Mongabay Newscast

'Without the land, indigenous people cannot exist' the new leader of Cultural Survival, Galina Angarova, tells host Mike G. in this new episode. Raised in a Buryat community in Siberia, she's had a number of top roles through the years, but her recent appointment to this key indigenous rights organization is perhaps the most important one yet.

She grew up eating wild berries, mushrooms, nuts, wild garlic, deer, and more on the shores of Lake Baikal, and therefore has a strong sense of relationship to the land and how important it is that indigenous peoples like her community are allowed to keep stewarding these places: it's been proven that indigenous communities are the best stewards of land, waters, forests, and animals.

Angarova joins the show to discuss this plus the power of indigenous radio programs, and her idea of the sacred feminine.

Here's this episode's top news:

• Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
• Dam that threatens orangutan habitat is 'wholly unnecessary': Report
• Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside
• Belize officially declares wildlife corridor in key protected area complex

Learn more about Galina and the work of Cultural Survival at their website, culturalsurvival.org.

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Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Laurel Symes is a biologist who uses bioacoustics to study tropical katydids in Central America, and she joins us to play some of her hypnotic rainforest recordings and say how tracking these insects' interesting sounds can aid rainforest conservation.

Based on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, she uses machine learning to detect and identify these creatures, which are grasshopper-like insects that are important to the rainforest food web, because they eat a lot of plants and are in turn eaten by a lot of other species, including birds, bats, monkeys, frogs, and more.

Here's this episode's top news:

• 2019 was second-hottest year on record, 2010s hottest decade
• Indigenous lands hold 36% or more of remaining intact forest landscapes
• Update to biodiversity treaty proposes protecting at least 30% of Earth
• One six-week expedition discovered ten new songbird species and subspecies in Indonesia

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Ami Vitale is an award-winning war correspondent turned conservation photographer, and her iconic images of animals like Sudan the Rhino adorn the pages of National Geographic and other top outlets often. But she's so much more than a woman with a camera, rather, she's a force of nature helping create change and grassroots conservation all over the world through her work, words, and advocacy.

She joins the podcast to talk about the most inspiring and heartbreaking moments from her recent projects (don't miss the beautiful story at the end about the behavior of elephant orphans) and she shares where she finds her seemingly boundless energy and optimism.

Here's this episode's top news items:

• Study declares ancient Chinese paddlefish extinct
• 'Tainted timber' from Myanmar widely used in yachts seized in the Netherlands
• New monkey discovered on "island" amid deforestation in Brazil

Episode artwork of a panda keeper in China is courtesy of Ami Vitale.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

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For this last episode of 2019, we take a look back at some favorite bioacoustics recordings featured here on the Mongabay Newscast and play them for you.

As regular listeners will know, bioacoustics is the study of how animals use and perceive sound, and how their acoustical adaptations reflect their behaviors and relationships with their habitats and surroundings. Bioacoustics is a fairly young field of study but it is already being used to study everything from how wildlife populations respond to the impacts of climate change to how entire ecosystems are impacted by human activities.

Here's this episode's top news:

• Tropical forests' lost decade: the 2010s
• Central American countries pledge to protect Mesoamerica's '5 Great Forests'
• Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

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We speak with National Geographic writer Chris Fagan about the investigative report he just filed for Mongabay revealing a massive invasion of national parks in the Peruvian Amazon, in an area relied upon by isolated indigenous communities.

Traveling up the Sepahua River with indigenous guides, Fagan counted more than 250 plots of land illegally cleared for cocaine production in recent months. He met some of these growers and describes for us a very 'Wild West' scene that Peruvian officials know little about, in an area that was thought to be largely protected.

Read Chris's full report and see the stunning video and drone footage here:

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/coca-farms-close-in-on-protected-areas-isolated-tribes-in-peruvian-amazon/

Here's this episode's top news:

• Revealed: Government officials say permits for mega-plantation in Papua were falsified
• Hopes dim as COP25 delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics
• Newly spotted calves boost Javan rhino population to 72

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Photo of Chris Fagan by Jason Houston/Upper Amazon Conservancy.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Dena Clink is a primatologist studying individuality and variation in Bornean gibbon calls, which she says could aid these primates' conservation. She joins this episode to play some recordings of these fascinating songs & calls she's made in the course of her research, and explain how they're used and what they may mean to the species.

