Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / Carlton Ward Jr. on Wildlife Corridors, Panthers & Conservation That Lasts (Ep 801)

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Carlton Ward Jr. on Wildlife Corridors, Panthers & Conservation That Lasts (Ep 801) · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:00
  VO: You're tuned in to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. Conserving wetlands, restoring habitat, and working to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow, and forever. From field tested hunting insights to the biggest conservation wins across North America, This is your front row seat to wetlands conservation in action. The DU Podcast is proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're wrapping up a hunt with your best friend or kicking back with your crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment.
• 0:31
  Enjoy responsibly.
• 0:38
  Jimbo Robinson: Welcome back to another episode of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast, recording from Ducks Unlimited's eighty ninth Annual National Convention here in Tampa, Florida. I'm your host today, Jimbo Robinson, and I get the awesome privilege of hanging out and talking to Carlton Ward Junior, whose list of accomplishments are way too long, but conservation photographer, conservationist, everything built inside of that, is here with us today. Welcome again. Glad to be here. It was awesome listening to you this morning.
• 1:15
  Carlton Ward: Thank you. And such a good group to present to. Absolutely.
• 1:19
  Jimbo Robinson: And and we're gonna dive into that, and and we've got some great questions to go over. But before we get started on that, we're gonna do a fun round we call the flock shot. Quick questions, and we'll quick answers, and it's all fun.
• 1:34
  Carlton Ward: So flock shot, is that when I'm trying to take out all the birds with one trigger?
• 1:38
  Jimbo Robinson: It's a it's fast moving teal. Right? And so people say that you flock shot them when you shoot and you don't hit any of them. Spray and pray, they're so fast. So it's just some funny term I came up with a long time ago.
• 1:52
  It's kinda stuck a little bit. The spray and pray questions. Right?
• 1:54
  VO: The flock shot.
• 1:58
  Jimbo Robinson: First car.
• 2:00
  Carlton Ward: First car, Ford Explorer.
• 2:02
  Jimbo Robinson: Do you want it back? No. Favorite color Gatorade?
• 2:06
  Carlton Ward: Ambivalent between orange and green. Orange and green.
• 2:09
  Jimbo Robinson: Alright. Alright. Alright. Specific coffee in the thermos or gas station stop on the way in.
• 2:14
  Carlton Ward: You're saying which do I prefer? Yeah. The coffee in the thermos or gas station stop?
• 2:18
  Jimbo Robinson: Do you have like a specific coffee you like to make at home, or would you just stop at a gas station and grab some?
• 2:22
  Carlton Ward: I like the idea of making it home. In practicality, it's usually usually the Wawa. Worst weather you've ever been in. And was it worth it, or do
• 2:33
  Jimbo Robinson: you regret it for your job?
• 2:35
  Carlton Ward: Oh, it's always worth it. For you? Yeah. No. It's always worth it.
• 2:39
  Worst weather I've been in for my job, I don't know, every summer.
• 2:45
  Jimbo Robinson: Summer. Being in Florida.
• 2:46
  Carlton Ward: Well, yeah. No. The what I really like now is photographing kind of the edges of the thunderstorms. Right. So I've I've got a houseboat that I can instead of having to get in your center console and race away from the storm, I can take pictures to the last minute, land my drone when the wind gets so high that it's about to crash it for me, and then just go inside and close the door and all hell breaks loose.
• 3:07
  But yeah. That's
• 3:09
  Jimbo Robinson: One piece of gear you can't live without.
• 3:12
  Carlton Ward: Good question. Well, it's funny today because I drowned my iPhone over the weekend, so I'm physically living without a phone at the moment. So that's a bit of a adjustment. Mhmm. Piece of gear, my go to gear I can't live without.
• 3:25
  It it all depends on the assignment. Right. You know, it's a it's it's I would I would say my phone, but I'm living without it just fine right now. So It's probably nice. I mean, it's it's better when your assistant's not on vacation.
