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Rewilding Earth Podcast
Episode 165: Filming the Elusive El Tigre for “Borderlands Jaguar” with Austin Alvarado
00:34:14
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- [00:00]
Austin Alvarado
Foreign. It's not just setting up a camera, leaving and coming back and hoping for the best. It's doing the research on the front end and then understanding behavior on an individual level. And that when you nail the shot exactly the way you're intending to nail that shot, because you put in the time that could have taken weeks, could have taken months, could have taken years to get exactly what you thought it was that animal was going to do at the time you thought it was going to do it. Yeah, it is one of the best feelings ever.
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Podcast Announcer
You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
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Jack Humphrey
I'm your host, Jack Humphrey.
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Podcast Announcer
Near the end of 2025, I spoke to Ryan Olinger from Finn and Fur Films about the new release of a documentary called American Southwest. The film received a lot of attention and the visual storytelling was spectacular. Today I have another treat for listeners who love that documentary. Borderlands Jaguar is set to release on January 13th and is a remarkable exploration of the rugged, untamed heart of the northern jaguar reserve. Joining me today is Austin Alvarado, a wildlife cinematographer who traded his oars as a Rio Grande river guide for the patient, grueling work of tracking one of the most elusive predators on the planet. Austin doesn't just take photos. He embeds himself in the landscape, spending weeks in the remote backcountry to fine tune equipment and wait for a living shadow to pass through the frame. What makes this film and our conversation so compelling is the human transformation at its center. We dive into the story of the northern jaguar reserve in Mexico, where a cultural shift around jaguars is quietly taking place. We talk about the men who once hunted jaguars but have now become their fiercest advocates and protectors. It's a masterclass in empathy and community, proving that the best way to protect the corridor is to first heal the relationship between the people and the land.
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Jack Humphrey
Austin brings a quiet, heavy authority to.
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Podcast Announcer
His work, a perspective sharpened by grit and stillness in those long, solitary months in the high desert. I think you'll find his journey as inspiring as the footage he captures.
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Jack Humphrey
To find out where you can see.
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Podcast Announcer
The film when it launches, make sure you go to rewilding.org pod episode165 for more details.
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Jack Humphrey
Austin, welcome to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
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Austin Alvarado
Hey, thanks. I'm excited to be here.
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Jack Humphrey
I am super excited. I'm kind of becoming a fan here of Finn and Fur Films and all the people you run around with. We just had Ryan Olinger on not too long ago and he was teasing the American Southwest. It hadn't come out yet either. And so when I told people we were going to have you on and they were like, why? I can't even see where.
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Podcast Announcer
What do you mean?
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Jack Humphrey
It's like it's a pending film. Borderlands Jaguar. Come on, you gotta get on board. So I'm learning more and more about your little gang of wildlife photographers and editors and the masterful work that you guys do. First of all, congratulations. Borderlands is beautiful, exciting, and even a little tear jerking. So great job.
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Austin Alvarado
Oh, man, I really appreciate that. Yeah, thanks. And you know, the gang, the gang is just a group of friends trying to figure it out. So I appreciate the recognition there.
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Jack Humphrey
Oh, man, it doesn't look like that from this end. And I would really love to go behind the scenes with you guys sometime and just watch how you do what you do. Because I bet you it has that feeling of just we're out here doing our thing. But man, the thing that you guys do is world class stuff. I said it to Ryan like 100 times. I think he got tired of me saying it. But it's for real and I'm hearing it from everybody. It's not just me. So we should just get into it. I was doing some background work here, looking at you, and I have to start with. I don't know where you typically start your story, getting people caught up to who you are and where you've been to this point, but I found out you're a river rat.
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Austin Alvarado
Like a serious river rat, man, through and through. Yeah. I ended up living out in West Texas in a small town called Teralingua, Texas, right on the border between Big Bend Ranch State park and Big Bend National Park. Uh, and that was to be a river guide on the Rio Grande. I fell in love with the Rio. I was only going to be interlingua for what I thought was going to be a short season and that ended up being a decade. And that really is where I started my curiosity in my filmmaking career. I met Ben out there, I met Ryan out there. I met several people from the. From the Finn Fur family out there. And yeah, I kind of owe everything really to the Rio Grande and Big Bent.
