Our Wild Lives
Our Wild Lives takes listeners into the heart of wildlife conservation, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. Each episode dives into the wild lives of diverse species, explores complex ecosystems, and unpacks the urgent issues facing wildlife conservation.
Our Wild Lives
Discovering Urban Wildlife with Sam Kieschnick
What if the wildest place you visit this week is the tiny park down your street? Urban wildlife biologist Sam Kieschnick of Texas Parks and Wildlife joins us to show how Dallas–Fort Worth’s “mosaic of green and gray” holds more life than most people imagine—over 12,000 documented species and counting.
Sam walks us through the people-centered work of urban ecology: helping residents share space with coyotes, guiding park managers to support pollinators and birds, and translating observations into decisions that make cities cooler and healthier. We dig into iNaturalist as a gateway for wonder and a serious tool for community, learning, and policy. Naming what you see changes your relationship with it, and those names stack into patterns scientists can study—distribution, phenology, even climate signals. Equally important, participation data reveals where people are engaging with nature, giving city officials a clear case for investing in habitats that voters value.
Subscribe, share this story with a friend, and tell us the most surprising species you’ve seen in your backyard!
More information
The Wildlife Society - https://wildlife.org/
TPWD Urban Wildlife Program - https://tpwd.texas.gov/wildlife/wildlife-diversity/urban-wildlife-program/
iNaturalist (@sambiology) - https://www.inaturalist.org/
The Future of Life by E. O. Wilson - https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Future_of_Life.html?id=5rbG839DFw0C
Urban Heat Island - https://www.epa.gov/heatislands
Texas Master Naturalists - https://txmn.tamu.edu/
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Katie Perkins: What does it mean to find wilderness in the heart of a city, and how can we better connect people with nature right outside their doors? In this episode, I talk with Sam Kieschnick, an urban wildlife biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, about the incredible biodiversity thriving in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Sam shares his unique insight, earned working as an educator, a botanist, an interpreter, and now an urban biologist. Why he loves tools like iNaturalist to help people discover the wild world around them, and why changing our perspective around urban spaces is key to conservation. We explore the challenges of working with people and wildlife inside city limits, the surprising way nature persists in urban environments, and how anyone can help foster biodiversity - no matter where they live.
I'm your host, Katie Perkins. Welcome to the Our Wild Lives Podcast, brought to you by The Wildlife Society.
Sam Kieschnick: My name is Sam Kieschnick, uh, an urban wildlife biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife. Uh, I serve the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. If you're not familiar with Dallas-Fort Worth, uh, we're more than just an airport that everyone passes through for pretty much every trip around the world.
Uh, we are a, an incredible urban ecosystem here in the, the DFW Metroplex and, uh, there's a lot of nature. I'm super lucky that I get to engage with the nature and the people that are also, uh, engaged with the nature. So really happy to be here, Katie.
Katie Perkins: Sam, you have such an infectious, like enthusiasm for urban wildlife. Where did that start? Tell us about your background.
Sam Kieschnick: Great question. Infectious, contagious. That's very good. Hopefully not obnoxious. Uh, I get that every now and then, but hopefully that's a fine line between contagious and obnoxious, perhaps. Uh, yeah. Pinch me. Katie. Give me a, a, a virtual pinch if you would. Uh, I am living the dream. It is such a sweet. Job that I have here as an urban wildlife biologist.
but it was also a lot of paths that led to, to this. Uh, so before I became an urban wildlife biologist, I was a nature educator for a city here in Dallas-Fort Worth called Mansfield. I led little kiddos out and, and big kiddos out in, uh, field trips at a nature park. Before that I worked as a science interpreter at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.
I worked as a botanist at BRIT, The Botanical Research Institute of Texas, and I also taught college freshmen at, uh, at a, at a community college. My, my standard joke is that each level trained me for the next, so college freshmen trained me to work with kindergartners, and kindergartners trained me to work with city council.
So it's, it's all a, a lovely transition. I gotta jiggle my keys every now and then to get the city manager to listen. Uh, but that's kind of my background.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. So what is your, your current day to day look like?
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah, so my rainforest is the urban ecosystem, so downtown Dallas, downtown Fort Worth, DFW has give or take 8 million folks that live within the metroplex. So day to day, I am working with the people. I mean, really as an urban wildlife biologist, I tend to work more with the people than with the critters.
