A new award has been created in honor of late conservation icon Jane Goodall by the board of the Starmus Festival, an international gathering of scientists and artists to be held from Oct. 17-22 in Tenerife, Spain. Christiana Figueres has been selected as the recipient of this inaugural Jane Goodall Earth Medal. Figueres is the former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and is known for her work in securing the negotiations leading to the Paris climate agreement.

She joins the podcast this week to discuss the significance of this medal and her thoughts on the future of science communication and truth — both of which are focal points of the upcoming festival.

"What an absolute giant [Goodall] was to her very last day," says Figueres. "The fact that a medal has been made in her honor, and that I will debut that is just an unbelievable honor."

Astrophysicist and co-founder of the Starmus Festival, Garik Israelian, also joins the podcast to discuss the festival theme, "The Search for Truth." He credits the idea for the medal to his advisory board, which includes Starmus co-founder Brian May, also an astrophysicist but better known as the guitarist for the rock band Queen, and fellow musician Peter Gabriel.

"Brian was very active in protecting animals, and he had a foundation called Save Me. And another member of our advisory board, Peter Gabriel, was also very active in human rights, and also he knew Jane Goodall very well," Israelian says.

Both Figueres and Israelian agree that this year's theme, "The search for truth," runs into challenges in the age of social media, which previous newscast guest Bram Büscher described as ushering in a "post-truth era," where factual information is increasingly hard to discern. The solution, this week's guests agree, may lie in regulating tech companies and their algorithms, which prioritize engagement over truth, with platforms often pushing content that may contain false information.

"We are swimming in both disinformation and misinformation all the time without even knowing it," Figueres says.

"It is time for us to make a conscious decision," she adds. "We need to surround ourselves with different kind[s] of information. We cannot continue to search for the tiger that is going to eat us up."

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover image: Sunrise over the Amazon Rainforest. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Listen to our previous conversation with Christiana Figueres here.

Listen to our conversation with Bram Büscher about social media platforms here.

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Timecodes

(00:00) A legacy of hope

(10:30) The search for truth

(24:52) Legal frameworks to hold countries accountable for climate impacts

(31:25) An awakening to the importance of nature

(40:28) AI and environmental concerns (47:30) Looking to the Starmus Festival

Bhutan is a Himalayan kingdom sandwiched between China and India. Forty percent of its 800,000 citizens work in the agriculture sector. The mountainous country is famous for its breathtaking landscapes and its unique policy of "Gross National Happiness," instituted in 1972 by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the fourth king of Bhutan.

My guests on the Newscast this week say this philosophy is the backbone of the nation's food system, and its plan for full food self-sufficiency by 2029.

"Our food system isn't just about producing food. It's about sustaining our landscapes, our communities, and our culture," says renowned chef and restaurateur Bleu Tshering Dorji. She owns two restaurants in the nation's capital, Thimpu. She explains the unique challenges farmers she works with face due to climate change and steep mountain terrain.

"We are a mountainous landlocked country, and only a small percentage of our land is, I think, actually suitable for agriculture. We don't have the luxury of just expanding farmland. We have to make better use of the land that we sort of already have," she says.

"Labor is becoming extremely scarce as young people sort of move away from agriculture, and farmers still have to deal with issues like wildlife conflict, unpredictable weather, and also getting their produce to the market," Bleu says.

Sonam Wangchuk is an executive specialist at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock for the government of Bhutan. He also joins the conversation to explain how the government plans to address these challenges through the 13th five-year plan, "Transforming the Agrifood Sector for Economic Growth and Sustainable Development." The plan calls for spending the equivalent of about $180 million through 2029. Much of these funds appear to be directly supporting smallholder farmers, the majority of whom in Bhutan are women.

"We have been working to strengthen the capacity of the smallholder farmers, especially through training on climate-smart agriculture, improve production technologies, farm mechanization, post-harvest management, value addition and agribusiness and business development for women and youth," Wangchuk says.

