topic: Communication

topic: Communication

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Project retraces Darwin’s voyage, educating young conservation leaders
- The DARWIN200 Project is retracing English naturalist Charles Darwin’s 19th-century voyage, stopping at 32 ports around the globe by 2025.
- The sailing ship’s crew is composed of 200 young people who work in environmental conservation around the world, taking turns aboard the vessel to learn about projects in the places where they moor.
- Mongabay visited the ship as it passed through Rio de Janeiro together with Sarah Darwin, Charles Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter.

The conservation sector must communicate better (commentary)
- The conservation sector needs to be more strategic, inclusive, and more creative in sharing lessons and solutions.
- “If sharing lessons and formulating solutions can only be done by flying somewhere and paying for the privilege, in an atmosphere which too often presents wins and not fails, there are too many people missing out,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

How creative & emotive communication conserved 55,000 acres of Peru’s Amazon
- Protecting the Peruvian Amazon is dangerous work, but conservationist Paul Rosolie and his nonprofit Junglekeepers team have attracted millions of dollars in funding to protect 55,000 acres of rainforest in the country’s Madre de Dios region.
- Rosolie first received international recognition via his 2014 memoir, “Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey in the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon.”
- Today, he runs both a nonprofit and an ecotourism service that employs and is co-led by local and Indigenous people.
- In this podcast episode, Rosolie reflects on his decade-plus journey to today and shares his recipe for conservation success.

Mongabay CEO discusses slowdown in Amazon loss and other positive news
- It’s been an eventful couple of months for the Amazon Rainforest and for the Mongabay newsroom.
- Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recently shared data showing a 22% decline in deforestation for the year ending July 31, 2023.
- In other exciting news, Mongabay was awarded the prestigious 2023 Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication recently. Past winners have included Pulitzer-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert and The Guardian.
- Mongabay has also just launched an entirely new bilingual bureau in Africa. Here to discuss all these developments on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast is CEO and editor-in-chief Rhett Butler.

Mongabay wins prestigious 2023 Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication
- The Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication is a prestigious award granted to professionals and organizations working to improve public understanding of ecological issues.
- The fifth annual Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication has been awarded to Mongabay for its commitment to reporting on issues related to nature and biodiversity, particularly in countries in the Global South.
- Past recipients have included The Guardian, as well as journalists Elizabeth Kolbert, Marlowe Hood, and Matt McGrath.
- Renowned conservation scientist Jane Goodall, who serves on Mongabay’s advisory board, said Mongabay “not only highlights the problems in the world, but also discusses solutions from the ground up” and that it “tells inspiring stories of people fighting and risking their lives as they strive to save wildlife and the environment.”

Beyond ‘no,’ more positive visions for conservation need communication (commentary)
- “I have become increasingly concerned that [environmentalists’] ongoing failures stem at least partially from really bad messaging,” a new op-ed states.
- “We are so focused on being against things that we keep missing an opportunity to be for something…We desperately need new climate-friendly visions for our economies and governance systems that we can all get behind, not just a laundry list of what not to do,” the Cambridge scholar continues.
- Some environmentalists are starting to push more positive communications and the development of transformative visions for conservation, such as developing “socio-bioeconomies” to replace existing economic models.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

We need to show that planetary wins are possible, says Dax Dasilva
- In 2021 Canadian entrepreneur Dax Dasilva donated $40 million to launch “Age of Union,” which supports conservation projects working to address climate change and the extinction crisis.
- Dasilva aims to bring a startup mentality to conservation, supporting grassroots, locally-led, and Indigenous-led projects with resources and guidance on scaling impact.
- Age of Union places a strong emphasis on storytelling to demonstrate that conservation efforts can have an impact, and has supported short documentaries and social media videos: “One of the main things we want to do is to show people that things can be done,” said Dasilva. “The worst outcome would be for people to stop believing that we’re out of time and that there’s nothing left to do.”
- Dasilva spoke about his passions, his philosophy on conservation, and more during a March 2023 conversation with Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler.

Will shipping noise nudge Africa’s only penguin toward extinction?
- The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is expected to go extinct in the wild in just over a decade, largely due to a lack of sardines, their main food.
- A colony in South Africa’s busy Algoa Bay is suffering a population crash that researchers say coincides with the introduction of ship-to-ship refueling services that have made the bay one of the noisiest in the world.
- They say theirs is the first study showing a correlation between underwater noise pollution and a seabird collapse.
- Current studies are investigating whether the ship noise is interfering with the penguins’ foraging behavior and their ability to find fish.

