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The Current Transcript for April 2, 2018

Host: Liz Hoath

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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VOICE 1: The categorical imperative states: act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

LIZ HOATH: Or in other words, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative may be a key concept in philosophy courses, but like so much philosophy, the language and ideas can be dense and hard to understand. And it can seem pretty far removed from everyday life let alone in the workplace or corporate boardroom. But first up today we're meeting a philosopher who's doing just that: bringing the spirit of philosophy to the boardroom and beyond. And then, a remarkable story of a California woman who decided to act as a surrogate mother. It was a life-changing experience, but not in the way that she'd imagined.

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VOICE 1: Like how is it possible? Like did the IVF Centre mess up? Did they transfer two instead of one? You know, did they mix up the embryos? Like I have no idea what's going on.

LH: Our documentary, Expecting the Unexpected, in half an hour. Plus, he was the big cat, whose death caused big reactions right around the globe.

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VOICE 1: When I look at the images of that lion and I think of some rich guy going to Africa, a land where he has no business.

VOICE 2: I get it if you're feeding your family, that's what you do. But that was not a hunt. That was a murder.

LH: The real story of Cecil the lion, from a zoologist who knew him, in an hour. I'm Liz Hoath sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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Why businesses are hiring philosophers to help their bottom line

Guest: Lou Marinoff

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VOICE 1: It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

VOICE 2: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

VOICE 1: Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

VOICE 3: This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

VOICE 1: Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.

LH: Some inspirational quotations you might expect to see on a poster or a cubicle wall. They're drawn from the works of some the great philosophers - from Confucius to Hannah Arendt. But in the course of a busy day at the office, platitudes such as those and the wisdom they contain are often lost in the noise. There is a new trend in the business world, however, to give philosophy a seat at the boardroom table. To really listen to ancient wisdom and think like a sage. Instead of inspirational quotes on a poster, corporate offices are bringing in so-called "practical philosophers,” such as my first guest. Canadian philosopher Lou Marinoff is president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. He is also a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York, and the author of Plato, Not Prozac! Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems. He's been working for more than two decades at bringing philosophy to the boardroom. And Lou Marinoff joins me from Monroe, New York. Hello.

LOU MARINOFF: Good morning Liz.

LH: Hello. Why do you think businesses need philosophers?

LOU MARINOFF: Businesses are always seeking to innovate and these days there's a particular emphasis on the so-called thinking out of the box. Philosophers were born out of the box so we can certainly help them in that capacity. And also in a more serious vein, there is a shift in developed countries. As you well know from manufacturing to service provision, and that entails a much more conceptual workplace. So people need constantly to hone not only their communications skills and their strategic thinking but also need to have a firm grasp of the concepts and visions and the mission of their organizations and philosophers can render vital assistance in all of those areas.

LH: What are some of the particular challenges that businesses are facing right now that you think philosophers could really help them with?

LOU MARINOFF: The kinds of things that I tend to do Liz or perhaps more eccentric or unusual than workaday; you know in the United States — I'll speak now wearing my American hat — I think that U.S. is a far more litigious culture in general than let's say commonwealth countries. And so there tends to be a different sort of mindset with CEOs who will often when contemplating whether or not something is right will call in lawyers as opposed the moral philosophers. But Europeans in my experience, Canadians, Australians, or the commonwealth nations tend I think to be more virtue oriented as a function of their educational backgrounds and so they're much more likely to contemplate the moral dimensions of their potential actions. So that's something that is very important today because of the connectedness of the world and the implications of what we decide to do in one place can be felt globally.

LH: So how common is it actually to have philosophers at the boardroom table?

LOU MARINOFF: Well I haven't done the social science Liz. We're a fairly new profession and I could give you a kind of analogy in terms of our impact factor. I think that the impact that philosophers have had over the millennia is far greater than our numbers. The services that we provide tend to be much more I guess qualitative in their essence rather than sheer quantity. So it's very hard for me to tell you exactly what the net effect is on the world of say a few dozen or a few hundred philosophers working as we do not only with businesses but also with governments. But I would like to think that we're helping to make the world, the workplace, and all of its ramifications a better rather than a worse place to be.

LH: So how do you actually convince a CEO that they need to hire a philosopher?

LOU MARINOFF: Well I don't generally have to give them a sales pitch. Thank goodness. I wasn't trained to do that and nor do we lecture to them by the way. They're not calling us in because they want a refresher course on world philosophy. You led off your show with the quote from Kant and I'm very impressed that 7:30 in the morning that you're willing to do this. I hope there are still people out there listening. But seriously my good fortune I guess has been to have written among other things played on Prozac which became an international bestseller almost 20 years ago. And having been written up in the Economist and in the New York Times, Weekend Magazine, and other places, people just started coming to me and that's been obviously a much simpler way of producing services for this community. But in general I'd have to say that my mission is not just personal. As you've mentioned leading off on one of the co-founders and president of the APPA — American Philosophical Practitioners Association — and our mission partly is to train philosophers to render services outside the academy. We think that philosophy is as you've already mentioned a very difficult subject compared perhaps to others, a difficult preparation. And indeed there are very bright people who are attracted to philosophy not because they necessarily have phenomenal career prospects but because they love ideas and they have a real commitment to plumbing the depths of human thought and mentation. So we want to help them to be more useful to society and we think in turn that a society can find use for its philosophers is going to be more productive, creative, and happy.

LH: So what kinds of businesses have you been invited into?

LOU MARINOFF: Well it runs pretty much the whole gamut. And as I am not able to disclose the identities of my personal clients I cannot necessarily name the business clients either. But I can give you a few examples and with pleasure will do so. In Davos I have had a great good fortune to have been exposed to Fortune 500 CEOs, global entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, as well as I said political leaders and governments need business as much as businesses and sometimes more. But to focus on the business I guess some of the most interesting things that I've done in that capacity have been with Hollywood where I've been invited to work with a couple of significant players and develop actually philosophical television shows for kids although the major networks when they pitch this were not too keen. I guess they didn't have enough violence in them to suit the plebeian appetite. But I think it would have been a very good thing to shape the moral character of our younger generation.

LH: So those didn't go ahead?

