In recognition of her leadership and advocacy, Indigenous Wirdi woman Murrawah Maroochy Johnson has been awarded the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize. She joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss a landmark victory for First Nations rights in Australia, led by her organization Youth Verdict against Waratah Coal, which resulted in the Land Court of Queensland recommending a rejection of a mining lease in the Galilee Basin that would have added 1.58 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere o...
Apr 29, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Indigenous rights advocate and executive director of SIRGE Coalition , Galina Angarova, and environmental journalist/author of the Substack newsletter Green Rocks , Ian Morse , join us to detail the key social and environmental concerns, impacts, and questions we should be asking about the mining of elements used in everything from the global renewable energy transition to the device in your hand. Research indicates that 54% of all transition minerals occur on or near Indigenous land. Despite th...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, journalist Dahr Jamail joins co-host Rachel Donald to discuss the ways many international conflicts are based on resource scarcity. Notable as an unembedded reporter during the US-led Iraq invasion, Jamail expands on the human and ecological costs to these conflicts, the purported reasons behind them, how those justifications are covered in the media, and the continued stress these conflicts put on society. "There was a saying a ways back by Lester Brown...
Apr 16, 2024•52 min•Ep 200•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode, climate activist and founder of the non-profit Force of Nature , Clover Hogan , details list of challenges activists face both from outside and within their movements. Not only do environmental activists face growing legal and physical threats across the globe, they are also vulnerable to burnout, exhaustion, and ridicule as they navigate a host of other social challenges while doing this work that is poorly compensated. Hogan speaks with co-host Mike DiGirolamo about these c...
Apr 09, 2024•51 min•Ep 199•Transcript available on Metacast On today's episode of the Newscast, world-renowned primatologist and conservation advocate Dr. Jane Goodall sits down with Mongabay founder and editor-in-chief, Rhett Butler . Goodall is celebrating her 90th birthday this week and reflects upon her long (and continuing) career, sharing reflections, lessons, stories and inspirations that guide her philosophy toward protecting the natural world. Widely recognized for her pioneering work on animal behavior, she explains the importance of having emp...
Apr 02, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast African forest elephants play a crucial role in shaping the Congo rainforest ecosystem, two experts explain on this episode. As seed dispersers and maintainers of forest corridors and clearings, they are sometimes referred to as "gardeners of the forest." Their small and highly threatened population needs additional study and conservation prioritization, since the loss of this species would fundamentally change the shape and structure of the world's second-largest rainforest. Guest Fiona "Boo" M...
Mar 26, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Billionaires, foundations, and philanthropists often make massive, headline-grabbing pledges for biodiversity conservation or climate change mitigation, but how effective are these donations? How do these huge sums get used, and how do we know? These questions are among the considerations that conservationists and environmental reporters should keep in mind, two guest experts on this episode say. On this edition of the Mongabay Newscast, Holly Jonas , global coordinator of the ICCA Consortium, a...
Mar 19, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s guest is Jay Griffiths , award-winning author of several books, including the acclaimed Wild: An Elemental Journey. She speaks with co-host Rachel Donald about the importance of language for preserving communities and their cultures, the impact of colonization and globalization on Indigenous communities, and the innate human connection with the natural world in the land of one's birth. Roughly 4,000 of the world’s 6,700 languages are spoken by Indigenous communities, but multiple factors...
Mar 12, 2024•55 min•Ep 195•Transcript available on Metacast Eoghan Daltun has spent the past 14 years restoring 75 acres of farmland in southwest Ireland to native forest, a wildly successful and inspirational effort that has welcomed back long-absent flora and fauna, which he details in his book, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey Into the Magic of Rewilding . On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, host Rachel Donald speaks with Daltun about how easily he achieved this feat, its seemingly miraculous results, and the historical context b...
Feb 27, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, host Mike DiGirolamo takes you on a journey through the most biodiverse marine region in the world, Raja Ampat. He speaks with three guests about how ecotourism has provided stable incomes through conservation, including documentary filmmaker Wahyu Mul , veteran birding guide Benny Mambrasar and resort owner Max Ammer, whose biological research center trains and employs local people in a variety of skills. Please invite your friends to subscribe to the M...
