Wildlife wonder, policy, and fieldwork in conversation.
Trees A Crowd is a nature and conservation interview show led by David Oakes’s curiosity about wild places and the people working inside them. Recent episodes travel through Galápagos research stations, CITES conference corridors, Arctic trade debates, and Indian floodplains where wildlife rescue meets human need.
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Trees A Crowd is a nature and conservation interview show with one foot in field storytelling and the other in environmental policy. It is curious, personable, and often more candid than a polished wildlife documentary. Recent episodes place David Oakes in the Galápagos, near CITES proceedings in Uzbekistan, and around Wildlife Trust of India projects in Assam and Madhya Pradesh. The show likes charismatic species, but it rarely leaves them as symbols. Giant Galápagos tortoises become a way into ecological restoration, invasive species, funding gaps, and the difficult cost of removing rodents from Floriana. Rays and Sally Lightfoot crabs open a conversation about whether conservation rules can alienate the local people they need most. Polar bears lead to international trade, trophy hunting, Indigenous rights, and the long chain between remote communities and global markets. Elephants lead to floodplain rescue, calf rehabilitation, paddy fields, village tolerance, and emergency response teams. The conversations are relaxed. The questions are not always easy. Trees A Crowd repeatedly asks who gets included when science becomes policy, and who pays when wild animals and human livelihoods collide. It also has a taste for conference-room absurdity, from CITES semantics to NGO campaigning tactics. That levity keeps the show approachable without flattening the stakes. Guests are given room to explain technical work in plain language, including barcoding, citizen science, biosecurity, rapid action projects, and wildlife rehabilitation. The show’s best episodes resist simple villains. Sewage campaigns can be effective while still missing agricultural pollution. Bans can protect species while pushing local practices out of sight. Rescue can save an elephant calf while still depending on daily, fragile judgment. Trees A Crowd is for listeners who want wildlife stories with politics, science, travel, and moral friction left intact.
Made for: For listeners drawn to wildlife, conservation science, environmental policy, and the human realities behind protected places. It especially suits people who like expert interviews that stay accessible without sanding off complexity.
What sets it apart: Trees A Crowd combines affectionate natural-history curiosity with on-the-ground conservation reporting from research stations, treaty meetings, rescue centers, and conflict zones. It is unusually comfortable letting beauty, bureaucracy, humor, and ethical tension sit side by side.
Ever wondered what happens when you fill a cello with bees? Or how robins have successfully colonised the outer-reaches of our universe? Or why the world is destined to be populated purely by female turtles? This podcast celebrates nature and the stories of those who care deeply for it. Join artist, actor and Woodland Trust & Wildlife Trusts ambassador David Oakes, for a series of informal, relaxed conversations with artists, scientists, creatives and environmentalists as they celebrate the beauty of the natural world and how it inspires us as human beings. All episodes available at: https://www.treesacrowd.fm/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A condor pulls someone out of bed; David Oakes gives your curiosity somewhere to go.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded Galapagos conservation episode on giant tortoises, invasive rodents, and the cost of restoration.
The hoped-for return of a giant Galapagos tortoise to Floriana gives the episode its horizon, but Rakan Zahawi, chief executive of the Charles Darwin Foundation, keeps the focus on the less polished work behind restoration.
A grounded Galapagos conversation on science, lost tourism work, and community-led conservation.
Trees A Crowd returns to the Galapagos Science Centre for David Oakes's conversation with Professor Carlos Mena, its director and a geographer whose work links Amazon research, NASA-supported projects, and a pandemic-era citizen-science effort.
A grounded Galapagos conservation episode about crabs, rules, and who gets included.
The Galapagos comes through as more than a protected backdrop. In David Oakes's conversation with a Galapagos native born on Isabela, the episode moves from unusual species and ocean currents toward the harder question of how protection works when people live inside the story.
A measured polar-bear trade discussion that keeps Indigenous rights central.
