The COVID-19 pandemic’s ripple effects are broad; leaving virtually no industry, economy, or continent immune. As travel and tourism has been brought to a standstill, many wilderness areas are left vacant and workers left with the uncertainty of personal income. This “perfect storm” of conditions is leaving many endangered animals highly vulnerable to wildlife crime.

– Beverly and Derek Joubert, Project Ranger

In the last 50 years, Africa has lost 90 to 95 percent of its large predators. We could very well witness the end of many iconic species in the next decade or two. It’s that urgent and we are in that much trouble. If we want to live in a world with lions and leopards and elephants and rhinos, then we’ve got to get behind those who are out there on the front lines.

Beverly and Derek Joubert have spent their lives on the front lines. They are award-winning filmmakers, National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence, and wildlife conservationists who have made over 30 films while researching, exploring, and doing vital conservation work throughout Africa for nearly four decades.

They've been on Species Unite before, and if you haven't heard their episode, go back and listen. Their lives sound like something from an epic film - romance, wild adventures, extreme danger, all fueled by a deep love for the wilderness and one another, and the stories that they tell are absolutely astonishing.

But, today's episode is different.

There is an urgent situation happening across Africa. Since the pandemic started and tourism shut down, there's been a funding crisis for wildlife rangers across the continent, and without the rangers, there will be no one there to protect the wilderness and the animals who live there. It’s already bad and on the verge of getting much, much worse.

To prevent a full on poaching pandemic, Beverly and Derek have started an emergency intervention called, Project Ranger, an emergency fund supporting those on the front lines of conservation.

The situation is dire and it's something that we all can behind in one way or another, before it’s too late. So, please listen and share this episode, share the powerful PSAs that the Jouberts have created, and if you are able, donate to Project Ranger.

“…I checked into rehab and within 72 hours I was diagnosed with type two diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, bipolar disorder, suicidal depression, anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorders, sleep disorder and ADHD.” – Adam Sud

There was a point when Adam Sud’s life was completely out of control with food and drug addiction; so much so that he found himself cycling between amphetamine benders and fast food binges until things got so bad that he attempted suicide by drug overdose.

Fortunately, he failed and immediately reached out for help. He got sober and transformed everything single thing about his life. He credits a huge amount of his recovery to a plant based diet and the connection he feels with all living things through veganism.

Since then, Adam has dedicated his life to helping others transform their lives. He is a diabetes and food addiction coach for Mastering Diabetes, a program that focuses on reversing insulin resistance to master diabetes using low fat, whole food, plant-based nutrition. He is also an international speaker for the plant-based movement and addiction recovery movement. He has worked in recovery centers using plant-based nutrition as a tool for strengthening recovery and relapse prevention. And, he is also the founder of the non-profit, Plant-Based for Positive Change, a program that is dedicated to advancing the research of diet and mental health and addiction and is running the very first research study to investigate the effects of a plant based diet intervention on early addiction recovery outcomes.

Adam firmly believes that the simplest change on your fork make the most profound change of your life and that self-love is the root of all recovery. His story is as extraordinary as it is inspiring. I hope that you learn as much as I did.

Links –

Plant Based for Positive Change https://www.plantbasedforpositivechange.org/

The Infinite Study https://www.plantbasedforpositivechange.org/programs-1

Adam’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/plantbasedaddict/?hl=en

Adam's Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/plantbasedaddict/

Plant strong - https://plantstrong.com/adam-sud

"What's sad about it is… a lot of people think it's the norm… that's what I thought. Diabetes was something my grandmother had and my mom was pre-diabetic so I thought, oh diabetes and clogged arteries and high cholesterol, they’re just my destiny - that's a normal part of life because that's what I saw happening to everyone around me.”

-Jasmine Leyva

Heart disease, diabetes, and obesity have been rising at alarming rates all across the country, but the numbers are disproportionately higher in African American communities. There are many reasons that factor into why that is, but the fact that we have an unjust food system is a big one. Food desserts, regions in urban areas where it is difficult to obtain affordable and fresh foods, make it impossible for the people living in those areas to eat healthy and prevent diseases like those mentioned above.

Jasmine Leyva is an actress, a filmmaker, and the creator and director of The Invisible Vegan, a full-length independent documentary that delves into the complex issues surrounding the unhealthy dietary patterns in the African American community. The film shows how increased dependence on meat and fast food is rooted in the history of slavery, 20th century socioeconomic inequalities, and the rise of big food. And it explores on the health and wellness possibilities that can be achieved through a plant based diet. 

