Life as a Wildlife Documentary Writer

[00:00:00] Alex Re: Hello, welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week. And I guarantee you, you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. This week, we've got another special episode where I'm not talking about one specific animal.

[00:00:23] I got to chat with Amber Herzog Lyman. who has spent countless hours in the field observing all kinds of different animals. She also recently wrote a documentary called Ocean Souls, which explores the lives of cetaceans in the ocean. Amber is going to share a bunch of her experiences with animals and offer some really unique perspectives on how we should view animals.

[00:00:48] So let's get started with the interview.

[00:01:07] Hi, Amber. How are you doing?

[00:01:09] Amber Herzog Lyman: I'm well, thank you, Alex. I'm excited to be here with you today.

[00:01:12] Alex Re: Great. Thanks so much for coming on. Can you just tell me a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in learning from wildlife?

[00:01:20] Amber Herzog Lyman: Yeah, of course. I grew up in sort of a country environment out in the foothills of California where I had a lot of time to free roam and learn from animals.

[00:01:30] And from my earliest times I can remember, I was always interested in observing animals. And I really, really wanted to learn how to communicate with them. So I would do things like follow around the ducks and geese on our little lake at our house while they were making nests. And look after and observe like the possums and raccoons in my area, the foxes and find out where they were making their dens and where they were leaving the bones from their prey.

[00:01:57] And just from the beginning, I was really interested in tracking animals and learning what they were all about. And as soon as I had the opportunity, I also started. Working with them to do like wildlife rescue work and early protection work. For example, when those ducks and geese were making their nests and we noticed that neighborhood dogs were coming and stealing the eggs.

[00:02:19] My mom went and bought a simple incubator and that kicked us off for years. We would incubate the wild duck eggs in our, on our lake and raise those little babies in our bathtub. And they would imprint on us, chase us around the house in a neat little line. And then we built a special pen for them in our barn.

[00:02:38] We would release them when they were capable of floating and flying. And then the greatest joy of doing that work is that the next year, many of those female ducks would come back to our lake and they would nest and have their own wild babies and bring those babies back to meet us. So that's when I really noticed that animals are very, very capable of connecting with us and forming relationships and forming bonds.

[00:03:03] With people that, that are a danger to them. So that really kicked off my, my passion for seeking out wild creatures and seeing how, how close I could get.

[00:03:15] Alex Re: That's, that's amazing. And we just did an episode on ducks and imprinting, which is a really cool thing that happens. So that's great. Can you talk about some of your experiences in wildlife tracking and research and what kind of animals have you studied?

[00:03:32] I know you talked about this a little bit. Yeah.

[00:03:34] Amber Herzog Lyman: Yeah, sure. So the way that this curiosity about wild animals has translated into my adult life is that I bailed out from 10 years in a really stable, lucrative career in real estate development to move to Africa and Study wild animals when I was 30 and at that time I connected with a series of different projects that were ongoing and was able to live in some really remote and extreme environments like for example the northern part of South Africa.

[00:04:08] Where I was studying the ecological balance amongst different types of predators like lions, wild dogs, cheetah, and leopards. And sort of how those animals, what they needed in terms of space and prey in order to strike a balance that could keep everybody healthy. I also spent part of that year studying desert elephants in Namibia.

[00:04:30] Tracking them around with a team of 12 volunteers on the back of a truck where we were just sleeping on bedrolls on the sand every night and cooking our food over an open fire and moving around with the desert elephants as they were wandering the ancient paths that they follow. And then we did some ocean research as well, studying dolphins off the coast of Kenya.

[00:04:54] At that time, the Kenyan Wildlife Service was creating new marine protected areas. And we were studying to see if the dolphins were showing a hunting preference for staying inside those MPAs or if they were still using more of the areas that were commercially fished. And the other really dynamic piece of research that I participated in that year was studying coral reefs out in the islands of the Seychelles in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

[00:05:23] So I was a coral reef research diver there, spending hours and hours underwater, looking at the regeneration of corals after that first El Nino cycle in the 1990s that warmed ocean temperatures so much. Um, at that time, we were in year 11 of an ongoing coral reef research study there that is helping to inform a lot of the coral.

