topic: Savannas

topic: Savannas

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Deforestation from soy shows no sign of stopping in Cerrado, report says
- A recent report from Mighty Earth shows that approximately 26,901 hectares (66,473 acre) suffered deforestation and forest degradation in the Cerrado between last September and December, while 30,031 hectares (74,208 acres) were affected in the Amazon.
- Mighty Earth, in partnership with AidEnvironment and Repórter Brasil, are monitoring short-term soy and cattle ranching activities contributing to deforestation, aiming to highlight recent forest loss cases every three months.
- The report called for improved regulations that protect savanna biomes like the Cerrado, not just the Amazon Rainforest.

Forest diversity is key to Southeast Asia’s climate adaptability, study shows
- A new fossil study indicates that Southeast Asia’s forests were more resilient to past climate change than previously thought.
- In contrast to the theory that a vast savanna corridor expanded across Southeast Asia during the peak of the last glaciation, the researchers found evidence that a mosaic of forests in fact persisted across much of the region.
- The findings emphasize the importance of protecting connected networks of a wide range of forest types to afford the region its best chances of adapting to projected climate change.
- In addition to ecological implications, the findings provide insight to theories of how humans historically migrated across and shaped the region’s ecosystems.

2023 fires increase fivefold in Indonesia amid El Niño
- Nearly 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres, an area 15 times the size of Jakarta) burned in Indonesia between January and October 2023, according to environment and forest ministry data; El Niño and burning for new plantations contributed to this.
- 2023 was the worst fire season since 2019, when that year’s El Niño brought a prolonged dry season and fires so severe, they sent billowing smoke across Malaysia and Singapore.
- In the absence of local jobs, some people burn abandoned farmlands and turn them into new plantations as a way to make a living and survive.

Keeping herbivores at bay helps in early stages of restoration, studies show
- Excluding herbivores from restoration areas may lead to an increase in both vegetation abundance and plant diversity, according to a new analysis.
- The global-scale analysis, which reviewed hundreds of studies, found that herbivores tend to be more common in areas undergoing restoration and can slow down vegetation recovery.
- While native herbivores play a crucial role in healthy ecosystems, researchers argue it may be beneficial to keep them from entering heavily degraded areas in the early stages of restoration.
- The impact of herbivores on restoration varies, and project managers should consider timing and local conditions when deciding whether to exclude, tolerate, or introduce herbivores.

Do tree-planting projects on grasslands increase fire risk?
- Global tree-planting initiatives, aimed at storing carbon from the atmosphere, could include plantations in fire-prone African savannas.
- 58% of tree plantations grown in South African grasslands between 1980 and 2019 burned, polluting water and releasing carbon dioxide back into the air.
- As efforts to plant trees for carbon storage in Africa expand, researchers suggest cutting fossil-fuel emissions would be a better approach — but scientists are hotly debating the issue.

The Amazon’s archaeology of hope: Q&A with anthropologist Michael Heckenberger
- A professor at the University of Florida, Michael Heckenberger has been visiting and studying Indigenous peoples at the Upper Xingu River for decades and says the Amazon is already facing its tipping point: “It’s a tipping event.”
- In this interview for Mongabay, he tells how he and his colleagues have been practicing an “archeology of hope” — helping the Indigenous peoples in the region to prepare for climate change, using ancestral knowledge pulled out from archaeological research.
- “It should be the default, not the exception, to assume that there were Indigenous people living or dwelling in some way on almost every inch of Brazilian land,” he says about the marco temporal thesis, which aims to limit new Indigenous territories, now being discussed in Brazilian Congress.

Revealed: Why the UN is not climate neutral
- The UN has long championed the need for urgent climate solutions. It has claimed to be at least 95% “climate neutral” every year since 2018, largely through the use of carbon credits.
- The New Humanitarian teamed up with Mongabay to investigate the UN’s claims of climate neutrality. In an investigation that took a year and spanned multiple countries, reporters obtained details about carbon credits purchased by 33 UN entities, representing more than 75% of its reported offset portfolio since 2012.
- More than a dozen of the projects that issued the UN’s carbon credits were linked to reports of environmental damage, displacement, or health concerns. Others were deemed worthless by a number of leading climate experts.

How the Amazon’s ‘greatest devastator’ sold cattle to a Carrefour supplier
- Arrested by Brazilian Federal Police, cattle rancher Bruno Heller and relatives have already received over $5 million in environmental fines. He is also suspected of land grabbing.
- Heller transported cattle from a family farm fined for environmental violations to two other properties free from environmental implications — this maneuver is an indication of the so-called “cattle laundering.”
- A Frialto Group meatpacking plant confirmed that it slaughtered 249 animals for the Heller family. The facility supplies Carrefour, but the French retail company states that the meat from animals raised by Heller did not reach its supermarkets.

Counterintuitive conservation: Fire boosts aquatic crustaceans in U.S. savannas
- In an interesting twist, two kinds of rare American freshwater crustaceans have been found to thrive after prescribed burns in their habitats.
- Populations of vernal pool fairy shrimp in Oregon and several species of threatened crayfish on the Gulf Coast increased after the removal of invasive plants, woody shrubs and trees from their habitats using fire or mechanical means.
- Fairy shrimp populations were shown to increase more than fivefold following habitat treatments that featured fire, while speckled burrowing crayfish also responded positively following fires set to favor nesting of sandhill cranes (whose own population has soared since).
- Both areas are savanna ecosystems that have relied on frequent fires over millennia — whether naturally occurring or intentionally set by Indigenous peoples — to maintain the open habitats to which myriad organisms have adapted.

Study attempts to foresee the future of Amazonian mammals if the rainforest turns into savanna
- What could become of the some 300 species of mammals living in Amazonia if deforestation and global warming lead to the savannization of the rainforest?
- Researchers analyzed images from 400 photo traps placed in four natural enclaves of the Cerrado biome in southern Amazonia to find some answers; analysis of the photos showed that, when given the choice between preserved Amazon Rainforest and preserved Cerrado, most species chose the rainforest.
- Another study analyzed rainforests around the world, finding that savannization may happen sooner than expected; in Amazonia, this occurrence will mean reduced population and range for mammals like jaguars, tapirs and deer.

In Brazil, scientists fight an uphill battle to restore the disappearing Cerrado savanna
- Countries around the world have made ambitious targets to restore native ecosystems as an important nature-based solution, with Brazil committing to restoring 12 million hectares (30 million acres) of native vegetation by 2030.
- While restoration in places like the Amazon has attracted significant funding and resources, non-forested biomes like Brazil’s Cerrado savanna are struggling to attract the same resources, even as it faces some of the highest deforestation rates in years.
- Researchers working on Cerrado restoration are trying to change this, fighting an uphill battle to generate knowledge, strengthen expertise, and scale up restoration.
- But without more resources and focus on national and international policies, they warn that restoration efforts in the Cerrado won’t come close to reaching their targets.

Carbon credits from award-winning Kenyan offset suspended by Verra
- The carbon offset certifier Verra told Mongabay it had initiated a “quality control review” of the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project, which claims to store carbon by managing Indigenous livestock grazing routes.
- The project has been a darling of carbon market supporters, winning a series of awards at COP27 last year, where it was described as “exemplary” by Kenyan President William Ruto.
- A new report by the advocacy group Survival International said the offset was altering long-standing Indigenous herding practices and couldn’t accurately account for how much carbon it was removing from the atmosphere.
- Purchasers of carbon credits generated by the product include Netflix, Meta and NatWest.

