Granola-stealing Monkeys and Butterfly-watching in Arizona: Chatting with Conservation Biologist Peter Soroye

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Conservation Biologist Peter Soroye

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“This place is so, so cool. The outdoors are just so amazing.”

Peter shares how a fascination with the outdoors during his younger years led him to a career in conservation.

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Peter Soroye

Peter Soroye (he/him) is a conservation biologist and the Assessment and Outreach Coordinator for the Key Biodiversity Areas Program at Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. He strives to use his power for good as a science communicator and hopes that one day we can get our act together enough for him to not need to call himself a conservation biologist.

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Transcript

Peter Soroye: We would go there for weeks at a time. You know, we would bring the car, set up the campsite, um, bring some bikes and we'd have canoes and we'd just stay there for, you know, like three weeks at a time. Um, in good weather, in bad weather, hearing all the sounds of rain hitting the tent and lightning and the thunder flashing. Um and then you smell fresh leaves and the, you know, the wet ground. You see, you know, worms popping up and salamanders crawling about, and the birds are, you know, coming out from the rain and shaking off the water and flying out there. I think that like stands out in my mind as like one moment where it's just like, this place is so, so cool. Um, and, you know, the outdoors are just so amazing.

Science World: That’s conservation biologist, Peter Soroye. He’s telling us about the camping trips his family would take to Algonquin Park when he was younger. Peter is the Assessment and Outreach Coordinator for the Key Biodiversity Areas Program at Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. He’s also a birder and a self-professed butterfly nerd.

PS: Before I was a birder I was a big butterfly watcher. Um, and so I spent, at one point, a summer catching butterflies for research. Um, we were kind of monitoring populations of butterflies around Ottawa. And then I spent a summer in Arizona, actually, catching lizards—completely unrelated—but of course in my downtime, it was a really exciting place to look for butterflies as well. We were in the cloud—what they call the cloud mountains or the sky islands—so they are these, you know, mountains in southern Arizona and really unique like, uh, unique environments and ecosystems. Um, and a lot of really cool butterflies. 

SW: At  the Wildlife Conservation Society, Peter identifies Key Biodiversity Areas or KBAs—sites that are important for the preservation of biodiversity.

PS: I am really, really excited  to work at Wildlife Conservation Society every day. Um, it's a really cool organization, really cool group. Wildlife Conservation Society Canada is a group of scientists who are really interested in using science to influence conservation policy and I get to help identify some of the most important areas that we need to conserve with the hopes that it will help bring, you know, more attention to these places and help, you know, establish different types of protected areas, whether it's, you know, a government protected area or whether it's an Indigenous protected and conserved area. Or whether it just, you know, the designation might help draw funding and things to things that local groups and nations are already doing in these sites. Um, so it's cool, you know, applying this KBA designation is something that has the potential to be really helpful at local scales and for a lot of different types of conservation actions and decisions and stewardship.

SW: Peter mentions that identifying these areas is not just a scientific exercise. The Wildlife Conservation Society makes sure to involve naturalist groups, municipalities, Indigenous peoples and local communities.

PS: There's a really bad history in conservation of excluding locals and Indigenous peoples from their lands in the name of conservation and also just completely ignoring the incredible wealth of knowledge that Indigenous peoples have built over thousands of years. So it's really important to try to  acknowledge that and then try to correct it as well. And I think Wildlife Conservation Society Canada is really committed to recognizing that and working towards reconciliation. 

SW: Peter’s passion for conservation has taken him to different parts of the world—from Arizona to South Africa, and to the Lekki Conservation Centre in Nigeria

PS: It was so fun spending kind of the afternoon there with, you know, monkeys— I think it's Mona monkeys that are most common there [in the Lekki Conservation Centre]—and they're like hopping around, and they like reached into someone's backpack while I was there and stole a granola bar from them, which was absolutely hilarious. Um and then of course I was like checking out butterflies the entire time and like, the diversity of butterflies was just absolutely insane everywhere in Nigeria that I was. It was, you know, for a butterfly nerd, it was like actually a dream. It was crazy. Um, Peter from 10 years ago would be like really so, so hyped to see (I think) where I am right now and what I’m doing.

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From birders to conservationists to tech writers to oceanographers, these Black experts are making amazing contributions to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & design and math)!