[00:05:48] Rescue work that's happening around the world today.

[00:05:51] Alex Re: So you've really done so much with animal research, animal tracking, and really been in their habitats, which is amazing.

[00:06:01] Amber Herzog Lyman: Yeah. And so along with all the scientific and formal research that I did, I also have spent my whole life. Conducting my own sort of, I don't know, energetic research, maybe with wild animals in a practice of deep listening when I find myself living in these environments where I'm coming face to face with lions every day, for example.

[00:06:24] I'm really paying a lot of attention to how they're using sound and movement and scent and touch to communicate and also looking at what roles they play in creating balance in their ecosystems. Because that's a big question that faces humans right now. How can we create more balance in the ecosystems that we inhabit and that we share with wild things. And I'm always looking to the animals to learn on that.

[00:06:53] Alex Re: Yeah, that's great. And balance is such an important part of any ecosystem. And you'll, you'll see that if the balance is thrown off, it can really change. Everything about that ecosystem in, in not a great way. So it's really important to be looking at that.

[00:07:13] Amber Herzog Lyman: And it also reminds us how. interconnected we all are, you know, every single living species that inhabits an ecosystem is material to the survival of all of us. So each one matters no matter how, how small they are. And that is my, my approach to wildlife ecology. When I'm looking at an ocean ecosystem, I'm really trying to pay attention to what creatures large and small are helping to create balance.

[00:07:45] So that we can learn it as humans where we can make a positive impact by helping to protect and restore some of the creatures that might be having a hard time.

[00:07:55] Alex Re: Yeah, absolutely. And kind of going into that, you wrote a documentary called Ocean Souls. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:08:04] Amber Herzog Lyman: Yeah, absolutely. Ocean Souls is a really beautiful film that has visuals that were open sourced from over 70 filmmakers around the world. And it's one of the first documentary films that really looks deeply into the conscious lives of whales and dolphins. So we're speaking to not only their intelligence, But also how they utilize language, how they experience emotion, how they conduct their own generational cultural learning, how important their family bonds are to their lives and to their learning processes, and also how they're impacted by human actions.

[00:08:45] Alex Re: That's great. And I think if we can start getting people to understand some of that information, maybe we can start getting them to care a little bit more about their conservation because they'll realize that. We're not so different from these animals.

[00:09:02] Amber Herzog Lyman: Oh my gosh, yeah, it's with whales and dolphins, I mean, especially they really conduct their family lives so much like we do, you know, they have relationships not only with their own parents, but also that extend back generations to aunts and grandmothers and generations of animals participate in teaching the young.

[00:09:24] Much like our family systems work, and it's really evident when you look at different pods of dolphins, for example, that pods that live even in neighboring territories and work with some of the same resources might have very different ways of hunting or of communicating because their cultural learning bonds are so strong that they carry on these same dynamic and unique hunting strategies from generation to generation, it really does Show you when you see them experiencing emotions around joy and play or around the loss of a loved one, when you actually watch them more, the loss of a baby or the loss of a pod mate.

[00:10:12] You realize how much like us they truly are, and it's very touching to our hearts. It really reminds us how, you know, as humans, we're pretty dominant with our brains, but when we get back to those things that tug at our hearts, we're all so much the same.

[00:10:31] Alex Re: Yeah, definitely. And is that why you kind of have a special interest in whales and dolphins?

[00:10:37] Amber Herzog Lyman: That's a big part of my connection with whales and dolphins, the emotional layers of their life, and then the ways that they display conscious learning are really fascinating. I'm also super curious about the ways that whales and dolphins use sound. In addition to being a lifelong wildlife learner and writer and advocate, I'm also a poet and songwriter and I utilize sound to carry forward messages around emotion that we can't communicate with words alone that don't translate if you're just reading words on a page.

