Climber and conservationist Brady Robinson joins us for our fourth episode of Last Wild Places. Brady worked for 11 years as the executive director of the Access Fund, a non-profit rock climbing advocacy group that works to keep climbing areas open in the United States. He was founding chair of the Outdoor Alliance, a powerful coalition of outdoor organizations for protecting public lands, and he was a former executive director of the Conservation Alliance, which mobilizes the resources of American businesses to support organizations that defend and restore wildlands.

He also has a long connection to Chile and Patagonia. In 2001, he set up an Outward Bound program there; he has worked for Tompkins Conservation, coordinating their international fundraising and strategic planning efforts in the region; and he is currently the director of philanthropy at the Freyja Foundation (www.freyjafoundation.org), which among their international projects have conservation initiatives in Chilean and Argentine Patagonia.

Brady shares with us insights from his experiences leading outdoors and conservation organizations, we discuss the outdoors recreation community and its role in conservation success, and we hear about an historic international campaign launched in May 2024 that seeks to raise US$78 million to purchase and protect a massive 133,000-hectare wilderness area in Cochamó, Chilean Patagonia.

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Published in print and digital since 2011, Patagon Journal is a bilingual magazine in English and Spanish about Patagonia and the world’s last wild places. Head to our website - patagonjournal.com - where you can find our magazine and read our online articles. To subscribe, support our work through our special premium membership program, or buy back issues, merch and more, visit our online store at patagonstore.com

The founder and president of the Global Penguin Society, Pablo García Borboroglu joins us for our third episode of Last Wild Places. Pablo's conservation efforts have helped protect 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of marine and land habitat for penguins worldwide, including the massive Patagonia Azul (Blue Patagonia) UNESCO biosphere reserve in his home country of Argentina that protects the world's largest colony of Magellanic penguins. He is also a marine biologist for Argentina’s National Research Council and a professor for the University of Washington, and has coordinated the development of 8 management plans for protected areas in Chile and Argentina. His large body of work over the past 3 decades won him the 2023 Indianapolis Prize, the world's top award for animal conservation.

Pablo talks to us about how the human connection with penguins helps the wider conservation movement; the major threats facing different penguins species today; and the activism, scientific and educational endeavors his organization are making to protect marine environments.

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Published in print and digital since 2011, Patagon Journal is a bilingual magazine in English and Spanish about Patagonia and the world’s last wild places. Head to our website - patagonjournal.com - where you can find our magazine and read our online articles. To subscribe, support our work through our special premium membership program, or buy back issues, merch and more, visit our online store at patagonstore.com

In the second episode of Last Wild Places, our guest is Leon McCarron (www.leonmccarron.com), an adventurer, author, journalist and trail designer from Northern Ireland. A practitioner of “slow travel” and long expeditions, among his adventures he has cycled from New York to Hong Kong, traveled through Patagonia on horseback, and walked across China and Mongolia. He has written three books about his journeys, as well as made films for the BBC and National Geographic. His most recent book “'Wounded Tigris: A River Journey through the Cradle of Civilisation,” spotlights the threats to and richness of the historic Tigris River of Iraq. He is also co-founder of the Zagros Mountain Trail in the Kurdistan Region, where he has been based since 2017.

Our conversation crosses continents, as we dig into Leon’s incredible career so far; threats to rivers from Patagonia to Iraq; the future of the Middle East in a water crisis; and how his adventures have personally impacted his perspective on wild places and society.

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Published in print and digital since 2011, Patagon Journal is a bilingual magazine in English and Spanish about Patagonia and the world’s last wild places. Head to our website - patagonjournal.com - where you can find our magazine and read our online articles. To subscribe, support our work through our special premium membership program, or buy back issues, merch and more, visit our online store at patagonstore.com

In the first episode of Last Wild Places, our guest is Amy Lewis, CEO of the WILD Foundation (https://wild.org/), an international environmental NGO that for 50 years has been mobilizing international coalitions for the protection of wilderness through the World Wilderness Congress, the Nature Needs Half campaign and other initiatives. WILD works in more than 40 countries, with projects on the ground in Mali, helping to protect West African elephants, and the Brazilian Amazon where it is defending the indigenous rights of the Yawanawá people. Amy has worked over two decades in the environmental and human rights sector, and is now a key leader in the global movement to protect the world’s last wild places.

Among the topics, our conversation with Amy digs deep into the challenges of protecting the world's last wild places, which countries are leading the fight for wilderness protection, and her organization's role as a catalyst in that; how to build trust between indigenous communities and national institutions; and how her conservation work has personally changed her perspective on wilderness and her lifestyle.