• 3:38
  So I'm down a phone and and in the office support, so I'm just in a yeah. I'm really disconnected today. It is
• 3:44
  Jimbo Robinson: it is what it is at this point. I mean, with without one, you feel disconnected, but it's almost a time to to to just kinda live. It's what you do. Almost like being a child again. You just gotta you go where you're asked to go and do what you're asked to do, and you don't have to worry about being connected to anything.
• 4:01
  Carlton Ward: Right. You don't have to check-in in between. Right. Just go. So
• 4:06
  Jimbo Robinson: mirrorless camera
• 4:09
  Carlton Ward: or just an old digital camera? Mirrorless.
• 4:11
  Jimbo Robinson: Yeah. Just because of technology?
• 4:13
  Carlton Ward: Yeah. I had to go that way because the silence. Yeah. I mean, the I mean, I first transitioned to mirrorless because I was doing a lot in parallel to film crews and the clack of my shutter was ruining their audio. Right.
• 4:28
  But if I'm sitting around a panther in a veterinary hospital and it's only happening once, like I need to be able to get that moment in photography as well as film. Right. So that's when I switched to mirrorless to Sony and yeah, it's great.
• 4:41
  Jimbo Robinson: That's that's you passed the flock shot. You you you accomplished it with flying colors. But let's we're gonna dive into, you know, Carlton Ward Junior and everything. But for our listeners out there, just give a little quick overview of who you are and and kind of just a little bit of your background. Because if you give too much, then we won't have any questions to ask because it's so awesome.
• 5:05
  But just a little bit of who you are and kinda what you do.
• 5:07
  Carlton Ward: I'm a conservation photographer. I'm based here in Tampa, Florida. Grew up in Clearwater, just west of here. I have family heritage in ranch country, just east of here. I've worked around the world but really found my focus here at home.
• 5:25
  I'm a father, I've got three kids, three wild children, eight, 10, and 12. And my purpose is to kind of foster connections to nature and wild places through photography in a way that inspires protection.
• 5:39
  Jimbo Robinson: Wow. Do you, do your kids are they kind of into what you do?
• 5:43
  Carlton Ward: Yeah. My kids get annoyed by me always pointing a camera at them and things like that, but they love to get outside. They love to get to the ranch. They love to get out on the water.
• 5:53
  Jimbo Robinson: Yeah. So you've dedicated your career to telling conservation stories through imagery. What moment first made you realize storytelling could actually drive real conservation outcomes?
• 6:03
  Carlton Ward: Early in my career, I I worked as an intern with the Smithsonian in Central Africa in the country of Gabon. And one of my role models at the time was a National Geographic staff photographer named Michael Nick Nichols. And he had been working in Central Africa with another scientist, a guy named Mike Fay from the Wildlife Conservation Society. And they did this project called the Mega Transect, where there was an expedition for four hundred and fifty five days that started in the center part of The Congo halfway across the continent of Africa to the Atlantic Coast of Gabon, kind of following the best remaining path of wild and connected habitat. And the three part series they did for National Geographic Magazine along with communication directed at then president of Gabon, Omar Bongo, actually inspired the creation of 13 new national parks.
• 6:52
  Wow. And so that was kind of the gold standard. Like, you you didn't have to look back to Ansel Adams and the Sierra Clubs with black and white pictures inspiring the US Congress to protect the West. Like, here we were in the year 2000 and photography and storytelling was saving or contributing in a big way to saving large swaths
• 7:09
  Jimbo Robinson: of nature. Wow. Is that kind of where your career exploded as well?
• 7:14
  Carlton Ward: It's kind of when when it transitioned from a a hobby to a profession. Mean, I was I was studying biology and anthropology, photographing sports, shooting nature pictures on my own. I went to a liberal arts college where there wasn't a journalism or a photography track. So I was kind of trying to bring these different worlds together. And through that initial internship and then five different expeditions as part of my first job as a photographer, yeah, helped really get me started.
• 7:41
  It was my first book, my first national magazine stories, and kind of got me moving.
