Finding Wild

Heather Moran

Finding Wild is a podcast, short film series, and editorial feature about people and their relationship with the natural world — from scientists and conservationists to everyday people who simply love the outdoors, with one question at the heart of every conversation: What is wild to you? Born out of a personal journey — exploring the wild, the amazing creatures I’ve encountered along the way, and the equally fascinating people and their relationship with the natural world. As a photographer on assignment, conversation has always been part of my craft, and those exchanges revealed something profound — the stories behind the people behind the work. I found myself drawn to a particular question: what was the moment, the spark, that first connected someone to the wild — and never let them go? But beneath it all lived a deeper realization: everyone perceives wild as something different, and so many of us have lost touch with it altogether. The wild was once right outside our front doors; today, many of us live in cities and suburbs, buy our food from grocery stores, processed and often wrapped in plastic or foil, and the wild feels like something distant — a destination rather than a given. And yet it still finds us. Coyotes, foxes, ravens, bears, sharks, and jellyfish are all adapting to our human landscape just to survive — quietly moving through the edges of the world we’ve built. And that tension, between what wild once was and what it means now, is the heartbeat of Finding Wild — with one question at the heart of every conversation, one that never gets the same answer twice: What is wild to you?

Episodes

  1. 6d ago

    Finding Wild Puffins with Dr Heather L Major

    Wild Puffins — with Dr. Heather L Major, University of New Brunswick Dr. Heather Major is a Professor and Department Chair of Biological Sciences at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John, and the Lead of the Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research. Since 2016, she’s headed the long-term seabird monitoring program on Machias Seal Island — a small island in the Gulf of Maine that hosts the largest Atlantic puffin colony south of Newfoundland — building on a dataset that stretches back to 1995. In this episode, Heather walks us through what makes puffins such a strange and fascinating species — from the mystery of their orange bills to the chaos of fledging night — and shares the unexpected finding at the heart of her research: puffin chicks are leaving the island smaller than they used to, while their bills keep getting bigger. It’s a story about a bird most people think they know, and how thirty years of data is slowly rewriting what we understand about it. In this episode: What a puffin actually is — and why nobody knows why their bills are orangeThe science of pufflings: how chicks fledge at night, and why researchers spend those nights chasing them across a dark lawnWhat thirty years of chick diet data reveals about the Gulf of Maine food chainWhy puffins are getting smaller — and their bills are getting bigger, especially in femalesWhat the current population models suggest about where things are headingGuest: Dr. Heather Major Professor & Department Chair, Biological Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Saint John Lead, Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research (ALAR) Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research LabBlueskyFinding Wild Apple Podcasts Video Now Available!SpotifyAmazon/AudiblePandoraInstagram/YouTube @findingwildstudiosFacebook FindingWildBluesky#WhatIsWildToYou #FindingWild Want to see the puffins on Machias Seal Island? Sea Watch Tours (Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick)Bold Coast Charter Company (Cutler, Maine) Where to stay and everything else Grand Manan, from The East Coast Mermaid

    Finding Wild Puffins with Dr Heather L Major

  2. Sep 30

    Wild Pollinators | A Bee Friendly Place

    In 2011, flooding devastated a close-knit mobile home community built decades earlier on a Williamstown, Massachusetts floodplain. I walk the land today with Anne O'Connor, co-chair of Bee Friendly Williamstown. Since then, it's become a park, with street paths still running through it and most of the land simply left to grow wild, maintained by the town — but tucked inside it is a pollinator garden planted and tended by volunteers from Bee Friendly Williamstown. Their original vision was an ambitious, town-wide pollinator corridor — one that turned out to be a lot harder to build than anyone expected. What they built instead is smaller, but real: a garden full of wildflowers, bees, and butterflies. BeeFriendly Williamstown https://www.beefriendlywilliamstown.org Toxic Use Reduction Institute (TURI) University of Massachusetts Lowell https://www.turi.org Homegrown National Park https://homegrownnationalpark.org Wing And A Prayer Nursery https://www.wingandaprayernursery.com Massachusetts Pollinator Network https://masspollinatornetwork.org Grow Native Massachusetts https://grownativemass.org

    Wild Pollinators | A Bee Friendly Place

  3. Aug 26

    Wild Lobsters with Dan Rodgers, Bottom Line Fisheries and Catch Your Dinner Tours

    Wild Lobsters — with Dan Rodgers, Bottom Line Fisheries Dan Rodgers has been lobstering out of Corea, Maine since 1988 — a first-generation fisherman who grew up on the water and never left it. In 2017, he opened his boat to visitors, and Catch Your Dinner was born: guests watch as Dan and his daughter bring the traps full of lobster onto the boat, band lobster claws, and learn about the conservation practices lobstermen have used since the beginning — then eat what they caught. In this episode, Dan walks us through what a day of lobstering off the coast of Maine actually looks like, how a hand-painted sign by the side of the road turned into a full-blown tour business almost overnight, and why the fishery's most important conservation tool — the v-notch — was invented by fishermen, not regulators. It's a story about a hundred-year-old fishery that polices itself, a family business built one word-of-mouth voicemail at a time, and what it means to understand where your food comes from. In this episode: What a typical day of commercial lobstering looks like, from 2:30 a.m. onHow Catch Your Dinner Tours started with a hand-painted sign and grew from thereThe V-notch, and the billion-notch challenge reshaping lobster conservation statewideHow invasive green crabs are changing life along the Maine coastWhat Dan hopes every guest understands about where their food comes from Guest: Captain Dan Rodgers, Commercial Lobsterman & Founder, Catch Your Dinner Tours coreacatchyourdinnertour@gmail.comFacebook: catchyourdinnerlobstertourInstagram: @catchyourdinnerlobstertour Finding Wild Apple PodcastsSpotifyAmazon/AudibleInstagram/YouTube: @findingwildstudiosFacebook: FindingWild#WhatIsWildToYou #FindingWild

