Show Notes
Chris Packham is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable faces on British Television. He’s been a mainstay of the BBC’s Natural History programming for nearly 40 years. Alongside this commitment he also currently serves as President for the Bat Conservation Trust and Vice President for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust, Butterfly Conservation, and the RSPCA. In this two-part discussion, David and Chris walk through the New Forest (the site of both their childhoods), and discuss how Chris came to prominence on Television, and then balanced his role there alongside his creative passions and his environmental concerns and campaigns.
In search of Chris’ favourite Beech, David and Chris set out into the fabric of their lives – the New Forest. In the shade of “…a giant green cathedral, bathed in green light” they discuss the pressures facing one of Britain’s favourite national parks, the fact that even Belgium has a wolf-pack, and how over-grazing in the New Forest needs to be resolved for a healthy ecosystem.
Closer to home, the big questions are asked: Should Chris’ father have helped him boil the head of a Pilot Whale? Should Chris’ own parenting skills have involved putting wasps on his step-daughter Megan McCubbin’s nose and then making her dissect Roadkill? And should Chris, at 61, climb the 30 foot into a Scots Pine tree to examine an abandoned Osprey nest whilst recording a podcast?!
The driving force behind Chris is an obvious one: “I’ve got to do something, I’m running out of time; I don’t want to leave this world in a worse place than I inherited it.” But where does Chris stand on the effectiveness of modern non-violent protest? Is it too little too late? Or is something more dramatic required? 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!)