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Jack Humphrey
Well, how did photography get started for you? That's kind of a crazy thing to do. You must have heard that's no way to make a living. And yet you did it anyway. What's up with that?
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Austin Alvarado
Lucky for me, at the time I was already not making a living. I don't know if you know this, but river guiding isn't exactly a very fruitful career. Path.
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Jack Humphrey
You were already a pro.
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Austin Alvarado
Yeah, exactly. I was good. I was good at being broke. I was actually an expert at being broke. And so when my. My curiosity with photography came up, it was really just me with. With a pretty simple T Rebel Canon camera just going around fig out. But really, it wasn't until I was asked to be a part of a film with Ben called the river in the Wall that I got an insight into the film world. And really the biggest thing I got out of that trip. I shouldn't say the biggest thing, but one of many important things I got out of that trip were that the people filming, you know, while they're talented and very experienced, I trust myself to learn a skill set and I trust myself to be just as hardworking. And so I. I really got motivated to figure out film after that whole experience. And a while I was just piddling around, working for free, volunteering wherever I could, until eventually I got my first paid gig and did well enough in that that kept on involving to some other gigs. And here we are now. It's been a really privileged and fortunate, fortunate path to this point.
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Jack Humphrey
Yeah, here we are now. Like you're an old man, but you're still just starting out, which is just. I'm envious for that reason you. That you figured it out. You figured out what you love and you figured out how to make it pay and to be able to stay in it and everything and still really, with the credits you have under your belt and you're just getting started, is. It's gotta be. It feels like it should be very, very exciting. Yeah.
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Austin Alvarado
I've gone through a lot of life experiences lately that have really made me reflect on truly how unique and special it is that I get to do what I do. And I don't take that lightly. I don't mean to brag about it. I just. I. It's more to say how grateful I am for everything that I do.
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Jack Humphrey
So I wanted to talk a little bit more about the film, you know, for the other films that you had done leading up to this. It feels to me like this is kind of. I mean, you're sharing the spotlight with just a couple of people here. Is this one of the first ones or the first one where you're really kind of taking the lead more than you had in previous films?
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Austin Alvarado
Yeah, no, I've been fortunate enough to be in front of camera for a few other projects. It's always hard to see yourself in front of a camera and on a screen. And so it's. While it's not my favorite thing, per se. It definitely makes me reflect and feel appreciative of being able to play that role. I've done quite a bit of camera trapping in the past, quite a big bit of cinematography in the past where I've taken lead on different scenes, different projects. And so doing the actual work that you see on camera, that's not necessarily new to me. In fact, I would say I'm very comfortable doing the work itself. I have a whole lot more experience doing the work than actually being in front of the camera and showing the work.
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Jack Humphrey
But.
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Podcast Announcer
Yeah.
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Jack Humphrey
So Northern Jaguar Reserve, was that a new place to you when you started all of this or had you been there before?
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Austin Alvarado
It was a totally new place to me. We were lucky to have Ryan Hollinger, who is part of the Pin and for team, and he had spent a lot of time down there with his wife Rita in the past. And so he had a familiar knowledge of the place and he was super, super motivating in us wanting to go down there and check it out. And so we had some background information from him. But being there for the first time, it is, it's a reserve, but it's surrounded by these other ranches. And once upon a time is a ranch itself. And one, one of my first thoughts when I stepped foot on it was this must be one of the wildest ranches I've ever stepped foot on. You know, you. You go on ranches out here in the US and you feel like it's maybe not curated or manicured necessarily, but it just, it. There's a level of wilderness that's taken away from impact of just managing ranches here in the US There in the Northern Jaguar Reserve and the surrounding ranches, it feels as wild as if it. As if they weren't ranches, if that makes any sense.
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Jack Humphrey
Yeah, you went through a lot of places to get there and you've seen an awful lot of cal. Burnt landscape. And I know you're a huge hiker and you've been everywhere in the. In Southwest, all over Texas, Big Bend, all of that. So you know what the usual stuff looks like. And I imagine walking onto this reserve had an impact based on just comparison.
