On today’s episode, we talk with the Director General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Inger Andersen.

Founded in 1948 and headquartered in Switzerland, the IUCN is probably best known for its Red List of Threatened Species, a vital resource on the conservation statuses and extinction risks of tens of thousands of species with whom we share planet Earth. But the IUCN does much more than just maintain the Red List, as Inger Andersen, the organization’s director general, explains.

Andersen also discusses how updates are made to the Red List (and what updates we can expect to the List in 2019), the importance of empowering women in conservation and sustainable development, the need to tackle unsustainable production and consumption patterns, and why the 2020 installment of the IUCN’s World Conservation Congress will be perhaps the most important yet.

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Antarctica now shedding ice six times faster than in 1979
• China busts major ivory trafficking gang following EIA investigation
• Tanzania creates new reserve to protect rare colobus monkeys and trees

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Follow Mike Gaworecki on Twitter: @mikeg2001

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