WildAid is a global organization working to protect wild animals and their habitats from criminal poaching and trafficking, illegal fishing, climate change and other impacts that have seen the loss of 70% of the world's wild animals, including large mammals, birds, and fish just since 1970. Meaghan Brosnan is CEO of WildAid and an expert in marine law enforcement having served over 20 years with the US Coast Guard, both at sea and in their marine resources enforcement program. Vicki Nichols Goldstein and I recently talked with Meaghan about her work. You can hear a more extensive version of our conversation on our latest Rising Tide Ocean Podcast at bluefront.org or wherever you download podcasts.
Meaghan joined Wild Aid in 2017 and since then has expanded its oceans program more than tenfold to where they're now working on ocean wildlife protection in more than 20 nations.
David Helvarg (DH): So, Megan, let me ask how you first connected with the ocean?
Meaghan Brosnan (MB): I first connected with the ocean when I was a very young girl and I went to a marine science camp in Connecticut where I was raised called ‘Schooner Camp,’ and it’s this amazing camp where they bring you to all the different marine coastal environments that you can see in Connecticut. You're tromping through mud flats or along the beaches, your tide pooling in the rocky and intertidal zones. And I just fell in love with it through that. Moving through time, I became a counselor and eventually, decided at a young age that I wanted to work in the marine environment to protect it.
At first I thought I wanted to be a marine scientist. And then I had an experience my senior year in high school where I got to work in a science lab and it was incredible and humbling to be able to work with scientists but I saw just how hard it was to get funding. At the time, for 18-year-old Meaghan, that really seemed unfair. And at the same time, I had been introduced to the Coast Guard Academy (located in New London, Connecticut). And here was this place that offered an incredible marine science degree in a service in which women can do everything, and that was also humanitarian in nature. It had so many missions that were aligned with protecting the ocean. It had that benefit plus giving me some adventure and travel throughout the world.
So, I went to the Coast Guard Academy, graduated and got stationed out of Cordova, Alaska. And that’s where I was introduced to this mission of fisheries law enforcement and came to realize how incredibly important that is. I also met both sides of the equation, right? I lived in a town whose economy is a hundred percent driven by the sustainability of that fishery (the inshore salmon fishery that is controlled by the State of Alaska plus offshore fisheries in federal waters that the Coast Guard oversaw).
DH: When you went offshore, what were you doing?
MB: We were focusing primarily on halibut and Pollock fleets. One of my first cases as the boarding officer, which means I was in charge, this fisherman was blatantly discarding a species of fish that was less valuable (but) that they were required to maintain (not throw away). And I think he just thought that we weren't well versed enough in the laws to pick up on what he was doing. And you know, we made a solid case and he had real fines to face…He was pretty annoyed when he realized that we were collecting evidence on what he was doing.
It's interesting with these particular fleets you would run into two different types of fishermen in terms of how they interacted with me as a female boarding officer. There was a few, more than a few, times where I would come on board, they would be really angry, then they would see that they're talking to a woman and it's like suddenly they’d be like, ‘Oh no, I have to be polite to this human being,’ you know? Or there was the derision, just talking down to you but in the end…
Vicki Nichols Goldstein (VNG) You did your job.
MB: You did your job, and it doesn't really matter. Insult me as much as you want. I'm still the law enforcement officer following the rules because you didn't do your job right. Also, I had an incredibly supportive team behind me every time, at every step there. In the US Coast Guard, you're lucky where you've got a really good, robust (enforcement) program where you've got a team of professionals behind you every step.
DH: With the honest fishermen I found (in writing my Coast Guard book, ‘Rescue Warriors’) that at some level it’s appreciated but it’s also a love hate relationship with the fishing industry.
MB: Exactly. I mean nobody likes to have to stop fishing in order to get boarded because we all know that time is money. It’s like none of us like to have to do a routine traffic stop. And like you said, the vast majority of fishers that I interacted with were multi-generational, and understood the need and would have a beautifully organized (fishing data) notebook waiting for me when I walked into their cabin with all of their proper permits, and they knew exactly what they were doing and that was the norm.
DH: So what was the evolution from your leading boarding teams to doing marine resources enforcement?
