Mongabay Newscast

For a time during the 19th and 20th centuries, gray wolves were practically extinct across Western and Central Europe. Now, thanks to strict protection measures in countries across the region, their populations have risen over the past couple of decades — including a reported surge of 58% between 2012 and 2022.
On the one hand, this is a conservation success story. On the other, however, it amplifies long-standing sociocultural challenges, namely human-wildlife coexistence with farmers. Wolves sometimes prey on livestock, which can cause financial harm to farmers. Joining the Newscast this week to unpack these sociocultural challenges is social scientist Emu-Felicitas Ostermann-Miyashita, from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.
Ostermann-Miyashita has studied the conflict between humans and wolves specifically in Germany, and has published suggestions for sustainable wolf-livestock coexistence. However, she says the problems are much less polarized than European media may portray them.
"Some people hate wolves, some people love wolves, but that was also something which I wanted to look into whether that's true or not," she says. "And all of my studies which I've conducted so far on … the public perception or social side hint to a much more like gray [area regarding] public attitudes or public perception towards the species."
But the solutions are not black and white, and require a combination of incentives for wolf presence, livestock protection, and further study of measures such as lethal control, where much of the debate currently stands.
"At the moment, I would say there's not enough evidence to say whether lethal control can be effective or not, but from the existing data it rather suggests that it's much more complex than we think it is," she says.
Lethal control may also be more difficult than protection measures, she suggests, as "the effectiveness of reducing damage is definitely much higher by protection than by lethal control at the moment."
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.
Banner image: Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus), Pescheray, France. Photo by Clément Bardot via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). 
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Timecodes
(00:00) Wolf recovery in Europe explained
(09:47) Problems with the EU voting to loosen protection
(14:25) A holistic approach to coexistence
(18:42) Tensions between farmers and rewildling
(23:12) More data is needed
(25:46) Collaborative approaches are needed
(27:29) The nuances behind lethal control
(31:50) The human dimension behind wolf-livestock interaction
(35:22) Key takeaways & media portrayal
(39:34) What Europe can learn from nations living with carnivores

There have been few sightings of the endangered Persian leopard in the Caucasus region over the past 20 years: just three in Georgia and 10 in Armenia. But scientists and conservationists are alert to one Persian leopard in particular, whom they've named Aren and who is presumed to have journeyed 240 kilometers (150 miles) through cold, mountainous terrain with only three legs. This region of the world — made up of southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan — still contains decades-old minefields from prior conflicts, and it's believed this is how Aren was injured.
Joining the Newscast this week to discuss her story for Mongabay is journalist Kayleigh Long, who explains how this leopard subspecies, Panthera pardus tulliana, persists in the region. She also describes how NGOs like NACRES, operating on extremely thin budgets, continue to monitor the big cats and provide what protection they can.
Along national borders in the Caucasus, landmines pose risks to humans and wild animals alike, as do fences. Thousands of kilometers of barbed-wire from the Soviet era still stand across parts of the Caucasus, and they can trap leopards, bears, and deer.
Despite the region's challenges, the mere persistence of leopards and the dedication of NGOs operating amid increasingly difficult conditions after USAID's shuttering offer a sense of hope, Long says.
"I think the stories that I'm trying to seek out are ones that reflect the possibility of a better, a kinder, and more just world. And I think when you look at things like borders, they can reflect the very worst of our instincts, or if people are able to cooperate and recognize that we are a part of nature and that this is our environment, we all have to get along with nature and with each other," she says.
"Perhaps it's naive of me," she adds, "but … in times like this, I sort of think hope is a moral imperative."
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.
Cover image: A Persian leopard. Image via Peoples Trust for Endangered Species.
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Timecodes
(00:00) Leopards in the Caucasus
(04:50) Aren
(12:05) Challenges of Fieldwork
(16:14) Landmines & Fences
(25:03) Towards coexistence & Hope

This week on the Mongabay Newscast, Samantha Murray, CEO of the Indigenous Desert Alliance, joins the program to discuss the IDA's recent nomination for an Earthshot Prize. The alliance is a network of 70 ranger teams across the Australian desert, covering 270 million hectares (667 million acres), an area almost as large as Argentina. This makes it the largest Indigenous-led conservation corridor on the planet.
Murray and her network of 885 rangers have helped restore biodiversity to 140 million hectares (346 million acres) of land over the past four years using the practice of cultural burning, a cultural and ecological management practice that has been present in Aboriginal culture for millennia. The IDA administers this through its "Right Way Desert Fire" program.
Murray discusses the various ways in which this cultural knowledge is shared among ranger teams and the IDA via the guidance of Traditional Owners, the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islands individuals with ancestral, physical, or spiritual ties to the land. Traditional Owners may accompany rangers to what's known as Country — the Indigenous concept of a holistic, living entity encompassing the physical land, waters, skies, and all living things — and direct where and how to burn, in part because the knowledge is passed down through oral storytelling.
"We don't get handed down a manual or a handbook on how to do [the] right way of burning all that knowledge," Murray says. "And so we are very much [following] an oral history and showing practically what to do. So for that knowledge to get passed down, it requires spaces and times on Country to share."
Murray emphasizes the vast amount of land the ranger network conserves, saying it's conservation for all Australians.
"We're actually caring for such a big part of Australia, like a third of Australia, and we're caring for animals that really need our love and our care. And I think, instead of it being boxed into, 'Well, that's just Indigenous conservation. That's just over there,' or, 'That's just in the middle of Australia,' more of a different change of attitude to go, 'Well, there are some really committed professional people that are looking after animals and country,'" she says.
"Australians should be proud of rangers. They should be proud of people working on the ground."
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.
Cover image of Samantha Murray, courtesy of the Earthshot Prize.
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Timestamps
(00:00) Caring for Country
(02:57) Importance of Cultural Burning
(05:24) The Right Way Desert Fire Program
(10:03) Knowledge Sharing on Country
(13:22) Climate Change Impacts
(21:34) Future Goals

