Wildlife Episodes

Journalist Zak Podmore connects proposed nuclear-waste storage in southeastern Utah with the rapid ecological recovery emerging from Lake Powell, asking who bears the nuclear fuel cycle’s costs and what a restored Glen Canyon could become.

Mary O’Brien of Project 1100 explains how commercial honeybees compete with and spread disease to native solitary bees, why public lands are essential pollinator refuges and what genuine bee conservation requires.

Rick LoBello describes a lifelong effort to connect protected lands on both sides of the Rio Grande, using wildlife recovery, community relationships and environmental education to revive the vision of an international Big Bend park.

Chris explores desert quiet as an ecological soundscape rather than emptiness, showing how noise pollution masks wildlife, displaces animals and makes ecological loss harder for people to recognize.

Conservation biologist Nick Graver explains how climate change, invasive grasses and human-caused fire undermine Joshua tree recruitment—and why shutdowns and federal cuts obstruct the long-term research and coordination recovery requires.

Mandy Culbertson explains how state wildlife agencies and commissions govern most American wildlife, why special interests often outrank biodiversity and how public participation can make wildlife policy more democratic.

For his father's 91st birthday, Chris revisits an essay connecting a formative 1966 desert journey, the mutual dependence of Joshua trees and their moths, and the literal kinship joining every generation of life.

A monsoon in Twentynine Palms becomes an exploration of how scarce water shapes desert land and life, why rain smells so extraordinary, and how to stay safe when celebration turns into flash flooding.

Brendan Cummings explains California's Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan, the compromises behind the 2023 law and the difficult work of protecting climate refugia while development and fire continue.

On the Dome Fire's fifth anniversary, Chris returns to Cima Dome to confront the loss of its vast Joshua tree forest, the spread of invasive grasses, uncertain restoration and his own enduring solastalgia.

Parker Lloyd tours the Nature Center at Pia Okwai, where Tracy Aviary and West Valley communities are restoring former industrial land as wildlife habitat and an environmental-justice gathering place.

Chris challenges claims that genetically edited gray wolves amount to resurrected dire wolves, asking whether de-extinction can succeed without habitat, ecological relationships and learned animal culture.