MB: I was lucky enough to be accepted in a master's degree program for the Coast Guard and that program was at the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. And in that program, you're really learning how you need to understand the perspective of everyone around the table, right? You need to understand the science, understand the fishers, understand the politics, understand the law and the law enforcement, and that degree was designed to give you that collective understanding, which was incredible.
I took that, went to the Coast Guard headquarters where I ultimately was the Deputy Chief of the Coast Guard's National Living Marine Resources Enforcement division. So, I oversaw the policy, the training representation to foreign countries and in that role had a small part in supporting the training teams of the Coast Guard who would go to (give law-enforcement training to) International Navies and Coast Guards. We would be requested by these countries who wanted help in protecting their resources because they understood how incredibly important their marine resources were.
Ultimately, I had the opportunity to go into the (Coast Guard) Reserves and make a full-time shift to a nonprofit role. I was working for the Pew Charitable Trusts on their ending illegal fishing project for many years and then shifted to consulting.
VNG: You ended up at WildAid. Was that a goal?
MB: I was first made aware of WildAid when I was still wearing the uniform full time because they put on this Marine Protected Area enforcement conference and we learned about their system what we now call the marine protection system. And when I was a consultant, they asked me if I wanted to do some training for the Palauan Protected Area Network Rangers, their equivalent of the National Park Service. As a consultant, I was like, ‘let me think about this for one second. Do I want to travel to Palau (a coral haven in the tropical Pacific) to work with amazingly dedicated individuals? Yes, yes.’
And I must have done well because a couple years later I've got my three month old son in my arms and Marcel (head of WildAid’s Ocean program at the time) keeps on calling me. I'm like, ‘Geez, Marcel, I can barely sleep.’ And he is like, ‘Megan, I've got an opportunity for you...I want you to take over the program.’ I'm like, ‘How about in two years?’ He is like, ‘How about in two months?’ So anyway, that was the transition and it's been great because I've been able to travel with my (two) children quite a bit.
DH: Even before you got there WildAid got a lot of fame for its work around shark finning and really changing attitudes in China about consuming shark fin soup.
MB: WildAid has been working in the ocean space for 25 years. What many people don't realize actually is that both with (along with) working with law enforcement our (WildAid’s) demand reduction work and our consumer engagement work have both been going on for that full time.
It's just that one has been much quieter than the other. So, with our shark fin work it became very, very clear that, millions, more than a hundred million sharks were being killed each year and at that time, mostly for their fins. And China was the primary consumer of those shark fins and it was problematic.
There were quite a few threatened and endangered species being tangled into that consumption. And we began working over a series of years and eventually with the invitation of the Chinese government with big celebrities such as Jackie Chan and Yao Ming did a series of communications campaigns that sought to educate the Chinese public.
There were many people, if you directly translate the words for Shark Fin Soup, it's actually Shark Wing Soup. So, there were people who did not understand that it was actually shark fins in the soup. There were (other) people who were under the impression that the shark fins grow back.
So there was a real need to educate people. It took many years. You don't change a whole culture overnight. But ultimately the Chinese government chose to ban the serving of shark fin soup at all government banquets and (over a decade) the consumption of shark fin soup reduced 80% in China.
DH: We know that illegal wildlife trade today is still worth over $20 billion and overlaps with organized crime. Human trafficking, drugs, wildlife, they don't care as long as they can make a buck. So even if you create marine protected areas, they're only as good as the enforcement that takes place within them. So, you're coming out of law enforcement, out of the Coast Guard. You arrive at Wild Aid in 2017. And what do you see?
MB: When I came to Wild Aid, we had already developed years of experience in the Galapagos National Park. The enforcement officers would be seizing vessels that had tens of thousands of shark fins on board. And we learned just what all was needed, that whole system (of enforcement). You can't just look at the fancy tools (patrol boats, deck guns) You need some good policies, some good procedures, some good training as well. And yet at the same time I was first coming to WildAid there was 10 by 20, right? Protecting 10% of the ocean by 2020 was just coming to a close and we realized we were not going to reach that goal and that 30% by 2030 was going to be needed. And…I had a whole crop of marine resource enforcement officers, people who had actually worked in that relatively new field, who were retiring and who like (Me) when I was a consultant were, ‘You wanna pay me to travel to Cocos Island off Costa Rica (a National Park and hammerhead shark breeding site) and help them protect that incredible place? Yes. Okay. You can pay me less than I am worth and I will put my heart and soul into this work.’”
