Sylvia Medina has spent her career at the intersection of environmental science, conservation, and education. A biologist and environmental engineer turned children’s author, she founded Green Kids Club to introduce young readers to wildlife and the environmental challenges animals face. Through stories about figures such as the celebrated Grizzly 399, Medina uses individual animals as gateways into larger questions about habitat loss, conservation, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Scientific Inquirer spoke with Medina about translating complex environmental issues for children, the benefits and dangers of animal celebrity, and how stories can inspire a new generation of conservationists.

Can we start with some background? You started your career in biology and environmental engineering. What did you do, and how did that experience eventually inform Green Kids Club?

I have a degree in biology and environmental engineering, and I was recruited out of college to work for the Department of Energy in Idaho Falls. I’m originally from Arizona. I grew up in Flagstaff, and I’ve always loved animals, hiking and the outdoors. When I came up here, I didn’t realize how close I would be to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park, so that was a big plus.

During my career, I did environmental engineering and cleanup work for the Department of Energy, including radioactive waste cleanup. Eventually, I started my own business and did consulting and other work in the environmental field.

While I was working here, I started going to the parks all the time and realized how much I loved the outdoors. I also became a little obsessed with grizzly bears. I learned about the grizzly population in the Yellowstone ecosystem and started visiting the parks regularly.

Eventually, I realized I wanted to make a difference, so I developed the Green Kids Club concept. It originated with my children, who became the “Green Kids.” The original idea involved three kids who were environmental heroes traveling to different places and teaching people about environmental education and stewardship.

That eventually evolved into the Environmental Heroes books, including the Grizzly 399 book you read. An environmental hero can be an animal or a person. The stories explore animals facing issues such as poaching, habitat loss or endangerment, as well as the people working to protect them. The goal is to bring awareness to those issues. That’s how the Green Kids Club concept came about.

You take complicated environmental problems and conservation stories and present them to young readers. That’s not an easy task. How do you make those issues accessible without talking down to children or oversimplifying them?

Having my own kids helped because sometimes I would read the stories to them.

There’s also something about my own background that helped. My first language was Spanish, and I didn’t know English until I was five years old. My parents were Mexican American, and we spoke mostly Spanish at home. When they spoke English, they tended to use fairly simple language. So I grew up using smaller words and expressing things simply.

Even today, despite having a degree, there are words where I’ll say, “What are you talking about? Can you explain that word to me?” So I naturally speak in a fairly simple way.

I was also a librarian for a while after I retired and sold my business. I spent a lot of time around little kids and reading to them, which helped me understand how to communicate with them.

That doesn’t mean you can’t introduce bigger words. If you’re talking about an ecosystem, for example, you explain what an ecosystem is. Sometimes we’ll put those explanations in the back of the book. The same thing applies to a word like “poaching.” That’s a difficult word for children, but you can explain that it means people hunting animals illegally.

The idea is that children come away from our books having learned something beyond the environmental story itself.

You focus quite a bit on individual animals. Do you see those animals as gateways into larger ecological and conservation issues?

Yes, I would say so. I just spent the weekend in Wyoming with a gentleman who knows a lot about wild horses. I wanted to visit a particular herd, find the horses and understand what’s happening to them because they’re being rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management.

They’re supposed to be protected by the U.S. government, but there are serious concerns about what happens to them after they’re removed, including horses being sold and ultimately slaughtered.

You start with this beautiful horse. You go out, take pictures and learn its story. Then you dig deeper and discover issues surrounding the habitat it lives in, the size of the population and the forces affecting it.

You also begin learning about our laws and how animals are supposed to be protected under those laws. Sometimes you find loopholes or problems with the way the government or other groups are implementing them.

So an individual animal’s story can lead you into much deeper issues.

How do you select which animals you’re going to write about?

First of all, I selected animals that I really like. The grizzly bear was an obvious one. I wrote several stories about 399 because she lived in Grand Teton National Park, and I was able to see her with her four cubs.

I selected an elephant because of my friends at Elephants Without Borders. I spent time with them, got to know the organization and eventually did a book with them.

I also get contacted by different groups. A cheetah organization contacted me and asked me to write a book for them. So I assess different requests. If I have time, I can do them. If I don’t, I have to put them on hold.

Someone has also approached me about doing a book on turtles and the issues facing sea turtles along beaches.

The wild horse issue is especially near and dear to my heart. I had a horse as a child, and when I found out what was happening with wild horses, I decided I wanted to write a book about it.

How does your approach change when you’re fictionalizing an animal story versus telling a true story, such as the story of a wolf matriarch? Is one more difficult than the other?

With animals, you often don’t know what happened to them when they were young. If you look at wolves like Wolf 21 or 42, some of the early wolves introduced into Yellowstone, you don’t really know what happened in their lives when they were babies.

You can fictionalize that part because little kids want to know what happened before that animal became the hero of the story. So there are fictionalized parts.

I also anthropomorphize the animals and have them talk. That’s not always well accepted by scientists, and some park groups don’t want that. But little kids are often more interested in a story when animals talk to each other, just like they do in a Disney movie.

I also give animals emotions because I believe animals have emotions. When I was watching the horses the other day, it started raining and this little baby horse began running and jumping up and down. It looked happy. You can’t tell me that animal isn’t feeling happiness.

