Holiday Break

Is Ireland too safe for its own good? Are you ready for three weeks without electricity or running water? And should we spend public money on concrete or pay farmers to slow the flow of water upstream? This episode brings you a panel discussion recorded at a learning exchange event, part of Transition Kerry’s Community Climate Adaptation & Resilience Programme. It’s hosted by Sari Houlihan, presenter of Agritime, Radio Kerry’s farming and rural affairs programme. Ciarán Nugent, a forester, fire management specialist and Civil Defence volunteer, explains why living in one of the safest countries in the world can leave us blind to risk. He shares lessons from Covid, Storm Éowyn and a burst water main that left a Kerry town queuing at tankers. Bláthnaid O’Loughlin of the River Basin Management Service talks about heavier downpours, degraded rivers and nature-based solutions, from restoring wetlands to softening our gardens and drivewaysSubscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTube

This is a recording of a panel discussion, ‘Empowering our communities to adapt, thrive and flourish’, held during a learning exchange event as part of Transition Kerry’s Community Climate Adaptation & Resilience Programme. It was hosted by Catríona Fallon, co-founder of the Green Arts Initiative in Ireland and press contact for Transition Kerry, whom you might remember from episode 218. Catríona was joined by three guests, each bringing a different perspective on how local communities can prepare for a changing climate. Brigid O’Connor is an organic sheep farmer and Farming for Nature Ambassador who has been involved in community development for many years. She now runs farm walks that tell the story of the local area’s farming and folklore traditions. Thomas O’Connor, who also joined me in episode 218, spoke about food, farming and ‘Feeding the Kingdom’. Thomas runs Manna Organic Store with his wife Claire and sits on the board of Talamh Beo. Finally, Dr Nuala Rigney, a recently retired GP with more than 30 years of experience in rural communities at home and abroad, spoke about the health effects and challenges of climate change. While in Kerry, I also recorded individual conversations with Brigid and Thomas, which will be published in the upcoming episodes, so stay tuned.Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTube

Is it a wild boar or a feral pig in the Scottish Highlands? Does it really matter what we call it? And how can an animal that was once native end up on the list of non-native invasive species? In ten years of this podcast, wild boar came up many times in episodes about hunting, genetics, rewilding and even swine fever, yet we never had an episode dedicated to them. Today we fix that. Descendants of animals that escaped or were released from farms now roam the Scottish Highlands, but there is still no agreement on what they are, whether they belong and what should be done about them. As it turns out, the name matters a great deal. It shapes how people relate to the animal, how they react when they meet it and how, or if, it is managed. And many of the same questions are being asked here in Ireland.To discuss this topic I'm joined by Toryn Whitehead, a PhD researcher in the Department of Geography at King's College London and one of the authors of the paper 'Feral Pigs or Wild Boar? Emerging Interpretations of Belonging and Coexistence in the Scottish Highlands'. Toryn's path to this work is unusual, as he started out with a degree in chemistry before swapping the lab bench for interviews with crofters, gamekeepers and landowners. During our conversation, we go through the history of wild boar in Scotland, from their extirpation centuries ago to the farm imports of the 1980s. We discuss the strange legal situation where the same animal is a wild boar inside the fence and a feral pig once it steps outside. Toryn also explains the 'extinction of experience' and why, even though wild boar feature in clan crests and old songs, one crofter told him they are 'vermin, not game'.We also talk about the hands-off approach of the Scottish government, which leaves landowners to decide what to do with the animals on their land, and the tensions this creates between neighbours, especially when a rewilding estate becomes a safe haven for boar. We touch on the threat of African swine fever and the lack of any reliable data on numbers and impacts, which leaves plenty of room for misinformation. Toryn shares the story of a video of a sow charging a dog that spread quickly through Facebook and WhatsApp. To some it was an attack, while people from Spain and Estonia saw a mother protecting her piglet. Finally, Toryn tells us about his work with other researchers and NGOs to start a national conversation about these animals, and why empathy matters so much when a species returns after centuries of absence.Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTube

