- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Mongabay staff writer John Cannon, who traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway in July and wrote a series of reports for Mongabay detailing what he discovered on the journey.
- The Pan Borneo Highway is expected to make commerce and travel easier in a region that is notoriously difficult to navigate, and also to encourage tourists to see the states’ cultural treasures and rich wildlife. But from the outset, scientists and conservationists have warned that the highway is likely to harm that very same wildlife by dividing populations and degrading habitat.
- Cannon undertook his 3-week reporting trip down the Pan Borneo Highway in an attempt to understand both the positive and negative effects the road could have on local communities, wildlife, and ecosystems, and he’s here to tell us what he found.
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with our adventurous Middle East-based staff writer John Cannon, who recently traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway to assess the positive and negative effects the road could have on local communities, wildlife, and ecosystems.
Listen here:
Cannon spent three weeks traveling the proposed route of the Pan Borneo Highway which is being built to connect the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak as well as the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. The idea is to make commerce and travel easier in a region that is notoriously difficult to navigate, and also to encourage tourists to see the states’ cultural treasures and rich wildlife, from elephants to clouded leopards and crocodiles.
But scientists and conservationists have warned that the highway is likely to harm that very same wildlife by dividing populations and degrading habitat.
You can also read his six-part series detailing the trip and his “5 revelations from traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.”
Here’s this episode’s top news:
- ‘Full-blown crisis’: North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970
- At the UN, losing the race against time to fight climate change
- ‘The Blob’ is back: Pacific heat wave already second-largest in recent history
Would you like to hear how Mongabay grew out of its founder’s childhood adventures in rainforests and a fascination with frogs? Or how a Mongabay editor reacted to meeting one of the world’s last Bornean rhinos? We now offer Insider Content that delivers behind-the-scenes reporting and stories like these from our team. For a small monthly donation, you’ll get exclusive access and support our work in a new way. Visit mongabay.com/insider to learn more and join the growing community of Mongabay readers on the inside track.
If you enjoy the Mongabay Newscast, we ask that you please consider becoming a monthly sponsor via our Patreon page, at patreon.com/mongabay. Just a dollar per month will really help us offset the production costs and hosting fees, so if you’re a fan of our audio reports from nature’s frontline, please support the Mongabay Newscast at patreon.com/mongabay.
You can subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on Android, the Google Podcasts app, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, RSS, Castbox, Pocket Casts, and via Spotify or Pandora. Or listen to all our episodes via the Mongabay website here on the podcast homepage.
Follow Mike Gaworecki on Twitter: @mikeg2001
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.