Mongabay Newscast

Bhutan is a Himalayan kingdom sandwiched between China and India. Forty percent of its 800,000 citizens work in the agriculture sector. The mountainous country is famous for its breathtaking landscapes and its unique policy of "Gross National Happiness," instituted in 1972 by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the fourth king of Bhutan.
My guests on the Newscast this week say this philosophy is the backbone of the nation's food system, and its plan for full food self-sufficiency by 2029.
"Our food system isn't just about producing food. It's about sustaining our landscapes, our communities, and our culture," says renowned chef and restaurateur Bleu Tshering Dorji. She owns two restaurants in the nation's capital, Thimpu. She explains the unique challenges farmers she works with face due to climate change and steep mountain terrain.
"We are a mountainous landlocked country, and only a small percentage of our land is, I think, actually suitable for agriculture. We don't have the luxury of just expanding farmland. We have to make better use of the land that we sort of already have," she says.
"Labor is becoming extremely scarce as young people sort of move away from agriculture, and farmers still have to deal with issues like wildlife conflict, unpredictable weather, and also getting their produce to the market," Bleu says.
Sonam Wangchuk is an executive specialist at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock for the government of Bhutan. He also joins the conversation to explain how the government plans to address these challenges through the 13th five-year plan, "Transforming the Agrifood Sector for Economic Growth and Sustainable Development." The plan calls for spending the equivalent of about $180 million through 2029. Much of these funds appear to be directly supporting smallholder farmers, the majority of whom in Bhutan are women.
"We have been working to strengthen the capacity of the smallholder farmers, especially through training on climate-smart agriculture, improve production technologies, farm mechanization, post-harvest management, value addition and agribusiness and business development for women and youth," Wangchuk says.
"The skills are imparted to improve access to finance, technology and markets and creating an environment of entrepreneurship and to support the farmer groups and cooperatives."
Some government measures have received criticism, such as the implementation of a 3,400-kilometer (2,100-mile) fence to deter human-wildlife conflict.
A previous study from 2023 on agricultural practices in the nation suggested that, "Bhutan should emphasise women-centred initiatives by enhancing access to assets, raising awareness of climate change mitigation strategies, and developing training programs to promote CSA," or climate-smart agriculture.
This appears to be what the plan aims to do. However, not all challenges are easily solved with funding. Previous Mongabay fellow Choki Wangmo highlighted some of these challenges through the story of Pen Zam, a medicinal mushroom gatherer who struggles with a shrinking habitat at extremely high altitudes to attain a fraction of what her family used to gather decades ago, before the current climate impacts of today.
Later this month, the inaugural Global Conscious Food Systems Summit will take place in Bhutan.
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 chorten, or Buddhist stupa, at a rice field in Bhutan. Image by thaths via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
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Time codes
(00:00) Bhutan is transforming its food system
(06:45) A challenge ahead
(12:53) How 'Gross National Happiness' guides the way
(19:04) Supporting farmers amidst climate change
(29:36) Moving the global conversation forward

British wildlife photographer Margot Raggett says she created the book Remembering Elephants after she heard David Attenborough say, "The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?" Her effort was to provoke this question in others and to give the proceeds from its sale to conservation organizations. In a sense, the book went viral and generated a following, prompting Raggett to continue the book series and her nonprofit, Remembering Wildlife.
"Sometimes people get upset with me and say 'They're still around,' but I want people to stop and think," Raggett says.
In this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, she discusses her journey into photography, the intention behind memorializing still-living species, and details of her 11th book, Remembering Giraffes, which will be published Oct. 12. Raggett has gathered work from some of the world's most renowned wildlife photographers. To date, Remembering Wildlife has raised more than $1.6 million for 85 conservation organizations in 35 countries.
Raggett remarks on why she chose to go with giraffes for this volume, explaining how the gentle nature of these giants and their relative calm compared with apex predators are often overlooked or taken for granted, even as their numbers have declined by 30-40% since the 1980s.
"Like everything in conservation, the story is not even. So there are some areas where giraffes are doing well, and there are others where they're down to, you know, hundreds. And I just felt they deserved a story to be told. They are silent, and they deserve a voice like all of the other species we've covered," she says.
You can preorder or purchase a copy of Remembering Giraffes here.
Disclosure: Margot Raggett is a grassroots supporter of the Mongabay Newscast. Mongabay maintains full editorial independence from its financial supporters, who have no role in determining our coverage or editorial decisions.
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: As the sun sinks behind the Nguruman escarpment in the west, a solitary Masai Giraffe lingers on at a waterhole after drinking, in the late afternoon heat, as a flock of Wattled Starlings take off. Mt Shompole is in the background and the clouds are slowly building up. It's the end of the dry season and the rains are not too far away. Photo by Federico Veronesi. Courtesy of Remembering Wildlife.
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Time codes
(00:00) What if we only remember elephants in picture books?
(07:10) A cancer diagnosis, and finishing the book
(14:17) Momentum for the mammals
(18:47) Why giraffes?
(26:58) Finding the right images
(32:05) The giraffe in the red sneakers
(38:10) Most surprising things a wildlife photographer sees

