Mongabay Explores – Details, episodes & analysis

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 organizations.   The DRC is estimated to hold 64% of the world's cobalt reserves (3.5 million tons of cobalt, plus 31 million tons of copper) and could benefit from these metals by becoming a major player in the energy transition. But the state-owned mining company, Gécamines, is itself not immune, and is also a shareholder in several other companies, some of which are accused of these same rights abuses.   In the investigation you're about to hear, Mongabay visited several villages in Lualaba Province affected by pollution and human rights violations, to assess the state of the unresolved damages.   This story is supported by the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Investigation Network.   If you missed the first six episodes of our podcast series on the Congo Basin, please subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever you get your podcasts from, and follow the links below:    Forest elephants are the ‘glue’ holding Congo rainforests together What would it cost to protect the Congo Rainforest? A just energy transition requires better governance & equity in the DRC Big potential and immense challenges for great ape conservation in the Congo Basin, experts say Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world’ is at a turning point   Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here.    Image: Ruined homes and shops in Kabwe Village. In 2018 an accident caused by Mutanda Mining, a subsidiary of Anglo-Swiss company Glencore, cost the lives of 21 people here. They company has not completed the compensation process for the victims. Photo by Didier Makal for Mongabay.   --- Timecodes:   (00:00) Introduction (01:27) Bye bye Kabombwa (02:50) Fleeing pollution in Gécamines and Musonoïe (04:55) Mines, the economic lifeblood of the DRC (08:48) Forgotten victims, stolen livelihoods

The African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) plays a critical role in shaping the Congo rainforest, experts say. Though they represent incalculable and intrinsic value, there is much scientists still do not know about this critically endangered species of megafauna.    On this final episode of the Congo Basin season of Mongabay Explores, Fiona "Boo" Maisels, a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Andrew Davies, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, detail the 'irreplaceable' value of African forest elephants, what would happen if we lose them, and why they need urgent protection.   If you missed the first five episodes of this podcast series, please subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever you get your podcasts from, and follow the links below:    What would it cost to protect the Congo Rainforest? A just energy transition requires better governance & equity in the DRC Big potential and immense challenges for great ape conservation in the Congo Basin, experts say Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world’ is at a turning point   Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here.    Sounds heard during this episode: Soundscape recording from the Dzanga Bai forest clearing in the Dzanga Sangha Protected Area in the Central African Republic, where elephants aggregate in very large numbers. It is likely that there were 80 elephants or more at the clearing at the time of the recording, which was shared by The Elephant Listening Project at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Image Credit: Forest elephants, pictured in Central African Republic. Photo ©Cristián Samper/WCS

The Tanah Merah project sits in the heart of New Guinea covering 2,800 square kilometers (1,100 square miles). Roughly twice the size of Greater London, it threatens not only dense, primary, tropical rainforest and Indigenous land, but also could release as much carbon as the U.S. state of Virginia emits by burning fossil fuels for an entire year. However, the true owners of the project have been hidden by a web of corporate secrecy for more than a decade.

We speak with Philip Jacobson, senior editor at Mongabay, and Bonnie Sumner, investigative reporter at the Aotearoa New Zealand news outlet Newsroom, to discuss the project from inception to present day, the involvement of a New Zealand businessman, and where the project could go next.

Related Reading:

• The Secret Deal to Destroy Paradise
• New Zealand developer denies key role in giant palm oil project in Indonesia

If you missed the first five episodes of Mongabay Explores New Guinea, you can find them via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: An Indigenous Auyu man and child in Boven Digoel. Image by Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project.

Sounds heard during the intro and outro include the following: rusty mouse-warbler, growling riflebird, raggiana/lesser bird-of-paradise, superb fruit-dove, long-billed honeyeater, little shrike-thrush, brown cuckoo-dove, black-capped lory. Special thanks to Tim Boucher and Bruce Beehler for identifying them.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

New Guinea's dense tropical montane forests are home to 12 of 14 tree kangaroo species. Over the past couple of decades, conservationists have leveraged these charismatic, intelligent marsupials to spearhead community development, conservation efforts, and the establishment of protected areas.  In Papua New Guinea, the Torricelli mountain range is home to three species of tree kangaroo, including the critically endangered tenkile. This mountain range sits in the crosshairs of a road project threatening to encroach upon the region; however, the government is in the process of reviewing a draft proposal to have it officially declared a protected area.  

