Agroecology is a style of sustainable farming spreading quickly around the globe, transforming the way food is grown. Industrial agriculture requires chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides that harm natural systems and people alike, but by working with (and even enhancing) ecosystems, agroecology provides an alternative that encompasses many familiar practices--from composting to organic gardening and seed saving--and many less widely implemented ones, like agroforestry, while bringing modern technology like mobile apps and SMS to bear. And studies show that it can indeed feed the world's people: food systems expert and author Anna Lappé joins the show to discuss why the idea that it's a “low yield” practice is a myth and how the adoption of agroecological practices around the globe is key to a sustainable future. And behavioral scientist Philippe Bujold of Rare Conservation’s Center for Behavior & the Environment discusses his organization’s program that employs behavioral science to encourage farmers in Colombia to adopt agroecology in the face of changing climate conditions, like drought and heat, which are causing traditional growing methods to fail.  Episode artwork: Vegetable farmer watering plants at an organic farm in Boung Phao Village, Lao PDR, via Flickr. 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 the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Once drained for palm oil or other agricultural uses, Indonesia's peatlands become very fire prone, putting people and rich flora and fauna--from orchids to orangutans--at risk. Over a million hectares of carbon-rich peatlands burned in Indonesia in 2019, creating a public health crisis not seen since 2015 when the nation's peatland restoration agency was formed to address the issue. To understand what is being done to restore peatlands, we speak with the Deputy Head of the National Peatland Restoration Agency, Budi Wardhana, and with Dyah Puspitaloka, a researcher on the value chain, finance and investment team at CIFOR, the Center for International Forestry Research. Restoration through agroforestry that benefits both people and planet is one positive avenue forward, which Dyah discusses in her remarks. For more on this topic, see the recent report at Mongabay, "Indonesia renews peat restoration bid to include mangroves, but hurdles abound." Episode artwork: Haze from fires in a peatland logging concession pollutes the air in Jambi Province, Indonesia. Image courtesy of Greenpeace Media Library. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have 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! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Landscape rewilding and ecosystem restoration are likely our last/best chances to maintain life on Earth as we know it, the guests on this week's show argue. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration just began, so we invited author Judith Schwartz to discuss her new book The Reindeer Chronicles and Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth, which documents numerous restoration projects around the globe and highlights how the global ecological restoration movement is challenging us to reconsider the way we live on the planet. We’re also joined by Tero Mustonen, president of the Finnish NGO Snowchange Cooperative, who tells us about the group’s Landscape Rewilding Programme which is restoring & rewilding Arctic and Boreal habitats using Indigenous knowledge and science. He previously joined us to discuss the 'dialogue' between Indigenous knowledge and western science for a popular episode in 2018, a theme we also explored with David Suzuki for another popular show about how Indigenous knowledge is critical for human survival. Episode artwork: Reindeer calf at Lake Inari in northern Finland © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace.  Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have 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 nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

The Sumatran rhino is a ridiculously cute but cryptic species that teeters on the brink: with an estimated 80 individuals left in the wilds of its super dense rainforest home, experts are also divided on *where* they are. With conflicting and sometimes misleading data on their whereabouts, it is exceedingly difficult to track them down, and to therefore protect them. To discuss this 'rhino search and rescue' as she calls it, host Mike DiGirolamo contacted repeat guest Wulan Pusparini, who studied them as a species conservation specialist with the Wildlife Conservation Society before pursuing her Ph.D. in Environmental Conservation at Oxford University. Articles discussed in this episode: Rarely seen Sumatran rhinos are now even more elusive as threats close in Signs, but no sightings: The phantom rhinos of Sumatra’s Bukit Barisan Selatan Episode artwork: Rosa is the wild-born female Sumatran rhino noted by Wulan during the interview who now lives at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park. Image courtesy of Terri Roth/Cincinnati Zoo. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts. We also offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, providing instant access to our latest episodes and previous ones. 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! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. See all of 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Two technologies being promoted as climate solutions, biomass and hydropower, actually have big environmental consequences and might not be sustainable at all. Can we burn and dam our way out of the climate crisis? We speak with Justin Catonoso, a Wake Forest University journalism professor and Mongabay reporter, who describes the loopholes in renewable energy policies that have allowed the biomass industry to flourish under the guise of carbon neutrality, even though the burning of trees for energy has been shown to release more carbon emissions than burning coal. We also talk to Ana Colovic Lesoska, a biologist who was instrumental in shutting down two large hydropower projects in her Balkan country’s Mavrovo National Park. This recent Goldman Environmental Prize winner says there is a tidal wave of 3,000+ other hydropower projects still proposed for the region, and discusses whether hydropower can be a climate solution at all, at any scale. Articles mentioned in this episode: Will new US EPA head continue his opposition to burning forests for energy? EU renewable energy policy subsidizes surge in logging of Estonia’s protected areas In the Balkans, grassroots opposition stalls another hydropower project Read all of Mongabay's coverage of biomass here and hydropower here. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have 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 nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