LOU MARINOFF: Well they went... You know it's a very complicated process and nothing is predictable in Hollywood. But the producers with whom I worked were very much in favour. And I developed three, actually three, television shows, animated cartoon shows, delivering philosophy children in three different age groups and they actually liked one of them very much and pitched it to the major networks. As I say I wasn't privy to that boardroom conversation. I could have helped had I been there or maybe not. It didn't go forward. But it was one of the best things that never happened. It's on my shortlist. In terms of things that have come to fruition, I did a lot of work in Japan with strategic gaming. You know East Asian cultures are I guess famously socially cooperative and have tremendous spirit in the workplace organization and group harmony is very important for them in contrast perhaps to Western individualism. So we're constantly in the business world trying to balance these two features of human endeavour, namely competitiveness and cooperativeness. And a successful organization indeed maintains the balance of those things. So there's a lot of strategic gaming that goes on in Japan so they're particularly fond of this and it helps people to understand when to be competitive and when to be cooperative in the workplace. We've had a very interesting series of interventions in Sweden to give you an example in the medical community where philosophy has of course a historically a long partnership with medicine. But I was invited to develop for the Karolinska Institute, Spinalis foundation, in Stockholm a series of philosophical training's for their staff who wanted to work more philosophically with patients. They treat to populations over there. Namely newly injured spinal patients who are very often exclusively young men who are in motorcycle accidents or lumberjacks who've sustained injuries working in forest and also young women who are newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and the prognosis for M.S. is far less certain. So they're facing a kind of existential uncertainty about the remainder of their lives and how much quality they are going to have. The spinal injured patient’s face a different future because once the extent of the physical injury is known then their prognosis medically is more settled. But they also have as big an existential question, namely what am I going to do with the remainder of my life having to make a huge shift in lifestyle? There's nothing wrong with their minds you see. So philosophy here turned out to be a very beautiful intervention and by helping train the staff to discuss these questions with their patients they were able to help them turn around their lives in remarkable ways beyond the expert medical care they deliver.

LH: And when we're talking about a traditional business that presumably is out to make money mostly, how difficult is that to work with a business leader who is thinking about profits and maybe not philosophy?

LOU MARINOFF: Well business leaders have to think about profits and of course they're driven by the quarterly reports and philosophers are driven by the millennial vision more. So on the other hand there is absolutely no disconnect between profitability and ethicity unless your business is crime and you are for a living intending to harm people or if you're a kind of predatory capitalist who's interested only in making as much profit as possible and pay no attention whatsoever to ethics or to goodness or to human welfare. Most CEOs that I know are extremely bright people and are overworked like everybody else and perhaps even more so nowadays. So they don't see that there is a problem or a disconnect with philosophy of at all. On the contrary most of them understand that a virtuous organization is actually more functional and therefore potentially more profitable than a vicious one. So then it's a question of finding time during a busy work schedule to expose their teams, their managers, their employees, or however you want to address this within the organization to various kinds of workshops which are hands on experiences that people have at being philosophers not just listening to philosophy lectures and those who are amenable to bringing philosophers in to do this kind of thing report at least anecdotally that their workplace is more thoughtful and often more happy and productive as a result.

LH: I want to play a piece of tape here from somebody who has a slightly different perspective on this. This is Anita Anand, the J.R. Kimber Chair in Investor Protection and Corporate Governance at the University of Toronto.

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VOICE 1: The motivation is interesting. We want to encourage deep thinking within corporations. The key to ensuring this, on this view, is to have directors who are sophisticated in ethical decision making. I think somewhat differently. I start with the legal obligation of directors to act in the best interests of the corporation. Considering this obligation, I believe strongly that directors should have expertise in governance and financial matters; that they should and must be able to understand the financial affairs of the corporation so that they can discharge their duty. Within that skill set, there is also room to be ensure that directors are deep thinkers. Having a philosopher's voice at the boardroom table may not ensure that ethical decisions result. Good directors should have a multi-dimensional skillset. This is something that we need to encourage. So, give me a philosopher that has these other skillsets and I will think about it.

LH: So Lou Marinoff what do you think? Shouldn't we hope and expect that the business leaders can actually focus on business but also be deep thinkers? They don't have to bring in an outside philosopher.

LOU MARINOFF: Well I think that philosophers provide a very unique service in helping people to stimulate their thinking. So there is no inherent contradiction in what this colleague said. She mentioned multi-dimensionality and indeed it's vital for businesses to be able to function. People can't just stop what they're doing and philosophize all day. But on the other hand philosophy provides a dimension that needs to be addressed. People have a number of issues we see over and over again. There are moral dilemmas in the workplace. There are conceptual problems. There are communication issues. Every year or so the Wall Street Journal publishes an article on how people who are philosophy graduates actually make very good entry level hires in a number of fields that are financial or marketing-based or even legal-based. Why do philosophy graduates make good hires? Well fundamentally they can read, write, and reason, and this goes squarely to what your previous speaker just said that people who have responsibilities in the corporate world naturally need to understand the financial and legal implications of what they're doing but they also need to have highly honed communications and conceptualization skills and nothing hones those better than philosophy.

LH: I want to talk about a real world example and let's look at Facebook and that company has been under siege in the last few weeks. How different do you think that company's fortunes might look today if there was a philosopher on hand giving advice?

LOU MARINOFF: Well it depends on the philosopher. So it's not like we're all cut from the exact same cloth. And I think that the kind of philosopher you hire will also to a certain extent drive the kinds of questions that you're going to be induced to ask. The dialogical process however takes over and the kinds of robust methodologies that we deliver are not the same as giving answers that people rather we stimulate people to find their own answers. But I would say that these kinds of scandals that we're hearing about today are definitely real, are definitely affecting a lot of people. Some of them are driven by the epidemic of political correctness that's infected the corporate world. People are afraid to speak or think and sometimes people who do speak or think candidly or out loud are going to be subject to sanctions. Google and YouTube and Facebook and a lot of these huge global virtual entities are having I think rethink what they're doing because of the power and impact they have. And it would be absolutely essential for some of them to bring philosophers in to facilitate these conversations.

LH: And then at the same time we have people like Marco Rubio saying we need more welders and fewer philosophers. Do you think that's a widespread sentiment? Do you think people still kind of look down their nose at a philosophy grad?

LOU MARINOFF: Well if you want that side of it. I live in a small town in upstate New York, an hour north of Manhattan. And Liz if I want to get a lawyer I can get one 24/7. They're advertising on late night TV because the market is glutted with them. If I want to get a skilled trades person, if I want a plumber or an electrician, I've got to get online. Take a number and wait. And so I think there's very much a future of contemporary life. Americans in particular have become susceptible to the notion that all their children have "college degrees." Well it depends on the quality of the degree. If you're going to deliver skill sets that are really marketable. Yes. But there's a great need still for what the Brits call the “Redbrick Polytechnic.” We do need skilled trades people, skilled craftspeople, and there is a dearth of those. And indeed there's no reason why some of them shouldn't take philosophy 101 in the process. But absolutely we need more skilled people in our economy.