Scientists map nearly 10 billion trees, stored carbon, in Africa’s drylands
- A recent study has mapped the locations of 9.9 billion trees across Africa’s drylands, a region below the Sahara Desert and north of the equator.
- The research, which combined satellite mapping, machine learning and field measurements, led to an estimate of 840 million metric tons of carbon contained in the trees.
- This figure is much lower than the amount of carbon held in Africa’s tropical rainforests.
- However, these trees provide critical biodiversity habitat and help boost agricultural productivity, and this method provides a tool to track both degradation and tree-planting efforts in the region.

Lula wants to mirror Amazon’s lessons in all biomes, but challenges await
- A new decree intends to protect all of Brazil’s biomes and promote sustainable development in arguably one of the country’s most ambitious environmental policies to date.
- The mandate establishes action plans for the Amazon Rainforest, Cerrado savanna, Atlantic Forest, semi-arid Caatinga, Pampas grasslands and Pantanal wetlands, based on past strategies in the Amazon that have already proven successful against deforestation.
- Environmentalists have welcomed the decree amid the country’s surging deforestation levels and rising greenhouse emissions during the past four years under Jair Bolsonaro’s rule.
- The decree’s implementation won’t be easy, experts warn, and its success depends on coordinated action across all levels of the government, increased personnel in struggling environmental enforcement agencies and highly tailored plans for each biome.

Counterintuitive: Large wild herbivores may help slow climate change
- Large animals, especially herbivores such as elephants, are often seen as being destructive of vegetation, so are not thought of as a nature-based climate solution. Scientists are proving otherwise.
- By removing living and dead plants, large animals dispose of material that may fuel wildfires, which can add large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere; by consuming vegetation and excreting dung, large animals may improve the availability of nutrients to plants and support the storage of carbon in vegetation and soil.
- By creating gaps in the vegetation and dispersing seeds, large animals create diverse ecosystems with plenty of opportunities for a variety of plants to grow, making ecosystems more resilient and better able to deal with climate change.
- By nibbling down polar region shrubs and trampling snow, large animals help maintain permafrost, helping prevent the release of carbon to the atmosphere.

‘Amazing first step’ as EU law cracks down on deforestation-linked imports
- The European Union has agreed to adopt a law that will ban the trade of commodities associated with deforestation and forest degradation.
- The law will be the first of its kind in the world, and aims to tackle deforestation caused by the EU’s consumption of various agricultural commodities that are the main drivers of global forest loss, including palm oil, cattle, rubber, soy and cocoa.
- Green groups have lauded the law, but say it falls short on several key points, including failing to protect other wooded ecosystems like savannas, and providing limited rights protection for Indigenous peoples.

Growing soy on cattle pasture can eliminate Amazon deforestation in Brazil
- Expanding soy cultivation into underutilized cattle pastureland would help prevent massive deforestation and carbon emissions compared to the current practice of clearing new forest for farmland, a new study says.
- Experts say that Brazil, the world’s No. 1 soy producer and beef exporter, has enough pastureland lying unused that would allow soy production to increase by more than a third without any further deforestation.
- Researchers warn that if Brazil continues with its current method of soy cultivation, it would end up clearing 5.7 million hectares (14 million acres) of Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna into cropland over the next 15 years.
- Environmentalists have welcomed intensifying agriculture as a solution to deforestation, but have raised concerns about the potential for increased pesticide use, biodiversity loss, and the expansion of cattle ranching into forested areas.

Habitat loss, climate change send hyacinth macaw reeling back into endangered status
- The hyacinth macaw, the world’s largest flying parrot, is closer to return to Brazil’s endangered species list, less than a decade after intensive conservation efforts succeeded in getting it off the list.
- The latest assessment still needs to be made official by the Ministry of the Environment, which is likely to publish the updated endangered species list next year.
- Conservation experts attribute the bird’s decline to the loss of its habitat due to fires in the Pantanal wetlands and ongoing deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes.
- Climate change also poses a serious threat, subjecting the birds to temperature swings that can kill eggs and hatchlings, and driving heavy rainfall that floods their preferred nesting sites.

‘Lost’ Amazonian cities hint at how to build urban landscapes without harming nature
- Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Pre-Columbian urban settlement that spans more than 4,500 square kilometers (1,737 square miles) in Bolivia’s Llanos de Mojos region, in the Amazon rainforest.
- This is the latest proof that large, complex urban societies existed in the Amazon before the arrival of the Spanish, challenging the idea that the rainforest was always a pristine, untouched wilderness.
- Some experts say we could learn from these Indigenous urban planning strategies, which, with a sophisticated land and water management system, show us how cities and the rainforest once co-existed without degrading the environment.

Stamping out savanna fires doesn’t bolster carbon sink by much, study finds
- Stamping out fires in the African savanna generates smaller carbon sequestration gains than previously thought, an analysis published in the journal Nature found.
- The data from a decades-long experiment in South Africa’s Kruger National Park raises questions about whether fire suppression in savannas can help in combating climate change, according to an accompanying commentary.
- Shrubs and grasses that make up the savanna store more carbon below ground, on average, than forests, which is one reason why fires aren’t as damaging in these landscapes.
- Even for plots in the national park subject to intense fire activity, the researchers found that root and soil carbon stores are largely preserved.

In plan for African wildlife corridors, there’s more than one elephant in the room
- An ambitious plan by a conservation NGO calls for linking up elephant habitats throughout East and Southern Africa by establishing wildlife corridors.
- But the “Room to Roam” plan, still at the conceptual stage, faces the difficult challenge of getting the agreement of thousands of private, traditional and public landowners.
- Other conservationists say the plan by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, while the ideal to work toward, fails to address how it would tackle human-elephant conflict or why landowners should go along.
- Savanna elephants are now restricted to just 14% of their former range, often isolated pockets in national parks, forest reserves and wildlife conservancies.

Pay or punish? Study looks at how to engage with farmers deforesting the Cerrado
- Businesses and countries are renewing their commitments to reducing deforestation in supply chains, but disagreements still exist over what the most effective, efficient and equitable tools are to make that happen.
- In the Brazilian Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse savanna, soybean production is one of the key industries driving rampant deforestation and conversion of native vegetation.
- While some observers favor the “carrot” approach of paying farmers not to deforest, others advocate for a “stick” approach that would cut market access for farmers who deforest.
- A new study says that in the case of the Cerrado, just using a stand-alone policy that pays farmers not to deforest would be expensive, inefficient and inequitable, and that some measure of market exclusion is also needed.