DH: So, you recruited former Coast Guard and NOAA folks and fisheries observers and people with on the water experience to help expand this program?
MB: Exactly. The goal for me is that I can visit a location, but I'm not needed in that location.
VNG: How do you actually select, what’s your criteria so you are getting the right mix of people on the ground to merge with your experts that you bring in to help?
MB: I really like templates and spreadsheets and of course it's (they are) always adapted for each location, but maritime law enforcement's not rocket science, so we don't need to make it difficult. You can have a criteria for what makes a good local partner. The first component we needed is a marine protected area to have been established already, or being very close to the point where that was going to be…We can't help them enforce laws that do not yet exist.
Second, we needed really strong indications of political will at multiple levels. That means working with local partners. Like the folks who were actually on the water doing the patrolling, who were dedicated, who wanted our support and wanted to move forward. And, we had at least a mid-level political person, the person who could put (get) resources to patrols, who said, ‘yes, we want your support.’
And that could be a nonprofit, that could be a government entity, that could be in a few instances, even a community entity. It just needs to be people who actually have the authority to do the enforcing, right?
One common misconception people have is that they think that the world is just too rife with corruption and nobody cares. And I think we are lucky in that we see a lot of people who actually do care and are doing great work on a regular basis…There are more local partners who need our help than we are currently able to support.
DH: French Polynesia just announced the world's largest marine protect area (1.9 million square miles – larger than India), and the French have pretty good enforcement. They'll do what they need to do to make it real. Maybe you could give us one or two examples of your work in say Gabon in Africa or the Philippines and how that’s working out on the ground and on the water?
MB: So, I could start in the Philippines because we were there just a month ago. There we are working in a collaboration with the nonprofit Rare, which has a Fish Forever program, which has been working in the Philippines for many years.
And they have been crafting community managed fisheries where the local mayors or local communities make the sacrifices… and create their local marine protected areas. But then what happens when you start having more fish (overflowing from the protected areas) than your neighbors down the road? You become a target, right? So our work is in supporting them which is literally fishermen working to protect their own resources all the way up to the Philippines national police.
And that means we work with all those levels and identify where the gaps are, how are these illegal fishers coming in? And then we make a plan to fill those gaps. That can be tools we donate, a patrol vessel or it can be methods.
We came to find out that in a certain area, blast fishing, which is using homemade dynamite to fish (destroying coral reefs in the process) the biggest gap was that they (the enforcement agents) didn't have dive gear. So, when a blast fisher saw you coming, they would throw all the evidence over the side and the patrol vessels had no way of collecting that evidence in order to ensure that justice came forward.
So, it sometimes can be as simple as that (training and equipping scuba divers), making sure that they have the equipment to collect the evidence and then know how to get that evidence to the legal place.
VNG: With your emphasis on marine protected areas and then with Trump's opening up the US protected areas to other activities (fishing, mining, oil drilling), how is that impacting your work nationally and globally with these MPAs under threat?
MB: We don't currently work in the United States. As David mentioned, if the French aren't enforcing their own laws, it's not a lack of capacity or understanding, it’s a lack of political will. And that's not what our specific expertise is. You can say the same in the United States, right? The US Coast Guard, NOAA, many state fish and wildlife agencies know what they're doing. And if they're not doing their job, that is for political advocacy organizations to put forward.
That said, we're very well known as a US organization. The reason why we now have a Cuban program is because our partners in the Galapagos (a territory of Ecuador) introduced us to the Cuban government as a good partner.
DH: It's almost as if when U.S. people help other nations protect their environment, we get increased credibility in the world!
MB: It's almost as if…(smile). But we are always honest about whom we are. We're always following local laws. And we're meeting needs that our local partners have.
VNG: I want to know what your vision is for the role of conservation organizations like WildAid and others in protecting the world's oceans over the next 5 or 10 years?
MB: WildAid has a unique place in the ocean conservation space in that we are inherently collaborative. It is all about supporting governments and communities achieving their environmental leadership goals, right? Wherever we agree with them, we're moving that forward. We can do that with our law enforcement capacity building support. Or we can be doing that with our communications support where we are helping them to drive the discourse, to drive the hard conversations, the conversations that are needed to shift human behavior.