Planet: Critical

On the first episode of 2018, we speak with the author of a new book about the resilience of indigenous peoples in the face of climate change, and a researcher shares recordings of Australia's elusive night parrot.

Plus we round up the recent top environmental news!

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

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We speak with Christopher Herndon, a medical doctor who as co-founder and president of Acaté Amazon Conservation, has been helping indigenous Matsés people document their traditional healing and plant knowledge in a massive 1,000 page encyclopedia, and in creating living pharmacies for the future.

Also on the show is Mongabay contributor Rowan Moore Gerety, the writer behind our recent series on the effectiveness of conservation projects in Madagascar. The island nation has been a global conservation priority for decades, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in conservation funds from international donors — but rising deforestation, commercial exploitation of wildlife, and degradation of critical habitats suggest that these conservation investments may not be reaching their full potential. Mongabay hired Gerety, a veteran radio and print journalist, to examine the factors that contribute to or hinder success with the aim of informing future conservation efforts.

Plus we round up the recent top environmental news!

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this podcast!

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

Award-winning iconic writer Margaret Atwood recently tackled a medium she is not as well-known for: comic books. Her superhero series Angel Catbird "was a conservation project from the get-go," she tells us in this edition of the podcast, being an effort to shine a light on the plight of wild birds and the house cats who love to stalk them, plus other ecological themes. We also discuss her smash hit "The Handmaid's Tale" and other 'possible futures,' as she calls them.

Then we speak with Tyler Gage, a co-founder of the beverage company Runa and author of "Fully Alive," a new book detailing the lessons he learned in the Amazon that led to the launch of Runa and its mission to partner with indigenous communities in business via plant medicine and agroforestry.

Plus we round up the recent top environmental news!

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this podcast!

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

Mongabay is lucky to have Jane Goodall on its Advisory Board, and just before founder and CEO Rhett Butler was scheduled to speak with her most recently, research came out that vindicated her contention, which she’s held for nearly 60 years, that animals have personalities, so we recorded her thoughts about that for the Mongabay Newscast. “Quite honestly I think almost everybody recognized that animals have personalities, whether they were in the wild or whether they weren't,” she says. Other topics discussed include trophy hunting, activism, and hope for the future (a full transcript will be available at Mongabay.com on 11/17/17).

Our second guest is reporter Justin Catanoso, who is covering the UN Climate Change conference (COP23) for Mongabay this week, and he joins us from the event in Bonn, Germany.

Plus we round up the top environmental news.

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and tell a friend about this podcast!

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

In this episode we discuss new science on the impacts on birds and amphibians of drilling for natural gas in the tropics with a Smithsonian researcher, and a Goldman Prize winner discusses her ongoing campaign to rid mercury contamination from the environment, which is (still) having alarming human health effects.

Plus we round up the top environmental news.

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast!

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

Mongabay editor Phil Jacobson joins the Newscast to discuss a new investigative reporting project in collaboration with The Gecko Project called “Indonesia For Sale” about the land deals — and the powerful politicians and businessmen behind them — that have converted vast areas of Indonesian rainforest to industrial palm oil plantations for personal profit. 

Then we speak with Adrià López-Baucells, whose acoustic studies of bats in the central Amazon reveal the effects of Amazon forest fragmentation on bat foraging behavior. In this Field Notes segment, López-Baucells plays some of the recordings he captured and also explains how this audio led to some species being found in the central Amazon for the first time.

Plus we round up the past two weeks' top news.

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast!

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On this week's show we speak with Princeton University's Zuzana Burivalova about whether forest certification schemes like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are actually achieving their environmental, social, and economic goals. Whether they do or not has massive implications for forest conservation worldwide, and while the evidence is hard to find, this tropical forest ecologist has interesting findings to share.

Our second guest is Steve Wilson, who has just written a new paper on Javan rhino vocalizations. He plays some recordings of these fascinating sounds and discusses what they mean. 

Plus we round up the past two weeks' top news.

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast!

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Bruce Cockburn is well known for his outspoken support of environmental and humanitarian causes, and his multi-decade career has yielded 33 records, including his latest, Bone On Bone. This week, he will be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside another outspoken icon, Neil Young. We spoke with Cockburn about how he came to his ecological worldview, why he wrote iconic songs like "If a Tree Falls" and "If I Had A Rocket Launcher," as well as similar songs on his new record, and we also discuss where he finds hope for the future.

Our second guest is Amanda Lollar, founder and president of Bat World Sanctuary, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Texas. Lollar discusses the efforts of a number of dedicated wildlife rehabbers who took action in the wake of Hurricane Harvey to rescue wild animals in Houston and other impacted areas.

Plus we round up the past two weeks' top news.

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

If you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast.

Photo courtesy of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.

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

On this episode we take a look at the role technology plays in conservation efforts. First we speak with Topher White of Rainforest Connection, which deploys used cell phones in tropical forests around the world to provide real-time monitoring of forests and wildlife. Its network alerts local communities when illegal logging activities are taking place and can then be stopped, for example.

Then we speak with Matthew Putman, he's the CEO of Nanotronics and an applied physicist with a keen interest in conservation. We discuss some of the technologies that he sees making the biggest contributions to the way we approach conservation, and why he believes these advances can help turn the tide against environmental degradation.

Plus we round up the past weeks' top news.

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

Thanks, and we also hope you will tell a friend about this podcast!

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

Our first guest for this edition of the Mongabay Newscast is Eddie Carver, a Mongabay contributor based in Madagascar who recently reported about a troubled company that is hoping to mine rare earth elements in Madagascar’s Ampasindava peninsula, to make electronic gadgets. This is a highly biodiverse region that is home to numerous endangered lemur species, some of which live nowhere else on Earth.

Then we speak with Jo Wood, an Environmental Water Project Officer in Victoria, Australia. In this Field Notes segment, Wood plays for us the calls of a number of indicator species like whistling ducks and "pobblebonks" (also called "banjo frogs") which appear when her team floods their dried up wetland home -- this audio evidence helps her assess the overall success of the "rewetting program" and the health of the wetlands ecosystem.

Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it.

Thanks, and we also hope you will tell a friend about this podcast!

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