Uh, but it's okay. The, the people, uh, and how they engage with the critters, with the plants, with the fungi, with the nature that lives here in the urban ecosystem, those are the folks that I get to interact with. so day to day it's very different. Sometimes it can be, a quote unquote nuisance species.
You know, Katie sometimes, and I'll go ahead and say it for the listeners or the watchers or whomever, sometimes people get their panties in a wad when they see a coyote. T hey see a coyote, a creature that should be in the wilderness that's in the city, and they freak out. They don't know how to, how, how to act when that happens.
So I come in and sort of give some guidance, sort of get people off the ledge. It's okay that we share this area with wildlife. Uh, sometimes it's working with nuisance species. Sometimes it's giving public education stuff. Sometimes it's working with public land managers and how they can manage their parks for wildlife.
So really again, it's the coolest job, ever working in the urban ecosystem.
Katie Perkins: I feel like, you know, when you think of wildlife, you think of mountains and oceans and people way out in the wilderness. But tell us why urban wildlife management is just as important.
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah. Isn't it something, you know, when I, when I throw that word wilderness, Katie, you actually tell me where, where does your brain go? Like, can you give me exact location? I'm throwing the word wilderness at you go.
Katie Perkins: I'm going straight to a forest in New Mexico probably.
Sam Kieschnick: New Mexican forest. We think of Yellowstone, we think of Costa Rica. We think of these mountainous areas or these Great Plains areas that as far as you can see, you are seeing nothing but quote unquote wilderness. Well, what's really amazing, the urban ecosystem is to an ecosystem. It is composed, I like to say it's a mosaic.
It's a mosaic of green spots and gray spots. So there are buildings, there's roads, and then it's also juxtaposed these little green spots, be it parks. Be it vacant lots, golf courses, cemeteries, and all of these things make a mosaic. Make a mosaic that is genuinely filled with biodiversity. The, the critters and plants that can live with us and that we can live with them, it is just filled with biodiversity.
So it's, it's crucially important. This is where people live too, give or take, 80% of folks on the planet live in urban areas. So it's, it's a crucially important urban ecosystem.
Katie Perkins: What would you say to, you know, that 80% of people living in an urban area, what, where, where would you point them to start to get in touch with this urban ecosystem that maybe they don't think about as wild.
Sam Kieschnick: Two words, Katie, look closer. Look closer, change your perspective into maybe the idea of wilderness being this massive forest as to this wilderness being that little dinky park down the road. Go to that dinky park, get on your hands and knees, and I promise you, you'll see the migration of wildebeest in a millimeter.
You'll see insects, you'll see giraffes of the Serengeti in a, a little shrub and some birds and some little bugs there. So the perspective shift, uh, is crucially important, uh, in the urban ecosystem, but I would argue just as magnificent, just as magnificent of this biodiversity that you can see at that little park.
Or hey, in your own backyard, in your own front yard. Uh, that's where you can see, see wilderness here, here in the city.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. You have a tool that you love to use, so let's talk about it. Yeah. So tell us, tell us about iNaturalist and why you love it so much.
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah, it's a cool tool. I mean, it's really, it's become my, my favorite tool to use. it is a community and, and really iNaturalist the, the primary purpose of iNaturalist is to share engagements in nature. So we just share our engagements in nature with others. That's kind of all it is. It's a platform where we can document a little bug, document a slime mold, document, a hey, document a giraffe in the Serengeti if you're there this weekend.
so anytime you see nature, you take a picture, you take a recording, you share that with others. That's pretty much all iNaturalist is. Now for me. It's also become a data collection tool. It's become a social network. Some of my best friends that I may not have even met are on iNaturalist! So some of these fellow naturalist, fellow biologists, fellow nature enthusiasts from around the world, join together in communing about nature, into sharing little pictures of dragonflies, sharing pictures of, of birds, of mammals, of mammal tracks, of mammal scat. and, and it's just a beautiful tool. It, it's one of my favorite tools to use.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. So what are some common mistakes that people, when they start to use this and they start to try to, dig deeper, shift their perspective, see things in their own backyard. What are some mistakes that you see people making and how can they maybe kind of beat those mistakes?
