Planet: Critical

At a time when so many people are trying to make photographs of wildlife -- to break the pandemic lockdown blues, or to share on social media -- we speak with two guests about how to do this without harassing, exploiting, or harming them.

Internationally renowned wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas shares her experiences and advice, saying that the most important practices are both better for wildlife and capture the most compelling images.

This is “kind of a win-win,” Eszterhas says, because "we’re treating the animals with kindness and respect and we’re not affecting their lives in a very negative way" while delivering superior photos.

Also joining the discussion is environmental journalist Annie Roth, who recently wrote an in-depth article for Hakai Magazine exploring how wildlife pay the price when humans get too close in order to snap a few pics that they hope will score them likes on social media. 

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to listen and subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, 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! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, visit the link above for details.

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.

Episode artwork of jackal pups courtesy of Suzi Eszterhas.

Feedback is always welcome: [email protected].

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What does it mean to celebrate the 50th Earth Day amidst a pandemic? Our guests for this episode provide options and inspiration to mark this important anniversary in the face of a global virus outbreak, which ironically has roots in the destruction of nature.

We speak with Trammell Crow, the founder of the largest Earth Day event in the world, EarthX, which has big plans with National Geographic for a virtual celebration, and Ginger Cassady, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental advocacy group that works to end deforestation and respond to the climate crisis.

They share stories of inspiration, challenge, and triumph as we mark 50 years of Earth Day with an eye on what comes next. 

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! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, visit the link above for details.

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].

 

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Acclaimed environmental journalist John Vidal joins the show to discuss the current pandemic's links to the wildlife trade and the destruction of nature. 

We speak about his recent Guardian/Ensia feature on what we know about the origins of the outbreak, what he’s learned while reporting from similar outbreak epicenters in the past, how the destruction of nature creates the perfect conditions for diseases to emerge, and what we can do to prevent future outbreaks.

See related Mongabay podcast episode: How studying an African bat might help us prevent future Ebola outbreaks

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• National parks in Africa shutter over COVID-19 threat to great apes
• Shell of bioluminescent shrimp not only glows but detects light
• Seychelles extends protection to marine area twice the size of Great Britain

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].

Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

The songs, calls, clicks, and bumps of beluga whales, bearded seals, bowhead whales, ribbon seals, and walrus are the stars of this episode, which also features the co-author of a recent study that used bioacoustics to assess how variation in sea surface temperature and sea ice extent affects these animals' populations in the northern Bering Sea.

Dr. Howard Rosenbaum is the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ocean Giants Program, and his team is creating an acoustic baseline for how marine noise pollution and climate change are affecting large mammals in this area of the Arctic.

Learn more about Dr. Rosenbaum's team's study here and press play to hear the fascinating sounds they captured.

Here's this episode's top news:

• Conservationists set the record straight on COVID-19’s wildlife links
• Record-high global tree cover loss driven by agriculture
• In Afghanistan, a new national park carries hopes for conservation and peace

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].

Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Shah Selbe is a rocket scientist who put his engineering skills into building a lab that uses open-source technologies to empower local communities to solve conservation challenges.

His team has been deploying technologies like drones, sensor networks, smartphone apps, and acoustic buoys to monitor protected areas, wildlife, and biodiversity.

But their big news is the launch of the open-source hardware and online platform FieldKit that anyone can use to deploy a local sensing network and mesh that with remote sensing data for real-time ecosystem monitoring: he joins us to discuss its potential plus the conservation tech he’s currently most excited about.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• China beefs up wildlife trade ban as COVID-19 outbreak intensifies
• ‘Out of control’: Unprecedented fires ravage Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands
• Camera traps confirm presence of lowland gorillas in central mainland Equatorial Guinea for first time in over a decade

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].

Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Fred Swaniker is the founder of the African Leadership University, which recently launched a School of Wildlife Conservation to help young Africans develop the skills and knowledge necessary to “own and drive” the conservation agenda on the African continent.

Swaniker sees Africa's natural heritage as a strategic advantage for the continent, and argues on this episode that the immense young workforce can be engaged in its conservation in many ways, from management to filmmaking, science communications and technology. He also shares highlights from ALU’s recent "Business of Conservation Conference" in Kigali, Rwanda.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Jeff Bezos establishes $10 billion ‘Earth Fund’ to combat climate change
• Deforestation in Brazil continues torrid pace into 2020
• Rhino poaching in South Africa declines for fifth straight year

Learn more about African Leadership University's School of Wildlife Conservation at its website, www.sowc.alueducation.com.

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].

Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

Top scientists, authors, and activists appear on the Mongabay Newscast to discuss their latest research, describe new solutions for tough challenges, or to share their views on conservation and the environment: subscribe to this free show via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Mongabay.com is a 25 year-old award-winning nonprofit news service with 5 million monthly readers who consume our daily reporting in 6 languages via 5 international bureaus.   So to stay on top of key trends, new science and fresh thinking on the global environment, find, subscribe and follow the Mongabay Newscast for news and inspiration from nature's frontline.

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‘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.

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].

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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].

Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

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.

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].

Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe