Defender Radio and The Switch – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Defender Radio host Michael Howie is joined by colleagues Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin and Tijana Selak (Wildlife Campaigns and Advocacy Manager at The Fur-Bearers) to talk about The Fur-Bearers' recent time at the Humane Canada Summit for Wildlife, two studies reviewed for our article, and how communication is a key aspect to wildlife coexistence.

SHOW NOTES

Episode artwork by Brittany Crossman / Getty

Learn more about Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelivesofwilddogs/
Articles on TheFurBearers.com: https://thefurbearers.com/tag/drvallifrasercelin/

Articles and Studies referenced:

Humane Canada recap – https://thefurbearers.com/blog/recap-humane-canadas-2026-summit-for-animals/

Study: Helping Landowners Live with Beavers – https://thefurbearers.com/blog/study-helping-landowners-live-with-beavers/

Why Nocturnal Wildlife Gets Less Love – https://thefurbearers.com/blog/why-nocturnal-wildlife-gets-less-love/

Surprising ways skunks help your ecosystem – https://thefurbearers.com/blog/surprising-ways-skunks-help-your-ecosystem/

Raccoons at Noon? Don't Panic. – https://thefurbearers.com/blog/raccoons-at-noon-dont-panic/

Want to suggest topics for Defender Radio? Reach out to us at info@TheFurBearers.com, by visiting DefenderRadio.com or engaging host Michael Howie on social media via Instagram (www.instagram.com/howiemichael) or Facebook (www.Facebook.com/DefenderRadio). 

Defender Radio is produced by The Fur-Bearers (www.TheFurBearers.com), a charitable non-partisan organization whose mandate is to advocate on behalf of fur-bearing animals in the wild and in confinement, promote coexistence solutions in communities and protect the habitats of fur-bearing animals across Canada. You can follow The Fur-Bearers on Instagram (www.instagram.com/furbearers), Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/thefurbearers.bsky.social) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/FurFree). 

We want to look into the future for Defender Radio and The Switch – and that means hearing from you! We've put together a short (really) survey that will take fewer than 5 minutes and can help us know in which direction to go. It includes episode length/frequency, guest mix, accessibility, and more. Click here to open the survey now.

To show our appreciation, we're also offering a $100 Visa Gift Card that will be randomly drawn and awarded to a survey taker (must be 18+, live in Canada excluding Quebec, and provide name/contact information in the survey to participate). 

Click here to get started or visit DefenderRadio.com/survey. Thank you.

SHOW NOTES:

Artwork by Enrico Staine / Getty Images

Take the survey at https://questionnaire.simplesurvey.com/f/s.aspx?s=dd56341d-a112-4f66-a58e-8fad38458f63&ds=zX2P67oC1l

Want to suggest topics for Defender Radio? Reach out to us at info@TheFurBearers.com, by visiting DefenderRadio.com or engaging host Michael Howie on social media via Instagram (www.instagram.com/howiemichael) or Facebook (www.Facebook.com/DefenderRadio). 

Defender Radio is produced by The Fur-Bearers (www.TheFurBearers.com), a charitable non-partisan organization whose mandate is to advocate on behalf of fur-bearing animals in the wild and in confinement, promote coexistence solutions in communities and protect the habitats of fur-bearing animals across Canada. You can follow The Fur-Bearers on Instagram (www.instagram.com/furbearers), Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/thefurbearers.bsky.social) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/FurFree). 

Canada's iconic wildlife include moose, beavers, and wolves. But of the many species of vertebrate, which are the most evolutionarily distinct? And why does that matter?

A team of researchers from Simon Fraser University (emma Kominek, Olivia Cornies, Arne Ø. Mooers, and Wildlife Preservation Canada's Hannah McCurdy-Adams) explored these questions in their paper, Evolutionary isolation of Canadian terrestrial vertebrate species, published in the journal The Canadian Field-Naturalist. The final list included some not so surprising results – like beavers being near the top for mammals, and some unusual species that aren't commonly known, like mudpuppies, an amphibian that can be found in a relatively small range of southern Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.

To share more about the paper, how the species lists were developed, and why it's important for conservationists to learn about, study coauthor Emma Kominek joins Defender Radio.

