Today we speak with award-winning science writer, author, and journalist David Quammen about some of the most promising and fascinating trends in conservation and evolutionary science.

In a recent piece for National Geographic, where he is a regular contributor, Quammen profiles Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique — once touted by none other than E.O. Wilson himself, in an interview with Mongabay, as a place where successful restoration efforts were underway and benefitting nature, wildlife, and humans.

Another recent focus of Quammen’s work has been emerging diseases — his 2014 book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, for instance, looks at the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases, especially viral diseases like ebola. That made his appearance on the Newscast particularly well-timed, because the day before taping the interview, the World Health Organization announced that an ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has become a global health emergency, only the fifth time the WHO has ever made such a declaration.

Quammen’s most recent book, 2018’s The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, explores the revolution in how scientists understand the history of evolution on Earth sparked by the work of Carl Woese.

David Quammen appears on the Mongabay Newscast to discuss all of the above as well as what gives him hope that biodiversity loss and destruction of the natural world can be halted.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• From over 100,000 species assessments in IUCN update, zero improvements
• June 2019 was the hottest on record: NOAA
• U.S. Virgin Islands bans coral-damaging sunscreens

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Follow Mike Gaworecki on Twitter: @mikeg2001

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