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah. I do get that. how do I know if I'm doing it right? You know, it's like, how do I properly use this tool? And the truth of the matter. If you are using the tool to engage with nature, you are doing it right. You're doing it right. That's what it is.
It's all about engaging with nature. it, it's also a tool about learning. Uh, Katie, let me grill you for a second. Uh, Katie, have you ever been walking outside and you see a plant and you don't know the name of that plant? Has that ever occurred to you before?
Katie Perkins: Yep, all the time.
Sam Kieschnick: Yes, yes it has. and this is a tool that you can use to learn the name of that plant.
To learn the name of that plant. And Katie, something magical happens when you learn the name of something. When you learn the name of something, it opens up the pass. It's a password into the gates of that computer of knowledge. So as you learn the name of that plant that maybe you didn't know the name of, Every time you see that plant, you go, hello, sorghum halepense. Hello. You know, populus deltoides. Hello these interesting little plants that have always had names. Once you learn the name of it, it changes the relationship. So again, going back to your question, how do I correct mistakes that I may make by using the tool?
Well, you know, I'd argue there's not really mistakes If you're engaging with nature, that's what this tool is, is all about.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. I love that, Sam,
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah.
Katie Perkins: What a great outlook on on it's okay to to be messy, and to just get out there and get your hands dirty and get started.
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah. And another thing too about this tool, and you know, hopefully there are some biologists or, you know, certified wildlife biologists, academics that are also listening to this. Sometimes when I talk to academics about this tool, they cringe a little bit. They, they kind of cringe and go. Oh, is this going through the rigors of data collection that just by seeing a little bug and taking a picture of it, am I, am I going through the proper rigors of doing analysis of variance or did I do a transect, as I'm walking on that path to find out the name of that plant?
Well, data collection is a secondary aspect to, to Inaturalist. It's true, you can use this tool, with some caveats, with caution to find out distributions of, of organisms in space and in time. Sure, you can absolutely use it for that, but the primary purpose of this tool is to engage with nature. That's the right way to use it.
Katie Perkins: Well, have you ever ha heard of any stories of scientists using like citizen science data in their own studies?
Sam Kieschnick: Absolutely. Heck yes. Can I say heck? I think I can say heck.
Katie Perkins: you
Sam Kieschnick: yeah. Heck yeah. So there are loads of papers that have used this data that have been published using iNaturalist data. So Absofreakinlutely. You can use this data to publish papers, you can use this data to get the, the distributions of species in space and time.
You can use this data to see the changing trends in phenology or when plants are blooming so you can monitor climate change with this sort of tool. All of that is secondary. It's secondary to the data collection. let me tell you how I use it. If I could, uh, Katie tell you how I use it as an urban wildlife biologist.
To me, the most important piece of data that comes from my naturalist is the constituency. In other words, the people that are going to that little dinky park to look at bugs and birds, the people that are actively going to that park, be them, locals or visitors. I, as an urban wildlife biologist, take that number of people going to the park and I share it with city council.
I share it with the park board and say, "Hey, there are people coming to this park that are looking for bugs. So it's good to manage for bugs at this park for not just the bugs, but also for the people."
Katie Perkins: Have you had success with that? Do they, do they see those stats and, and it opens their eyes?
Sam Kieschnick: It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. I mean, it's a beautiful thing that, that folks that may not have interest in the diversity of flies at the park, you know, that's not really a, a platform that many city council members run on. I support the diversity of flies at this park. It's not really an award-winning platform to, to stand on, but the people that are coming to the park, that's the voters, that's the constituents, that's the visitors that are coming from out of town into town, buying groceries and food and all that sort of stuff too. so yes, we have seen active examples here in Dallas-Fort Worth and throughout Texas, throughout the world really, of this data being used to change the habitat management in that public space.
Katie Perkins: That's awesome to hear. What are some of the challenges that you face as an urban wildlife biologist? I know we kind of got into problem species and things. Tell me a little bit more about maybe some stories you have and, and how you solved those challenges.
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah, Katie, jeez Louise. So it can be challenging. I mean, there is the spectrum, there's the whole spectrum of people that exist. That have different backgrounds, different experiences, different ideologies, different, you know, ways of living. some folks love parts of nature. Some folks loathe parts of nature.