• 7:46
  VO: Welcome to the Old Timer Minute, sponsored by Old Timer Knives.
• 7:51
  Old Timer Minute: So my favorite place that I got to hunt as a kid, that's a really tough thing because I got the luxury of being able to hunt some fantastic places in Arkansas growing up with my my grandfather's best friend and then my dad. But I remember hunting a lot with my grandfather's best friend. He had a duck club on Big Ditch. And, you know, if you're a duck hunter and you're familiar with Arkansas, that's a mythical place. And I remember every time we got to go down there, the excitement was just incredible.
• 8:24
  You knew you were gonna get to witness something something impressive, the trees, the history, the story behind that place. And it always, it lived up to the hype in my mind. And I'll I'll never forget that opportunity or those places. That's your Old Timer Minute brought to you by Old Timer, built for generations.
• 8:44
  VO: Visit the oldtimer.com.
• 8:46
  Jimbo Robinson: When you came to Florida, when when did you move back? When did you make your roots here in Florida again?
• 8:52
  Carlton Ward: You know, I'd been I I was in graduate school at the University of Florida and I was just bouncing between Florida and Central Africa. And then I spent nearly a year in DC publishing my first book, The Edge of Africa with the Smithsonian. And it was kind of from that point that I decided, you know, I could have a life where I stayed in DC and I aspired to work around the world doing photojournalism or I could come home. And it was interesting, whole time I was in DC, I was wearing a, you know, jacket and tie to work and working with politicians and scientists and publishing and editing and getting a book together, but I didn't have any inspiration in the landscape. It didn't ever really take pictures.
• 9:30
  Right. And so I wanted to live closer to where I had inspiration in the landscape and, you know, have it be closer to home.
• 9:37
  Jimbo Robinson: So every hunter has a story about the one that got away and the one they'll never forget. What's your version of that in the field with your camera?
• 9:46
  Carlton Ward: Well, have been so many that have gotten away. Some of them I've tried and tried again and finally gotten there. But I had this there's this blessing and a curse of the wireless game cameras.
• 9:56
  Jimbo Robinson: Mhmm.
• 9:56
  Carlton Ward: And so, you know, my camera traps consist of a professional DSLR camera and a waterproof box connected to strobe lights and infrared tripwire. And so lots of things have to work in the right sequence and an incident of a second because it's like a proper photo studio in the woods that you're trying to keep waterproof and not getting chewed by mice and not being stolen by poachers or shot by, you know, I've had all those things happen. But I started putting the wireless game camera up actually looking at my cameras Because, you know, if I go change the batteries, I'm expecting to go back a month later, but two days later, a bear knocks it over or a deer runs into it and it's pointing at the ground. I need to know that so I go fix it. So I've so for better or worse, I know what's happened, I know what animals have walked by.
• 10:41
  And so there's there's a place where I had a shot set up. The scene is Interstate 75, Alligator Alley between Naples and Fort Myers. My camera is at Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. On the other side of the road is Picayune Strand State Forest. There's a wildlife underpass that connects them together.
• 10:58
  And I'm trying to get a shot of a panther walking towards the camera, hopefully with a car on the road above, to show how this wildlife underpass is working in real time. I know it's gonna be hard. I know it's gonna take a while. Panthers coming through like once a month facing the right direction. Mostly at night, mostly without a car on the road.
• 11:16
  And I've got the I've got the wireless camera they're telling me. And so one afternoon, 06:30PM, perfect lighting, likely plenty of traffic, so the probability of a car on the road is high. And there comes a Panther I see on the wireless camera walking right by my camera. And so I'm fired up. I go back, you know, the next day to go check the camera card.
• 11:36
  And the infrared tripwire, which like sends the beam to break, you know, takes size c batteries and you're supposed to change the batteries every six months. And the batteries had died sometime in the three days since I had been there servicing the camera and when that Panther went through. So It didn't happen. I knew the moment the moment happened, my camera just wasn't on to capture it.