"The skills are imparted to improve access to finance, technology and markets and creating an environment of entrepreneurship and to support the farmer groups and cooperatives."

Some government measures have received criticism, such as the implementation of a 3,400-kilometer (2,100-mile) fence to deter human-wildlife conflict.

A previous study from 2023 on agricultural practices in the nation suggested that, "Bhutan should emphasise women-centred initiatives by enhancing access to assets, raising awareness of climate change mitigation strategies, and developing training programs to promote CSA," or climate-smart agriculture.

This appears to be what the plan aims to do. However, not all challenges are easily solved with funding. Previous Mongabay fellow Choki Wangmo highlighted some of these challenges through the story of Pen Zam, a medicinal mushroom gatherer who struggles with a shrinking habitat at extremely high altitudes to attain a fraction of what her family used to gather decades ago, before the current climate impacts of today.

Later this month, the inaugural Global Conscious Food Systems Summit will take place in Bhutan.

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover Image: A chorten, or Buddhist stupa, at a rice field in Bhutan. Image by thaths via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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Time codes

(00:00) Bhutan is transforming its food system

(06:45) A challenge ahead

(12:53) How 'Gross National Happiness' guides the way

(19:04) Supporting farmers amidst climate change

(29:36) Moving the global conversation forward

British wildlife photographer Margot Raggett says she created the book Remembering Elephants after she heard David Attenborough say, "The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?" Her effort was to provoke this question in others and to give the proceeds from its sale to conservation organizations. In a sense, the book went viral and generated a following, prompting Raggett to continue the book series and her nonprofit, Remembering Wildlife.

"Sometimes people get upset with me and say 'They're still around,' but I want people to stop and think," Raggett says.

In this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, she discusses her journey into photography, the intention behind memorializing still-living species, and details of her 11th book, Remembering Giraffes, which will be published Oct. 12. Raggett has gathered work from some of the world's most renowned wildlife photographers. To date, Remembering Wildlife has raised more than $1.6 million for 85 conservation organizations in 35 countries.

Raggett remarks on why she chose to go with giraffes for this volume, explaining how the gentle nature of these giants and their relative calm compared with apex predators are often overlooked or taken for granted, even as their numbers have declined by 30-40% since the 1980s.

"Like everything in conservation, the story is not even. So there are some areas where giraffes are doing well, and there are others where they're down to, you know, hundreds. And I just felt they deserved a story to be told. They are silent, and they deserve a voice like all of the other species we've covered," she says.

You can preorder or purchase a copy of Remembering Giraffes here.

Disclosure: Margot Raggett is a grassroots supporter of the Mongabay Newscast. Mongabay maintains full editorial independence from its financial supporters, who have no role in determining our coverage or editorial decisions.

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover image: As the sun sinks behind the Nguruman escarpment in the west, a solitary Masai Giraffe lingers on at a waterhole after drinking, in the late afternoon heat, as a flock of Wattled Starlings take off. Mt Shompole is in the background and the clouds are slowly building up. It's the end of the dry season and the rains are not too far away. Photo by Federico Veronesi. Courtesy of Remembering Wildlife.

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Time codes

(00:00) What if we only remember elephants in picture books?

(07:10) A cancer diagnosis, and finishing the book

(14:17) Momentum for the mammals

(18:47) Why giraffes?

(26:58) Finding the right images

(32:05) The giraffe in the red sneakers

(38:10) Most surprising things a wildlife photographer sees

Elizabeth Goldman is a co-director of Global Nature Watch, previously known as Global Forest Watch, a database measuring forest loss that's frequently cited in Mongabay reporting. She joins this week's podcast to detail GNW's updated 25-year analysis of global forest fire trends. The picture is stark: Forest fires burn twice as much forest today as they did 20 years ago, and historic fire seasons are the "new normal," she says.

"Catastrophic, large-scale fires are becoming more of a normal. The last three years are the worst three years in the record-keeping in our data set," Goldman says. "Fires now burn twice as much forest as they did earlier in the time series from our data."