    Wild Lobsters with Dan Rodgers, Bottom Line Fisheries and Catch Your Dinner Tours

  4. Aug 12

    Wild Whale Rescue with Mackie Greene, Canadian Whale Institute

    For over 20 years, Mackie Greene has been pulling entangled whales back from the brink. As co-founder and director of whale rescue for the Canadian Whale Institute, he and his team cover nearly the entire east coast of Canada — one of just a handful of trained response teams in the country, alongside a longstanding team in Newfoundland and Labrador. It's a job that means racing to the water within the hour, tracking whales hundreds of miles offshore, and cutting rope by hand from animals that can weigh anywhere from 5 to 150 tons (roughly 4.5 to 136 metric tonnes). In this episode, Mackie walks us through what a rescue actually looks like, how the work has evolved since he and co-founder Joe Howlett started with little more than knives taped to poles in 2002, and how a warming ocean is reshaping where — and how often — these rescues happen. It's a story about fishermen turned first responders, and what it takes to keep showing up for an animal that might fight you the whole way. In this episode: What a whale disentanglement actually involves, start to finishHow the Canadian Whale Institute's rescue team began — and how tragedy reshaped itWhy right whales have shifted from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of St. LawrenceThe shipping lane and fishing closure changes designed to protect themWhat keeps Mackie going back out, even after a rescue doesn't succeedGuest: Mackie Greene Co-founder and Director of Whale Rescue, Canadian Whale Institute 📧 info@canadianwhaleinstitute.ca 📘 Facebook: /CanadianWhaleInstitute 📸 Instagram: @canadianwhaleinstitue 🐦 Twitter/X: @CanWhaleInst Finding Wild 🎧 Apple Podcasts: link 🎧 Spotify: link 🎧 Amazon/Audible: link 📸 Instagram/YouTube: @findingwildstudios 📘 Facebook: FindingWild #WhatIsWildToYou #FindingWild

    Wild Whale Rescue with Mackie Greene, Canadian Whale Institute

  5. Aug 5

    Finding Wild Horses — The Line Between Intervention and Interference A conversation with Meg Puckett, Part 2

    In part two of my conversation with Meg Puckett, director of herd management for the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, we get into the personal stories — the horses that changed everything for her, and the question at the heart of this series: what is wild? Meg shares the moments that have stayed with her across nearly ten years of managing this herd, the philosophy she’s developed about when to intervene and when to walk away, and the legacy she hopes to leave behind. Learn more about the Corolla Wild Horse Fund: Website: corollawildhorses.com Instagram: @corollawildhorsefundinc Facebook: Corolla Wild Horse Fund YouTube: @corollawildhorsefund1356 Follow Finding Wild: Instagram: @findingwildstudios Facebook: Finding Wild

    Finding Wild Horses — The Line Between Intervention and Interference A conversation with Meg Puckett, Part 2

  6. Jul 29

    Finding Wild Horses - Five Hundred Years of Survival, A conversation with Meg Puckett, Part 1

    Along the Graveyard of the Atlantic, on the northernmost beaches of the Outer Banks, lives the last genetically isolated herd of Colonial Spanish Mustangs in the world. Nobody knows exactly how they got here. But they've been here for five hundred years. In this episode, I join Meg Puckett, director of herd management for the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, on a morning ride-along on the 4x4 beach in Corolla, North Carolina. Meg takes us inside the work of managing a wild herd — the genetics, the breed conservation, the population management, and the growing challenge of coexistence between wild horses and the people who share their beach. Part 2 drops next Wednesday. Learn more about the Corolla Wild Horse Fund: Website: corollawildhorses.com Instagram: @corollawildhorsefundinc Facebook: Corolla Wild Horse Fund YouTube: @corollawildhorsefund1356 Follow Finding Wild: Instagram: @findingwildstudios Facebook: Finding Wild

    Finding Wild Horses - Five Hundred Years of Survival, A conversation with Meg Puckett, Part 1

  7. Jul 19

    What Is Wild To You?

    Finding Wild begins with a question: What is wild to you? In this first episode, wildlife and conservation photographer Heather Moran shares how a short film turned into a podcast, why “wild” doesn’t mean what it used to, and why she’s spending this whole series finding out what it means now. What is wild to you?

    What Is Wild To You?
  • 7 Episodes

About

Finding Wild is a podcast, short film series, and editorial feature about people and their relationship with the natural world — from scientists and conservationists to everyday people who simply love the outdoors, with one question at the heart of every conversation: What is wild to you? Born out of a personal journey — exploring the wild, the amazing creatures I’ve encountered along the way, and the equally fascinating people and their relationship with the natural world. As a photographer on assignment, conversation has always been part of my craft, and those exchanges revealed something profound — the stories behind the people behind the work. I found myself drawn to a particular question: what was the moment, the spark, that first connected someone to the wild — and never let them go? But beneath it all lived a deeper realization: everyone perceives wild as something different, and so many of us have lost touch with it altogether. The wild was once right outside our front doors; today, many of us live in cities and suburbs, buy our food from grocery stores, processed and often wrapped in plastic or foil, and the wild feels like something distant — a destination rather than a given. And yet it still finds us. Coyotes, foxes, ravens, bears, sharks, and jellyfish are all adapting to our human landscape just to survive — quietly moving through the edges of the world we’ve built. And that tension, between what wild once was and what it means now, is the heartbeat of Finding Wild — with one question at the heart of every conversation, one that never gets the same answer twice: What is wild to you?

Information

  • Creator
    Heather Moran
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    ©2026 Finding Wild Studios
  • Show Website
    Finding Wild