Earth to Humans

Today, Sarinah Simons brings you interviews from the front lines of the 2019 Film Festival. After wandering the streets of Park City, Utah and seeing more films in five days than she would in an entire year, Sarinah interviews the filmmakers and creators behind some of her favorite films seen at the festival. This included the films Anthropocene: The Human Epoch co-directed by Jennifer Baichwal, E...

Kristin Tieche explores issues of accessibility at the festival and analyzes it's role in spreading awareness of social, racial and environmental justice issues. This episode features: Cassandra Begay of PANDOS https://www.pandos.org/   Maikiko James of Women in Film https://womeninfilm.org/   Poonam Basu & Esther Mira of Team Rebelution https://www.facebook.com/teamrebelutionfilms/   Tama...

EOC podcast contributor Emma Tyrell interviewed representatives from indigenous communities all around the globe for this special episode of the show.  Climate change affects every community in a different way, and the variety of perspectives presented here show the scope of issues that indigenous communities are already facing.  These interviews also show the resiliency of indigenous communities,...

Environmentalism and its sister message of conservation have echoed throughout the ages. The love, fascination, and sublime fear of nature have been as much a part of humankind as any book or historical document can recall. But, it doesn’t mean that we’ve always understood our duty to it, or even been able to comprehend our capacity to permanently change it. In fact, despite our affinity to the ou...

Today we are going to learn about the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a piece of legislation that the Trump administration is attempting to dismantle 100 years after it was passed.  We are presenting for you in today's episode a presentation given by the Chief Network Officer of the National Audubon Society, David Ringer.  David highlights the key role played by the Audubon Society in the passage o...

Kristy Oriol and Paul Bancroft recently co-authored an article on the surprising and unsettling link between climate change and violence against women and their words serve as some of the earliest discussions surrounding this important topic. Oriol and Bancroft work to provide victims of domestic and sexual violence and child abuse with safety, advocacy, support and education services through the...

Most endangered species are easy to see in peril. There simply aren’t very many of them, and we struggle to see them in the areas where they’re from. Others aren’t so clear. Take, for example, the black-tailed prairie dog. It seems like they’re everywhere, and yet, their numbers are some of the lowest they’ve every been. This isn’t just bad news for the prairie dog. It’s bad news for animals like...

On today’s episode of the show, we are taking you to Sun Valley Idaho where we’ll sit in on a panel discussion featuring the voices of both local and global innovators on the topic of resiliency, innovation and opportunity in the face of climate change. Aimee Christensen is the executive director of Sun Valley Institute for Resilience and lead’s today’s panel discussion. The theme of the discussio...

Bill Ulfelder is the New York Executive Director for the Nature Conservancy.  The Nature Conservancy is known throughout the world for purchasing, managing and conserving land to protect and improve wildlife habitat, but in recent decades the focus of the organization has shifted towards finding solutions to the big environmental challenges of our time.  No challenge is bigger than that posed by c...

When it comes to fracking regulations on the ballot, there are likely fewer places more concerned than Weld county, Colorado, where I live. Weld county has a lot invested in the outcome, because nearly 12% of its workers are somehow either directly or indirectly tied to its production. Proposition 112 made it on the ballot because for many the debate over how safe this process actually is and how...

Today, we're taking you to a remote island off the coast of Alaska, just above the Aleutian Islands and not too far from Russia. Among the bellows of the fur seals and windswept sea cliffs of St. Paul Island, Aquilina Lestenkof, an indigenous Unangan woman and pioneer for her community in revitalizing the Unangan language, is teaching a new generation of youth about where their people have com...

Earlier this year, I got an email from a listener that stood out.  It read, Listening to your podcast in college help me realize I wanted to get into filmmaking rather than field biology because I agree SO much with your viewpoints and the reasons you got into wildlife filmmaking. Holy shit!  I thought.  We had altered the course of someone’s life with this podcast! His name is Zach Steinhauser, a...

