In this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we feature Bill Laurance, a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia as well as the founder and director of ALERT (Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers) and a member of Mongabay’s advisory board.

We recently heard Bill argue at the Earth Optimism Summit that scientists need to become more comfortable with expressing uncertainty over the future of the planet and to stop “dooming and glooming” when it comes to environmental problems. We wanted to hear more about that, as well as to hear from Bill about the “global road map” he and his team recently released to help mitigate the environmental damage of what he calls an “infrastructure tsunami” breaking across the globe, the subject of a recent Q&A published here on Mongabay.

We also welcome Michelle LaRue to the program. Michelle is a research ecologist with the University of Minnesota’s Department of Earth Sciences, and her current work is focused on using high-resolution satellite imagery to study the population dynamics of Weddell seals in Antarctica’s Ross Sea.

In this Field Notes segment, Michelle will also play for us some of the calls made by adult Weddell seals and their pups, which couldn’t be more different from each other and are really quite remarkable, each in their own way. But you really have to hear them to believe them, trust us.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Trump failure to lead on climate doesn’t faze UN policymakers in Bonn
• China flexes its new climate action muscles in Bonn; Trump administration blinks
• Cross River superhighway changes course in Nigeria
• Delicate Solomon Island ecosystem in danger of heavy logging
• Two new species of tarsier, rumored to be inspiration for Yoda, announced on Star Wars Day
• Study finds hundreds of thousands of tropical species at risk of extinction due to deforestation
• New report details enormous corruption, illegal logging along Vietnamese border with Cambodia

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Follow Mike Gaworecki on Twitter: @mikeg2001

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