Conservation and Science

Bertie Brosnan is known to regular listeners from episode 51. It was an immensely interesting conversation about the fight against salmon poaching in the rivers of the Irish South-West. In this episode, Bertie is back to talk about his other passions: hunting and dog training. During our conversation, Bertie gives a fascinating account of how things were in the Irish countryside many decades ago....

Wildlife trafficking and poaching are huge problems for the conservation of the world’s most endangered species. They also present significant social and economic challenges. On one hand, big green organizations like WWF are criticised for “militarization of conservation” in their attempt to counteract the increasingly sophisticated and militarized wildlife trafficking cartels. On the other hand,...

Dr Amy Dickman needs no introduction. She is well known and hugely respected in both academic and conservation communities. She’s a conservation biologist and works on resolving human-wildlife conflict on human-dominated landscapes. Amy is a Kaplan Senior Research Fellow in Wild Cat Conservation under Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. She is also the founder of The Ruaha Car...

My podcast listeners have heard, more than once, that there was a time when I was absolutely crazy about shark fishing. Among the many species of sharks present in my local waters, blue sharks (prionace glauca) have a special place in the hearts of sea anglers. These sharks are still relatively abundant and provide an opportunity to get a taste of true Big Game fishing without having to go on an e...

Białowieża Forest is well known among environmentalists and wildlife enthusiasts around Europe and the world. It is the largest remaining part of the primaeval forest that once stretched across the European Plain. This region, spanning Poland and Belarus, steaming with biodiversity, is designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. But the situation on the ground is rather worrying with continued...

Hunting in Africa is on the bucket list of many hunters. But for many that dream might seem very distant. Almost impossible. But as you will see in this conversation with Steve Scott , a veteran hunter, TV host, and producer of television hunting shows, this doesn’t have to be the case. Problems caused by the pandemic and related travel restrictions made the prices of hunts in Africa hit rock bott...

The Amazon rainforest is the largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforest in the world. It represents over half of the remaining rainforests. It is home to countless species of insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. Not to mention the fish. Unfortunately, as we all can read and hear in the news, it is subject to unrelenting exploitation and destruction. I decided that my podcast woul...

In recent episodes, I have presented a whole host of views and opinions regarding rewilding, land management, and the need to change the way we coexist with nature. In this episode, we continue on that path, but with a guest, Dr Cathy Mayne, who has a particularly interesting perspective. That perspective might not be entirely aligned with the usual rewilding approach, but it is very well thought...

In this episode, once again, we are going to talk about ecological restoration and bringing back species that were extirpated from their native range. Our guest is Chris Jones who is the Restoration Director at Beaver Trust. During our conversation, we discuss the history of Beaver Trust , how it was found and why. Then we discuss beaver ecology and the role of beavers in the ecosystem. Chris give...

This time our guest is a wildlife biologist from across the pond. Matt Gould works for the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology at New Mexico State University. Matt is also an avid hunter. This combination makes him a perfect guest for my podcast. Matt has done a lot of research and has written several papers on American black bears and that was the topic I was most interested in....

In this instalment of the podcast, our guest is a young scientist, Adam Francis Smith, who lives in the Bavarian Forest National Park. Adam specializes in large terrestrial mammal monitoring and predator-prey interactions. He also works for the Frankfurt Zoological Society where he focuses on specific project areas in Ukraine and Belarus and where, with a team of ecologists, he tries to protect la...

Peter Cairns is an executive director of an environmental charity Scotland: The Big Picture, the first organisation in Scotland wholly dedicated to championing rewilding. We started our conversation by discussing the controversy surrounding the term rewilding. Since rewilding (for want of a better, less controversial, term) is of great interest to me, the discussion started to flow from there. Aft...

I have wanted to record an episode about the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) and their work for quite a while now. Their excellent website, with a database where you can report sightings and strandings, was even mentioned in one of my vlogs. So today, it is my pleasure to bring you my conversation with IWDG’s Sightings Officer Pádraig Whooley. We started with discussing at length IWDG origins...