Is a European proposal on imported deforestation too punitive? (commentary)
- One third of global deforestation is linked to international trade, and the European Union plus the UK are estimated to account for 16% of global trade-related deforestation.
- A recent European Commission proposal would require companies to ensure that commodities placed on the European market are not linked to a territory that has been deforested after December 31, 2020.
- A senior scientist at CIRAD argues that as worded, the proposal could punish some countries unfairly while ignoring other useful certification schemes that protect forests.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

It’s not a cat, it’s the African civet | Candid Animal Cam
- Every month, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

As its end looms, Cerrado tracker records 6-year deforestation high
- The satellite-based deforestation-monitoring program focused on Brazil’s vast Cerrado savanna may end in April because of lack of funding, with some members of the team reportedly already laid off.
- Unlike the monitoring program for the Amazon, the one for the Cerrado isn’t included in the government budget and relies on external financing, which dried up in August 2020; since then, the program team has had to scrounge for funding from other projects and institutions.
- Sharing the scientists’ concerns is the agribusiness sector, which relies on the data to prove that its commodity is deforestation-free, and which has blasted the government’s “blurred” vision with regard to failing to fund the monitoring program.
- News of the impending closure of the monitoring program comes a week after its latest data release showed an area six times the size of the city of São Paulo was cleared between August 2020 and July 2021 — the highest deforestation rate in the Cerrado since 2015.

Getting African grasslands right, for people and wildlife alike: Q&A with Susanne Vetter
- Africa’s vast grasslands are well known for their iconic wildlife, but far less appreciated for the other ecosystem services they provide, including sequestering immense amounts of carbon and supporting millions of people practicing the ancient occupation of livestock herding.
- Susanne Vetter, a plant ecologist at Rhodes University in South Africa, studies the roles not only of plants but also of people in these landscapes.
- Through her work she has gained a rosier view of pastoralism, and its ability to coexist with wildlife, than many conservationists and policymakers hold.
- Mongabay recently interviewed Susanne Vetter via email about common misconceptions of African grasslands and the pastoralist communities who depend on them.

In Guinea, an illegal $6b gold ‘bonanza’ threatens endangered chimpanzees
- Earlier this year, Australia’s Predictive Discovery announced that it had found more than $6 billion in “bonanza”-grade gold deposits in eastern Guinea.
- A Mongabay investigation has found that the company’s exploration is taking place inside the boundaries of Haut Niger National Park, in violation of the law establishing the park.
- The park is home to an estimated 500 western chimpanzees, one of the highest concentrations of the critically endangered primate in West Africa.

Forests falling for cashew monocultures: A ‘repeated mistake’ in Côte d’Ivoire (commentary)
- Savannas and dry forests in vast parts of Côte d’Ivoire are being transformed into orchards of cashew trees, just as large areas of its rainforest have fallen for cocoa.
- Grown in extensive monocultures, cashew has raised incomes but led to deforestation and incursions into protected forests, as major stakeholders overlook the loss of trees and agro-biodiversity.
- Pollination and human diets are suffering, too: nature-based approaches like agroforestry are needed to create a diversified landscape that can make cashew sustainable in the long run.
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Timmermans vs. Bolsonaro: Will the EU get deforestation off our dinner plates? (commentary)
- The European Commission is drafting a plan to address deforestation linked with commodity supply chains.
- But Nico Muzi, Europe Director of global environmental group Mighty Earth and member of the EU Commission Expert Group on protecting and restoring the world’s forests, argues the measure has a significant loophole for soy-based animal feed and leather from Brazil.
- “The leaked plan has several major loopholes that would substantially and unnecessarily weaken its impact even as deforestation in Brazil surges,” Muzi writes. “Even while the law would protect parts of the Amazon rainforest, it would still allow big agriculture companies like Cargill to continue to drive large-scale deforestation right next door in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna and Pantanal wetlands and export the products of that destruction to Europe.”
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Fires bear down on Brazil park that’s home to jaguars, maned wolves
- Thousands of fires caused by humans in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna region continue to spread, with several fires around and inside Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- The park is home to dozens of rare and threatened species as well as the source of many important rivers and waterways; experts warn the intensity of the fires could permanently damage the natural vegetation.
- The fires don’t come as a surprise to many scientists who had predicted earlier this year that ongoing drought, rising rates of deforestation, and lack of enforcement would build up to a severe fire season.
- Every single month this year has seen above-average levels of fire in the Cerrado, with more than 36% of all fires in Brazil this year concentrated in this biome, even though it only covers just over 20% of Brazil’s land mass.

Scientists look to chimps’ past to gauge their future under climate change
- In a new study, scientists have uncovered where chimpanzees rode out periods of global change over the past 120,000 years, revealing insights into how they might be affected by future climate change.
- The team identified important long-term, resilient chimpanzee habitat in the Upper and Lower Guinean forests of West and Central Africa, and the Albertine Rift in East Africa that had been previously overlooked.
- The authors stress the vital role of understanding the past in predicting how future climate changes will affect wildlife abundance and distribution.

The secret lives of common hippos | Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

The Pantanal is burning again. Will it be another devastating year?
- Fires have reignited in the Pantanal region of South America, the world’s largest tropical wetland, a year after it lost 30% of its biome to the catastrophic fires of 2020.
- With more than 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of the Pantanal already burned, some experts say this year’s fires could be nearly as devastating as last year’s if the situation is not carefully managed and the current fires are not contained.
- Others are not as concerned, noting that fire is part of the natural ecological process in the Pantanal, and that this year’s fires aren’t nearly as damaging or substantial as last year’s.
- One marked difference between 2020 and 2021 is this year’s increased efforts to fight the fires, with government agencies, NGOs and communities working together to protect the Pantanal.

Loss of forests turns up the heat, literally, on giant anteaters
- A new study shows that giant anteaters, which are relatively poor at regulating their own body temperature, need forest patches as thermal shelters.
- It found that giant anteaters living in less forested habitats tended to travel farther to access forest fragments as a refuge from extreme temperatures.
- Researchers highlight the importance of understanding the spatial requirement of animals to guide management strategies and suggest conservation efforts focused on protecting forest patches within anteaters’ home ranges to help them regulate their body temperature.

‘Carving up my country’: Land clearing reignites fracking debate in Western Australia
- A recent data analysis shows that a single energy company has cleared 14,000 kilometers (8,700 miles) of vegetation for roads in the Kimberley, the northernmost part of Western Australia, Australia’s largest state, for fracking and mining exploration.
- The exploration occurred on First Nations’ territory, including those of the Yawuru people, recognized as “Traditional Owners” for their cultural associations with the land.
- Despite years of talk from government departments and industry, there is still no certainty about the rights of Traditional Owners to approve or veto such developments.
- Conservationists also warn this fracking exploration will enable the spread of feral cats who prey on native and endangered animals, one of Australia’s most pressing biodiversity issues.

Debt deal with deforester BrasilAgro puts UBS’s green commitment in question
- Despite its sustainability rhetoric, Swiss bank UBS has financed controversial land developer BrasilAgro with a bond issuance that raised $45.5 million. The operation is part of a broader strategy to profit from Brazilian agribusiness, including the consolidation of a joint venture with the Brazilian bank.
- BrasilAgro is allegedly responsible deforesting nearly 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of native vegetation in its farms in Brazil’s Cerrado region and was fined $1.1 million by Brazil’s environmental protection agency for illegal deforestation.
- The financial product chosen to raise money for BrasilAgro, a CRA or “agribusiness receivable certificate,” is backed by future harvests and has been a favored tool used to raise record amounts of money from the capital markets for Brazilian agribusiness firms over the past several years.
- Although there are hopes that CRAs could support sustainable practices in Brazil, financial data reviewed by Mongabay show that the largest issuances in recent months have all been for highly controversial companies such as BrasilAgro, JBS and Minerva.

