topic: Innovation In Conservation

topic: Innovation In Conservation

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New online tool is first to track funding to Indigenous, local and Afro-descendant communities
- The Path to Scale dashboard is the first online tool developed to track all funding for Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant peoples’ forest stewardship and land tenure.
- It’s already highlighted several trends, including that disbursements globally have averaged $517 million per year between 2020 and 2023, up 36% from the preceding four years, but with no evidence of increased direct funding to community-led organizations.
- Although information gaps exist based on what’s publicly available, Indigenous leaders say the tool will be useful to track progress and setbacks on funding pledges, as well as hold donors and organizations accountable.
- According to developers, there’s an increased diversity of funding, but it’s still insufficient to meet the needs of communities.

Indonesian architect presses vision for low-cost homes from nature
- Architect Yu Sing is among a number of notable Indonesian architects prizing natural materials and traditional techniques as part of contemporary design.
- For more than a decade, Yu Sing’s Bandung-based Studio Akanoma has built projects great and small, from showpiece convention spaces to communal bamboo kitchens for women farmers.
- In 2009, Yu Sing published a book, Mimpi Rumah Murah, setting out his vision for affordable homes using locally available natural materials.

The more degraded a forest, the quieter its wildlife, new study shows
- Tropical forest researchers are increasingly using bioacoustics to record and analyze ecosystem soundscapes, the sounds that animals make, which in turn can be used as a proxy for forest health.
- Researchers studying soundscapes in logged rainforests in Indonesian Borneo have tested a novel approach that could provide a reliable and low-cost way for conservation agencies and communities to monitor tropical forest health.
- Their new method, which partitions animal groups into broad acoustic frequency classes, offers a stop-gap method for measuring acoustic activity that could be used in the short-term until more detailed artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology is developed.
- During their study, they found that animal sounds diminished and became asynchronous in forests disturbed by selective logging, factors that could be used as proxies for disturbed habitats.

New tech aims to track carbon in every tree, boost carbon market integrity
- Climate scientists and data engineers have developed a new digital platform billed as the first-ever global tool for accurately calculating the carbon stored in every tree on the planet.
- Founded on two decades of research and development, the new platform from nonprofit CTrees leverages artificial intelligence-enabled satellite datasets to give users a near-real-time picture of forest carbon storage and emissions around the world.
- With forest protection and restoration at the center of international climate mitigation efforts, CTrees is set to officially launch at COP27 in November, with the overall aim of bringing an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability to climate policy initiatives that rely on forests to offset carbon emissions.
- Forest experts broadly welcome the new platform, but also underscore the risk of assessing forest restoration and conservation projects solely by the amount of carbon sequestered, which can sometimes be a red herring in achieving truly sustainable and equitable forest management.

‘Spiderwebs’ to the rescue for Indonesia’s coral reefs
- A small-scale project in Indonesia is seeing success in efforts to restore coral reefs damaged by blast fishing.
- Lightweight cast-iron rods form underwater “spiderwebs” that are placed onto existing reefs, with new coral grafted onto the structure.
- Proponents of the project say the benefits are already tangible, but add that to make them last, there needs to be an end to destructive fishing practices.

Beyond bored apes: Blockchain polarizes wildlife conservation community
- Blockchain technology’s various applications, such as NFTs and smart contracts, are being explored for use in wildlife conservation.
- The technology’s potential might be immense, but downsides such as a massive carbon footprint and the imposition of Western technology to dictate resource management in the Global South raise logistical and ethical questions.
- Most proponents and critics agree on one thing: The technology is still in the early stages for its applications to be fully understood and implemented on the ground.

Bamboo mamas and bikes help with Indonesian diplomacy
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo recently gifted visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a bamboo bicycle during the latter’s first trip abroad since taking office.
- The publicity from the diplomatic gesture has shone a spotlight on bamboo, a versatile material once commonly used throughout Indonesia, but now largely sidelined by plastic and metal.

Smart Parks, the Dutch technologists tackling poaching with technology
- Smart Parks is a Netherlands-based organization deploying high tech and an R&D-focused approach to finding technological solutions to conservation problems.
- The organization is best-known for using LoRa (long range) wireless technology to create networks of connected sensors and devices within conservation areas.
- These are designed to help anti-poaching teams through access to real-time data such as animal locations, vehicle movements, and fence voltages, among other parameters.
- Working primarily in Africa, Smart Parks’ next phase of development is to add more sensors to tracking collars to collect additional data such as animal sounds and movement data, and then use machine learning to gain additional insights for research.

New near-real-time tool reveals Earth’s land cover in more detail than ever before
- A new tool co-developed by Google Earth Engine and the World Resources Institute is being billed as the planet’s most up-to-date and high-resolution global land cover mapping data set, giving unprecedented levels of detail about how land is being used around the world.
- The launch of the tool this week marks a big step forward in enabling organizations and governments to make better science-based, data-informed decisions about urgent planetary challenges, the developers say.
- Named Dynamic World, it merges cloud-based artificial intelligence with satellite imagery to give near-real-time global visualizations of nine types of land use and land cover.
- The tool is likely to be important for a variety of purposes, the developers say, such as monitoring the progress of ecosystem restoration goals, assessing the effectiveness of protected areas, creating sustainable food systems, and alerting land managers to unforeseen land changes like deforestation and fires.

In Singapore, a forensics lab wields CSI-like tech against wildlife traffickers
- A wildlife forensics laboratory launched in Singapore last year is making breakthroughs in tracking down criminal syndicates trafficking in wildlife.
- Singapore is a major transit point for the illegal ivory trade; the nation impounded 8.8 metric tons of elephant ivory in July 2019 — evidence from which led to the arrest of 14 people in China.
- The researchers use the same method to capture poachers that authorities in California used to arrest the Golden State Killer.
- Elephant ivory and pangolin scales account for the bulk of the new lab’s workload; figuring out how traffickers accumulate this material from two species could uncover much of their methods.

Podcast: Community empowerment and forest conservation grow from the galip nut in Papua New Guinea
- Galip nuts are a well-known, traditional agricultural product in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
- Papua New Guineans are currently reaping the economic and environmental benefits of this nut via agroforestry led by local communities and women entrepreneurs.
- In this episode, we speak with Dorothy Devine Luana, PNG-based owner of DMS Organics, a galip nut grower and processor, and Nora Devoe, research program manager for a project of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), focused on the potential of the galip nut industry to sustainably empower PNG communities.