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Austin Alvarado
Oh, 100%. 100%. Like I said, it just felt so much more wild than any other human managed ranch I've ever been on. There is a degree of danger might not be the right word, but a degree of I'm vulnerable here and not because of another human, but because this is real wilderness set that most people I would say aren't just ready to be out out in any given day. And that excites me as someone who loves being in those type of places, that's something I seek. I seek the wild spaces that you feel. You know, I feel like a lot of times nature and the outdoors, different levels, different degrees of wild, and they're all beneficial for some reason to somebody. But finding those places that really kind of make. Make you a little bit more perked up and alert, that, that really excites me.
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Podcast Announcer
Yeah.
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Jack Humphrey
Doug Peacock, I'll paraphrase, but he says it's not wilderness unless there's something out there that can eat you.
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Austin Alvarado
Exactly.
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Jack Humphrey
You're down there, you're there, and you have this monumental task before you. How much of what's on the film did you guys set out to do and how much was, holy crap, did we just do that?
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Austin Alvarado
Our first initial plan was for Brian Olinger, Ben Masters and myself to head down there as the first initial convoy and really get an idea of what we think is possible and what we think is not possible. Really, that's, that's just as important. And we got the lay of the land. Working with the ranch hand, working with the researchers and the biologists. Miguel Lackey, Laco, all these amazing human beings who've been on the reserve for a long time, who, mind you, without their knowledge and without their expertise, none of what we did would have been possible. But we went down there first time and took about two to three weeks to really kind of get a lay of the land. We set up a few of the research camera traps, just kind of your typical Browning reconyx things that you see used for research. And then we set up some of our more high end camera traps. We go back to the US after that, after that two or three week stance and really game plan on a storyline, mind you. We've done jaguar. We've worked on a jaguar film before, a shorter piece out in Tamil in Cielo, which is a cloud forest on the border state of Tamaulipas with Texas. And so we kind of had a concept of what was possible there, thinking that maybe the same sort of storyline could be possible or a similar storyline could be possible in the northern jaguar reserve. When we got to the northern jaguar, we immediately realized how different of situation and how different of a story this was going to have to be. Fast forward with kind of having a concept of what we want to capture. I started going back, I think every six weeks for about two to three weeks at a time and to get there is a journey. I fly from Texas or Tucson and then make the six to eight hour journey, drive to the closest village and then about a six, eight hour drive through mountain roads to get to the first camp. My camera traps are set up on the reserve at various locations. And so each location, give or take two or three hours of driving between each location and then hiking up to that location. And hiking can take anywhere between a few hours to a full day. And the logistics of just getting to these cameras, you know, we're talking a week's worth of work just to go see them, just to put hands on them, just put eyes on them. We end up not having a lot of success for the first few months. And granted, camera trap work is always pretty frustrating work. It's a lot of problem solving, it's a lot of fixing errors. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And it's really just staying on top of the maintenance, but more so staying committed to what we think is possible on a day to day. Like I said, we could be driving a few hours and then hiking a few hours and then I could very well stay put at that same location for days on end just to make sure that everything's working right, that I'm, that it's working the way I want to work, that the angles are appropriately working at nighttime as well during the daytime, that my lights are coming in at the right angle that I'm hoping they come in from, that the focal length is right. You know, this is, this is guess and check. On a very long scale. We have an ultimate goal, but really all these little fine details take a lot of time to get just right. And we operate under that same sort of procedure for months on end until we start getting some real fruitful footage. And from there is where we got really creative in the film.
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Jack Humphrey
You made it pretty clear how hard you guys were struggling. And I was going to ask you who's. Who's the biggest wildlife vandal of trail cameras in your experience? Who's the one that screws up the most of your stuff by finding the camera and playing with it? I have an idea, but I wanted to hear what you think.
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Austin Alvarado
Your favorite one is by far bears. Bears are those curious, just most aggressive little rascals and they'll get into just about anything. We try to do a good job of really setting our cameras in a very strong way. And man, I've seen bears completely knock over what, what we would imagine to be just a bulletproof setup. And it's. Yeah, they'll, they'll get into just about anything.