• 11:56
  Jimbo Robinson: So Wow. And so I think that was one of the coolest things. Carlton this morning spoke to spoke at our Ducks Unlimited convention. He was the keynote speaker, and he the message that he gave, if we could give it through a podcast, it wouldn't mean near as much because of the photos. And I think that to our listeners out there that will be listening to this podcast, one of the things they need to do is go to your website and go and and find you, and I'm sure there's a lot of those photos are out there telling your story.
• 12:24
  What you think of when you hear a game camera and what you do is totally different, and you nailed it just now. You're setting up a photo studio, professional photo in the And it was amazing because those are photos that people have in their houses that you've taken on their own. Right. You're talking about the ship art.
• 12:40
  Carlton Ward: With a game camera. Yeah. Yeah. Photos that can go in a museum exhibition or
• 12:44
  Jimbo Robinson: No doubt.
• 12:45
  Carlton Ward: On on on the wall in your living room, and all about the lighting. Right. And I'm I'm sometimes using these in between three and five flashes because you have to light the animal, you have to light the background, you have to light it subtly in such a way that it looks like it's natural lighting, and that takes a lot of learning and a lot of trial and error and a
• 13:02
  Jimbo Robinson: lot the time. Do the lights and strobes scare them spook them sometimes? Depends on
• 13:06
  Carlton Ward: the species. It does not seem to have any effect on panthers.
• 13:10
  Jimbo Robinson: Which is huge for you.
• 13:11
  Carlton Ward: Right. And I and I had I had, like, a monitoring and mitigation protocol with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and that's part of the reason I had those wireless cameras pointing at my cameras. Because I was reviewing video of when the panthers walked through so I could say if there was any startle effect or adverse effect, then I would have to discontinue the effort. But for some reason, I don't know how, because these are night vision adapted animals cruising through, the panthers don't even break stride. Wow.
• 13:37
  But a coyote? You you get one frame and the thing is gone in the other direction. Like, it's it's amazing how spooky they are to the light.
• 13:45
  Jimbo Robinson: And so you're you're a little bit more of the story, to to fill into that part of the story is, you your project or or what you are working for was the corridors.
• 13:55
  Carlton Ward: Right. Yeah. I've you know, a little bit earlier in my career before I started chasing panthers, I founded the Florida Wildlife Corridor Project. And, you know, I need to be careful about the word founded. Like, the science of wildlife corridors has been around since the eighties in Florida, and, you know, it was named and identified as a large landscape connectivity vision, you know, by the February.
• 14:16
  It was called the Florida Ecological Greenways Network, and it still exists. But my contribution was naming it the Florida Wildlife Corridor so that we could try to build public and political support for its protection. And it's one of those ideas that you don't necessarily think about on your own that nature needs to be connected. But some of the science and some of the wildlife, you know, tell us that story. Right.
• 14:39
  And we know it from ducks, we know it from flyways and migratory species, where they stop over, where they travel, what they need to fuel their journey, what they need for their breeding grounds. These terrestrial wildlife do the same thing and where the bears travel to connect their populations. You know, I spent a lot of my focus on panthers because it's the most exciting, charismatic, wide ranging, and unique species in the state of Florida that's also our state animal. But you could pick any number of other species who can tell the same story. And the Florida black bear is really the initial inspiration for me for the Florida wildlife corridor idea.
• 15:14
  Now the Florida wildlife corridor idea again was there, but the push to name it and to try to claim this as something Florida needs to save is inspired by the black bear because there used to be a bear in every county in the state of Florida and they got squeezed down to seven semi isolated subpopulations. So you've got bears down in the Everglades, you've got bears up at the Georgia Florida line, you have bears in Ocala National Forest, another big pocket of bears out in the Western Panhandle, but they're getting disconnected from one another. Right. And keeping the genetic continuity between those bear populations is pretty much synonymous with protecting the Florida wildlife corridor.
• 15:52
  Jimbo Robinson: And so for the listeners that don't know what a corridor is, it's basically an inter interstate system for for animals to travel and and to be protected. Correct?
