About this episode
Wildfires are a devastating, natural phenomenon. But as climate change makes the world hotter and drier, the threat has intensified. Following megafires on Australia’s Kangaroo Island and in the Pantanal in Brazil, project teams got to work helping animals and looking at ways to future-proof their increasingly fragile ecosystems. Rafael Hoogesteijn, jaguar program conflict director at Panthera in Porto Jofre, Brazil, discusses how teams collaborated with the government and local community stakeholders to help the jaguar population as wildfires raged in the Pantanal. Pat Hodgens, fauna ecologist at Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife in Kingscote, Australia, talks about how teams are collaborating on the Kangaroo Island recovery, an effort that made PMI’s 2020 list of Most Influential Projects. He shares details on his team’s efforts to aid a small marsupial native to the island after its habitat was burned in the bushfires. Key themes [01:12] Wildfires: A growing threat around the globe [03:08] Teams, firefighters & military work together to fight Pantanal wildfires [07:04] Partnering with the community to help jaguars [12:10] Initiatives to help the Kangaroo Island dunnart [16:29] Lessons Learned: Act fast and put resources toward wildfire prevention