Australia’s fire season may have just ended, but most of the world’s tropical forest regions will soon enter their own.

We look at what’s driving the intense fires in the Amazon, Indonesia, and elsewhere in recent years with three guests, who discuss what we can expect from the 2020 tropical fire season while sharing some solutions to this problem, which has huge effects on biodiversity, indigenous peoples, forests, and climate change.

Joining us are Rhett Butler, Mongabay’s founder and CEO, who provides a global perspective; scientist Dan Nepstad, who worked in the Brazilian Amazon for more than three decades; plus Aida Greenbury, an Indonesian sustainability consultant for projects like the High Carbon Stock Approach to forest protection.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to listen and subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

More reading from this episode:

Rhett Butler for Mongabay: "Rainforests in 2020: Ten things to watch," December 2019
"Amazon deforestation increases for 13th straight month in Brazil," May 2020

Dan Nepstad for the New York Times, "How to help Brazilian Farmers Save the Amazon," December 2019

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.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this 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, visit the link above for details.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

At a time when so many people are trying to make photographs of wildlife -- to break the pandemic lockdown blues, or to share on social media -- we speak with two guests about how to do this without harassing, exploiting, or harming them.

Internationally renowned wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas shares her experiences and advice, saying that the most important practices are both better for wildlife and capture the most compelling images.

This is “kind of a win-win,” Eszterhas says, because "we’re treating the animals with kindness and respect and we’re not affecting their lives in a very negative way" while delivering superior photos.

Also joining the discussion is environmental journalist Annie Roth, who recently wrote an in-depth article for Hakai Magazine exploring how wildlife pay the price when humans get too close in order to snap a few pics that they hope will score them likes on social media. 

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to listen and subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this 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, visit the link above for details.

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

Episode artwork of jackal pups courtesy of Suzi Eszterhas.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

What does it mean to celebrate the 50th Earth Day amidst a pandemic? Our guests for this episode provide options and inspiration to mark this important anniversary in the face of a global virus outbreak, which ironically has roots in the destruction of nature.

We speak with Trammell Crow, the founder of the largest Earth Day event in the world, EarthX, which has big plans with National Geographic for a virtual celebration, and Ginger Cassady, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental advocacy group that works to end deforestation and respond to the climate crisis.

They share stories of inspiration, challenge, and triumph as we mark 50 years of Earth Day with an eye on what comes next. 

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this 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, visit the link above for details.

See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Acclaimed environmental journalist John Vidal joins the show to discuss the current pandemic's links to the wildlife trade and the destruction of nature. 

We speak about his recent Guardian/Ensia feature on what we know about the origins of the outbreak, what he’s learned while reporting from similar outbreak epicenters in the past, how the destruction of nature creates the perfect conditions for diseases to emerge, and what we can do to prevent future outbreaks.

See related Mongabay podcast episode: How studying an African bat might help us prevent future Ebola outbreaks

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• National parks in Africa shutter over COVID-19 threat to great apes
• Shell of bioluminescent shrimp not only glows but detects light
• Seychelles extends protection to marine area twice the size of Great Britain

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

The songs, calls, clicks, and bumps of beluga whales, bearded seals, bowhead whales, ribbon seals, and walrus are the stars of this episode, which also features the co-author of a recent study that used bioacoustics to assess how variation in sea surface temperature and sea ice extent affects these animals' populations in the northern Bering Sea.

Dr. Howard Rosenbaum is the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ocean Giants Program, and his team is creating an acoustic baseline for how marine noise pollution and climate change are affecting large mammals in this area of the Arctic.

Learn more about Dr. Rosenbaum's team's study here and press play to hear the fascinating sounds they captured.

Here's this episode's top news:

• Conservationists set the record straight on COVID-19’s wildlife links
• Record-high global tree cover loss driven by agriculture
• In Afghanistan, a new national park carries hopes for conservation and peace

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Shah Selbe is a rocket scientist who put his engineering skills into building a lab that uses open-source technologies to empower local communities to solve conservation challenges.