‘Bad science’: Planting frenzy misses the grasslands for the trees
- Planting trees by the millions has come to be considered one of the main ways of reining in runaway carbon emissions and tackling climate change.
- But experts say many tree-planting campaigns are based on flawed science: planting in grasslands and other non-forest areas, and prioritizing invasive trees over native ones.
- Experts point out that not all land is meant to be forested, and that planting trees in savannas and grasslands runs the risk of actually reducing carbon sequestration and increasing air temperature.
- The rush to reforest has also led to fast-growing eucalyptus and acacia becoming the choice of tree for planting, despite the fact they’re not native in most planting areas, and are both water-intensive and fire-prone.

Did you know that a group of warthogs is called a sounder? Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

Study sounds latest warning of rainforest turning into savanna as climate warms
- A recent study from Brazil shows that heat stress is disrupting a critical component of photosynthesis in tree species found in the Amazon and Cerrado belt.
- Leaves heat up faster than the ambient air, and sufficiently high temperatures can cause irreversible damage to them and endanger the tree.
- The area has become hotter in recent decades and faced increasingly intense heat waves, fueled not just by global warming but also local deforestation.
- Tropical forests could look more and more like deciduous forests or savannas in the future, which are better adapted to deal with higher temperatures, the study found.

Can ‘Slow Food’ save Brazil’s fast-vanishing Cerrado savanna?
- The incredibly biodiverse Cerrado is Brazil’s second-largest biome after the Amazon. However, half of the savanna’s native vegetation has already been lost to industrial agribusiness, which produces beef, soy, cotton, corn, eucalyptus and palm oil for export.
- Those wishing to save the Cerrado today are challenged by the lack of protected lands. One response by traditional communities and conservationists is to help the rest of Brazil and the rest of the planet value the Cerrado’s cornucopia of endemic fruits, nuts and vegetables that thrive across South America’s greatest savanna.
- These include the baru nut, the babassu and macaúba coconut, the sweet gabiroba (looking like a small guava), the cagaita (resembling a shiny green tomato), the large, scaly-looking marolo (with creamy pulp and strong flavor), the berry-shaped mangaba, which means “good fruit for eating,” the egg-shaped, emerald-green pequi, and more.
- Small family farmers, beekeepers, traditional and Indigenous communities, Afro-Brazilian quilombolas (runaway slave descendants), socioenvironmental activists, and celebrity chefs have become allies in a fast-expanding slow food network, declaring: “We want to see the Cerrado on the plate of the Brazilian and the world!”

The art of adaption and survival: A story of Brazil’s Kadiwéu people
- The Kadiwéu Indigenous Land is located in western Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil, near the Paraguay border. The protected reserve covers 539,000 hectares (1.33 million acres), spanning both the Cerrado (71%) and Pantanal (29%) biomes.
- The 1,500 Kadiwéu living in the reserve today are descended from larger Indigenous groups decimated by Portuguese and Spanish colonizers. The Kadiwéu were donated their territory by Emperor Dom Pedro II for their role in the 1864-70 War of the Triple Alliance; theirs was the first Indigenous reserve ever established in Brazil.
- The remnant Kadiwéu long seemed headed for extinction, but their culture survived and adapted. Their arts, especially pottery and body painting, were studied by international anthropologists, including Claude Lévi-Strauss. Today, the Kadiwéu are incorporating their designs into international high fashion.
- But the Kadiwéu still face challenges. Their reserve continues to be invaded by illegal loggers and land grabbers. In 2019-20, more than 40% of their reserve burned in the Pantanal biome wildfires — brought on by record drought due to climate change and irresponsible land management by ranchers. COVID-19 also looms.

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- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

The Kalunga digitally map traditional lands to save Cerrado way of life
- The Kalunga represents a grouping of 39 traditional quilombola communities — the descendants of runaway slaves — living on a territory covering 262,000 hectares (647,000 acres) in Goiás state in central Brazil, within the Cerrado savanna biome.
- This territory has been under heavy assault by illegal invaders, including small-scale wildcat gold miners, and large-scale mining operations, as well as land grabbers who have destroyed native vegetation to grow soy and other agribusiness crops.
- To defend their lands, the Kalunga received a grant from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), supported by Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, EU, the Global Environment Facility, Japan and the World Bank. With their funding, the Kalunga georeferenced the territory, pinpointing homes, crops, soils, 879 springs, and vital natural resources.
- In February 2020, the U.N. Environment Programme and World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) recognized the Kalunga Historical and Cultural Heritage Site as the first TICCA (Territories and Areas Conserved by Indigenous and Local Communities) in Brazil, making it what UNEP-WCMC calls a “Territory for Life.”

Cat corridors between protected areas is key to survival of Cerrado’s jaguars
- Only 4% of the jaguar’s critical habitat is effectively protected across the Americas, and in Brazil’s Cerrado biome it’s just 2%.
- A survey in Emas National Park in the Cerrado biome concludes that the protected area isn’t large enough to sustain a viable jaguar population, and that jaguars moving in and out could be exposed to substantial extinction risk in the future.
- The study suggests that improving net immigration may be more important than increasing population sizes in small isolated populations, including by creating dispersal corridors.
- To ensure the corridors’ effectiveness, conservation efforts should focus on resolving the conflict between the jaguars and human communities.

‘What’s at stake is the life of every being’: Saving the Brazilian Cerrado
- The Cerrado boasts a third of Brazil’s biodiversity and is the largest savanna in South America with 44% of its 10,000 species of plants endemic. And yet, since the colonial period, this semi-arid region was largely ignored, and has even been portrayed as an “infertile, uninhabited region,” nothing more than “a place between places.”
- That all changed over recent decades with agribusiness declaring the Cerrado to be Brazil’s last great agricultural frontier. Today, half of the vast savanna which covers two million square kilometers (770,000 square miles) has been converted to crops of soy, cotton, corn and eucalyptus, or to pasture covered in massive cattle herds.
- As the savanna has been lost, its communities have simultaneously risen to save what’s left. The National Campaign in Defense of the Cerrado, launched in January 2016, has fought an uphill political battle to preserve the region’s native vegetation and biodiversity. The effort has grown more dogged during the Bolsonaro presidency.
- Working with Indigenous and traditional peoples, the organization is striving to build global awareness of the Cerrado’s natural significance and to get more of the region declared as World Heritage sites. “Defending the Cerrado is defending its people,” declares one activist.

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.

Podcast: Is Brazil’s biodiverse savanna getting the attention it deserves, finally?
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast we look at how the largest and most biodiverse tropical savanna on Earth, Brazil’s Cerrado, may finally be getting the conservation attention it needs.
- We’re joined by Mariana Siqueira, a landscape architect who’s helping to find and propagate the Cerrado’s natural plant life, and is collaborating with ecologists researching the best way to restore the savanna habitat.
- Also appearing on the show is Arnaud Desbiez, founder and president of Brazilian NGO ICAS, who describes the Cerrado as an important part of the Brazilian range for the giant armadillo, a species whose conservation could play an important role in protecting what’s left of the Cerrado’s vast biodiversity.