LH: So it is a win-win for the philosophers to, right? That they actually can get jobs in the business world.

LOU MARINOFF: Well absolutely as I said philosophy is an arduous preparation and there are all kinds of jokes that people tell about you know philosophy graduates which are not exactly amusing to the graduates. It's hard to find work. So there is no other occupation or profession or vocation that I know of which could justify such low employment numbers. I mean if you were graduating teachers or dentists or architects or engineers or medical people and you know two thirds of them or three quarters of them couldn't find jobs you couldn't justify carrying on the profession in this way. Why should philosophers be different? So I do concur with what you are saying that philosophers can in fact serve very well in many capacities and it's simply a question of reinventing them to understand. Give them ways of deploying their skill sets outside the academy.

LH: Lou Marinoff thank you so much for telling us about your work.

LOU MARINOFF: Oh you're more than welcome thank you for having me on Liz.

LH: Lou Marinoff is a professor of philosophy at the City Universtiy of New York, and the president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. We reached him in Monroe, New York. And we'd love to hear what you think about bringing philosophy to the workplace and what kind of lessons you think are important to learn. You can send us an email by going to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent, and click on the contact link. You can always find us on Facebook, or on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC. The CBC News is next. Then, the story of a California surrogate mom. It was quite a surprise when she found out she was carrying twins. But that was hardly the last surprise in store. Our documentary, Expecting the Unexpected, after the news. I'm Liz Hoath sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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ENCORE | How a surrogate twin pregnancy turned into a custody battle over unrelated babies

Guest: Alison Motluck

LH: Hello I'm Liz Hoath in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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LH: Still to come, he easily became the most famous lion in the world after he was shot and killed by an American hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015. In half an hour, I'll be joined by a man who knew Cecil the lion in life. Zoologist Andrew Loveridge shares his memories of Cecil, and his investigation into just what happened. But first, Expecting the Unexpected.

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LH: Last Friday on The Current, we brought you a story about some big changes that may be coming to the way surrogate pregnancies work in Canada. A liberal MP has put forward a private members bill that would mean Canadian surrogate moms could be paid for carrying someone else's baby. Right now Canadian surrogates can only have their expenses covered and the idea of changing that has sparked some strong responses for and against. Visit our website or download Friday's podcast to hear our conversation with three surrogate moms with very different opinions. The next story we have for you today involves a U.S. woman who decided to be a surrogate and ended up having an unexpected and frankly, mind-bending experience. Jessica Allen was 29-years-old and already a mother of two when she decided to become a surrogate mom. She lives in California where it's legal for surrogates to be paid. And at first it seemed like everything went smoothly. She gave birth in December 2016. But Toronto journalist Alison Motluck picks up her story from there, in her documentary, Expecting the Unexpected.

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JESSICA ALLEN: It was basically a way to give back you know and to just be a great way to bless someone with a child and in return get my family blessed financially.

ALISON MOTLUK: In 2016, Jessica Allen agreed to help a couple from China have a baby.

JESSICA ALLEN: We only had two kids. My oldest was five then and our newest was only six months.

ALISON MOTLUK: She would be what's known as a gestational surrogate meaning she would be carrying a baby made from someone else's sperm and egg. They would be the intended parents. All the arrangements were made through a surrogacy agency.

JESSICA ALLEN: I only agreed to get one embryo transferred. When I was about six seven weeks pregnant they saw another embryo. They told me that I was pregnant with twins that the first embryo that they transferred, the only embryo that they transfer split into twins. I was completely shocked.

ALISON MOTLUK: It can happen. A single embryo can split into two. Jessica had been warned of this possibility. Now the doctors told her she was carrying twins, identical twins, two babies with the same DNA.

JESSICA ALLEN: After every doctor's appointment. I would text her or let her know the babies are great. I'm doing well. I would send her a picture of every ultrasound that I get. I even made videos of the babies moving. I recorded them moving for her so I sent her everything I possibly could and just try to someway somehow allow her to feel comfortable and connected even being so far away.

ALISON MOTLUK: At the same time she and her family made sure not to get too attached. Here's her husband, Wardell Jasper.

WARDELL JASPER: I tried to distance myself. I didn't want to get some type of emotional connection because I know the kids in the belly was not mine. I did not rub her belly. You know I didn't feel when the baby was kicking. You know the national things. I kind of just didn't want to. I was like "those are not my babies. I know they're not so I just didn't want to do it."

ALISON MOTLUK: Towards the end of the pregnancy the babies were both in breech position. So Jessica was told she'd have to have a c-section at 38 weeks.

JESSICA ALLEN: They put something in front of you to block you cannot see what's going on down there. I had he intended mom come in with me and she was a nervous wreck [laughs]. I felt so bad for her poor heart she was a nervous wreck you know and I was the one laying on the table, and I just grabbed her hand and I just told her it's going to be ok. And when they were getting ready to pull the babies out, they you know hollered at her "Get your camera ready." She stood up, snapped a picture. And they put the babies in a little rolling bed and rolled them off right past me and she went with them and they went to their room.

ALISON MOTLUK: A few hours later when Jessica was recovering in her room. The intended mother stopped by with the caseworker from the surrogacy agency. They wanted to see how she was doing.

JESSICA ALLEN: Right away. You know I said "Did you get some pictures of the babies did you get some good pictures?" and "Can I see the picture?" and she hand me the phone. And I saw a picture of them they had beanies on with their head turned to the side. So it was just a side shot. And I said "Wow they look different" then my caseworker said that she also carried a set of identical twins that came out not looking identical but as they got older they started looking the same. I just thought of it as "Well you learn something new every day" because I didn't even know. Identical twins can come out not looking identical so I didn't think anything of it at that time.

ALISON MOTLUK: Jessica wanted to see the babies for real.

JESSICA ALLEN: And then the last day I knew it was going to be her last visit and I said "So are you going to bring the babies by with you before you leave so I can say goodbye" and then that's when she stated "Probably not" and this when it gets hard. She just gave me a hug and I said "Ok take care." As I'm crying you know she saw I was crying in the end. That was it. Last time I saw her. I didn't see them at all.

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JESSICA ALLEN: Until this day I have no idea why she did not bring them to me. That really broke my heart.

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JESSICA ALLEN: When I came home, the only thing I could think of was to recover from my surgery, get well, and just get back to my life. You know get back to my kids, get back to my husband, and just move forward with just life in general.