SHOW NOTES:

Episode photo by Chuck Miller / Getty Images

Evolutionary isolation of Canadian terrestrial vertebrate species: https://doi.org/10.22621/cfn.v137i4.2673

SFU's coverage of the study: https://www.sfu.ca/science/news/2024-news/move-along-moose--sfu-study-reveals-the--most-canadian--animals.html

Want to suggest topics for Defender Radio? Reach out to us at info@TheFurBearers.com, by visiting DefenderRadio.com or engaging host Michael Howie on social media via Instagram (www.instagram.com/howiemichael) or Facebook (www.Facebook.com/DefenderRadio). 

Defender Radio is produced by The Fur-Bearers (www.TheFurBearers.com), a charitable non-partisan organization whose mandate is to advocate on behalf of fur-bearing animals in the wild and in confinement, promote coexistence solutions in communities and protect the habitats of fur-bearing animals across Canada. You can follow The Fur-Bearers on Instagram (www.instagram.com/furbearers), Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/thefurbearers.bsky.social) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/FurFree). 

Defender Radio is back after a pandemic-related hiatus. New episodes will be launching this month so stay tuned! In this update, hear from host/producer Michael Howie on the hiatus and changes in his personal life, how the show will be changing (only a little), and how you can help find new topics, special features and more.

Follow The Fur-Bearers on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FURfree/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/furbearers

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/furbearers/

Sign up for email updates: https://thefurbearers.salsalabs.org/enewssignup/index.html

Getting governments to change isn't easy; often, there are roadblocks in the path to communicating an issue, particularly ones related to non-human animals. There are tools out there, however, that are making it easier and more effective for Canadian parliamentarians to hear from constituents and learn more about issues related to animals in Canada.

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal MP for Beaches-East York, sponsored House of Commons Petition e-3096, drafted by The Fur-Bearers calling on the federal government to end fur farming; he's also one of the founding members of the Liberal Party's Animal Welfare Caucus and a new all-party format of the animal welfare caucus. Nathaniel joined Defender Radio to discuss Petition e-3096, the parliamentary process behind petitions and why some aren't as effective, as well as providing background on the animal welfare caucus and how all Canadians can ask their MP to get involved in this important educational initiative.

Sign Petition e3096: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-3096

Check out Nathaniel Erskine-Smiths' website: https://beynate.ca/

Follow The Fur-Bearers on

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FURfree/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/furbearers

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/furbearers/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHxrcRm5jLnpIjvTmN9MV9Q

As we press through these colder months of the winter, I'm seeing more questions about coyotes pop up on social media and traditional media. Of course, this is often in response to bad memes or misinformation designed to frighten people, rather than educate them. Check out TheFurBEarers.com for some the articles we've written to try and respond to these concerns.

But it's also an opportunity to talk about aversion conditioning – commonly referred to as hazing – and the role it can play in mitigating and ending human conflict with coyotes. Lauren Van Patter, a Queen's University PhD candidate and my good friend Lesley Sampson of Coyote Watch Canada worked together to pen a paper that outlines the scientific literature on aversion conditioning, as well as the experiences of the Coyote Watch Canada Canid Response Team. Titled, Advancing Best Practices for Aversion Conditioning to Mitigate Human-Coyote Conflicts in Urban Areas and published openly in the journal Human-Wildlife Interactions, the paper also prompted an outstanding essay on TheConversation.com.

Lauren and Lesley joined Defender Radio to talk about the importance of this paper, why we need to understand what is and isn't proper aversion conditioning and how we can coexist with our essential wild neighbours.

The Paper: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/hwi/vol14/iss2/7/

TheConversation.com article: https://theconversation.com/how-coyotes-and-humans-can-learn-to-coexist-in-cities-147738

Lauren Van Patter's Queen's University page: https://www.uoguelph.ca/ccsaw/people/lauren-van-patter-0

Coyote Watch Canada: www.coyotewatchcanada.com

The coronavirus pandemic has forced a lot of change in the world in the last 13 months. One of the most notable, unfortunately, is an increase in plastic waste entering our oceans. Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, which is frequently made with plastics more than doubled in size as a global industry in response to the pandemic.

Oceans Asia, a non-profit focused on marine conservation, released a dire report indicating 1.56 billion facemasks entered the marine environment in 2020. But PPE is just the tip of the pollution iceberg.

To dive into where this waste comes from, how it impacts the planet, and what we can all do to make a difference today and into the future, Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff joined the Defender Radio podcast.