‘Digital land grab’ deprives traditional LatAm peoples of ancestral lands: Report
- South American nations, including Brazil and Colombia, are increasingly using georeferencing technology for registering land ownership.
- However, if this high-tech digital technique is not backed up by traditional ground truthing surveys, it can be used by landgrabbers and agribusiness companies to fraudulently obtain deeds depriving traditional communities of their collective ancestral lands, according to a new report.
- The georeferenced process is being partly funded by the World Bank, which has provided US $45.5 million for digital registration of private rural properties in Brazil. Georeferencing is allowing the international financial sector to play a key role in converting large tracts of rainforest and savanna into agribusiness lands.
- To prevent this form of land theft, prospective landowners’ claims need to be independently verified via a centralized governmental land registration system organized to resolve land conflicts and to detect and eliminate local and regional corruption.

At-risk Cerrado mammals need fully-protected parks to survive: Researchers
- A newly published camera trap study tracked 21 species of large mammal in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna biome from 2012-2017.
- The cameras were deployed in both fully protected state and federal parks and less protected mixed-use areas known as APAs where humans live, farm and ranch.
- The probability of finding large, threatened species in true reserves was 5 to 10 times higher than in the APAs for pumas, tapirs, giant anteaters, maned wolves, white-lipped and collared peccaries, and other Neotropical mammals.
- With half the Cerrado biome’s two million square kilometers of native vegetation already converted to cattle ranches, soy plantations and other croplands, conserving remaining habitat is urgent if large mammals are to survive there. The new study will help land managers better preserve biodiversity.

Harvard’s half-billion land stake in Brazil marred by conflict and abuse
- Harvard University has plowed $450 million of its $40 billion endowment in Brazil, most of it to buying up at least 405,000 hectares (1 million acres) of land in the Cerrado.
- This is a region where major landowners have racked up human rights violations against smallholder farmers and crimes against the environment.
- Most investments in land in this region are purely speculative; while the land goes unused, locals are deprived of their water sources, farmland and other resources.
- Harvard would not comment on its Brazilian investments specifically, but said it is trying to divest from unsustainable ventures. But even as it has trouble finding buyers for the farms, it continues to profit from the appreciating value of the land.

Amazonia’s people domesticated crops on ‘forest islands’ 10,000 years ago: Study
- Early Amazon human inhabitants domesticated and grew crops more than 10,000 years ago, making the region one of the world’s earliest centers of plant domestication for food, a study has found.
- These early people left behind thousands of artificial raised forest islands in what is now the Llanos de Moxos savanna in northern Bolivia.
- Researchers tracked glass-like microfossils to reveal evidence that these early farmers grew squash, corn and cassava.
- The new research helps dispel a persistent myth that the Amazon long existed as a sort of wilderness paradise, largely untouched by human influences. Instead, it is now thought that humans have been profoundly altering the landscape of Amazonia for thousands of years, with lasting consequences for species conservation and habitats.

Corn growers in Brazil’s Cerrado reap a hostile climate of their own making
- Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.
- That’s the finding of a new study that shows the loss of native vegetation has led to more warm nights and changes in rainfall patterns, affecting corn crops that require moderate temperatures and reliable rainfall.
- The study’s authors say everyone loses from this scenario, and call for keeping the native vegetation in place as much as possible.
- International pressure and a serious commitment from agribusiness, which is largely resistant to efforts to preserve the Cerrado, might be the way to stop deforestation, they suggest.

China and EU appetite for soy drives Brazilian deforestation, climate change: Study
- A recent study highlights how demand for Brazilian soy by Europe and China is stoking deforestation, thereby increasing carbon emissions, especially in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna biome, followed by the Amazon rainforest.
- The extent to which Brazilian soy production and trade contribute to climate change depends largely on the location where soybeans are grown. Soy exported from some municipalities in Brazil’s Cerrado, for example, contributes 200 times more total greenhouse gas emissions than soy coming from other parts of the country.
- China was the world’s largest importer of Brazilian soy from 2010 to 2015 and responsible for 51% of associated carbon dioxide emissions, with the European Union responsible for about 30%. However, EU soy imports (sourced from the northern Cerrado) were linked to more recent deforestation than China’s imports.
- The study is the first to offer an estimate of carbon emissions across Brazil’s entire soy sector. The data obtained by analyzing 90,000 supply chain streams could help policymakers curb emissions by designing low-carbon supply chains, with more effective forest conservation, and making improvements in transport infrastructure.

Soy made the Cerrado a breadbasket; climate change may end that
- The Brazilian Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna covering over 20% of the nation’s landmass. More than half the Cerrado’s native vegetation — much of it biodiverse dry forest — has been converted to agribusiness, turning it into a breadbasket for Brazil and a key source of soy for China, the EU and other international markets.
- Brazilian soy cultivation is set to expand by 12 million hectares between 2021 and 2050, with the vast majority of that expansion happening in the Cerrado and especially on its agricultural frontier — a four-state region known as Matopiba.
- However, the Matopiba region (consisting of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states) is more vulnerable to climate change than other parts of Brazil. Researchers say global warming on the savanna is also worsened by the conversion of native vegetation to croplands and pastures.
- Extensive conversion of native vegetation (which holds moisture in roots deep underground) into a soy monocrop (which stores little water) is becoming a major problem, as little Cerrado soy is currently irrigated. Scientists argue that the conservation of native vegetation must be actively pursued to save the Cerrado agricultural frontier.

Painting with fire: Cerrado land managers learn from traditional peoples
- Fire is a disturbance that has occurred naturally in Brazil’s tropical savanna — known as the Cerrado biome — for thousands of years. Indigenous and traditional people living in the Cerrado taught themselves to work successfully with fire, using it as an environment-enhancing land management tool.
- However, modern land managers, influenced by techniques practiced in European and U.S. forests, imposed a non-alteration “zero-fire” conservation policy for decades in the Cerrado.
- That practice allowed the steady buildup of combustible organic material, which frequently led to late dry season wildfires or even mega-fires, ecosystem harm, and conflicts with traditional peoples. But in fact, a new study shows prescribed burns in the Cerrado cause no net loss in species diversity, and even enhance some species.
- Starting in 2014, pilot projects launched by the government on conserved lands in the Cerrado have successfully utilized Integrated Fire Management (IFM), including prescribed burns — approaches learned in part from traditional communities. The result is a decrease in wildfire size, intensity and ecosystem damage.

Study finds new population of rare deer — but in Brazil’s Arc of Deforestation
- Scientists have discovered new populations of Pampas deer in the savanna region along the southern edge of the Brazilian Amazon, hundreds of miles away from the species’ historical range.
- The findings illustrate the need for more detailed studies to assess the deer’s conservation status and that of other unrecorded species.
- While finding new populations is good news, it’s tempered by the fact that the largest of those groups is in an area known as Brazil’s Arc of Deforestation, where the land is fast being taken over for agriculture.

