On this episode of Mongabay’s weekly podcast, we look at nature through the lens of wildlife photographer and senior marketing associate at Mongabay, Alejandro Prescott-Cornejo, the multilingual staffer charged with sharing the team’s reporting and mission with the world.

Prescott-Cornejo details how his work with Mongabay intersects with his passion for wildlife photography, what makes a good photo, and how anyone can connect with nature by getting to know their own “local patch.”

“There are so many beautiful things, whether big or small, that can be very, very close to you — and you don't need to go photograph the biggest animals, just photograph what's close,” he says.

His photography — along with images created by three of his colleagues, including Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler — is currently on display at an exhibition at the Linden Street Gallery near Boston. The show’s theme of “Biophilia,” which celebrates humanity's love for nature, also refers to Mongabay’s recent receipt of the Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication, and is on view until Nov. 4, 2025.

Readers and podcast listeners are invited to showcase their own wildlife photography by entering Mongabay’s “Wildlife Wonders” photo contest: starting on Oct. 1, just post your best wildlife image at Instagram and tag it with #MongabayWildlifeWonders and @mongabay in the description for a chance to be featured. The contest will accept entries until Oct. 22.

Find the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. All past episodes are also listed here at the Mongabay website.

Image Credit: Mountain gorillas by Alejandro Prescott-Cornejo for Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Alejandro’s connection with multiple languages

(07:27) Why Alejandro finds healing in nature

(12:59) Get to know your “local patch”

(19:37) Ethical concerns of photography

(24:34) What makes a good photo?

(29:58) Alejandro’s work for Mongabay

(32:50) The Biophilia exhibit, and visiting a gorllia

(41:32) Alejandro’s favorite landscape

Aimee Roberson, executive director of Cultural Survival, joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss how her organization helps Indigenous communities maintain their traditions, languages and knowledge while living among increasingly Westernized societies.

As a biologist and geologist with Indigenous heritage, Roberson is uniquely suited to lead the organization in bridging these worlds, including via “two-eyed seeing,” which blends traditional ecological knowledge and Western science to increase humanity’s ways of knowing, toward a view of people as active participants in shaping the natural world.

Cultural Survival also sees radio as a critical tool for keeping communities together and fostering a relationship with the land. Roberson shares how their robust radio project is specifically designed to train and empower Indigenous media creators to share local news and cultural information of critical importance, in multiple languages across the world.

“It's something that's [a] core part of what we do. Some people are like, ‘Ah, radio, you know, this is 2025. Who cares about radio?’ But Indigenous people really care about radio because it keeps our communities together. It's a primary form of communication.”

Find the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. All past episodes are also listed here at the Mongabay website.

Image Credit:

Lolita Cabrera (Maya K’iche’), an Indigenous rights activist from Guatemala. Photo by Jamie Malcom-Brown/ Cultural Survival.

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Timecodes

(00:00) A bridge between two worlds

(09:28) The fallacy of ‘Objectivity’

(17:20) The Indigenous Kinship Circle

(22:24) We all have Indigenous roots somewhere

(28:19) Indigenous led local radio

(37:55) AI cannot substitute the human experience

An international tribunal of environmental rights activists recently found extensive evidence that the Canadian mining sector is “guilty for the violation of Rights of Nature across South America and Serbia.” The guest on this episode of Mongabay’s podcast corroborates these accusations, and describes human rights abuses in South American nations that she has seen in her reporting, too.

Brandi Morin, a Cree-Iroquois-French environmental journalist and freelancer for Mongabay, discusses how Canadian mining projects impact ecological health and the rights of Indigenous communities in places such as Ecuador and Bolivia.

“Canada is the mining giant of the world, and around the world, they're getting away with atrocities. They aren't regulated very well to hold them to account. It's a free-for-all out there,” she says.

Find the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. All past episodes are also listed here at the Mongabay website.

Image Credit: Intag community members block security guards hired by the mining company Copper Mesa Corporation (at the time a Canadian firm) from entering Junin Reserve in Ecuador in 2006. Image courtesy of Elisabeth Weydt.

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Time codes

(00:00) Canadian mining in South America

(15:39) A ‘green transition’?

(23:50) A mining state in Ecuador

(28:19) The International Rights of Nature Tribunal

(35:00) You can’t protect the Earth by destroying the Earth