Show Notes
This episode finds David in conversation with the Galápagos-born geographer, Director of Universidad San Francisco de Quito’s Galápagos campus and Co-Director of the Galápagos Science Centre, Professor Carlos F. Mena (recorded with a chorus of barking sea lions providing an unmistakably local backdrop!)
From a NASA fellowship and early work modelling human behaviour in the Amazon, Carlos explains how his research led to a simple, uncomfortable truth: conservation succeeds or fails at the level of families. In places where survival is precarious, the forest becomes a bank account — and any environmental message that ignores poverty, health and education is doomed to stay theoretical.
From there, the conversation moves to the Galápagos as a living, inhabited system: a place of extraordinary protection and extraordinary pressure. Carlos describes the islands’ dependence on tourism, the “fortress conservation” model that tightly regulates both people and nature, and the political push to open the archipelago to outside investment. They explore how the Science Centre builds trust with local communities after a history of extractive science, why co-authorship and two-way learning matter, and how citizen-science livelihoods emerged in the shock of COVID.
The episode ends where it began — with sea lions spilling into town — as Carlos unpacks the new sea lion management plan, the challenge of educating residents and tourists alike, and the looming threat of disease in small, irreplaceable populations.
This episode was recorded live at the Galápagos Science Centre on Isla San Cristóbal in the Galápagos. Every episode, with notes and links: treesacrowd.fm Support the show on Patreon – any profit goes to our guests’ charities: patreon.com/treesacrowdpod More about David: davidoakes.co.uk · Instagram @doakesdoakes · Bluesky @davidoakes.bsky.social Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Trees A Crowd
Recorded live at the Wild Summit, Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, sits down with David Oakes to talk about what his "Green Britain" could actually look like. They probe the paradox at the heart of nature access, whether the Green Party's environmental and social-justice instincts really pull in the same direction, and why Zack thinks capping corporate money in politics is a necessary precondition for making our country more full of nature. Along the way: commitments on bottom trawling and grouse moors, the UK's legal target to protect 30% of green and blue spaces by 2030, and a belief that education lies at the heart of all of it. With time running out for the planet, champions of biodiversity are in short supply near the ballot box. Under Zack's leadership, is Britain destined for a Green Party - or just green, partly? Every episode, with notes and links: treesacrowd.fm Support the show on Patreon – any profit goes to our guests’ charities: patreon.com/treesacrowdpod More about David: davidoakes.co.uk · Instagram @doakesdoakes · Bluesky @davidoakes.bsky.social Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Recorded on the outskirts of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, this episode drops David into the high-stakes reality of animal conservation. Guided by Peter Blinston and his team at Painted Dog Conservation, David joins the people whose work keeps Lycaon pictus alive in the buffer zone: Belinda Ncube, PDC’s first female ranger, whose story runs from childhood bush camp to leading a unit of women in a landscape still shaped by patriarchal assumptions; Adraino Sitole, who began as a community volunteer after a Painted dog was killed in a snare just moments from his village, and now tracks poachers with trained sniffer dogs while helping remove thousands of wire traps from the bush; and David Kuvawoga, PDC's Director of Operations, who literally takes Oakes from patrol to rapid response - explaining how the team uses radio alerts and 24/7 tracking to push packs away from snares, highways and other anthropogenic threats, and why, in this context, the low risk of ‘...a habituated wild dog is better than a dead wild dog.’
Around a table at the Woodland Trust's headquarters in Grantham, David sits down with three of the most powerful voices in British conservation: Darren Moorcroft, Chief Executive of the Woodland Trust; Craig Bennett OBE, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts; and Beccy Speight, Chief Executive of the RSPB - between them, custodians of millions of members, thousands of nature reserves, and decades of hard-won environmental progress.
Following on from two episodes recorded on San Cristóbal Island, this episode finds David having set sail across the Galapagos archipelago for Santa Cruz; destination: the headquarters of the Charles Darwin Foundation — the research institution founded alongside the Galápagos National Park, and still at the heart of how science becomes conservation on the islands.
A Galápagos native – born on Isla Isabela – marine biologist and conservation geneticist Diana Pazmiño focuses her research on rays, sharks, and the human communities that live alongside them.