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Jack Humphrey
Well, I wanted to ask that. It kind of brings a dramatic flair to the whole thing because it's so hard to do what you do. And then you describe very eloquently how you need to just become part of the landscape. You got to visit, you got to stay a long time, you got to research, you've got to, you got to get a feel for places almost, I would imagine. I think it's going to be tonight and I think she's going to be there, or I think this, or, you know, I imagine you have to get to that level. And is that where the, the risky thing, the risky part comes in where you're just like, let's just go for it? I think I'm just. This is the biggest hunch ever, but I know she's going to be there.
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Austin Alvarado
And that's exactly right. Just hearing you describe that makes me excited. Getting into the flow state of starting to understand pattern, starting to understand behavior of, in. Of an individual. With this, it was jaguar. But with any, any animal that we're camera trapping, it's not just setting up a camera, leaving and coming back and hoping for the best. It's doing the research on the front end and then understanding behavior on an individual level. And that when you nail the shot exactly the way you're intending to nail that shot, because you put in the time that could have taken weeks, could have taken months, could have taken years to get exactly what you thought it was that animal was going to do at the time you thought it was going to do it. Yeah. It is one of the best feelings ever.
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Jack Humphrey
Now, you guys on the credits didn't do this alone and no one ever does. Right. When I'm talking mainly here about the ranch hands and the former jaguar hunters, what's it like working with somebody who used to hunt jaguars?
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Austin Alvarado
Yeah. Yeah. First, I do nothing in wildlife filmmaking and conservation work that isn't completely dependent on the work of the people doing the work on the ground, doing the work every day. The experts, the biologists, the ranch hands. And this was no exception. Miguel, the ranch manager, head researcher there, Lacko. Lucky. But I'll. These ranch hands, these guys who used to hunt jaguar on the reserve itself, everyone added such a level of insight that made everything that we did there possible. With that said, I don't get a lot of opportunity to see the actual human development side of conservation from a cultural shift towards a back half of, of an intended project. And what I mean by that is with a lot of stuff. You know, there's a side A and side B of how you deal with whatever conservation issue or management strategy you may have. And in this instance, that shift from the people who actually used to hunt jaguars on the actual reserve itself, to then become the protectors of the jaguars, to then be the spokesman to the other neighboring ranches, to invite them on conservation projects, to do that same sort of protective work for these jaguars. It makes you realize how conservation work, along with any work, is a matter of just having empathy and understanding. And to be around these guys who bust their ass and work hard to do what they do and to have no ego about to do what they do to versus now, I found it extremely, extremely inspiring and gives a real humility to the work that is conservation, because conservation only works if people buy in. And the most important people to buy in are those who might have been part of the problem in the past. And I don't want to say, in fact, that was. That was a bad phrase, not part of the problem, but just had different opposing views previously. Yeah, they're incredible. And these guys changed their mindset of what they think of jaguars, but by all means, they're still ranchers in northern Mexico. Every sense, every feeling you get from them is still true to who they are. It's. It's a vaquero in that northern ranching world. That, that. That lifestyle and that feeling you get from them is. Is all the same. They've just had a change of heart is all. And I think that's super important because it's easy to write people off when they may seem what you're not familiar or agreeable with, really. It's just a. It's just a matter of. Of having empathy.
- [18:38]
Jack Humphrey
What about surrounding communities? I've talked to a good number of jaguar activists and biologists and Chris Tompkins and. And, yeah, and about what they're trying to do is mostly community work, community outreach and education and also showing the money like 100. Your economy is based on this.
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Austin Alvarado
Exactly.
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Jack Humphrey
Which isn't good for the jaguars. But we will be there for you and help you with the economy and the switch. And it's just amazing how they get that accomplished from people who have such set views about things.
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Austin Alvarado
Oh, you got it. You're getting it right on. You know, it's. I think it goes back to having that empathy. Right. Understanding that this is. There are certain things that. That affect a livelihood and certain realities that we do need to face, and the economics behind it is one of them. You know, as a Program that the Northern jaguar reserve is working with alongside these neighboring ranches, where they give prize money for documentation of various cats. Not. Not just jaguars, all cats. And there's a. There's a different scaling system on. On how much they make per photo or per individual. And it. It has had an immense impact on people willing. Right. Just willing to hear what they have to say as far as the importance of. Of what they're doing with this jaguar reserve. It seems so simple, but. But it's so profoundly unique in a lot of different conservation work where you're putting your money where your mouth is and reckoning with the economics of it all, and which is huge.