Some people love butterflies, but hate caterpillars, you know, so it's that entire spectrum of folks that exist out there and finding ways, trying to find ways that we can agree on things. Golly, it is a challenge. It is a crazy, crazy challenge. I, I do think, I think deeply believe that there is that innate desire.
there's even a word for it. Biophilia, an innate desire that people have to being outdoors or to seeing nature. Something is deeply innate within us. Uh, this term, biophilia not coined by me. E. O. Wilson is the guy that coined that term, if I'm not mistaken, and in one of his books. Golly, I think it's called The Future of Life.
I think it's called The Future of Life. he talks about the waiting rooms of hospitals that when you go into a hospital, you see photos and pictures of nature. You see pictures of mountains, you see flowers. Something about even looking at nature, at pictures of nature calms us.
So there is, you know, in that whole spectrum of people from those that love to loathe it. There's still that innate desire, I think to, to be in nature or to enjoy nature. So it, it's, it's, there is a challenge in that whole spectrum, but I also think there's that consensus that we like being in nature.
We like clean air and clean water. We like those ecosystem services, provided by biodiversity. So there's, there's that deeply with innate, uh, desire that we all have. but finding ways to work with the entire spectrum, the entire constituency. Yeah. It can be a challenge.
Katie Perkins: What are some of the strangest wildlife sightings that you've seen in the DFW area?
Sam Kieschnick: Oh, Katie, woohoo, please. And I invite everybody to come visit. Please. Katie, come, come visit, uh, me and you can go check out this little dinky park that's right down the road. Uh, again, bring your knee pads. 'Cause we're gonna be crawling on the ground to see bugs and stuff. , Just in Dallas-Fort Worth alone, uh, we have documented over 12,000 species. Now, Katie, real quick, how can you, how many can you name? Okay. Ready? There's an hour long podcast, so go ahead. We're at zero so far.
Katie Perkins: Mourning dove.
Sam Kieschnick: Okay. That's okay. That's okay. We probably think of squirrel. We think of bobcat. Think of coyote. We think of turtles. Uh, we think of cardinals. 12 thousand species that we've documented just within Dallas-Fort Worth. So that it's just a number, but when you go and try to name as many as you can, it gets pretty tremendous. It gets tremendous to, uh, to realize how much biodiversity exists. So when you ask about certain individuals, well, to me it's sort of the, the, the, the culmination of all of those species that make up the urban ecosystem.
Uh, it's just the coolest ever. I mean, it's so freaking cool, uh, to, to share this, this ecosystem with so many different things.
Katie Perkins: So there's, there's, you know, 12,000 species in DFW. I, I think that is kind of, you know, as someone say I'm living in DFW and I wanna create the best habitat in my front and backyard that I can for urban wildlife. Do you have any tips for that? That it kind of, you know, something that maybe helps a wide range of urban wildlife?
Sam Kieschnick: You know, and I don't wanna get too, uh, too much on the "You should do this, you should do that." But one of the fun things that happens, and especially, and I'm a plant guy. I mean, my background is in botany there at, at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. So I love plants. And plants are the foundation.
I mean, really, they're the foundation of biodiversity and you could argue, well, soil is too, and all the microbes, it depends on, you know, what platform you wanna, uh, to work with. Uh, but plants, plants are a thing that you can actively put in different types of plants. Ideally, you wanna go for natives, but if you don't have that opportunity, diversity of any type of plant.
Diversity, throw in as many different types of plants as you can, uh, in the habitat that you can control or manage, be it your front yard, your backyard, your apartment complex, your your balcony, even a balcony. You have an opportunity to put maybe some potted plants in there, or your favorite park.
Modifying or suggesting a different management in those spots. So by putting in a whole bunch of different plants, you're bringing in different bugs. You're bringing in the different pollinators. Those plants are hosts for different types of, of, uh, predators to those plants or herbivores to those plants. So by more diff different types of plants, you have different types of bugs, which leads to different types of birds, which leads to different types of things that eat the birds.
So biodiversity begets biodiversity. That's, that's kind of the fun way to experiment, uh, in your own yard, in your own area that you can manage, uh, different plants. Gosh, it's so good.