[00:11:17] So I'm really interested in the ways that whales and dolphins use song to communicate what they know and what they think and what they feel.

[00:11:26] Alex Re: Wow. That's really amazing. Can you share a memorable experience that you've had with whales?

[00:11:33] Amber Herzog Lyman: Yes, of course. You know, it's so interesting because I've interacted with whales and dolphins both from boats and in the water in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean and in Baja, California.

[00:11:47] You know, across many decades of my life and especially when I think about dolphins, they're so dynamic, the way they move, you know, they're so vibrant and full of energy, the most lasting impression comes from an experience where I shared a moment of complete stillness. With a pair of whales in August of 2019, I went to the kingdom of Tonga, which is one of the few places on earth where you can safely and legally dive underwater with humpback whales in really carefully controlled and guided situations. And there, I had so many different interesting interactions with humpbacks up close, but the most powerful moment that I shared with them is when I encountered a male and female who had paired off, and this is mating season, so they're They're looking to create these pair bombs, and this pair swam into a shallow bay, and sank down to the bottom of the ocean, and for one complete dive, they sat in stillness next to each other for 33 minutes, without living.

[00:13:03] And we were just floating silently on the surface. Observing them, write about them, but sharing that deep stillness with such an enormous pair of animals after earlier in the day, watching them swim through the ocean at full speed, that really captivated my attention and that, that just really is a memory that I will never, ever, ever forget.

[00:13:29] Alex Re: That sounds like such a surreal experience and there's so much that we still don't know about. These animals, and it just makes you wonder what's going on through their minds.

[00:13:40] Amber Herzog Lyman: Yeah, absolutely. They are thinking it's obvious when you see them. I, I, it's really obvious that they carry a deep intelligence and capacity to observe and capacity to witness and to process and to think, and, you know, many people, as I spent time with whale people around the world and my explorations.

[00:14:02] So many of us have experienced this feeling of deep healing. Your encounter humpback whales and so that really sparks my curiosity and I, I do think it comes back to their capacity to slow down and really witness us and see us, you know, when they're looking at us underwater and giving us all their attention, they're not thinking about where we went to school or what we're wearing or where we came from.

[00:14:30] They're just really attuning to our presence and our energy and. For me as a human, it's very liberating to be seen that way, you know, so I look to animals to remind me of my own wildness, my own inherent goodness without all the human labels.

[00:14:49] Alex Re: That's great. It must be. It's really refreshing when you think about it like that.

[00:14:53] Amber Herzog Lyman: Totally. It's very liberating.

[00:14:55] Alex Re: Yes, definitely. And what are some of the challenges that you've run into when interacting with wildlife?

[00:15:02] Amber Herzog Lyman: I've, I mean, I've had a few encounters of animals that have been stressed or have created some damage and destruction. For example, when I was living at a camp in South Africa, we had an elephant bull who was in musts.

[00:15:18] So bulls go through these hormonal cycles where they'll have calm periods and then their hormones will spike and that's what causes them to go out seeking mates. When they are in these short periods of musts, it's very obvious that they're agitated, right? They're, they're quite literally on a rampage and they're really driven to display their strength and their might.

[00:15:43] And so they go around breaking things. You can often hear them coming. When they're in these in these moods because they'll snap big tree branches and make noises that otherwise they would totally avoid because they're trying not to alert other animals. So in this camp one morning I was on camp duty instead of out researching on the back of the truck and there were only three of us left in camp and a bull who was in must we heard him coming and breaking trees along the way as he was approaching our camp and he made his way to our water pump.

[00:16:17] So we had a little well there at our camp that was driven by solar power, and this bull came along and came upon the water equipment and started breaking pipes, just like he was breaking tree branches, he started snapping our water pipes. And was at the point where he was about to pull our only water tank for the camp, right off of its tiny concrete foundation.