Tuning in to the world of nonhuman sound: Q&A with author Karen Bakker
- “The Sounds of Life” is a new book by University of British Columbia geography professor Karen Bakker that explores our understanding of nonhuman sound.
- Through the stories she has gathered from around the world, Bakker reveals how new technology has given us “a planetary hearing aid,” both to better understand how nonhuman life uses sound and the ways in which these sounds can help monitor and protect species.
- Bakker also investigates the role of traditional knowledge and deep listening to help researchers tune in to the sounds around us.
- Mongabay spoke with Karen Bakker in September.

Stingrays can ‘talk’ when they get riled up, new study suggests
- A new paper provides the first evidence that wild stingray species produce short, loud clicking sounds.
- While scientists still need to learn how and why stingrays make these noises, they speculate that the clicking sounds are a distress or defense signal.
- The paper documents three instances of this behavior in mangrove whiprays and cowtail stingrays, two species threatened with extinction.

Himalayan musk deer talk to each other through poop, but poachers are also listening
- A new study has indicated to scientists what poachers in Nepal may have long known: that Himalayan musk deer use their defecation sites as a sort of message board to communicate with one another.
- The endangered species is typically solitary and has limited vocalization, but its varied behavior at latrine sites — defecating, browsing, sniffing, scrapping and covering, and ignoring — appear to show efforts to convey messages to the other deer using the sites.
- Poachers may have long known about this behavior, and accordingly set their snares near latrine sites, where they target the male deer for their scent glands — prized for making perfume and traditional medicine.
- The authors of the new study say this finding could help improve conservation activities, including ensuring mating success for captive-breeding efforts.

Jane Goodall’s Hopecast podcast features Mongabay founder
- Primatologist and conservation icon Jane Goodall recently interviewed Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler for her Hopecast podcast. The episode was released October 26, 2021.
- Goodall and Butler talked about the importance of good storytelling in conveying information about the environment. Goodall lamented that much of the news around the environment is sad and depressing, and said there was a need to showcase more hopeful stories, including conservation successes.
- Butler said that while the media does tend to dwell on the negative, good environmental outcomes can result from “bad stories”: “Sometimes you can have a bad story that results in a good outcome,” he said. “Covering it can then lead to the activity stopping or people being empowered.”

Project maps soundscape of human noise in northern Adriatic and impact on marine life
- The bottlenose dolphin population of Croatia’s Lošinj archipelago is increasingly faced with problems from noise disturbance produced by boats, particularly in the summer tourist season.
- Noise pollution is known to impact a wide range of marine species, from turtles to tuna to cetaceans, but its long-term effects are still little-understood.
- The SOUNDSCAPE project that started in 2019 in the northern Adriatic Sea, between Italy and Croatia, is trying to better understand the problem at the regional level and identify solutions.

The queen sets the tone: Deciphering the dialects of naked mole-rats
- Naked mole-rats have their own dialects that differ between colonies of the rodents, researchers have found.
- The virtually blind animals communicate underground through squeaks, grunts and chirps, and have an “accent” that is determined by the queen of each colony.
- This shared dialect “strengthens cohesion and a sense of belonging among the naked mole-rats of a specific colony,” says Alison Barker, lead author of the new study.
- The finding has important implications for the understanding of our own history, by potentially shedding light into how human linguistic culture evolved.

Well, hello there: Glass frogs ‘wave’ to communicate near noisy waterfalls
- A researcher discovered that an obscure species of nocturnal glass frog, Sachatamia orejuela, uses visual signaling as well as acoustical calls to communicate within their environment.
- Other frog species are known to communicate visually, although they are unrelated to S. orejuela and are found on different continents.
- A recent paper on the discovery also provides the first known description of the acoustical call of S. orejuela, endemic to Ecuador and Colombia.

Bringing color to conservation: a conversation with wildlife artist Morgan Richardson
- Many of the visuals we’re used to seeing in conservation are ones of despair: forests being torn down for palm oil production, pangolins and rhinos being slaughtered for the scales and horns, blue glaciers calving into the ocean, fires destroying majestic trees, and vigils to environmental defenders slain for their efforts to protect the planet.
- Morgan Lee Richardson, a Los Angeles-based artist, takes a different approach. He creates images of wildlife with shockingly bold colors. Richardson — whose artwork has appeared widely from Disney to Nickelodeon to Thundershirts — uses his “kick in the face” style to “introduce people to the amazing biodiversity of our planet.”
- Richardson says new approaches are needed to reach and engage the next generation since it is they who will determine the fate of the species with which we share the planet. He also believes that wildlife conservation needs to become more inclusive if it hopes to thrive into the future.
- Richardson shared his thoughts during a January 2021 interview with Mongabay’s Dave Martin.

