On sleep, and work

Last night, 9.5 hours and still not quite able to get up. Body telling me something - that a month of non-stop work, regardless of how wonderful, requires rest. Hoping to power up for another month to make 4 programs out of a gathering of many extraordinary interviews, done with my BBC colleague Neil Trevithick. It is daunting in a way, but I'm so looking forward to diving back in to the audio, to hear what jewels we've gathered from SE Asian communities who are fighting back against the environmental assaults on their landscapes, flora and fauna. We visited Planet Indonesia in West Kalimantan to talk about the way songbirds are vanishing from the forests, and saw the reason why - the industrial scale of songbird competitions in every village and town. We went to Vietnam to see a pangolin rescue centre - just as these scaled mammals are being captured in their millions for a domestic and Chinese market which is all about prestige and status, so are the local people rehabilitating and returning confiscated animals to the wild. We went to eastern Thailand to look at how rangers are being militarily trained to combat poachers of again, highly desirable and status-indicating rosewood, and visited a monk and his village, offering sustainable farming as an alternative to greed. And we crossed the border to Myanmar where the Karen people are proposing to the deaf Myanmar government, a complex 'peace park' arrangement, where they can protect and live within their rich, and as yet, unexploited forests. What remarkable people we have met. Bold and brave.

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