Katie Perkins: Okay, this is a big question, but: what is something you never get tired of seeing or never get tired of showing other people in, you know, an urban setting.
Sam Kieschnick: Never get tired. Well, I do sleep well at night, but I never get tired of, of showing people bugs. I'll just be honest with you. Bugs are so cool. Uh, Katie, tell me your favorite bug real quick. I'm putting you on the spot. I didn't give you this question pre-prepared. So tell me your favorite bug. Go.
Katie Perkins: I, I always love to see a dragon fly.
Sam Kieschnick: Dragonflies. The, the a, the, the aerial predators of the sky. Oh my gosh. They are so much fun to watch. So much fun to watch. Uh, real quick, a little a question for you. What's the favorite prey item of a dragonfly? Do you know?
Katie Perkins: I don't know. I would guess some kind of fly or something like that,
Sam Kieschnick: You got it. You got it. Just like we practiced. It is a little tiny fly. It's a little mosquito. Dragonflies eat more mosquitoes than I would argue, any other animal on the planet. So they eat more mosquitoes than anything. So it's a wonderful thing to celebrate when we're seeing dragonflies. Aha. There's our mosquito killer flying around, but they're also super charismatic.
Like if you, if you get the opportunity, I hope you do. Katie, I'll double dare you to. Sit by a body of water, sit by a little creek or something for a moment, uh, and watch dragonflies. There is such intellectual enjoyment that we can get from watching nature. Watching dragon flies so much like what you just did with your favorite bug.
I love talking about bugs in, in the urban area or wherever I go, I'll find strangers and say, "Hey, come over here. Come look at this cool bug. Uh, that, that exists here. It's got a name, it's got a natural history. It eats things, it gets eaten by stuff." So that's, that's my favorite, favorite part of, of nature.
I think bugs.
Katie Perkins: That's awesome. I did not know that, but. Their main, uh, source of food was mosquitoes. So our, our park just down the street had, has tons of dragonflies. So that's good to know that, hey, there's not very many mosquitoes
Sam Kieschnick: Go out, catch one and give it a little hug. Katie. Give it a little hug, you know, a little nuzzle, and go, I love you. Here you go.
Katie Perkins: A little kiss on the head.
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah.
Katie Perkins: Yeah. So how, how do you, how do you get these observations? How are you catching these an, these bugs, these, you know, small critters? Tell us about that.
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah, so iNaturalist, again, it's a tool. It's just a tool. I use it through my app. There's an app for that, so I do use it. Hey, look, I'm even branded there. Look, even branded with. Uh, in reverse. Just imagine if it's the right way. but I'm even branded with a little tool on my, on my phone. I also, another great tool.
I argue it's an important tool for naturalist, is a camera. You know, mine's a little point and hope it's nothing but a point and hope camera that I click, you know, 50 images or 50 clicks, maybe one of them will be okay. But it's a fun way that I can look, helps me look closer so I look closer through the camera lens.
some people are super artsy with their, with their photographs, which is wonderful. That's beautiful. But for iNaturalist, you don't have to be artsy. It doesn't have to be even really a super clear image. You know, some of my crummy images of dragonflies flying around, it's hard. It's art. And some of them, if I can get a, a, a clear image as I can, I can help to get an identification on it.
So wherever I go, uh, around the world actually, wherever I go around the world, I bring iNaturalist with me. Katie, if I could tell a little story about that too. So I had the really interesting opportunity last year to go to Saudi Arabia. So I went to Saudi Arabia. I know it wasn't on my top 10 places of to visit, you know, it wasn't really on the top 10 list.
but I've got a brother-in-law and sister and nephew and niece that, uh, that live in Dhahran, which is pretty close to basically the, the, uh, Arabic sea and, uh, what is that? Qatar is right there too. So I went over there. Before I went, I went on to iNaturalist. I looked at the bugs of Saudi Arabia. I looked at the people that made bug observations from Saudi Arabia.
I sent little messages of, "Hello, I'm headed to Saudi Arabia. Uh, is there cool places I need to visit?" I met up with some naturalist in Saudi Arabia and we went out and naturalized together. And if just for a moment, if just for a moment in time there was world peace. There was world peace as we were looking at the dragonflies of Saudi Arabia.
Uh, it was the coolest. It was so cool. and that's another cool thing about this tool is you can commune and network with the community of naturalist that exist around the world.