WARDELL JASPER: Our part was done. They got their babies. You know we got to bless them, they bless us and we're done.

ALISON MOTLUK: But they weren't done.

JESSICA ALLEN: About a month later she texts me and she started sending me pictures she sent me a picture of the babies by themselves and she sent me one of them together. I just thought she was being nice just saying "Hey. Here they are you know they're doing fine."

ALISON MOTLUK: This is the text exchange from Jessica's phone. The intended mother did not get back to us so another person is reading her side of the conversation.

JESSICA ALLEN: She sent a message stating that have I thought about "Why they look different?"

VOICE 1: Why they are different. I have been waiting for you to be well. Now I think you are well enough to think about something. They're not the same, right?

ALISON MOTLUK: True. Jessica had noticed differences in the photos. The baby's complexions, their nose shapes, their eyes but she had taken the original explanation at face value. Sometimes identical twins just look different at birth.

JESSICA ALLEN: She stated that she's having doubts that one of the babies don't belong to her. I said I don't think that's possible. And as she stated she is waiting for a DNA, for her embassies that she go back home.

ALISON MOTLUK: The Chinese embassy wanted proof that the babies were genetically related to the intended parents before they would issue the infant's passports.

JESSICA ALLEN: About a week or so later I get a text message and it's just a picture of the results stating that one baby is not genetically related to the dad. And I immediately started freaking out like "What do you mean?" I call my caseworker I'm like "How is the baby not theirs, not genetically related to the father? What does that mean?" You know and of course she has no answers like how is this possible. Like the IVF centre messed up? Did they transferred two instead of one you know did they mix up the embryos? Like I had no idea what's going on.

WARDELL JASPER: And my wife is like "Babe. They're saying babies look different and they want to do DNA testing" and all this time I'm like "Ok go ahead. Why not? Do whatever they need you to do". You know like what are you trying to say. "There is any possibility this be our.." "No. No Jesse come on. No these are not our babies." I just literally threw it off. No it's not our baby. We know that for sure. So they just going to find maybe with some mix up at IVF or something. I did not even give thought to it.

ALISON MOTLUK: But Jessica did. She took the DNA test and while she waited for the results she kept looking at the photos. There was no denying it. The two babies were not identical but did the smaller one look like her or her husband? The intended parents are Asian. Jessica is white. Wardell is black. Finally, a week later, Jessica got a text message from the agency caseworker asking to talk.

JESSICA ALLEN: I just knew it. She had the results and my husband and I found you know a quiet area in our house and did a video call with her. And she goes "Well and the results came back and Jessica definitely is the mother of Max". His name was Max, that she gave him. Our hearts dropped, you know.

WARDELL JASPER: Wait a minute. I have.. I have.. I have another son. I have another son. So those pictures, that I was seeing, is our son? It was like everything in the world stopped.

JESSICA ALLEN: How can this even be possible? How can one of these babies belong to me?

ALISON MOTLUK: Jessica and Wardell never got a full explanation. Was she already pregnant when she had the transfer? Did she conceive naturally after she was already confirmed pregnant with the other couple's embryo? It's called 'superfetation' a rare but not unheard of event where a second pregnancy takes place after a first one is already established. However it happened. The two babies, one made from the intended couple's egg and sperm and one from Jessica and Wardell's ended up just gestating side by side in her uterus.

JESSICA ALLEN: The next day I text her and I said when can we meet up to discuss the next steps for him to come home.

ALISON MOTLUK: She was texting the agency caseworker at some point after the intended parents learned that the baby wasn't their own. They had handed him over to the agency. At this point, Jessica didn't know exactly where her son was.

JESSICA ALLEN: The agency wanted to meet up with us and sign an agreement before they handed over my son. They also said that the intended parents wanted money back about 20 to 22 thousand dollars.

ALISON MOTLUK: Jessica had been paid twenty seven thousand dollars U.S. for the surrogacy but she got $5,000 extra for carrying twins, and another $3,500 for undergoing a c-section. She also got a small top up on the clothing allowance. Now the agency informed her that she had to pay all these extras back to the intended parents, along with what was now considered a month of round the clock childcare for her son.

JESSICA ALLEN: One thing on the list is the return twin compensation $5,000, you know returning clothes allowance for the twins $200.

WARDELL JASPER: This is agreement basically stating that "Hey you're going to pay back the intended parents this amount. You're not going to be able to talk about this. You're also not going to sue us. You can't come after us. You can't come after the company and you're admitting fault."

JESSICA ALLEN: [Reading] $840, formula $400.

WARDELL JASPER: They wanted us to sign that.

JESSICA ALLEN: [Reading] Clothing, diapers, car seat, stroller, wipes etc for one month $550.

WARDELL JASPER: No.

JESSICA ALLEN: [Reading] DNA tests $450. Child care for Max for one month $5,000.

JESSICA ALLEN: Then the caseworker states that she was reimbursed for the money she paid out of her own pocket for taking care of him.

JESSICA ALLEN: [Reading] $24, diapers and wipes $110. A photo of the baby for the DNA test 62 cents. The newborn care $1,800.

WARDELL JASPER: No. Not happening. I want my son now.

JESSICA ALLEN: [Reading] Circumcision $384. Who told you to go get him circumcised? So she racked up a total of $7,308.63.

WARDELL JASPER: So what do we do? We knew that we needed to find help. When I say help; a lawyer.

JESSICA ALLEN: At this time it was just a roller coaster we're calling all these attorneys trying to find help nobody knows what to do. The civil attorney saying this is a family law case. The family law saying this is a civil case. You know they're both saying this is a surrogate Attorney case. So we're basically getting thrown all over the place and nobody can give us any answers or anything about what to do because they've never heard of this before.

ALISON MOTLUK: So this is not the first case that's raised difficult issues in California. Lisa Ikemoto is a professor of law at UC Davis. She has a special interest in law that relates to assisted reproductive technology. She says there's just one scant law in California governing surrogacy.

LISA IKEMOTO: So the legislation itself was passed in 2012 and it does just two things. It authorizes surrogacy, it makes it permissible and it also authorizes the courts to issue pre-birth orders in gestational surrogacy arrangements and that's about it. It leaves many other issues unaddressed.

ALISON MOTLUK: A pre-birth order is almost like an adoption that's set in motion before a child is born. The pre-birth order in Jessica's case was signed several weeks before the babies were born. The order meant that the instant the babies came into the world, the Chinese couple were their legal parents. The problem is pre-birth orders in California only pertain to babies who are created through assisted reproduction and are not related to the surrogate.