Private firms will pay soy farmers not to deforest Brazil’s Cerrado
- The meteoric growth of the soy industry, which cultivates the profitable bean to feed livestock and cultivated fish in both Brazil and internationally (especially in the UK and EU) is rapidly destroying critical biomes like the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savanna.
- But in December. Tesco, Nutreco, and Grieg Seafood launched a groundbreaking initiative aimed at reducing deforestation in the Cerrado by paying farmers to conserve native vegetation on their lands.
- The “Funding for Soy Farmers in the Cerrado Initiative” has so far managed to secure around US$13 million in pledges to incentivize farmers to avoid new deforestation, and instead grow on land that has already been transformed for agriculture. A mechanism for distributing the funds has yet to be established.
- The initiative’s goals align with those of the Cerrado Manifesto, a voluntary pact already signed by 60+ organizations to protect the Cerrado. Backers only want soy grown on the 38 million hectares already converted from savanna to agriculture. A sticking point: transnational commodities companies, like Cargill, haven’t signed on.

EU/Chinese soy consumption linked to species impacts in Brazilian Cerrado: study
- The Brazilian Cerrado, the world’s largest tropical savanna, is a biodiversity hotspot with thousands of unique species and is home to 5 percent of the world’s biodiversity.
- However, half of the Cerrado has already been converted to agriculture; much of it is now growing soy which is exported abroad, particularly to the European Union (EU) and China, primarily as animal feed. But tracing soy-driven biodiversity and species losses to specific commodities traders and importing nations is challenging.
- Now a new groundbreaking study published in the journal PNAS has modeled the biodiversity impacts of site-specific soy production, while also linking specific habitat losses and species losses to nations and traders.
- For example, the research found that the consumption of Brazilian soy by EU countries has been especially detrimental to the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), which has lost 85 percent of its habitat to soy in the state of Mato Grosso.

Fires still being set in blazing Bolivia (commentary)
- Firefighters in Bolivia are tackling conflagrations that have burned an area larger than Costa Rica. Several national parks and Indigenous territories have been affected.
- Many Indigenous and civil society groups are calling for an end to laws that allow burning.
- I spoke to ecologists and biologists about what is being lost, and what the chances of recovery are for affected areas. Some did not want to be named, as the political situation is tense right now in the run up to Bolivia’s October elections.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Brazilian Amazon fires scientifically linked to 2019 deforestation: report
- A scientific report released today by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) reveals critical overlap between deforestation and fire alerts. Mongabay had exclusive access to the report ahead of release.
- At least 125,000 hectares (310,000 acres) of the Brazilian Amazon — the equivalent to 172,000 soccer fields — were cleared through 2019 and then burned in August. The findings offer a base map overlapping 2019 deforestation and fire hotspots, and include 16 high-resolution time lapse videos unveiling newly cleared agricultural lands linked to fire occurrences.
- MAAP’s findings show that the dramatic photos that garnered worldwide attention of smoky fires sweeping the Brazilian Amazon in August do not correspond with burning rainforest, but instead coincide with areas intentionally deforested this year, with the cleared land then set ablaze to finish the agricultural conversion process.
- Although the report didn’t detect major forest fires in Brazil to date, the risk still exists, as the dry season deepens, given that many fire occurrences were detected on agriculture-forest boundaries. The study doesn’t say how much of the 125,000 hectares cleared in the first 8 months of 2019 were illegally deforested.

Europe-bred rhinos join South African cousins to repopulate Rwanda park
- Five critically endangered eastern black rhinos have been flown from Europe to Akagera National Park in Rwanda.
- Eastern black rhino populations across the region are small and isolated, with the risk of inbreeding damaging long-term genetic viability.
- The rhinos come from the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) breeding program and will add vitally needed fresh genetics into Rwanda’s fledgling population, made up of rhinos bred in South Africa.

Despite a decade of zero-deforestation vows, forest loss continues: Greenpeace
- Nearly a decade after the Board of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) passed a resolution to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 when sourcing commodities such as soya, palm oil, beef, and paper products, these commodities continue to drive widespread deforestation, a new report from Greenpeace says.
- Greenpeace contacted 66 companies, asking them to demonstrate their progress in ending deforestation by disclosing their cattle, cocoa, dairy, palm oil, pulp and paper and soya suppliers. Of the companies that did respond, most came back with only partial information.
- The report concludes that not a single company could demonstrate “meaningful effort to eradicate deforestation from its supply chain.”
- Other experts say that transparency in supply chains is improving, and that measuring compliance to zero-deforestation goals requires more nuanced research.

EU holds the key to stop the ‘Notre Dame of forests’ from burning (commentary)
- Brazil’s President vowed to rip up the rainforest to make way for farming and mining, threatening the lives of Indigenous people.
- European scientists and Brazilian Indigenous groups say that the EU can halt the devastation. In ongoing trade talks, the EU must demand higher standards for Brazilian goods.
- EU citizens care about our planetary life support systems. Their leaders should reflect this on the global stage.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Cargill pledges to stop forest to farmland conversions, but no results yet for the Cerrado
- Cargill has announced new and updated policies to achieve deforestation-free supply chains by 2030, including more transparency in supply chains for soy – a crop that is a major cause of large-scale deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado.
- The announcement came just days after the Soft Commodities Forum announced a new framework for transparency and traceability in “high-risk” soy supply chains in Brazil, and two years after an investigation shed light on large-scale forest-clearing by Bolivian and Brazilian soy farmers selling to Cargill.
- A newly released report shows that not a single company will achieve their 2020 deforestation-free pledges, and recent research questions the effectiveness of such commitments.

Why did Serengeti’s wild dogs disappear? Study challenges controversial hypothesis
- When African wild dogs disappeared from the famed Serengeti National Park in 1991, a controversial hypothesis that emerged was that handling by researchers to fit them with radio collars and take blood samples had compromised their immune systems and triggered a latent rabies virus.
- Decades later, a new study challenges that hypothesis, showing that wild dogs exposed to similar stresses and conditions to the east of the park didn’t face the same mortality rate.
- A proponent of the original hypothesis, though, says a more rigorous analysis of the wild dogs’ exposure to disease and levels of stress would have presented a more convincing argument.
- The study’s authors posit that African wild dogs went missing from the Serengeti plains because of increasing competition with lions and hyenas, whose numbers have increased in the park.

As Brazilian agribusiness booms, family farms feed the nation
- Brazil’s “Agricultural Miracle” credits industrial agribusiness with pulling the nation out of a recent economic tailspin, and contributing 23.5 percent to GDP in 2017. But that miracle relied on a steeply tilted playing field, with government heavily subsidizing elite entrepreneurs.
- As a result, Brazilian agro-industrialists own 800,000 farms which occupy 75.7 percent of the nation’s agricultural land, with 62 percent of total agricultural output. Further defining the inequity, the top 1.5 percent of rural landowners occupy 53 percent of all agricultural land.
- In contrast, there are 4.4 million family farms in Brazil, making up 85 percent of all agricultural operations in the country. The family farm sector produces 70 percent of food consumed in the country, but does so using under 25 percent of Brazil’s agricultural land.
- Farm aid inequity favoring large-scale industrial agribusiness over family farms has deepened since 2016 under Michel Temer, and is expected to deepen further under Jair Bolsonaro. Experts say that policies favoring family farms could bolster national food security.