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Jack Humphrey
All right, I want to hear what you learned about jaguars that you didn't know before this project.
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Austin Alvarado
You know, I mentioned earlier that I had spent some time with jaguars in Tamaulipas in El Cielo, and the, the level of interaction, a human to jaguar interaction in El Cielo and Tamaulipas compared to that in the northern jaguar reserve is night and day. In El Cielo, their issues are literally in town. They have pets that if they're not guarded well enough, they're not put away well enough that they may be liable to being preyed on by jaguars. They have sightings constantly by people. They have a closer vicinity, and that's due to a lot of variables, but they have incorporated the jaguar as one of their leading tourist attractions as well. They really champion the fact that they live with jaguars there. Compared to the reserve, where we know jaguars are there, but the sightings are few and far in between. They have such a big territory and they have these deep canyons where they can get lost, that the actual human interaction with the jaguars is pretty limited. And I was pretty. I shouldn't say surprised, but I was. I was caught off guard by the fact that we have this amazing reserve doing great work with a pretty limited amount of human jaguar interaction. It's the. The fact that the reserve plays a role in, let's call it a corridor, a highway system between south of the reserve and north of reserve, which encompasses the US as well. How important that is and the fact that the pieces around the reserve still feel so wild is what makes it that much more impactful, that much more important compared to El Cielo and Tamaulipas, where while their interactions are pretty embedded to their life on a sheer volume level, the reality is, is they have to cover a hundred miles of human population corridors that would make it nearly impossible to cross highways and roads and buildings that they're really kind of cut off. And when I say cut off, I mean cut off from the north, from the US and understanding how it's not just about where they're located but how they're connected to everything else. Maybe I didn't learn that, but more I acknowledge the importance of that. Being on the reserve.
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Jack Humphrey
I think the long running joke is people who study like mountain lions and they've studied them professionally, I went to school, everything, and they haven't seen one in the wild yet. And then all these people on the Internet just post pictures of mountain lions, really get their goats.
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Austin Alvarado
First of all, oh, it gets me going sometimes. I mean I've seen, I've filmed mountain lions, I've been around mountains, mountain lions. It is very hard to see a mountain lion nonetheless. And when people just casually post up a cat that just cross around, I'm like, oh my gosh, it takes me months, months of day in town work to even get a, a glance at one. Much less they don't even know. They don't know. Oh my gosh, they really don't know.
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Jack Humphrey
So I've been telling that little joke for a long, long time. But I finally got the real life in, in real time reaction of someone who understands exactly how frustrating that is.
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Austin Alvarado
Oh man, it really is. Yeah, it's, it's always not offensive, but also pretty frustrating whenever people are like, oh, why didn't you just post up over here? This is where I saw one two days ago. Like, well, because I'm not a psychic.
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Jack Humphrey
Yeah, I like it when in the picture you can see their eyes are just undilating. Meaning that the person just turned around and saved his own life by doing so because that cat was taking a closer look at it.
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Austin Alvarado
Exactly, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
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Jack Humphrey
I'm glad that people have those experiences and I'm sure that the people who have those experiences have a much bigger, stronger appreciation for nature than the day before.
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Austin Alvarado
I'm sure. I think it's hard to, to come across a big cat and not feel, feel sense of, of, of vulnerability and a new sense of appreciation, respect.
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Jack Humphrey
I saw a preteen mountain lion in person with a rescue I can't remember. I think was in Arizona or someplace and they were going around and just had them there for education. And there's something about being really, really close to something that big and wild and powerful, a predator especially. I don't know how to this day even describe it.
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Austin Alvarado
I've been lucky enough to have a few different species and individual cats look right at me and they know That I know that we're looking at each other. And.
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Jack Humphrey
Yeah, when they, when they observe you, you know, you're. Yeah, that's whole. That's totally different.
