're not very good at sensing danger and running away from animals.
[00:10:32] Their defense strategy that they evolved with was to live and occupy habitats in which there was not a lot of predators. So, in other words, they need ecosystems that are very intact and that there's not a lot of other critters running around to compete with them. and the reason that caribou are declining is that we have rapidly changed the ecosystem in which they live in, in the sense that we've.
[00:11:00] Created logging, like cut blocks, those big openings in the mountains. And when we do that, we expose a forest floor that traditionally the sunlight would not hit. It was a very shaded forest floor. And when the sunlight is able to hit that floor and we disturb it, plants grow. So leafy, yummy plants grow and that draws in more moose and more deer.
[00:11:23] In consequence where all of a sudden caribou used to be the only dominant large mammal, and now you've got moose and deer more wolves, more mountain lions, and in consequence, they predate on caribou at unsustainable rates.
[00:11:39] The fancy scientific term for that is apparent competition where the moose and deer aren't necessarily competing for the same food sources. but what happens is they facilitate more predators coming into the system. That's one of the two ultimate causes of caribou decline.
[00:11:56] The second cause of caribou decline is climate change. So, our world is becoming warmer and because of that, there's more fires. The winter severity is less. So again, that helps those ungulates. That's what we call the hoofed animals. That helps moose and deer do better on a yearly basis. Cause fire creates more leafy, yummy food and opens up the forest canopy and it allows deer to move further northward. And when these deer are in the boreal forest, there's more predators, more wolves than what the caribou evolved for thousands of years to sustain. Cause caribou can't like kick and fight. Like moose and deer and elk, you maybe see those videos of the mama moose getting mad and like charging a person. That is an evolutionary strategy to fight their way away from wolves.
And you know, you see deer running fast and elk running fast and caribou can also run fast, but throughout the thousands of years of their evolution, they just never had a reason to really like be super wary of wolves. Again, they existed in these landscapes that there were very few wolves, so it was not really a problem. There's the landscape change and the climate change landscape change. Not only have we changed the structure of the forest to be more beneficial for moose, deer, and elk, we've also created all these roads and these roads. And those roads often referred to as linear features, it creates a highway for wolves. Cause wolves are a coursing predator. So, their strategy is to cover as much ground as possible and try and encounter as much prey. So, with these roads, wolves are able to move further and faster and encounter more caribou.
[00:13:48] So it's kind of a double whammy on the landscape change front in that there's more moose and deer because the forest structure has changed and there's more roads. So, the caribou just kind of caught in the middle of this and they've declined significantly.
[00:14:02] It's interesting, like moose are newcomers to, here in Kelowna, there was not moose here traditionally. In fact, the Okanagan nation, they don't have an Indigenous name or word for moose because they're, they're newcomers.
[00:14:16] In the sense that moose have proliferated, you know, rapidly across British Columbia and it was really only started in the 1900s. And so, there's this inverse thing that's happened, more moose and less caribou, but moose are pretty awesome cause they're tasty, they reproduce quite quickly. They're beautiful. They're still an iconic and culturally important animal for lots of people. But like to summarize it at a high-level, moose are doing okay in British Columbia, um, whereas caribou are struggling.
[00:14:49] Carol Eugene Park: So, I mean, what you're saying, there's a lot of interesting things that you've seen. I'm just curious, have there been any highlights so far in your career at this point that you think you'll cherish for however long you continue to do this work?
[00:15:02] Mateen Hessami: If I was to look back in the last 12 months, you know, working with Lake Babine Nation is definitely a highlight and like a deep honor of my career. They're a really incredible First Nations group in North Central BC and they're leading a precedent. Setting effort to recover moose to their traditional territory, it's a very important food source. And I think just spending time with The Guardians. So, there's these four guardians, they're like kind of rangers. They're the, the eyes and ears of the nation. They're basically the ones that do the, the monitoring and you know, just going out with them.
[00:15:36] I think to a moment, this September we were out, we were actually boating around the territory looking for moose and there was a record setting salmon run this year. And I was standing over a bridge and there was literally so many salmon that you couldn't see the water. It was just red.
[00:15:55] So being able to see those glimpses of abundance and that there are still and special places in our world that are doing well relatively. But most importantly, that there's a strong community connection. A group of local people that really want to do best and do well for their lands.
[00:16:16] Another highlight, I work for McLeod Lake Indian Band, and in mid-December we flew a caribou survey. We discovered this caribou herd that had been extricated since 2014. So, we basically discovered that, that there's seven individuals. So that was an amazing moment to fly over the tippy top of a mountain. It was like minus 50 with the wind chill. cause we landed the machine and we collected some of the caribou poop. But the highlight there was that we found this caribou herd that, you know, government officials have said has gone extinct, and our finding says the opposite. So definitely being out on the land is a highlight.
[00:16:58] Jeevan Sangha: I'm curious about how the process has been for you one, spending time with various nations and learning about their ways of living and why it's so important within the ecology space to be centering the voices of indigenous peoples and how they navigate these dynamics that you're sharing with us today.