That’s an example of how I incorporate fictional elements into stories grounded in nonfiction.

Tell me about Grizzly 399. Who was she, and how did the book come together?

I’d been going up to the parks for years. My children’s books have a science section in the back where we include real photographs along with illustrations.

This was before COVID, when there were far fewer visitors. After COVID, visitation became crazy. Before that, I would go up quite a bit just to see the animals. I knew where to look for grizzlies.

I got to know wildlife photographer Thomas Mangelsen. After I wrote my first Environmental Heroes children’s book, about a baby elephant named Morelo, I decided I wanted to write one about Grizzly 399.

I contacted Tom and asked if he would do the book with me. He’s a well-known photographer and wasn’t easy to get ahold of. I asked him at least once a year for three years. He finally agreed.

I already knew about 399 because I would see her in the park. She was beautiful and was what people call a “roadside bear.” Female bears sometimes stay near roads because male grizzlies can kill their cubs. The presence of people can discourage male bears from approaching, so being near the road can offer the females a form of protection. Grizzly 399 adopted that behavior, which meant people had many opportunities to see her.

Once Tom agreed to the book, I became much more immersed in her story. Before that, I would simply go out and enjoy seeing her. We had to stay 100 yards away, of course. You can’t get close to a grizzly.

During COVID, I also took up photography so I could photograph animals myself. Over time, I got to know 399’s habits.

She became especially famous when she had four cubs, which is unusual for grizzlies. Movies were made about her, and there have been a number of books.

I grew to really love her. That’s probably the best way to put it. And I wanted to put her story down on paper for children.

Her fame leads into something more complicated. What did your experience with Grizzly 399 teach you about the relationship between conservation and animal celebrity?

It’s very difficult.

Before COVID, when I went to see Grizzly 399, there might be 10 or 20 people watching her. After COVID and after movies were made about her, there could be hundreds of people lined up along the roads to see her. To me, it became a bad situation.

I realized that I was probably part of the problem too because I wrote a story about her and people wanted to see her. You can’t blame people for wanting to see her.

Animal celebrity is both a plus and a minus for conservation. On one hand, you’re bringing the plight of the grizzly bear to people’s attention. That’s particularly important when there are debates about removing grizzlies from Endangered Species Act protections and allowing hunting.

But fame also creates a difficult situation for the animal. You get all these people to love an animal, and suddenly that attention interferes with how the animal lives.

The bears can have trouble crossing roads because there are so many cars and people lined up. They can also become habituated to humans and start going to people’s homes or raiding garbage cans.

So animal celebrity can be both positive and negative—for conservationists and for the animals themselves.

You write for children about some difficult subjects. How much environmental reality should adults expose children to? How do you make sure that instead of filling them with anxiety, you’re encouraging curiosity and a desire to understand these problems?

I think we tend to believe that children can’t absorb hard issues, and I don’t think we give them enough credit.

Some of it depends on how you’re raised. I was just in Wyoming, and we were talking about how attitudes toward animals differ from place to place. In Wyoming, for example, many children grow up learning to hunt. In other places, children might grow up with a very different approach to wildlife and conservation.

But children already encounter difficult ideas. Think about Bambi. The mother gets killed. Children understand that concept.

Kids also see a lot on YouTube and elsewhere. They’re exposed to much more than we sometimes think.

And sometimes children are the ones who teach their parents. We were talking in Wyoming about children who have gone to their parents and said, “No, you can’t be doing that to animals, Dad,” or “Mom, you can’t do that.”

So it can go the other way. Children can absorb these issues and even influence the adults around them.

Do you think society puts too much emphasis on fixing environmental problems after the damage has happened instead of preventing that damage in the first place?

Yes. I think that’s a problem in our society.

I went to Wyoming specifically to learn about the wild horse issue. I’d already been working on it before an article came out recently in The New York Times about what is happening to some of these horses.

The Bureau of Land Management rounds horses up with helicopters, and I think it’s a terrible way of managing them. But rather than stopping these things before they happen, we sit and watch the situation evolve.

It’s similar with grizzly bears and other animals. People continue taking animals until their numbers become very low. Then suddenly we say, “Oh my God, we need to stop doing that.”

Instead, when we see a problem developing, we should try to make a difference then.

Maybe part of it is that government and laws move too slowly. But I definitely think there’s a problem with waiting until the situation becomes severe before acting.

Let’s say a child reads one of your books and remembers only one idea from it 20 years later. What would you want that idea to be?

I love animals, so of course I’d love for them to come away saying, “I love animals.”

But more than that, I want them to understand that wildlife and habitats need protection and to ask themselves: What can I do to make a difference?

That’s the message I’m trying to get out to kids. Little kids often have a favorite animal. I want them to think about how we can make sure there’s a world in the future where they and their children can still enjoy those animals and their habitats.

Simply helping them understand what’s happening is important because they’ll remember.

I know a young man named Jack who became interested in orangutans when he was about six years old. He learned that orangutans were losing their habitat and began asking, “What can I do to make a difference?”

He ended up becoming an orangutan conservationist. Now he’s 19 years old and teaching people about orangutans.

Jack is a good example of what I hope children who read my books will take away from them.