We've featured a wide variety of bioacoustics studies here on the Mongabay Newscast, from whales to bats and birds, but these are usually recordings of species at the population level. Our guest today focuses on how calls vary between each gibbon, and what that can teach us about the animals, and their conservation needs.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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Photo of a Mueller's gibbon (Hylobates muelleri) via People Resources and Conservation Foundation.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Damian Aspinall is chairman of the Aspinall Foundation, a UK charity that works to conserve endangered animals and return them to the wild. Despite his foundation operating two zoos, he's a vocal critic of how zoos are generally run, and feels their focus should be upon breeding rare animals and reintroducing them to the wild, vs keeping them in captivity for public entertainment, as he says.

"European zoos spend at least 15 million pounds a year, at least, on looking after their elephants and rhinos...imagine what you could do with that money in the wild," toward stopping poaching & rebuilding their habitats, he argues on this episode of the podcast.

Aspinall also talks about numerous other ethical problems he sees with 'the zoo-ocracy,' discusses his own program for breeding and reintroducing gorillas, lemurs, gibbons and more, and he shares his vision for a 'zoo-less future' on Earth.

Here's this episode's top news:

• Controversial dam gets green light to flood a Philippine protected area
• Emperor penguins could disappear by 2100 if nations don't cap emissions
• There's a new fin whale subspecies in the North Pacific

Listen to our recent conversation with Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny about zoos' role in conservation on Mongabay's podcast, here.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Katie Baker is a reporter for the Buzzfeed News team investigating human rights violations committed against local & indigenous people by park rangers paid by the major environmental NGO WWF to protect creatures like rhinos from poachers.

"No one is saying that [WWF's rangers] don't have really difficult jobs...but just because they have a difficult job doesn't mean they can rape and kill and torture with impunity or arrest people without evidence," she tells host Mike G, and adds that the pushback from the NGO has been rather meek: "I have not received any hate mail from [WWF employees] telling me I got it wrong."

Baker discusses the explosive findings of her team's investigative reports, what it took to chase these stories down, and the impacts she's seen from her reporting.

Here's this episode's top news:

• Violence against indigenous peoples explodes in Brazil
• Study finds massive reorganization of life across Earth's ecosystems
• $85 million initiative to scale up agroforestry in Africa announced
• Once close to extinction, western South Atlantic humpback population close to full recovery

Mongabay reported on the effects on local communities as revealed by Baker's reporting here, and here's Mongabay's investigation of harassment, bullying, and retaliation against whistleblowers at another major environmental NGO, Conservation International.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Plans for ocean floor mining are moving forward globally -- especially around thermal vents that create deposits of metals like gold, silver, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc -- but humans have explored less than 1% of the deep sea, so it's fair to say that we really have no idea what's at risk.

On this episode we speak with deep sea biologist Dr. Diva Amon about what we do -- and don't -- know about biodiversity at the bottom of the ocean.

Raised on the shores of Trinidad & Tobago, Dr. Amon's fascination with what lies below the surface has taken her on journeys to great depths, and she shares insights and glimpses of amazing creatures gained there.

Here's more about this episode's top news:

• Eight ape species, including Tapanuli orangutan, make first appearance on list of most endangered primates
• Madagascar calls for assistance as fires imperil its protected areas
• Rare songbird recovers, moves off endangered species list

And see all of our coverage of deep sea mining issues here.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

Mongabay's adventurous Middle East-based staff writer John Cannon just traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway and shares what he discovered on the journey about biodiversity, development, and the natural future of this, the world's 3rd largest island.

It took him 3 weeks to travel the route proposed to connect the rainforest-rich Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak as well as the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo--to make commerce and travel easier in a region that is notoriously difficult to navigate--and also to encourage tourists to see the states' cultural treasures and rich wildlife, from elephants to crocodiles, gibbons and clouded leopards.

But scientists warn that the highway is likely to harm the very wildlife it seeks to highlight, by dividing populations and degrading their habitats.

Here's where you can find John's six-part series and his "top 5 revelations from traveling the Pan Borneo Highway" at Mongabay.com.

These are the episode's top news items if you want to learn more:

• 'Full-blown crisis': North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970
• At the UN, losing the race against time to fight climate change
• 'The Blob' is back: Pacific heat wave already second-largest in recent history

Episode photo: A female Sunda clouded leopard and one of her cubs crossing a road in Sabah, still image from footage shot by Michael Gordon.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to this show via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is welcome: [email protected].