Deforestation in Brazil’s cerrado falls
- Deforestation in Brazil’s cerrado, a wooded grassland that covers more than two million square kilometers and is the country’s second largest biome, fell 11 precent relative to a year ago.
- According to analysis by Brazil’s national space research institute INPE, deforestation in the cerrado amounted to 6,657 square kilometers for the twelve months ended July 31, 2018, which beat out 2016 as the lowest annual forest loss since at least 2001.
- Last year 7,474 square kilometers of cerrado was cleared.
- By contrast, deforestation in the Amazon has been trending upward since 2012, including a 14 percent rise this year.

Stay or go? Understanding a partial seasonal elephant migration
- Elephants in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park wearing GPS tracking tags shared a general dry-season home range but followed three different wet-season migration strategies: residency, short-distance migration, and long-distance migration.
- Despite similar dry-season conditions that kept all the tagged elephants near provisioned waterholes, the migrating elephants began their seasonal movements at the onset of the first rains.
- Scientists urge collaboration among stakeholders and countries to maintain the long-distance, cross-border migrations some animals need to survive.

Common ground on the prairie (commentary)
- Good stewardship of our native grasslands is one of the best ways to survive the next weather event. Grasses are rooted in the ground, which enables the soil to absorb and retain more water. That, in turn, prevents sediment, fertilizer, pesticides, and other compounds in the soil from running off into nearby water ways. And by absorbing and storing more water, the land better withstands flood and drought alike.
- Healthy grasslands also serve as a check against climate change, pulling heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it in the soil. Research shows that improving grazing management practices on just one acre of grassland can pull an average of 419 extra pounds of carbon out of the atmosphere each year.
- This is an important message for the governors, mayors, CEOs and producers gathering in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS). There, they will demonstrate the progress the public and private sectors have made in reducing carbon emissions and they’ll set ambitious new goals. Land stewardship will be high on the agenda, as it should be.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Audio: The ‘Godfather of Biodiversity’ on why it’s time to manage Earth as a system
- On this episode we welcome the godfather of biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, to discuss some of the most important environmental issues we’re currently facing and why he believes the next decade will be the “last decade of real opportunity” to address those issues.
- Lovejoy joined the Mongabay Newscast to talk about how deforestation and the impacts of climate change could trigger dieback in the Amazon and other tropical forests, causing them to shift into non-forest ecosystems, as well as the other trends impacting the world’s biodiversity he’s most concerned about.
- He says it’s time for a paradigmatic shift in how we approach the conservation of the natural world: “We really have got to the point now where we need to think about managing the entire planet as a combined physical and biological system.”

Fires tear through East Java park, threatening leopard habitat
- Authorities in East Java, Indonesia, are trying to stop a wildfire from spreading into core zone of the Coban Wisula forest, home to Javan leopards.
- The fire is burning within Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, a major tourist attraction. An iconic landscape in the park, known as Teletubbies Hill, has already gone up in flames.
- A local NGO is monitoring the situation to make sure none of the leopards are flushed out of their habitat and into contact with humans, which could turn violent.

More companies sign on to Cerrado Manifesto
- APG and Robeco are two of the most recent companies to sign on to the Cerrado Manifesto, which calls for an end to deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado biome.
- The Manifesto is a two-page document that puts the onus on soy and meat producers and traders, as well as other companies in the commodities supply chain, to prevent runaway destruction of the Cerrado savannah.
- According to experts, about half of the biome’s native forests and vegetation have already been cleared for agricultural expansion.
- While more than 70 companies have signed the Cerrado Manifesto, including large fast food companies and supermarkets like McDonalds and Walmart, experts say the initiative won’t likely be successful without participation by large commodities firms, such as Cargill, ADM and Bunge.

As Colombia expands its palm oil sector, scientists worry about wildlife
- Colombia aims to overtake Thailand to become the world’s third largest supplier of palm oil, a popular plant-based oil used in many products around the world.
- Studies have shown that oil palm plantations provide poor habitat for wildlife, supporting a fraction of the species as neighboring forest.
- Researchers say Colombia’s palm oil expansion could have minimal impacts on the country’s biodiversity if it takes places on already-degraded land, such as cattle pasture. They caution that development should not happen in areas that provide habitat for threatened species, or regions that are ecologically important. They say smaller plantations will have less of an impact, and recommend planting understory vegetation.
- Biologists are also concerned the most common species of oil palm, called African oil palm, could hybridize with native palm plants and degrade the species’ genetic integrity.

Bolivia’s Madidi National Park home to world’s largest array of land life, survey finds
- A two-and-a-half-year biological survey of Madidi National Park in Bolivia added 1,382 species and subspecies of plants and animals to the list of those living in the park.
- The team believes that 124 species and subspecies may be new to science.
- WCS, the organization that led the study, said the 18,958-square-kilometer (7,320-square-mile) park is the world’s most biodiverse protected area.

Tanzania’s Maasai losing ground to tourism in the name of conservation, investigation finds
- An investigation by the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank, has turned up allegations that the government of Tanzania is sidelining the country’s Maasai population in favor of tourism.
- The government and some foreign investors worry that the Maasai, semi-nomadic herders who have lived in the Rift Valley for centuries, are degrading parts of the Serengeti ecosystem.
- The authors of the Oakland Institute’s report argue that approaches aimed at conservation should focus on the participation and engagement of Maasai communities rather than their removal from lands to be set aside for high-end tourism.

Half a ton of pangolin scales seized on the way to Asia from Benin
- More than 500 kilograms of pangolin scales were confiscated at the Cotonou airport in Benin on March 19.
- Three people suspected of trying to smuggle 23 bags of scales, used in traditional medicine in Asia, were arrested on their way to Vietnam.
- Research indicates that a hunter captures a pangolin in the wild once every five minutes, adding up to more than a million taken over the past 10 years.

Audio: Impacts of agriculture on Brazil’s Cerrado region
- On today’s episode: the impacts of agriculture on Brazil’s Cerrado region. Incredibly biodiverse, the region supports more than 10,000 plant species, 900 birds, and 300 mammals. But it has long been overlooked by scientists and environmentalists alike, and as protecting the Amazon has become more of a priority, much agricultural production in Brazil has moved from the rainforest to the vast Cerrado savannah.
- In February, Mongabay sent journalists Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance to the Cerrado region of central Brazil to report on the impacts of this rapid expansion of agribusiness on the region’s environment and people.
- Prager and Milhorance filed a series of six reports and they’re here to tell us what they found.

Suspected poisoning takes down 11 lions in Uganda park
- Eight cubs and three female lions have been found dead, apparently from eating poisoned meat in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
- Lions, along with other predators, have been in decline across Uganda since the 1970s.
- Recent studies indicate that the country’s growing human population has driven lions out of their former habitats and that the big cats are killed to defend the livestock of local communities.

New remote-sensing technique used to determine carbon losses in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Research published yesterday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution finds that pressures from human activities and climate change caused the African continent to lose as much as 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon between 2010 and 2016.
- The study not only shows that there was an overall net carbon loss across sub-Saharan Africa, but also that substantial losses occurred in drylands — savannahs and woodlands that fall outside of humid zones — which lost approximately 5 percent of their total carbon stocks each year.
- In order to quantify changes in above-ground biomass-carbon in sub-Saharan Africa, an international team of scientists used a new remote sensing technique based on a satellite system that employs low-frequency, passive microwave signals as opposed to the more common high-resolution photography.