[00:16:40] And so, three tiny humans had to try to find a way to distract this elephant in a way that wasn't going to cause conflict, but also could save our water resources. We were like two and a half hours from the nearest town, so we had to try to protect the little bit of infrastructure we had. And so we ended up hiding behind a tent so that the elephant couldn't see us visually.

[00:17:02] And making all the noise that we could with different objects, banging glass bottles and pots and pans, just trying to get his focus on to you. the sound rather than destroying the equipment that we had in the ground. And it ended up with this elephant displaying a couple of mock charges toward our location.

[00:17:24] So we've really got to see up close, you know, the might of a full grown bull elephant, but also coming up with a, a solution that didn't cause any damage to the animal or to the limited resources that we were working with. What I learned from that is that, you know, animals, Will always operate with respect when they are being respected, right?

[00:17:49] And that when we see issues of human wildlife conflict, it's nearly always because we are encroaching onto territory that the animals need for survival. And so that was a really pivotal moment for me because in the rest of my interactions with wild animals ever since. I've been really mindful of how we as humans can give wild things ample space and ample time to move around us in ways that are safe for the animals and for humans.

[00:18:26] Alex Re: Right. It's really important to think about that because one of the largest issues facing all animals is habitat loss and it causes a lot of unnecessary conflicts between humans and animals where we then see animals in a in a bad light such as a wolf eating A farmer's sheep or something like that, we see wolves negatively, even though we're the ones that encroached on their land.

[00:18:55] Amber Herzog Lyman: Right. And it also teaches us the lesson that we can love and respect animals all that we want until the moment that our safety feels threatened. Right. And, and that's really where things shift for the negative, particularly when it comes to predators or to animals that are competing for similar food sources.

[00:19:19] And it's just important to remember that we have so many more choices about where we move and what we eat than they do. And the responsibility really is on us to behave in a way that doesn't impact them, right? Yeah. Um, because we have a lot more freedom and we have a lot more choice.

[00:19:44] Alex Re: Yeah, definitely.

[00:19:45] And going back to your whales and dolphins experiences, what do you think that the average person might not understand about those animals?

[00:19:56] Amber Herzog Lyman: Hmm. I think the average person might not understand how deep our ties to whales and dolphins really are, you know, in my research and writing and learning about whales and dolphins.

[00:20:08] I mean, of course, I feel a really deep personal connection to different species. To humpback whales in particular, to orca, to the spotted dolphins, but that kinship goes back thousands of years in human history and across so many different traditions. You know, there are records when you go back into the writings and teachings of the ancient Greeks, the ancient Greeks believed that humans and dolphins worked together to found that civilization.

[00:20:45] Where you look back deep into the teachings of the Hawaiians and the Polynesians, they believe that humpback whales are our allies in carrying the deep memory of consciousness. Or you look to tribes of the coast of Africa, and they believe, like the Polynesians, that whales were the first carriers of conscious awareness.

[00:21:11] on Earth, that they held that chorus until humans were ready to take on that responsibility. And of course, the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, and the Inuits up even further north, See the orca and the narwhal and other species of whales as our spiritual kin, you know, as our allies in protecting the oceans, keeping the oceans in balance.

[00:21:35] So once you start looking into the depth of that history and seeing that it spans all the continents of the earth, it's really undeniable that there's something meaningful there to that connection between us.

[00:21:48] Alex Re: Yeah, absolutely. It can't just be a coincidence that all of these different cultures feel a certain way about these specific animals.

[00:21:57] So that's really cool. Yeah. A lot of love there. Yeah, definitely. And why do you think ocean conservation is so important?

[00:22:07] Amber Herzog Lyman: Oh, gosh, because you know, the, the more that I've become active on the global ocean conservation stage and really looked at these big gatherings of delegates at UN world oceans day and the big climate conferences and other global gatherings.

[00:22:25] I, I see how the oceans are the lungs of our entire planet, you know, we've been taught that so much of our oxygen comes from forests, which is true in part. Now we're understanding that over half of all of the oxygen in the earth's atmosphere is coming from vital plankton and the plant plankton that exists.