Traditional knowledge guides protection of planetary health in Finland
- Undisturbed peatlands act as carbon sinks and support biodiversity. Finland has drained 60% — more than 60,000 km2 (23,000 mi2) — of its peatlands, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and destroying entire ecosystems.
- But scientists and Finnish traditional and Indigenous knowledge holders are collaborating to rewild and protect peatlands and associated forests and rivers, turning them into carbon sinks again, while bringing back wildlife and supporting fishing, hunting, and even tourism, offering economic benefits to local communities.
- These Finnish collaborations are already serving as both inspiration and guide to those seeking to use rewilding to curb climate change, enhance biodiversity, create sustainable land use systems, and restore forest, freshwater and wetland ecosystems, while supporting traditional communities.
- “Rewilding is very much about giving more freedom to nature to shape our landscapes, and looking at nature as an ally in solving socioeconomic problems,” says Wouter Helmer former rewilding director of Rewilding Europe. “It’s a holistic way of putting nature back on center stage in our modern society.”

From land mines to lifelines, Lebanon’s Shouf is a rare restoration success story
- The Shouf Biosphere Reserve is a living laboratory experimenting with degraded ecosystem recovery in ways that also boost the well-being of the human communities living there.
- Previous conservation efforts in the area involved using land mines and armed guards to stem illegal logging and reduce fire risk.
- Today, the reserve builds local skills and creates jobs in a bid to help the local community through Lebanon’s severe economic crisis.
- Managers are also employing adaptive techniques to build resilience in this climate change-hit landscape.

Researchers turn to drones for that big-picture view of the forest canopy
- Scientists need to collect data fast to understand how forests are changing due to climate change and deforestation.
- In a recent study, scientists flew drones over the forest canopy to learn more about tree mortality. The drones revealed new patterns because of the large areas they can cover. According to one researcher, a single drone can cover an area in a few days that would take a team a year on foot.
- Drones are also helping local and Indigenous communities monitor forest fires and deforestation as well as harvest resources more sustainably.
- Yet experts say that the useful tool should complement, and not replace, fieldwork done on the ground.

Winds of change: Detecting species from airborne DNA just got real
- In recent years, environmental DNA has enabled conservationists and citizen scientists to study entire ecosystems and to monitor elusive species that would otherwise evade detection.
- A suite of new research studies demonstrates that eDNA extracted from thin air can be used to identify a variety of plants and animals.
- Airborne DNA technology is potentially a valuable new tool for monitoring biodiversity, with particularly promising applications for monitoring rare and endangered species and providing early warning of invasive organisms.
- While a lot of work to hone the technique remains, experts are hopeful that prior advances in other eDNA technologies will help to accelerate the development of airborne DNA sampling so that it can be used in the field.

Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2021
- The world’s largest rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
- Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever.
- The rainforest as a whole remains a net carbon sink, thanks to conservation areas and Indigenous territories, where deforestation rates remained low.
- Indigenous communities continued to be hit by a barrage of outside pressure, from COVID-19 to illegal miners and land grabbers, while community members living in Brazil’s cities dealt with persistent prejudice.

How wildlife crossings in Canada are inspiring safer roads for global species
- The stretch of Trans-Canada highway that runs through Banff National Park was once incredibly dangerous for animals and motorists alike, but today the park has more wildlife crossing structures than anywhere else in the world and the data to support their effectiveness.
- The crossing structures at Banff inspired a project on I-90 in the U.S. state of Washington with its own location-specific twists.
- Tribal efforts also led to a Banff-informed development project on US-93 in the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana that respects local people and wildlife.
- Lessons from Banff are informing projects beyond North America: In Costa Rica, emerging crossing structure projects protect jaguars and canopy-dwelling creatures.

For South Africa’s dwindling renosterveld, there’s now a ‘panic button’ app
- The renosterveld shrubland once covered the Swartland and Overberg regions of western South Africa, but its rich soils led farmers to clear it for agriculture.
- Remaining fragments continue to provide habitat for birds like endangered black harriers and vulnerable southern black korhaans, and mammals like the grey rhebok, a near-threatened antelope.
- A “panic button” app has been developed in South Africa to alert the authorities to threats facing the renosterveld, the country’s most endangered ecosystem.

From the ocean floor, a startup livestreams the rise of coral cities
- A Portuguese company that was forged in Southeast Asia is building an underwater city for coral in Sultan Iskandar Marine Park, Malaysia, made from food waste such as rice husks.
- It is also building a pilot project ultimately leading to a 72 km2 (28 mi2) engineered reef off Comporta, Portugal, which will cost approximately $226-556 million.
- Each stackable underwater city contains a Bluboxx, a console fitted with sensors to measure the salinity, temperature and acidity of the sea, with the data then livestreamed to scientists and shared with governments.
- If no action is taken to protect coral reefs, it is believed that 90% will be extinct by 2050, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Cooking with the sun: Entrepreneurs help launch Mexico’s solar revolution
- Much of Mexico gets 300 days of sunshine out of the year which is helping make the country a solar energy pioneer. With the current government showing little interest in the clean sustainable technology, a range of entrepreneurs is leading the way, especially in the food industry.
- In the southern state of Oaxaca, Victoria Aguilera studied sustainable energy at the regional university and founded Sazón del Sol, a grassroots project that includes a solar farm, solar restaurant, and solar food processing workplace. She designed and now sells a solar kitchen for use in homes and restaurants.
- In central Mexico’s Hidalgo state, Gregor Schäpers’ company, Trinysol, achieved initial success with solar-powered water heaters. Now he’s experimenting with solar cooking using Scheffler modules — solar dish reflectors to run kitchens in restaurants, hotels, mezcal distilleries and tortilla bakeries.
- In the state of Jalisco, Angel Mejía and Aldo Agraz co-founded Inventive Power in 2010, specializing in thermal solar systems. Local food factories and dairies were their first clients. Since then, Mexican and international companies Nestlé, Barcel, Unilever, and tequila producer José Cuervo have all commissioned projects.

Wildlife releases have a mixed record, and climate change complicates things
- Translocation is a conservation technique that returns lost species to their previous habitats or moves then to new, safer areas in a bid to boost their wild populations.
- But research shows that it only works about half the time, with failures often linked to low numbers of individual animals being released, or the presence of invasive predators.
- Climate change is also a factor, rendering former habitats unsuitable for a species’ return, and necessitating finding a new home for the animals.
- But introducing species into areas where they didn’t historically occur can be dangerous too, as it’s difficult to predict whether they will survive, and whether they pose a threat to the native species already living there.

Are nature-based solutions the silver bullet for social & environmental crises?
- In the months leading up to the global climate conference in Glasgow this November, the term “nature-based solutions” has gained global prominence in the climate change mitigation discourse.
- Praise for NBS has mainly come from the U.N., policymakers, international conservation organizations and corporations, while grassroots movements and civil society groups have voiced concerns over the concept.
- Critics warn that NBS can be used as a tool to finance destructive activities by corporations and greenwash ongoing carbon emissions and destruction of nature.