2025, considered a drop from 2024, still saw 11 million hectares (27 million acres) of forest, an area roughly the size of Guatemala, burn. Rhett Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay, published an analysis of the dip in 2025, cautioning readers against reading too much into what appeared to be a reprieve. He noted that large-scale commodity agriculture and climate change, the causes of this forest loss, remain. Goldman agrees.

In the absence of "serious action" internationally to combat it, and commodity-driven agriculture that continues contributing to these fires, Goldman says there are things governments can do to mitigate their risk locally.

"There are ways to sustainably manage a forest, like through thinning and prescribed burns, fire breaks, those sorts of things that don't involve clear-cutting an entire forest, but leave the tree standing, leave the healthy ecosystem there, but are still kind of managing the fuel load," she says.

Sustainable management and strengthening Indigenous rights and resources is another cited need, Goldman says, a point raised in a previous Newscast conversation with Erica Gies, who reported on the work of forestry scientist Suzanne Simard.

"Results show that 60% coverage really does maintain a lot of the complexity of the forest and those forest relationships and a healthy hydrology, keeping the land from drying … in some ecosystems it seems like 30% might be enough, but definitely clear-cutting seems to not be sustainable," Gies said in that conversation.

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Banner image: Pine forest and granite in the Sierra Nevada. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

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Time codes

(00:00) We are 'not on track' to solve this problem

(08:31) Boreal regions bear the brunt

(12:34) Tropical fires are almost entirely human made

(15:44) What can be done right now?

(24:51) Urban wildfires 'potentially' likely to continue

In her upcoming book, My Wild City: Finding Nature, Meaning, and Hope in India's Capital, conservation biologist Neha Sinha takes readers to the hidden and not-so-hidden ecosystems of India's largest city. And while the book expertly details the biodiversity, I believe its greatest strength lies in connecting with the reader emotionally through powerful stories from her personal life. On this week's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Sinha explains why nature in cities isn't just important from an ecosystem health perspective, but necessary for the emotional life of all people.

Sinha describes the difficulty of caring for her ailing father, and how this was the moment she found her favorite tree. While waiting in the hospital, she spotted a semal tree (Bombax ceiba). She tells me this was a turning point for her.

"In these kind of difficult situations which are physically and mentally challenging … you look at a tree, and it restores you. It kind of makes you feel that you might have strength that you didn't know about. And it's also unique to see a tree in a very urban environment because the tree itself is a survivor," she says.

Readers already enamored with nature will find much about My Wild City that will resonate with them. And people in positions of authority tasked with protecting these ecosystems may find insight here that could alter their perspective. Sinha tells me in our conversation that the urgency to care for nature has not yet taken hold in the politics of India, but that it has in the everyday person, pointing to the rise in popularity of urban hiking and bird-watching in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I can tell you for sure, there hasn't been a better time for citizens to be engaged and involved in nature. And in many ways, it's actually urban wildlife that has done that," she says, "and I think that's what has started this quiet revolution of documenting the natural world."

My Wild City is already released in India under the title Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi. For readers outside India, you can preorder a copy here.

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover image: A parakeet in the Delhi ridge. Photo by Neha Sinha.

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Time codes

(00:00) Trees are more than a name

(11:13) Protected spaces and restorative attention

(18:29) Meaning in hard times

(22:37) Loss of the fireflies

(27:56) Where dolphins once swam

(34:12) The quiet revolution

(37:42) When a tree tunnels into your life

(42:25) Decolonization is also recognizing native biodiversity

(47:52) 'The justice we give ourselves'

On this week's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with features writer Ashoka Mukpo, who traveled to southeastern Liberia to investigate what satellite images indicated was a spike in deforestation over a relatively concentrated period. Along with video production coordinator Juan Maza, Mukpo documented illegal cacao plantations in the rainforests in the county of Grand Gedeh. In this interview, he explains how and why these plantations are appearing now in Liberia.

