Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant

The women talk to Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant carnivore ecologist with a background in conservation biology. As Gandhi calls her 'Bear Doctor'!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, we are celebrating women all day and all month,
and now I get to do something I have selfishly
been plotting on for a long time. You know, I
love animals, and you guys are convinced that that's how
I'm gonna die one day. Yeah, because you're going to
approach an animals is going to eat you. Maybe I will,
maybe I won't. But because of that, I have been
following a woman on Instagram. Her name is doctor ray

(00:24):
Win Grant. She is an ecologist. And when I tell
you what she does, or better yeah, when she tells
you what she does, I think your minds are going
to be blown. Hello, doctor ray Win Grant, how are you? Hey?
I'm extra good. I'm so happy to be with y'all today.
Thank you so much for joining us. You have no
idea how excited I am. She has been so excited
about this. I'm really hoping you're going to tell her

(00:45):
not to hug a bear though before the end of
this interview. Yep, thank you. Please listen. That is my
PSA to everyone listening. Leave them alone. But how how
do you know that? Let's talk about which you do? Okay,
So I am a wildlife ecologist and my goals are

(01:05):
to prevent endangered species from going extinct. But in particular,
if you follow me on social media, I am best
known for stealing little baby black bears like little wild
bear cubs and stuffing them in my jacket and taking
selfies with them. Yes and so yeah, so this is
where the problem lies, because this is what this one

(01:27):
wants to do. Yes, I do. You are living my
dream life. It is a dream. It is a dream. Literally.
One of my biggest things is that, like most people think, oh,
to be a scientist, that means you have like a
lab code on and you're like pipetting chemicals right like
at a bench. Like. No, you can be out there
in the wilderness like me. And the reason that I
have all these adorable pictures of me snuggling baby bears

(01:48):
in the wild is because I study mama bears and
they give birth during hibernation. It's very very convenient because
every winter if they have a GPS coloropst part. Little
baby bears that are just born, they're so little they
can't create their own body heat. So during the like
five minutes that we're giving them a checkup and listening

(02:09):
to their heart and they're breathing and all that. We
have to actually snuggle them in our jackets and give
them our body heat so they stay warm, and it
just so happens. That's also the perfect time to take
photos of the signs that you're doing. The bear is
asleep before she snuggles the baby cub, and she's doing
so that she can do like a little physical you know,

(02:32):
to make sure the baby. Yeah, yeah, that's insane to me,
Like that is the coolest, absolute best job in the world.
And I know you haven't just worked with bears. You've
worked with lions, You work with sharks. Can you name
some of the animals that you deal with. I have
worked with African lions for years, Like there was a
point I was living in Tanzania studying lions doing the

(02:52):
same thing with these lion mamas and cubs. I studied
grizzly bears and black bears and lemurs in Madagascar, ringtailed lemurs.
I've studied lowland gorillas in the Coco Basin, almost everything,
almost everything. I still have like a bucket list of
animals I haven't studied. Is there something that you've taken
away from this that like surprised you about a certain

(03:15):
animal like you would like blew your mind where you're like,
I didn't know that about that animal. I think coyotes
are the ones that have blown my mind to the most.
They're extremely tolerant of humans. The humans are intolerant of
coyotes because a lot of the animals I study are
like so sensitive near humans. If they hear human noises,
then they like can't sleep and their whole biology is

(03:37):
thrown off. Coyotes can like thrive in some of these cities,
and it's just people who freak out about them. And
I thought, that's been like such a surprise to me.
So for you with all these different animals that you've encountered,
and yes they are endangered species, but they're also kind
of terrifying species. The ones that you have listed, have
you ever had any crazy encounters with them? Close calls

(03:58):
Win Grant And the most popular episode of my podcast
is called Near Death Experiences, where I talk about all
the times I almost died at the hands of wild animals.
There's like twenty examples, but I will give one here
where I was studying bears in this year and Avada
Mountains right this was like summer of one of my

(04:19):
PhD years. So I was younger, I was in grad school.
I was an idiot, and I was spending the full
summer in like over one hundred degree temperatures, like in
the desert, and I was setting traps for bears because
we have to put a GPS collar on them, and
my job as the like intern grad student was to
check the traps every day. We don't want to have

(04:39):
a bear in a trap for more than like twelve
hours or something, right, especially in that heat. And so
every day I was checking these traps in the middle
of nowhere, is camping by myself for weeks on end,
and there were no bears, not a single bear ever.
So I started getting lazy. I stopped carrying my bear spray,
I stopped carrying my like whistles, I stopped carrying my water.

(05:00):
One day I checked a trap, no bear, and I
start putting the bait back in the trap, some new bait,
and as soon as I turn around to go back,
there is a huge male black bear three feet from me,
Like I could smell his breath, and he was pawing
the ground and he was like they do this like
shaking their head thing, and he started charging me and

(05:21):
I did the thing you're not supposed to do. Like
after all of my training, I knew, I knew exactly
the protocol. I panicked. I totally panicked, and I ran.
And that is the one thing that you do not
do with a bear is you do not run. You're
supposed to back away slowly and make yourself look big
and kind of yell at the bear. Honey. I dropped everything.