The film is packed with information, history, stories of transformation, and interviews with African American vegans ranging from NBA legend, John Salley to Cedric the Entertainer to Stic of Dead Prez. If you haven’t already seen it, watch it.

Jasmine is a force of a human being – she’s inspiring, wise, and incredibly thoughtful. I learned a ton from her film and from our conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Jasmine’s website https://jasmineleyva.com/

Jasmine's instagram https://www.instagram.com/jasmine_c_leyva/?hl=es

Jasmine's Twitter https://twitter.com/jasmine_c_leyva

The Invisible Vegan https://www.theinvisiblevegan.com/

The Invisible Vegan on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Vegan-Cedric-Entertainer/dp/B07WF9L1JM

When the pandemic first hit and tourism all over the world shut down, thousands of captive elephants across Asia went from being very much in demand to being out of work, meaning they are struggling and many of them are in dire situations.

Whether these elephants are from places where their lives are really good, like certain sanctuaries, or from places where their lives are incredibly difficult, where they are forced to give rides, perform tricks and spend they rest of the day on horribly small chains, they have all been affected by the pandemic.

Jemma Bullock runs a project called ELIE at Elephant Valley Project (EVP) in Eastern Cambodia. EVP is one of the very good places to be an elephant. These elephants live in the forest, eat whatever they want, aren’t ridden or bathed or used as selfie props, they don't have to do anything except be elephants.

In normal times, tourist visit EVP but they don’t interfere with the lives of the residents. They go out into the forest and hike with the elephants and watch them in their natural habitat. It's a pretty incredible place. But, like everyone else, EVP shut down to visitors in March and until then, ecotourism was 90 percent of their income.

To survive the crisis, they had to shut down their second sanctuary in Thailand, and have been relying on grants and donations. The fact that they can receive grants and donations makes them much more fortunate than most.

I spoke with Jemma about life at EVP and what it's been like since the pandemic started. So far, 2020 at EVP has been a lot like many people’s year– unpredictable, difficult, and absolutely insane. Not only have they been navigating the loss of income, tourism, and an entire sanctuary, but they’ve also had some days (and weeks) that they barely survived – including a three-week stint with a wild elephant on the loose, stealing one of their females and sending the humans up into the trees.

Lauren Ornelas is the founder and the executive director of the Food Empowerment Project, a nonprofit food justice organization that spotlights the abuse of animals on farms, unfair working conditions for produce workers, and the unavailability of healthy foods in communities of color and low-income areas.

She and I spoke earlier in the pandemic. She had just written an article on Medium called, We Are All Connected. It was written back in April, but it could not be more relevant now, with the demonstrations in our streets calling out systemic racism.

“As many of us know, COVID-19 has just proven what we know: that racism and inequalities that exist for Black, Indigenous, and Brown people in this country are a barrier to success and living healthy lives. Our communities have been losing lives due to police violence, lack of health care, lack of healthy food, lack of clean drinking water, environmental racism, lack of living wages, and the list goes on; however, what makes COVID-19 even more dangerous is that these problems still exist and in some ways are exacerbated.”  – Lauren Ornelas, We Are All Connected

Lauren has spent her entire life on the front lines fighting for human and animal rights. She went vegan and became an activist in the 80s, later she founded and ran the animal right’s organization, Viva USA, and in 2007, she started The Food Empowerment Project, an organization that operates from the understanding that we are indeed all connected, humans, animals, and the planet and thus, it only makes sense to fight for the whole package.

Later, in that same Medium piece, she writes, “…but I am more determined than ever that we must truly fight the systems that have a role in how we got here.” And that is exactly what Lauren and the Food Empowerment Project are doing.

“There’s no question that Beyond Meat IPO was a watershed event. You cannot overstate enough how big of a deal that was, because before then you had a relatively small group of folks, including myself, leading the parade, cheering as loudly as we could, and largely falling on deaf ears outside of small pockets here and there.

When that [IPO] happened, everybody on Wall Street started to take notice, not just because it went public, but it was the most successful IPOs since I think 2001 or something like that. And so, Wall Street, for better or worse, looks for where the money is being made and once they started to really look into the growth percent, the numbers in the plant based meat aisle - the success of the IPO, everybody started looking for the next one.”