I don’t think that anyone who has at least dipped his toes in hunting needs to be convinced of how important it is to be in good physical shape to fully enjoy the experience. Strength and endurance come in handy not only when it comes to walking long miles in search of an animal with a lot of gear on your back but also during the extraction of the carcass. A critical component of keeping yourself...

Climate change, in one way or another, is mentioned in almost every episode of my podcast. But with the exception of episode 38, which was a recorded public talk, I have never dedicated a whole episode to this important issue. But today we’re going to jump right into this subject with Ben Harkin who wrote a book about climate change in the Irish context. Ben is a young man who decided to put to go...

In this episode, I had the pleasure to talk once again with scientists from SeaMonitor project. This time our guests were Dr Natasha Phillips and Dr Amy Garbett. Our conversation was focused on Basking Sharks but while at it we discussed a whole range of other subjects as well, like genetic connectivity, biotelemetry and bioinformatics. There is nothing like a conversation with scientists who are...

This is yet another episode of the podcast where we talk about seals. This time I hit you with a healthy dose of unbiased, evidence-based knowledge. Actually, that’s not me doing the hitting but our guest Dr Sam L Cox who is a quantitative ecologist and researcher for the SeaMonitor project. In our conversation, we discuss the behaviour and spatial ecology of harbour seals which are tracked using...

The benefits of being outdoors for our mental health and wellbeing have been discussed on the podcast a few times already. But this is a subject that is always worth revisiting. Especially when my guest’s impressive resume guarantees a fresh and well-developed approach. And so in this episode, our guest is Dr Ruth Allen, an outdoor and online counselling therapist, professional development coach,...

Not that long ago I wrote a blog post about angling for endangered fish species, including the common skate, which is highly sought after as a trophy catch. These elusive fish, however, are classified as critically endangered and unfortunately, we don’t have much information about their life history. So I welcomed the opportunity to talk with Dr Patrick Collins who is a marine biologist at Queen’s...

Byron Pace needs no introduction to most of you. He is a man of many talents: a filmmaker, photographer, writer and the host of the excellent Into The Wilderness and Into The Anthropocene podcasts. Given that we share many topics, and even guests, on our podcasts I was delighted to talk with Byron. During our conversation, we discussed the importance of hunters and anglers for wildlife conservatio...

On Tommy’s Outdoors, we spend a lot of time talking about fish tagging programs and various types of research supported by them. But our guests today are taking this concept to an entirely new level. They are Ross McGill, the Principal Project Officer for SeaMonitor at Loughs Agency and Dr Fred Whoriskey, the Executive Director at Ocean Tracking Network. If research and monitoring of marine wildli...

In episode 72 we started a discussion about seals in Ireland. As you might remember, at the time, I said that we wouldn’t get into the subject of human-seal conflict in that episode, as this is a complex subject that requires its own discussion. Since then, I’ve wanted to cover it from all angles but it has been difficult to find people willing to talk about it on record. Clearly there are a lot o...

This is a really delicious episode for all hunters who want to learn about hunting in Sweden. Our guest, Andreas Michalik, is a Swedish hunter and fellow blogger at https://swedenishunting.com/ During the podcast we dig deep into what hunting is like in Sweden. We discuss regulations, the public perception of hunting and Andreas’ personal journey to becoming a hunter. We also talk in detail about...

Ron Thomson should be well known to anyone interested in wildlife management on the African continent. He started his career as a game ranger in 1959. Throughout his career, he has worked in Africa's biggest and most prestigious game reserves. He has published fourteen books and we can safely say that he is one of the most experienced African big game hunters alive today. Ron is also the CEO of th...

This is yet another episode where my guest and I take on the subject of rewilding. This time our guest is the host of the discussion platform called Rewilding Ireland. During the podcast, we talk in length about various aspects of rewilding but we also talk about the future of the Rewilding Ireland platform. And towards the end of the podcast, we spend some time discussing whether or not megafauna...