Creation of three new northern white rhinos embryos may indicate hope for other rhino species
- In July, BioRescue announced the creation of three new northern white rhino embryos, bringing the total to 12.
- Project leader Thomas Hildebrandt said he hopes to transfer a northern white rhino embryo into a female southern white rhino by the end of the year.
- Researchers and stakeholders are assessing whether it would be possible to employ similar methods to preserve genetic diversity in critically endangered Asian rhino species, weighing the risks of extracting eggs against the need for a backup plan.

Conservation after coronavirus: We need to diversify and innovate (commentary)
- Protected areas, the ecotourism industry, and many conservation initiatives and communities, which depend on international tourism, took a financial hit as COVID-19 lockdowns started. As poverty swelled in these regions, there’s been an increase in poaching in Africa’s protected areas, including Zambia’s Kafue National Park.
- Long before the emergence of COVID-19, the conservation community has suffered from a chronic dearth of resources; with the pandemic, protected areas and related communities experienced a sharp retraction in investment.
- With examples from across the world, philanthropist Jon Ayers and Panthera CEO Frederic Launay call for diversified and innovative steps to increase funding and support for conservation communities.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

End of deforestation tracker for Brazil’s Cerrado an ‘incalculable loss’
- For 20 years, Brazil’s space agency, INPE, has run a program monitoring deforestation and fire risk in the Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot.
- But that program may be shut down at the end of this year due to a lack of money, after a funding agreement with the World Bank ended last year.
- Scientists, civil society groups, and the soy industry have all spoken out against allowing the program to end, calling it an “incalculable loss”; soy traders, in particular, depend on the data to prove their commodity is deforestation-free.
- INPE’s data is also crucial in guiding the work of environmental regulators, which has grown increasingly urgent in light of projections that the entire biome could collapse within 30 years under current rates of deforestation.

Shoe-leather science helps quadruple protected area in Peruvian Amazon
- Rapid biological and social inventories produced by a team from Chicago’s Field Museum were the basis for new areas dedicated to conservation in Peru, a new study shows.
- In the Amazonian department of Loreto, territory covered under some category of conservation went from 2 million hectares to 8.5 million hectares (4.9 million acres to 21 million acres).
- The study found that advances in protecting Loreto allowed not only the region, but also Peru as a whole, to meet the Aichi Goal of getting 17% of the country’s territory under some category of protection.

New artificial intelligence tool helps forecast Amazon deforestation
- A new tool co-developed by Microsoft using artificial intelligence to predict deforestation hotspots has identified nearly 10,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon that’s in imminent danger.
- Called PrevisIA, it uses artificial intelligence to analyze satellite imagery from the European Space Agency, and an algorithm developed by the Brazilian conservation nonprofit Imazon to find the areas most prone to deforestation.
- The tool, which the developers say could potentially be applied to any forested area on Earth, will be used for preventive actions, in partnerships with local governments, corporations and nonprofits.
- The next step of the project is to build partnerships with local governments and institutions to act on preventing deforestation, which is the most challenging phase of the project, according to Imazon researcher Carlos Souza Jr.

For monitoring mammals, eDNA boasts ‘killer feature’ over other methods
- Mounting evidence suggests that the fast-developing tool of eDNA could be a game-changer for terrestrial mammal monitoring.
- A new study demonstrates that eDNA analysis of stream water can reveal the diversity of terrestrial mammals in a large landscape as effectively as camera trapping and for a fraction of the cost.
- Traditional mammal survey methods can be time-consuming, expensive and far from failsafe; eDNA is a reliable and comparatively inexpensive way for conservationists to gain a snapshot of an ecosystem’s mammal fauna, scientists say.
- It could also have a big impact on conservation, since eDNA data allows timely decisions on which species to prioritize and which areas to protect.

Gabon becomes first African country to get paid for protecting its forests
- Gabon recently received the first $17 million of a pledged $150 million from Norway for results-based emission reduction payments as part of the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI).
- Gabon has 88% forest cover and has limited annual deforestation to less than 0.1% over the last 30 years, in large part possible due to oil revenues supporting the economy.
- With oil reserves running low, Gabon is looking to diversify and develop its economy without sacrificing its forests by building a sustainable forest economy supported by schemes such as CAFI.

Saving our ‘Beloved Beasts’: Q&A with environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis
- Environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis explores the history of the conservation movement in her new book, “Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction.”
- The book traces the successes and missteps of conservation through the people who influenced the movement.
- Along the way, Nijhuis shares a guarded sense of optimism that humans can positively influence the future of all life on Earth.

Podcast: What are the tropical forest storylines to watch in 2021?
- Happy new year to all of our faithful Mongabay Newscast listeners! For our first episode of the year, we take stock of how the world’s rainforests fared in 2020 and look ahead to the major stories to watch in 2021.
- We’re joined by Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler, who discusses the impacts of the Covid pandemic on tropical forest conservation efforts, the most important issues likely to impact rainforests in 2021, and why he remains hopeful despite setbacks in recent years.
- We also speak with Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, who helps us dig deeper into the major issues and events that will affect Africa’s rainforests in the coming year.

Restaura Cerrado: Saving Brazil’s savanna by reseeding and restoring it
- The Cerrado is Brazil’s second largest biome, and the most biodiverse tropical savanna in the world. It is of vital importance for Brazil’s watersheds, for global biodiversity, and is an important but undervalued carbon stock.
- But in recent decades, half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has been destroyed to make way for cattle, soy, and other agricultural commodities. In the southern Cerrado, scientists are now shifting their focus to restoring the native vegetation
- However, scientific knowledge on savanna restoration is scarce. So one collaborative network, Restaura Cerrado, is bringing together scientists, seed collectors, and the public to advance practical knowledge about restoration. The group’s goal is to achieve the means for ongoing effective Cerrado restoration.
- Restaura Cerrado is a collaboration between ICMBio, the University of Brasília, the Cerrado Seeds Network, and Embrapa (the Brazilian Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Research Enterprise); together they hope to use restoration to bring sustainable development to the savanna region.

Philippine wildlife reporting app promises to upgrade fight against trafficking
- The Philippines’ environment department plans a year-end rollout of an app, currently being tested, that should make it easier for citizens and enforcement officials to report wildlife crimes.
- Illegal wildlife trafficking is the fourth-biggest transnational crime in the world, following the trafficking of drugs, people, and weapons; in the Philippines, the trade is estimated at $1 billion a year, and threatens the country’s unique wildlife, of which many species are found nowhere else.
- The WildALERT app is designed to overcome one of the main problems with reporting any kind of crime from remote areas — patchy internet reception — by using an offline mode that allows users to enter photographic and location data on-site and upload it when they get reception.
- The app also has a library feature, essentially a Facebook for endangered species, to allow users to quickly identify and report species they encounter; the lack of specialist knowledge is currently one of the big gaps in the existing campaign against the illegal wildlife trade.

