BiodiverCity

In this week’s bonus episode, Jake talks with Marko Costanzo, renowned foley artist, about how he makes the sounds of nature come to life in movies like Life of Pi and Ice Age with a collection of household objects and a lot of imagination. To learn more about the BiodiverCity podcast, visit www.thegottliebnativegarden.com/podcast

If you counted all the migratory monarch butterflies in California in 1992, you might total five million. But today, that number is less than 2,000. How did one of the most popular butterflies in the world begin to disappear? Xerces Society’s Senior Endangered Species Conservation Biologist Emma Pelton unravels the mystery of why the western monarch is vanishing, and she and horticulturist and native plant specialist Carol Bornstein explore ways that everyone can help. Meanwhile at the zoo, Curator of Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish Ian Recchio tells us how his team is working to save a largely unknown, nondescript amphibian called the southern mountain yellow-legged frog from extinction. To find out more about what the Xerces Society is doing for the Western Monarch and how you can help: https://xerces.org/western-monarch-call-to-action For more information about programs at the L.A. Zoo visit lazoo.org BiodiverCity is made possible with support from The Gottlieb Native Garden. Host: Dr Jake Owens, Director of Conservation, Los Angeles Zoo Executive Producers: Susan Gottlieb Tom Jacobson Diane Shader Smith Denise Verret Producers: April Merl Jake Owens Associate Producer: Brenda Scott Royce Original Music: Micah Smith Additional contributions from: Hannah Beal Bennett Rea

In this week’s bonus episode, Jake talks with JaV’on Latimore, entomologist and entotarian, about insects on the menu and not yuck-ing anyone else’s yum. Follow JaV’on on TikTok at @vonnroach, on Instagram at @en.tune, and on Twitter at @ent_tune. To learn more about the BiodiverCity podcast, visit www.thegottliebnativegarden.com/podcast

It’s all about food as we get behind the scenes at the zoo and discuss one of L.A.’s most complicated diets with Zoo Nutritionist Emily Schwartz and Curator of Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish, Ian Recchio: the diet of the Butaan, one of the world’s largest lizards. After that, we talk about southern Californian indigenous food traditions and how to strike the balance between passing down traditions and depleting the land with Sherman High School Indian Museum curator and co-author of Cooking the Native Way Lorene Sisquoc. For more information about programs at the L.A. Zoo, visit lazoo.org To learn more about the Malki Museum: http://malkimuseum.org/ Buy the Chia Café Collective cookbook, Cooking the Native Way here and at many book sellers. BiodiverCity is made possible with support from The Gottlieb Native Garden. Host: Dr Jake Owens, Director of Conservation, Los Angeles Zoo Executive Producers: Susan Gottlieb Tom Jacobson Diane Shader Smith Denise Verret Producers: April Merl Jake Owens Associate Producer: Brenda Scott Royce Original Music: Micah Smith Additional contributions from: Hannah Beal Bennett Rea

In this week’s bonus episode, Jake talks to Chris Van Dorn, founder of Batman4Paws, about how dressing up as a superhero is turning heads and helping animals in need. To learn more about the BiodiverCity podcast, visit www.thegottliebnativegarden.com/podcast

Have you ever heard a bat? You probably haven’t. While bats are all around us, their presence goes practically undetected because of their nocturnal habits and silent (to us, at least) echolocation. We talk with Natural History Museum (NHM) Wildlife Biologist and Community Science Manager Miguel Ordeñana about how bats help start conversations about conservation in neighborhoods all across L.A., and the Gottlieb Native Garden’s naturalist Scott Logan shares his recordings allowing us to go beyond the limits of human hearing to get a sense of what bat calls really sound like. More about NHM’s Be a Bat Detector Program: https://nhm.org/stories/be-bat-detector More about how to attract bats to your backyard (including DIY plans for bat houses): https://www.batcon.org/about-bats/bat-houses/ For more information about programs at the L.A. Zoo, visit lazoo.org BiodiverCity is made possible with support from The Gottlieb Native Garden. Host: Dr Jake Owens, Director of Conservation, Los Angeles Zoo Executive Producers: Susan Gottlieb Tom Jacobson Diane Shader Smith Denise Verret Producers: April Merl Jake Owens Associate Producer: Brenda Scott Royce Original Music: Micah Smith Additional contributions from: Hannah Beal Bennett Rea

In this week’s bonus episode, Jake talks to 18-year-old Lilly Chertock about who and what inspired her to help create an event to educate and motivate over 1,000 of her fellow students to get involved in fighting climate change. To learn more about the BiodiverCity podcast, visit www.thegottliebnativegarden.com/podcast

