Mammalwatching

Charles and Jon compare notes from their recent trips to China, and talk the joys of travel there, especially the country's superb mammalwatching opportunities.  Charles and his family spent 10 days in China's Qinghai Province in May, while Jon was in China for a month from mid-April, including almost two weeks in Yunnan Province and a few days in Qinghai. We discuss the Gouli Valley, an...

Charles and Jon talk to conservationists and primatologists Tom Butynski and Yvonne de Jong from their base in Kenya. Tom and Yvonne run the East African Primate Diversity and Conservation Program and research primates and other mammals in East Africa. After explaining how their rural childhoods fostered a love for nature, Tom and Yvonne outline very varied career paths that took them around the w...

Charles and Jon talk to Joel Sartore , founder of NatGeo's Photo Ark project and one of the world's most preeminent wildlife photographers. Joel describes his passion for conservation, a passion inspired by parents who cared and a childhood spent in nature.  He outlines his career, which took him from a cub photographer with the Wichita Eagle, to National Geographic where he now runs the...

Charles and Jon chat with Nick Mcphee, founder of Nick's Adventures Bolivia , from his home in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Nick explains how a childhood love of wildlife - inspired by growing up near Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo - led him to Bolivia after five years in the Australian army and another three working in Afghanistan's Helmand Province.  He talks about the many - an...

Charles and Jon turn the podcast over to three of the youngest mammalwatchers we know: Ellen Linton (20), Bruno Kovacs Gomez (16) and Moses Swanson-Mwamasika (15). In a lively chat the three share stories about their passion, why they love it and what their friends and family think. We hear stories about pizza with a Caracal in South Africa; close encounters with pouched rats in Zimbabwe; and a qu...

Charles and Jon don't have a guest this month. Instead we talk to each about our recent trips to southern Tanzania (Charles) and Tierra del Fuego (Jon). Charles's adventure coincided with the Tanzanian elections and an outbreak of protests. These may have shut down the country but did not deter its mammalwatchers! In between negotiating their way through road blocks and buying diesel fro...

In the first podcast of 2026 we talk with professional bird and mammal guide János Oláh from his home in Hungary. János set up Sakertours in 1994. Initially focussing on birding tours in Eastern Europe they expanded to run hide-based photography tours and now mammal tours. János explains how he was drawn to birding as a child, and the formative role an aversion to summer camp chores played in the...

The Season 4 opener to the mammalwatching podcast has Charles and Jon talking about their September 2025 expedition to Sulawesi.   This is a blow by blow - and mammal by mammal - account of a remarkable two week trip that recorded over 80 mammal species. Our story is interspersed with interviews from the field with Carlos Bocos, the trip leader; bat guru Prof Juliana Senawi; and the other particip...

Charles and Jon speak to conservation power couple Nachiket Kelkar and Kadambari Deshpande from their home in Bangalore. for the finale to Season 3 of the podcast. Kadambari and Nachiket both work to better understand how wildlife and people can co-exist in India, with Kadambari focussing on bats and Nachiket looking at riverine ecosystems and wildlife including the Ganges River Dolphin. In a fasc...

Charles and Jon talk with carnivore conservation expert Laila Bahaa-el-din . Laila studied the near mythical African Golden Cat for her PhD in Gabon from 2010 - 2015 and was the first to study the species for a PhD. She explains how her grandfather inspired her to follow a career in conservation and how a chance encounter with a mislabeled photo of an African Golden Cat saved her from studying rap...

Charles and Jon talk with wildlife filmmaker and presenter Nigel Marven from his home in the UK. Nigel describes how a childhood fascination with wildlife led to his first job in TV, 'wrangling worms', and from there to working with Sir David Attenborough and ultimately presenting and making his own shows and films. He explains why his films have often put the spotlight onto smaller, les...

Charles and Jon talk with Rachel Ashegbofe Ikemeh , founder of the SW/Niger Delta Conservation Project . Rachel, a Nigerian conservationist and visionary, has built a team of almost 100 people working at the grassroots community level to save the wildlife of the Niger Delta. The delta, densely populated and home to oil and gas reserves, is one of the most degraded environments on the planet. It co...

Charles and Jon talk to Shavez Cheema, founder of Borneo1Stop Wildlife , from his home in Sabah. Shavez talks about a childhood in Brunei surrounded by wildlife and how, at the age of nine, he was inspired to work in conservation after seeing a neighbour's senseless killing of a monitor lizard.  We discuss the massive potential for growth in conservation tourism across Borneo, and both the be...