His team has been deploying technologies like drones, sensor networks, smartphone apps, and acoustic buoys to monitor protected areas, wildlife, and biodiversity.

But their big news is the launch of the open-source hardware and online platform FieldKit that anyone can use to deploy a local sensing network and mesh that with remote sensing data for real-time ecosystem monitoring: he joins us to discuss its potential plus the conservation tech he’s currently most excited about.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• China beefs up wildlife trade ban as COVID-19 outbreak intensifies
• ‘Out of control’: Unprecedented fires ravage Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands
• Camera traps confirm presence of lowland gorillas in central mainland Equatorial Guinea for first time in over a decade

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Fred Swaniker is the founder of the African Leadership University, which recently launched a School of Wildlife Conservation to help young Africans develop the skills and knowledge necessary to “own and drive” the conservation agenda on the African continent.

Swaniker sees Africa's natural heritage as a strategic advantage for the continent, and argues on this episode that the immense young workforce can be engaged in its conservation in many ways, from management to filmmaking, science communications and technology. He also shares highlights from ALU’s recent "Business of Conservation Conference" in Kigali, Rwanda.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Jeff Bezos establishes $10 billion ‘Earth Fund’ to combat climate change
• Deforestation in Brazil continues torrid pace into 2020
• Rhino poaching in South Africa declines for fifth straight year

Learn more about African Leadership University's School of Wildlife Conservation at its website, www.sowc.alueducation.com.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Top scientists, authors, and activists appear on the Mongabay Newscast to discuss their latest research, describe newly discovered animal species, or share their views on conservation and the environment: subscribe to this free show via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you get your podcasts. We recommend listening to the most recent shows first, for the freshest news.

See 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.

‘Without the land, indigenous people cannot exist’ the new leader of Cultural Survival, Galina Angarova, tells host Mike G. in this new episode. Raised in a Buryat community in Siberia, she's had a number of top roles through the years, but her recent appointment to this key indigenous rights organization is perhaps the most important one yet. 

She grew up eating wild berries, mushrooms, nuts, wild garlic, deer, and more on the shores of Lake Baikal, and therefore has a strong sense of relationship to the land and how important it is that indigenous peoples like her community are allowed to keep stewarding these places: it's been proven that indigenous communities are the best stewards of land, waters, forests, and animals.

Angarova joins the show to discuss this plus the power of indigenous radio programs, and her idea of the sacred feminine.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
• Dam that threatens orangutan habitat is ‘wholly unnecessary’: Report
• Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside
• Belize officially declares wildlife corridor in key protected area complex

Learn more about Galina and the work of Cultural Survival at their website, culturalsurvival.org.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Laurel Symes is a biologist who uses bioacoustics to study tropical katydids in Central America, and she joins us to play some of her hypnotic rainforest recordings and say how tracking these insects' interesting sounds can aid rainforest conservation. 

Based on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, she uses machine learning to detect and identify these creatures, which are grasshopper-like insects that are important to the rainforest food web, because they eat a lot of plants and are in turn eaten by a lot of other species, including birds, bats, monkeys, frogs, and more.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• 2019 was second-hottest year on record, 2010s hottest decade
• Indigenous lands hold 36% or more of remaining intact forest landscapes
• Update to biodiversity treaty proposes protecting at least 30% of Earth
• One six-week expedition discovered ten new songbird species and subspecies in Indonesia

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Ami Vitale is an award-winning war correspondent turned conservation photographer, and her iconic images of animals like Sudan the Rhino adorn the pages of National Geographic and other top outlets often. But she's so much more than a woman with a camera, rather, she's a force of nature helping create change and grassroots conservation all over the world through her work, words, and advocacy.

She joins the podcast to talk about the most inspiring and heartbreaking moments from her recent projects (don't miss the beautiful story at the end about the behavior of elephant orphans) and she shares where she finds her seemingly boundless energy and optimism.

