Environmental stories, from salmon rivers to The Sims.
Terra Informa is a volunteer-made environmental program from CJSR 88.5 FM, and the host's chair changes hands across episodes. Its subjects run from salmon farms and fisheries jurisdiction to The Lorax, The Sims, and a writer and her father blocked by fallen trees in a West Coast storm.
PRESS PLAY
Terra Informa is an environmental program from CJSR 88.5 FM, and its credits note that all of its content is created by a team of volunteers. No single voice owns it. The host changes from episode to episode: Amanda Rooney and Sophia Osborne share one, Elizabeth Dowdell hosts another, and Andrea Miller introduces an episode on science communication. Sophia Osborne also appears as a guest, interviewed as a freelance writer, editor and Terra Informa alum. Range is the draw. Pacific salmon get a two-part series. The first part explains why an anadromous fish is hard to manage: Fisheries and Oceans Canada holds the file, the rivers and streams are provincial, and the two governments have only recently begun working together across that line. It also points to the roles salmon play in Indigenous cultural, political and social traditions, and to stories of successful Indigenous management. The second part turns to aquaculture and salmon health in BC. It explains how counts of spawners and returning fish feed the population models behind much of the evidence on declines associated with salmon farming. Between the science segments, two salmon characters, one named Finley, trade lines about ponds and the ocean, and a short song about a natal pond closes the second part. Pop culture gets the same attention. In a group discussion of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, one participant asks about feeling ostracized for environmental values and another relates to the Lorax's frustration. The talk then reaches an Alberta narrative that casts environmental activism as anti-Albertan. A conversation about The Sims and its eco lifestyle expansion pack follows Sophia Osborne's article from pitch to publication. She explains how she convinced an editor the piece mattered and how writing it for that outlet pushed her thinking toward capitalism and its conflict with environmentalism. That episode carries an explicit-content advisory. The most personal material is an essay she reads about riding out the worst storm in BC Hydro's history on an isolated island. Blocked by fallen trees, she watches her father strain at the branches until islanders clearing the roads in the middle of the storm offer a way home. Energy research gets its turn in an episode with Dr. Valerie Miller named in its title, about how research is shared beyond the academy and how outreach connects people to their energy system. Its framing is plain: energy systems are technical, natural and social all at once. Land acknowledgements naming Treaty 6 and the unceded territory of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations run throughout, and one asks listeners to consider whose version of history informs their understanding of the land.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants environmental stories with a Canadian footing and is happy to move from fisheries jurisdiction and energy research to a personal storm essay or a critique of a video game.
What sets it apart: Made by volunteers at CJSR 88.5 FM with a changing lineup of hosts, it treats children's books, video games and personal essays as environmental material alongside salmon management and energy communication. Land acknowledgements run through its episodes.
A weekly environmental news program covering issues from across Canada & around the world.
A talking salmon is your cue that environmental reporting can have a sense of play.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A storm-battered drive home opens into fear, neighborly help, and the journalism of living through massive storms.
A drive home across Saterna Island becomes a tense, grounded look at what a massive storm can do to a person's sense of control. Sophia Osborne reads from her piece for the Taiyi about being caught in the December storm that hit the West Coast, with trees down across the roads…
Sophia Osborne turns The Sims' green makeover into a smart question about environmental identity and capitalism.
Terra Informa looks at The Sims 4's Eco Lifestyle Expansion Pack through an environmental lens, following freelance writer and editor Sophia Osborne from a Passage article pitch into a larger question: what can a beloved game do with the climate crisis?
A salmon story that makes conservation units feel as consequential as the species they belong to.
Pacific salmon come through as a management challenge that will not fit neatly inside one jurisdiction. The episode moves from ocean and stream beauty to the federal-provincial split shaped by salmon's anadromous life, then tightens its focus to the hundreds of genetically…
A careful salmon-farming review that keeps population models, species differences, and ecological uncertainty in view.
Pacific salmon anchor a measured look at how ecological evidence is assembled, challenged, and kept in proportion. The episode follows salmon aquaculture and salmon health in BC from possible farm encounters during migration to the population models used to compare spawning…
A thoughtful Lorax discussion about extraction, environmental isolation, and the courage to do something useful.
Terra Informa uses The Lorax as an entry point into resource extraction, environmental storytelling for children, and the toll that comes with caring loudly.
This episode of Terra Informa revisits a conversation with intern Janina Fuchs about renewable energy and student-led sustainability efforts.
Terra Informa’s Amanda Rooney and Sophia Osborne frame Sophia’s Taiyi piece, "Dad’s World Was My Refuge Until the Windstorm Hit," around the December 20, 2018 storm on Saturna Island.
Terra Informa’s `Revisiting: More Than a Game` uses The Sims 4’s `Eco Lifestyle` pack to ask what happens when climate politics gets translated into a purchasable aesthetic.
["Terra Informa turns to Pacific salmon with Francis and Finley, two fish from the Adams River whose journey reaches the Pacific Ocean and returns upriver to spawn.", "Sarah Chitsaz interviews Emmy Page of Pacific Wild, who says salmon feed humans, bears, wolves, and southern resident killer whales and fertilize forests after spawning.", "Page links salmon decline to shoreline development, runoff, climate-driven heat waves, drought, flooding, and aquaculture, and says salmon management is split between Fisheries and Oceans Canada and provincial freshwater systems.", "She says 80% of known spawning streams lacked public data before 2018, 29 conservation units have never been recorded, and Pacific Wild\u2019s Salmon Count campaign is pushing for more Indigenous Guardian funding."]
Terra Informa host Sarah Chitzaz closes a two-part Pacific salmon series with a focus on salmon aquaculture and salmon health in British Columbia.
["Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.
This episode explores how researchers communicate energy systems to the public and build interdisciplinary connections.
An interview with dress historian Dr.
This episode explores climate fiction and speculative literature, featuring a guest expert and recommendations for Indigenous authors.
This episode of Terra Informa explores solar energy, explaining how it works, its pros and cons, and global leaders in solar power.