Show Notes
This bonus episode was recorded live at the Global Bird Fair, and is a conversation with the Actor, Director, RSPB Ambassador and Trainspotter-turned-Birder, Samuel West. Samuel talks about his recent experiences shooting the Channel 5/PBS Masterpiece remake of “All Creatures Great and Small” in the Yorkshire Dales; how the rural connection to nature and community helped him and many of its viewers through the pressure of the COVID lockdowns, and how the production team had to wrestle with some unique anachronistic wildlife - Swifts appearing in the June-shot Christmas special, Collared Doves appearing in a drama set in 1940 (despite not reaching Yorkshire until 1958), and extinct Red Kites obsessed with photobombing! Samuel’s love of birds began upon a visit to his grandfather in Kenya, has taken him to film “Death in Paradise” in no small part because of the endemic Guadalupian avifauna on set, and helped him with the pressures of running the Sheffield Crucible Theatre. To Sam, nature is key to contentment: “No matter how nice the person is you might be in bed with, it’s worth getting up and getting out at first light, some of the time…” As an RSPB Ambassador, he takes particular relish in raising a placard board; speaking out against environmental concerns such as the construction of the Nuclear Plant, Sizewell C; but also believes British Wildlife easily competes with the impressive sights of the African savannah having seen 4,500 waders take to the air in one bound at RSPB Snettisham. 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.
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!)