In Unearthed, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew invites you to explore how plant and fungal knowledge can be harnessed to change our world for the better.
Series 3 “Unearthed: Nature needs us”, takes us on a journey from soil to sky, scaling the tangle of nature’s systems and interactions to help us tackle the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
Join us as we explore nature’s critical role in solving our biodiversity crisis, and highlights how understanding the links between large and small scale are crucial to tackling some of the world’s most urgent problems.
Narrated by Dr Mya-Rose Craig, the environmentalist, ornithologist, and diversity activist known as Birdgirl, the third series of our award-winning podcast takes a deeper look into transformative and nature-based solutions that make use of the vast range of biodiversity found across our planet.
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Episode 1: What is the biodiversity crisis?
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Nature needs us!
In series 3 of Unearthed, Dr Mya-Rose Craig begins the journey into what biodiversity loss means and why it matters to protect what we have left.
We find out what might happen if we continue to ignore the impacts of climate change and habitat destruction in terms of its impacts on our lives, along with future life on the planet. We also explore how human action has brought us to the current dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
But there is still plenty of hope that we can slow down or halt these destructive processes thanks to scientific research and action across different levels of society.
Episode 2: Why does soil matter? - 5 June 2024
The ground beneath your feet is teeming with life, and there is still so much to learn about the mysterious realm of soil. From the microscopic organisms essential to life on Earth, to the complex and wonderful associations between plants and fungi.
Find out how our world’s health is impacted by forces we may not even be able to see, and how this plays out on the scale of crop health, biodiversity in environments and the nutritional wealth of landscapes. Discover the research into plastic-eating fungi on China’s salt marshes that could help clean up global pollution.
Finally, we explore how modern farming is transitioning to working with soil regeneration and longevity of our environments, and the social, economic and policy changes that are vital in supporting farmers to save our beloved landscapes.
Episode 3: Why do we save seeds? - 19 June 2024
Seeds are the beginnings of life. From the food we can grow today, to the wondrous habitats they can create. They offer us a chance to capture, store and even design the landscapes of the future.
In this episode of Unearthed: Nature needs us, find out how scientists around the globe are working against the clock to capture species on the brink of extinction. From the Millennium Seed Bank - the world’s largest global seed bank for wild plant species, to intrepid collection trips in harsh conditions, explore the breadth of current research about seeds.
Discover the story of how plants and fungi colonised and shaped the planet we know today, and listen in on a discussion on how everyone can benefit from biodiversity research that includes and values communities.
Episode 4: How can we protect pollinators? - 3 July 2024
As well as our beloved bees, pollinators include wasps, moths, hoverflies, butterflies, beetles, bats and birds. There are about 1,500 different insect species helping plants reproduce in the UK alone, and without them our world would be less colourful, less nutritious and less diverse.
In this episode, hear how pollinator health supports the health of humans and the planet. We busts myths surrounding honeybee conservation projects, and explore the important links between plants and wildlife for environmental biodiversity.
Episode 5: What does successful regeneration look like? - 17 July 2024
In the penultimate episode of this series, we ask what it means to regenerate and restore degraded forests and landscapes, and why so many tree-planting projects in the past have failed.
We visit the Woodland Trust’s Home Farm, one of the largest native woodland creation sites in Southern England, where Forest Research Forest Ecologist Nicola Cotterill is carrying out research into how genetic diversity can help strengthen the ecosystem.
Dr Kate Hardwick and Isabella Tree unpick the differences between rewilding and regeneration, and explore the spectrum of conservation that encompasses these approaches to regenerating our landscapes.
Episode 6: How does nature network? - 31 July 2024
How do nature’s wonderful systems all fit together? And how can science help us understand these for better conservation and restoration of species? In the final episode of Unearthed: Nature needs us, we take a tour of mountain systems, weather and climate, migration, cloud forests and coastlines.
Find out how Kew are learning from and mapping mysterious and delicate desert ecosystems in South America and hear about an innovative cross-community project in Colombia’s forests. Then ZSL’s Henry Hakkinen reveals some astonishing facts about migratory species. Isabel Milligan of Great Yellow is joined by Green Alliance’s Heather Plumpton and WWF’s Nitika Agarwal to ask what governments and the commercial sector must do to support biodiversity around the world.
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Get caught up and scroll back to listen to the first two series of Kew's podcast.
