Cash for community conservation is tight, but this nonprofit unlocks it
Mongabay Newscast
says organizations know best how to tackle the complex conservation challenges unique to their ecosystems. However, they’re also among the most underserved in terms of funding of all stripes. On this week's episode of Mongabay's podcast, Collomb explains how his nonprofit, (WCN), is working to change that. When it comes to funding conservation," it's really difficult to know who to give your money to besides a handful of organizations that a lot of people are familiar with," Collomb says. WCN facilitates partnerships between community-based conservation groups, primarily in Global South...
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Are Rivers Alive? Author Robert Macfarlane argues they are.
Mongabay Newscast
This week on Mongabay's podcast, celebrated author and repeat Nobel Prize in Literature candidate Robert Macfarlane discusses his fascinating new book, , which both asks and provides answers to this compelling question, in his signature flowing prose. Its absorbing narrative takes the reader to the frontlines of some of Earth's most embattled waterways, from northern Ecuador to southern India and northeastern Quebec, where he explores what makes a river more than just a body of water, but rather a living organism upon which many humans and myriad species are irrevocably dependent — a fact...
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Coffee drives tropical deforestation, but it doesn’t have to
Mongabay Newscast
Roughly a billion people enjoy coffee daily, and more than 100 million people rely on it for income. However, the coffee industry is the sixth-largest driver of deforestation and is also rife with human rights , including the labor of enslaved persons and children. But it doesn't have to be this way, says this guest on the Mongabay Newscast. is the founder of the NGO , having formerly served as a senior adviser at the U.S. National Wildlife Federation. The main commodity on her radar now is coffee. On this podcast episode, she explains how the industry can — and should — reform its...
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Lessons from 30 years of successfully fending off mines in an Ecuadorian cloud forest
Mongabay Newscast
Carlos Zorrilla has been living in an Ecuadorian cloud forest since the 1970s, and his last 30 years there have been spent mining companies seeking to extract its large copper deposits. He and his community have successfully fought such proposals by multiple firms in one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, but sometimes at great personal risk, he tells Mongabay's podcast. While his organization, Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag (), and allies in the local community notched a against mining there in a 2023 court case, he explains they're still not out of the proverbial...
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Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Ministry for the Future' has lessons for the present
Mongabay Newscast
Five years since groundbreaking climate fiction novel, , hit The New York Times bestseller list, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer shares reflections on themes explored in the book and how they apply directly to the world today. The utopian novel set in a not-so-distant future depicts how humans address and the , toppling oligarchic control of governments and addressing chronic inequality. Robinson explains how the novel works as ”a kind of cognitive map of the way the world is going now, the way things work and the way things might be bettered. And also a sort of...
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Why protected Congo rainforests look 'like a war zone'
Mongabay Newscast
Nearly half of the Republic of Congo’s dense rainforests are protected under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) framework to receive climate finance payments, but Mongabay Africa staff writer Elodie Toto’s recent investigation the nation has also nearly 80 gold mining and exploration permits in areas covered by the project, driving deforestation and negatively impacting local people and wildlife. As the world scrambles for new sources of gold during these uncertain economic times, she joins the podcast to explain what her...
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Inspiring action for the ocean wins top environmental prize for ex-engineer
Mongabay Newscast
has been awarded the for protecting the marine biodiversity of Tenerife, the most populated of the Canary Islands. On this episode of Mongabay's podcast, Molina explains what led him to quit his job as a civil engineer on a road project impacting the Teno-Rasca marine protected area (MPA) and his subsequent campaign to stop the port project it was planned to connect to, which would have impacted the biodiversity of the area. His successful campaign contributed to the decision of the Canary Islands government to abandon the port plan. Now, Molina and his nonprofit are helping set up an...
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‘De-extinction’ is misleading and dangerous, ecologist says
Mongabay Newscast
A biotech company in the United States made last month by revealing photos of genetically modified gray wolves, calling them “dire wolves,” a species that hasn’t existed for more than 10,000 years. edited 14 genes among millions of base pairs in gray wolf DNA to arrive at the pups that were shown, leaving millions of between these wolves and real dire wolves. This hasn’t stopped some observers from asserting to the public that “de-extinction” is real. But , says podcast guest Dieter Hochuli, a professor at the at the University of Sydney. Hochuli explains why ecologists like...
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How the sounds of whales guide conservation efforts
Mongabay Newscast
Biological oceanographer John Ryan joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss his team’s multiyear study that examined vocalizations of baleen whales, including blue (Balaenoptera musculus), humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) and fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), and how this science is critical for understanding their feeding habits, and thus informing their conservation. The found that these whales’ songs rise and fall with their , which provides valuable insights into how changing ocean conditions can affect their health and guide management measures. “Some of the research we did...
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How a prize-winning project brought saiga antelope back from the brink
Mongabay Newscast
Two decades ago a group of NGOs came together with the government of Kazakhstan to save the dwindling population of saiga antelope living in the enormous Golden Steppe. Since then, the has successfully rehabilitated the saiga (Saiga tatarica) from a population of roughly 30,000 to nearly 4 million. For this effort, it was the 2024 Earthshot Prize in the “protect & restore nature” category. Joining the podcast to discuss this achievement is Vera Voronova, executive director of the , an NGO involved in the initiative. Voronova details the cultural and technological methods used to...
info_outlineThe Australian government recently shelved key environmental protection commitments indefinitely, including the establishment of an environmental protection agency, and a robust accounting of the nation’s ecological health via an environmental information authority. The latest suspension was announced by the Prime Minister just ahead of a federal election. Australia initially proposed these “nature positive” reforms in 2022 and hosted the first Global Nature Positive Summit in 2024 to great fanfare, but has not implemented any substantial domestic legislation to overhaul its old environmental laws.
Joining the podcast to explain this situation is Adam Morton, the environment editor at The Guardian Australia. In this podcast conversation, Morton details what the Australian government promised, what it reneged on, the potential global influence of its backtracking, and why the nation’s environment will continue to degrade without intervention.
"I think that the message internationally from this term in parliament has been that the resources sector is winning, and environmental protection is losing out. Now, that's a very simple dichotomy, and it doesn't have to be one or the other, but on every front at the moment, that's how it feels in Australia. That applies to fossil fuel extraction. It applies to native forestry [and] logging, which still continues in a significant amount," Morton says.
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Image Credit: A koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) in Queensland, Australia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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Timecodes
(00:00) Australia breaks a key promise
(07:30) What does 'Nature Positive' mean?
(16:39) Koala protection sidelined
(20:53) How to 'right' the 'wrongs’
(28:30) Credits