Watching Birds in New Zealand with Brent Stephenson

New Zealand is famous for its epic landscapes. It’s become a favorite place for filmmakers who want dramatic scenery. But New Zealand is also known for having unique and unusual wildlife, particularly its birds. There are more than 370 species of birds that can be found in New Zealand, about a quarter of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

Brent Stephenson knows New Zealand’s birds better than just about anybody. He’s an ornithologist with a Ph.D. in Zoology from Massey University who has led birding expeditions in New Zealand and around the world. At one point he held the record for the most birds seen in New Zealand by a person in a single year! One species, the New Zealand storm petrel, was thought to be extinct until Brent spotted one in 2003. Brent is also a photographer and author of the book, Birds of New Zealand: A Photographic Guide.

Join Wild World host Scott Solomon on a trip to New Zealand with the Rice Alumni Traveling Owls! The Traveling Owls program offers exciting intellectual itineraries to destinations across the globe. You don’t have to be a Rice alum to participate in Traveling Owls programs. Scott will be hosting a Traveling Owls trip to New Zealand in December 2025 on a custom itinerary by International Seminar Design, Inc. Visit https://alumni.rice.edu/travelingowls/new-zealand-wonders for details or call ISDI at 202-244-1448 to sign up!

More info about New Zealand birds:

https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/birds/

https://www.expeditions.com/expedition-stories/stories/slideshow-the-birds-of-new-zealand

More info about New Zealand

https://www.britannica.com/place/New-Zealand

This episode of Wild World was produced by 3WireCreative with support from the Rice Alumni Traveling Owls.

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio, the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips. Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it.

Mentioned in this episode:

Traveling Owls New Zealand v2

Discovering the Natural...

There are more than 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth. But rather than being spread evenly across the planet, they tend to be clustered in particular locations. A cluster of active volcanoes occurs in east Africa, in what’s known as the Great Rift Valley, which runs through the continent of Africa from Ethiopia in the north to Mozambique in the south.

Like other places where volcanoes are clustered, such as the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Great Rift Valley is a place where the boundaries between Earth’s tectonic plates meet. In some places, like the Andes of South America, the plates are moving toward one another, causing one plate to be forced below the other, which leads to the formation of tall mountains as the plates buckle and fold. But in East Africa, the plates are moving away from one another. In the gap between them, depressions are created that form large valleys, or lakes as water accumulates. But in a few spots, the separation of these massive plates creates an opening where magma from deeper in the Earth can make its way up to the surface. Where that happens, you get a volcano.

Dr. Kayla Iacovino is a geoscientist who has studied volcanoes all over the world. She has a Bachelor’s degree in geology from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge and her current position is Senior Research Scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She has also done fieldwork in Antarctica, Costa Rica, Chile, Italy, North Korea, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her work has been featured on numerous documentaries, including a BBC documentary about her work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The DR Congo, or DRC, is the second largest country in Africa and is located in the center of the continent. The Congo river flows through it, surrounded by the world’s second largest rainforest. The eastern edge of the country, near the border with Uganda and Rwanda, has rugged mountains. This is where the country’s two active volcanoes are located, Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira. In 2002, an eruption of Nyiragongo devastated the nearby city of Goma. Kayla Iocovino was part of the research team that visited these mountains along with the BBC film crew. I watched the documentary and my jaw was on the floor when I saw how Kayla and her team literally rappelled down into the crater of Nyiragongo, at the bottom of which was a massive lava lake– the largest in the world.

To learn more about Kayla Iacovino’s research on volcanoes, visit her website: https://www.kaylaiacovino.com.

Did you know Wild World has a merch shop? You can get a T-shirt, coffee mug, or hat to show your support of the podcast. You can find it here: https://www.wildworldshow.com/

Wild World is produced by 3WireCreative.

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio, the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips.

The Andes are the longest mountain chain in the world and the second highest mountain range in the world after the Himalayas. There are over a hundred peaks in the Andes with summits that exceed 6,000 meters (19,685 feet)-- and many of the mountains are covered in glaciers.

Glaciers cover 10% of the land area on Earth. They store about ⅔ of the world’s fresh water– an incredibly important and valuable resource. But as global temperatures rise, those glaciers are disappearing. Not only are we losing precious fresh water as glaciers melt into water that flows into the sea and gets salty and harder to use, but all that water is also causing sea levels to rise. If all of the glaciers on Earth melted, the sea level would rise about 230 feet, flooding every coastal city on the planet and displacing about one-third of the world’s population.