LISA IKEMOTO: I think it's confusing. I think the statute does not apply to one of the twins, in this case. The twin is genetically related to the surrogate. It only applies to surrogacy when the embryos that have been transferred to the woman's womb are not genetically related to the woman who carries the pregnancy to the surrogate. But the pre-birth order becomes a judgement about parentage upon birth. And so that means that legally names the intended parents of the children who were born and that basically establishes legal parentage.

ALISON MOTLUK: In other words, the pre-birth order shouldn't have been applied to the second baby but it was and so on paper at least, the intended parents were the legal parents of the naturally conceived genetic child of Jessica and Wardell.

LISA IKEMOTO: You might be able to challenge it but there's no clear path to doing that. And I think that's why when this couple tried to find a lawyer. The lawyers all said "We don't know what to do."

ALISON MOTLUK: The surrogacy agency declined to be interviewed for this story citing confidentiality concerns. A statement sent through the company's lawyer did say that Jessica's version of events distorts the truth. The letter also says the company adheres to all professional, ethical and legal guidelines. In an e-mail to Jessica earlier this year the company's lawyer accused her of failing to take the drugs that were prescribed and having sexual intercourse when she wasn't supposed to. Jessica denies that the drugs were ever prescribed and she says that she and her husband abided by the contract only having sex after the surrogate pregnancy was confirmed. The day after Jessica found out that the baby was hers she was texting back and forth with the agency caseworker who's represented by someone else's voice here.

JESSICA ALLEN: She was checking with me to see what I wanted to do. At this point I am in church and I said "I am truly lost with this situation and heartbroken. I don't have the funds to give back nor pay for a birth certificate. Everything is about money and because of that we are being forced to give up a child that belongs to us." She said "I understand this is very difficult, I hate ..

VOICE 2: I hate to think this is about money. My only objective is to get Max in a stable home sooner than later.

JESSICA ALLEN: If you have your concern you would gave him to me the second he went and picked him up from the intended parents, not take him in your own care.

VOICE 2: Now that we're getting to the point of major decisions I want to be very clear that there are financial burdens that need to be paid to make things right for Max. Clearly I should not be out of pocket for care and expenses for Max.

JESSICA ALLEN: How is paying all this money back to other people make things right for my son? Making things right for my son would have been bringing him home to me the second we found out he belonged to me.

[Music]

VOICE: To let you know that if you don't keep Max I will need to come to meet with you and Wardell to get a statement from each of you signed and notarized, indicating that you are giving up your rights to Max. This is needed while all the other legal paperwork is processed. There would be no expense to you for this. It'll all be paid by me and reimbursed with the other expenses. There's no easy decisions or solutions to this very difficult situation.

[Music]

JESSICA ALLEN: But who are you to come get a notarized statement saying that I give up my rights. It's ridiculous. Uh.

[Music]

VOICE: For the sake of Max it would be best if a decision can be made today.

WARDELL JASPER: No decision. I'm sorry. Didn't you just say the DNA test came back positive that he's our son? Give us our son. Of course we want him back.

ALISON MOTLUK: But it wasn't that simple. The problem was the money, the money to pay back the intended parents. The money to pay back the caseworker who was taking care of the baby and the money to pay lawyers to have the legal documents changed. They simply didn't have it.

WARDELL JASPER: Then they wanted to present to us an option. What's the option? "Oh well the option is if you put your son up for adoption..." Wait a minute what? You want me to put my son up for adoption? "Well if you put your son up for adoption then do you know that the actual parents that take him home — by the way we do have someone in place to take him — will actually pay these bills. And sure. If you want to get rid of these bills give up your side." You got to be kidding me. So then the battle just got more intense because now they're holding our son hostage.

JESSICA ALLEN: After a million phone calls and a lot of turndowns, my husband found our attorney through Craigslist.

WARDELL JASPER: I would be lying to you if I told you it was easy for us to get this money for this lawyer. We just got the house. We sold TVs, instruments, clothing, shoes like just to give to her to get our son back.

ALISON MOTLUK: Jessica and Wardle's lawyer sent one e-mail.

LAWYER: [To company] Respectfully after speaking with my client they do not believe that they owe anything. They would like to have their son returned immediately and to deal with the civil indications immediately thereafter. The power of attorney and the…

LAWYER: [To Alison] At that point in time you know certainly as as a matter of decency it was wrong that the agency was holding the child, but as a matter of law it's not perfectly clear. Who should have been taken care of the child.

LAWYER: [To company] Looking at pictures of the babies it is obvious that Max was not their baby. Max needs to be immediately returned to his mother. And this should not be hindered by a paper settlement agreement, $10,000 in payments and efforts to limit liability on your company's end.

LAWYER: [To Alison] Linking the reimbursement money to the establishment of parentage is muddling the issues. Just as a matter of principle the legal status of the child and making sure that the parentage of the child are clarified should have been addressed first.

LAWYER: [To company] Please advise no later than the end of today. My clients want their child back immediately.

ALISON MOTLUK: The e-mails seemed to work. They heard back from the agency that same day.

JESSICA ALLEN: We got a phone call that we could get him in the morning, Sunday morning. We were instructed to meet up with the caseworker at a Starbucks parking lot. When I got there she was not there and waiting and waiting. She late and I see her finally pull out and she put the car seat down, unbuckles him. And before she can hand him to me I just grabbed him and said "give me my baby." I just grabbed him and was just kissing him just wanting to see his face. You know want him to look at me. [Sobbing] You know this is the first time I've seen my own child that I gave birth to and he's already 2 months old.

WARDELL JASPER: I remember getting the text, Jessy said "We got them," rushed home. When I opened the door I mean I started sweating. Is he going to know me? Is he going to connect with me? And I see his face and it is bright and it is warm. He looks at me and I look at him and I just hold him so gently and I started kissing him on his head, and just like "Daddy's here."

JESSICA ALLEN: At this time we're finally home. I have my son.

[Chatter and laughter]

ALISON MOTLUK: They named their baby Malakai.

[Noises of Wardel playing with baby Malakai.

JESSICA ALLEN: Malakai is just like his brothers. Just like his daddy, silly.

WARDELL JASPER: Da da...

MALAKAI: Daaa...

JESSICA ALLEN: He brightens up our world just by the smile when he's walking with his arms out reaching out to us. You know I call them my trio. You know my three princes. [Malakai moans] You know we did not expect to have a child so soon.

WARDELL JASPER: [To his son] All of a sudden you want to play now. We will sing A B C [sings A B C].

