Species Unite

 “I sit in the camp that is going to defend wildlife, and I will live and die in that space. Even though what I see is in the West, wolves have a bad reputation. It's still there…" -Jeffrey Reed    What if we could understand wolves? How they communicate, what they might be saying? Jeffrey Reed, is a computational linguist, naturalist, and technologist who’s doing just that—using artificial intelligence to decode the wild. Jeff is the founder of the Cry Wolf Project, a groundbreaking bio acoustic study capturing hundreds of thousands of hours of wolf vocalization across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. From howls and chorus howls to teeth clacking and whines, Jeff's work is uncovering the complex ways wolves and many other animals communicate with one another. His company, Grizzly Systems, is creating cutting edge tools to help people and wildlife share the land more peacefully and intelligently. This conversation is about wolves, language, the future of wild soundscapes, and how technology might help us become better neighbors to the beings that we've long misunderstood. LINKS:  https://www.thecrywolfproject.com/ How individuals can donate to Yellowstone National Park's Wolf Project via this link: https://www.thecrywolfproject.com/donate  Grizzly System's conservation technology: https://www.grizcam.com ​ Jeff's forthcoming (2026) book on wolf communication, via this link: https://www.thelanguagesoflife.com/excerpt Jeff's TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jeffrey_t_reed_can_ai_help_us_speak_with_wolves Jeff's social presence: https://www.facebook.com/jefftreed, https://www.instagram.com/thecrywolfproject, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefftreed, and https://www.youtube.com/@crywolfproject

I think you could probably go back and track the stages of grief, probably that is what I went through. But I think if you do it right, you end up at acceptance. And that's where I ended up. And that's not to say that I've fully accepted the idea that the golden toad is extinct. Personally, I do still hold out hope that it could still be out there in those forests." - Trevor Ritland    This conversation is with Trevor Ritland, who—along with his twin brother Kyle—authored The Golden Toad. The book chronicles their remarkable journey into Costa Rica’s cloud forest, once home to hundreds of brilliant golden toads that would emerge for just a few weeks each year—until, one day, they vanished without a trace. What began as a search for a lost species soon became something much more profound: a confrontation with ecological grief, a meditation on hope, and a powerful call to protect the natural world while we still can.   Links: SpeciesUnite.com Kyle and Trevor: https://kyleandtrevor.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adventureterm/ Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222249677-the-golden-toad Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Toad-Ecological-Mystery-Species/dp/163576996

"72 juveniles is 28% of the current population of sunflower stars under human care in California. More than a quarter of them are at our facility. If you had asked us that question about a year and a half ago. The answer would be zero at our facility, and the answer across California would be six total." - Andrew Kim In 2013, one of the largest marine disease outbreaks on record, sea star wasting syndrome swept through echinoderm populations, laying waste to sunflower stars across their historic range. Once common in California, sunflower stars are now functionally extinct there. This devastating population crash is one of the leading drivers of the 96% decline in kelp forest cover in Northern California in the last decade, as sunflower stars are no longer prowling rocky reefs and scaring purple urchins, who graze on kelp.   Sunflower Star Laboratory was founded by a group of concerned citizens who watched California's kelp disappear before their eyes and were inspired to take action.   This conversation is with Reuven Bank and Andrew Kim from Sunflower Star Laboratory, where they are actively growing sunflower stars with the aim to bring the stars and the kelp forests back to the ocean.   

“We don't actually know how many animals we're testing on in this country, because most of them are not protected by any laws. There's not even a requirement that you track their numbers.” – Delcianna Winders Today, I have the pleasure of sharing some genuinely promising news. For decades, the FDA and NIH have required or relied on animal testing as the gold standard for drug development and biomedical research. But that's beginning to change. Both agencies have just announced significant steps to reduce animal testing—moves that could mark a turning point in how science is done. The FDA is beginning to phase out animal testing requirements for certain new drug applications, starting with monoclonal antibody therapies, and is pushing forward the use of more ethical, human-relevant technologies—like organ-on-a-chip systems and advanced computer modeling. At the same time, the NIH is prioritizing human-based approaches and creating a new office dedicated to accelerating the development and adoption of these new methods across biomedical research. To help us understand what all of this means, what led to these changes, and what still needs to happen, I’m joined by Delci Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Delci is one of the leading voices at the intersection of law, science, and animal protection—and she’s here to walk us through this historic shift.  

"It is a scientific fact that these macaques, like all other primates, including humans, are communicating. They communicate in much the same way we do - facial expressions, vocalizations, body postures, those kinds of things." - Jeff Kerr Jeff Kerr is PETA foundations Chief Legal Officer. I asked him to come on the show to talk about one of PETA’s current lawsuits against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Nathional Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). PETA is arguing that the monkeys being tested on in a government run facility are capable of communication (or “are communicating”). And that we have a constitutional right under the First Amendment to receive their communications. This could be a game changer in allowing us to see what’s really going on in labs that are funded by taxpayer money, and which have so far been censored from public view. PETA’s lawsuit follows years of NIH’s attempts to deny Freedom of Information requests banning PETA executives from its campus and illegally censoring animal advocates’ speech on NIH’s public social media pages. Through the lawsuit, PETA is seeking a live audio-visual feed to see and hear real-time communications from the macaques who have been kept isolated, used in fear experiments, and had posts cemented into their heads. Anthropologists and other scientists have studied macaque and other primate communications for decades and know that the monkeys communicate effectively and intentionally through lip smacking, fear grimaces, body language, and various cries and sounds—all of which constitute speech under the law. Primatologists can analyze that speech on a deeper level to share their stories with the world.