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Austin Alvarado
Yeah, it's, it feels spiritual. It feels, it feels damn scary. It feels exciting. It feels, you know, part of me is like, oh, I think I'm having a real connection with this cat. Meanwhile, the cat's like, I wonder if I could take him down or not. But yeah, no, there's, there is a, A mystery whenever that kind of locked eye experience happens. It's happened few and far between, but it has happened. And it's, man, it's, it's, it's something else.
- [25:22]
Jack Humphrey
I'm sure the cats don't go back to the little cat bar and tell all their buddies, man, I came so close to a human today, you guys.
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Austin Alvarado
He smelled like crap.
- [25:29]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, I was going to eat him, but no.
- [25:31]
Austin Alvarado
Yeah, yeah.
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Jack Humphrey
Give me a peck. So all alone, you're out in a place that it took days to get to or. And you just have a time to think. Everything's done and you're waiting or you got to sleep, but you can't sleep and you're just going through thoughts. Something really profound that happened that day or that week and you wish everybody knew about it. You wish you could get that feeling across somehow. An insight that you gained from something very profound happening out there.
- [25:57]
Austin Alvarado
Yeah, you know, I don't, I don't think this is unique to hear, but I don't have this feeling too often, but understanding that we are part of this wild world and we get to be as wild as we intend to be. And it can be super, super intimidating at first, it can be extremely uncomfortable at first. But we are part of all this. And when you're. And I remember I was on, on the side of the river, I just come down from checking some camera traps and I had some time to myself. I usually was rolling around the reserve with a ranch hand or two and you know, after a couple weeks together, you always tend to kind of go off and spend some time on your own after a long day. And, and so, yeah, I remember reflecting on, on we, we get to be as wild as we want to be. And it's, it's hard work, it's intimidating, but it's, it's within everyone's capability. The spectrum of how wild is for some people or how much work it would take to do. So, you know, that's the variable in that. That's different for everybody, but it's in us. It's in everybody. Yeah, I think we. We tend to lose sight in that. With all their comforts, it's easy to. I know I do. Yeah.
- [27:04]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah. So getting people out, like, I wish I could bottle this and bring it to everybody or make them come out here and grab their bottle of wild themselves. I've had many moments like that out there where it's just like, man, I wish I could just make everyone feel what I'm feeling right now out here with this experience. You're going to have a blast. Looking back on what you're doing right now in the next, you know, 20 years or so. Did I really do that?
- [27:30]
Austin Alvarado
Yeah.
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Jack Humphrey
You're being seen and appreciated, and you are part of the story of what's to come for jaguars in a very.
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Podcast Announcer
Very big way because of the work.
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Jack Humphrey
That you're doing directly. But what do you think outside of the work that you're doing needs to happen, should happen or is happening? Maybe there's some things that you know about jaguars and their future. Maybe more of them. Getting from the northern jaguar reserve up to cuenca los ho host and new mexico and arizona. What's it look like out there for you in that regard?
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Austin Alvarado
I mean, you're essentially stating everything. As far as my knowledge goes, that there are more and more sightings happening. And there is, you know, there's a surprising amount of entities doing a lot of. A lot of good work. I appreciate your compliments of me being seen and me being part of the story, but really, there's. There's. I played a. A small role in a very relative small amount of time compared to people. I mean, you mentioned turtle earlier. I've never met her in life, but I've heard about her for years now. She's a living legend. There's people who have been doing work at a tucson on the border, and there's a. There's a lot of these entities that are putting a lot of effort in and it's starting to be seen just like you've seen. There's. There's sightings in different places as well. It's all really exciting. It's all really, really exciting.
- [28:47]
Jack Humphrey
So I ask everybody, pretty much everybody, when they have things that I can imagine listeners going, wow, I wonder it'd be like to be him to do what he does. And I love the. The people that have the most interesting jobs in the world. There doesn't seem to be any formula whatsoever for them arriving at where they are today. You know, like, oh, I went to school and I did this and Then I got my. It never seems to work out that way. And I get the picture. It didn't work out exactly that way for you. But, but is there any kind of a formula you can have for I'm just going to go for what I want to do, which you did and you're doing and screw everything else, screw how hard it is, screw everything. I have to do this. This is my thing. What else would you tell somebody who's thinking about, I, I think this sounds hard, but it sounds rewarding. What do I do?