Radio drama encourages Belizean fishers to follow the rules
- The Belizean radio show “Punta Fuego” teaches local fishing communities about fishing regulations.
- Listeners can phone in to the show’s “Talking Fuego” segment and interact with hosts and conservation experts.
- The show aims to earn fishers’ support for the expansion of “replenishment zones.” In April, the government approved these new strictly protected areas to give marine species a break from fishing pressure.
- Critics say the show doesn’t address a wider problem: fishers won’t follow regulations that the government does not enforce, even if they understand the purpose.

Virtual Reality 360-degree video: An “empathy-generating machine” for conservation outreach?
- New video technology that films in 360 degrees brings viewers into the middle of the action and is set to become a powerful outreach tool to build understanding and empathy for wildlife and wild places.
- Small off-the-shelf cameras rugged enough to film in the wild are relatively inexpensive, easy enough for field researchers and other filming novices to use, and sufficiently sophisticated to collect videos of resolutions higher than 5 megapixels.
- At a recent presentation at National Geographic, four VR-360 filmmakers strongly endorsed the technology as a tool to inspire and nurture empathy in viewers for a range of conservation issues.

Gorilla radio: Sending a conservation message in Nigeria
- The Cross River gorilla, the rarest great ape subspecies with only 300 individuals believed to survive in the wild, is found only in highland forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.
- A 2014 survey of people living near Cross River gorilla habitat found that while the majority understood that gorillas are endangered and killing them is illegal, few supported measures to protect the gorilla or its habitat.
- The Wildlife Conservation Society is working to build support for conservation via an educational and entertaining radio program called “My Gorilla My Community.”

A monitoring network in the Amazon captures a flood of data
- Cameras and microphones are capturing images and sounds of the world’s largest rainforest to monitor the Amazon’s species and environmental dynamics in an unprecedented way.
- The Providence Project’s series of networked sensors is aimed at complementing remote-sensing data on forest cover change by revealing ecological interactions beneath the forest canopy.
- Capable of continuously recording, processing and transmitting information to a database in real time, this high-tech experiment involves research institutions from three countries and the skills of biologists, engineers, computer scientists and other experts.
- The monitoring system will connect to a website to disseminate the forest biodiversity data interactively, which the researchers hope will contribute to more effective biodiversity conservation strategies.

The iNaturalist species data sharing platform reaches one million users
- The iNaturalist species data-sharing platform reached a milestone earlier this month with its one millionth observer.
- The 10-year-old platform and mobile app use several smartphone technologies, crowd-sourced data, and artificial intelligence to help observers identify the species of plants and animals they see.
- Co-founder Scott Loarie highlighted the rapid progress in computer vision technology as a surprisingly helpful technology that complements crowdsourcing to speed the image identification process for a large number of photos, though it has also introduced other concerns, including how to maintain high data quality.

Managing the data deluge: Twitter as a tool for ecological research
- Access to constant streams of observational data from 60 or 70 million Twitter users is a potential trove for scientists, but extracting the target data is a challenge.
- A big advantage of social media data mining is the ability to turn data into usable information on a short timetable. The question is, how does quick, retrospective data compare to data from painstakingly prepared collection processes?
- A recent study compared the results from three published citizen science studies to data sets mined retrospectively from Twitter for the same time periods. It confirmed that mining Twitter could yield reliable baseline data (when, where). As for testing causal relationships or hypotheses involving dependent variables, the jury is still out.
- Twitter shows promise for ecological study, particularly studies around seasonal phenomena such as the annual emergence of flying ants. But filtering out the noise of random human observation is a still-evolving science.

‘Better and better’: Thermal cameras turn up the heat on poachers
- The annual Serengeti-Maasai Mara wildebeest migration attracts not just tourists, but also bushmeat poachers, who kill between 40,000 and 100,000 animals along the way.
- In 2016, the Mara Conservancy began using FLIR thermal cameras, which detect heat instead of light, to find and capture poachers at night, when they are most active.
- Thermal imaging, together with a motivated team using high-quality digital radios, has led to the capture of over 100 people and left poachers at a loss as to how they’re being detected.