Feb 20, 2024•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Objectivity is a pillar of journalism, but its definition and application are loosely defined and humanly impossible to achieve, experts say. Podcast guest Emily Atkin argues that an uncritical adherence to objectivity (over trust) has led to gaslighting readers about the real-world causes and urgency of the climate crisis. She quit her day job to launch the acclaimed newsletter “ HEATED ,” which was spurred by a desire to report on the human causes of climate change and ecological destruction m...
Feb 13, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Can 'degrowth' solve our economic, social, and ecological problems? Economist Timothée Parrique thinks so. On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, he joins co-host Rachel Donald to interrogate this 20+ year-old concept that critiques the notion of limitless growth in a finite world, and which offers tangible gains for people and planet. The current economic model stretches the ecological limits of the planet – the Planetary Boundaries . Parrique says degrowth is a pathway for rich countries to...
Jan 30, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Data scientist and head of research at Our World in Data , Hannah Ritchie, says her 'radically hopeful' new book that's getting a lot of press, "Not the End of the World: How We Can be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet," offers a pathway to solving the multiple environmental crises our world faces. However, co-host Rachel Donald finds that key geopolitical challenges are left unaddressed by the book, leaving out important frameworks such as the planetary boundaries, and attempts...
Jan 16, 2024•1 hr 28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 2015, independent journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown and Sarawak Report uncovered the beginnings of what is now considered the world’s biggest money-laundering scandal. The crime resulted in billions stolen from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fund. While former prime minister Najib Razak is now facing a 12-year prison sentence for his role in the crime, Rewcastle Brown herself has also faced legal actions against her, including an arrest warrant and an attempt to place her on Interpol’...
Jan 09, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Wildlife trafficking is a high-profile but complex topic that reporters struggle to tackle effectively. Three experts recently spoke with Mongabay about some of the thornier questions the media should consider when covering international wildlife crime. Wildlife trafficking should be covered as a crime story, first and foremost, because that's what it is, as one podcast guest argues. Simone Haysome , Dwi N. Adhiasto , and Bryan Christy joined host Mike DiGirolamo in a live discussion that origin...
Dec 19, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast The idea that nature is something outside of society hampers practical solutions to restoring it, says Laura Martin , associate professor of environmental studies at Williams College. On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, co-host Rachel Donald speaks with Martin about the restoration vs. preservation debate, and why Martin says a focus on the former is the way to address the biodiversity crisis. Martin defines restoration as “an attempt to design nature with non-human collaborators,” which s...
Dec 12, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Conservationist Paul Rosolie co-leads a non-profit deep in the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon. Conserving forests beyond where law enforcement is willing to travel can be dangerous work, but his team successfully recruits former loggers to use their forest knowledge to become conservation rangers: this provides alternative income streams for communities and has attracted millions of dollars in funding. Today, this Indigenous-co-led nonprofit is responsible for protecting 55,000 acre...
Dec 05, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The text of the climate loss and damage fund is heading to the COP 28 climate summit in Dubai this December without a mandate that wealthy, industrialized nations pay into it, says Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA. Frequent Mongabay contributor and journalist Rachel Donald joins the Mongabay Newscast as co-host to speak with Wu about why he says this global climate fund “requires almost nothing of developed countries." Related reading: COP27: Climate Loss & Damage ta...
Nov 28, 2023•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has declined by 22% for the year ending July 31, 2023, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, CEO and editor-in-chief Rhett Butler tells us what the data show and what Mongabay will be looking for in the future. Butler also details more exciting news, such as the 2023 Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication, given to Mongabay for its “outstanding track record” in communi...
Nov 21, 2023•32 min•Ep 184•Transcript available on Metacast If current conditions line up just right, much of the Great Barrier Reef could soon suffer another catastrophic bleaching event, so how are conservationists reacting to threats like this in Australia? “We could lose a huge part of the reef by February,” says Newscast guest Dean Miller of the Forever Reef Project, so his team is racing to add the final coral specimens to its huge “biobank” of coral species before then, for use by researchers and conservationists. Work like this was featured at th...
