Mongabay Newscast

The U.K.’s Environment Agency calls waste crime — where instead of delivering recycling or rubbish for proper disposal, companies simply dump it in the countryside — “the new narcotics” because it’s so easy to make money illegally. It’s estimated that one in every five U.K. waste companies operates in this manner ('fly-tipping'), and the government seems powerless to stop it: it’s so easy to be registered as one of the government’s recommended waste haulers that even a dog can do it — and at least one has, as this episode shares. In part 2 of our new investigative podcast series, the team also speaks with a lawyer who describes her year-long campaign to get the government to deal with a single illegal dump site, but they fail to act before it catches fire, in an emblematic 'trash fire' for this whole issue. They also speak with a former official at Interpol who shares that his agency also lacks the resources to tackle the problem. In a three-part, “true eco-crime” series for Mongabay’s podcast, our hosts trace England’s towering illegal waste problem: investigative environmental journalists Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby follow this illegal 'waste trail' from their quiet English town to the nearby countryside and as far away as Poland. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. This episode is "The Jungle" and is part two of the podcast series, "Into the Wasteland," developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu. Banner image: The U.K.’s recyclables, plastic packaging and waste soils the countryside across the country and as far away as Turkey (pictured). Image courtesy of Caner Ozkan via Greenpeace Media Library. If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Please share your thoughts and feedback! submissions@mongabay.com.

The British countryside is increasingly under siege from a scourge of illegal waste dumping – polluting both water and air – but one man is bravely taking the criminals on, staking out their sites with night vision goggles, drones and more. In a three-part, 'true eco-crime' podcast series for the Mongabay Newscast, investigative environmental journalists Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby trace this illegal 'waste trail' from their quiet English town to the nearby countryside, and as far away as Poland. Threatened, chased, but undeterred, waste investigator Martin Montague has also established a website, Clearwaste, to document incidents of 'fly-tipping' as the practice is known, and people use it daily to report tens of thousands of incidents all over the country, where illegal landfills are also on the rise. Episodes two and three will air in the coming weeks and take the issue to a wider European scope, discussing it with Interpol and visiting a destination for U.K. waste in Poland. Banner image: A mountain of UK plastic waste near Wespack Recycling Factory in Malaysia, via Greenpeace Media Library. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. This episode is "The Waste Mountain" and is part one of the podcast series, "Into the Wasteland," developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu. If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Please share your thoughts and feedback! submissions@mongabay.com.

Host Mike G. speaks with Mongabay reporters whose new investigations reveal a major and illegal shark finning operation by one of China’s largest fishing fleets, and the role of a giant Japanese company, Mitsubishi, in buying that fleet’s products. Through an exhaustive interview process with deckhands who worked throughout the company’s fleet, Mongabay's Phil Jacobson and Basten Gokkon revealed that Dalian Ocean Fishing's massive operation deliberately used banned gear to target sharks across a huge swath of the western Pacific Ocean. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission is currently meeting to discuss policies that would crack down even further on use of this gear, and we speak with Jacobson who is there covering the event. We also speak with Japan-based reporter Annelise Giseburt who was able to verify that the illegal operation benefited greatly from selling a massive share of its tuna catch to the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi. The investigations: Exclusive: Shark finning rampant across Chinese tuna firm’s fleet How Mitsubishi vacuumed up tuna from a rogue Chinese fishing fleet Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Please share your thoughts and feedback! submissions@mongabay.com.

In a nation gripped by currency depreciation, harsh economic fallout and civil unrest, the Shouf Biosphere Reserve endures as a rare conservation success story in Lebanon. Previously protected by landmines and armed guards, the region (a UNESCO biosphere reserve) forges ahead with community engagement in tree-planting projects while providing the community with food, fuel, and jobs. Click the play button to hear this popular article by Elizabeth Fitt aloud:  From land mines to lifelines, Lebanon’s Shouf is a rare restoration success story Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Photo Credit: Farid Tarabay, forest guide, under the Lamartine Cedar, one of the oldest in the reserve. Image by Elizabeth Fitt for Mongabay. Please send feedback to submissions@mongabay.com, and thank you for listening.

Healthy ecosystems are often noisy: from reefs to grasslands and forests, these are sonically rich places, thanks to all the species defending territories, finding mates, locating prey, socializing or perhaps just enjoying their ability to add to life's rich chorus. Recording soundscapes in such places is one way to ensure we don't forget what a full array of birds, bats, bugs, and more sounds like, and it couldn't be more important, as the world witnesses a decline in many such kinds of creatures, due to the biodiversity crisis. Soundscape recordings provide a kind of sonic baseline which researchers can also pull data from. On this episode of the podcast, host Mike G. plays a diverse selection of forest soundscapes from South America and Africa and discusses them with their creator, sound recordist George Vlad, who travels the world and shares the acoustic alchemy of nature via his impressive Youtube channel. Join us to explore these sonic landscapes with Vlad and get inspired to find the richness of natural sounds near you. Episode artwork: A writhed hornbill, a Philippines endemic species, singing. Image via Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0). Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Please share your thoughts and feedback! submissions@mongabay.com.