Here's this episode's top news items:

• Study declares ancient Chinese paddlefish extinct
• ‘Tainted timber’ from Myanmar widely used in yachts seized in the Netherlands
• New monkey discovered on “island” amid deforestation in Brazil

Episode artwork of a panda keeper in China is courtesy of Ami Vitale.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

For this last episode of 2019, we take a look back at some favorite bioacoustics recordings featured here on the Mongabay Newscast and play them for you.

As regular listeners will know, bioacoustics is the study of how animals use and perceive sound, and how their acoustical adaptations reflect their behaviors and relationships with their habitats and surroundings. Bioacoustics is a fairly young field of study but it is already being used to study everything from how wildlife populations respond to the impacts of climate change to how entire ecosystems are impacted by human activities.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Tropical forests’ lost decade: the 2010s
• Central American countries pledge to protect Mesoamerica’s ‘5 Great Forests’
• Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

We speak with National Geographic writer Chris Fagan about the investigative report he just filed for Mongabay revealing a massive invasion of national parks in the Peruvian Amazon, in an area relied upon by isolated indigenous communities. 

Traveling up the Sepahua River with indigenous guides, Fagan counted more than 250 plots of land illegally cleared for cocaine production in recent months. He met some of these growers and describes for us a very 'Wild West' scene that Peruvian officials know little about, in an area that was thought to be largely protected.

Read Chris's full report and see the stunning video and drone footage here:

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/coca-farms-close-in-on-protected-areas-isolated-tribes-in-peruvian-amazon/

Here's this episode's top news:

• Revealed: Government officials say permits for mega-plantation in Papua were falsified
• Hopes dim as COP25 delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics
• Newly spotted calves boost Javan rhino population to 72

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

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

Photo of Chris Fagan by Jason Houston/Upper Amazon Conservancy.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Dena Clink is a primatologist studying individuality and variation in Bornean gibbon calls, which she says could aid these primates' conservation. She joins this episode to play some recordings of these fascinating songs & calls she’s made in the course of her research, and explain how they're used and what they may mean to the species.

We’ve featured a wide variety of bioacoustics studies here on the Mongabay Newscast, from whales to bats and birds, but these are usually recordings of species at the population level. Our guest today focuses on how calls vary between each gibbon, and what that can teach us about the animals, and their conservation needs.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Malaysia’s last Sumatran rhino dies, leaving Indonesia as the final refuge
• Indonesia fires emitted double the carbon of Amazon fires, research shows
• Amazon deforestation rises to 11 year high in Brazil
• Agroforestry program in Appalachia receives $590,000 in federal funding

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

From now until the end of December 2019, donations to Mongabay are being doubled by Newsmatch, making this the best time to support our independent news about conservation science and the environment, visit mongabay.org/donate to learn more.

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

Photo of a Mueller's gibbon (Hylobates muelleri) via People Resources and Conservation Foundation.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Damian Aspinall is chairman of the Aspinall Foundation, a UK charity that works to conserve endangered animals and return them to the wild. Despite his foundation operating two zoos, he's a vocal critic of how zoos are generally run, and feels their focus should be upon breeding rare animals and reintroducing them to the wild, vs keeping them in captivity for public entertainment, as he says. 

"European zoos spend at least 15 million pounds a year, at least, on looking after their elephants and rhinos...imagine what you could do with that money in the wild," toward stopping poaching & rebuilding their habitats, he argues on this episode of the podcast.

Aspinall also talks about numerous other ethical problems he sees with 'the zoo-ocracy,' discusses his own program for breeding and reintroducing gorillas, lemurs, gibbons and more, and he shares his vision for a 'zoo-less future' on Earth. 

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Controversial dam gets green light to flood a Philippine protected area
• Emperor penguins could disappear by 2100 if nations don’t cap emissions
• There’s a new fin whale subspecies in the North Pacific

Listen to our recent conversation with Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny about zoos' role in conservation on Mongabay's podcast, here.  

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Katie Baker is a reporter for the Buzzfeed News team investigating human rights violations committed against local & indigenous people by park rangers paid by the major environmental NGO WWF to protect creatures like rhinos from poachers.