[00:17:21] Mateen Hessami: There's often this misconception that humans are separated from nature and it's almost this romantic ideology. That nature can only be best in this kind of pristine glass box where people aren't part of the equation, and that is just unequivocally untrue in the sense that we have such remarkable evidence, archeological evidence, and I'll highlight some from British Columbia.
[00:17:47] Like in the coastal regions of BC and in Washington, there has been archeological evidence showing that first peoples were managing sea otters, like killing sea otters, you know, hundreds, thousands of years ago because they were competing with their ability to, uh, obtain shellfish and salmon. In Banff National Park, the Stony Dakota, there's remarkable evidence that there was rotational burns. So, they were burning the landscape, they were, in essence farming the landscape. cause they recognized that by burning you could grow more sheep and bison, just the process I just described with moose and deer.
[00:18:27] And in Northern British Columbia, the late Bob Hayes, he recently passed away, but he made a really cool discovery in a wolf den in Northern BC, and it was the discovery of this old arrowhead that was carbon dated to be about 800 years old. So that shows that the Kaska and Tahltan people were crawling into these wolf dens, presumably managing these wolves because they understood that there was a competition between wolves, caribou, moose.
[00:18:57] So I just wanted to start with that background and say that that's really how I approach and center my work with these communities is that humans are so interconnected and integral to these systems, and I think approaching those communities that you understand their way of life, their rural way of life, the importance of wild food.
[00:19:17] Of, you know, not purchasing a steak that's $45 and you don't know where it came from. You know, the ability, the right, the constitutional right to harvest wild food and provide for your community how important that is. Working with these communities, that there's this saying, you work at the speed of trust, and I really prioritize listening and learning and at the end of the day, I am working on behalf of them and I'm trying to help them solve problems. Those problems mostly being growing more wildlife that they harvest and consume.
[00:19:51] And I also really like to take time to learn beyond the hunting and the land stuff. For example, every time I go to Lake Babine to work, I stay with a family. One of the guardians, his name's Willie Bertacco, I stay with his family, and I'll go to hockey practice with their kid and go to the park and it's just beyond working. It's, to me, this world of reconciliation and working with communities, it takes a lot of time, and you really have to show that you're a meaningful partner. And I guess lucky for me, like I don't have to fake any of that, cause I'm just so interested in what these folks do.
[00:20:30] Carol Eugene Park: the trust and the rapport building. I imagine it can be difficult or there might be challenges with that kind of relationship building as a scientist entering these spaces, or I guess, is that true? Are there these challenges that you've had to overcome as you were starting to kind of work in this space?
[00:20:48] Mateen Hessami: For sure. There's lots of challenges and, you know, past traumas and past and current exploitation that occurs, specifically in like the science world. You know, the, the classic thing is you'll have a group from a university, or you know, from a city center that goes up, you know, 15 hours north and says, I want to help you, I want to work for you. But the underlying, sometimes nefarious reason that they're doing that is to benefit their own career.
[00:21:16] And like that's something I'm so proud of working here at UBCO. Dr. Adam Ford was my advisor, and his approach and his wildlife research lab is pretty well what I described in terms of my approach to working with communities. It's very community forward, bottom up. It's very genuine.
[00:21:36] To answer that, yes, there are unfortunately a lot of groups that will try and infiltrate and influence these northern communities, especially first nation communities, to advance their own agenda or mission or set of values. You've got a bunch of folks from urban centers that to make a difference up north, and it can often be misplaced if you don't take the time to learn that these folks that were, you know, trapping seals and trapping coyotes, they are actually some of the best stewards and champions of the land.
[00:22:10] It's really important to just know the intricacies of the economies, the connections with nature. And again, I'm really proud that our group here at UBC Okanagan and beyond really takes the time to understand that we're guests in the territory and we want the relationships to be meaningful win-win scenarios in the sense that we want to advance the goals that they need help with.
[00:22:37] Jeevan Sangha: It's so interesting hearing about your approach to this work because it feels so holistic, which is really cool. It's taking the sociopolitical context as well as the science and the ecological perspective and building them all together into a practice, which is super interesting.
[00:22:52] In reflecting on that and reflecting on your journey thus far, what impact do you hope that your work will have in this space moving forward?
[00:22:59] Mateen Hessami: I think the impact that I hope to achieve is twofold but interconnected. The first one being the impact on local communities. Just being able to captivate young people into being interested in learning about nature in their backyards and equipping some of these community members with the tools and the education to hopefully do what I do instead of relying on a contractor. The ultimate dream is that these communities have their own wildlife biologists that have the education and the ability to oversee their programs.
[00:23:35] So, that's a huge priority for me is just rekindling traditional connections to the land that indigenous peoples have and having a role in rekindling those connections. And I think science and wildlife management are great vehicles and vectors for that rekindling of nature between indigenous, rural people and the wildlands of Canada.
