Given that we are so close to the start of a new year, over the next couple of weeks on the podcast I wanted to stop and have a look at how our global, regional, and local environments are tracking along.

Today and next week, I’m lucky to be chatting with Professor William Laurance. He is a distinguished research professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. A tropical conservation biologist, he has written eight books and over 450 scientific and popular articles. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and has received many professional honors, including the Heineken Environment Prize. He is director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University, and founded and directs ALERT—the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers—a global conservation-advocacy group that reaches over 250,000 readers each week. He is also a four-time winner of Australia’s Best Science Writing Prize.

The topic of today’s chat is Biodiversity. Many articles and media over the last few years have reported that the Earth is facing a Mass Extinction event on a scale similar to that which wiped out the dinosaurs. It’s been termed the Sixth Mass Extinction event and is really quite scary for life as we know it on Earth.

In today’s podcast Bill and I discuss: 

• What biodiversity is and why it’s important.
• What this Sixth Mass Extinction event means.
• The current rates and percentages of biodiversity loss
• Where Australia sits among the rest of the world on the issue of biodiversity.
• What needs to happen to halt, or slow the current rates of biodiversity loss worldwide.

This is a really meaty episode but I’m excited and proud of that. I don’t like to shy away from the big issues on this podcast which is why I’ve invited Bill to come on and share his insights and knowledge on the topic of biodiversity.