Line of Sight Podcast · Don Heider PhD, Brigit Helms PhD

Mapping Hope: David Yarnold on GIS, Global Conservation, and the Power of Story

·35 min·2 clips

Women were shut out of humanitarian de-mining until about 15 years ago.

1. Line of Sight speaks with David Yarnold about GIS, global conservation, and his book The Geography of Hope. 2. Bridget Helms and Don Heider host David Yarnold, who led Audubon’s GIS-driven growth, worked at the San Jose Mercury News, and wrote The Geography of Hope. 3. The episode asks how geographic information systems can create practical change in conservation, social justice, business, and public life. 4. David defines GIS as “a way of locating things in the world” by layering data on a map. 5. He says GIS shows “gaps,” “overlaps,” and “opportunities” and is used by Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, the military, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. 6. He describes GIS as infrastructure behind cell phones, maps, and Waymo, which uses 360-degree sensing in cities. 7. David explains that The Geography of Hope began at Audubon, where leaders asked him to bring a shared vision to the organization. 8. He says the Audubon vision focused on protecting “four superhighways in the sky” used by birds across the Americas. 9. He names the San Francisco Bay and the Everglades as examples of priority places identified through GIS. 10. He says the annual ESRI convention exposed him to stories of people using GIS for military, water, and community work. 11. A WHO doctor’s plenary-session story about ending Ebola became a turning point for David’s book idea. 12. David says he approached ESRI founder Jack Dangermond about writing deeply personal case studies rather than standard corporate case studies. 13. He says the project felt like a full-circle return to writing, photography, and design in his own career. 14. Social justice was intentional from the start, and David says some chapters emerged that way more strongly than he expected. 15. He highlights Bakersfield, California, where redistricting became a political-power story after “more than a century” of segregation. 16. He also describes humanitarian de-mining, where women were excluded until about 15 years ago and later improved the work because they knew where explosives were. 17. David says Prague uses GIS to create transparency in government and to balance preservation with the demands of a modern city. 18. He notes that Prague’s GIS work includes traffic, pediatricians, airport congestion, and even questions about solar panels on historic roofs. 19. The tone is conversational, specific, and reflective, with the hosts pressing for practical examples and social impact. 20. Listeners who like conservation, mapping, journalism, and social-justice storytelling will get the most from this episode; listeners who want only technical jargon may skip it.

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