WARDELL JASPER: [To Alison] Not saying we don't love our son and we're grateful, he is beautiful, he is loving you know he has everything that we would want in a son and more. But it's like this was not our plan. [Sings to his son].

ALISON MOTLUK: Almost one year later Jessica and Wardell are still not recognized as the legal parents. The pre-birth order still stands. They have no birth certificate, no Social Security card. They do finally have a new lawyer and are trying to set things straight.

JESSICA ALLEN: He came home from the hospital with me and on my chest and my arms and in daddy's arms, not a bunch of strangers, not a bunch of changes being handed around like an item.

ALISON MOTLUK: As far as we know this is the only case of its kind in the world but there's no way to be sure. Babies are not routinely DNA tested upon birth. As far as Jessica is concerned they should be.

JESSICA ALLEN: This is a type of pain that you're never going to get over. Because they stole something from me that I can never get back.

[Music]

LH: The documentary Expecting the Unexpected was produced by Toronto journalist Alison Motluk and myself, Liz Hoath. Coming up in our next half hour the real story of what happened to Cecil the lion from someone who knew the great cat as well in life as in death. I'm Liz Hoath sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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Cecil the lion 'died in agony' 10 hours after being shot by hunter, says zoologist

Guest: Andrew Loveridge

LH: I'm Liz Hoath in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current. Rarely has the death of an animal provoked such worldwide fury and condemnation as that of Cecil the lion who was shot and killed in Zimbabwe by an American dentist, Walter Palmer, back in 2015.

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VOICE 1: This magnificent animal was known as Cecil. A 13-year-old lion who was a well-known and much loved attraction at the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. The animals protected.

VOICE 2: Cecil with his distinctive dark mane was a star. The best known animal in Hwange National Park. Officials say earlier this month Cecil was lured out of the protected park with bait Then he was shot.

VOICE 3: Well there's been widespread condemnation we've been reporting this morning of an American dentist who shot and killed a lion in Zimbabwe to make most of the front pages of newspapers here today.

VOICE 4: It appears Walter Palmer paid thirty-five thousand pounds to go on the hunt.

VOICE 5: I get it. when I look at the images of that lion and I can think of some rich guy going to Africa, a land where he has no business — like with a gun.

VOICE 6: A lot stars are outraged, tweeting about Cecil's killing. We spoke to Salma Hayek today.

VOICE 7: I think that we are in trouble when we take suffering and killing as a sport.

LH: Dr. Palmer was vilified in social media. Protesters even showed up outside his dental office in Minneapolis.

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VOICE 1: Yeah we're here today because Cecil was poached in Zimbabwe. And we want this dentist, we want this poacher out of our community, we want him shut down, we want him extradited to Africa to face justice.

[Sound: Applause]

LH: Cecil the lion may not have become a household name until after his death, but Andrew Loveridge knew the animal for years. Mr. Loveridge is a zoologist who has been studying lions in and around Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park since 1999. And he's seen firsthand the often contentious relationships between trophy hunters, conservationists and local villagers. After Cecil's death, Andrew Loveridge set out to uncover what exactly happened on the day he died. His findings are laid out in his new book called, Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil and the Future of Africa's Iconic Cats. We reached Andrew Loveridge in Oxford, England. Hello.

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Hi Liz.

LH: Can you tell me when you first met Cecil the lion?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So I'd be working in Hwange National Park for nearly 20 years now and about 10 years ago I first saw Cecil the lion. He was a territorial male that had just moved into our study area to replace a male that had actually been a trophy hunted before. And part of our study is to put radio collars on these animals so we can follow their movements and their lives and their fates of time. And so in November 2008 my wife and I who was working with me at the time actually went and tranquilized Cecil and put a radio collar on him and that was the first time we'd really kind of got close to him and handled him and we would get to know him extremely well over the next seven years.

LH: And what stood out about Cecil to you?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I think all lines are beautiful and Cecil was obviously a very very beautiful lion and I think he was absolutely unique in that he was one of many lions we've studied. And I think at that point we had radio collared 160 lions. So he was 161st. Buthe was very very well-habituated to vehicles. He lived in a photographic safari area where a lot of tourists come and visit the wildlife, take photographs. He got very very used to people. Hundreds if not thousands and thousands of people took his photograph. So he became a very very famous lion locally.

LH: And then how did you hear that he had been killed?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So I was actually in Oxford in England at the time and one of my field team phoned up and said we've just heard that Cecil has been illegally killed in a hunt which was kind of shocking news because we had thought that there was no hunting in that particular area in that year. And at that point we didn't really have a lot of detail and we had to work hard to uncover the detail later.

LH: And so what did you find out when you wanted to uncover? When you tried to do that, how did you do it and what did you find?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So Hwange National Park is in the kind of quite a rural part of Africa. It's a big national park. It's a very very small community of people and in small communities the word gets around pretty fast and so the rumour was out there that a lion had been hunted. We knew that Cecil was one of the lions that lived in that area and when we looked on our data from our satellite collars — Cecil was wearing a satellite collar — he disappeared. So we immediately kind of thought well it must be Cecil. We reported it to the authorities and the authorities said please can you take one of our rangers and go and actually investigate. And we sent one of our local research staff who has a background in anti-poaching. He went and he and the ranger investigated the story and they interviewed several hunting staff and the local kind of hunting camp where we thought the hunted actually taken place. And they gave their story: Yes a lion had been hunted and these are the kind of circumstances. And at the same time we'd actually downloaded the satellite data from the collar so we knew pretty much where Cecil had been in those days and we could kind of reconstruct more or less what happened.

LH: What do you know then now about how he died?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So we know that Walter Palmer and the local Zimbabwean professional hunter called Theo Bronkhorst had come to the area to hunt a lion. They were probably aware that there was no hunting quota for a lion and they were doing something slightly dodgy. And they came to this area and they used a bait to attract the lions to their hunting blind which is a kind of hide that they bolt in a tree to hide themselves from the lion before they hunted it. Walter Palmer was a bow hunter and he shot Cecil with a bow and arrow and fortunately at the time he didn't kill him. We know that Cecil ran away about 20, 30, 40 meters away into some bush and survived for the next 10 hours with a devastating arrow wound before the hunters actually went to finish him off. And they then skinned the animal and took all the parts of the animal away so there was no evidence to incriminate them. At the same time they also noticed that the animal had a collar and this was kind of inconvenient for them because they knew that if they handed that collar that would be admitting to having illegally killed the animal.

