Mongabay Explores New Guinea: Protecting unparalleled biodiversity

Mongabay Explores is an episodic podcast series that highlights unique places and species from around the globe. Subscribe to the show wherever you get podcasts and stay tuned for subsequent episodes in this season.

New Guinea is one of the most most biodiverse regions on the planet and also the world's largest tropical island. It makes up less than 0.5% of the world’s landmass, but is estimated to contain as much as 10% of global biodiversity.

To unpack the vast biodiversity of New Guinea, conservation policy, and NGO efforts to protect land, culture and Indigenous rights, we spoke with Rodrigo Cámara-Leret, of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, Charlie Danny Heatubun, head of the research and development agency of the provincial government of West Papua, and Miriam Supuma of Synchronicity Earth.

In this third season of the podcast, we take a look at what makes New Guinea unlike any other place in this world, the contributing environmental impacts that threaten its culture and biodiversity, and what is being done to protect it.

Listen to the previous 2 seasons of Mongabay Explores via the podcast provider of your choice or find them at our podcast homepage here.

Episode artwork: (Casuarius unappendiculatus) is one of the majestic birds that New Guinea is famous for. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay.

Sounds heard during the intro and outro include the following: rusty mouse-warbler, growling riflebird, raggiana/lesser bird-of-paradise, superb fruit-dove, long-billed honeyeater, little shrike-thrush, brown cuckoo-dove, black-capped lory. Special thanks to Tim Boucher and Bruce Beehler for identifying them.

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