Mongabay Newscast

Bruce Cockburn is well known for his outspoken support of environmental and humanitarian causes, and his multi-decade career has yielded 33 records, including his latest, Bone On Bone. This week, he will be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside another outspoken icon, Neil Young. We spoke with Cockburn about how he came to his ecological worldview, why he wrote iconic songs like "If a Tree Falls" and "If I Had A Rocket Launcher," as well as similar songs on his new record, and we also discuss where he finds hope for the future. Our second guest is Amanda Lollar, founder and president of Bat World Sanctuary, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Texas. Lollar discusses the efforts of a number of dedicated wildlife rehabbers who took action in the wake of Hurricane Harvey to rescue wild animals in Houston and other impacted areas. 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. If you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast. Photo courtesy of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.

On this episode we take a look at the role technology plays in conservation efforts. First we speak with Topher White of Rainforest Connection, which deploys used cell phones in tropical forests around the world to provide real-time monitoring of forests and wildlife. Its network alerts local communities when illegal logging activities are taking place and can then be stopped, for example. Then we speak with Matthew Putman, he's the CEO of Nanotronics and an applied physicist with a keen interest in conservation. We discuss some of the technologies that he sees making the biggest contributions to the way we approach conservation, and why he believes these advances can help turn the tide against environmental degradation. Plus we round up the past 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. Thanks, and we also hope you will tell a friend about this podcast!

Our first guest for this edition of the Mongabay Newscast is Eddie Carver, a Mongabay contributor based in Madagascar who recently reported about a troubled company that is hoping to mine rare earth elements in Madagascar’s Ampasindava peninsula, to make electronic gadgets. This is a highly biodiverse region that is home to numerous endangered lemur species, some of which live nowhere else on Earth. Then we speak with Jo Wood, an Environmental Water Project Officer in Victoria, Australia. In this Field Notes segment, Wood plays for us the calls of a number of indicator species like whistling ducks and "pobblebonks" (also called "banjo frogs") which appear when her team floods their dried up wetland home -- this audio evidence helps her assess the overall success of the "rewetting program" and the health of the wetlands ecosystem. 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. Thanks, and we also hope you will tell a friend about this podcast!

“It was a complete breakthrough for me to realize that sharing from the heart, which is the opposite of what we’re taught to do as scientists, was the way for me to connect with people,” Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist, tells us in this episode of the Mongabay Newscast. She is an acclaimed climate communicator and a professor at Texas Tech University and last year, she teamed up with her local TV station to write and produce a web series called "Global Weirding," which tackles common questions, misconceptions, and myths around climate science, politics, and religion. We check in with Hayhoe right as she’s in the midst of shooting Season 2 of "Global Weirding." We are also joined by Branko Hilje Rodriguez, a PhD student from Costa Rica, where he’s studying the soundscapes of different successional stages of the tropical dry forest in Santa Rosa National Park, the largest remaining remnant of tropical dry forest in Mesoamerica. In this Field Note segment, Hilje Rodriguez plays for us a number of the recordings he’s made in the park, allowing us to hear the sounds of the dry forest during different stages of regrowth and different seasons, as well as some of the iconic bird species that call the dry forest home. 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. Thanks!

On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast we speak with Sarah Bardeen, the communications director for the NGO International Rivers. Bardeen wrote a commentary for Mongabay recently after attending an international gathering of river defenders, who face harassment, intimidation, and worse for their opposition to massive hydropower projects.  We also speak with Yannick Dauby, who has been making field recordings throughout the small country of Taiwan. In this Field Notes segment, Dauby plays a recording of his favorite singer, a frog named Rhacophorus moltrechtpi, the sounds of the marine life of Penghu, the calls bats, and more. 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. Thanks!

On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we take a break from our usual science reporting to look at some of the ways nature inspires people to create art — and how they in turn use that art to inspire others to protect the natural world and its inhabitants. Our first guest is Ben Mirin, aka DJ Ecotone, an explorer, wildlife DJ, educator, and television presenter who creates music from the sounds of nature to help inspire conservation efforts. He'll explain the art and science of his recordings and play several songs he composed. We also speak with Cleve Hicks, author of a new children’s book called A Rhino to the Rescue: A Tale of Conservation and Adventure, not only to express his love of nature but to raise awareness of the poaching crisis decimating Africa’s rhino population. If you'd like to share your acoustic ecology work with us during a future edition of the show, log on to Twitter and send us a link to a recording you made and any info about the science the clip conveys using the hashtag #Sciencesoundslike. 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 welcome Gemma Tillack, agribusiness campaign director of the Rainforest Action Network, which has been very active in the global campaign to protect Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, one of the richest, most biodiverse tropical forests on the planet that is at risk of being turned into oil palm plantations. Tillack explains just what makes Leuser so unique and valuable and how consumers can help decide the fate of the region. And in the latest Field Notes segment, research ecologist Marconi Campos Cerqueira discusses a recently completed a study that used bioacoustic monitoring to examine bird ranges in the mountains of Puerto Rico, which appear to be shifting related to climate change, and he’ll share some of his recordings with us. 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 welcome John Hocevar, a marine biologist and director of Greenpeace USA’s oceans campaigns. John was on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza to document the newly discovered Amazon Reef, and he talks about the uniqueness of the discovery, what it’s like to be one of a few people on Earth who have ever seen it with their own eyes, and what the opposition to drilling for oil near the reef will look like, should BP and Total try to move forward. Then we welcome two staffers from Mongabay-Latin America which just celebrated its one-year anniversary recently, so we spoke with them about what it’s like covering the environment in Latin America, what some of the site’s biggest successes are to date, and what we can expect from Mongabay-Latam in the future. Please help us improve this show by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. Thanks!

On this episode we speak with Frances Seymour, lead author of a new book Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change, which she co-authored with Jonah Busch. Seymour argues that tropical forests are key to climate change mitigation, and that it's up to rich countries to invest in their protection. She shares her thoughts on why now is an important moment for such forests, whether or not the large-scale investment necessary to protect them will materialize any time soon, and which countries are leading the tropical forest conservation charge. We also welcome Mongabay editor Glenn Scherer back to the program to answer a question from a Newscast listener about which 'good news' stories are worth talking about in these tough times for environmental and conservation news. Mongabay has a long and very inspiring series of stories tagged 'happy upbeat' that you can view here. Please help us improve this show by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. Thanks!

In this episode we feature Dr. Bill Laurance of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, talking about his team's work documenting the planetary infrastructure boom and the need for more positive, less 'doom and gloom' science communication, and then we welcome Dr. Michelle LaRue to the program. She is a research ecologist with the University of Minnesota’s Department of Earth Sciences, and her current work is focused on using high-resolution satellite imagery to study the population dynamics of Weddell seals in Antarctica. You have to hear these seals' calls to believe them! Please write a quick review of the Mongabay Newscast in the Apple Podcasts app, iTunes store, Stitcher page, or wherever you get your podcasts! Your feedback will help us improve the show and find new listeners. Simply go to the show's page on whichever platform you get it, and find the 'review' or 'rate' section. Thanks!