Why does the blackthorn along our motorways flower weeks before the blackthorn in the hedgerows? How did Ireland end up with so many deer, and would bringing back the wolf solve the problem? And are farmers really the villains that some headlines make them out to be? Every now and then there is an episode with a guest who needs no introduction, and this is one of them. I'm joined by Éanna Ní Lamhna, biologist, broadcaster, Irish Times columnist and a panellist on RTÉ's Mooney Goes Wild since 1995. She is also a former president of both An Taisce and the Tree Council of Ireland. Our conversation opens with gardening, as Éanna explains why a weed is simply a plant in the wrong place. She also tells us why the real trouble starts when garden plants such as rhododendron escape into the wild, and how to keep garden birds safe from disease at the feeder.From there, we move on to the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use, where Éanna is communications officer. She explains how rat poisons move up the food chain, with traces found in 80% of Irish barn owls and even in sparrowhawks and falcons that never eat rats. Éanna doesn't let me off the hook either when I share the story of the mice in my shed and the buzzard I spotted a few days after putting out poison. Then we turn to deer, a subject close to my heart and the hearts of many listeners. Éanna explains how the loss of the wolf, the arrival of sika and fallow deer, and plenty of grassland led to the numbers we see today. She also tells me why today's Ireland has no room for wolves. Would she press a button to make all sika deer disappear? And what can each of us do about the problem? Her answer is simple: eat venison.In the final part of our conversation, we talk about farming and the uneasy relationship between farmers and environmentalists. Éanna argues that farmers are among the most regulated people in the country and that most of them want to see birds and wildlife on their land. She doesn't ignore the problems, such as the switch from hay to silage that hit curlews and corncrakes, or nutrients washing into our rivers. But she also points to the forces behind these changes, from EU payment schemes to supermarkets selling carrots below cost. And she has a challenge for those of us who complain about the price of food while mowing our lawns every week. If you enjoy this episode, I recommend Éanna's 'The Great Irish Biodiversity Book', and as Éanna says, go out and enjoy the world around you!Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTubeTommy’s Outdoors is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk

What does the label 'protected area' actually tell you about what is being protected? How did the wolf lose its strict protection status in the EU? And what about a legal system that looks strong on paper but leaves animals exposed on the ground? Those questions sit at the heart of 'Protecting Wildlife in Europe: A Comprehensive Analysis of Legislative Frameworks and Their Shortcomings', a paper published in July this year in the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy. Today I'm joined by both of its authors. Caroline Cox is an Associate Professor in Wildlife Crime and Policy at the University of Portsmouth. Dr Meganne Natali is a lawyer and legal consultant specialising in wildlife crime, zoonoses prevention and biodiversity conservation. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Portsmouth School of Law. Europe has strong institutions, extensive legislation and considerable scientific knowledge. What it doesn't have, they argue, is a body of law that treats wild animals as individuals capable of suffering rather than as stock, functions and entries in an annex.Caroline and Meganne first met at a conference in Florence and have worked together ever since. Caroline spent years on elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade before turning her attention to wildlife closer to home. Our conversation starts with fragmentation. EU wildlife law is not one system but several layers sitting on top of each other. The Birds Directive, the Habitats Directive, CITES and national legislation each bring their own lists of species, different listings trigger different levels of protection, and implementation is left to member states. From there we move to national parks. In England and Wales the framework dates to 1949, with two aims that regularly collide, conserving the landscape and giving everyone access to it. Caroline lives in the New Forest and describes what happens there when too many visitors arrive at once. We also get into the badger cull and its link to bovine TB.The wolf takes up a good part of the episode, as it tends to on this podcast. Meganne explains how a species whose numbers grew from around 11,000 animals in 2012 to more than 20,000 in 2023 was moved from Annex IV to Annex V, and what that does and does not change for member states and for wolves. That opens a bigger question about whether protection status should be settled by ecologists or by politicians. There is also a problem with defending wildlife on economic grounds. The same argument runs the other way the moment an animal becomes costly. We also talk about social inequality, compensation for farmers and who ends up carrying the cost of conservation.Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTubeThe guest featured in this episode paid a nominal guesting fee. This fee did not directly influence the content of the episode. The guest had no editorial control, did not review the episode before publication, and did not influence the questions asked during the interview.