- Michael Pellman Rowland

One silver lining that has come from the devastating Coronavirus pandemic has been the rise of the plant based meat industry. Business is booming. Sales of alternatives to animal flesh proteins have soared since the pandemic started and are now outpacing meat sales. This has been in part because of the meat shortage and in part because many more people have now been made aware of just how bad the meat industry is (extremely bad). They are looking for alternatives and, fortunately there are many.

So, I asked my friend, Michael Pellman Rowland to explain the latest goings on in the alternative meat space, a space he knows well. He is a financial advisor whose specialty is around sustainability and impact. And, he’s been writing about it for years, primarily for Forbes. His articles are about the future of food, sustainable food startups and technologies, and all of the happenings in the plant based food world from Memphis Meats leading the way to being the first cell-based meat company to bring its product to market to Beyond Meat being offered at Starbucks (although sadly, not in the US (yet)).

Michael is particularly excited about companies that offer innovative solutions to reduce the impact that agriculture has on human health, climate change, water scarcity, and the welfare of billions of animals, companies like: Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, JUST, Ocean Hugger, Califia Farms, and Good Catch.

I learned a lot from Michael about many of these world-changing companies. He’s a wealth of knowledge, information, and advice; and, a really good human being.

“…based on my personal experience and having worked with scientists and researchers most of my life, I would say that it's not too late. There are some things that are probably gone. There are places where only pockets of biodiversity may remain in the time ahead, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a healthy future. It may not be what it once was, but it's like the old saying - when's the best day to quit smoking cigarettes? Today - if you don’t quit today, when's the next best day? Tomorrow.

So, it's not too late. We may have lost 50% of the world's coral reefs, but that means there's 50% left. We may have taken 90% of the big fish in the ocean, but maybe there's 10% left. We don't have to kill 100 million sharks every year. We don't have to rollback legislation that determines how much carbon we pump into the atmosphere. We can speak out against that and tell our elected leaders that we care. The ocean doesn't have to turn acidic because we're dumping so much carbon into it that its chemistry is changing.

These are things that we can change and can control. So, I do remain cautiously optimistic. I realize that the battle lines are drawn and we have to fight hard, but I do think that it's worth fighting for. It's not too late. And we can see a reversal in the places that have been protected. You do see that resilience. The ocean does know how to take care of itself. We just need to leave it alone…”

-Brian Skerry

Brian Skerry is one of the worlds most accomplished underwater and marine wildlife photographers and he is one of the greatest. He’s been a contract photographer for National Geographic Magazine since 1998 and his work has been featured in scores of other publications, such as Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, BBC Wildlife, Paris Match, GEO, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, Esquire, Audubon and Men’s Journal. He is also the author of 11 books including the acclaimed monographs Ocean Soul and Shark.

In his four decades exploring the world's oceans, Brian has experienced things that very few humans will ever get to experience, like diving with a population of southern right whales who had never before encountered human beings dropping down into their underwater universe. Brian dives eight months of the year, often in extreme conditions - beneath Arctic ice or in shark-infested waters.

His work brings us the beauty and the majesty of our oceans, but it also shows us the devastation and the destruction that we've caused them. His stories raise awareness, promote conservation, and ultimately create change.

Today, June 8th is World Oceans Day, the day to celebrate the world's combined efforts to protect the one ocean that we all share. And that ocean is in bad shape - between dead zones, loss of apex predators, rising sea levels affecting tidal ecosystems, the bleaching of coral reefs, oil spills polluting the waters and decimating habitats, overfishing and hunting of marine species, climate change, rising acidity levels, and plastic, plastic and more plastic the ocean’s future seems extremely bleak. But, as I learned from Brian, there’s still time. Our ocean is resillient and there is so much left that we can save, but we have to act now.

And, I can’t imagine a better day to begin than World Oceans Day. So, start by listening to Brian, one of the best tellers of ocean stories out there.

“The time to begin phasing out the intensive confinement systems in which we raise billions of animals is now. We need to accelerate society’s direction of reducing demand for meat from animal factory farms and shift instead to more of an emphasis on healthier — and safer — plant-based foods. As our population grows, plant-based foods are also more sustainable and affordable for societies globally.

Unless we — especially legislators and the food industry — make changes immediately, the concerning practices in animal agribusiness will remain. Only in transforming our food system can we eliminate the tinderbox ready to explode in our country. We can’t afford to wait.”

• Josh Balk and Dr. Shivam Yoshi, Pandemic on Our Plates

Social distancing is the key to slowing the spread of COVID-19. We know this. It has worked and is still working. But, we also know that in this absolutely insane time, a time where we are fully aware that staying apart does indeed saves lives, just the opposite is taking place at factory farms and meat processing plants all across America. Slaughterhouses are being forced to stay open and their workers must remain in close proximity to one another to be able to get their jobs done. And, they are getting sick and they are dying.

