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Mongabay Newscast

News and inspiration from nature’s frontline, featuring inspiring guests from scientists to authors discussing global environmental issues like climate change, biodiversity, rainforests, wildlife conservation, animal behavior, marine biology and more.
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Now displaying: December, 2020
Dec 23, 2020

Valuable minerals are regularly dug out of sensitive ecological areas like rainforests, and a growing slice of this mining is of the small, "artisanal," and unregulated kind.

The result is often a moonscape devoid of trees that is difficult to restore. But a new tech interface called Project Inambari, which was recently named a winner of the Artisanal Mining Challenge, aims to change that with technology, so that communities and authorities can better protect their resources. Bjorn Bergman is an analyst for SkyTruth and is one of the project's developers, and he joins the podcast to describe their vision.

Also joining us to discuss the impacts of mining and its mitigation is Dr. Manuela Callari, a Mongabay contributing writer who recently wrote about the tens of thousands of abandoned and shuttered mine sites in Australia and what communities are doing about them.

Episode artwork: satellite view of artisanal mining in rainforests of Madre de Dios, Peru, courtesy of SkyTruth.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify, or wherever they get podcasts.

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If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Dec 16, 2020

The wildlife rich island of Sumatra is experiencing a road building boom, causing some of its iconic creatures to be seen by construction workers: a photo of a Sumatran tiger crossing a highway work-site went viral this summer, for example. 

This smallest of all tiger subspecies still needs its space despite its stature: up to 250 square kilometers for each one's territory. A single road cut into their forest habitat encroaches on these key areas, where less than 400 of these critically endangered animals persist.

Road building creates access to impenetrable forests that are home to all kinds of creatures, though, enabling illegal hunting and fragmenting habitats.

To discuss the impact of - and alternatives to - such infrastructure projects as the billion dollar Trans-Sumatran Highway, we reached Hariyo “Beebach” Wibisono, a research fellow at the San Diego Zoo Global & director of SINTAS Indonesia, plus Bill Laurance, a distinguished professor at James Cook University, who is also head of ALERT, the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers and Thinkers.

Related reading:

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify or Audible, or wherever they get podcasts.

We now offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, so you can have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips, please download it and let us know what you think via the contact info below.

Episode artwork: a critically endangered Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica). Image courtesy of the Zoological Society of London.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Dec 9, 2020

On this episode we look at how the largest and most biodiverse tropical savanna on Earth, Brazil's Cerrado, may finally be getting the conservation attention it needs.

We’re joined by Mariana Siqueira, a landscape architect who’s helping to find and propagate the Cerrado’s natural plant life, and who is collaborating with ecologists researching the best way to restore the savanna habitat.

Arnaud Desbiez also joins the show: he's founder and president of a Brazilian wildlife research NGO who describes the Cerrado as an important part of the range for the giant armadillo, an ecosystem engineer which creates habitat for many other species. So conserving their population will have positive effects for the savanna's overall biodiversity, he argues.

Read more about the Giant Armadillo Conservation Project here & view all of our recent coverage of the Cerrado here.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify, or wherever they get podcasts.

We now offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, so you can have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips, please download it and let us know what you think via the contact info below.

Episode artwork: A giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus), photo courtesy of Giant Armadillo Conservation Program.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Dec 3, 2020

North Sumatra is home to 1 of only 8 known great ape species in the world, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, first classified in 2017 after its habits and DNA proved them to be unique. As with many animals in Sumatra, they are amazing creatures that are critically threatened, with a maximum of 800 individuals estimated to be living in an increasingly fragmented habitat.

Now a hydroelectric dam proposed for the center of the animals' tiny territory further challenges this special species' chances of survival, as well as that of 23 other threatened species which also live in the area. 

To understand what's interesting about this animal and how the proposed Batang Toru dam would impact it, we speak with a biologist who helped discover its uniqueness, Dr. Puji Rianti of IPB University in Bogor, and Mongabay staff writer Hans Nicholas Jong in Jakarta, who has been covering the controversy over the project, as it's been called into question by activists and funders alike and faces numerous delays.

The saga is definitely not over, and this episode explains why.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, via Pandora or Spotify or Audible, or wherever they get podcasts.

We now offer a free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store for this show, so you can have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips, please download it and let us know what you think via the contact info below.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! Supporting at the $10/month level now delivers access to Insider Content at Mongabay.com, too, please visit the link above for details.

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

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