Facial recognition tech for chimps looks to bust online ape trafficking
- Much of the illegal trade in apes now takes place online, with traffickers posting pictures of baby animals for sale.
- ChimpFace, a newly developed software, uses an algorithm to determine if chimpanzee faces in images posted by traffickers match up with images later posted to social media accounts.
- Its creators hope the matches the program turns up will aid Interpol or local law enforcement in tracking and prosecuting people illegally buying and selling wildlife.

Pandemic or not, the mission to save the rare Philippine eagle grinds on
- A critically endangered Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) was rescued in the Zamboanga Peninsula in the southern Philippines during the height of the country’s COVID-19 lockdown, when all land, sea and air travel were barred.
- Despite the mobility limitations, various groups were able to exchange information and provide the much-needed proper first aid and rehabilitation for the rescued eagle, which was released back into the wild on May 20.
- There are currently seven known and identified Philippine eagles in the Zamboanga Peninsula, where there are ample protection mechanisms to support breeding eagle pairs.
- Deforestation, hunting and poaching are still the biggest threats to Philippine eagles, but recent collective efforts by various stakeholders have helped strengthen their conservation, experts say.

Conservation insights from an enormous aspen clone: Q&A with ecologist Paul Rogers
- Pando is the name of a 40-hectare (100-acre) aspen forest in central Utah whose 47,000 stems share a single genome. It’s thought to be the largest and one of the oldest organisms on Earth.
- In discovering that Pando might be dying, ecologist Paul C. Rogers came to realize that the problems troubling the famous giant were a microcosm of the problems troubling aspen forests across the Northern Hemisphere, and with them the highly biodiverse set of organisms they support.
- That sparked a collaboration among aspen researchers from eight countries, who propose a conservation strategy they’re calling ‘mega-conservation.’ It aims to protect common ecosystems distinguished by a species that, like aspen, supports uncommon levels of biodiversity while facing common threats.
- Mongabay spoke with Rogers about Pando, mega-conservation, and the wisdom of thinking like an aspen forest.

Podcast: Listening to elephants to protect Central Africa’s tropical forests
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at a project that aims to preserve the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Central Africa and the biodiversity found in those forests by focusing on elephants and their calls.
- As a research analyst with the Elephant Listening Project, Ana Verahrami has completed two field seasons in the Central African Republic, where she helped collect the behavioral and acoustic data vital to the project. She joins the Mongabay Newscast to explain why forest elephants’ role as keystone species makes their survival crucial to the wellbeing of tropical forests and their other inhabitants, and to play some of the recordings informing the project’s work.
- One of the two existing African elephant species, forest elephants are native to the humid forests of West Africa and the Congo Basin. The forest habitat they rely on has also suffered steep declines in recent years, with one 2018 study concluding that at current rates of deforestation, all of the primary forest in the Congo Basin could be cleared by the end of the century. As Mongabay’s contributing editor for Africa, Terna Gyuse, tells us, the chief threats to the Congo Basin’s rainforests are human activities.

In South Korea, centuries of farming point to the future for sustainable agriculture
- Agriculture in South Korea is a blend of centuries-old traditions and contemporary techniques adapted to a variety of environmental conditions, making it a model to adopt in the effort to future-proof food production against climate change.
- With its emphasis on making the most of local conditions, prioritizing native crops, maximizing the use of organic inputs while minimizing waste, South Korea offers templates for nature-based solutions.
- State and local support of farmer’s livelihoods, revitalizing rural areas and incentivizing youth to enter farming are also ongoing efforts to help guarantee the generational sustainability of agriculture.

Through biomimicry, Brazil seeks tech innovations inspired by nature
- From spiderweb-inspired shampoo to a hotel whose architecture is based on the thermal properties of toucan beaks, scientists and companies in Brazil are betting on nature’s intelligence to create innovative solutions that reduce impacts on the planet.
- By valuing multifunctional design and being able to integrate materials that nature acknowledges in productive cycles, biomimicry reinforces the optimization of resources and aligns itself with the principles of a circular economy.
- Biomimicry began to be systematically implemented in the 1990s, initially to achieve energy efficiency; examples include buildings in Zimbabwe and Australia inspired by the circulation of air inside termite hills, the principle of whale fins applied to the generation of wind energy, and antiseptic walls that imitate shark skin.
- In Brazil, many immersion courses are now offered in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes that focus on innovative materials, and biomimicry consultants and startups are emerging in the market: In 2018, Nucleário became the first Brazilian company to win a prize from the Biomimicry Institute for its technology that protects trees in reforestation projects, based on the principles of winged seeds and bromeliads.

Overworked, underpaid and lonely: Conservationists find a new community online
- Created by a 26-year-old Australian, a new online community called Lonely Conservationists is bringing together young and struggling conservationists.
- Members post about their experiences, including unpaid jobs, financial woes, mental health issues, and, of course, loneliness.
- The community has succeeded in creating a space for candid, sympathetic conversations about the difficulties of working in conservation.

In Ethiopia, a community leans on customs to save an antelope from extinction
- By 1992, the animal had been hunted almost to extinction in the Senkele Swayne’s Hartebeest Sanctuary, one of the last places where it’s found.
- Traditional leaders banded together to convince their community to end the hunting of the hartebeest for food, on the grounds that it went against their age-old customs.
- The Swayne’s hartebeest population has since rebounded, although threats to its survival remain, both from natural predation and from human activities.

Something smells fishy: Scientists uncover illegal fishing using shark tracking devices
- Sharks become unlikely detectives as marine ecologists discover a link between their acoustic telemetry data and the presence of illegal fishing vessels.
- Researchers acoustically tagged 95 silvertip and grey reef sharks to assess whether the creation of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) Marine Protected Area was helping to protect these species.
- Detailed in a recently released paper, the almost simultaneous loss of 15 acoustic tags coincided with the capture of two illegal fishing vessels, arrested for having 359 sharks on board.
- While helping to map sharks’ movements around the reef, scientists expect that they will be able to use data collected from the acoustic tags to predict the presence of illegal fishing vessels.

A community in Guyana relies on indigenous knowledge in conservation
- In Guyana’s sprawling Kanuku mountain range, indigenous villagers partner with researchers, scientists and conservation groups for support and to build upon their knowledge and capacity for conservation work.
- With traditional territory stretching to the northern border of Brazil, the Yupukari, Wapishana, and Macushi indigenous groups take the lead in conservation within their communities.
- The projects are managed through the Kanuku Mountains Regional Council, which was established to help oversee conservation in the 21 communities throughout the Kanukus.

