Mongabay Newscast

On this episode we discuss the amazing minds and lives of animals — their memories, how even electric eels dream, the fact that some creatures like to get drunk (and why) — and we’ll hear all about Mongabay's newly launched bureau in India. Author Sy Montgomery teamed up with her friend and fellow animal writer Elizabeth Marshall Thomas to write Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind. Sy is the author of numerous other fascinating animal behavior titles, including "The Soul of an Octopus," which was a National Book Award finalist in the U.S. We also speak with Sandhya Sekar, she is Programme Manager for Mongabay's newest bureau, Monbabay-India, and she shares some fascinating stories that they're already covering. Plus we round up the recent top environmental & conservation science news! If you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about the show. And please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.  

On this episode we dive into cutting-edge remote sensing technologies invented by Heinz Award-winner Greg Asner, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, which his team uses to monitor ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs. This airborne laser-guided lab can even see underwater to map reefs, find record-breaking individual rainforest trees that have escaped detection, and more. We also listen to bioacoustic recordings that are used to analyze species richness in tropical forests with a researcher from the University of Puerto Rico, Dr. Mitch Aide. Plus we round up the recent top environmental & conservation science news! Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about the show!

On today’s episode we feature a conversation with iconic Canadian scientist, author, television presenter, and activist David Suzuki. Suzuki is a biologist who’s just as well known for his outspoken views on the need to protect nature. He is the author of more than 50 books and the host of the long-running science program The Nature of Things. He’s also the founder of the David Suzuki Foundation and the Blue Dot Movement, which aims to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in the Canadian Constitution. Plus we round up the recent top environmental & conservation science news! Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this show!

On the first episode of 2018, we speak with the author of a new book about the resilience of indigenous peoples in the face of climate change, and a researcher shares recordings of Australia's elusive night parrot. Plus we round up the recent top environmental news! Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this podcast!

We speak with Christopher Herndon, a medical doctor who as co-founder and president of Acaté Amazon Conservation, has been helping indigenous Matsés people document their traditional healing and plant knowledge in a massive 1,000 page encyclopedia, and in creating living pharmacies for the future. Also on the show is Mongabay contributor Rowan Moore Gerety, the writer behind our recent series on the effectiveness of conservation projects in Madagascar. The island nation has been a global conservation priority for decades, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in conservation funds from international donors — but rising deforestation, commercial exploitation of wildlife, and degradation of critical habitats suggest that these conservation investments may not be reaching their full potential. Mongabay hired Gerety, a veteran radio and print journalist, to examine the factors that contribute to or hinder success with the aim of informing future conservation efforts. Plus we round up the recent top environmental news! Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this podcast!

Award-winning iconic writer Margaret Atwood recently tackled a medium she is not as well-known for: comic books. Her superhero series Angel Catbird "was a conservation project from the get-go," she tells us in this edition of the podcast, being an effort to shine a light on the plight of wild birds and the house cats who love to stalk them, plus other ecological themes. We also discuss her smash hit "The Handmaid's Tale" and other 'possible futures,' as she calls them. Then we speak with Tyler Gage, a co-founder of the beverage company Runa and author of "Fully Alive," a new book detailing the lessons he learned in the Amazon that led to the launch of Runa and its mission to partner with indigenous communities in business via plant medicine and agroforestry. Plus we round up the recent top environmental news! Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this podcast!

Mongabay is lucky to have Jane Goodall on its Advisory Board, and just before founder and CEO Rhett Butler was scheduled to speak with her most recently, research came out that vindicated her contention, which she’s held for nearly 60 years, that animals have personalities, so we recorded her thoughts about that for the Mongabay Newscast. “Quite honestly I think almost everybody recognized that animals have personalities, whether they were in the wild or whether they weren't,” she says. Other topics discussed include trophy hunting, activism, and hope for the future (a full transcript will be available at Mongabay.com on 11/17/17). Our second guest is reporter Justin Catanoso, who is covering the UN Climate Change conference (COP23) for Mongabay this week, and he joins us from the event in Bonn, Germany. Plus we round up the top environmental news. Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this podcast!

In this episode we discuss new science on the impacts on birds and amphibians of drilling for natural gas in the tropics with a Smithsonian researcher, and a Goldman Prize winner discusses her ongoing campaign to rid mercury contamination from the environment, which is (still) having alarming human health effects. Plus we round up the top environmental news. Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast!

Mongabay editor Phil Jacobson joins the Newscast to discuss a new investigative reporting project in collaboration with The Gecko Project called “Indonesia For Sale” about the land deals — and the powerful politicians and businessmen behind them — that have converted vast areas of Indonesian rainforest to industrial palm oil plantations for personal profit.  Then we speak with Adrià López-Baucells, whose acoustic studies of bats in the central Amazon reveal the effects of Amazon forest fragmentation on bat foraging behavior. In this Field Notes segment, López-Baucells plays some of the recordings he captured and also explains how this audio led to some species being found in the central Amazon for the first time. Plus we round up the past two weeks' top news. Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast!

On this week's show we speak with Princeton University's Zuzana Burivalova about whether forest certification schemes like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are actually achieving their environmental, social, and economic goals. Whether they do or not has massive implications for forest conservation worldwide, and while the evidence is hard to find, this tropical forest ecologist has interesting findings to share. Our second guest is Steve Wilson, who has just written a new paper on Javan rhino vocalizations. He plays some recordings of these fascinating sounds and discusses what they mean.  Plus we round up the past two weeks' top news. Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast!