Coronado National Forest, north of Tucson, Arizona is the latest subject of Living on Earth’s occasional series on America’s public lands. There’s plenty of heat and cacti, of course, but also many species ordinarily found far north of the desert Southwest. With a local biologist as her guide, Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb reports on the remarkably diverse biomes of Arizona’s Sky Islands.

The Earth is warming and changing faster than many climate scientists had predicted, and at times the future looks impossibly grim. Yet practical and accessible solutions to climate change are already at hand. The new HBO documentary “Ice on Fire”, produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, focuses on these solutions as well as the dangers and on the scientists who are tackling climate change. Director Leila Conners joined Host Steve Curwood to discuss the making of the documentary and who it aims to reach.

This week, Peter Dykstra joins Host Steve Curwood to talk about how climate change, a key concern these days for Democratic voters, fared in the first series of Democratic debates held on 2 consecutive nights. To the dismay of some candidates and activists, climate change received just 15 minutes in 4 hours, and half of the 20 candidates onstage did not say anything about climate at all. Now the Democratic National Committee appears to be reconsidering its refusal to hold a dedicated climate change debate.

Scientists working on the US-Mexico border face unique challenges when trying to study borderlands ecosystems, thanks to everything from outright harassment at the hands of Border Patrol officers, to tight restrictions on what natural materials can cross the border. They say it’s gotten much worse in recent years since the Trump Administration began advocating for a massive border wall as well as taking a hard line on illegal immigration and asylum seekers. Living on Earth's Bobby Bascomb is producing a series of dispatches from the US-Mexico border and discusses the challenges of doing science on the border with Host Steve Curwood.

President Trump has declared a state of emergency to secure funding for a wall along the US border with Mexico. If built, the wall would disturb critical habitats and block migration routes for animals already stressed by climate change, and could possibly lead to extinction for some rare and endangered species. Biologist and Outdoors Coordinator for the Sierra Club Sergio Avila talks with Host Bobby Bascomb about the impacts of a wall on some rare species including jaguars and pygmy owls.

June 2019 brought world leaders together at two major meetings: the Bonn Climate Conference and the G20 Osaka Summit. Negotiators in Bonn continued their work on hammering out the details of the landmark Paris Climate Agreement. But although much stronger commitments under the Paris Agreement are needed, major polluters have yet to step forward with promises to further curb emissions, and the US is opposed. The US also blocked climate action at the G20 meeting in Osaka. Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, joins Host Steve Curwood to sort through the major takeaways from these meetings.

Every year, an arm of the US Department of Agriculture called Wildlife Services kills millions of native species, including gray wolves, coyotes, beavers, prairie dogs, and even red-winged blackbirds. Now the Center for Biological Diversity is bringing an Endangered Species Act lawsuit against Wildlife Services over its shooting and trapping of more than a thousand beavers in California every year. Collette Adkins, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, joined Host Steve Curwood to explain why Wildlife Services’ program of beaver-killing is harming endangered salmon and steelhead in California that depend on beaver-created habitats.