Global agreement on ‘conserved areas’ marks new era of conservation (commentary)
- Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity have adopted the definition of a new conservation designation: ‘other effective area-based conservation measures’ (known informally as ‘conserved areas’).
- It represents a transformative moment in international biodiversity law and enables a greater diversity of actors — including government agencies, private entities, indigenous peoples, and local communities – to be recognized for their contributions to biodiversity outside protected areas.
- The ‘protected and conserved areas’ paradigm offers the global community an important means through which to respect human rights and appropriately recognize and support millions of square kilometers of lands and waters that are important for biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and connectivity — including in the Global Deal for Nature (2021-2030).
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Group helps illegal bird traders transition into different lines of business
- Instead of focusing on putting bird poachers and illegal traders behind bars, an NGO in Indonesian Borneo is creating incentives for them to stop.
- It’s a unique approach in the Southeast Asian country, where conservation efforts have tended to focus on calls for tighter law enforcement and more rigorous punishment.
- The group, Planet Indonesia, has identified more than 100 small bird shops in and around Pontianak, the biggest city in western Borneo, and says many of them are pondering changing professions. It’s know-how and capital that’s holding them back.

Can social media save great apes?
- Bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees face a fight for survival, and social media offers a new tool to help people connect with these endangered great apes.
- Conservation groups say that, handled correctly, social media can help raise awareness — and funds.
- What’s good for social media isn’t always good for apes. Experts caution that posts featuring interactions between humans and animals or unusual animal behavior should be accompanied by explanations that put the images into context.

Rhino poop gives villagers in India a conservation incentive
- Elrhino company uses the fiber from rhino dung, along with other locally available products, to produce high-end paper products.
- The founders of the company aim to help preserve India’s greater one-horned rhinos by giving villagers a financial incentive to help protect the species.
- The company employs local residents to collect rhino waste, to work in the paper factory, and to produce decorations for its paper products.

‘Not all doom and gloom’: Q&A with conservation job market researchers
- Intense competition, a flood of unpaid internships, a prevalence of short-term work, high student-loan debt: young conservationists are reporting a tough, rough time in the job market.
- A recent study in Conservation Biology attempts to uncover some concrete data on the hard-to-quantify conservation job market in an effort to help students prepare themselves for the competitive hunt for paid employment.
- Mongabay interviewed study co-authors Jane Lucas, who is now doing a postdoc at the University of Idaho, and Evan Gora, who is now doing a postdoc at the University of Louisville, to hear what they learned.
- Their advice? Start researching the job market early, even before you’re actively looking for work. Reach out to people who have the career you want. And make sure you’re gaining diverse skills.

Good quality monitoring surveys key to wildlife conservation: new study
- Most population monitoring surveys of wild animals and plants are poorly designed, a new study says.
- Populations that are monitored are sometimes not representative of the community we seek to understand, for example, which can lead to highly misleading estimated trends, scientists say.
- Existing monitoring programs should be reviewed, scientists say, and available technologies can be used to collect reliable data on population trends.

Identifying the world’s top biodiversity investment returns
- When portions of a previously contiguous forest are carved away, so-called “fragmented forests” are created, and now-isolated species find it increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy and sustainable population. Species in fragmented forests start to head toward extinction within in less than a decade.
- Out of 25 global biodiversity hotspots – sites that contain unusually high numbers of endemic plant and animal species and have lost greater than 70 percent of their original habitat – a team of scientists analyzed two forests for habitat restoration study.
- The team calculated that the cost to regenerate the locations, two of the most fragmented biodiversity hotspots in the world, at less than $70 million. Under the advised approach, the overall projects could generate one of the highest returns on investment for biodiversity conservation in the world.
- The team also notes that the work “could dramatically postpone and likely prevent many forest bird extinctions in these two highly fragmented tropical biodiversity hotspots.”

A rich person’s profession? Young conservationists struggle to make it
- Mongabay interviewed young conservationists about their experiences launching their careers.
- Many of them related similar stories of having to reconsider their career choice as a result of the conservation sector’s tight job market, high educational and experience requirements, and often-temporary entry-level jobs.
- To meet prospective employers’ demands for experience, many graduates become stuck in full-time unpaid internships or long-term volunteering.
- As a result of these trends, the field of conservation may be hemorrhaging passionate, qualified, and innovative young people.

Footprints in the forest: The future of the Sumatran rhino
- Fewer than 100 Sumatran rhinos (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) remain in the wild, a number many biologists say is too low to ensure the survival of the species.
- Several organizations have begun to build momentum toward a single program that pools resources and know-how in Malaysia and Indonesia, the last places in Southeast Asia where captive and wild rhinos still live.
- Advocates for intensive efforts to breed animals in captivity fear that an emphasis on the protection of the remaining wild animals may divert attention and funding away from such projects.
- They worry that if they don’t act now, the Sumatran rhino may pass a point of no return from which it cannot recover.

Financing sustainable agriculture possible, if terms fit farmers’ needs
- Worldwide, more deforestation results from the push for farmland than any other cause.
- The Global Canopy Programme reports that funding aimed at encouraging a move away from deforestation-based agriculture and toward more sustainable methods must be designed to address the needs of farmers.
- Loans with longer terms and lower interest rates can help farmers who are switching to sustainable agriculture survive the ‘valley of death’ – that is, the first few years of new methods before their production becomes profitable.

Why gender matters in conservation
- Over recent decades, conservation organizations have started listening to local communities for insight into how best to protect dwindling ecosystems. But only recently have some of them begun tuning in the voices of women, specifically.
- By adopting a “gendered approach” to conservation, some organizations believe they can improve both environmental and social outcomes.
- Kame Westerman, the Gender and Conservation Advisor at the NGO Conservation International, helps her group adopt the gendered approach in its projects.

Namibia’s low cost, sustainable solution to seabird bycatch
- Accidental take of marine animals by commercial fisheries is a serious global environmental problem, with 40 percent of the world’s ocean fishing totals disposed of as bycatch annually.
- Roughly 63 billion pounds of unwanted wildlife — seabirds, marine mammals and sea turtles, countless fish species, rays, and cephalopods — are killed as bycatch due to the swallowing of baited hooks or entanglement in nets.
- Namibia, once known as the “world’s worst fishery” regarding avian bycatch is addressing the problem. It has installed “bird-scaring” lines on the nation’s 70 trawlers and on its 12 longline fishing vessels, and has also adopted other low cost methods to minimize avian bycatch, which once killed more than 30,000 birds annually.
- The Meme Itumbapo Women’s Group, known for its seashell necklaces and other jewelry, is now sustainably manufacturing and supplying the bird-scaring lines from their headquarters “Bird’s Paradise,” in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The hope is that these combined efforts will reduce avian bycatch by 85-90 percent in the near future.

