Ahead of the milestone COP30 in the Amazon, our People for Planet Summit on 8 October gathered six Whitley Award-winning conservationists and leaders from science, technology, finance and the arts to share solutions to protect and restore the natural world.
Summit speakers and Whitley Award winners were featured across top media outlets – speaking on a range of subjects, from Jane Goodall and the need for conservation heroes, to how tracking species from space will help resolve what’s happened to Europe’s 500 million lost individual birds, and what the boom in demand for gold, which has hit record high prices, is doing to the environment, particularly the Amazon.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme interviewed Dr Fernando Trujillo and Farwiza Farhan about who the modern day heroes are in conservation and why they’re needed now more than ever. Presenter Emma Barnett introduced the award winners to the programme’s 6 million listeners ahead of a “meeting of the world’s top conservationists gathering in London for a major summit on how to protect and restore nature.” The winners cited Sir David Attenborough, Jane Goodall and Jacques Cousteau as their inspiration.
The Sunday Times Science Editor, Ben Spencer, interviewed keynote speaker Professor Martin Wikelski on the upcoming satellite launch to create the “internet of animals” and how to tap into their sixth sense using tiny AI sensors which map their behaviour. In a preview of the potential power of the data, his team found that farm animals could sense an earthquake up to 12 hours before it hit. First, the cows stood still, he said in The Times Environment Weekly newsletter, then the dogs became agitated, then the sheep…. about 45 minutes before the earthquake it was like a trading floor “in a stock market crash – all the animals were going crazy.”
BBC World Service Science in Action was at the summit where presenter Roland Pease interviewed Professor Wikelski, an ornithologist, about his many years tracking wildlife around the world using tiny radio sensors. The interview also featured live recordings from the summit’s compere Liz Bonnin welcoming our 350 guests to the one-day event.
Rare Earth, which WFN Ambassador Tom Heap presents on BBC Radio 4, was at the summit to record interviews ahead of COP30.
To round off the packed week, Dr Fernando Trujillo spoke to presenter Rebecca Kesby at BBC World Service Newshour (from 45.00) – which is broadcast to 66 million listeners around the world – about what soaring global demand for gold is doing to wildlife. Illegal mining of the metal is resulting in mercury being dumped in the Amazon and other rivers. Most governments have banned the use of mercury to isolate gold in mining however, illegal miners sometimes use ten times the level of mercury needed, Fernando said, which is making its way into freshwater ecosystems.
With journalists representing the top media attending and moderating what Country and Townhouse described as the “inspiring initiative” at the Royal Institution, with “visionaries who have launched pioneering projects around the world,” stay tuned for future stories!