[00:23:58] And then the second goal that I want to go to sleep at night. Thinking I've contributed to is enacting meaningful and measurable change on the land. So, it's kind of a dream of every biologist to be a part of efforts that actually translate to outcomes that animals notice. That it's not just planning meetings and presentations and reports, but you're a part of an effort to measurably change how things look on the land. And on the wildlife front like being able to grow more moose like measurably year after year. We get up in the helicopter. We count that there's more moose in 2028 than we counted in 2025, like that would be a huge accomplishment.
[00:24:42] Carol Eugene Park: Are there any things that you wanted to mention about your work, questions you want our listeners to consider?
[00:24:48] Mateen Hessami: I think the whole world is feeling a shift in economic standing across sectors, including the universities. We're seeing a tightening of budgets, and we will continue to see that, and I think wildlife, unfortunately, are often the first to be neglected.
[00:25:05] I would just urge the listeners of this podcast and society as a whole to really recognize that investing in nature and conservation and biodiversity is really at the best interest of all of us. And it goes beyond monitoring the land, growing animals for the land. It's about, you know, preserving the ecological integrity that we rely on for clean drinking water, clean air, as well as our ability to connect with nature in a good way.
[00:25:33] So I would just impart that, that if there's any chance to communicate to your local political folks, just the importance of nature conservation, biodiversity, centering local peoples. I think that's really, really important.
[00:25:49] And, and just one more like subpoint, there is just the importance of local and Indigenous Peoples is being at the front of these efforts, even if it's like, you know, the development of a mine or industry like, you guys may have seen in the news Tahltan Central government, they're a nation in Northern BC, they just signed a really sweeping agreement on mineral extraction. And I think that that is the future, that co-partnership with nations, but really ensuring that if and when these projects go forward, that the local land users are the ones that are at the forefront of it, because for so much of history, the definition of colonialism, it hasn't always gone that way.
[00:26:35] Carol Eugene Park: Awesome. since we are at the end of it, and I want you to really think about this question as a scientist, as a human being.
[00:26:41] Mateen Hessami: Okay,
[00:26:42] Carol Eugene Park: what are you? More like a caribou or a moose?
[00:26:47] Mateen Hessami: I would say I'm more like a caribou because caribou really like wild places and they're just so majestic. I think caribou. Yeah. I, I love caribou. Every year I've been going up north. I spend two weeks up north. I'll fly in, in a float plane to a little lake, they drop me off and for two weeks and the last few years, I've done it completely solo. It's a life altering experience to be up there hunting caribou.
[00:27:15] Most of these trips I don't see, not only a human, but I don't even see a boot print of a human. And there's psychological transformation that happens. And this has been studied like when you spend more than three days away from your phone, away from the world, you feel so present. And this just another level of harmony and, for me, like being up there, that's where the caribou are still doing well. There are still pockets of BC where caribou are doing well, it's directly related to where there's not a lot of disturbance. And that's just like the pinnacle, like that's like heaven for me is being in those wild places where you don't see another person. And so that's why I would say I'm more like a caribou, but I love moose as well. So, it is a tough one.
[00:28:00] Jeevan Sangha: Lovely. That was a very important question for us to end off on. So, thank you so much for your time. It's been lovely chatting with you.
[00:28:07] So Carol, any changes of heart about the natural world after a chat with Mateen?
[00:28:12] Carol Eugene Park: I do appreciate his enthusiasm and love for the wild outdoors, especially when he talked about going out, for three days, no cell service, just him, his thoughts and the world, that was really cool. But as he was describing this experience, I was like, again, I would just go, take me this, the end for me. I'm sure it brings peace to some people, but the thought of me in the outdoors with no cell service as a woman especially. I don't like it. What about you?
[00:28:43] Jeevan Sangha: I'm just sitting with that visual that you provided and it's disturbing me as well. I think that I learned a lot from that conversation and I feel like, as much as I'm not one of the people who’s going to be out there doing the work, it's really nice knowing that there's all kinds of work going on.
[00:28:57] One thing I really liked that Mateen mentioned was this kind of fallacy of nature being separate from humans, and this idea that there's the social world of human beings and then there's physical nature, but in reality, those things are actually completely interconnected. Thinking about that as we move through our day-to-day life felt really cool. Particularly the things that he mentioned around like relationship building with indigenous folks and centering their teachings.
[00:29:22] Carol Eugene Park: I recognize that I sound like a very anti nature person, and I just want to clarify, I too really support the people who are doing this work. As much as you could not pay me to do it, I'm so glad that there are people who are not like me, who value the outdoors and wildlife management, find peace in being one with nature.
[00:29:46] Jeevan Sangha: I think that's good self-awareness.
[00:29:47] Carol Eugene Park: Thank you. And with that, thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling your feels, please drop us a review. You can find me on Blue Sky at Carol Eugene Park,
[00:30:02] Jeevan Sangha: And me on Twitter @Jeevanksangha. From Here Forward is an alumni UBC podcast produced by Kylé McPhedran for Podium Podcast Company.