‘Earth Watch’ Cuts a Path in Jungle of Environmental Shows

On the first segment of a new environmental radio show, “Earth Watch,” an expert on the northern spotted owl clashed with a building industry spokesman over the rights of developers versus the protection of wildlife habitat.

In the most recent of the radio programs produced by Cal Poly Pomona, the director of “Naked Gun 2 1/2” spoke about how the farcical movie actually was dealing with serious environmental themes.

And now “Earth Watch” creator and host Leslie Baer-Brown has gone on a two-week jungle trek, braving monsoons and malaria in the Amazon River rain forest of Venezuela, where she is researching material for an upcoming show.

From the sublime to the ridiculous to the adventuresome, “Earth Watch” is charting a course across a range of topics as Baer-Brown--a novice in the broadcast business--attempts to nurture the nationally distributed show and secure a niche for it in a plethora of environmentally oriented programming.

“Originally, I was just going to do a live, local, call-in show,” said Baer-Brown, 33, the senior editor at the university’s news and publications office. “Then I thought, ‘Why do all this work for a local show?’ ”

So far, Baer-Brown has taped 16 shows. Ten have been broadcast nationally via the Pacifica Network to more than 400 radio stations. The public radio network doesn’t yet know how many stations have used the programs because it has been distributing them free and won’t begin charging a fee until after three more shows have aired. But Pacifica Network’s Bill Thomas said favorable reports have come from stations in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Northern California.

Baer-Brown said the university hasn’t yet decided what to do if the show generates income, but would probably donate it to the network.

“There is a lot of environmental programming being distributed on public radio right now and it’s pretty competitive,” said Thomas, Pacifica’s program services director, who helped Baer-Brown launch the show. “What I like about ‘Earth Watch’ is that it’s not . . . the standard ‘sound bite’ sort of thing. Instead, you get a feeling you’re getting real information.”

“Earth Watch” is an outgrowth of a mandate made several years ago by Hugh O. La Bounty, who retired earlier this year as Cal Poly Pomona’s president. La Bounty, according to Norm Schneider, the director of news and publications, wanted the school to become a lightning rod for environmental issues, both locally and nationally.

The school’s new president, Bob H. Suzuki, wants to expand that role even more, Schneider said.

Last fall, the news and publications office launched a series of forums on the environment. These became the material for television shows that are being broadcast on cable stations throughout Southern California. Then, after a brainstorming session, Schneider and Baer-Brown decided to start “Earth Watch,” which debuted in April.

The show has been broadcast locally on a financial and business-oriented station, KMNY in Pomona. But Baer-Brown said she has decided to drop that station and will be searching for another local outlet when she returns from Venezuela.

Baer-Brown frequently draws her guests from Cal Poly Pomona and Southern California but she also speaks by telephone with academics, scientists, environmentalists, government officials and industry representatives from around the nation.

Outdoor survival skills, America’s bulging landfills, the depletion of the ozone layer and environmentally conscious investing have been among the topics.

Although the first show came the closest to a knockdown, drag-out argument between two studio guests, Baer-Brown said: “I don’t do a show where I try to get (the guests) to argue and fight.”

The show’s purpose, she said, is to explore diverging viewpoints and then try to find a common ground. At the close of each hourlong show, she encourages guests to suggest specific actions that listeners can take.

“The main focus is to urge people to do whatever they can do, however small, for the environment,” she said. “I can’t judge what is the right thing. I just trust that when people get that urging from deep in their heart, then it’s the right thing.”

This philosophy, she said, reflects what she called the “colliding worlds” in her background. For four years, she worked as a technical writer for Hughes Aircraft, but she left that field when she grew uncomfortable with the military orientation of the aerospace industry.

Next, she edited a computer industry magazine, then three different magazines aimed at motorcycle, water bed and bicycle manufacturers and dealers. Since her teen-age years, she has performed as a folk singer, most recently writing and singing songs about the homeless.

Today, she considers herself an environmentalist but one who wants to see mediation. “I don’t believe in environmentalism at any cost,” she said.

Still, she is going to extreme lengths to enlarge her understanding of a situation that embodies the kinds of controversies that she and her guests debate each week.

She is traveling to the Amazon River jungle, where Yanomamo Indians live. They are among the last indigenous tribes to have been untouched by the outside world and are being threatened by gold mining interests, disease brought in by outsiders and a diminishing rain forest.

The Amazon trip was inspired by one of the guests on her show. Baer-Brown became fascinated with the work of Los Angeles-based author Michael Stuart Ani, who has spent much of the last 20 years living among tribes in remote areas.

On the floor by her desk Tuesday were two huge boxes of food that she had lugged in to take to the jungle. Nearby was a stack of books on the Yanomamo.

One of the books, she said, told the true story of a female outsider who was kidnaped by the Indians. But Baer-Brown, two days before she left for Venezuela, said she had no intention of being kidnaped because--among other reasons--she had an environmental radio show to come back and produce.