One person who is working to help understand and raise awareness of the problem of shrinking glaciers is Ulyana Horodyskyj Peña. She’s a glaciologist– a type of geologist that specializes in studying glaciers. She has a Bachelor's degree in Earth Science from Rice University, a Masters from Brown University, and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder. She was also a Fulbright Fellow in Nepal where she lived for 10 months. Her current job is Communications Lead at North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Colorado, one of nine Climate Adaptation Science Centers across the country.

Ulyana’s Persistent Pollutants Project: https://scienceinthewild.com/persistent-pollutants-project/

To follow Ulyana and Ricardo’s mountain climbing expeditions, visit http://summitssongsandscience.com/index.html

To learn more about glaciers, visit the world glacier monitoring service website wgms.ch/

Watch Ulyana’s TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE54K0sF-1g

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative.

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio, the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips. Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it.

Mentioned in this episode:

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

Please check out our affiliate link for AUTIO!

Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it. Professionally edited and narrated, the audio vignettes combine to paint a picture you’re unlikely to get from a history book or visitor’s guide.

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. In fact, chimps are more closely related to you and I than they are to other apes, like gorillas. That means we can learn a lot about ourselves by studying chimpanzees. But to really learn the secrets of these amazing animals, you can’t just watch them in a zoo. You have to venture out to where they live.

Jane Goodall’s work with wild chimpanzees in Tanzania in the 1960s was groundbreaking in many ways. No one had ever gotten wild chimpanzees to trust them enough to allow close observation of what they do. And, although people had studied captive chimpanzees for decades, she saw chimps doing things that had never been seen before. Her work revealed that wild chimpanzees have much more complex and sophisticated behaviors than people previously thought. That was true of both their individual behaviors– like fishing for termites with a stick– but also their social interactions.

But Jane Goodall’s work also proved that it was possible for wild chimpanzees to become habituated to the presence of humans. And that paved the way for other researchers to do the same...

Researchers like Dr. Jill Pruetz, who has been studying wild chimpanzees in the West African nation of Senegal since 2001 when she began the processing of habituating chimpanzees at a savanna site called Fongoli. While several other groups of forest chimps had been habituated since Jane Goodall’s work in the 1960s, no one had successfully habituated savanna chimps. Until Jill Pruetz did-- and her work has revealed that savanna chimps are quite different from forest chimps.

Jill Pruetz is Regents Professor of Anthropology at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. In addition to publishing dozens of research papers about chimps and other primates, she is also the author of several books, including her latest, Apes on the Edge: Chimpanzee Life on the West African Savanna published by The University of Chicago Press.

Learn more about Jill Pruetz’s work with savanna chimpanzees and how you can help:

Jill Pruetz's Faculty Profile at Texas State University: https://faculty.txst.edu/profile/2013121

Jill Pruetz book, Apes on the Edge: Chimpanzee Life on the West African Savanna: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo238989411.html

Neighbor Ape, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of chimpanzees in Senegal and to the well-being of humans that live alongside them: https://www.globalgiving.org/donate/10235/neighbor-ape/

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative.

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips. Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it.

Mentioned in this episode:

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

Please check out our affiliate link for AUTIO!

Autio is a network...

The Himalayas are the highest mountains in the world. They span some 1,500 miles through the heart of Asia, from Afghanistan to China. Having such enormous mountains makes much of the Himalayan region hard for people to access. But that doesn’t mean that nothing lives there. The Himalayas are home to some incredible types of wildlife that have adapted to the thin air, steep slopes, and very cold temperatures. But living in the upper slopes of the Himalayas makes these among the most difficult wild animals to catch a glimpse of– and even harder to photograph.

Prasenjeet Yadav is a nature and wildlife photographer from India who specializes in capturing images of elusive creatures. Prasenjeet has a background in science, having trained in a field of biology known as molecular ecology before turning to a career as a full-time photographer. His work has taken him all over his home country of India and surrounding areas. His photographs of snow leopards from the Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh appeared in the July 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.

To see some of Prasenjeet Yadav’s photos of snow leopards and other wildlife, visit his website: https://www.prasenjeetyadav.com/. You can also follow him on Instagram: @prasen.yadav.

To learn more about snow leopards and ways to help protect them, visit:

Snow Leopard Trust https://snowleopard.org/

Nature Conservation Foundation https://www.ncf-india.org/

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative.

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips. Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it.

The emergence of life on land was one of the most important moments in the grand saga of life’s evolutionary history. Many of the characteristics of our bodies– like our arms, legs, hips, hands, fingers, and necks– can be traced back to adaptations that occurred during the transition from fish to amphibians. But how do we know that? What evidence exists from this time that can help us piece together the sequence of events that led our ancestors out of the water and onto land?