Read the OceansAsia report: https://oceansasia.org/covid-19-facemasks/

Follow The Fur-Bearers on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/FURfree/), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/furbearers/), Twitter ( https://twitter.com/furbearers) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-fur-bearers/)!

Luci Cudman, the executive director of the North Shore Black Bear Society and Ellie Lamb, bear behaviour expert and bear viewing guide and instructor joined me for a call the late days of fall 2020 to talk about how our actions – and inactions – impact the behaviour of bears, why some strategies to coexist aren't as successful as others, and how we as individuals can truly make a difference for bears and other animals in our communities.

I've got good news, better news and bad news, folks. The good news is that yesterday a book launched that will change minds, hearts and lives around the world. The better news is that Jo-Anne McArthur, co-editor of this book, took time out of an incredibly busy schedule this morning to chat with me about it. The bad news is that, because it's 2020, the recording software I use didn't record my side of our conversation. Which, for many, may be the best news of all.

Let's start at the beginning. Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene by Jo-Anne McArthur and Keith Wilson, with a Foreword by Joaquin Phoenix, is now available.

A short synopsis from the book's media kit:

HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene is an unflinching book of photography documenting our relationship with non-human animals in the 21st Century. It focuses on the invisible animals in our lives: those with whom we have a close relationship and yet fail to see. They are the animals we eat and the animals we wear. They are the animals used in research and for entertainment, as well as the animals we sacrifice in the name of tradition and religion.

HIDDEN includes the work of a global community of photographers, 40 of the world's best animal photojournalists who work globally to investigate, document, and expose animal use. 

I spent a few hours flipping through my review copy, experiencing the images and reading the accompanying essays, facts and contextual copy. My review can be broken down to two sentences: Hidden is the heart-wrenching documentation of the unnatural things we've done to this planet and its inhabitants. We can only hope that this clear story – one that shows truth without apology or hyperbole – is enough to help us change our ways.

Jo-Anne, founder of We Animals, joined me for a conversation about the new book; but as I noted, an error in my recording software kept only Jo-Anne's part of that conversation.

I spent about an hour and a half trying to reverse engineer my questions (I keep notes, not fully written questions) before realizing that there's ethical implications behind that I'm not comfortable with and it would likely just sound weird. As such, I'm presenting Jo-Anne's answers, again the important part, with simple subject prompts from me.

I apologize to listeners and Jo-Anne for this issue, though I think Jo-Anne's own interview skills really shine as a result.

This episode is brought to you by AnimalStone.com. Use promocode DEFENDERRADIO to get 10% off your order at AnimalStone.com!

Get Hidden at WeAnimalsMedia.org's shop: https://weanimalsmedia.org/our-work/buy-books-and-prints/

Get Hidden on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Animals-Anthropocene-Jo-Anne-McArthur/dp/1590566386/

Sign up for email alerts with The Fur-Bearers: https://thefurbearers.salsalabs.org/enewssignup/index.html

Follow The Fur-Bearers on

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FURfree/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/furbearers

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/furbearers/

A lot of animals are tested upon and killed in the name of science, particularly biomedical research. In conversation, many people adopt a utilitarian attitude – the lives and deaths of these non-human animals is to benefit human health, an acceptable trade off.

But what if it wasn't benefiting human health – and what if, before the experiments even began, there was a solid chance the research would never, ever have human applications?

Those are some of the questions being posed by the Center for Contemporary Sciences, a new organization that is, quote, "pioneering a paradigm shift towards innovative, evidence-based research methods that are based on human biology. Through collaboration, we champion technologies that are better for humans and that replace animal testing."

Dr. Jarrod Bailey, Director of Science and Technology at the Center for Contemporary Sciences, joined Defender Radio to discuss the current state of animal testing and why it continues to fail, the results of a just published paper following up on so-called breakthroughs using animal testing in decades past, and we even get into the use of squalene in COVID vaccinations and animals being tested on during a pandemic.

Some of the content of this episode may be upsetting to listeners as we discuss animal testing; if you'd like to learn more about the work of the CCS without listening, please visit contemporarysciences.org.

Center for Contemporary Sciences: https://contemporarysciences.org/

Clinical impact of high-profile animal-based research reported in the UK national press (study):  https://openscience.bmj.com/content/4/1/e100039

Coronavirus Vaccine Makers Are Not Mass-Slaughtering Sharks (NY Times article): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/science/sharks-vaccines-covid-squalene.html