Katie Perkins: I never would've thought to, to use that tool to look ahead of the places that I'm traveling, so that's, that's really awesome.
Yeah. I've gotta get on this iNaturalist app. I've heard about it, but I've not been, I've, I take a lot of pictures of little things on my phone, but I need to start putting them on iNaturalist.
Sam Kieschnick: And, and Katie, it's not a cult. Like it's not a cult. you know, I'm a believer and I've got my little pamphlet that I go door to door with, but it's not a cult. It's not a cult. It's just a community. It's a social network. And I'll also honestly say, I have removed other social medias from my life. Uh, those other social media tools that I used to be gaga about, I used to love them.
They do a lot of doom scrolling. I found myself doing doom scrolling, especially, gosh, dare I say, during COVID. During the pandemic, it was all doom scrolling, just finding out more bad news. Ugh, more and more bad news. However, on iNaturalist, I scroll through the dragonflies of Russia. I scroll through the dragonflies of South Africa.
I scroll through the naturalist around the world that are observing these things. And again, maybe it's momentary, maybe it's idealistic. Maybe I'm looking through the world with rose colored glasses, who knows what. but there is just such beauty and amazement of the biodiversity and the people, the naturalists that are out observing it along with me.
Katie Perkins: Would you say that this tool is in a way kind of replacing field guides, making nature more accessible? Uh, do you think that the content on there is up to the standards that you would find and say, if I was going to Colorado and I bought a Colorado field guide about the birds of Colorado.
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah, what a great question and, and I talk to folks and that, that sometimes lament, they lament that, uh, that folks are going outside outdoors with these, that this is a device that can be a distraction from nature. And, and I hear you. I I absolutely hear you. You know, as I'm sitting up that creek looking at dragonflies along with you at your park, you know, every once in a while I'll get a ding, I'll get a ding of, there's an email, eh, I gotta look at this email real quick.
Or I get a, oh, I wonder what's happening with some celebrity these days? Or, when is my favorite movie coming out? And I get that momentary distraction. So I, I know that this can be a tool of distraction, but I also think that this can be a hook. This device can be a hook to get someone engaged, maybe a young high schooler that's starting to get into bugs and he, she or they go out and start to document the dragonflies in that little park in Lubbock and they start getting a comment from the Katie Perkins that has a podcast.
It allows us to give a little guidance, a little bit of encouragement to that young naturalist, that nature enthusiast. Uh, it, it is a, it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing. The, is it replacing field guides? I'm not sure. I still like to get, I like to, you know, flip through the pages of a field guide.
I actually had someone tell me about field guides. That field guides don't necessarily help you get identifications for things. What field guides are best at doing is preparing your eyes. They prepare your eyes to look out in the field. So as you flip through that field guide, you are looking at different bugs and different plants and it trains your eyes to look for things.
So it's more like a preparatory book than an actually identification book. I don't know if the next generation of naturalists will get field, will get paper cuts on field guides. I just gotta be honest with you, I don't know if they will. So they'll be utilizing different tools, different tools for these things, and I think as wildlife biologists, as as wildlife enthusiasts, whatever, we need to embrace some of these new tools and technologies.
Katie Perkins: A hundred percent. So someone listening right now that is like, man, I think I might be a naturalist that I, you know, I, and I haven't, I haven't worked on this before. Yeah. What is the, what is the tips and advice that you're gonna give them? Is it as simple as just going out and taking a photo or, you know, do you have some, some better advice?
Sam Kieschnick: Play with perspective and modify your perspective. Look at things, uh, closer. Look at things differently. You know, look at plants. Uh, when I talk to, especially kids or actually sometimes older folks, wildlife society groups, and they have their favorite animals, you know, they'll think of deer, they'll think of deer being wildlife.
And then I'll say, well, what do deer eat? And they'll go, of course, plants. We'll eat, you know, Illinois bundle flower. They'll eat something like that. And then I'll say, well, what pollinates in Illinois bundle flower? What is the moth species that feeds just on Illinois bundle flower? So if you can widen your perspective, look at things from an ecosystem.