How do you tell solid science from something dressed up to look like it? Are we living through the sixth mass extinction? And why is the climate crisis not the worst of the planetary boundaries we have crossed? My guest today is Amy McEuen, a professor of Biology at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she has taught environmental biology, ecology and conservation biology for more than twenty years. Her book, 'How to Think Like an Ecologist: A Non-Scientist's Guide to Saving Our Planet', is written for people without a science background and is laid out like a field guide, so you can read the chapters in any order you like. What caught my attention is that Amy spends the opening chapters on what science actually is and on how misinformation works before she gets anywhere near ecology. Our conversation follows much the same path.We spend a fair bit of time on that groundwork because I think it matters a lot. Amy explains the difference between misinformation and disinformation, why fact checkers read laterally rather than arguing with an article line by line, and why prebunking works better than debunking. From there we move on to nature itself. If humans are part of nature, does the word still mean anything useful? Amy also argues that we get further by asking people what they value about a particular place than by asking them to defend nature in the abstract. We also pull apart the idea of a historical baseline, since choosing a date to restore the land to is a fairly arrogant thing to do and not much use when the whole global environment is shifting.Then we get to the numbers. To qualify as a mass extinction, 75% of taxa have to disappear from the planet, and Amy explains why the honest answer to 'are we in the sixth one?' is both yes and no. We also talk some more about planetary boundaries and why biodiversity loss and novel entities such as plastics and synthetic chemicals are worse than climate change, even though climate takes up most of the oxygen in the room. We finish with talking about policy, paradigms and eco-anxiety. Is policy change enough on its own or does something have to shift in how we see the world? And how do you talk about any of this without either frightening people into switching off or offering false comfort?Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTubeThe guest featured in this episode paid a nominal guesting fee. This fee did not directly influence the content of the episode. The guest had no editorial control, did not review the episode before publication, and did not influence the questions asked during the interview.Tommy’s Outdoors is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk

Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTube

Why do we feel so hopeless about the future of the natural world? Is nature really collapsing everywhere we look or have we simply been told a one-sided story? And what if our lack of control over ecosystems turns out to be our greatest strength? In this episode I welcome back expert ecologist and author Simon Mustoe to talk about his new book, ‘How to Survive the Next 100 Years: Lessons from Nature’. It picks up where his previous book left off, building on the idea that we are not separate from nature but central to it. Simon explains how we sit right in the middle of the trophic pyramid and depend entirely on the animals around us to keep energy moving through the systems that sustain life. It is a perspective that quietly reframes how we think about our place on this thin, living veneer of the planet.Much of our conversation focuses on balance, both in nature and in how we talk about it. Simon points to a reanalysis of the Living Planet Index suggesting the picture is closer to fifty-fifty than the widely reported three-quarters decline, with many animals, including large ones like humpback whales, recovering on their own. We get into why bad news spreads so easily while good news gets buried and how our understanding of the world often lags decades behind reality. From novel ecosystems and so-called invasive species to the misuse of words like 'pest' and 'overabundance', Simon makes the case for caution, humility and a kind of Hippocratic oath for conservation: first, do no harm. He argues that forcing outcomes rarely works, because the forces shaping ecosystems are far more powerful than we are.We also explore why blanket solutions so often fail, using examples from Australian farming, koala conservation and a single burrowing animal that increased the profitability of a sheep farm. Simon believes communities, not top-down policy, hold the key to lasting change, and that real progress comes from enabling people to act locally rather than shouting at politicians or each other. He leaves us with simple, practical advice: get outside, pay attention to the nature on your own doorstep, support what others are doing nearby, and step back from the relentless flow of negative news. It is a refreshingly balanced, middle-of-the-road conversation that gives you something rare these days, a genuine sense of agency.Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTube

What if the environmental movement has badly underestimated our ability to solve the climate crisis? Could renewable energy grow so fast that we are out of fossil fuels within a decade? And once emissions fall away, how do we deal with the carbon already in the atmosphere? In this episode I'm joined by Benoit Lambert, author of the book titled ‘Biogeotherapy: nature-based climate solutions, life as a geological healing force’. Benoit has a rich and varied background, from planting four million trees by hand across five Canadian provinces to spending eighteen years in Geneva, where he completed a PhD and worked as French editor for the Worldwatch Institute. He argues that reducing emissions, while essential, is only half the task. We also need to capture and store carbon dioxide, and nature offers the tools to do exactly that.Much of our conversation focuses on the four pillars Benoit sees in nature-based solutions: regenerative agriculture with cover crops and no-till methods, carbon ranching through holistic grazing, massive reforestation, and biochar. He explains how the world's soils have lost a great deal of their carbon and why putting it back, with proper science behind it, can fix the problem faster than most people imagine. Benoit is honest about the friction within the green movement too. He describes losing friends over these ideas, and reflects on why so many who spent decades defending degrowth react with hostility when shown that solar and wind have followed a path nobody expected. It's a frank look at how worldviews get tangled up with identity.We also talk about the people, like Tony Seba, who did predict the speed of the renewable transition and why exponential change is so hard for us to grasp. Benoit shares practical steps ordinary people can take, from supporting regenerative farming to using biochar in their own gardens. Throughout, his message is one of grounded hope: the science of soils has moved on enormously since 1992, the financial levers exist, and a solar economy paired with nature could give us prosperous, healthy societies for centuries to come. Whether you lean optimistic or sceptical, this is a conversation that will challenge how you think about what's actually possible. And yes, it might involve cycling to work.Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTubeThe guest featured in this episode paid a nominal guesting fee. This fee did not directly influence the content of the episode. The guest had no editorial control, did not review the episode before publication, and did not influence the questions asked during the interview.Tommy’s Outdoors is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk

Why are red deer populations in Germany growing in number and antler size yet sitting in deep genetic trouble? What is the difference between census population size and effective population size, and why does it matter? And how can a satirical award for the worst-built wildlife crossing draw attention to the issue of habitat fragmentation? In this episode, I sit down with Frank Zabel, a wildlife biologist, campaigner, and co-host of the award-winning JAGDcast podcast. Frank also runs the nonprofit RotWildes Deutschland (Non-profit Society for Wildlife Biology & Sustainable Use) and authored the 2022 deer management plan focused on corridors and mapping. Although Frank is speaking from Germany, many of the issues he raises will feel familiar to anyone interested in deer management, habitat connectivity, and how policy decisions made decades ago continue to shape what happens on the ground today.Frank takes a broader view of red deer as an umbrella species, using them as a vehicle to talk about biodiversity in general. We discuss the historic genetic bottleneck created when red deer were extirpated in much of Germany after the 1848 revolution and how that legacy still shapes populations today. Frank explains why most German red deer populations now sit dangerously close to or below the threshold where the issues with inbreeding start to appear, even though the absolute numbers look healthy on paper. Our conversation also covers the red deer management areas in southern Germany, where deer must be shot once they leave designated zones, a policy decision rooted in post-war food production priorities that has become, in Frank’s words, a far more effective form of habitat fragmentation than any motorway.We then shift gears to the lowering of the wolf’s protection status in the EU. Frank offers a perspective that may surprise some listeners, particularly those who expect hunters to take a predictable line on the wolf question. He also makes a compelling case for why looking at wolves across the whole of Europe through a single lens misses what is actually happening on the ground in different regions. We touch on what hunters need to do when wolves return to an area, and Frank shares an observation from his time in Sweden that illustrates the point well. This is a rich conversation packed with wisdom and insight.Subscribe to Tommy's Outdoors: Conservation and Science NewsletterSupport the Podcast and Buy Me a Coffee.Follow Tommy's Outdoors on Bluesky, Instagram or YouTube