[00:22:50] at the ocean surface. And whales are really the great gardeners of the sea because as they move around planet earth in these huge migration patterns, they stir nutrients that they collect when they feed at the poles. And then as they swim and feed their babies and defecate along the surface of the ocean, thousands and thousands of miles from where they feed.

[00:23:14] They are actually carrying these critical minerals and nutrients around the surfaces of the sea to fertilize the phytoplankton gardens that provide our air. So there is no better argument for helping the oceans maintain their balance than the fact that we need them for our own survival, right? We need them for the air we breathe.

[00:23:35] We need them for the evaporation of clean water so that we can have the fresh water we need to survive and to grow our crops. It just really speaks to that intricate web of interconnection that underlies all life on earth. And I, through my work, love to remind humans that we are not in any way separate from that we are fully embedded in that cycle and every piece of pollution that we put into that mix impacts us just like everything that we, you know, every piece of pollution that we remove also creates a positive ripple.

[00:24:12] So that's what I'd like to focus on, whether I'm teaching to kids or adults that every choice that we make matters because we are part of this vast ecosystem that connects us all.

[00:24:25] Alex Re: Absolutely. And it's so important to remember that nothing that we have or use is unlimited. So everything is, is finite. And that's just something that we should always be keeping in mind.

[00:24:39] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So this will be my last question, but how can people support you and your work?

[00:24:47] Amber Herzog Lyman: Yeah. When, you know, this is always an interesting question for me to answer because my work is really about inspiring people to do what they can, where they can. So rather than seeking support, I love to remind people that they can look around their own.

[00:25:03] Neighborhood and find out how to make an impact where they are, I believe really, really strongly in picking up trash, removing trash from the natural world. I think that's a really important role that every human can play. I also know that people feel called to support different kinds of conservation work in their own areas.

[00:25:25] And whether that's with your time, your effort or your donation dollars. If you have a little voice in your head that says, Oh, that's something I'd like to be a part of. Then jump on that and do it, just get involved wherever you are to make positive impact wherever you feel called, because that's where those right alignments lie.

[00:25:43] And luckily with our digital age, becoming connected to those good positives is easier and easier. So find, find what calls to you and take some action to all to support where you are.

[00:25:58] Alex Re: Yeah, I think that's a great message. And. Everybody should be heeding that advice.

[00:26:04] Amber Herzog Lyman: And then I also, um, am releasing an album of my spoken word poetry and music that really speaks to nature and consciousness and invites us back into deeper connection with the natural world.

[00:26:16] And that music can be found everywhere. Apple, Amazon, Spotify, under my artist name, Amber Grzog Lyman. The album's called Listen Deep and it's 12 beautiful pieces. That are inviting us to into deeper exploration and connection with nature. So I invite you to check that out as well.

[00:26:37] Alex Re: Great. So everybody should take a listen.

[00:26:39] Um, well, Amber, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And I learned so much, uh, from you. So thank you again.

[00:26:47] Amber Herzog Lyman: Thanks Alex. Thanks for all that you do. I really appreciate you getting out there and spreading the word. People in connection with the animals. It's really important and I appreciate you playing a role in helping us find what we loved.

[00:27:02] Alex Re: Amber really made me think about our connection with wildlife in a way that I haven't really thought about it before. I'm so glad I was able to talk with her and get to hear about some of the awesome experiences that she's had with animals. Thanks for joining me on this special episode of On Wildlife.

[00:27:20] You can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference at onwildlife. org. You can also email us with any questions at onwildlife. podcast at gmail. com. And you could follow us on Instagram at on underscore wildlife or on TikTok at on wildlife. And don't forget to tune in in February for another awesome episode.

[00:27:44] And that's on wildlife.

[00:27:51] Jess Avellino: You've been listening to On Wildlife with Alex Re. On Wilzdlife provides general educational information on various topics as a public service, which should not be construed as professional, financial, real estate, tax, or legal advice. These are our personal opinions only. Please refer to our full disclaimer policy on our website for full details.