Elizabeth Goldman is a co-director of Global Nature Watch, previously known as Global Forest Watch, a database measuring forest loss that's frequently cited in Mongabay reporting. She joins this week's podcast to detail GNW's updated 25-year analysis of global forest fire trends. The picture is stark: Forest fires burn twice as much forest today as they did 20 years ago, and historic fire seasons are the "new normal," she says.
"Catastrophic, large-scale fires are becoming more of a normal. The last three years are the worst three years in the record-keeping in our data set," Goldman says. "Fires now burn twice as much forest as they did earlier in the time series from our data."
2025, considered a drop from 2024, still saw 11 million hectares (27 million acres) of forest, an area roughly the size of Guatemala, burn. Rhett Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay, published an analysis of the dip in 2025, cautioning readers against reading too much into what appeared to be a reprieve. He noted that large-scale commodity agriculture and climate change, the causes of this forest loss, remain. Goldman agrees.
In the absence of "serious action" internationally to combat it, and commodity-driven agriculture that continues contributing to these fires, Goldman says there are things governments can do to mitigate their risk locally.
"There are ways to sustainably manage a forest, like through thinning and prescribed burns, fire breaks, those sorts of things that don't involve clear-cutting an entire forest, but leave the tree standing, leave the healthy ecosystem there, but are still kind of managing the fuel load," she says.
Sustainable management and strengthening Indigenous rights and resources is another cited need, Goldman says, a point raised in a previous Newscast conversation with Erica Gies, who reported on the work of forestry scientist Suzanne Simard.
"Results show that 60% coverage really does maintain a lot of the complexity of the forest and those forest relationships and a healthy hydrology, keeping the land from drying … in some ecosystems it seems like 30% might be enough, but definitely clear-cutting seems to not be sustainable," Gies said in that conversation.
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: Pine forest and granite in the Sierra Nevada. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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Time codes
(00:00) We are 'not on track' to solve this problem
(08:31) Boreal regions bear the brunt
(12:34) Tropical fires are almost entirely human made
(15:44) What can be done right now?
(24:51) Urban wildfires 'potentially' likely to continue

In her upcoming book, My Wild City: Finding Nature, Meaning, and Hope in India's Capital, conservation biologist Neha Sinha takes readers to the hidden and not-so-hidden ecosystems of India's largest city. And while the book expertly details the biodiversity, I believe its greatest strength lies in connecting with the reader emotionally through powerful stories from her personal life. On this week's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Sinha explains why nature in cities isn't just important from an ecosystem health perspective, but necessary for the emotional life of all people.
Sinha describes the difficulty of caring for her ailing father, and how this was the moment she found her favorite tree. While waiting in the hospital, she spotted a semal tree (Bombax ceiba). She tells me this was a turning point for her.
"In these kind of difficult situations which are physically and mentally challenging … you look at a tree, and it restores you. It kind of makes you feel that you might have strength that you didn't know about. And it's also unique to see a tree in a very urban environment because the tree itself is a survivor," she says.
Readers already enamored with nature will find much about My Wild City that will resonate with them. And people in positions of authority tasked with protecting these ecosystems may find insight here that could alter their perspective. Sinha tells me in our conversation that the urgency to care for nature has not yet taken hold in the politics of India, but that it has in the everyday person, pointing to the rise in popularity of urban hiking and bird-watching in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I can tell you for sure, there hasn't been a better time for citizens to be engaged and involved in nature. And in many ways, it's actually urban wildlife that has done that," she says, "and I think that's what has started this quiet revolution of documenting the natural world."
My Wild City is already released in India under the title Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi. For readers outside India, you can preorder a copy here.
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 parakeet in the Delhi ridge. Photo by Neha Sinha. 
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Time codes
(00:00) Trees are more than a name
(11:13) Protected spaces and restorative attention
(18:29) Meaning in hard times
(22:37) Loss of the fireflies
(27:56) Where dolphins once swam
(34:12) The quiet revolution
(37:42) When a tree tunnels into your life
(42:25) Decolonization is also recognizing native biodiversity
(47:52) 'The justice we give ourselves'

On this week's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with features writer Ashoka Mukpo, who traveled to southeastern Liberia to investigate what satellite images indicated was a spike in deforestation over a relatively concentrated period. Along with video production coordinator Juan Maza, Mukpo documented illegal cacao plantations in the rainforests in the county of Grand Gedeh. In this interview, he explains how and why these plantations are appearing now in Liberia.
"What we saw … probably the best metaphor for it is that there's a kind of gold rush happening in this part of Liberia, except it's not gold that people are after, it's cocoa," Mukpo says.
"And this makes sense, given the context that in the last few years there was a huge price spike for cocoa, and this had to do with a lot of factors, including climate change and a poor harvest in Côte d'Ivoire. And so that's pushing this huge number of migrant workers from Côte d'Ivoire into Grand Gedeh."
At the end of the year, the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is set to take effect. The EU legislation would ban the importation of certain commodities produced via deforestation, and one of those commodities is cocoa. And much of the cocoa being grown in Liberia right now would potentially fall under this ban, Mukpo says. Furthermore, setting up the tracking infrastructure to ensure commodities meet EUDR standards is expensive. While nations like Côte d'Ivoire have already invested in this, Liberia has not. That leaves a lot of farmers who are betting on this commodity vulnerable.
"A lot of farmers are gonna suffer just from lack of clarity. And I could see a scenario where suppliers choose to just not buy from Liberia because if there's no way for them to know where these beans are coming from, they could get in a lot of trouble if they do buy, and I think that's the real concern," Mukpo says.
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 young cacao tree in Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.
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Timecodes
(00:00) Why are forests disappearing in Liberia?
(10:56) Communities struggling to make a living
(21:18) Perspectives from conservationists
(25:38) The EUDR may impact these farms
(32:07) 'No clear villain'