Wildlife Episodes

The Chihuahuan Desert rewards a closer look. UTEP botanical curator Kevin Floyd joins Chris Clarke to talk about its plants and wildlife, disputed boundaries, and the challenges of protecting biodiversity as the climate changes.

Burros are magnificent animals. What happens when unmanaged herds overwhelm the desert habitat around them? Dr. Jen Anderson joins Chris Clarke to describe her efforts to restore the Sonoran Desert Sanctuary near Alamo Lake in western Arizona. She recounts damage to palo verde trees, disappearing wildlife, and years of seeking help from the Bureau of Land Management. The conversation brings together desert conservation, federal wild burro management, animal welfare, and hands-on restoration—and includes a detour onto the bridge of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Why do deserts need protection? For the 150th episode of 90 Miles from Needles, Chris Clarke returns to the reasons this work matters: deserts remain widely misunderstood, receive less scientific attention than they deserve, and cannot be protected without confronting questions of justice. Listeners Kimberly, Nancy, and Diane share what the desert means to them, while Chris considers wildfire, Joshua tree science, environmental inequality, the border wall, urban heat, and the love that ultimately lies behind conservation. An after-credits report examines where the podcast has traveled during its first 150 episodes—and where its coverage still needs to go.

Journalist Kimon de Greef follows the dirty business behind psychedelic “toad medicine”: wildlife exploitation, manufactured Indigenous tradition and a global market selling ego death as transcendence.

The boundary between two ground-squirrel species preserves the memory of a wetter Mojave,and a barrier that disappeared thousands of years ago.

Only a handful of vaquitas have recently been observed, but the species doesn't have to be doomed. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho explains why these desert porpoises remain capable of recovery, and what must change to keep them alive.

Kate Scott reports from a tree sit in Lochiel, where activists occupied the last of four landmark cottonwoods after contractors destroyed the others for double-wall construction through the San Rafael Valley.

Chris examines fireworks as a recurring source of wildland ignitions, explaining how invasive grasses and depleted firefighting capacity magnify the danger while proposing safer celebrations suited to desert communities.

Laura Cunningham and Kevin Emmerich trace Greenlink West from the Amargosa Valley toward northern Nevada, arguing that the transmission line will accelerate utility-scale solar, gas generation and hyperscale data-center development across intact desert.

Chris combines practical hot-weather safety with an examination of unequal heat exposure, contrasting voluntary recreation with the risks imposed on migrants, outdoor workers and incarcerated people who often cannot escape extreme temperatures.

A personal history of Cima opens into the evolutionary partnership between Joshua trees and Shasta ground sloths, asking how a plant adapted to past climate shifts can migrate now that its most effective seed disperser is extinct.

Desert tortoise biologist Tim Shields explains experimental tools for deterring ravens, confronting invasive schismus grass and measuring ecosystem health—work intended to give future restorationists practical ecological leverage.