Charles and Jon talk with mammalwatching power couple Venkat Sankar & Nicole Haseley from their base at Stanford University in California.  Nicole and Venkat 'accidentally' turned 2024 into a Big California (Mammal) Year and ended up seeing a record breaking 150 species in the state by December 31. They talk about some of their big year's highs and lows as well as their favourit...

Charles and Jon talk to legendary mammal guide Sid Francis from his home in Sichuan. Sid runs through a career as geographically diverse as it is professionally. After studying agriculture in the UK he worked as - among other things - a shepherd in the Falkland Islands shepherd and a school teacher in Denmark before moving to China and becoming a wildlife guide.  We talk about how much China - and...

In the first episode of 2025 Charles and Jon talk about their December 2024 trip to Ethiopia's Somali Region and Djibouti. From Dik-diks to Dibatags we discuss some of the rare mammals we encountered along with spectacular species like the poison-covered Crested Rat. We describe the agony of arriving in a camp that looked like the set from a slasher movie, to the ecstasy of taking what appear...

In the last podcast episode of 2024, Charles and Jon talk to Marcelo Gavensky from his home in Buenos Aires. Marcelo is director of Birds Argentina , a tour company that recently expanded into running mammalwatching safaris. Marcelo talks about the varied career that led him to establish his tour company. He describes some of his favourite encounters and his work to find a reliable method to see t...

Charles and Jon talk with Rodney Jackson the director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy, who is widely considered the leading world expert on the snow leopard, having devoted over forty years to researching and conserving this elusive cat in South and Central Asia.   In a wide-ranging chat Rodney describes his journey from a young boy looking for wildlife around his Harare home to the mountains of N...

Charles and Jon chat with two Bangkok-based mammalwatchers, Alexander Coke Smith and Jirayu 'Tour' Ekkul. Coke, an American, moved to Thailand a decade ago. He has travelled extensively and many mammalwatchers will be familiar with his superb photos and trip reports . Tour, a Thai citizen, began running trips in the Gulf of Thailand in 2012 to watch the resident Eden's Whales. His c...

Charles and Jon talk to Fernando Tortato  from his  home in Cuiaba in Brazil's Pantanal. Fernando is Brazil Conservation Program Coordinator for Panthera , the global wild cat conservation organization.  Dr Tortato talks about his work researching and championing the rapidly growing Jaguar tourism industry in Brazil. Twenty five years ago it was very difficult to see a wild Jaguar anywhere. T...

Charles and Jon are joined from South Africa by Rod Cassidy who runs world famous Sangha Lodge in the Central African Republic. A true mammalwatching nirvana. Rod talks about his early career as a bird guide and conservation researcher including his entry for the Darwin Awards during an ill-fated attempt bat collection expedition. He talks about the importance for conservation of the work he and h...

Charles and Jon are joined by Claudia Diaz , from Wild About Colombia, at her home in Bogota. Claudia and Robin Smith founded Wild About Colombia in 2017 and the company quickly developed a reputation for high quality and adventurous mammalwatching trips. Claudia talks about a career which has taken her from marine biology in Mexico's Gulf of California back to her native Colombia, via studyi...

Charles and Jon talk to Dr Barbara Taylor (USA) and Dr Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho (Mexico), who together lead the global efforts to save the Vaquita from extinction. The Vaquita, a tiny and beautiful porpoise, is found only at the top of the Gulf of California and holds the unfortunate distinction of being the world's rarest marine mammal (possibly the rarest of any mammal species). There may be as...

Charles and Jon talk to Australian author, broadcaster and wildlife nut Bradley Trevor Greive (BTG) from his home in California. BTG has an extraordinary CV: he was a paratrooper and cartoonist before becoming a successful author and broadcaster. In between he found time to win the French Polynesian Rock Lifting Championship, graduate from the Russian Cosmonaut Space Program, spend 6 years working...

Charles and Jon talk to conservationist Bill Robichaud, best known for his work to protect what many would argue is the world's most enigmatic mammal: the Saola. Saolas - a beautifully marked 100kg bovid - are often referred to as the 'Asian Unicorn' because of their scimitar-like horns and rarity. The species, first discovered by scientists in 1992 in the mountains of Vietnam, is o...