• 16:02
  Carlton Ward: That's right. And it's it's not, you know, it's not just like a hallway. It's a hallway with all the rooms connected to it.
• 16:08
  Jimbo Robinson: Yes.
• 16:09
  Carlton Ward: And so this is large scale connected habitat. And Florida is a great proving grounds for the concept because Florida is already more than 25% public land. So you have the stepping stones in place. You've got Everglade National Park in the South, Ocala National Forest in the center, the Osceola National Forest and the Okefenokee Swamp straddling the Georgia, Florida line. Apalachicola National Forest moving into the Panhandle.
• 16:33
  175 state parks and wildlife management areas, state forests kind of scattered in between. But those pieces of the puzzle will be completely surrounded by development if we don't protect the farms and the ranches through the connective tissue between them. Yep. In the state of Florida, we still have a fifth of the state by land mass and cattle ranch. Almost half the state is forested.
• 16:57
  People don't necessarily think that about Florida. And 60% of those forests, so you know, a quarter of the state of Florida is in privately owned forest. And people driving down the highway or flying over an airplane see all that green space and might assume that it's protected. But that's private land, and that land could be one of two things. It could be conserved into the future as a working landscape with a conservation easement, or it's gonna be developed.
• 17:24
  Right. And those are really it's a binary choice in the state of Florida. Because you have a thousand people a day moving here, massive population pressure, and if it's not conserved, eventually it's gonna be lost. And that's that's the moment we face now. The idea of the wildlife corridor, it's that combination of public parks and preserves with the connective tissue of working farms, ranches and forest that together make the connected habitat.
• 17:49
  Wow.
• 17:56
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 18:11
  Jimbo Robinson: You know, hunters often talk about being part of the landscape. How did walking thousands of miles across the Florida Wildlife Corridor change the way you see your role in the wild?
• 18:22
  Carlton Ward: It was really interesting to kind of move at an animal's pace. You know, you're not just flying by it on the highway. You're seeing it the way a bear or a panther would experience the landscape. And so when you're five miles away, you hear the road and you hear the car screaming down that road. And you start to kind of see it from a different point of view.
• 18:43
  You also realize how much connected land still exists, and it gives a ton of motivation to try to try to fight for that. And really, this this effort for the Florida Wildlife Quarter was motivated by wildlife, but ultimately it's about people. And the most inspiring thing was to connect with the landowners and the property managers and the wildlife biologists for the different agencies who are like the heroes on the front lines of conservation keeping that land alive. Yep. And hearing their stories and seeing how they all want to be part of the solution and how much is being sacrificed or given to try to keep those options open to keep that land protected.
• 19:28
  So that that was a huge motivation. It became kind of a corridor of people from Yeah. Adjacent ranchers and landowners and all these all these conservation heroes who, you know, people on the coastline or in the cities don't even know are out there.
• 19:42
  Jimbo Robinson: Right. It all made sense this morning listening to you talk. I've driven from Tallahassee towards Tennessee down 10, Highway 10, and you pass thousands upon thousands of miles of fence. And I've always wondered, why did they put so much money in the fence that runs down this interstate? Well, I had no idea what it was.
• 20:05
  And then this morning, you talked about, you know, the corridors and and the going underneath and and the underpass of those for wildlife to travel. And that fence, I'm assuming, is to keep them from going bears, I would assume, was probably the number one or maybe it's the panthers and others, but to keep the animals off the highway?
• 20:21
  Carlton Ward: That's typically the motivation and that, you know, it it gets harder on private lands when they get smaller because people don't want their access blocked. Right. But where you have public land or private land under easement along a highway, first off, it's in a self interest from safety of motorists Right. That you put up cross fencing. You know, eight foot cross fencing with raised with barbed wire up top deters the animals from just wandering out on the highway.
• 20:47
  But you combine that with strategically placed wildlife crossings in Florida or in the South, it's often wildlife underpasses, and it just funnels the animals under the road. And it works well. Once they learn it, they know it, and that becomes their pattern.
