WCS Wild Audio

We need to act fast to address the three interrelated crises facing our planet—climate change, biodiversity loss, and the threat of zoonotic pandemics. We must not only protect the last of the wild, but also actively restore wildlife and wild places. WCS Wild Audio recently spoke with John Lotspeich, Executive Director of Trillion Trees— a conservation partnership attempting to meet the scale needed at this critical time.

To learn more about Trillion Trees, read their 2022 Impact Report.

This week a 25-minute documentary, “Haulout,” will headline the New York Wild Film Festival as its Best in Festival winner. That prize can be added to prestigious awards for “Haulout” from the International Documentary Association and the American Film Institute on its way to the Academy Awards, where it competes for best documentary short on March 12.

WCS Wild Audio spoke to representatives of the film, the festival, and WCS’s scientific programs to learn more. Watch the film at The New Yorker.

[NOTE: This episode contains spoilers].

Jaguars are the Americas’ mightiest big cat, with roughly 150,000 of this extraordinary species scattered across its range from southern Arizona to northern Argentina. Today they face a growing threat from the illegal wildlife trade in their teeth, skin, and other parts. Wild Audio recently spoke to Kurt Duchez, the Counter-Wildlife Trafficking Officer for the WCS Mesoamerica region, to learn about the scope of the problem and what can be done to confront it.

More and more scientists today are using environmental DNA—or eDNA—to identify species or organisms inhabiting a particular area by measuring genetic traces found in water, soil, or air. In 2019, a group of researchers co-led by WCS’s Tracie Seimon surveyed Mt. Everest to explore high elevation biodiversity there using eDNA. Now that they have begun publishing their findings, WCS Wild Audio checked in with Tracie to find out what they learned.

“With all this strangeness, there is also beauty beyond words.” That’s how the famous scientist and explorer William Beebe described an underwater marvel off the coast of New York and New Jersey in the late 1920s. Today, Hudson Canyon has been nominated as a National Marine Sanctuary. But, as WCS Wild Audio learned from Noah Chesnin and Dr. Merry Camhi, there’s still a lot we don’t know about this massive canyon.

We're taking a break from WCS Wild Audio this week to share a new podcast, "Wild World with Scott Solomon," hosted by field biologist and science communicator Scott Solomon. The show explores the natural wonders of our planet through the voices of the people who explore, study, and protect them.

In today’s episode, you’ll join Scott as he speaks with WCS's own Dr Boris Arevalo, who is working to protect the spectacular scarlet macaw in his home country of Belize. Dr Arevalo's efforts to study this beautiful bird and reintroduce hand-reared chicks back into the wild have contributed to a resurgence in scarlet macaw populations in the region.

If you like what you hear, follow "Wild World with Scott Solomon" on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. We’ll be back next week with a new episode of WCS Wild Audio.

https://www.wildworldshow.com/

Madidi National Park, in northeastern Bolivia, boasts a jaw-dropping concentration of some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. The vast landscape ranges from the Amazon River basin up nearly 6,000 meters to the peaks of the Andes.

A comprehensive WCS survey has documented thousands of plants and animals, some new to science, that are informing conservation in the region. Wild Audio spoke to WCS Bolivia’s Rob Wallace to learn more.

Across the globe, climate change is reshaping land and seascapes. In the Arctic, melting sea ice is opening up shipping traffic into and out of the region. The increasingly noisy underwater environment created by these commercial vessels now threatens marine mammals that rely on sound for communication, food, and safety. WCS Canada’s Bill Halliday and Steve Insley have been studying this growing problem and spoke to WCS Wild Audio for this report.

The Arctic is currently warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. Drastic changes are happening. We still don’t know all the different ways this is impacting local wildlife. WCS Wild Audio spoke with Tom Glass of the University of Montana and Martin Robards from WCS about what they’ve learned about how one unheralded species—the wolverine—is adapting to a changing climate.