LH: So you think they knew that this was not a legal hunt?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I'm virtually certain that the local hunter knew. Walter Palmer may or may not have known. We probably will never know.

LH: And that was a difficult death for Cecil, right? Having been shot and then 10 hours later. Why is such a length in between the time that he was first shot and then finally killed?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I mean we don't know exactly because we haven't spoken to the actual hunters. But he almost certainly ran away. He wasn't dead. He could move. He moved about 350 meters in the first kind of five or six hours. It is possible they couldn't find him straight away. But when we spoke to the hunting tracker he said that he could hear the animal struggling to breathe. So it was obviously close by and they didn't bother to go and kill it, to kind of finish it off put it out of its misery. And we think that's Walter Palmer wanted to claim a bow hunting trophy or bow hunting record. And in order to do that he would submit the trophy record to one of these big hunting associations and they would record the size of the trophy. But in order to claim it as a bow hunting trophy he would have to kill it with a bow and arrow. He can’t go and shoot it. And I guess they wanted to wait for the animal to die of its initial wound.

LH: So what was that like for you to hear that this lion that you had been tracking for a decade had been killed in this manner?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I mean I think it's always really distressing to hear that one of your study animals has died. You really get to know them extremely well; you know follow their lives for sometimes years. And to hear that they've taken 10 hours to die in agony is very very distressing.

LH: So this wasn't just a distressing story for you, it turned into an international story. I mean there are many trophy hunts every year, why do you think this story turned so big?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I think there are lots of different reasons. And I think one of the reasons is that people were just astounded that firstly lions are hunted at all. Most people didn't know they were. Secondly, that this animal was mistreated in such a horrible way. And I think a lot of people really just don't understand the motivation for going to kill an animal for pleasure, an animal that's never going to hurt or you won't eat. And most people just can't really understand that. And so I think that sort of wave of revulsion was a lot to do with that.

LH: LH: I want to play another little piece of tape because everybody seemed to be talking about this at the time and here's what us late night host Jimmy Kimmel had to say about Cecil's death.

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VOICE 1: Let's say we accept at face value that he thought it was legal and properly handled, and didn't know the lion had a tracking collar...the big question is why are you shooting a lion in the first place? I'm honestly curious to why a human being would feel compelled to do that? How is that fun?

LH: So that goes back to what you were just saying there. But how surprised were you about the scale of the response to his death

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Well I think most biologists are used to kind of animal stories maybe making the third page you know sort of a minor newspaper. This was front page news for weeks and weeks. I think in between July and September 2015 there were a 100,000 media articles worldwide on this particular animal and I think to my knowledge that's never ever happened before for any kind of animal or environmental story.

LH: But you'd been dealing with this before because many other lions had been killed by trophy hunters. Lions involved in your research.

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Absolutely. Cecil was the 42nd lion that had been radio collared by the study that had been killed by trophy hunters. For all of the previous ones we'd had almost no response from anybody.

LH: It was not on Jimmy Kimmel.

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Exactly. Jimmy Kimmel didn't know about it.

LH: So looking at the aftermath of this… a court in Zimbabwe eventually threw out the charges against the professional hunter. Walter Palmer never faced charges. So what do you make of how this case was handled?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I think that certainly the case in Zimbabwe probably wasn't very well handled at all. And the judge threw it out and he said that basically the charges were so vague that no defense could be mounted. So Theo Bronkhorst especially got off. He's never he faced the charges. Walter Palmer has not faced charges although he is still under investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And at the end of last year we asked him for comment and they said they couldn't provide any comment because the case was still pending. What kind of impact does trophy hunting — you mentioned the 42 number — have on the population of lions?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So for the Hwange National Park, our population is a single most important source of mortality for male lions. So it has a really big impact on lions in Hwange National Park. Probably across Africa it has a much smaller effect simply because it's not as much trophy hunting and because lions are actually threatened by a lot of other things primarily by loss of their habitat and coming into conflict with local people and their kind of agriculture and livestock.

LH: I want to talk a little bit about some of those other threats in a minute. But there were other lions that you talk about in your book that you had a real connection to, maybe weren't as famous as Cecil. Can you tell me about is it Kitazawa?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Yes Kataza started off as a cub in my study and when I first actually started the study in 1999 and grew up into a young male lion. And he was one male that kind of epitomized the threats that lions face. His mother was killed in a poacher’s snare and that obviously put him in danger. He was then caught in a poacher’s snare and he nearly died. I had to rescue him, dart him, take his snare off and treat the wound. He survived that. He then left the National Park and started killing people's livestock and he came very close to being shot as a problem animal. And I caught him, immobilized him, and moved them back in the park and he fortunately stayed in the park after that. And he was eventually actually shot by a trophy hunter but all those kind of threats that he kind of dealt with and faced are threats that lions face all the time.

LH: And you felt like after all that time you'd put all that effort into him and then again another trophy hunter took him down.

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Yes it was very sad because he just survived so much and it just seemed so unfair that he was just going to be shot. But you know that is the kind of fate that so many lions around Hwange face.

LH: So the supporters of the trophy hunting argue that the hunting actually helps conserve wildlife which seems counter-intuitive. Can you explain that argument for me?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: That's true. And in Africa about 1.2 point square kilometers of wildlife habitat that is actually set aside for trophy hunting. There's actually more habitat then set aside for national parks. So in terms of actually protecting habitat which is what conservationists need to do trophy hunting does do that. But whether it will continue to do that is really a big question because Africa is changing by the minute. There are a billion people in Africa at the moment. In 50 years is going to be two billion people. And all those kind of habitats are under pressure. And trophy hunting doesn't actually really make that much kind of revenue in terms of covering the costs of conservation. And so there's a threat that these conservation areas that are used for hunting actually may become farms and agriculture in 50 years’ time.

LH: Which would be more of a threat to the animals?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Yeah lions can't survive in this kind of human modified habitat. They're carnivores and have to eat meat. If there's no zebras to eat they eat people's donkeys and cows and that causes people to get very angry and usually kill the lions so they just don't survive in agricultural landscapes.

LH: I was going to ask about that because it's easy for me to think about lions and preserving them. But what about the people who have to live so close to them? How difficult is it to live side by side with these animals that can be very vicious?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Yes I think we can't talk about conserving lions without kind of understanding that sort of African perspective of lions. Westerners think of lions as these beautiful magnificent creatures. We sort of think of the Lion King. Africans don't view lions that way at all. Lions are dangerous animals. They kill animal. They kill people's domestic stock a lot. They sometimes kill people. They kill people's kids. And people are frightened of them and they have a lot of respect for them and they don't necessarily want to live with them.