• 21:00
  Jimbo Robinson: And and that's kinda one of the photos you were talking about earlier on in this in this episode was that's the image you were trying to get.
• 21:06
  Carlton Ward: Yeah. I was trying to show these things work. And like how many people, tens of thousands of people drive down that interstate every single day without knowing that there could be a bear or panther walking beneath them.
• 21:17
  Old Timer Minute: Right.
• 21:18
  Carlton Ward: And they're out there and it's an example of how we can coexist. And I think that the those wildlife crossings are great. I think they're a conceptual gateway to think about connecting landscape.
• 21:31
  Jimbo Robinson: Yeah.
• 21:31
  Carlton Ward: Because you know, our orientation to the world as humans navigating this planet is our transportation infrastructure. Whether you're riding a train or driving a car, you know, how you map yourself from one place to the you're following a path, you're following a roadway. And so that's our that's our touch point to the world. When you get to where that roadway intersects a wildlife passageway, it opens up your mind to think about, oh, what do they need? Where do they travel?
• 21:57
  Where where do they go beyond this road? And it's it's all in terminology and semantics, but I want people to think about the wildlife corridor as a large connected habitat. The best wild places that remain. And the wildlife crossing is that technical solution that helps the wildlife get above or beneath the highway.
• 22:17
  Jimbo Robinson: So you spent thousands of miles in the field. There there's no way you haven't documenting these wild places. What's one encounter that changed how you think about conservation in North America?
• 22:27
  Carlton Ward: One encounter changed the way I think about conservation in North America. Could be a photo. There there's a rancher named Elton Langford who I met while photographing a Babcock Ranch. Elton's an impressive cowboy hero. He's a thirteenth generation Floridian descended from the Spanish whose ancestors sold cattle to the Spanish and to the English and the Spanish again.
• 22:47
  Like like full credibility, full blown Florida cowboy. And the way he got and understood how the Florida panther could help save his way of life was super inspiring motivating. Because he started to see it as well, he he says and he's a character in the film Path of the Panther. And he basically says, well, I don't have to like that cat, but if he and I can get along, people aren't gonna spend millions of dollars to save the cowboy. And if we can be in this together, saving the panther can help save my way of life.
• 23:16
  Jimbo Robinson: Wow. I can see where that that hit home.
• 23:18
  Carlton Ward: Yeah. Because you're you're used to you know, there's a certain caution or animosity even towards predators by ranchers throughout throughout the country. Sometimes it's because they actually eat the calves. Right? It's a real threat.
• 23:31
  Also, it's they're often an extension of the federal government or an outside intrusion on private property or sovereignty that is a concern for people. But in the case of Florida, with the development coming from all sides, anyone who kind of looks behind their horizon can see that the panther and the rancher are ultimately in it together. Right. And I think that's a refreshing perspective to think about that could apply to other places around the country.
• 23:58
  Jimbo Robinson: Which leads me into this question. For hunters, conservation is often tied to access and habitat. Right? How can the Florida wildlife core model inspire other efforts across regions other regions that DU works in?
• 24:14
  Carlton Ward: My dream is for every state in the country to name its own corridor, tell its story, and develop conservation solutions for its protection. And if there's a Georgia wildlife corridor and a South Carolina wildlife corridor and a North Carolina wildlife corridor, all that's super important because then the legislative bodies of those states can enact conservation easement measures or other incentives to help the private landowners go into a conservation solution. And then those state corridors build onto one another to become a whole coastal plain or Appalachian Corridor. Right. And it all connects.
• 24:50
  There's a real power in naming something and identifying with it. Because as we saw in Florida, conservation can get polarizing. It can become an urban versus rural thing. It can become a liberal environmentalist telling a conservative landowner what to do with their land. And those attitudes and tensions exist throughout the country.
• 25:08
  But once you present the solution in the form of a wildlife corridor, it becomes something that people can see why. Right. You know, you lose the why unless you have the map or the identity for what you're trying to save. And we went from bitterly divided to unanimous bipartisan support largely because it was presented in the context of this wildlife corridor where you can measure your progress. It's not some UN open ended decree on the land, or it's not this endless land grab.