"No one is saying that [WWF's rangers] don't have really difficult jobs...but just because they have a difficult job doesn't mean they can rape and kill and torture with impunity or arrest people without evidence," she tells host Mike G, and adds that the pushback from the NGO has been rather meek: "I have not received any hate mail from [WWF employees] telling me I got it wrong."

Baker discusses the explosive findings of her team's investigative reports, what it took to chase these stories down, and the impacts she’s seen from her reporting.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Violence against indigenous peoples explodes in Brazil
• Study finds massive reorganization of life across Earth’s ecosystems
• $85 million initiative to scale up agroforestry in Africa announced
• Once close to extinction, western South Atlantic humpback population close to full recovery

Mongabay reported on the effects on local communities as revealed by Baker's reporting here, and here's Mongabay's investigation of harassment, bullying, and retaliation against whistleblowers at another major environmental NGO, Conservation International.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Plans for ocean floor mining are moving forward globally -- especially around thermal vents that create deposits of metals like gold, silver, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc -- but humans have explored less than 1% of the deep sea, so it’s fair to say that we really have no idea what’s at risk.

On this episode we speak with deep sea biologist Dr. Diva Amon about what we do -- and don’t -- know about biodiversity at the bottom of the ocean.

Raised on the shores of Trinidad & Tobago, Dr. Amon's fascination with what lies below the surface has taken her on journeys to great depths, and she shares insights and glimpses of amazing creatures gained there.

Here’s more about this episode’s top news:

• Eight ape species, including Tapanuli orangutan, make first appearance on list of most endangered primates
• Madagascar calls for assistance as fires imperil its protected areas
• Rare songbird recovers, moves off endangered species list

And see all of our coverage of deep sea mining issues here.

If you enjoy this show, please invite your friends to subscribe via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

Visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps!

See our latest news from nature's frontlines 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.

Mongabay's adventurous Middle East-based staff writer John Cannon just traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway and shares what he discovered on the journey about biodiversity, development, and the natural future of this, the world's 3rd largest island.

It took him 3 weeks to travel the route proposed to connect the rainforest-rich Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak as well as the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo--to make commerce and travel easier in a region that is notoriously difficult to navigate--and also to encourage tourists to see the states’ cultural treasures and rich wildlife, from elephants to crocodiles, gibbons and clouded leopards.

But scientists warn that the highway is likely to harm the very wildlife it seeks to highlight, by dividing populations and degrading their habitats.

Here's where you can find John's six-part series and his “top 5 revelations from traveling the Pan Borneo Highway" at Mongabay.com.

These are the episode’s top news items if you want to learn more:

• ‘Full-blown crisis’: North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970
• At the UN, losing the race against time to fight climate change
• 'The Blob’ is back: Pacific heat wave already second-largest in recent history

Episode photo: A female Sunda clouded leopard and one of her cubs crossing a road in Sabah, still image from footage shot by Michael Gordon.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to this show via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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

Feedback is welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

For this episode we speak with Jim Darling, a marine biologist whose team found that the songs of different humpback whale groups can be so similar to each other that the conventional wisdom of these being distinct groups might be wrong. These whales may be sharing and singing each others' songs across groups and regions, he thinks.

Darling joins the show to play recordings of these remarkably similar humpback whale songs and discuss the implications.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to this show via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever they get podcasts.

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

Feedback is welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Reverend Lennox Yearwood about the upcoming UN Climate Summit in New York City and what it’s going to take to pass legislation and policies that can effectively tackle the enormity of the climate crisis.

Undaunted by the challenge, Rev Yearwood rather is "very excited," he says, about the new energy and effective leadership he sees coming from youth, women, people of color, and more, who are all urging the world toward meaningful climate action. He is President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, a non-profit that advocates for social and environmental justice, and is a sought after speaker who also recently addressed the U.S. Congress on the topic of the environment.

Yearwood talks about participating in the week-long Global Climate Strike during the UN meetings; providing a platform for indigenous leaders, people of color, and young people to speak on climate issues that affect them; and his “suites to the streets” approach to climate activism: 

"Climate change is a civil rights issue. People have a right to clean air. People have a right to ensure that this planet is safeguarded for future generations."