For this episode of the podcast, we speak with Jim Thomas of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance and Lisa Dabek and Modi Pontio of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program. They detail the successes and challenges of working for nearly two decades in PNG to conserve these intelligent marsupials and the lands they inhabit.

If you missed the first four episodes of Mongabay Explores New Guinea you can find them via the podcast provider of your choice or find all the episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: A Matschie's tree kangaroo in the Wasaunon Field site in the YUS Conservation Area in Morobe Province in PNG. Image by Jonathan Byers. Courtesy of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program.

Sounds heard during the intro and outro include the following: rusty mouse-warbler, growling riflebird, raggiana/lesser bird-of-paradise, superb fruit-dove, long-billed honeyeater, little shrike-thrush, brown cuckoo-dove, black-capped lory. Special thanks to Tim Boucher and Bruce Beehler for identifying them.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores via Apple Podcasts or wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Spanning over 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) and being built over the course of decades, the Trans-Papua Highway cuts across the entire length of Indonesian New Guinea’s two provinces, including 7 key protected areas.

While the project is nearly complete, experts warn it will cost billions annually to maintain, and threaten to open up untouched rainforest to palm oil expansion contributing an additional 4.5 million hectares of deforestation by 2036.

For this episode, we interviewed David Gaveau, founder of The TreeMap and Bill Laurance, distinguished professor, and director of the Center for Tropical, Environmental, and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Australia.

Both experts explained the environmental, financial, and social costs of the project, which runs through Indonesia’s Lorentz National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

If you missed the first three episodes of Mongabay Explores New Guinea you can find it via the podcast provider of your choice or find all the episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: A part of the Trans Papua highway that snakes across Indonesia's easternmost provinces Papua and West Papua. Photo courtesy of Public Works and Housing Ministry.

Editor's Note: Bill Laurance, is a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia as well as the founder and director of ALERT (Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers) and a member of Mongabay’s advisory board.

Sounds heard during the intro and outro include the following: rusty mouse-warbler, growling riflebird, raggiana/lesser bird-of-paradise, superb fruit-dove, long-billed honeyeater, little shrike-thrush, brown cuckoo-dove, black-capped lory. Special thanks to Tim Boucher and Bruce Beehler for identifying them.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

New Guinea is home to the third-largest tropical rainforest in the world—of which 80% is still intact. The two-nation island also contains 44 species of unique birds-of-paradise and dense biodiverse regions unlike anywhere else on the planet.

Because of its one-of-a-kind biodiversity, and relatively undeveloped landscape, New Guinea is in a unique position to conserve its forest cover as part of an economy that serves its local inhabitants, rather than extracting from and deforesting these communities.

For this third episode of the New Guinea season, Mongabay interviews Bustar Maitar, CEO of EcoNusa, and biologist Edwin Scholes from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology about the diverse and charismatic birds-of-paradise and the potential for New Guinea to harness ecotourism to power a sustainable economy. 

If you missed the first two episodes of Mongabay Explores New Guinea you can find it via the podcast provider of your choice or find all the episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: A Cendrawasih (bird of paradise) on a tree in Malagufuk village, located in the rainforest in Kalasou valley, Sorong, West Papua. Copyright: Jurnasyanto Sukarno/Greenpeace

Sounds heard during the intro and outro include the following: rusty mouse-warbler, growling riflebird, raggiana/lesser bird-of-paradise, superb fruit-dove, long-billed honeyeater, little shrike-thrush, brown cuckoo-dove, black-capped lory. Special thanks to Tim Boucher and Bruce Beehler for identifying them.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

 

 

Since 2014, Papua New Guinea has been the world’s largest tropical timber exporter: more than 70% of that is considered illegal. Timber companies continue to possess land originally owned by local Indigenous communities through legal loopholes: while the carbon market has gained popularity as an alternative source of revenue for Indigenous communities, it suffers from some of the same land rights abuses as timber extraction.

For this episode of Mongabay Explores we interview Gary Juffa, governor of Oro province in Papua New Guinea, and investigative journalist, Rachel Donald.