"What we saw … probably the best metaphor for it is that there's a kind of gold rush happening in this part of Liberia, except it's not gold that people are after, it's cocoa," Mukpo says.

"And this makes sense, given the context that in the last few years there was a huge price spike for cocoa, and this had to do with a lot of factors, including climate change and a poor harvest in Côte d'Ivoire. And so that's pushing this huge number of migrant workers from Côte d'Ivoire into Grand Gedeh."

At the end of the year, the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is set to take effect. The EU legislation would ban the importation of certain commodities produced via deforestation, and one of those commodities is cocoa. And much of the cocoa being grown in Liberia right now would potentially fall under this ban, Mukpo says. Furthermore, setting up the tracking infrastructure to ensure commodities meet EUDR standards is expensive. While nations like Côte d'Ivoire have already invested in this, Liberia has not. That leaves a lot of farmers who are betting on this commodity vulnerable.

"A lot of farmers are gonna suffer just from lack of clarity. And I could see a scenario where suppliers choose to just not buy from Liberia because if there's no way for them to know where these beans are coming from, they could get in a lot of trouble if they do buy, and I think that's the real concern," Mukpo says.

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover image: A young cacao tree in Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Why are forests disappearing in Liberia?

(10:56) Communities struggling to make a living

(21:18) Perspectives from conservationists

(25:38) The EUDR may impact these farms

(32:07) 'No clear villain'

On this week's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, I speak with travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa. She has documented the violence and natural destruction that the presence of oil companies have brought to the people of the Niger Delta in her latest book, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria.

Saro-Wiwa is also the daughter of the late activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. Her father led a peaceful resistance against the oil companies' presence in the Niger Delta by mobilizing 300,000 people from Ogoniland in 1993. It is fair to say his activism started the movement against the destruction and exploitation led by oil companies in the nation. While peaceful at first, Noo Saro-Wiwa says many people gave up hope on peaceful resistance when the government failed to hold the companies accountable, and men turned to forming violent militant groups.

"Oil has been literally the worst thing that's happened to the Niger Delta. If I could go back in time and I had the power, I would never have allowed oil to have been discovered," she says.

While her latest book chronicles the harm of oil and the resulting violence, I put it to her that it's also a story about how the absence of women's rights is destroying societies. Saro-Wiwa explains how Nigeria isn't unique in this regard, but rather a stark example of how this dynamic plays out.

" Going around the Niger Delta and talking to activists like Emem Okon … I could see very clearly how women's rights directly affects the environment … and society, and how the absence of those rights feeds into this militancy which ultimately hurts men."

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Banner image: A man fishes in the Niger Delta near the village of Diebu, Nigeria, Saturday, May 18, 2013. Image by Jon Gambrell / AP Photo.

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Timecodes

(00:00) A heavy price to pay for oil

(06:09) The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People

(16:17) Militancy

(21:54) Governments are 'not interested in sustainable peace'

(26:11) Women as a stabilizing force

(29:44) Women's rights directly affects the environment

(36:54) Oil has been 'the worst thing to happen to the Niger Delta'

The Mediterranean Sea accounts for less than 1% of the world's ocean surface water, but it contains roughly 18% of global marine biodiversity. It is home to 150 million people along its coastline (roughly equivalent to Russia's population). And it sequesters 17.2 million metric tons of CO2 each year. Joining the Newscast this week to talk about the unique biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea and its threats is journalist Manuela Callari.

Callari has written for Mongabay, highlighting the threats to purple sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus) along the Italian coast. These marine invertebrates are crucial to the health of marine ecosystems, such as those in the Mediterranean, by helping regulate algal abundance and serving as food for predators. However, they are being overfished and even poached in marine protected areas due to demand for them as the primary ingredient in a popular tourist dish: spaghetti ai ricci di mare.

While the situation with urchins persists, Italy has been investing in an unprecedented effort to map its entire underwater coastline using deployed sensors to better understand the marine environment and manage conservation efforts. This is allowing them to identify where meadows of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, which are "absolutely vital" to the Mediterranean ecosystem, persist, Callari says.