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For an encore edition during this show's brief hiatus, we replay one of our most popular Field Notes interviews of all time, featuring Australian researcher Anastasia Dalziell who's doing trailblazing work with superb lyrebirds. Listen to her recordings of these songsters and be amazed by these animals, who are so adept at replays themselves. 

Host Mike G. explored with her the incredible ability these creatures have to mimic sounds in their environment, ranging from predators and possums to squeaky trees and other songbirds native to their forested habitat: even the clicks of camera shutters and chainsaws are 'replayed' by these animals. 

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Image credit: Superb lyrebird in Marysville State Forest, Australia (© Donovan Wilson/500px).

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

Talk to you again in two weeks!

Urban pests like rats have been in the news due to the US President calling Baltimore “rat and rodent infested.” He isn’t the first American politician to use this kind of rhetoric to demean communities that are predominantly made up of people of color (while ignoring the fact that policies deliberately designed to marginalize communities of color are at the root of the pest problems), he's just the latest.

Dawn Biehler actually knows what she’s talking about when it comes to rodent infestations in cities: the University of Maryland professor wrote the indispensable 2013 book Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats, and has just penned an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun newspaper looking at how racial segregation and funding inequities for urban housing and infrastructure contribute to rat infestations.

Biehler joins this episode of the Mongabay Newscast to discuss how this is an environmental justice issue, and how the problem can be dealt with in an environmentally sustainable manner, starting with investment in urban communities.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth
• As Amazon deforestation in Brazil rises, Bolsonaro administration attacks the messenger
• In Indonesia, a court victory for Bali’s ban on single-use plastics

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David Quammen is an award-winning science writer, author, and journalist covering the most promising trends in conservation and evolutionary science for the past 30 years. We invited him on the show to discuss his latest feature for National Geographic, where he is a regular contributor, about Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique — once touted by none other than E.O. Wilson in a podcast interview with Mongabay as a place where inspiring restoration efforts are underway and benefitting nature, wildlife, and people. We also discuss Quammen’s most recent book, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, which explores the revolution in how scientists understand the history of evolution on Earth sparked by the work of Carl Woese, and his coverage of virology in light of the recent Ebola outbreak. He shares his thoughts on all of this plus what gives him hope that biodiversity loss and destruction of the natural world can be halted.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• From over 100,000 species assessments in IUCN update, zero improvements
• June 2019 was the hottest on record: NOAA
• U.S. Virgin Islands bans coral-damaging sunscreens

Please invite your friends to subscribe to this show via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify or wherever they get podcasts.

Visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps.

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

Jessica Crance is a research biologist who recently discovered right whales singing for the first time. While some whales like humpbacks and bowheads are known for their melodious songs, none of the three species of right whale has ever been known to sing. Crance led the research team at NOAA that documented North Pacific right whales breaking into song in the Bering Sea, and on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, she will play recordings of two different right whale song types and discuss what we know about why the critically endangered whales might be singing.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Japan resumes commercial whale hunting
• Heart of Ecuador’s Yasuni, home to uncontacted tribes, opens for oil drilling
• Zambia halts plans to dam the Luangwa River

Please invite your friends to subscribe to this show via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify or wherever they get podcasts.

Visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps.

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

We speak with Ivonne Higuero, new Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — better known by its acronym, CITES. The first woman to ever serve as Secretary General, we discuss how her background as an environmental economist informs her approach to the job, how CITES can tackle challenges like the online wildlife trade and lack of enforcement of CITES statutes at the national level, and what she expects to accomplish at the 18th congress of the parties (COP) this August.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Arctic sea ice extent just hit a record low for early June and worse may come
• Nearly 600 plant species have gone extinct in last 250 years
• Sumatran rhinos to get a new sanctuary in Leuser Ecosystem

Please invite your friends to subscribe to this show via Android, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify or wherever they get podcasts.

Visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep this show growing, Mongabay is a nonproft media outlet and all support helps.

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