Neil Shubin is a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and an award winning science communicator whose fieldwork in the Canadian Arctic is helping piece together some of the most important transitions in the history of life. He’s the Robert R Bensley Distinguished Service Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. He’s also the author of several books, including Your Inner Fish, The Universe Within, Some Assembly Required, and a new book entitled Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, The Cosmos, and Our Future. His team has discovered several important fossils that have helped biologists better understand how fish evolved into land animals.

Neil Shubin’s Lab at the University of Chicago: https://shubinlab.uchicago.edu/

Neil Shubin’s new book, Ends of the Earth:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/692649/ends-of-the-earth-by-neil-shubin/

Interactive 3D model of Tiktaalik fossil:

https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/tiktaalik-fossil-body

Qikiqtania - fossil fish that returned from land to water

https://shubinlab.uchicago.edu/2022/07/20/meet-qikiqtania-a-fossil-fish-with-the-good-sense-to-stay-in-the-water-while-others-ventured-onto-land/

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative.

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips. Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it.

Mentioned in this episode:

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

Please check out our affiliate link for AUTIO!

Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it. Professionally edited and narrated, the audio vignettes combine to paint a picture you’re unlikely to get from a history book or visitor’s guide.

The 3-masted topsail schooner Oosterschelde is on a two-year journey around the world, following the route taken by Charles Darwin aboard the HMS Beagle nearly 200 years earlier. The voyage is known as the Darwin200 expedition. It’s the brainchild of Stewart McPherson, a British naturalist and science communicator. McPherson and his colleagues organized conservation projects and educational outreach led by young researchers known as Darwin Leaders in each location.

Thanks to The Explorers Club, Scott had the opportunity to join the Darwin200 expedition in in December 2023 as it sailed from Uruguay to Argentina. During the journey, he sat down with Grant Terrell, an ornithologist serving as the ship’s naturalist who is collecting data about seabirds along the two-year, worldwide journey.

Learn more about the Darwin200 project, and follow the Oosterschelde on its global journey:

https://darwin200.com/

Follow the expedition on social media:

https://www.facebook.com/darwin2002021/

https://www.instagram.com/darwin200_

https://x.com/darwin200_

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUTGh9MgZjuBFQE8i8Bn8Ag

There are also free educational activities and resources shared live each week that are designed to to inspire children’s curiosity and passion for learning: https://worldsmostexcitingclassroom.com/

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative.

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips. Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it.

Mentioned in this episode:

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

Please check out our affiliate link for AUTIO!

Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it. Professionally edited and narrated, the audio vignettes combine to paint a picture you’re unlikely to get from a history book or visitor’s...

Madagascar is home to some incredible wildlife. Many of the animals in Madagascar occur nowhere else on Earth. Among them are lemurs– a group of primates that resemble monkeys but are in fact their own distinct group. But, unfortunately, these remarkable animals are facing enormous challenges.

Dr. Jonah Ratsimbazafyis a primatologist who is from Madagascar and is considered one of the world’s experts on lemurs and is helping lead the fight to protect them. He is the President of the International Primatological Society and was a Co-founder and President of the Madagascar Primate Study and Research Group at the University of Antananarivo, or GERP. He is a member of the African Academy of Sciences and a National Geographic Explorer. He also works with the Houston Zoo as Director of their in-country Madagascar program.

Madagascar Primate Study and Research Group: https://www.association-gerp.org/

International Primatological Society: https://internationalprimatologicalsociety.org/

Houston Zoo’s Madagascar program: https://www.houstonzoo.org/conservation/african-wildlife/#:~:text=The%20Zoo%20is%20committed%20to,primates%20de%20Madagascar%20(GERP).

World Lemur Festival: https://www.lemurreserve.org/world-lemur-festival/

Thanks to Eric Wuesthoff and Amy Dunham for lemur audio and video.

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative

Help support this podcast and future episodes by checking out Autio the perfect travel companion app for more engaging road trips. Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it.

Mentioned in this episode:

Please check out our affiliate link for AUTIO!

Autio is a network of stories, told by master storytellers like Kevin Costner, Phil Jackson, and John Lithgow, with the power to bring the landscape, its people, and its history alive as you pass through it. Professionally edited and narrated, the audio vignettes combine to paint a picture you’re unlikely to get from a history book or visitor’s guide.

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio

AUTIO SHOW NOTE LINK

Autio