Nature Solutionaries

When Colombian conservationist Sara Inés Lara started helping women from rural communities access family planning and education and become guardians of their own environment, she got a lot of pushback from local men and conservation colleagues. After all, it was a taboo to address environmental protection, women’s empowerment and population. Seventeen years later, her NGO Women for Conservation has reached more than 2,000 women and helped the recovery of the yellow-eared parrot, which was downlisted from the IUCN Red List in 2021. More than ever, Sara is convinced that this is the correct way to do conservation.

On this episode, Sara Inés Lara and Catriona Spaven Donn, Empower to Plan Coordinator from Population Matters, talk about:

If you’d like to learn more about women's rights and environmental justice, listen to the interview “The Most Effective Conservation Strategy? Empower women”.

Sara Inés Lara founded Women for Conservation which has empowered more than 2,000 women in rural communities through conservation education, environmentally sustainable livelihoods, and access to family planning. Sara has been recognized as One in a Hundred Great Latin American Women by Billiken Magazine.

Catriona Spaven-Donn works for UK-based charity Population Matters, which supports Women for Conservation as part of their Empower to Plan Program. Cat is passionate about the intersection of women's rights and environmental justice and has worked on women’s empowerment and indigenous rights in Canada, Peru, Guatemala and Scotland.

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While in most places, we hear about rhinos and elephants being killed, in North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, one of the most untouched wilderness sanctuaries in Africa, the situation is quite the opposite. This little-known park is home to Zambia’s only black rhino population, which continues to show one of the highest growth rates in Africa, and Zambia’s largest, most stable and ever-increasing elephant population.

On this episode, Claire Lewis, a British conservationist who manages the park, talks about:

Conservationist Claire Lewis has been living and working in the park with her husband Ed Sayer and their three children since 2007. She is the Technical Advisor at the Frankfurt Zoological Society, a conservation organization which created the North Luangwa Conservation Programme with the Zambian Department of National Parks and Wildlife in 1986.

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With fewer than 50 animals in the wild, saola is possibly the most threatened mammal on the planet. Even though it was discovered in 1992, very little is known about it, as no biologist has ever seen it in the wild and there are only a handful of photos of it from camera traps – last one from 2013. To save the animal from extinction, the Saola Foundation for Annamite Mountains Conservation wants to lead an intensive search for the last saolas in order to capture them for a breeding program. William Robichaud, the president of the organization, talks about:

William Robichaud has been working on wildlife conservation in Laos and Vietnam for more than 25 years. In 2006, he co-founded the IUCN Saola Working Group, and served as its Coordinator until 2019. In 2015, the IUCN Species Survival Commission recognized Bill with its Harry Messel Award for Conservation Leadership, for his contributions to Saola conservation. 

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The impact of our growing population on nature is such a sensitive topic that nobody really dares talk about it. Better sweep it under the carpet and forget about it, right? Well, not necessarily. If you think it through, the solution is really simple and beautiful: give women full rights, opportunities and access to family-planning methods.

In this interview with Paul R. Ehrlich, the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies at Stanford University, we talk about:

Paul Ralph Ehrlich (*1932) is an American biologist, best known for his warnings that population growth presents an extremely serious threat to the future of human civilization. The Population Bomb, a book that he co-authored with his wife, Anne, helped start a worldwide debate on the impact of rising population that continues today. Author of 50 books and thousands of articles, Ehrlich is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies at Stanford University, President of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology and also president of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere.

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For 7.8 billion people to live sustainably on the planet, everyone would have to be a vegetarian; never drive a car or fly in an airplane; live in a one-room apartment with minimal electricity and no heat, hot water, washing machine, dryer, or dishwasher; and have only a few sets of clothes and pairs of shoes. Sounds crazy, right? But what's even crazier is that nobody, including environmentalists, really wants to talk about our growing population and consumption. With 7.8 billion people on the planet and a few billion more (between 9.4 and 12.7 billion people in 2100 based on UN estimates) to come, it is time we look at the elephant in the room.

Together with Terry Spahr, the environmentalist and filmmaker behind "8 Billion Angels," we talk about:

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Even though the elephant population decline is a gigantic problem – only 415,000 elephants remain compared to 10 million in 1930 – there are ways to protect this iconic species. The nonprofit Save Elephants, in collaboration with EAGLE Network (organizations fighting corruption and wildlife crime), have seen some success protecting elephants in Congo, Cameroon and Chad. 

On this episode, Arthur Sniegon, the founder of Save Elephants, talks about:  

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Illustration by Veronika Perková

In this episode, I am talking to Luis Mazariegos and Stuart Pimm about their successful conservation project in Western Andes Cloud Forest, in Colombia, one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet. Since 2008, The Hummingbird Conservancy, with financial support from Saving Nature has restored 3,500 hectares of degraded land and connected about 100 km2 of intact forest with the main Andean chain into a land corridor.

Together we talk about: 

Luis Mazariegos is a world's leading hummingbird photographer, founder of The Hummingbird Conservancy and virologist by profession. He resides in Colombia but frequently travels to US where he has company that sells bio pesticides. 

Stuart Pimm is a world leader in the study of present day extinctions and he is currently, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University.

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Lisa Carne is a marine biologist and founder of Fragments of Hope, a community-based organization that stands behind the most successful coral reef restoration project in the Caribbean. Dr. Maya Trotz is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida and a board member of Fragments of Hope. 

Together we talk about: 

- How Lisa started coral reef restoration in the Laughing Bird Caye National Park in Belize 

- How coral reef restoration works (methods, techniques)

- What results Fragments of Hope has achieved in Laughing Bird Caye National Park

- What makes the conservation strategy so unusually effective 

- If this strategy can be used by other conservationists elsewhere

- Why interdisciplinary approach to reef restoration is important

- What challenges Fragments of Hope face

Links: 

- Fragments of Hope

- Maya Trotz's website

- BBC article "How to regrow a wrecked coral reef"

Annette Arjoon-Martins is a Guyanese conservationist and pilot who founded the Guyana Marine Conservation Society, an NGO that originally started with protecting sea turtles on Shell Beach and now aims to protect mangrove forests and marine habitats in general. Ivana Thompson is a young marine biologist who has recently joined the organization to deepen the scientific knowledge about sea turtles. 

Together we talk about: 

- Protecting of sea turtles on Shell Beach

- Working with indigenous communities and finding alternative livelihoods

- Restoring mangrove forests along the Guyanese coast

- Barima Mora Passage – one of the largest most intact mangrove ecosystems in Guyana

- Opportunities & threats of a newly discovered oil & gas industry for Guyanese nature

Links: 

- Guyana Marine Conservation Society Facebook page

- REEL Guyana Youtube videos 

Hana Raza is a Kurdish wildlife conservationist who rediscovered the Persion leopard, once thought to be extinct, in the mountains of Kurdistan in 2011. She dedicated her career to establishing a program for conserving this globally endangered species.  In 2017, she was awarded the prestigious award of Future for Nature.

Together we talk about:

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