Just prior to the latest world biodiversity summit (COP 16 in Colombia), a similarly-themed event was hosted by the Australian Government in Sydney: the Global ‘Nature Positive’ Summit featured Indigenous leaders, scientists and conservationists, but political leaders in attendance provided little insight into when key reforms to the Environmental …

The Mongabay Newscast recently traveled to San Francisco to join an event hosted by the popular radio show and podcast, Climate One, reflecting on both Mongabay’s 25th anniversary and Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday, for a live audience of 1,700. First, Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler discusses the news outlet’s biggest successes and impac…

An array of top voices are interviewed or heard on this episode straight from Climate Week in New York, a global gathering of leaders and experts working in the climate and environmental sectors on proactive policies and practical initiatives. The podcast speaks with several individuals on topics ranging from a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty …

Drylands are vast and home to a wide array of biodiversity, while also hosting a large portion of the world’s farmland, but they face continued desertification, despite many of them recently experiencing increased vegetation levels. Five million hectares (12 million acres) of drylands, an area half the size of South Korea, have been desertified due…

Marine biologist and climate policy advocate Ayana Elizabeth Johnson joins this episode to discuss her latest book, What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures, a compilation of essays and interviews with experts and authors in the climate and environmental fields. Her book sensitively probes the problems human society faces and potential p…

The Phnom Chum Rok Sat community forest used to support local and Indigenous groups in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province, as well as a thriving local ecotourism venture, but that all changed this year when mining company Lin Vatey privately acquired roughly two-thirds of the land and began clearing the forest. Mongabay features writer Gerry Flynn inv…

“Legal personhood” and laws regarding the “rights of nature” are being trialed in nations worldwide, but whether they lead to measurable conservation outcomes is yet to be seen, says environmental economist Viktoria Kahui. Still, she says on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast that she’s very hopeful about them. There’s a global debate surroundin…

Homeowners and towns along the U.S. East Coast are increasingly building “living shorelines” to adapt to sea level rise and boost wildlife habitat in a more economical and less carbon-intensive way than concrete seawalls. These projects protect shorelines using a clever mix of native plants, driftwood, holiday trees, and other organic materials. Pe…

The current clade of H5N1 or bird flu is an "existential threat" to the world’s biodiversity, experts say. While it has infected more than 500 bird and mammal species on every continent except Australia, the number of human infections from the current clade (grouping) 2.3.4.4b is still comparatively small. U.S. dairy workers have recently become in…

Top National Geographic photographer Kiliii Yüyan joined the show to discuss traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and why Indigenous communities are the world’s most effective conservationists. Yüyan spoke about this with us in March 2023 and we're sharing the episode again after it recently won a 'Best coverage of Indigenous communities' prize f…

Mongabay newswire editor Shreya Dasgupta joins the Mongabay Newscast to detail her new three-part miniseries, Wild Frequencies, produced in collaboration with the Mongabay India bureau. Dasgupta details her journey with Mongabay-India senior digital editor Kartik Chandramouli. They travel the country speaking with researchers, listening and studyin…

Scientists described Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) over 10 years ago, a pathogen that causes the deadly disease chytridiomycosis which is currently devastating salamanders and frogs around the world, contributing to a global amphibian decline. But thanks to a successful cross border (U.S., Mexico & Canada) effort to keep it out, it has y…

U.S. states such as Vermont and Massachusetts are cutting thousands of acres of forest for solar power projects, despite the fact that this harms biodiversity and degrades ecosystems' carbon sequestration capacity. Journalist and author Judith Schwartz joins the Mongabay Newscast to speak with co-host Mike DiGirolamo about the seeming irony of cutt…

Australian agronomist Tony Rinaudo's reforestation project in Niger was failing – with 80% of his planted saplings dying – until he stumbled upon a simple solution in plain sight: stumps of previously cut trees trying to regrow in the dry, deforested landscape. The degraded land contained numerous such stumps with intact root systems, plus millions…

The premier of the Malaysian state of Sarawak recently announced new dam projects on three rivers in Borneo without the informed consent of local people. The managing director of the Sarawak-based NGO SAVE Rivers, Celine Lim, joins the podcast to discuss with co-host Rachel Donald how these potential dam projects could impact rivers and human commu…

Last year, Mongabay launched a brand-new bureau dedicated to covering the African continent daily in French and English. The team is led by veteran Cameroonian journalist David Akana, who chats with co-host Mike DiGirolamo about the importance of covering the African continent and why news that happens there is of keen interest to audiences worldwi…

The biotic pump theory has been controversial in the climate science community ever since Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov published their paper about it to the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in 2010. If true, the theory sheds light on how the interior forests of vast continents influence wind and the water cycles that supply who…

Burning wood to generate electricity – ‘biomass energy’ – is increasingly used as a renewable replacement for burning coal in nations like the UK, Japan, and South Korea, even though its emissions are not carbon neutral. On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, reporter Justin Catanoso details how years of investigation helped him uncover a compli…

Putting a dollar amount on a single species, or entire ecosystems, is a contentious idea, but in 2023, the New York Stock Exchange proposed a new nature-based asset class which put a price tag on global nature of 5,000 trillion U.S. dollars. This financialization of nature comes with perverse incentives and fails to recognize the intrinsic value co…

Two experts join the Mongabay Newscast to discuss the decline in koala populations in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), even as city councils and the government green light development projects on koala habitats that aren't being replaced by biodiversity offset schemes, ecologist Yung En Chee of the University of Melbourne, explains. M…

On this episode of Mongabay’s podcast, Rachel Donald speaks with campaigner and activist Jon Moses about the ‘right to roam’ movement in England which seeks to reclaim common rights to use private and public land to reconnect with nature and repair the damage done from centuries of exclusionary land ownership. In this discussion and the new book Wi…

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), pollution from extracting minerals commonly used in the energy transition like cobalt and copper is on the rise, and miners generally ignore their legal obligations to clean it up. Cases of such pollution have killed and displaced people and caused major health problems, say residents and community organiz…

On this episode of Mongabay’s podcast, we speak with a co-founder of the award-winning Canadian nonprofit news outlet ‘The Narwhal,’ Emma Gilchrist. She reflects on Canada’s unique natural legacy, her organization's successes, the state of environmental reporting in the nature-rich nation, how she sees ‘The Narwhal’ filling the gaps in historically…

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 Qu…

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 renewabl…

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 t…