Overall, Callari says she wishes the rest of the world and tourists visiting the Mediterranean were more informed about the pressures the marine ecosystem faces.

"I grew up here, and now that I go back to certain places where I was as a child, and they are just completely different places to me. Places that were just nature and were difficult to access. Now they have very easy access on cars, buses. You can go on boat tours very easily. And I think we don't appreciate enough the impact that has on the environment. On the sea."

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover image: Satellite data from a study shows that the Mediterranean's average surface temperature has risen by 1.2°C (2.2°F) since the mid-1980s. Image by Katerina Katopis/Ocean Image Bank.

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Timecodes

(00:00) The Mediterranean is taken for granted

(07:09) Why is a tourist dish destroying marine ecosystems?

(18:49) Mapping the entire Italian coast

(28:19) Learning to appreciate the Mediterranean

Nearly three years ago, Newscast guest, author and journalist Ben Goldfarb discussed his book Crossings, which is about wildlife crossings and road ecology. Wildlife crossings help reconnect habitats fragmented by road networks, reducing collisions, helping protect threatened wildlife, and improving genetic diversity.

Since that conversation, Goldfarb has documented the growing popularity of wildlife crossings worldwide. He returns to the Newscast to detail how, where, and why wildlife crossings are becoming increasingly funded and built.

"Probably the biggest factor is that at this point, the evidence that wildlife crossing structures are effective is just overwhelming. Maybe 20 years ago, you could've theoretically said, 'Well … we don't necessarily know that …' but here in 2026, we just have a lot of scientific research basically showing that animals of all shapes and sizes use wildlife crossings," Goldfarb says.

He takes us to locations in South America, North America and Europe, where this particular type of infrastructure has rare nonpartisan political support. A bill is currently before the U.S. Congress to make the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program permanent. Public surveys show overwhelming support for wildlife crossings in the United States. Goldfarb explains that the positive reception may also be due to the visual nature of one iteration of crossings, the highway overpass, which a source of his long ago described as "billboards for connectivity."

"I love wildlife crossings for … their ability to … just remind us that we're sort of global citizens of a planet that we share with wildlife."

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover image: The first wildlife bridge in Brazil connects habitat across the coastal four-lane BR-101 highway. Saving Nature's partners, DOB Ecology and the Golden Lion Tamarin Association, are reforesting a corridor to connect a protected area to the south and forest fragments to the north of the bridge. Image courtesy of Luis Paulo/Saving Nature.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Why are wildlife crossings having a moment?

(06:55) North America invests in more crossings

(16:25) 'Malicious restoration' & 'a bridge to nowhere'

(20:38) The most permeable highway on Earth

(25:17) Brazil's canopy bridges

(29:32) 'Billboards for connectivity'

A group of more than 40 researchers spent 20 months devising a plan for the world to achieve ecological sustainability within planetary boundaries, all while seeing incomes rise for 98% of the global population and reducing working hours for everybody by half to two and a half days a week. The plan to achieve this by 2100 is laid out in the recent "Global Justice Report."

If it sounds utopian, Lucas Chancel, the co-director of the World Inequality Lab and editor of the report, is the first person to acknowledge this, but explains why it's not only possible — there's even historical precedent for many of the measures the report outlines.

Achieving this plan rests on three pillars: decarbonization and the energy transition; a shift towards "sufficiency," defined here as the reduction of labor and production of superfluous products not needed for human survival; and a "drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth and power."

"Basically, our plan is thought in a way that it can work with [an] incomplete coalition of actors," he says. "That is, you can start to implement it even though you don't have a global wealth tax. But our argument is that progressively, more and more countries [are] doing exactly these things."

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Cover image: Bay near Pulau Rayo, Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) A habitable, equitable world is possible

(14:19) How we accomplish it

(30:56) Rebutting the arguments against it

(40:15) 98% of the world would see their income rise

(44:55) Gender equality is at the heart of it