This week, we speak with Brad Rumble, a Disney Conservation Hero Award winner for his work building a native plant habitat at Esperanza Elementary School in a concrete-laden part of L.A., about how transforming a school transforms a community. After that, we get a look into a summer program at the L.A. Zoo for the children of migratory workers, where they create imaginative projects centered on animal habitats. But teaching kids about critters is just part of the story. The zoo’s community program manager Coral Barreiro talks about the amazing transformations she sees in the students, and the important message she has for every child: the zoo belongs to you. For more information about programs at the L.A. Zoo, visit lazoo.org BiodiverCity is made possible with support from The Gottlieb Native Garden. Host: Dr Jake Owens, Director of Conservation, Los Angeles Zoo Executive Producers: Susan Gottlieb Tom Jacobson Diane Shader Smith Denise Verret Producers: April Merl Jake Owens Associate Producer: Brenda Scott Royce Original Music: Micah Smith Additional contributions from: Hannah Beal Bennett Rea

In this week’s bonus episode, Jake talks to Warren Dickson, a hip hop performer and entrepreneur from Watts who has collaborated with Save LA Cougars to help foster a love of nature in every neighborhood in L.A., particularly his own. To listen to his track “If I Was Wild,” visit https://ifiwaswild.org/ For more information on 3rd Rock Hip Hop, visit http://www.3rdrockhiphop.com/ To learn more about the BiodiverCity podcast, visit www.thegottliebnativegarden.com/podcast

It’s only fitting that the world’s most famous mountain lion lives in the city of stars, but it hasn’t been an easy ride for P-22. The mountain lion has crossed multiple freeways and found himself stuck in the urban green space of Griffith Park…or has he? We talk with National Wildlife Federation California Director Beth Pratt about why the cougar’s home is his just as much as it is ours, the wildlife crossing that could save millions of animal lives and millions of dollars, and why she has P-22’s face tattooed on her arm. Find out more about Beth Pratt’s work at the National Wildlife Federation here. For more information on Save LA Cougars, visit https://savelacougars.org/ For more information on OutdoorAfro, visit https://outdoorafro.org/ To find out how you can create a Certified Wildlife Habitat visit the National Wildlife Federation at https://www.nwf.org/garden-for-wildlife/certify or find supplies and additional information at https://gardenforwildlife.com/ For more information about programs at the L.A. Zoo visit lazoo.org BiodiverCity is made possible with support from The Gottlieb Native Garden. Host: Dr Jake Owens, Director of Conservation, Los Angeles Zoo Executive Producers: Susan Gottlieb Tom Jacobson Diane Shader Smith Denise Verret Producers: April Merl Jake Owens Associate Producer: Brenda Scott Royce Original Music: Micah Smith Additional contributions from: Hannah Beal Bennett Rea

In this week’s bonus episode, Jake talks to TikTok’s hummingbird guy, Joe Ballantyne, aka JoeyYikes, to find out how he finally got a hummingbird to land on him. See a “best of” reel of his crazy attempts to get a hummingbird to land on him here. To learn more about the BiodiverCity podcast, visit www.thegottliebnativegarden.com/podcast

In the heart of Los Angeles, there is a garden filled with more hummingbirds than anywhere this side of the Mississippi. We talk with the garden’s naturalist, Scott Logan, and UC Davis hummingbird expert and veterinarian Lisa Tell to discover how and why one person’s backyard became a haven for thousands of hummingbirds. We’re also joined by Dr. Eric Strauss, Executive Director of the Loyola Marymount University Center for Urban Resilience, who tells us how wildlife conservation in our urban setting is changing. Less than 10 miles away at the L.A. Zoo, we meet Star, a bird so rare that she was smuggled into the United States in someone’s socks, and it’s up to Mike Maxcy, Lori Rogalski and the team at the Zoo to save her – and maybe her species. Want a peek into what hummingbird tagging looks like? See Lisa Tell collect a hummingbird for tagging here. See the chip reader that the hummingbirds fly through here. For more information about programs at the L.A. Zoo visit lazoo.org BiodiverCity is made possible with support from The Gottlieb Native Garden. Host: Dr Jake Owens, Director of Conservation, Los Angeles Zoo Executive Producers: Susan Gottlieb Tom Jacobson Diane Shader Smith Denise Verret Producers: April Merl Jake Owens Associate Producer: Brenda Scott Royce Original Music: Micah Smith Additional contributions from: Hannah Beal Bennett Rea

Introducing BiodiverCity - a new podcast from the Gottlieb Native Garden and the Los Angeles Zoo, BiodiverCity explores urban ecology and conservation in L.A. From inside a one-acre native garden that is visited by over 1,500 different species of animals, to behind the scenes at our zoo, visited by more than 1.8 million people each year, we’re talking to both experts in their fields and everyday people to find out how Angelenos and wildlife are thriving together. BiodiverCity is hosted by Dr. Jake Owens, Director of Conservation at the L.A. Zoo, and is the vision of Susan Gottlieb, creator of the Gottlieb Native Garden.