• 25:37
  It's a very specific strategic goal built on incentives to try to help preserve the connectivity of the landscape. Right. I think people get it. And and the more we can present conservation as infrastructure, the more it's gonna find its way in to the planning, you know, without naming it, without presenting it as a corridor, it doesn't get considered with equal weighting as a highway or as a new utility corridor. Right.
• 26:02
  But if you have them all in the same conversation, the likelihood of the green corridor persisting is much higher.
• 26:08
  Jimbo Robinson: Your path of the Panther project played a role in influencing real policy, like you were just saying. What does it take to move from a powerful image to actual legislative action?
• 26:17
  Carlton Ward: The the path of the Panther project was really designed with the intent of inspiring legislative action. So from the very beginning, we were wanting to communicate the importance and the power and the need for the Florida Wildlife Corridor to the decision makers. In my organization at Wildpath, that's what we specialize in. Like, our our whole focus is helping identify wildlife corridors and then inspire their protection through storytelling. Yeah.
• 26:44
  And it's storytelling without a legislative or other tangible outcome doesn't rank for us. Yeah. Because we don't have time to sit around and tell stories just to inspire and awe and entertain. You know, we only have decades at most to preserve some of these really critical habitat connections. And so the storytelling is really focused on decision makers.
• 27:08
  And National Geographic is a really important partner for us in that because the National Geographic brand is trusted and it's bipartisan. Yes. And how many media brands are there in the world today that are equally trusted across the political spectrum? Right. And so that's part of the design.
• 27:26
  And so for the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act, we had some important philanthropists and important supporters who helped us get the intent and attention of the legislature. But then we also had a National Geographic branded short film told to the voices of the people who live and work in the corridor to present to the decision makers at the same time the legislation was being considered. Yeah. And it and you present it in a way that's not about just saving the wildlife, it's about saving the way of life. And that really seemed to strike home.
• 27:54
  Jimbo Robinson: If you were sitting around a campfire with a
• 27:57
  Carlton Ward: bunch of Ducks Unlimited volunteers and supporters, what story would you tell them to remind them of what they do? Supporting DU and volunteering matters most. Well, the brand of conservation that Ducks Unlimited is leading right now is the path forward for twenty first century conservation. There are certainly cases where more public land is helpful and beneficial or even needed, but the lion's share of conservation that needs to be achieved in this country should be through conservation easements. And that's about giving farmers, ranchers, and forest managers tools to protect that landscape.
• 28:34
  And that's what's needed for waterfowl habitat. That's what's needed for watersheds. That's what's needed for climate resilience. It's what's needed for just keeping a healthy planet. And we are moving as as Adam Putnam was saying recently, we're moving out of that regulatory phase of environmentalism and into more of an incentive based private land solution.
• 28:59
  And Ducks Unlimited is one of the most trusted and effective partners in brokering and advancing that. I mean, I'm in awe of the million acres a year that's a benchmark for your conservation. And yes, you might be motivated to do it for the waterfowl, you love to hunt and you love to see on the landscape, but every other species in that bird's domain is the beneficiary.
• 29:22
  Jimbo Robinson: Absolutely.
• 29:22
  Carlton Ward: And so, you know, for the same reasons that I leaned into the Florida panther, 200 square mile home range, widest ranging terrestrial land animal, if you save the land for the panther, you save the land for thousands of other species.
• 29:36
  Jimbo Robinson: Oh,
• 29:36
  Carlton Ward: yeah. Well, the flyway takes it even to the next level. If you save the flyway connecting all of the North American continent, how many other species benefit from that?
• 29:46
  Jimbo Robinson: Oh, absolutely. And it's it's it's a then you showed a picture of it today, but it's a it could be the the road map for the corridor. Right? Because those habitats are where so many other animals live and benefit along that that route, which a lot of times follows a river or a body of water, connected body of waters.