Women could be a key to great ape conservation in the Congo
- The Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI), Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE), Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), and Coopera are all organizations working with women in and around the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help advance great ape conservation through education, empowerment, healthcare and food security access.
- Some examples: BCI helps fund pilot micro-credit projects for women who want to launch business enterprises, including soap and garment making. GRACE employs women as surrogate mothers for newly orphaned gorillas during an initial 30-day quarantine period.
- GRACE also provides women and their families with bushmeat alternatives by teaching them to care for and breed alternative protein sources. Coopera helps provide alternative food sources through ECOLO-FEMMES, an organization that trains women in livestock breeding and agriculture to reduce great ape hunting in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
- Coopera, working with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots, engages young rape victims in tree planting to provide food sources to wild chimpanzees. JGI’s women’s programs in Uganda and Tanzania keep girls in school through peer support, scholarship programs and sanitary supply access. Educated women have smaller families, reducing stress on the environment.

Graffiti campaign brings rhino conservation message to urban Vietnam
- The campaign is aimed at educating locals and engaging neighborhood residents about the cost of sought-after rhino horn.
- A prominent French graffiti artist, Suby One, is one of the artists whose work is featured in the campaign.
- After difficulty obtaining government approval, the campaign put up 17 pieces of art throughout the month of March.

Fighting rhino poaching in India, CSI-style
- RhODIS, the Rhino DNA Index System, relies on a database of rhino DNA collected from across rhino range states in Africa.
- The system, developed in South Africa, allows investigators to link captured poachers and confiscated horns to specific poaching incidents.
- Researchers are currently working to expand the database to include Asian rhino species.
- This year, India is expected to be the first Asian country to roll out the program as part of its anti-poaching strategy.

‘Revolutionary’ new biodiversity maps reveal big gaps in conservation
- The research uses the chemical signals of tree communities to reveal their different survival strategies and identify priority areas for protection.
- Currently, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory’s airplane provides the only way to create these biodiversity maps. But the team is working to install the technology in an Earth-orbiting satellite.
- Once launched, the $200 million satellite would provide worldwide biodiversity mapping updated every month.

Sudden sale may doom carbon-rich rainforest in Borneo
- Forest Management Unit 5 encompasses more than 101,000 hectares in central Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo.
- The area’s steep slopes and rich forests provide habitat for the Bornean orangutan and other endangered species and protect watersheds critical to downstream communities.
- Conservation groups had been working with the government and the concession holder to set up a concept conservation economy on FMU5, but in October, the rights were acquired by Priceworth, a wood product manufacturing company.

Hectare by hectare, an indigenous man reforested a jungle in Indonesia’s burned-out heartland
- In 1998, a Dayak Ngaju man named Januminro started buying up and reforesting degraded land not far from Palangkaraya, the capital of Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province.
- Today the forest spans 18 hectares and is home to orangutans, sun bears and other endangered species.
- Januminro uses funds from an adopt-a-tree program to operate a volunteer firefighting team. He has big plans to expand the forest.

Airbus to marshal its satellites against deforestation
- Starling is a new service developed by Airbus, The Forest Trust and SarVision.
- Palm oil suppliers can use it to verify their compliance with their customers’ zero-deforestation policies.
- Starling, which will be sold to companies, is meant as a compliment to Global Forest Watch, a publicly available platform that anyone can use to track deforestation in near-real time.
- Starling is more powerful than Global Forest Watch, with the ability to see through clouds and zoom in close enough to count the trees.

House of Mussels: an artificial reef off the coast of Jakarta
- The underwater sculpture Domus Musculi, or House of Mussels, is “a remembrance of what the Jakarta Bay has been famous for: its mussels, which nowadays are no longer exist due to heavy pollution,” according to the artist Teguh Ostenrik’s website.
- The sculpture uses Biorock technology, a patented artificial reef system that involves coursing electricity into the sculptures’ steel frames.
- Ostenrik has installed other artificial reefs in the waters off Lombok and the Wakatobi islands.

10 conservation “fads”: how have they worked in Latin America?
- A 2013 editorial in the journal Conservation Biology described 10 conservation methods that emerged since the late 1970’s as fads, “approaches that are embraced enthusiastically and then abandoned.”
- The fads on the list were: the marketing of natural products from rain forests, biological diversity hotspots, integrated conservation and development projects, ecotourism, ecocertification, community-based conservation, payment for ecosystem or environmental services, REDD+, conservation concessions, and so-called integrated landscapes.
- Mongabay consulted seven conservation experts on how the 10 fads played out in Latin America, a region that is not only a hotbed of biodiversity but also of conservation activity.

Controversial park plans in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve
- Mirador-Rio Azul National Park is one of the best-conserved protected areas in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, where illegal logging and agriculture, forest fires, looting, and drug trafficking have contributed to deforestation.
- A plan to increase tourism to the area and redraw the boundaries of the park and adjacent community forest concessions aims to prevent these threats from compromising the area’s rainforest and important archaeological sites.
- Yet the plan has drawn widespread opposition from local communities, environmental NGOs, and the government agency charged with managing the reserve. Opponents say the plan would threaten the region’s ecology, local livelihoods, and community forest concessions that have successfully protected the rainforest.

Communities lead the way in rainforest conservation in Guatemala
- The Maya Biosphere Reserve, which covers one-fifth of Guatemala, is one of the most important tropical forest areas north of the Amazon and contains dozens of ancient Mayan archaeological sites.
- The best way to protect the reserve’s rainforest—better than national parks—has turned out to be nine community concessions, forest allotments where locals earn a living from the carefully regulated extraction of timber and plants.
- However, the community concessions’ future remains unclear, with contracts set to expire in the coming years and powerful forces opposing them.

Can conservationists overcome their differences to save life on Earth?
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future.
- The series explores how the world’s biggest conservation groups have embraced a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that has split the field over how best to save life on Earth.
- It also investigates the role of big money in pushing conservation agendas, and the field’s changing relationship with people living in areas targeted for conservation.
- Jeremy Hance reported the Conservation, Divided series over the course of eight months. Stories ran weekly in April and May, generating intense interest from readers.

Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve
- The Maya Biosphere Reserve, which covers one-fifth of Guatemala, is one of the most important tropical forest areas north of the Amazon.
- The reserve is a gem of biological and cultural heritage, with more than 500 species of birds, numerous endangered and iconic wildlife species, and dozens of ancient Mayan archaeological sites.
- The reserve’s multiple-use zone has generally succeeded at reducing deforestation and providing sustainable livelihoods for communities living there. But deforestation remains a huge problem in the reserve as a whole, pushed along by complex factors, including illegal settlement by landless migrants, oil development, and the presence of drug traffickers, cattle ranchers, and other armed groups.

The key to tropical conservation: scrap big projects, invest in people
- Dr. Andy Mack speaks out: “BIG rarely works. Big international conservation organizations have Big budgets supporting Big offices and staff with Big salaries in the US and Europe. Per dollar, such organizations accomplish much less than smaller national organizations in rainforest countries.”
- “Dedicated, well-trained and competent people are pretty much the lowest common denominator to all our conservation successes; the opposite is a common denominator for many conservation failures.”
- “How much of the global conservation budget is invested in people?… How large is the slice of the pie going for training people in tropical rainforest countries?“
- “Sadly, the answer to these questions shows why I think conservation is failing. Anyone in the business knows how common it is for conservation donors to stipulate ‘no salaries.’ We undervalue conservationists in the tropical nations.”

