Mongabay Newscast

Forester and scientist Suzanne Simard is well known for her landmark 1997 paper, which demonstrated that two distinct species of trees could share resources. At the time, it turned traditional Western forestry thinking on its head. Instead of the Darwinian view of trees as being in competition with each other, it introduced the idea that these trees may actually help each other, and that industrial logging practices may be missing the forest for the trees.
In recent years, Simard has been advocating for Indigenous knowledge as the only way to save the Earth and its forests. Environmental reporter Erica Gies spent some time in the field with Simard and her colleagues, looking into her latest project, The Mother Tree Project, which seeks to find the most sustainable form of forestry for both people and ecosystems.
Gies joins the Mongabay Newscast to explain what she learned from Simard and why she advocates Indigenous knowledge and systems, which are governed by rules of reciprocity. A shift in her thinking occurred when she read the dissertation of fisheries ecologist Teresa Sm'hayetsk Ryan, who now works with Simard.
"She realized that, you know, the people were also a very important part of the complex forest relationships," Gies says. "Which is much more of a reciprocity kind of mentality. If you take, you also give back. There is a responsibility to care for the system. Because if you don't, and if you overexploit it, it would be really easy to starve, right?"
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Listen to our previous conversation with Erica Gies here.
Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
Image Credit: Goose Island Archipelago is a cluster of tree-covered islands with wild, rocky beaches located off the central coast of British Columbia. Image courtesy of Alex Harris.
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Timecodes
(00:00) The 'wood-wide web'
(15:49) The Mother Tree Project
(19:33) Why reciprocity is needed
(30:27) Questions that remain

The routes taken by migratory birds, known as flyways, often cross vast expanses of ocean. Six of these marine flyways have now been formally recognized by the U.N.'s Convention on Migratory Species, at the suggestion of scientists who published their findings on these flyways in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology. Tammy Davies, a co-author of the paper and marine science coordinator at BirdLife International, joins the Mongabay Newscast this week to discuss the conservation potential of the six flyways, and what the formal recognition by CMS does and doesn't do.
"It's a fantastic communication tool for highlighting these amazing journeys that the seabirds undertake and the fact that multiple people, stakeholders, and countries need to come together and everyone can do their bit," Davies says.
She notes that 151 bird species rely on these migratory routes, which connect 1,300 key biodiversity areas that the birds regularly use. Having nations focus on protecting these areas, and reducing bycatch from fishing, are just some of the ways countries can coordinate conservation efforts along these routes. But this effort requires shared responsibility across the 54 nations that these flyways bisect. The flyways provide a formal mechanism for nations to do this, Davies says.
Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast, here.
Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
Image Credit: Antipodean albatross (Diomedea antipodensis antipodensis) offshore from Dunedin, Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand. Image by Oscar Thomas via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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Timestamps
 
(00:00) What are marine flyways?
(07:47) How formal recognition helps conservation
(14:55) Policy limitations
(19:32) Shared goals with other treaties
(21:41) What's next?

Coyotes are now present in almost every major urban-metropolitan area in the United States, yet conflicts between the canines and humans are exceptionally low. Between 1960 and 2006, only 146 documented coyote attacks on humans occurred in the U.S. and Canada. Yet there are 4.5 million dog attacks on humans annually in the U.S. alone.
Despite the low number of conflicts with coyotes, nearly one coyote is killed every minute in the United States on average, according to the nonprofit organization Project Coyote. Camilla Fox, the group's founder and executive director, joins this week's podcast to discuss the myths and misconceptions around coyotes (Canis latrans), why they're largely peaceful and critical for ecosystem health, and how humans can coexist better with the growing urban population of coyotes.
"For a lot of people … who grow up in urban areas, a coyote is the first predator they've ever experienced in their lives," she explains. "But … if you can arm yourself with knowledge and educate yourself about this animal, you'll come to see not only their ecological role, but also what an amazing animal" it is.
Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast, here.
Image Credit: A coyote in Chicago. Image courtesy of Cook County Coyote Project.
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Timecodes

(00:00) Why coyotes are in so many cities
(08:23) One coyote killed each minute
(15:14) Myths and misconceptions
(27:52) Impacts of trapping in the United States
(33:53) Towards better co-existence with coyotes

Jessie Panazzolo was given a stuffed gorilla when she was 3, and from then on, she always wanted to be a conservationist. But a reasonable career track of being gainfully employed or on a livable wage almost doesn't exist in the sector, she explains to me this week on the Mongabay Newscast. She details the dwindling career prospects, the grueling conditions conservationists must endure, and the mental toll they're taking on themselves.
Following Jeremy Hance's reporting on the mental health crisis afflicting conservationists, I contacted Panazzolo to gain more insight into her journey in the conservation sector and how she came to lead a community of like-minded professionals who had heartbreaking stories about pursuing their passions.
Panazzolo has been fired for being sick, twice. And had trees thrown at her by orangutans. But these are far from the only struggles she and other conservationists have faced.
"I've been chased by tigers or have orangutans rip trees out of the ground and chucked in my direction. But all of these are seen as like not normal risks that you'd put in risk assessments."
She founded The Lonely Conservationists and Earth Carer Care to provide resources to conservationists of all walks of life and to offer workshops to conservation NGOs on improving working conditions and caring for their employees.
"I wanted to make sure that there was light shed on a range of struggles faced in the conservation industry and give more weight to the need to start to address these. And ever since then, I've been running workshops for NGOs and for teams … to help their teams to look after themselves and each other and build resilience."
Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast, here.
Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
Image Credit: Jessie Panazzolo. Image courtesy of Jessie Panazzolo.
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Timecodes
(00:00) The 'unfair' job of conservation
(13:49) Creating a community for conservation workers
(18:39) Not all NGOs are on board
(25:22) How conservation has changed
(36:52) Fighting for nature in a world working against it

The people and policies that control how humans treat the natural world are increasingly dominated by a small class of elite political entities and corporations, argues our guest, political ecologist Bram Buscher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, on this week's Newscast. This power, he says, is concentrated on platforms that have no allegiance to fact or truth, but rather serve only what increases their bottom line. Understanding this power dynamic and speaking truth to it is essential for the environmental movement to succeed.
"If you keep on doing the same kind of things and not take the root causes, the root structural forms of power into account, you may have nice terms like nature-based solutions, ecosystem services, natural capital, but they don't actually challenge the power structures to change," he says.
That structure he refers to as "platform capitalism." Tasks humans used to do through various options or pathways are now gate-kept by tech companies. These companies have monopolized these platforms, including social media, generative artificial intelligence, and search engines that prioritize data collection over sincere citizen engagement. This makes it difficult for the environmental movement's message to find an open audience. In some cases, people cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not anymore.
Buscher has written his thoughts in his book The Truth About Nature: Environmentalism in the Era of Post-Truth Politics and Platform Capitalism, which explains why "speaking facts to power" does not fundamentally change the policies currently failing the environment. Speaking truth to power, Buscher argues, is the only way to truly address the root causes of environmental destruction.
"Unless we understand how power works … also authoritarian power … we can't go beyond it and or speak truth to it. To do something deliberately and consciously different."
Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast, here.
Banner image: Wallace's Passage between Gam and Waigeo islands in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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Timecodes
(00:00) What is political ecology?
(12:31) Why conservation is inherently political
(17:03) What is 'speaking truth to power'?
(29:35) Understanding 'platform capitalism'
(42:02) How to speak truth to power
(53:24) Convivial conservation