Conservation Amplified
41 episodes listed below
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The People Helping Nature Podcast is all about sharing the incredible stories of people who are helping nature. We do this by bringing a megaphone to the world of conservation by featuring people from all walks of life who are doing interesting and important things to help nature thrive. We aim to make it easy for everyone to learn, understand, take action, and feel like they’re a part of the solution. Our vision is simple: make conservation mainstream... Produced by the Conservation Amplified Charitable Trust. Find out more & join the community at www.conservationamplified.org.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It makes New Zealand conservation legible by connecting field evidence, management choices and public action.
Anna and Callum build each conversation around a practical conservation problem, then keep asking how the work happens. People Helping Nature Podcast moves from marine protection and catchment restoration to alpine weta, lizards, bats and zoo conservation, with close attention…
At the zoo, animals count as customers; your next question is what visitors take home.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at conservation work that depends on shared labor, careful logistics, and fewer exhausted volunteers.
Southern Lakes Sanctuary is presented as a practical conservation effort built on shared work rather than heroics. Six major partners, paid staff, and volunteer groups all seem to pull in the same direction, and the clearest argument is simple: if people spend less time fighting…
Climate anxiety meets planting trees, stream care, and school-based native restoration.
People Helping Nature's conversation with Sally Clegg of Trees for Survival keeps its attention on practical climate action. Students worried about climate change are shown planting trees, looking after streams, and restoring eroded hillsides, so the episode lands as a clear…
Commercial forests become a kiwi habitat question.
Craig Balsom's conversation with Ana and Callum makes a careful case that commercial pine forests may offer more kiwi habitat than is often assumed.
A rare bird becomes a rallying point for wetlands, education, and community action.
Helen Jamieson frames the bittern as more than a rare wetland bird, casting it as an indicator species and a kind of totem that can pull people toward restoration work.
A practical catchment story about farm repair, wetland reinstatement, and profitability.
This episode follows a Western Bay of Plenty farm and the catchment around it, treating land repair as both ecological work and a practical part of running the place.
A sober look at marine loss, protection gaps, and the hard work of recovery.
New Zealand's marine gap is the point here, and Sean Lee keeps it plain: public confidence in protection is far ahead of the protection that actually exists.
A neighborhood-first conservation story that stays practical and civic.
People Helping Nature treats predator-free work as civic organizing as much as conservation. Dan Henry keeps the focus on people: once enough communities care, pressure builds, politicians pay attention, and funding follows.
A clear-eyed conservation conversation about shorebirds, pressure, and the people working to protect them.
Shorebirds are the thread running through this discussion, but the deeper focus is time: species that have changed over millennia, and people trying to catch up with habitat pressure that has shifted hard over the last 200 years.
Mongolian hangout talk with a secret-sharing spark.
Particle accelerators, compost piles and Queen's guitarist, all explained.
Steven Novella and a rotating panel dissect weekly science news and debunk pseudoscience claims.
Long interviews with neuroscientists and philosophers on consciousness, decision-making, and whether AI is anything like a brain.
Samuel Purdie, a herpetologist and lizard and reptile specialist at Southern Lakes Sanctuary, explains how monitoring alpine weta and native lizards in the Southern Lakes is harder than just putting out cameras or tracking tunnels.
Conservation Amplified hosts Tim, Ana, and Callum interview Mark Roper, a senior ecologist and bat expert, about New Zealand's endangered bat species.
Paul Kavanagh, CEO of Southern Lakes Sanctuary, discusses how the consortium collaborates with six partner groups to scale conservation efforts in New Zealand's Southern Lakes region.
Dan Henry, founder of Predator Free Miramar in Wellington, says community action rather than a new tool was the “silver bullet” for predator-free work.
Craig Balsom, Forestry Specialist at Save the Kiwi, says only 5% of wild Kiwi chicks survive to adulthood without predator control and that 1.8 million hectares of New Zealand commercial forest could function as habitat.
People Helping Nature Podcast focuses on Australasian bittern, or matuku hūrepo, with Helen Jamieson of the Forest Bridge Trust describing why a 1.5-kilo, camouflage-heavy wetland bird matters.
Karen Fifield, Chief Executive at Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo since 2006, says modern zoos have moved from 1700s-era “living museum” thinking to conservation organisations.
Anna and Callum welcome Michelle Impey back to talk about building a career with purpose.
The conversation tackles the state of New Zealand’s oceans and why public perception sits so far from reality.
Interview with John Burke, a Bay of Plenty farmer who transformed his family's degraded farm into a conservation success story over 25 years.
Steve Hathaway makes the case for starting with children.
Anna and Callum announce their upcoming 11-week cycling adventure along the Danube River, covering 2,800 km across 10 countries to explore and share conservation stories.
Sally Clegg from Trees for Survival talks about bringing native forests back through schools and helping students turn climate anxiety into action.
Keith Woodley of the Pukorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre describes why the Firth of Thames, Manukau Harbour, and other New Zealand estuaries support huge numbers of shorebirds, including 14,000 to 60,000 birds at peak overlap.
This episode discusses the impact of Australian brush-tailed possums on New Zealand's native biodiversity and the efforts of Pest Free Banks Peninsula to eradicate them.
People Helping Nature Podcast episode 28 brings back Sam the Trap Man to explain how catchment groups in Aotearoa NZ have moved from a water-quality niche into farming, biodiversity, emergency response, and regional projects.
An interview with Vicky Connor about the 'Always Be Naturing' campaign to make conservation mainstream in New Zealand.
An interview with a conservationist about fieldwork and challenges in protecting the kea parrot in New Zealand.
An interview with a conservationist about the endangered kea parrot and efforts to protect it.
An interview with penguin scientists about monitoring and protecting korora (little blue penguins) in New Zealand.
An interview with Ora Barlow about the Raukumara forest restoration project and indigenous conservation efforts.
A conservationist recounts returning to his childhood hunting grounds to find native species gone and starting a community-led restoration effort.
An interview discussing the unique biodiversity of New Zealand and the importance of conservation.
An interview exploring how the kōkako bird serves as an indicator of forest ecosystem health in New Zealand.
A discussion on the role of disease in ecosystems and human responsibility in conservation, featuring a veterinarian.