And, on factory farms, billions of animals are “living” in cramped, filthy, overcrowded spaces with almost no room to move their antibiotic-fueled bodies - conditions that are creating a perfect storm for the next zoonotic disease to emerge and spread. This threat is nothing new, diseases have already come from factory farms - we’ve just gotten lucky in terms of their spread. But the clock is ticking.

Josh Balk is has been a global leader in animal protection for the past 20 years. He is the Vice President of Farm Animal Protection for the Humane Society of the United States, and he’s the co-founder of plant based, food manufacturing company, JUST, as in JUST Mayo and my favorite invention of the 21st century, JUST Egg.

Josh has spent a couple of decades focusing on and fighting against extreme confinement on America’s factory farms, meaning practices like cramming many chickens into small battery cages for their entire lives, and keeping mother pigs in gestation crates, which are small metal cages that fit around their bodies like steel coffins, and days old calves in tiny veal crates where they can barely move. These are some of the cruelest practices on the planet and they are the status quo at factory farms in most American states.

Josh and his team have scored huge victories on changing animal welfare policies at some of the worlds largest companies and by changing legislation in many states. But there's still a long way and a lot of states to go. And, there are still billions of animals suffering.

And, right now, while we are in the midst of a public health crisis that started because of how we treat animals, we need to demand that our food industry change; otherwise we're setting ourselves up for a much larger crisis.

Josh is a hero and a world changer and many humans and millions of animals are lucky to have this guy in their corner.

Rachel Nuwer has spent a decade writing about, reporting on, investigating, and going undercover in the illegal wildlife trade. She is a freelance journalist whose work often focuses on wildlife trafficking and poaching and appears in publications like the New York Times and National Geographic.

She also wrote the book Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking. It’s a book for anyone who is interested in a planet that still has tigers, elephants, rhinos and thousands of other species living on it a couple generations from now. Rachel takes the reader to trafficking hotspots in twelve countries shares an in person account from the frontlines of the trade.

Rachel and I met in Brooklyn in January, pre-pandemic, to talk about her book and her time spent reporting on the wildlife trade. She is a wealth of knowledge with a deep understanding of the incredibly complex world of wildlife trafficking.

We all have a food story; the story that we tell ourselves about what we eat and why we eat it. It’s that story that runs the show when it comes to how we shop, cook, and feed our children.

It was most often taught to us by our parents and their parents, most who thought they were passing on good values and deep traditions and were only doing what was best for their kids. But our food story is more than that. It was also passed on to our parents and to us from advertisers, marketers and a food industry that uses words like values and traditions to get us to buy into a narrative that has damaged our health, destroyed the planet, and caused endless suffering to billions of animals.

But once we come to terms with the fact that it’s just a story and not something that we can’t change, there’s a whole new world waiting. And, like in so many other industries that are inherently broken in America and around the globe, the pandemic has exposed the gaping holes in our food system. But it’s also given us the opportunity to take a deeper look into what and how we eat and decide that we can change the story.

Aaron Gross is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, and he's the CEO and founder of Farm Forward. Farm forward was founded as the nation's first nonprofit devoted exclusively to ending factory farming.

Recently, Aaron and the writer, Jonathan Safran Foer published a piece in the Guardian called, We Have to Wake Up: Factory Farms are Breeding Grounds for Pandemics.

There's a paragraph in the article that says, " The link between factory farming and increasing pandemic risk is well established scientifically, but the political will to curtail that risk has, in the past, been absent. Now is the time to build that will. It really does matter if we talk about this, share our concerns with our friends, explain these issues to our children, wonder together about how we should eat differently, call on our political leaders, and support advocacy organizations fighting factory farming. Leaders are listening. Changing the most powerful industrial complex in the world – the factory farm – could not possibly be easy, but in this moment with these stakes it is, maybe for the first time in our lifetimes, possible.”

Aaron graciously joined me from his quarantine in San Diego to talk about how we change the story around how and what we eat and ultimately, how we change our food system. Aaron is one of the smartest guys out there and it was beyond a privilege to hear his thoughts and ideas on how we forge ahead. This conversation was enlightening, inspiring, and incredibly informative. I hope that you learn as much as I did.

We can change our food industry. As bad as most things across the planet are right now, there’s real opportunity in front of us. Let’s not waste it.