{"id":292,"date":"2014-04-26T00:43:44","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T04:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/?page_id=292"},"modified":"2014-04-30T10:54:51","modified_gmt":"2014-04-30T14:54:51","slug":"interview-with-mike-kessler","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/literature-reviews\/interview-with-mike-kessler\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Mike Kessler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wildlife Tracking with Mike Kessler and UVM Continuing Ed.mpg\" width=\"470\" height=\"264\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tzrv-pJ5al0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I started out the interview with the question, \u201cDo you consider wildlife tracking to be a form of outdoor recreation?\u201d He answered, \u201cYes, very much so.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>My next question was, \u201cHow does tracking strengthen a person\u2019s connection to the land?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>I asked, \u201cDo you think that learning about tracking makes people conscious about conservation?\u201d He said that when he\u2019s 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 \u201cgot\u201d tracking during one class. One of the guys was tearing up, and he said something to the effect of \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve missed so much. In all the field classes at UVM, we were never taught to <em>see<\/em> like this. I\u2019ve spent so much time in nature, but I\u2019ve never understood it this way.\u201d 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\u2019t be quantitatively measured.<\/p>\n<p>My last formal question was, \u201cWhat are your opinions of the \u201cLeave No Trace\u201d wilderness ethic?\u201d Mike wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>We continued talking and got onto the topic of humans as an invasive species. Mike doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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, \u201cWhat we don\u2019t understand we are destined to destroy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By Christine Sandbach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2238,"featured_media":0,"parent":29,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-292","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/292\/revisions\/334"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/egoss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}