"The one that really surprised me was the organic humane Certified Egg Farm. I thought Humane Certified would at least mean that I would see some chickens running around somewhere, but it looked exactly the [00:00:30] same as any other egg facility. They were just big warehouses. You don't see a chicken anywhere in sight. And then I learned, of course, that, um, you know, the this whole free range, pasture raised terminology doesn't really mean anything." - Isabella La Rocca Gonzalez Isabella LaRocca Gonzalez is an artist, author, and activist. Her work is part of a long tradition in art and photography to bring to light and find beauty in the hidden, unconscious or disregarded. Her most recent book is called Censored Landscapes. It's a long term photographic project that unveils the hidden reality of animal agriculture.   

John Kinder is the director of American studies and a professor of history at Oklahoma State University. And he is an author. His most recent book is called World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age. John’s book tells a story most of us have never heard: what happened to the world’s zoos—and the animals inside them—during World War II. It’s a sweeping, deeply researched look at how zoos became sites of propaganda, patriotism, and survival, often at the expense of the animals themselves. But World War Zoos isn’t just about the past. It’s also a mirror, showing how many of the ethical blind spots that existed during wartime remain with us today. In an age of climate crisis and mass extinction, this conversation asks: what do zoos really stand for—and who are they really serving?      

“I used to be the largest dairy consumer on the planet. I used to eat so much dairy and meat. The more that I looked into the dairy industry, the more that I saw that it was the singular, most inhumane industry on the planet, that we've all been lied to, including myself, for years. I always believed that the picture on the milk carton, the cow standing next to her calf in the green field with the red barn in the back was true. It’s certainly the complete opposite.” – Richard (Kudo) Couto   Richard (Kudo) Couto is the founder of Animal Recovery Mission (ARM), an organization solely dedicated to investigating extreme animal cruelty cases. ARM has led high-risk undercover operations that have resulted in the shutdown of illegal slaughterhouses, animal fighting rings, and horse meat trafficking networks. Recently, they released a damning investigation into two industrial dairy farms outside of Phoenix, Arizona supplying milk to Coca-Cola’s Fairlife brand. What they uncovered was systemic animal abuse, environmental violations, and a devastating betrayal of consumer trust. While Fairlife markets its products as being sourced "humanely," ARM’s footage tells a very different story—one of suffering, abuse, and corporate complicity. Despite the evidence, this story has been largely ignored by mainstream media—likely due to Coca-Cola’s massive influence and advertising dollars.

“There's a drug called vioxx that was found to be safe and effective in animal trials, so they moved it on to preclinical trials in humans. Once on the market, that drug caused 88,000 people to have heart attacks and killed 38,000 people.” Meredith Blanchard   We have some big news at Species Unite. In January and February, our team traveled to Bainbridge, Georgia to begin filming our first documentary. Bainbridge is a small Southern town facing a truly chilling threat: a company called Safer Human Medicine is planning to build the largest monkey breeding facility in the United States right in their backyard. If approved, this facility would hold up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques at a time—monkeys who would be bred in captivity, then sold to pharmaceutical companies for use in painful and outdated animal experiments. It’s a nightmare for the animals. But it’s also a nightmare for the people of Bainbridge: from threats to their water and soil, to dangerous zoonotic disease risks, to the loss of wildlife and community health. The people of Bainbridge are fighting back. And they’re not alone. One of our partners on this film is the National Anti-Vivisection Society, or NAVS—an organization dedicated to ending the exploitation of animals in science. Today’s guest is Meredith Blanchard, the Senior Manager of Advocacy and Policy at NAVS. I spoke with her about what’s why animal testing doesn’t work and what it will take to finally bring it to an end.   Links:  National Anti-Vivisection Society https://navs.org/  

 “One year, we actually offered the Faroe Islanders One million pounds to stop the hunts. 1 million pounds, which would go to promoting whale and dolphin tourism to the islands and marine conservation education to Faroese kids in schools. And the Faroese response to our offer was the most emphatic no you've ever had in your life. They actually held a hunt on the 1st of January. On the first day of that offer, they went out and deliberately killed pilot whales as their official no to us.” – Rob Read  Rob Read is the leader of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK, otherwise known as Neptune's Pirates UK. He and his team have been working for years to end the suffering of many marine animals. Rob has initiated campaigns as well as actively operating boats, coordinating crew and flying drones, working on issues that include everything from seal shooting by wild salmon net fishermen around Scotland, in Japan against the Taiji dolphin hunts, in the Faroe Islands, against the drive hunts of pilot whales and dolphins, in Iceland against commercial fin whaling, and in Namibia, exposing the Namibian seal hunt.  I asked Rob to come on the show to talk about the places in the world where whaling is still the norm. There are not that many left, but there shouldn't be any left. And that's what Rob and Captain Paul Watson Foundation are working to achieve. Links https://neptunespiratesuk.education/about/the-team/rob-read https://www.neptunespirates.uk/