Jungle Bird

Marseilles, France: Established by Paul Watson in 1977, the Sea Shepherd or Neptunes Navy as they've become more affectionately known, have become the world’s largest private navy.

Proudly flying the jolly roger, a black and white ensign featuring a skull and crossbones, Neptune's Navy' comprises a plucky crew of incredibly brave women and men that patrol the high seven seas, in search of the elusive illegal fishing vessels that to date have operated with impunity.

Operating under the philosophy that 'it takes a pirate to catch a pirate' they fill a crucial gap left by the fact that no government is able or prepared to patrol the waters beyond their economic exclusion zones (EEZ’s) leaving our international waters to become a vast lawless place, where quite literally anything goes.

Check out the documentary ‘Chasing The Thunder’ by Vulcan Productions.

Mountain View, California: When Professor Carlos Souza of Brazil approached Google for the extra computing power he needed to calculate deforestation, he set into motion a chain of events that led to the development of their groundbreaking Earth Engine.

As Rebecca Moore, manager of the Earth Engine team explains, they immediately rose to the challenge and soon found themselves in an underground bunker in Utah retrieving 12 years worth of satellite imagery from NASA's Landsat satellite.

This interview was published in the Huffington Post and can be viewed here.

Washington, DC: As the need to feed a burgeoning population is pitched against our ability to preserve rainforests, the need for people like Charles (Chip) Barber has never been greater.

Since graduating in 1989 from UC Berkeley, Chip has spent the last twenty five years working to defend our forests. Having served as 'Chief of Forests' at the U.S. State Department, Chip is no stranger to deftly navigating and balancing the numerous economic, legal and often unseen drivers of illegal logging and deforestation. All realities of a modern-day Earth.

This original interview was on Huffington Post

Palo Alto, California: It gets flagged by my spellchecker and is yet to make it into the Oxford dictionary, but "defaunation", a phrase coined by Professor Rodolfo Dirzo of the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University, describes a phenomena that's posing a serious threat to rainforests and public health.

In the following interview, Professor Dirzo explains how he came up with the name and how, while a forest may look healthy on the outside, the poaching of animals for bush meat and illegal trade, is leading to a disruption of carnivore and herbivore populations.

The original interview was on Huffington Post here

I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Nigel Sizer, Global Director of the Forests Program for the World Resources Institute.

In this interview he discusses Global Forest Watch, a satellite monitoring system, which powered by Google's Earth Engine is capable of detecting illegal logging across the world; in near-realtime.

The original interview can be found on Huffington Post here

Jungle Bird interviews tropical ecologist Mike Hands of the Inga Foundation and learns more about his inga alley cropping system and how this can help with the challenge of slash and burn farming.

Contributing more carbon emissions than global transportation, slash-and-burn farming is one of the greatest forces in rainforest destruction.

This interview was published in Huffington Post and can be viewed here.

30 year old Miranda Gibson climbed a Eucalyptus tree in the Southern forests of Tasmania, South West Australia and lived there for a year.

Suspended on a makeshift platform 60 meters in the air, Miranda demands protection for the ancient forests that surround her, and through a clever mix of social media and pure determination is focusing global attention on her cause.

Speaking with Miranda from her Observation Tree I learned this about her epic tree sit.

Huffington Post: Living in a Tree for a Year, This Is Miranda Gibson's Story here