The Sumatran orangutan is a lowland species that has adapted to life among this Indonesian island’s highlands, as it has lost favored habitat to an array of forces like deforestation, road projects, plus the trafficking of young ones to be sold as pets, so this great ape is increasingly in trouble. On this episode, Mongabay speaks with the founding director of Orangutan Information Centre in North Sumatra, Panut Hadisiswoyo, about these challenges plus some hopeful signs. His center is successfully involving local communities in this work: over 2,400 hectares of rainforest have been replanted by local women since 2008, creating key habitat for the orangutans, which also provides the villagers with useful agroforestry crops, for instance. Related reading from this episode: Deforestation spurred by road project creeps closer to Sumatra wildlife haven Call for prosecution of Indonesian politician who kept baby orangutan as pet ‘We are losing’: Q&A with The Orangutan Project’s Leif Cocks on saving the great ape Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts. We also offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, providing instant access to our latest episodes and previous ones. 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! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. See all of 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Ever drink 'shade grown' coffee or eat 'bird friendly' chocolate? Then you've enjoyed the fruits of agroforestry, an ancient agricultural technique practiced on a huge scale across the world which also sequesters a staggering amount of carbon from the atmosphere. Agroforestry is poised for growth as the world searches for solutions to the climate crisis, and this one is special because it also produces grains/fruits/vegetables/livestock, builds soil and water tables, and is highly biodiversity-positive. Today we discuss its power and promise with three guests: Mongabay's agroforestry series editor Erik Hoffner; the director the Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri, Sarah Lovell, who discusses agroforestry’s history and extent in the United States, plus what the Biden Administration might do with it; and a true icon in the field, Roger Leakey, an author, researcher, and vice president of the International Tree Foundation. Leakey explains how helps build food security, boosts biodiversity, and reduces conditions that lead to deforestation and migration. Mongabay’s entire series on agroforestry can be viewed here, but here are some features discussed on the show: “Investors say agroforestry isn’t just climate friendly — it’s also profitable” “An ancient ‘indigenous technology’ with wide modern appeal” “Trees are much more than the lungs of the world” “Agroforestry: An increasingly popular solution for a hot, hungry world” Episode artwork: chocolate thrives under a mix of fruit and timber trees, image via World Agroforestry. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have 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 nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

The Sumatran elephant is a small species of Asian elephant whose numbers are dwindling as their lowland forest habitats are converted to crops like oil palms. Experts say that Indonesia has 10 years to turn this trend around and save them from the eternity of extinction--and that doing so will have many additional benefits for human communities and wildlife.  To explore the issues surrounding the species' conservation, we spoke with 3 guests: Leif Cocks, the founder of the International Elephant Project, Sapariah “Arie” Saturi, Mongabay-Indonesia's Senior Writer who's reported regularly on the issue; and Dr. Wishnu Sukmantoro an elephant expert at Indonesia's Bogor Agricultural University.   Two recent articles Arie reported for Mongabay on the topic: As a forest in Sumatra disappears for farms and roads, so do its elephants On plantations and in ‘protected’ areas, Sumatran elephants keep turning up dead Episode artwork courtesy of World Wildlife Fund's Sumatran elephant program. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify or Audible, or wherever they get podcasts. We now offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, so you can have 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! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

From fires to COVID, 2020 was a *bit* of a rough year for forest conservation efforts. But what’s in store, and hopeful, for 2021? On this episode, we catch up with Mongabay's founder and CEO Rhett Butler to hear what's on his radar for the year--from the Amazon to Africa and Indonesia--plus for a forest focus on Africa, we ask Joe Eisen, the executive director of the NGO Rainforest Foundation UK, for his take on the past year and the major issues and events likely to impact Africa’s tropical forests over the course of 2021. Here's Rhett's latest article: Rainforests: 11 things to watch in 2021 Related episodes mentioned during the show: • “New Latin American treaty could help protect women conservation leaders — and all environment defenders” (28 October 2020) • “What can we expect from tropical fire season 2020?” (13 May 2020) • “Reporter Katie Baker details Buzzfeed’s explosive investigation of WWF” (29 October 2019) Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify, or wherever they get podcasts. We now offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, so you can have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips, please download it and let us know what you think via the contact info below. 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 nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Valuable minerals are regularly dug out of sensitive ecological areas like rainforests, and a growing slice of this mining is of the small, "artisanal," and unregulated kind. The result is often a moonscape devoid of trees that is difficult to restore. But a new tech interface called Project Inambari, which was recently named a winner of the Artisanal Mining Challenge, aims to change that with technology, so that communities and authorities can better protect their resources. Bjorn Bergman is an analyst for SkyTruth and is one of the project's developers, and he joins the podcast to describe their vision. Also joining us to discuss the impacts of mining and its mitigation is Dr. Manuela Callari, a Mongabay contributing writer who recently wrote about the tens of thousands of abandoned and shuttered mine sites in Australia and what communities are doing about them. Episode artwork: satellite view of artisanal mining in rainforests of Madre de Dios, Peru, courtesy of SkyTruth. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify, or wherever they get podcasts. We now offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, so you can have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips, please download it and let us know what you think via the contact info below. 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 nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details. 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. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.