On Costa Rica's Carribbean coast, sloths are losing their habitat to houses and roads, forcing them to cross between forest patches on the ground, making them vulnerable to traffic incidents and dog attacks.  However, the Sloth Conservation Foundation, created by British zoologist Rebecca Cliffe, is trying to change that by building rope bridges to allow these famously slow-moving animals to safely cross cleared patches of forest. Read the popular article written by Monica Pelliccia and translated by Maria Angeles Salazar here: Bridges in the sky carry sloths to safety in Costa Rica Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Photo Credit: Baby three-toed sloth hugging a stuffed panda in a Trio Indigenous community. Suriname, 2012. Image by Rhett Butler. Please send feedback to submissions@mongabay.com, and thank you for listening.

“Ecuador had not declared community protected area management by Indigenous peoples until Tiwi Nunka Forest. This area is the first of its kind in Ecuador, and one of the few in the entire Amazon,” says Felipe Serrano on this episode. His organization Nature and Culture International recently helped the Shuar Indigenous community in Ecuador win a historic victory to protect its ancestral territory from cattle ranchers, loggers and miners, and he discusses how the community succeeded on this episode. We also speak with Paul Koberstein, editor of the Cascadia Times, an environmental journal based in Portland, Oregon, who with Jessica Applegate recently published "Deep Cut," an article at Earth Island Journal that details the flawed basis for the U.S. State of Washington’s new and flawed climate solution: cutting down forests. Episode artwork: Members of the El Kiim community. Photo courtesy of Nature and Culture International. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Please share your thoughts and feedback! submissions@mongabay.com.

Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa is a spectacular new-to-science fish species and the first that has been named by a Maldivian scientist. Ahmed Najeeb, a biologist from the Maldives Marine Research Institute, named the fish, which means "rose" in the local Dhivehi language. Fairy wrasses such as this are known for their elegant and colorful appearance with new species often being described. Read the popular article written by Liz Kimbrough, here: Spectacular new fish species is first to be named by Maldivian scientist. This species, while new-to-science is already being traded. Many aquarium-traded fish are caught unethically. Read Robert Wood's 2019 commentary on buying aquarium fish ethically.  Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Photo Credit: A male rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) from the Maldives. The species name ‘finifenmaa’ means ‘rose’ in the local Dhivehi language, a nod to both its pink hues and the Maldives’ national flower. Photo by Yi-Kai Tea © California Academy of Sciences Please send feedback to submissions@mongabay.com, and thank you for listening.

"It might be the highest density of trout species on Earth," our guest Ulrich Eichelmann says of a suite of European rivers slated for damming to generate electricity – rivers which also host a vast wealth of birds, bats, bugs and beauty – plus a deep cultural heritage. Rapid biological surveys are a well known way to establish the richness of an ecosystem and advocate for their conservation, and a corps of scientists have used this conservation solution to repeatedly prove that the rush to build hundreds of new hydroelectric dams threatens to drown this heritage, with impressive results: A proposal to dam the last free-flowing river in Europe (the Vjosa) was halted in part on the basis of one such survey conducted by Scientists for Balkan Rivers which Eichelmann coordinates, after the team identified species new to science, in addition to great overall biodiversity. The group has since turned its focus to other threatened rivers in the region, and he describes their activities, plus which rivers' ecologies they are investigating now. Episode Artwork: The biodiversity of Balkan rivers is now becoming more widely known, and also their beauty, such as Kravice Waterfalls on the Trebižat river in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Photo by Goran Safarek for Riverwatch/EuroNatur. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Please share your thoughts and feedback! submissions@mongabay.com.

Nine leading forest and climate experts defined 10 principles for equitable and transformative landscapes in a "playbook" for ecosystem restoration. The playbook authors say these steps could be game changing if followed. The plan outlines climate change and forest loss as political, economic and social problems, not just biophysical or environmental. Hear more about the playbook by listening to this reading of the original popular article by Liz Kimbrough, New restoration “Playbook” calls for political, economic, and social change. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy this series, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay. Photo Credit: A toco toucan (Ramphastos toco) by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay Please send feedback to submissions@mongabay.com, and thank you for listening.