The global pet trade, particularly in exotic reptiles and amphibians, poses significant biodiversity and potential human health risks, scientists say; yet compared to other pressing crises like climate change, the solutions are relatively simple — if only governments would act on them.
Susan Lieberman, vice president for international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society, based in the U.S., and Sandra Altherr, co-founder and head of science at Pro Wildlife, in Germany, join the Mongabay Newscast this week to discuss these solutions, which they've outlined in a commentary published in the journal Nature.
"The international wildlife trade for pets, reptiles, amphibians, and other species is a massive experiment," Lieberman says. "It's an experiment to see what diseases can come from one part of the world into another part of the world, and 'let's see what happens.' I think it's an experiment we should not be undertaking."
But the "exotic pet trade could be regulated very quickly, and this risk could be reduced very quickly," Altherr adds.
Both guests discuss what they identify as the main legal gaps that world governments could close, such as the fact that countries of origin have no or little legal recourse for species sold outside their borders.
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.
Banner image: The Jalisco mud turtle, endemic to the Jalisco and Colima states in Mexico, is a freshwater turtle found in rivers and wetlands. It is listed on CITES Appendix II, and its international trade is regulated. Image by Cheryl Harleston López Espino (CC-BY-NC-ND).
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Timecodes
(00:00) Why the Exotic Pet Trade Is Booming
(07:51) Disease Transmission Risks
(10:56) Legal Gaps in the Pet Trade
(13:47) EU Solutions, and Positive Lists
(17:16) A New UNTOC Protocol
(23:58) Lacey Act & Corruption Crackdown

Indigenous activist and filmmaker Kynan Tegar joins the Mongabay Newscast this week to discuss the impacts of the fires devastating Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. Some 48,000 hectares (about 119,000 acres) of land have burned so far this year; Kynan says these fires are intentional on the part of agricultural corporations.
"The process that has gotten us to this point right now, where fires are raging through the island, it's a process that started maybe you can draw the line up to the 1970s, which was around the time where the Indonesian New Order period regime of Suharto was leasing out a lot of lands as concessions to companies," she says.
"A lot of times it's logging, it's palm oil concessions, it's also gold mines."
Corporations have drained more than 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of peatland, she says. But the impact, she says, that isn't receiving as much attention is the decreased access to freshwater for Indigenous and local communities, which both climate change and El Niño are making worse.
"It's quite an ironic thing. Like, it's one of the world's biggest rainforest[s], and a lot of the people there are struggling for water. So that, on top of the conditions created by the massive wildfires that has been happening since July … has put a lot of the people there in strain," she says.
Kynan released a spoken-word music video in 2024 to dramatize and tell the story of her community, Sungai Utik, and the people who have defended the land for more than 100 years. She explains the filmmaking process behind the video, Earth Defender, and how she created the narrative, which states that  every 48 hours, an Earth defender loses their life protecting their land, protecting their forests, protecting their ecosystems, their families
Kynan is also a transgender woman. In light of the Indonesian president's decision to designate the "dissemination of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) culture" as a nonmilitary state threat, she explains how this impacts her advocacy.
"How free we can really be in this country? It made me second-guess on how much I … can actually speak up on the kinds of issues that I have always spoken up for."
She further reflects on what she feels is a lack of solidarity.
"Being queer and being Indigenous, it's not that far removed. It's a lot of the same, layers of oppression culturally, economically, socially. And I suppose that's where I really had hoped for there to be more solidarity between these movements because of all of those similarities. But I think that's still something that we collectively need to work on."
Kynan also shares her thoughts on the long-delayed Indigenous People's Bill, which promises to grant legal recognition to customary lands, but has hung in parliamentary limbo for 16 years.
"I don't see elements within it that will redress the historic inequality that we have faced. I think that's still a massive problem that needs more than just a legal solution."
When asked what she hopes to see for the future of Indonesia's Indigenous population, she says, "I don't think I can accurately represent all Indigenous youths of Indonesia. But for me personally, the kind of future that I want to imagine is a future that exists."
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.
Basten Gokkon is a Jakarta-based staff writer for Mongabay with interests in wildlife conservation, renewable energy, and Indigenous communities. Follow him on Twitter to see his latest thoughts via @bgokkon.
Image: A customary longhouse in Sungai Utik. The community elders make sure everyone complies strictly with the law, as this serves as a model for the young generation to follow in their footsteps and lead the path to community conservation. Image by Indai Apai Darah, Kynan Tegar / Wayfinders Circle.
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Timestamps
(00:00) Opening
(03:26) Fires in Kalimantan
(10:13) Sungai Utik and Imagined Futures
(18:10) Earth Defenders
(22:49) Indigenous Peoples Bill & Identity
(28:34) Gender, Environment & 'A Day on Earth'