Abraham's film looks at the point where polar-bear hunting, international trade, and downstream profit begin to blur into one another. In conversation with David Oakes, he keeps a firm distinction between Indigenous hunts for food and clothing and trophy hunting, while arguing…
British landscapes, patiently listened to.
Field conservation, told by the people doing it.
One plant per episode, and a guest who knows it.
Conservation science and good news, from people doing the work.
Trees A Crowd's "The Executive Branch" puts David Oakes in conversation with Darren Moorcroft, Craig Bennett, and Becky Spate about how the Woodland Trust, the Wildlife Trusts, and the RSPB work together in practice.
Trees A Crowd visits the Charles Darwin Foundation on Santa Cruz with David Oakes and guest Rakan Zahawi to unpack the Floriana restoration project in Galapagos.
Carlos Mena tells David Oakes that conservation in the Ecuadorian Amazon starts with families, not abstract communities.
Professor Diana Pazmino says a childhood snorkel on Isabela, when she saw a huge group of golden cow nose rays, pushed her toward ray research and conservation genetics.
["Trees A Crowd speaks with Abraham Joffe about Trade Secret, which investigates the international commercial trade in polar bear skins and trophies that many listeners would assume is already banned.", "Joffe says the film follows investigative journalist Adam Cruz, wildlife advocate Iris Ho, and Norwegian photographer-guide Ole Leoden as they examine legal trade routes, undercover buying, and import links through China, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, and Germany.", "He connects the project to a childhood spent traveling Australia in a caravan with author-parents, plus early work with Malcolm Douglas, Don Burrows, and the Kimberleys.", "Joffe says the goal is respectful but urgent debate at CITES, where polar bear uplisting has failed twice and public pressure may change the outcome."]
Iris Ho explains to David Oakes how CITES uses international wildlife-trade policy to affect endangered species at scale, after the 20th conference of the parties in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
David Oakes visits Kaziranga in Assam with wildlife veterinarian Dr Bhaskar Choudhury, who leads the Wildlife Trust of India's Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation.
Sylvia Earle and Tessa Hempson discuss ocean exploration, coral reef decline, marine-animal individuality, and Mission Blue's conservation work with host David Oakes.
M.G.
David Oakes, Dr Hannah Trayford, and Rachel Bigsby examine Britain’s badger cull alongside bovine tuberculosis, which David says spreads from cow to cow in 94% of UK cases.
Trees A Crowd host David Oakes visits the Cotswolds to discuss Purple Emperors with naturalist and writer Matthew Oakes.
David Oakes visits the Forest of Dean with Tim Kendall and Fiona Matthews to investigate wild boar, their disputed origins, and their ecological effects.
Trees A Crowd brings Fiona Matthews, a conservation biologist at the University of Southampton, and Tim Kendall, an English literature professor at Exeter, together to discuss Britain’s wild mammals and their book Black Ops and Beaver Bombing.
Rob Stoneman, head of landscape recovery for the Wildlife Trusts, explains why Atlantic rainforests contain roughly a quarter of Northwest Europe’s lower-plant diversity.
Trees A Crowd host David Oakes visits Holly Kale and Adam Block at the Horstmann Trust in Wales, where about 70 vultures are held for conservation breeding.
Trees A Crowd host David Oakes visits Tate St Ives to discuss Andy Holden’s video installation A Natural History of Nest Building with Holden and his father, Peter.
Trees A Crowd host David Oakes interviews Dr David Hetherington about Eurasian lynx reintroduction and the connected woodland habitat available in Scotland.
David Oakes introduces a podcast episode about desert-adapted black rhinos in Namibia and the rangers who protect them from poachers.
David Oakes introduces a walk with naturalist Chris Packham in the New Forest, highlighting his extensive conservation roles.
David Oakes interviews environmental protester Dan 'Swampy' Hooper about the evolution of protest over 30 years and the power of activism.
Dr Gavin Broad discusses parasitoid wasps, their role in Darwin's thoughts on God and evolution, and their prevalence in British insects.
George Monbiot discusses homemade cider and its connection to printing press technology in a casual interview.