Oct 24, 2023•41 min•Ep 183•Transcript available on Metacast In a yearlong investigation from The New Humanitarian and Mongabay, spanning multiple countries, investigative reporters found the United Nations is not climate neutral as it claims to be. The UN bases much of its claims on the use of carbon credits--which are already increasingly criticized by experts as having little impact on actually offsetting emissions. Reporters found that many projects that issue carbon credits to the U.N. were linked to environmental damage or displacement, and 2.7 mill...
Oct 10, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The American bison ('buffalo') was once decimated to a tiny fraction of its original population of 30 million, reaching a low point of just 77 individuals. Today, they number around 350,000 thanks to the visionary preservation efforts of Indigenous communities, individual conservationists, and others. Joining the Mongabay Newscast to discuss this hopeful conservation effort that enabled this comeback is acclaimed, award-winning filmmaker and American documentary filmmaker Ken Burns . His latest ...
Oct 03, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Human beings have a storied and complicated history with bears. The iconic mammals have long been an important symbol for thousands of years in cultures across the globe. Yet, almost all of the eight bear species left in the wild remain threatened. Some iconic bear species, such as the giant panda, have benefitted from conservation gains, but other species continue to face urgent and increasing threats to their survival. Award-winning environmental journalist Gloria Dickie joins the Mongabay New...
Sep 27, 2023•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nearly a million animals are killed on roads every day. That's just in the U.S., and this sobering statistic is very likely an underestimate. “If anything, the number is probably quite a bit higher,” says Ben Goldfarb , environmental journalist and author of the new book " Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of our Planet ." The world is projected to build 25 million more miles of roads by 2050, so wildlife ecologists and engineers are searching for ways to integrate the needs of w...
Sep 19, 2023•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Traditional capitalism is not working for the planet or the public, and needs an overhaul, says Beth Thoren, environmental action and initiatives director at Patagonia. Where governments are failing to regulate, Thoren argues, corporations should be making the change anyway. “If we continue to live in a world where shareholder value is the only thing that is valued, we will burn up and die,” she says. She joins the Mongabay Newscast to detail Patagonia's business model—which gives its profit to ...
Sep 05, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ecuadorians have just approved a referendum to halt oil drilling in Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, which will prohibit further oil extraction. The "yes" vote effectively keeps its oil in the ground, so for the details we check in with staff writer Max Radwin who covered the news for Mongabay. Related to that is a recent legal victory in Ecuador's Andean region, another massively biodiverse area – not only in that country but for the entire planet – so we'...
Aug 22, 2023•20 min•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast Tim Killeen is a top conservation biologist and author whose book is a straight-shooting, non-naive dive into "everything you need to know about the Amazon if you want to save it," he says on this episode. With 30 years of experience living in the Amazon, his wealth of knowledge springs from having guided the first environmental impact study there, pioneering satellite mapping of deforestation with NASA, and traveling extensively throughout the region, so Killeen has unique insight into the driv...
Aug 08, 2023•47 min•Ep 176•Transcript available on Metacast Conservation technology such as drones, remote sensing, and machine learning plays a critical role in supporting conservation scientists and aiding policymakers in making well-informed decisions for biodiversity protection. Recognizing this, the XPRIZE Foundation initiated a five-year competition with the goal of developing automated and accelerated methods for assessing rainforest biodiversity. In this episode of the Newscast, Mongabay staff writer Abhishyant Kidangoor interviews Peter Houlihan...
Jul 25, 2023•26 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast Field research stations are vital to rewilding and conservation efforts yet they’re often absent from global environmental policy, a Nature paper argues. Despite this lack of visibility and funding challenges, their impact is immensely beneficial in regions of the world such as Costa Rica: a nation that had one of the highest rates of deforestation in the 1980s and became the first nation to reverse tropical deforestation. Joining the Mongabay Newscast to discuss the importance of field research...
Jul 11, 2023•34 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast Great apes are facing a concerning future. If humans neglect to address climate change, they could lose up to 94% of their range by 2050. In the Congo Basin, a stronghold for great ape species, several challenges pose significant threats to their survival; national interests in exploiting natural resources, security issues in areas like the Albertine Rift, hunting activities, and the illegal wildlife trade all contribute to the severe predicament faced by these charismatic mammals. In this episo...
Jul 04, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast 
