Q&A with behavioral ecologist Mike Mooring
Mike Mooring has taught a range of ecology and biology courses at Point Loma Nazarene University since 1997. Before landing in the field of animal behavior, he worked in the social justice movement with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and then pursued a career in musical theater. Mooring encountered Jesus while doing research on impala in Zimbabwe.
You had quite a history before encountering Jesus in Zimbabwe.
I grew as a city kid, in New York City. I did not have a natural connection with the environment, as a lot of folks do. During the time I was with Cesar Chavez, I had the opportunity to be in some remote areas, do a little bit of hiking. That’s what got me started. As a student the University of Colorado Boulder, I had a project assisting a master’s student that turned into an honors project of my own, following mule deer around the foothills leading up to the Rocky Mountains. At that point I knew I really wanted to do something in the environment.
I was not a believer at that point. I grew up in a little Presbyterian church with this idea of, “Be a good person.” But I drifted away. For my dissertation research I ended up in Zimbabwe. That is the point at which I found my calling. I got saved at a little charismatic church in Zimbabwe. I met my wife. We got married. I was not at all thinking along the lines of being a teacher. Fortunately, I landed in a place where I’m able to do teaching during the year and some fieldwork with my students during the summers. God’s been really faithful.
What is your favorite course to teach and why?
When you start out at a small teaching institution like most Christians colleges and universities are, you have to be willing to teach stuff that’s outside of your area of expertise. I did that for a few years. I’ve been fortunate to land on courses that have really been in my area. I started out in Animal Behavior. That is a favorite. About half my teaching load is general education—teaching non-majors. I enjoy that simply because that may be the one chance we get to really create awareness there’s an environmental crisis and God cares about that. This is God’s creation and we are obligated, if we are wanting to be faithful to him, to be good stewards.
I like bringing in other things besides my area of specialization—creation theology, the social aspects of caring for creation. I’m teaching a course now called Environment and People. It’s not just biology and ecology but the sociology and economics and different aspects of living that have to be changed to be a more sustainable society.
My main course for majors is called Conservation Ecology. That’s a great course because I’ve been able to create all that content and not be constrained by a textbook. This is also our seventh time now offering Neotropical Ecology every other year, where we take students to Costa Rica for 10 days after the spring semester. That’s a special one. We really get students into the environment and have a much deeper connection with the wildlife, the tropical montane forest, the lowland forest.
What drew you the particular landscapes and animals you study?
It was what was available. As a doctoral student, I was basically following up the research of my professor who had a hypothesis with a number of predictions connected with impala—a common African antelope. Even before I landed in Africa I was doing research with the San Diego Wild Animal Park. I love that animal. Then I moved to bison, which is a little bit different. We did work for about 12 years in Nebraska at a wildlife refuge and also in Montana.
Now we’re studying all sorts of elusive mammals with camera traps in Costa Rica. Up until 2010, everything involved doing observations on the animals directly. We can’t do that now, since they’re elusive. It’s very exciting work. It’s a team effort.
There’s not one particular animal we study, but if I had to name one, it would be the jaguar—the big charismatic mega-carnivore. But we have recently gotten to looking at the oncilla, now called the clouded tiger cat, a high-elevation housecat-sized spotted cat. That’s my current favorite.
What research questions are you asking currently?
There’s still a lot of basic knowledge that we don’t have in terms of where the animals are, what kind of habitat they’re preferring, population densities, prey species, competition, and activity patterns. It’s only recently with these camera traps that we’re collecting a lot of data. We’re looking at the big overarching picture and how human impacts are influencing those patterns.
In Costa Rica deforestation isn’t such a problem, but, for example, illegal hunting. How does illegal hunting impact activity and distribution? There are some really interesting specific questions.
We’re involved in a project to identify individual jaguars throughout the high-elevation mountainous area by looking at their rosettes and pelage patterns to find out how far are they traveling. It turns out there are a number of individuals traveling across the border between Panama and Costa Rica, back and forth.
Coyotes are also expanding their range. In the 1960s they started moving south and were only found in Northern Costa Rica. Now they’re in Southern Costa Rica and Panama. Someday they will probably jump to the South American continent. Are they outcompeting the native species?
We have some surveys in the lowlands, and one of the species that is very, very common is the tapir. They’re the largest mammals found in South America and related to rhinos. We’re looking at the habitat preference and distribution of this species.
How do you explain your work to Christians who might wonder what this has to do with God’s kingdom?
For a long time, Evangelicals have been very concerned about how God created the world. I think that’s the wrong question. If we can imagine ourselves standing before God at the end of time, I don’t think he’s going to say, “How did I create all this?” The question we’re going to be asked is, “What did you do with my creation? Did you care for it?”
We’re on a trend where things are getting worse. When we think about the air, soil, water, land degradation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, climate change, it goes on and on and on. How can we make things better? If you read the scriptures, human beings are God’s representatives in the world. That includes being faithful in caring for human part of creation as well as the nonhuman part. I see it not a salvation issue. It’s an issue of simply loving and caring for what God loves.
What role has Au Sable played in your life and in your students’ lives?
Au Sable’s been really important to me on a number of levels. In terms of our environmental science and biology programs, Au Sable is one of our important partners in giving students the opportunity to get field research. I don’t know of any student that’s come back from their Au Sable trip and not raved about their experience. It’s been a deeply important, in many cases transformative, experience for students. Au Sable fills a critically important niche where students with some kind of Christian faith who also care about the environment can come and have an experience at some beautiful natural areas in the field, where they’re learning about science but also about how it’s connected with their faith, in a community context.
For me as a faculty representative, I’ve always found annual academic council meetings to be deeply renewing. Most of us work in small schools where there’s not a whole lot of people doing what we do. It can get discouraging and feel isolating. Being able to spend a couple days with likeminded colleagues and talk about the unique problems of doing this work at small institutions at a beautiful peaceful, setting at the Au Sable Great Lakes campus is deeply satisfying.
What do you want students going into the environmental science field to know?
Jesus and his disciples walked everywhere through the countryside, through the agricultural areas, in the wilderness, in the city, always observing. Listen to the stories, the parables, to the Sermon on the Mount. They were observers of their environment. They were doing applied ecology.
I really did experience the presence of God in wild places even though I wasn’t looking for God. I would say, go into nature and think about the science and how is God working. Just observe. We’re so affluent technologically that we create this buffer around ourselves. People go out for walks, and they’ve got their EarPods in. They can’t hear the sounds of nature.
Observe what you see in creation. Then get with other people who have a similar desire, hunger, and thirst and make that connection. Talking to each other is where the revelation comes, where God shows up.
I came into science through the back door because I wanted to study animals. It’s all interconnected. Jesus and his disciples walked everywhere through the countryside, through the agricultural areas, in the wilderness, in the city, always observing. Listen to the stories, the parables, to the Sermon on the Mount. They were observers of their environment. They were doing applied ecology. To be a farmer or a pastoralist, you had to understand the animals, the environment, the seasons. If we dig below the surface, there is a lot of ecological wisdom in the Bible that went without saying.
Anything else you’d like to share with the Au Sable community?
I’m really grateful for students because they are the future. It’s refreshing and invigorating for me to see students discovering anew the things I may take for granted. One of the things that is so special about Au Sable is that so much of the learning takes place out of doors in more informal teaching situations rather than a professor standing in front of a PowerPoint slide. To actually be with students discovering, observing, and talking about those things, that student connection is super important. The Bible makes it really clear that we’ve got an obligation to raise up the new generation. We have the risk of forgetting about God and forgetting about the creation. We have an obligation to keep that going in terms of teaching.