Epilogue: Conservation still divided, looking for a way forward
- Ideas promoted under a new philosophy in conservation that focuses on nature’s service to humanity merit continued trial and a fair hearing, Hance writes, but they also require ongoing scrutiny.
- Likewise, Hance writes that the world’s biggest conservation groups, which have embraced the new philosophy, have made major achievements in recent years. But widespread dissatisfaction with their methods within the conservation community means they, too, deserve questioning.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories ran weekly between April 26 and May 17.

Conservation’s people problem
- Since its beginnings, conservation has had a people problem. An ugly history of marginalizing indigenous and local communities living in ecosystems designated for protection has made re-gaining trust and building relationships with these groups one of the toughest aspects of conservation today.
- In Part 4 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how the field has shifted to embrace local communities as partners in conservation — and the work that remains to be done.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories are running weekly between April 26 and May 17.

Conservation today, the old-fashioned way
- There used to be one way to do good conservation: save a species and protect some land or water. But as the human population has exploded, the atmosphere warmed, the oceans acidified, and the economy globalized, conservation has, not surprisingly, shifted.
- In Part 3 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how some conservationists are continuing to focus on traditional methods, even as the field shifts around them.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories are running weekly between April 26 and May 17.

How big donors and corporations shape conservation goals
- In Part 2 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how major donors at foundations, governments, and corporations are pushing conservation groups to adopt a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that some critics say leaves wildlife and wild lands out in the cold.
- Meanwhile, cozy relationships with environmentally destructive corporations have prompted long-running arguments that some of the world’s biggest conservation groups have lost sight of their environmental missions. Yet big conservation and corporations are closer than ever.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories are running weekly between April 26 and May 17.

7 conservationists win the ‘Green Oscars’
- This year’s Whitley Awards have been given to seven conservationists chosen from a pool of over 120 applicants from 53 countries for their “innovative conservation projects”.
- At an awards ceremony held last evening at the Royal Geographic Society in London, the seven winning conservationists received £35,000 (~$50,700) in project funding.
- Hotlin Ompusunggu from Borneo won the 2016 Whitley Gold Award that is given to an outstanding past recipient of a Whitley Award who has gone on to make a significant contribution to conservation.

Has big conservation gone astray?
- In Part 1 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how the world’s biggest conservation groups have embraced a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that has split the field over how best to save life on Earth.
- Neither side of the debate disagrees that conservation today is failing to adequately halt mass extinction. But how to proceed is where talks break down, especially when it comes to the importance of protected areas and the efficacy of the biggest, most recognizable groups.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories will run weekly through May 17.

Baby boom for New Zealand’s extremely rare giant parrot
- Only 123 adult kakapos (Strigops habroptila) remain in New Zealand.
- This year, 37 kakapo chicks have survived so far, making it the most successful breeding season in more than 20 years of conservation efforts, researchers say.
- It will be six months until the chicks are added to the head-count of the total kakapo population, Conservation Minister Maggie Barry said in a statement.

Forest restoration: from Stone Age to drone age
- Proven methods of forest restoration exist, but they are labor intensive and expensive.
- If technology can make forest restoration easier, it is more likely to be practiced on a scale large enough to make a difference, experts say. But there is still much work to be done.
- Researchers say drones can help achieve reforestation goals now being set by the UN in order to provide habitat, resources for people, and carbon storage. For instance, in 2014, the New York Declaration on Forests committed world leaders to restore forest to 350 million hectares of deforested and degraded lands by 2030.

$1m for devising best way to map Indonesia’s peatlands
- Bad maps have undermined Indonesia’s development for a long time.
- For one, they have made it tough to fight the annual forest and peatland fires.
- Now, the government wants to establish a national standard for mapping the country’s peat. It will do so through a competition, the Indonesian Peat Prize.

New ‘Blue Economy Challenge’ wants your solutions to transform the aquaculture industry
- The Blue Economy Challenge is seeking entries that can help develop “aquaculture technologies and systems that grow economies, improve the lives of disadvantaged people in the developing economies of Indian Ocean region, and achieve positive environmental and social impacts.”
- The Challenge is open to both experts and non-experts.
- Online applications will be open until 30 June 2016, and the winners will be announced sometime between September to October, 2016. Winners can receive grants of up to AU$750,000 (~US$550,000) for any single idea.

New tool seeks end to Indonesian paper giants’ secret links
- The Sinar Mas and Royal Golden Eagle conglomerates are connected with dozens of companies in Indonesia’s pulp and paper sector.
- The Environmental Paper Network has created a database that aspires to list these connections, many of which are hidden from public view.
- Sinar Mas’ most prominent holding in the sector is Asia Pulp & Paper, while RGE’s is APRIL.

How are NGOs innovating to reach palm oil financiers and companies?
- NGOs are increasingly engaging in dialogue with palm oil companies.
- To get through to financiers, some NGOs present their arguments in terms of material risk.
- However, some still some feel that there still exists a gap between activists and the finance world.

Camera trap pictures help nab tiger poacher
- Thailand police confiscated tiger skin and body parts at a police checkpoint in Mae Sot District in Western Thailand.
- By comparing camera trap photos with those of the confiscated tiger skin, WCS experts have identified the dead tiger: a female last photographed alive in Huai Kha Khaend Wildlife Sanctuary.
- Thailand police have arrested the alleged poacher, who now awaits trial.

Conservationists propose the ‘World Heritage Wilderness Complex’ to protect large landscapes
- The World Heritage Convention is already used to protect many wilderness areas around the globe, but there are significant gaps in protection, especially in large, intact wilderness areas.
- Two of 24 global-scale wilderness areas are completely absent from the World Heritage List; eight other wilderness areas have less than 1 percent of their total area within a World Heritage site.
- Several countries are already working towards a World Heritage-plus-large wilderness landscapes approach, but it hasn’t been a very systematic process.

Does conservation work? Using the IUCN Red List to evaluate groups’ performance
- Researchers came up with a new method to determine whether a conservation group’s programs work.
- The method involves tracking the status of species over time to see whether their risk of extinction increases or decreases, then comparing the outcome to a hypothetical “what if” scenario in which no conservation interventions took place.
- The study, conducted by researchers at UK-based Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, examined 17 species subjected to Durrell’s own conservation interventions, and found that of the nine species whose status changed over time, eight improved and one worsened.

