It’s a summer night in New Hampshire. An 18-year-old Chris Morgan, working as a camp counsellor, joins a bear biologist on an adventure to find some bears - just prior to this moment, Morgan had been bugging the man to take him out into the field with him. They find themselves facing fourteen black bears at the garbage dump close to the camp. Looking into those fourteen pairs of eyes shining under the moonlight, Morgan realizes that his life would never be the same.
Thirty-three years later, Chris has still not lost the excitement, fascination, and appreciation for these creatures. Morgan had always cared about the wildlife that was around him. As a young boy in Dorset, England, he would go out into the wilderness around him and collect snakes and lizards or participate in bird watching. "I just felt at home in the woods and loved it on my own as well. I've always been a bit of a loner.” His parents also loved to be outside, especially his mom, who loved birds and trees. “She helped to nurture that nature gene in me.” Morgan says he believed that everyone is born loving and connecting to nature, but we seem to disconnect from that over the years. "And I think that's the saddest thing. We're all born with this fascination for slugs and ants and twigs as a kid, and then suddenly, sort of it's not the cool thing, the accepted thing, or the way you can make a living, or you know, we lose that wonder".
Today, Chris Morgan is the host in the successful KUOW podcast The Wild. The podcast has received a significant amount of appreciation since its creation at the beginning of 2019. A typical episode begins with a compelling introduction of the podcast’s theme, followed by captivating ambience noise of the various sounds offered by surrounding nature. You may catch him whispering as he lays his eyes on a bear before him and describes the feeling of standing in front of this powerful animal. Or you may get the chance to hear the fascinating tales told by a lone ranger who runs the hills of eastern Washington state, informing farmers on how to live in harmony with wolves.
Although the podcast is relatively new, Morgan started exploring the voice-led medium from the age of nineteen. "I used to do these recordings on an old cassette tape, it was a Sony Walkman, when I was out doing my squirrel research and things like that, and I would send them back to my mum and dad," he says. Morgan's parents would invite their family and neighbours to come over and listen to some of the recordings he would do out in the woods. "Something that I always wanted to do was to share my love for nature."
Through the years, Morgan says he felt a bit selfish, benefiting from our wildlife's beauty and not sharing it. "The transition from adventure and thrills and amazing experiences in the wild switched over time into me engaging others and inspire others about nature." This idea triggered the creation of the podcast that gives people a chance to be carried into the eyes of Chris Morgan and the fascination he sees around him all the time.
As we experience climate change and the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs, Morgan says he feels that humans have been disconnected from our wildlife and ecosystem. As more and more people live in cities away from our swamps and forests, humanity starts to get desensitized to the degradation since it does not directly affect them. “I think there's a dose of humility needed to reconnect us with the good things that we share in common.”
Similarly, Kyle Elliott, a natural resource science professor at McGill University says that most disconnectedness between humans and the planet's wildlife is because of each other's geographical distance. "We crave interactions with nature and wildlife, we just lack the opportunity to express those emotions in the urban landscape."
The current political situation does not help with the constant degradation we see today. Elliott adds that “the wealthy fund politicians that enact legislation that reduces oversight on pollution, reduces taxation or just erodes public trust in science, which helps those individuals enrich themselves.” This lobbying can happen at any level of politics. Morgan says he believes that politics have not evolved when it comes to the way they deal with their wildlife. In the United States, policy-making hovers around the idea of protecting a wild area, not for the good of that area, but for future generations to exploit them as well. “American (mountain) lions walk these forests, bears walk these forests, it's mind-blowing that the official department of wildlife looks at them as a resource to harvest and have a season where you can kill a mountain lion for 25 dollars."
Today's media does not help with these disconnections between humans and animals. Many of the news stories we see today focus on the negative. A bear attacked hikers, a shark bit a swimmer, and many more. "And that's unfortunate because you don't hear headlines that consist of three thousand cougars in Washington state who remain hidden from humans, causing no trouble whatsoever,” Morgan says. If it is not about an animal attack, it is about the mass extinction the planet is experiencing or climate change, which feeds into the pessimistic mindset, so why try. He says "it goes to the extremes that people aren't used to hearing good news about the environment. I always say we know the sky is falling, let's share messages about how to prop it up.” And that is why the podcast tries as much as possible to keep stories positive and optimistic.
Morgan says he believes that conversing about these issues around the dinner table is an excellent place to start. "Take steps to stay connected personally with nature, and if you only do it for a selfish reason, then so be it because a walk in the woods as science has shown it, brings down your cortisol levels and increases your empathy.” There is hope. Elliott adds that “yes, if we act soon, we can return to a condition of sustainability.” Morgan says ecology should also be taught in school from a young age to help people stay connected to our planet. "Support good conservation organizations and, most importantly, vote, things do trickle down."
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