Approach. Aldo Leopold has a, a quote about thinking like a mountain. When we think like a mountain, we recognize all the different components that make up that mountain. There's living stuff, plants and bugs and birds, but there's also the non-living stuff, the geology, the soil, the microbes, and I know that's living.
but the, the temperature, the water, the humidity. All of these sort of things. So think broader in an ecosystem. And that ecosystem can be that little park too. It can be that little park doesn't have to be the mountain that Aldo Leopold refers to. He may be referencing that little park too, thinking like a, a little park and all the different components of that little park.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. you tell me a little bit about, you know, your job at TPWD? What are y'all doing to improve the urban wildlife ecology from a science management perspective?
Sam Kieschnick: Yeah. So again, super lucky to work for the state of Texas so part of my job as an urban wildlife biologist and I, if I were to put it in one sentence, it would be to provide technical guidance to public land managers.
So, again, I'll say that again. To provide technical guidance to public land managers. So my primary goal is to work with parks, to work with cities, their parks, their open spaces, their green spaces, and, and the city and the municipality and the metroplex. So part of my guidance to them is to say, "Hey, yes, you do have biodiversity here.
Yes, it exists." Uh, but also there's that constituency that exists too. So I kind of work, I guess, would you call me a translator? I translate some of that data, some of the observations that people make out there into. "These are naturalists that seek out places to go look at nature." I translate that data to ecosystem services, so to the clean air, the clean water, the cooler area.
We have this thing called the urban heat island, effect, where an urban area is typically hotter because of all the pavement that's reflecting that heat back. So a park can absorb that heat, it can absorb it, making it a little bit cooler than the surrounding gray areas. So my job is to translate this data into hopefully meaningful, uh, management in the public areas.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. Well, Sam, we've reached the end of my questions, but is there anything that you wanna talk about that we haven't gotten to?
Sam Kieschnick: You know, I would like to bring up one word that I've been struggling with. You know, I joke that I sleep well at night. Ha. Some nights I don't. Some nights I don't. And there's a word that actually kind of keeps me up at night. You ready to to struggle? Wrestle with the word with me, Katie?
Katie Perkins: Yeah,
tell me about it.
Sam Kieschnick: The word is relevancy. And I don't know if we as wildlife biologist, as nature enthusiasts, if we wrestle with the word relevancy enough. Relevancy, I don't even really know how to define it, but I think it is important. So our struggle for relevancy, our quest for relevancy, our quest to share nature and the stuff that we love.
And I think other people love it too. Maybe they just need to be guided, um, as well. relevancy is crucially, crucially important. Perhaps one of the, the folks listening studies, the respiratory illnesses in raccoons. Okay. Which is cool. Which is crazy cool. I mean, I bet that's phenomenally interesting stuff.
Is it relevant to the public? So our challenge is to not necessarily make it relevant, but to show people that, yeah. It is interesting. It is cool. It is intellectually stimulating for me, it's showing those neat little bugs that live here with us that they are so freaking amazing. They are magnificent.
There are stories that they still tell us all of the time that make it, uh, you know, it may not provide survival value, but it provides value to survival by learning about these things. So relevancy, it's, it's a word that I'm still wrestling with. Maybe it's a rhetorical question of "Is nature relevant?" Um, but I, I would argue, I would hope that we all wrestle with that question some more. I, I. Use the tool of iNaturalist to show relevancy, to show beauty and interest in biodiversity. Uh, but I encourage everyone to wrestle with that question. is nature relevant?
Katie Perkins: Awesome. Well, Sam, thank you so much for joining us. If people live in the DFW area and they wanna get connected with the work that you do for TPWD, where can they find, you know, events that you may be putting on, gatherings, that kind of stuff?
Sam Kieschnick: Sure. So I work, uh, with a great program called the Texas Master Naturalist. It's a volunteer organization. We do so many events throughout the metroplex. I'm lucky to help out with a lot of those events. So if they search up the Texas Master Naturalist, you can find out information. also as we talked about before, I'm crazy active on iNaturalist.
My username is sambiology. If you do an iNaturalist search for SAM Biology, uh, you can find me on there. Send me a message and we can go check out that little park in, in Lubbock and look at dragonflies. I think that sounds like a great afternoon.
Katie Perkins: Awesome. Sam, thank you so much for joining us. This was really great.
Sam Kieschnick: My pleasure. Absolutely.