LH: So what do they do?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So we call it human wildlife conflict. It's something that happens all over the world. It happens in Europe. It happens in America. But you know when lions leave national parks and they go into sort of communal agricultural land and kill people's livestock the people retaliate and kill the lions. And that's a huge source of mortality for most lion populations.

LH: And I mean that's a real difficulty for them because they rely on that livestock for food and to survive. So how do you manage that? How do you walk that line of wanting to conserve the animals yet understanding that this is really difficult for the locals?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Yeah I think most locals would like to just be completely separated from wildlife and that's not always practical. But we can't conserve the wildlife without kind of looking after the needs of people. So you have to kind of have that balance. People need to benefit from the wildlife ideally in some way and they also need to be protected from the wildlife. So the one thing that we've been doing around Hwange is we have a program called the Lion Guardian Program where we employ people in the local community to help local villages protect their livestock from the lions and also to chase the lions back into the national park when they leave and that protects the lions. So they kind of do both those jobs and that really helps a lot. We've reduced the livestock loss by about half in the last five years which makes a really big difference and you know every time you do that you reduce the need to kill lions.

LH: What's it like for you as somebody that works with lions? Obviously they're ferocious but you are working with them and handling them and darting them and collaring them, what's it like to work so closely with these animals?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Firstly I have a huge amount of respect for them. They're massive animals. Male lions twice the size of a very big man and they can shred you in seconds so you have to be very very careful. But they're not needlessly aggressive animals and they do become very habituated to research vehicles or tourist vehicles. You can observe them very very closely. Obviously when we need to put a radio collar on them we dart them with a dart gun and a tranquilizer and you handle them once they're fully tranquilized and that is an amazing experience just to get that close to such a magnificent animal.

LH: Have you had any close calls?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I have had lions wake up from the tranquilizer and certainly when I was first starting out I didn’t have a lot of experience. A young male lion that I had just collared and I was actually moving into the shade of a bush woke up and started moving around and that was pretty terrifying for a while.

LH: What did you do?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: We ran away and he ran away as well.

LH: The other way hopefully.

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: We were both terrified. That could have ended badly.

LH: You talk about in your book you compare the lions and the way they live with each other in their groups to Game of Thrones — the famous book and TV show. Can you tell me a little bit about their societies and why you would compare it to Game of Thrones in particular?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So lines are very very social animals and they live in these like very strongly bonded social groups. So the females live in prides and the males live in what we call coalitions or groups of males often very closely related. And coalitions compete with each other for access to the females, to the prides, and they fight to the death to gain that access. When they do displace a male or a coalition of males they kill all the pride's cubs. So it's pretty brutal. You know just a little bit like that sort of medieval kind of chaos in Game of Thrones and it can be very like that. They don't tolerate another male's cubs. They don't want to raise another males cubs, they want to follow their own cubs as quickly as they can. And that's a big problem with trophy hunting is that if you shoot the territorial male in a pride a new male is going to come in and he instantly kills all the cubs. He quite often you know fights with the females as well and he can kill some of the females. So trophy hunting causes a huge amount of disturbance in that kind of quite finely balanced social system that lions have.

LH: And do the males always have that sort of adversarial relationship when always needing to be at the top of the pack so to speak?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: Yes they do. So males will almost always challenge strange males. They will always end up fighting and occasionally they can actually link up. So Cecil was an animal that actually formed a bond with a completely strange to him male. So he formed a bond with a male called Jericho and they kind of formed the slow coalition when they were actually quite old animals. And so they can actually form bonds with strangers as well. So it's a lot more unusual but they do it.

LH: And where do the females fit into that whole social structure?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: So the females in a pride are almost always very very closely related. So they're sisters, mothers, and daughters. A young female will quite often join her mother's pride or if the pride's too big she'll go and try to own pride. So they're always closely related and they compete with other pride's to try and hold down the best territory they can find. And if they've got a good territory they've got a good chance of raising cubs. Females that have bad territories don't tend to do so well.

LH: So in the book you ask the question: Did anything good come out of Cecil's death? What's the answer to that?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I think prior to Cecil's death and prior to all the kind of you know intense media exposure people were just a little bit unaware that lions are really in quite big trouble. Lion populations have declined by about 42 per cent in the last 50 years or so. There's about 23,000 lions left in Africa. That's far fewer lions than there are African elephants and everyone's worried about elephants. So I think one of the big things is that we now are aware that these animals are in danger. We need to do something about their conservation. So I think that is a kind of a good thing that has come out of it and I think that exposure is really valuable for lion conservation. I think it's also exposed some of bad practices in lion trophy hunting. And I think that the spotlight's really on trophy hunting at the moment. It's something that I think that needs to change in the way we sort of interact with nature.

LH: So what would you like to see happen now? What needs to change in the short-term?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I think what the really big challenge in African conservation is how do we fund the conservation because African governments are poor. African nations are some of the poorest in the world and they're having to fund the conservation of lions and elephants and all these species that we that everybody loves. And I think that we really need to move to a system where conservation becomes a global responsibility and wealthier nations actually take some responsibility for looking after these wild places in Africa that Africans can't really afford to conserve and many Africans don't want to conserve because they contain these dangerous animals that threaten their lives.

LH: Do you see that happening? How hopeful are you?

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: I am a little bit hopeful and I think it is kind of happening already and there are some several big philanthropists who have taken on whole conservation areas and they pay for it. They pay for the conservation. There's an organization called Africa Parks which currently manages 15 national parks across Africa and they want expand their footprint. They take on the conservation entirely. And it's all funded by philanthropic money. Western governments could fund conservation in a heartbeat if they wanted to. It's a fraction of the kind of defense and development spending that governments spend all the time.

LH: Mr. Loveridge. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. It's been fascinating hearing about your work.

ANDREW LOVERIDGE: It's an absolute pleasure Liz. Thank you very much.

LH: Andrew Loveridge is a Research Fellow in the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University. His book, Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil and the Future of Africa's Iconic Cats will be published next week by Regan Arts. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Tom Power puts the spotlight on the career of film composer Hans Zimmer. And, coming up this afternoon — at 5 o'clock, 5:30 in Newfoundland and Labrador — we're bringing you the best of the Current's series called "Facing Race" where we heard some of the most pressing issues of race and racism across the country. Hear highlights from all 3 of those town halls in Halifax, Vancouver and Montreal. The program will be hosted by The Current producer, Pacinthe Mattar. I'm Liz Hoath. Anna Maria is back tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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April 2, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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