Landscape rewilding and ecosystem restoration are likely our last/best chances to maintain life on Earth as we know it, the guests on this week's show argue.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration just began, so we invited author Judith Schwartz to discuss her new book The Reindeer Chronicles and Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth, which documents numerous restoration projects around the globe and highlights how the global ecological restoration movement is challenging us to reconsider the way we live on the planet.
We’re also joined by Tero Mustonen, president of the Finnish NGO Snowchange Cooperative, who tells us about the group’s Landscape Rewilding Programme which is restoring & rewilding Arctic and Boreal habitats using Indigenous knowledge and science.
He previously joined us to discuss the 'dialogue' between Indigenous knowledge and western science for a popular episode in 2018, a theme we also explored with David Suzuki for another popular show about how Indigenous knowledge is critical for human survival.
Episode artwork: Reindeer calf at Lake Inari in northern Finland © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace.
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The Sumatran rhino is a ridiculously cute but cryptic species that teeters on the brink: with an estimated 80 individuals left in the wilds of its super dense rainforest home, experts are also divided on *where* they are. With conflicting and sometimes misleading data on their whereabouts, it is exceedingly difficult to track them down, and to therefore protect them.
To discuss this 'rhino search and rescue' as she calls it, host Mike DiGirolamo contacted repeat guest Wulan Pusparini, who studied them as a species conservation specialist with the Wildlife Conservation Society before pursuing her Ph.D. in Environmental Conservation at Oxford University.
Articles discussed in this episode:
Episode artwork: Rosa is the wild-born female Sumatran rhino noted by Wulan during the interview who now lives at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park. Image courtesy of Terri Roth/Cincinnati Zoo.
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Two technologies being promoted as climate solutions, biomass and hydropower, actually have big environmental consequences and might not be sustainable at all. Can we burn and dam our way out of the climate crisis?
We speak with Justin Catonoso, a Wake Forest University journalism professor and Mongabay reporter, who describes the loopholes in renewable energy policies that have allowed the biomass industry to flourish under the guise of carbon neutrality, even though the burning of trees for energy has been shown to release more carbon emissions than burning coal.
We also talk to Ana Colovic Lesoska, a biologist who was instrumental in shutting down two large hydropower projects in her Balkan country’s Mavrovo National Park. This recent Goldman Environmental Prize winner says there is a tidal wave of 3,000+ other hydropower projects still proposed for the region, and discusses whether hydropower can be a climate solution at all, at any scale.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
Read all of Mongabay's coverage of biomass here and hydropower here.
Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, or download our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.
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The Sumatran orangutan is a lowland species that has adapted to life among this Indonesian island’s highlands, as it has lost favored habitat to an array of forces like deforestation, road projects, plus the trafficking of young ones to be sold as pets, so this great ape is increasingly in trouble.
On this episode, Mongabay speaks with the founding director of Orangutan Information Centre in North Sumatra, Panut Hadisiswoyo, about these challenges plus some hopeful signs.
His center is successfully involving local communities in this work: over 2,400 hectares of rainforest have been replanted by local women since 2008, creating key habitat for the orangutans, which also provides the villagers with useful agroforestry crops, for instance.
Related reading from this episode:
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