If you missed episode one of Mongabay Explores New Guinea you can find it via the podcast provider of your choice or find all the episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode artwork: Greenpeace activists paint 'Forest Destruction',' Climate Crime' and 'Moratorium Now' on barges of illegally felled trees. The logs wait on Paia Port waterways - prevented from being loaded onto the 'Harbour Gemini' ship in the rainforests of the 'Turama extension' logging concession, Gulf Province. Image by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert for Greenpeace.

Sounds heard during the intro and outro include the following: rusty mouse-warbler, growling riflebird, raggiana/lesser bird-of-paradise, superb fruit-dove, long-billed honeyeater, little shrike-thrush, brown cuckoo-dove, black-capped lory. Special thanks to Tim Boucher and Bruce Beehler for identifying them.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

New Guinea is one of the most most biodiverse regions on the planet and also the world's largest tropical island. It makes up less than 0.5% of the world’s landmass, but is estimated to contain as much as 10% of global biodiversity.

To unpack the vast biodiversity of New Guinea, conservation policy, and NGO efforts to protect land, culture and Indigenous rights, we spoke with Rodrigo Cámara-Leret, of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, Charlie Danny Heatubun, head of the research and development agency of the provincial government of West Papua, and Miriam Supuma of Synchronicity Earth.

In this third season of the podcast, we take a look at what makes New Guinea unlike any other place in this world, the contributing environmental impacts that threaten its culture and biodiversity, and what is being done to protect it.

Listen to the previous 2 seasons of Mongabay Explores via the podcast provider of your choice or find them at our podcast homepage here. 

Episode artwork: The stocky, flightless northern cassowary (Casuarius unappendiculatus) is one of the majestic birds that New Guinea is famous for. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay.

Sounds heard during the intro and outro include the following: rusty mouse-warbler, growling riflebird, raggiana/lesser bird-of-paradise, superb fruit-dove, long-billed honeyeater, little shrike-thrush, brown cuckoo-dove, black-capped lory. Special thanks to Tim Boucher and Bruce Beehler for identifying them.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts. If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

'I'm amazed how resilient, adaptable and optimistic the people of Sumatra are,' conservationist and HAkA Sumatra founder Farwiza Farhan says in the first moments of this episode about the women and communities she works with during the final episode of Mongabay's special series on Sumatra.

The giant Indonesian island of course faces many environmental challenges, but there is also tremendous hope and good progress thanks to the work of people like her and educator Pungky Nanda Pratama, who also joins the show to describe how his Jungle Library Project & Sumatra Camera Trap Project are opening the eyes of the next generation to the need for protecting their fabulous natural heritage.

Host Mike DiGirolamo shares the effectiveness of their efforts, what they are hopeful for, their biggest challenges, and the role of grassroots organizing in protecting and revitalizing the land, wildlife, and people of Sumatra.

More about these guests' work:

• Farwiza Farhan: Women's Earth Alliance mentor & board member
• How one conservationist is sparking a ‘young revolution’ in Indonesia
• Saving Sumatran orchids from deforestation, one plant at a time

Listen to the previous 9 episodes of Mongabay Explores Sumatra via the podcast provider of your choice or find them at our podcast homepage here.

Episode artwork: Pungky with the biggest flower on Earth, Rafflesia arnoldii. Photo by Alek Sander.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts. You can access episodes to our sister series, the Mongabay Newscast, by downloading our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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.

Once drained for palm oil or other agricultural uses, Indonesia's peatlands become very fire prone, putting people and rich flora and fauna--from orchids to orangutans--at risk.

Over a million hectares of carbon-rich peatlands burned in Indonesia in 2019, creating a public health crisis not seen since 2015 when the nation's peatland restoration agency was formed to address the issue.

To understand what is being done to restore peatlands, we speak with the Deputy Head of the National Peatland Restoration Agency, Budi Wardhana, and with Dyah Puspitaloka, a researcher on the value chain, finance and investment team at CIFOR, the Center for International Forestry Research.

Restoration through agroforestry that benefits both people and planet is one positive avenue forward, which Dyah discusses in her remarks.

For more on this topic, see the recent report at Mongabay, "Indonesia renews peat restoration bid to include mangroves, but hurdles abound."

Episode artwork: Haze from fires in a peatland logging concession pollutes the air in Jambi Province, Indonesia. Image courtesy of Greenpeace Media Library.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts. You can also access our sister series, the Mongabay Newscast, by downloading our free app in the Apple App Store and in the Google Store to have access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

If you enjoy our podcast content, 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! 

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.