This week on the podcast, Mongabay’s newest staff writer Abhishyant Kidangoor, with experience covering health, climate change, and the environment in South Asia, joins to discuss his new focus on conservation technology.

Abhi first cut his teeth on conservation technology for Mongabay as a fellow under the Sue Palminteri Wildtech Fellowship in 2022. There he gained an appreciation and fascination for conservation technology and its many applications. In this episode of the Newscast, he discusses new stories he’s working on related to tracking shark births, bioacoustics, and even AI.

No stranger to rigorous reporting before joining Mongabay, Abhi produced work for Time while living in Hong Kong, covering the protests that occurred in 2019 and 2020. “In retrospect, I can confidently say that was definitely a turning point in Hong Kong’s political history,” he says. However, it did not come without its challenges. “We were teargassed…it was difficult to get people to talk. Security was a big concern.”

Additionally, Abhi spent considerable time documenting the fight against COVID-19 in India. In particular, he covered the story of 1 million women healthcare workers who were drafted and sent to rural villages across the nation to serve on the frontlines, where they also struggled to attain livable wages.

In his spare time, Abhi has a passion for hiking and mentions that Hong Kong has some of the most beautiful hiking trails he’s ever seen: while notably one of the densest urban environments in the world, it is still surrounded by lush vegetation and steep mountainsides with much wildlife and many trails.

Abhi also previews the exciting work he’s doing with Mongabay’s video team, including working on two long-form video series, Chasing Deforestation and Problem Solved.

Related reading:

• Bioacoustics in your backyard: Q&A with conservation technologist Topher White
• On the roof of the world, water is life. Or a sign of it, thanks to eDNA
• Beyond bored apes: Blockchain polarizes wildlife conservation community

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Mike DiGirolamo is Mongabay’s audience engagement associate. Find him on Twitter @MikeDiGirolamo, Instagram, TikTok and Mastodon.

Banner Image: Conservation technology and wildlife manager, Eleanor Flatt, installs a GSM camera trap in the forests protected and managed by Osa Conservation. Image by Marco Molina.