“She was looking for another member of her own kind, and there was never a response.”   Meet Mike Phillips, co-founder and Executive Director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and co-founder and adviser to the Turner Biodiversity Division. Mike knows wolves. His work with them began in the 80s where his big break coordinating the Red Wolf Recovery Program. In 1994 he became Project Leader for...

The chambered nautilus is the only living descendant of a group of ocean creatures that thrived in the seas 500 million years ago when the earth’s continents were still forming. Older than the dinosaurs, these deep sea dwellers are often referred to as the oldest living fossils. But, after withstanding countless challenges, they are being sought after for their beauty and dwindling toward extincti...

Today on the show we are going to learn about how one city is taking responsibility for the trash that it produces, and setting a global example for how to stop plastic waste from entering our oceans. That city is Baltimore, and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to chat with one of the key figures behind Baltimore’s campaign to clean up their waterways - Adam Lindquist.  Adam works for th...

On today’s episode of the show, I interview a woman who has inspired me and many people like me to embrace themselves in outdoor spaces and find community even when its not always easy.  Her name is Rue Mapp, and she is the CEO and founder of Outdoor Afro, a not-for-profit organization founded in Oakland, California that is at the forefront of celebrating and inspiring African American connections...

Last week I took a trip. In the Rocky Mountains, Northwest of Fort Collins, Colorado, just past Bellvue. I wasn’t very equipped. Welcome to Eyes on Conservation. I’m Gregory Haddock. Today you will hear part 1 of a 2-part series on protecting and conserving wolves and their legacy in the Rocky Mountains. W.O.L.F Sanctuary is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public and rescuing...

For her feature-length film, Sea of Life, the ever-talented Julia Barnes interviewed scientists and activists working to save the ocean and shared an interview with Callum Roberts with Eyes on Conservation. Callum is a marine conservationist, oceanographer, author and researcher based at York University. Julia spoke with Callum about human impacts on the ocean, going back through the history of fi...

Today’s episode is about drones.  I spoke with the founders of an organization called Oceans Unmanned about how they are using drones to assist in conducting biological research, as well as how they are working to reduce wildlife disturbance from drones. Join private conversations with top authors and access exclusive bonus content! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get...

To have or not to have children, that is a most vexing question and one I wrestled with personally during my 30s. A career in conservation and, in particular, being steeped in issues of climate change, firmly planted me on the fence on the issue. After all, how could I bring a life into this doomed world? At the same time, I witnessed nature’s resilience first-hand, opening the possibility of hope...

Today we are welcoming back our guest from episode 92 of the show - Nate Dappen.  Nate is a filmmaker focused on telling stories about science and conservation, and he has a new film, just released this week, called “the Passage”. The Passage is a bit of a departure from Nate’s typical storytelling style - it’s a deeply personal story focused on the importance of family and explores what it’s like...

Summer is often cited as a favorite season, what with long days and favorable weather for outdoor adventures. Living in Montana, however, Summer has gotten shortened by a new, worrisome season: Fire. Months of smoke-filled skies, waking up to a layer of particulate matter covering everything and a worry that seeps into every cell of my being makes it easily my least favorite time of the year. When...

Today, we take you for a tour of the inside of Wild Lens as the organization starts the difficult process of transforming, growing and differentiating. Following a weekend retreat with collaborators and contributors to the work of Wild Lens, I spoke with Matt Podolsky and Sean Bogle about this process, what it has looked like, how it feels and the circumstances leading up to their recognition for...

If you’re like me, you are a total sucker for story. The kind that make me lean-in, as if my ears closer to the speaker could possibly offer more, is my favorite. I’ve come to learn that this is, in fact, a nearly universal human trait, emerging spontaneously in childhood, and existing in all cultures studied thus far. Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years, sharing them orally ev...

Over the past decade, carbon offsetting has become increasingly popular, but it has also become increasingly controversial. While some argue that carbon offset programs allow people to feel absolved of their carbon consuming sins without genuinely changing behaviors, which may very well be true in some instances, we here at the Eyes on Conservation Podcast as part of the larger Wild Lens crew all...