Noted ecologist and author Carl Safina appears on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast to discuss the current state of marine conservation and its future under the Trump presidency.

Mongabay interviewed Carl Safina back in June, just before his latest book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, which came out in 2015, was due for a paperback release. It was exciting to get to interview him again, especially given how much has happened since we last heard from him, including the creation of massive marine protected areas off the coast of Hawaii and in Antarctica.

We also welcome to the show Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler, who fills us in on the origins of Mongabay and where it’s going in 2017. (There are many more answers to questions you might have about Mongabay in this post.)

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Off-the-shelf hobby drones are helping save elephants in Tanzania
• Where have all the lutungs gone? Mystery monkeys fast disappearing
• Deep sea mining plans for Papua New Guinea raise alarm
• Morocco plants millions of trees along roads to fight climate change
• Trump vows Paris Agreement pull out; world unites behind green economy
• Seven African countries pledge to protect their tropical forests from unsustainable oil palm development

As Rhett discusses on the Newscast, Mongabay has standalone sites for Indonesia and Latin America, which you can find at mongabay.co.id and es-mongabay-com.mongabay.com, respectively.

If you’ve got a question about environmental science and conservation, we’d be happy to answer it for you! Just drop us a line at submissions@mongabay.com and we’ll answer your question in a future episode of the Mongabay Newscast.

And don’t forget, you can find all of our podcast episodes on Stitcher, TuneIn, iTunes, Google Play, and RSS.