(05:43):
I ran. The bear chased me. I could feel it
like nipping at my butt the whole time. Literally, I
was crying. I was like running, crying, praying, falling down
this mountain, like getting like dirt and stuff like up
my nose. Like it was a disaster. And really, the
reason I'm around today is because the bear just decided
not to eat me. Any bear can outrun a person easily.

(06:06):
They run thirty five miles an hour. I can run,
you know, two miles an hour, right, So like it
just decided she's weak, let me not even try it.
That was like my life flashed before my eyes. I
was just like, oh my god, here I am thinking
I'm protecting these bears. I just pissed one off, and
now it's chasing me away. Oh my god, that's terribly nip.
It was horrible, horrible, horrible. So is the addage true brown,

(06:31):
lay down, black, fight back, and white good night. Yeah.
You know, I feel bad about the white good night
because polar bears, they are the world's largest carnivore. They're
over a thousand pounds, So there's just like a low
chance of survival if you're having an actual attack from
a polar bear. But I think it's important to note that,

(06:52):
like most people don't get attacked by a polar bear.
Just because you see a polar bear, or just because
you're surprised by polar bear, or just because you upset
a polar bear doesn't mean it's going to attack you.
But if we're talking about an attack, then yeah, it's over.
It's like les, if that black bear had been a
polar bear, do you think it would have chased you
and you would that have been it? Yeah? Yep, I

(07:12):
would not be here. Yeah, rip me good night. Yeah.
Can we go back to extinct animals, like if is
there one animal in particular that is basically almost gone
and almost done? So there's a couple species of rhinos
in East Africa and Southern Africa that are almost done.
I believe it's like the northern white rhino. There's a

(07:32):
couple of them left, like four left, And that's really hard,
right because rhinos are like, they're big and they look ferocious, right,
but they're like very gentle. They just eat grass all day.
You know. They're these amazing creatures. And due to a
mix of land transformation and the legacy of colonialism in
Africa is what started driving them to extinction. And now

(07:54):
poaching is a huge threat. There's not very many of
them and that makes me really sad. Rhinos when you
see them on the African landscape, it just looks right like,
you know that the ecosystem is functioning, but we're not
going to have them. It's pretty much over for them.
And there's a couple of other species like that too.
But it doesn't have to be that way moving forward.
There's a lot that can be Then there's a lot

(08:15):
of reasons for hope. So quickly before you go, I
want to highlight a couple of things about you, because
I think that within your field, you're probably a unicorn
yourself or a white rhino yourself myself included, are not
necessarily in leadership, right, So that's kind of like what
we see in a lot of these fields. It's like, Okay,
women are getting there, women are passionate, like they're opening
some doors for us, but in terms of leadership, in

(08:37):
terms of like being at the top, you're not seeing
very many women. And so I'm a woman, I'm a
black woman. I am a black woman from the inner city.
Like I grew up in San Francisco, back when San
Francisco had an inner city. It has changed, but like
that's where I'm from. And so I didn't go outside

(08:58):
with my family, right, Like we didn't go like cam
bang and hiking and stuff. So I didn't see my
first wild animal until I was in my twenties. So
that's something that's also really important for people to know,
is that you don't have to be some person who
goes to Yosemite, you know, every weekend to be made
for this field. I've made a lot of change. I
have gone all over the world. I've had adventures of
a lifetime, and I feel like I'm just getting started. Well,

(09:20):
I think you're fascinating and I appreciate you joining us
so much. Thank you for that. GODDI would like to
live in your back pocket. Thank you come on ran
please if you could give us some advice for just
the everyday person. We're talking about conservation and how we're
going to save the planet and save these animals. What
advice can you give the everyday person to make that move?

(09:40):
Oh my gosh, it's so easy. Vote. Every single election
has environmental issues on the ballot. There are politicians who
support the environment and some that don't. But also there's
like literal legislation, like I'm talking about the coyotes, I'm
talking about the bears, I'm talking about the eagles flying around.
That kind of stuff is on the bat and you

(10:00):
don't have to be a scientist to make an impact there.
So go to the polls and vote in favor of
the environment. I love that. Thank you. Drop your podcast
one more time. It is Going Wild with doctor ray
Win Grant from PBS Nature. You can find it wherever
you get your podcasts and on Instagram. You can find
me across social but I like Instagram the most. At
ray Win Grant r A W y n N g

(10:23):
r A n T. Come visit. Thank you so much
for joining us. You are wonderful and you're inspirational and
I will stock you even more than I already have,
so I appreciate you spending some time with us. Thank you.
This has been the best having me back. I'll be
back absolutely, don't you worry. Thank you. Thank you. Byell,
my aunt's boyfriend got a whole pizza thrown at him.

(10:45):
I turned on and shocked it at his head. Why
the celebrating boss women everywhere? Happy International Women's Day, El
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