• 30:06
  Carlton Ward: Yeah. Or coastline. Or coastline. Absolutely. And I think that I think in in in the deepest way, we as humans, like, know this
• 30:15
  Jimbo Robinson: We're acting on it.
• 30:16
  Carlton Ward: But we've forgotten. Yeah. Our our urban and suburban lives have made it easy to forget that nature needs to stay connected.
• 30:25
  Jimbo Robinson: No doubt. I mean,
• 30:26
  Carlton Ward: what are we in America three generations, maybe four generations at most, removed from living very close to the land?
• 30:33
  Jimbo Robinson: Yes. Three generations is what they say.
• 30:36
  Carlton Ward: And as a species, it's biologically at least 200,000 years old. Right. You know, we are hardwired to nature and hardwired to connecting with the land the same way that a mallard or a bear or a panther does.
• 30:51
  Jimbo Robinson: Right.
• 30:51
  Carlton Ward: And we have so much more in common with these species than we identify with or recognize. And that's why I think that the species are gonna show us what we need to do to save this planet. And you just have to look at their path and look at their story. The the ducks show us, the panthers show us, the whale sharks show us, and their movements are at a scale that we can understand and really bring people together into those solutions.
• 31:15
  Jimbo Robinson: Yeah. So if you so taking that and and and as we begin to to kinda wrap up, but if you could challenge our listeners, the Ducks Unlimited audience as a whole, hunters, volunteers, conservationists, with one action to help protect landscapes at scale, what would it be?
• 31:32
  Carlton Ward: Well, wherever you are in this country, on this planet, you're in a wildlife corridor. And my charge is to name your corridor and tell its story. And lean into that from the perspective of the duck you're protecting or the watershed you wanna keep healthy for the future. You've got to name it and you've got to tell its story. The work this organization is doing is phenomenal, but the people in New York City or the members of the more public facing conservation organizations don't know the work that's being done here.
• 32:06
  Keep doing the amazing work, but tell your story.
• 32:08
  Jimbo Robinson: Yeah. Yeah. So where can people find you?
• 32:11
  Carlton Ward: I'm on Instagram at Carlton Ward. Our organization Wildpath, w I l d p a t h, also there, wildpath.com, carltonward.com. Engage with us. Let's let's figure out ways to scale this model. I think Ducks Unlimited has been a phenomenal partner, really leading the way in private lands conservation.
• 32:32
  And to the degree that our storytelling can align with your solutions and support one another, that's really exciting.
• 32:39
  Jimbo Robinson: Absolutely. Well, Carlton, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time this afternoon to be here, be on the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. And and, I mean, you know, you were a little late, but that's because you were so popular. I mean, your line for your books and and signing the books was, you know, blocking the whole hallway up there, that's a testament to you and and the work that you're doing. And and, man, on behalf of Ducks Unlimited and all, we appreciate what what you do.
• 33:02
  And and, man, your photography is amazing. And it is truly I I am a very amateur photographer, but what what you're doing is amazing. Keep it up, and I hope that we get to maybe do this down the road again and see kinda how we've aligned ourselves along the way.
• 33:18
  Carlton Ward: I look forward to that. Thanks so much.
• 33:19
  Jimbo Robinson: Absolutely. So to all of our listeners out there, thank you for listening to another episode of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. Go check out Carlton Ward and all the work he's doing, his organization Wild Path, and you can see his movie, Path of the Panther.
• 33:36
  Carlton Ward: Yeah. That's on National Geographic on Disney Plus.
• 33:39
  Jimbo Robinson: On Disney Plus. I mean, kids and I are gonna watch it when we get home, for sure. But to everybody listening out there, thank you for staying in to another episode of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. Watch out for Panthers.
• 33:52
  VO: That's a wrap for today's episode of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast brought to you by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. From post hunt unwinds to celebrations back at camp, Bird Dog delivers award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and check out ducks.org/dupodcast for more stories, science, and all things waterfowl. Guest opinions are their own and don't necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited.
• 34:17
  Until next time, stay fired up, stay focused, and stay tuned to the Ducks.