Mike Kessler is the wildlife tracking professor at the Rubenstein School at the University of Vermont. Every semester, he teaches courses like Intro to Wildlife Tracking and Winter Tracking Specialty. This past spring break, he took students to Belize to track jaguars. When I took Mike’s class, I learned to appreciate the land in a whole new way. He advocates experiencing landscapes with all the senses and understanding whole ecosystems as moving parts and stories. This video documents one of his classes.

I started out the interview with the question, “Do you consider wildlife tracking to be a form of outdoor recreation?” He answered, “Yes, very much so.” He then thought about his answer and asked me whether I thought recreation had to involve exercise. We both agreed that recreation is anything one does for pleasure and enrichment, regardless of whether physical exertion takes place.

My next question was, “How does tracking strengthen a person’s connection to the land?” Mike said that connection to the land may happen at a random point, but for most people, it happens over time. He said that a visit to a city may have a certain memorable part, but if you live there, you get to love the place. It is the same with any environment. Time is important. With tracking, not only do you spend time in nature, you learn the animals and their stories. Rather than just seeing or hearing wildlife, you explore their movements and learn about their experience. Connection to stories is important for connection to a place.

I asked, “Do you think that learning about tracking makes people conscious about conservation?” He said that when he’s teaching a tracking class, people are often surprised about what species of animals are actually in an area. He recounted a story of two Rubenstein seniors who suddenly “got” tracking during one class. One of the guys was tearing up, and he said something to the effect of “I feel like I’ve missed so much. In all the field classes at UVM, we were never taught to see like this. I’ve spent so much time in nature, but I’ve never understood it this way.” Mike believes that if a place is more special to someone, they are more likely to want to conserve it. He said there are two main reasons for wanting to conserve land, not mutually exclusive. People can learn about the intellectual importance of a place; they can understand that a certain forest is a corridor, important for wildlife movement, so it has value for that reason. Then they can have an experience that leads to an emotional connection to the land. This makes the place special to them and valuable in a way that can’t be quantitatively measured.

My last formal question was, “What are your opinions of the “Leave No Trace” wilderness ethic?” Mike wasn’t familiar with LNT, so after I gave him some information, he agreed that people should bring less into the wilderness, and take everything out that they bring. Then he said it is important for us to remember that not all human impacts are negative, and that that rather than trying not to impact anything, we should try to have a positive impact if possible. People should be stewards of the landscape. He said that most people don’t understand that just being in a landscape disturbs it. We can startle birds in torpor while walking in the woods at night and cause them to die from energy expenditure. We scare deer and disrupt their daily movements and never know it. One reason that tracking is useful is that it teaches us where not to go to avoid disturbance.

We continued talking and got onto the topic of humans as an invasive species. Mike doesn’t think we are. He said that other animals migrate the same way we do. For biodiversity in an ecosystem, there must be a mixing of new species at a rate that the system can accept. Mixing keeps ecosystems diverse and strong. You must understand the context in which you move. If you improve a landscape, you are not an invader.

He wrapped up the discussion by telling me that his goal of teaching is opening up exciting ways of looking into the landscape. He believes this is important because, he paraphrased a quote, “What we don’t understand we are destined to destroy.”

By Christine Sandbach