After long battle, big swath of Sumatran rainforest wins protection

In what conservationists are hailing as a major breakthrough in efforts to protect Sumatra’s fast-dwindling lowland rainforests, the Indonesian government on Wednesday finally approved an ecosystem restoration license for more than 44,000 hectares (110,000 acres) of forest bordering Bukit Tigapuluh, a national park renowned for its rich wildlife. After a long-running tug-of-war between plantation companies […]
Exploring the intersection of conservation and technology
- Today Mongabay, Resolve, and World Resources Institute (WRI) announced the launch of wildtech.mongabay.com.
- Wildtech will serve as a platform for exploring the use of technology in conservation.
- The site aims to foster collaboration and partnerships between conservationists and the tech community.

Borneo’s rainforest may get high-tech 3D scan to boost conservation

CAO lasers easily penetrate forest canopies to reveal minute variations in ground elevation associated with soils. This images shows a ground elevation map in dense tropical forest of western Amazon. The map uncovers a history of geologically old meanders in the Tambopata River in Peru. Today, only the main stem of the river persists, and […]
Peru has massive opportunity to avoid emissions from deforestation

Carnegie Airborne Observatory map showing carbon in along the main stem of the Amazon in Peru. All images courtesy of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory/Greg Asner Nearly a billion tons of carbon in Peru’s rainforests is at risk from logging, infrastructure projects, and oil and gas extraction, yet opportunities remain to conserve massive amounts of forest […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Recognize the value of novel forests

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Ariel Lugo Ariel Lugo overlooking an urban watershed in Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy of Ariel Lugo. Think first before you eradicate non-native species says Dr. Ariel E. Lugo, the current director of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry within the USDA Forest Service, based in Puerto Rico. Lugo, […]
Google, zoo to leverage ‘TV white space’ to monitor wildlife

‘Whitespaces for Wildlife’ initiative hopes to change how conservationists track endangered species Imagine watching a tiger stalk a sambar deer, or catching a ghost-like glimpse of the rarely-seen saola, or monitoring a herd of peccaries in the Amazon rainforest—all from your desktop and in real time. Well, this may soon be possible under a new […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Harness the power of marketing

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Diogo Veríssimo Curious common marmosets in Northeastern Brazil. Photo by: Diogo Veríssimo. In the Biblical tale of David and Goliath, David, the underdog, uses his wit and cunning to overcome the brute force of the giant Goliath, ultimately declaring victory. Just last year, the immensely popular pop-science […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? DNA fingerprinting trees to stem illegal logging

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Chuck Cannon As a professor at Texas Tech, Dr. Chuck Cannon has been, among other things, working to create a system of DNA fingerprinting for tropical trees to undercut the global illegal logging trade. “If we just enforced existing laws and management policies, things would be pretty […]
Next big idea in forest conservation: Reconnecting faith and forests

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Shonil Bhagwat Entrance to a sacred grove in Kodagu, India. Photo courtesy of Shonil Bhagwat. “In Africa, you can come across Kaya forests of coastal Kenya, customary forests in Uganda, sacred forest groves in Benin, dragon forests in The Gambia or church forests in Ethiopia…You can also […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Rewards for reforestation

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Susie McGuire and Dr. Ed Louis Jr. Ed Louis (left) and Susie McGuire (right) with aye-aye. Photo courtesy of the Madagascar Biodiversity Partnership and Conservation Fusion. Susie McGuire and Dr. Edward Louis Jr. are the powerhouse team behind the Madagascar Biodiversity Partnership (MBP), an NGO that involves local […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? The ‘double-edged sword’ of democracy

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Douglas Sheil The Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda hosts nearly half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas. Photo courtesy of Douglas Sheil. Dr. Douglas Sheil considers himself an ecologist, but his research includes both conservation and management of tropical forests. Currently teaching at the Norwegian University of […]
Featured video: What would you change in conservation?

What would you change in conservation? It’s a simple question, but like so many simple quandaries it’s bound to elicit a wide diversity of answers. Recently, a pair of students in the MSc Conservation Science program at Imperial College London—Vikki Lang and Xuchang Liang—posed this question to their fellow students, recording a fascinating string of […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Playing games to understand what drives deforestation

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Dr. Claude Garcia Ivindo National Park in Gabon. The loss of rainforest is an emerging issue in the Congo Basin. The forests of the Congo Basin are some of the wildest areas on Earth, and until now, the level of threat was comparatively low, a result of low […]
Discarded cell phones to help fight rainforest poachers, loggers in real-time

A technology that uses discarded mobile phones to create a real-time alert system against logging and poaching will soon be deployed in the endangered rainforests of Central Africa. Rainforest Connection (RFCx), a San Francisco-based non-profit startup, is partnering with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) to install its real-time anti-deforestation technology at sites in Cameroon. […]
Bears, cats, and mystery mammals: camera traps in ‘paper park’ prove it’s worth protecting

Camera traps catch endangered species in remote park in Cambodia A rare Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) dashes past a camera trap in Virachey National Park. This species is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Photo by: Habitat ID. Can a single photograph change the fate of a park? A new conservation group, […]
The quiet zoo revolution

How the world’s best zoos are working to save biodiversity in an age of extinction. Tiger meets human at the Minnesota Zoo. Physical spaces where people can easily encounter and connect with wild species, zoos and aquariums are unique institutions. Yet in an age of environmental crises, are they doing enough to save species from […]
Revolutionary Google-backed system unlocks power of ‘big data’ to save forests

Global Forest Watch showing tree height and forest loss and gain between 2000 and 2012. World Resources Institute (WRI) today announced the release of a tool that promises to revolutionize forest monitoring. The platform, called Global Forest Watch and developed over several years with more than 40 partners, draws from a rich array of “big […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Using drones to catch poachers, monitor forests

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Lian Pin Koh Collage of photos showing orangutan nests taken from a conservation drone. Photo courtesy of ConservationDrones.org. At the foothills of the Himalayas, elephants, rhinoceroses, and tigers stir in the green forests. Protecting and monitoring these animals and the health of tropical forests worldwide is a significant […]
Next big idea in forest conservation? Integrating forest conservation, use, and restoration

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Robin Chazdon Rainforest near La Selva, Costa Rica. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Dr. Robin Chazdon has dedicated over 30 years to studying and working in tropical forests. Her research interests include biodiversity conservation, regeneration and restoration of tropical forests, and biodiversity in human-modified tropical landscapes. Currently, Chazdon […]
Scientists identify individual lizards by their irises

Institutions and governments have been scanning human irises for years to verify one’s identity—Google has been using this method since 2011—but could iris-scanning be employed on other species as well? According to a new study in Amphibia-Reptila, the answer is “yes.” Scientists have recently employed iris scanning to visually distinguish individuals of an imperiled gecko […]
Scientists build app to automatically identify species based on their calls

Call recognition for animals. New technology makes it possible to automatically identify species by their vocalizations. The software and hardware system, detailed in the current issue of the journal PeerJ, has been used at sites in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica to identify frogs, insects, birds, and monkeys. Many of the animals identified by the […]

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