New study provides blueprint to translate satellite data into conservation action
- A new paper offers a protocol to help conservation practitioners integrate forest-monitoring technology with policy to reduce illegal deforestation.
- Public and private entities can more easily access the latest satellite-based remote-sensing technology to rapidly detect new deforestation, prioritize areas for action, identify the causes, and get the information to policymakers without delay.
- The study calls for increased use of satellite technology to improve the monitoring, understanding and communication of deforestation events, as well as increase engagement between government institutions and civil society.

Innovative ideas sought for new conservation tech prize
- The non-profit Conservation X Labs has launched a competition aimed at encouraging teams with diverse skillsets to propose novel technology solutions to conservation challenges.
- The competition offers prizes of $3,500 to 20 finalists — who will compete for a grand prize of $20,000 — based on the proposed solutions’ novelty, sustainability, and feasibility.
- Applicants must submit their proposals by June 30, 2018, and winners will be announced in July.

Global Forest Watch offers mapping and data visualization fellowships
- Global Forest Watch has launched a new fellowship for people working to reduce deforestation within 23 countries in South America, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia.
- The July-December 2018 fellowship—including online training sessions, peer-to-peer interactions, and a 3-day in-person tech camp in Washington, D.C. —aims to help participants build technical skills, network with both peers and GFW staff, and implement a data-focused project.
- Fellowship applications are due June 15th, 2018, and GFW will notify the five fellows selected for this first cohort by July 1st.

Online network seeks to boost international collaboration against wildlife trafficking in Central Africa
- The Africa-TWIX (Trade in Wildlife Information eXchange) platform facilitates collaboration to help Central African enforcement agencies implement wildlife trade laws and treaties.
- The platform’s secure mailing list and database allow enforcement officials from five countries to share materials and data that enhance cross-border collaboration.
- The sharing of experiences, data and best practices among police, inspectors, prosecutors, judges, and customs officials is expected to help enhance their respective abilities to better fight wildlife crime.

One-stop shop for digital global maps launched
- A new online platform called Resource Watch makes over 200 geographically referenced global-scale data sets available for viewing and analysis.
- You can view and overlay spatial data layers on your own or explore analyses produced by the platform’s research staff.
- The developers hope that assembling a broad collection of environmental, economic, infrastructure, and social data in a single platform will promote understanding of the connections between human activities and natural systems and encourage more sustainable decision-making.

Crowdsourcing the fight against poaching, with the help of remote cameras
- A U.S. non-profit and a cadre of volunteers have teamed up with reserves in South Africa and Indonesia to combat wildlife poaching through a series of connected camera traps.
- The group’s monitoring system, wpsWatch, can transmit visual, infrared, and thermal camera images as well as data from radar, motion detectors, and other field devices.
- The volunteers monitor image feeds while rangers sleep and have become an effective part of the team, which has detected roughly 180 intrusions into the reserves, including rhino and bushmeat poachers.

10 top conservation tech innovations from 2017
- The increased portability and reduced cost of data collection and synthesis tools have transformed how we research and conserve the natural world.
- Devices from visual and acoustic sensors to DNA sequencers help us better understand the world around us, and they combine with online mapping platforms to help us monitor it.
- New online and mobile apps have democratized data collection, inspiring a brave new world of citizen scientists to learn about the species around them, contribute to conservation and scientific discovery, and feel part of a learning community.
- Here, we present 10 tech trends we covered in 2017, in no particular order, that have helped us better understand nature, monitor its status, and take action to protect it.

Combining computing power and people power to identify key deforestation hotspots
- Technology now allows us to remotely locate and monitor areas of forest loss, creating the challenge of responding to areas with rampant deforestation.
- The Global Forest Watch platform has launched Places to Watch, a feature that highlights key areas of recent deforestation, especially near intact and protected forests.
- An automated process selects deforestation hotspots, which are then filtered and prioritized by experts using satellite imagery and locally-derived reports to select 10 “Places” each month.
- The GFW team aims to provide journalists, activists, and concerned citizens and government, with curated deforestation information to encourage action that prevents further loss in priority areas.

Measuring fish abundance through acoustics: spawning aggregations are key to improving fishery management plans
- Despite the threat of overfishing in many fish populations, fisheries managers often lack accurate plans and quota systems to allow a sustainable harvest.
- Traditional methods of estimating fish populations can be costly, intrusive and laborious, so a team of researchers tested the use of acoustics to survey the Gulf corvina fish.
- The researchers found that deploying passive acoustic detection devices near spawning aggregations was a cost-effective and easy-to-use method of estimating abundance through data collected on the fishes’ vocalizations.