- [29:32]
Austin Alvarado
I think what I think asking yourself, are you willing to do this for the sake of just doing it? Are you willing to do it for no money? Do you get a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from just the fact that you get to do it? But you have to, you have to answer that very honestly because if there's a slightest amount of hesitation, then more times than not in anything, you know, I do, I do think that you'll end up finding a reason why it can't or won't work out. But if the answer is yes, I think the path really works out however it's supposed to work out for you.
- [30:02]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, we got to make more of you. We need thousands and thousands more. Austin's Stan Bins and everybody out there willing to tell stories in whatever format, in whatever way they choose to do it. Because you know, this is, unfortunately, this is where everybody's getting all their information now. It's not first hand experience for the vast majority of humans anymore. If we're going to get any of them out there to become new speakers for the Wild, then, then you guys are very, very necessary.
- [30:30]
Austin Alvarado
Well, I appreciate that. I, you know, I, I don't think it takes a, a massive amount of motivation or inspiration. I think people more than anything just need opportunity and chance. I think there's a lot of people out there willing to work hard. Just not everyone has, gets a chance or, or knows that there is a chance. I sure as heck didn't know that any of this was possible. Yeah. Yeah.
- [30:51]
Jack Humphrey
Are there, are there any things that you guys have talked about or are working on that where you were inspired to like, wow, we got to make this easier for other people because this was not easy all the time for us, like Fin and someday in the future you're going to have like maybe some kind of a program where you take kids on and show them it's a little bit easier than what it was for you.
- [31:10]
Austin Alvarado
Yeah. You know, that that'd be such a good idea. There's Nothing that we've been putting in the books or working on per se. But by all means we're more and more everyone on an individual, not just as a team, but on individual from Ben Ryan to Thrash to Sam to everyone who, Nina, the editor to people who were just involved with Finn. Everyone has done their part in trying to reach out and help out others doing the same type of work for the sake of helping. And I think we'll start there. But I, I think you're onto something.
- [31:37]
Jack Humphrey
If only you guys weren't so dam crazy, right? I mean, I hear Ryan in my head right now, he's like, well, he very politely said in some part of the interview I brought some crazy great idea up. Yeah, that'd be great if we had the time.
- [31:50]
Austin Alvarado
We're super, super.
- [31:51]
Jack Humphrey
Or you know, the science communicators. Getting a scientist to communicate outside of all the hard work it takes to do their job in the first place is something you can only really let them choose to do, you know, because you got to lay down sometime.
- [32:04]
Austin Alvarado
Oh my gosh. And you know, and these, being around all these, these scientists, they're some of the most dedicated people. Like they need a break and like when do they have time to tell their own story because they're just busy working. Yeah, it's always I, I, I do a good, good bit with, or have been doing a good bit with Cornell with their own ornithology lab and, and the people that I'm working with more often than not are just some of the more most dedicated, inspiring people. They just, and they're lovely, you know, they, they can speak well, they just have a lot on their plate.
- [32:36]
Jack Humphrey
That's how I see this podcast in, in a lot of ways. It's just, it doesn't take much to sit down and then you've got somebody promoting you and your work and all of that for a very little, for little input work wise.
- [32:47]
Austin Alvarado
So dude, I, man, how can we.
- [32:49]
Jack Humphrey
Make a big machine out of this? Because there's so many people to talk to. There's so many people to that, that.
- [32:55]
Austin Alvarado
Have stories to tell and kudos to y'. All. You know, I went into you, I, I, you know, admittedly I started listening to the podcast when Ryan came on and then I started going back and archives and listening to others and, and you guys do a great job with, with not only talking to the people doing the work, but having a spread of variety. And I think that's important. I think people can get, get lost in, in the same conversation over and over and over. Right. Which I think we've all heard. But you guys do an incredible job of bringing that variety in in and making sure you guys are staying on top of different the different things happening now.
- [33:31]
Jack Humphrey
Thank you. Yeah, it's. But it's just fun. It's just curiosity. Cool. Thanks for spending all this time today.
- [33:38]
Austin Alvarado
Yeah, no worries.
- [33:39]
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