my next guest hopes we can all find a way to live a little bit better alongside the natural world Brenda Peterson is the author of wild chorus finding harmony with whales wolves and other animals she's got an author event tonight at Elliot Bay book company but first she's on our couch here at New Day Brenda welcome to the show and who have you got here I have the dog who doesn't love me her name is Ella she is a Siberian Husky well it doesn't seem like she doesn't love you now well I have treats
in my pocket is that what she's for I have bribed her and she Ella it's okay yeah so I'm her Trophy Wife you're well let's talk about your book Wild chorus the title to me reminds me of like kyotes howling in the night is that what you're trying to convey in the title yes I love the great singers of the natural world wolves whales Birds they all have a music if we can only listen they really do they really do as a nature writer you have grown up with a lot of animals you actually grew up in a o
n a remote high or a US Forest Lookout station yes that must have been incredible there were many more animals than people so I imprinted on animals in fact I actually believed that I would grow up to be a wolf or that I would have antlers or that I could Fly Like an Eagle because there were so few people so I modeled on animals they taught me everything and it really is interesting because animals do teach us a lot they teach us a lot about as you can see with these are these coyotes or Wolves
I can't quite tell these are wolves at Wolf Haven which is right down there by tanino Washington it's the international wolf sanctuary and I did a whole book about them called wolf Haven and they're in this new book El Lobo returns homeo return because this is a gray Mexican Greywolf family and this is actually a parents teaching their pups to howl oh how beautiful teaching them how to do it yes I it's amazing um when you grew up in this in this Forest Service Tower and you kind of came into the
world as you got older did you start to see how things like climate change and and society and encroaching on natural places is really affecting the animals yes in my um birthplace it was in the High Sierra called Quincy California there were no wolves M but there were coyotes yep yep yep yep now there are wolves there are a few wolf packs there oh are there and they are thriving if we can keep from shooting them right right but climate change there were many many many old growth forests but no
w they've fallen in my lifetime they've fallen and I worry about the next Generations and what they will experience well we have here um in in the Seattle area seen an increasing number of coyotes people had never seen them and yes I grew up with coyotes um also from California but it it is very scary to people because they you know and I think that it's important that we teach people about how to handle these animals that are encroaching in urban areas don't you think well Urban Wildlife are ou
r neighbors you know if we can think of them not as verman or pest but fellow creatures who have survival strategies there are things that animal teach us that humans cannot right and so why not learn from these masters of their own ecosystems right you've also worked with Jane Goodall I understand um someone who dedicated her life to preserving um species of gorilla as more women enter the Wildlife Conservation Center like sector yes you say females female animals also play a vital role in assu
ring the survival of next Generations happy birthday Jane she's 9 today to you know I met Jane Goodall on her birthday about 10 years ago really no I know random I yeah I the day I came went to interview her down in California she came we gave her a birthday cake she's wonderful she really is and she has been a matriarch like animal matriarchs there are orcas that we have here in our Waters granny was 105 or 80 depending upon the scientist and these Orca matriarchs they make sure that their sons
who live live with them all their lives survive they call them mummies boys because the grandmothers actually feed them the scientists are calling this the grandmother effect really so all you grandmothers out there we desperately need you for our own Survival we really do yeah yes we do you also say that it isn't enough just to save other species we are our greatest survival skill is our imaginations like you mentioned as a young child to become other species yes okay can I tell us what you me
an by that and how we can do it in our own lives who didn't grow up in in a place like you did right so instead of just conquering or saving which are two sides of the same environmental you can actually imagine the life of an animal kids when I go and I work with them I always say adopt an animal learn everything you can about that animal dolphin wolf coyote and then Apprentice yourself to that animal as a conservationist right and if you do that from childhood or even adulthood you will learn
so much about your own Survival you have a chapter in this book uh called singing with animals yes um I remember being young and hearing the coyotes and I would howl back and in my mind I would think they were answering me is that true yes there's call and response there's a chapter in here called wolf music and you know when you start singing very few wild animals will actually respond to us as singers but wolves do and sometimes birds do and whales do so if you are singing and you're howling a
wolf if they go on your same pitch will vary and harmonize with you so you are not on the same pitch you are harmonizing together that's beautiful and it's like social glue like singing around the campire that is cool yeah yeah there are so many great and cool things about this book especially the chap called humpback hip hop speaking and song and if you want to know more about that well you're going to have to go to Brenda's author event tonight Wednesday April 3rd at 700 p.m. at the Elliot Ba
y Book Company on Seattle's Capitol Hill
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the most creative person I know