Story-telling app and website help communities improve their ‘backyards’
- The TIMBY reporting platform applies the wide range of knowledge and experience of journalists, scientists, technologists, designers and security experts.
- Originally developed in Liberia to curb some of the impacts of illegal logging, the design and function of the TIMBY platform has been customized to fit the needs of the people facing conservation issues other locations.
- TIMBY has been used across the globe to address a wide array of issues, including environmental conservation in Chile, women’s health in Kenya, and information dissemination in Liberia.

Whistleblowing for wildlife
- The National Whistleblower Center (NWC)’s new Global Wildlife Whistleblower Program is launching a secure website and attorney referral service to help people provide tips on wildlife crime and obtain rewards from whistleblower provisions in relevant laws.
- The program combats wildlife extinction by incentivizing potential whistleblowers to come forward and submit tips confidentially and anonymously.
- To increase the platform’s impact, the NWC is ramping up outreach and hoping to develop an app in 2017 to facilitate mobile reports.

Solving Global Grand Challenges, One MOOC at a Time
- The newly launched Innovation and Design for Global Grand Challenges MOOC explores current global challenges in conservation and development.
- The course is free and covers topics from wildlife trafficking to global health, 3D printing and synthetic biology.
- Launched in July 2016, the course has registered 1,500 students from 75 countries.

Identifying the drivers of Amazon deforestation through high-tech maps and stories
- The MAAP project scours remote sensing data for areas of new deforestation and revisits known deforestation hotspots to highlight activities that cause forest loss.
- The project publicizes deforestation “stories” via a combination of several remote sensing technologies through its website.
- The team’s reporting of “just the facts” has prompted conservation action from government agencies, civil society and the media.

A World of Tings
- Created in 2012, Latest Sightings is a mobile app and social network with a community between 450,000 and 500,000 people.
- Latest Sightings allows app users to report real-time sightings within South African parks and promotes conservation and education through online platforms.
- Wildlife sighting apps have faced recent criticism, but Latest Sightings CEO and Founder Nadav Ossendryver explains that these apps are saving wildlife and globally educating millions of wildlife enthusiasts.

Light, long-lasting and low-cost: the technology needs of field conservationists and wildlife researchers
- The concurrent challenges of remoteness, extreme temperatures, dust, high rainfall and humidity, dense vegetation and steep terrain all complicate and limit the use of existing and emerging technologies for nature conservation and research.
- Survey responses of front-line conservationists suggest that no single technology will stop either wildlife poaching or human-wildlife conflict.
- Researchers everywhere desire smaller, lighter, longer-lasting, and more affordable devices that better withstand humidity, dust and damage.
- Integrated, automated devices and systems for detecting, monitoring, and providing early warning of movements of people and animals would revolutionize conservation and research work across species, ecosystems, and countries.

A Beginner’s Guide to Aerostats
- Aerostats—helium-filled payload-carrying balloons—can provide 24/7 aerial surveillance and communications with increasing reliability, safety, size and carrying capacity.
- Size matters: larger and higher quality aerostats can withstand rougher conditions, are safer and more durable, and carry larger, more advanced payloads, ranging from communications sensors to daytime and nighttime cameras, radars and other intelligence systems.
- Teams assessing the cost of operating an aerostat system, whether free-moving or tethered, must consider longer-term needs, including the required training for both aerostat and payload, number of technical teams, initial deployment process, routine logistical needs, helium supply and power supply.

Just Text It In: Streamline Survey Collection through SMS
- Mobile surveys are becoming ubiquitous in the 21st century, with findings showing they save both time and money over traditional paper surveys.
- The TextIt service helps you build and distribute conversational surveys soley through SMS.
- Establishing more consistent communication and providing valuable information to rural communities over SMS can aid practitioners looking to involve local people in conservation efforts.

goTenna provides low-cost remote communication without a cell network
- Rangers, hikers, and researchers all need to communicate in the field, though mobile coverage is poor or absent in many remote areas.
- The goTenna device connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone, and via long-range radio to one or more other goTennas to provide instantaneous SMS communication between the devices.
- Still on pre-order, goTenna tests indicate local (2-6 km) communication in forest and a longer range if devices can be elevated.

Scientists build app to automatically identify species based on their calls

Call recognition for animals. New technology makes it possible to automatically identify species by their vocalizations. The software and hardware system, detailed in the current issue of the journal PeerJ, has been used at sites in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica to identify frogs, insects, birds, and monkeys. Many of the animals identified by the […]

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