Cerrado: can the empire of soy coexist with savannah conservation?
- With new deforestation due to soy production markedly reduced in recent years by Brazilian laws and by the 2006 Amazon Soy Moratorium, agribusiness, transnational commodities companies like Bunge and Cargill, and investors have shifted their attention to the Cerrado, savannah.
- Four Cerrado states, Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, known collectively as Matopiba, are seeing a rapid reduction in native vegetation as soy, cotton, corn and cattle production rises. Over half of the Cerrado’s 2 million square kilometers has already been converted to croplands, with large-scale agribusiness owning most land.
- One reason for the focus on the Cerrado: Brazil’s Forest Code requires that inside Legal Amazonia 80 percent of forests on privately held lands be conserved as Legal Reserves. But in a large portion of the Cerrado, property owners are only required to protect 20 to 35 percent of native vegetation.
- With little help coming currently from government, conservationists are responding with creative approaches for protection – developing partnerships with local communities, seeking signers for the Cerrado Manifesto to curb new deforestation due to soy, and restoring degraded lands to market the Cerrado’s unique fruits and other produce.

$23.5 million funding pledge aims to protect critical West African national park
- The National Geographic Society, Wyss Foundation, African Parks and the government of Benin have announced a combined commitment of more than $23 million to secure and restore the Pendjari National Park in Benin, West Africa.
- The park is one of the last remaining strongholds for elephants in West Africa, and is also home to the critically endangered West African lion and Saharan cheetah.
- In 2017, African Parks assumed management of the national park.

For Australia’s fire-starting falcons, pyromania serves up the prey
- Australia’s indigenous peoples have long spoken of birds of prey intentionally starting bushfires to flush out prey.
- In a new study, researchers have now compiled observations and anecdotes from scientific reports, firefighters and Aboriginal peoples to get a better understanding of how such bird-caused fires spread in Australia’s Northern Territory.
- Overall, most instances of fire-spreading by birds seem to be intentional, the authors say, but it is hard to say how common such fires are.

Camera trap captures spotted hyena in Gabon national park, the first in 20 years
- The spotted hyena was thought to be extinct in Gabon’s Batéké Plateau National Park for 20 years as a result of wildlife poaching.
- But the camera trap image captured has given conservation groups hope that protection of the park is working and allowing wildlife to return.
- Camera traps have also recently snagged images of a lion, a serval and chimpanzees.

Carbon sequestration role of savanna soils key to climate goals
- Savannas and grasslands cover a vast area, some 20 percent of the earth’s land surface — from sub-Saharan Africa, to the Cerrado in Brazil, to North America’s heartland. They also offer an enormous and underappreciated capacity for carbon sequestration.
- However, the role of forests in storing carbon has long been emphasized over the role of savannas (and savanna soils) by international climate negotiators, resulting in policies such as REDD+ for preserving and restoring forests, with no such incentives for protecting grasslands.
- Scientists warn that the planting of trees, such as nonnative eucalyptus in Africa and Brazil, could be counterproductive in the long term, potentially contributing to climate change emissions while harming grassland biodiversity and altering ecosystems.
- As participants prepare to meet for the COP23 climate summit in Bonn, Germany next week, grassland scientists are urging that policymakers turn an eye toward savannas, and begin to develop incentives for preserving them and their carbon storing soils. More research is also needed to fully understand the role savannas can play in carbon sequestration.

Major global companies commit to halting destruction of Brazilian Cerrado
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon remains historically low. But much of the agricultural development that didn’t occur in the Amazon, it turns out, was simply shifted over to the Cerrado, a vast and highly biodiverse tropical savannah that is the second-largest ecoregion in Brazil.
- In response to the enormous scale of destruction in the Cerrado, more than 40 Brazilian environmental organizations co-signed the Cerrado Manifesto this past September to “call for immediate action in defense of the Cerrado by companies that purchase soy and meat from within the biome.”
- Twenty-three global companies, including Carrefour, Marks and Spencer, McDonald’s, Nestle, Unilever, and Wal-Mart, responded to that call to action on Wednesday by issuing a statement saying that they “support the objectives defined in the Cerrado Manifesto and commit to working with local and international stakeholders to halt deforestation and native vegetation loss in the Cerrado.”

Healthy soils can boost food security and climate resilience for millions (commentary)
- Drylands take centre stage this week as world leaders gather in Ordos, in the Inner Mongolia region of China, for the thirteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP13).
- The health of many dryland ecosystems has declined dramatically over recent decades, largely due to unsustainable farming methods, increasing drought, deforestation, and clearance of natural grasslands.
- Changing the way drylands are farmed to conserve life underground is the only way of restoring these ecosystems and the agricultural outputs they sustain.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Big mammals flourish as Cerrado park’s savanna comes back
- The study examined a state park in the Brazilian Cerrado, which contains land used in recent decades for eucalyptus plantations, cattle ranching and charcoal production.
- The researchers used camera traps, recording the dry season presence of 18 species of large mammals.
- In a subsequent analysis, they found that the number of large mammals found in the ‘secondary’ savanna was similar to numbers found in untouched regions of the Cerrado.

How the World Heritage Convention could save more wilderness: Q&A with World Heritage expert Cyril Kormos
- Since its inception in the 1970s, the UNESCO World Heritage Convention has officially recognized 1,052 sites of cultural or ecological importance around the planet.
- Making the list as a World Heritage site can help provide a location with increased protection and attention.
- The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an advisor to the World Heritage Committee, released a study showing that 1.8 percent of wilderness areas are covered under World Heritage protection.
- The IUCN recommends a more methodical approach to the designation of World Heritage sites to help fill these gaps.

Is Brazil’s Forest Code failing to reduce deforestation?
- Engagement with the land registration system that underpins the Forest Code was initially high, but the researchers found that it had little bearing on the amount of illegal deforestation.
- Only 6 percent of farmers surveyed said they were actively restoring deforested parts of their land, while 76 percent said that they would only do so if forced by authorities.
- After dropping off substantially in the late 2000s, deforestation rates are once again on the rise, reaching their highest levels since 2008 last year.

New soy-driven forest destruction exposed in South America
- Mighty Earth looked at updated satellite imagery from 28 sites in the Cerrado in Brazil and the Gran Chaco and the Amazon in Bolivia.
- They found evidence of 60 square kilometers of land clearing for soy production since their September 2016 investigation.
- Bunge and Cargill, the two companies that figure prominently in Mighty Earth’s latest report, argue that they are working to eradicate deforestation from their supply chains.

Rwanda welcomes 20 black rhinos to Akagera National Park
- The 20 black rhinos are of the eastern subspecies (Diceros bicornis michaeli).
- African Parks, the NGO that manages Akagera National Park in cooperation with the government of Rwanda, says that it has rhino trackers, canine patrols and a helicopter to protect the rhinos from poaching.
- Fewer than 5,000 black rhinos exist in Africa. Their numbers have been decimated by poaching for their horns, which fetch high prices for use in traditional Chinese medicine.
- Officials hope that the new rhino population will boost Akagera National Park’s visibility as a ecotourism destination.

Increasing tree cover threatens world’s most endangered antelope
- Between 1985 and 2012, tree cover in hirola’s habitat has more than doubled.
- This increasing encroachment by trees is likely to blame for the decline in hirola populations in Africa, researchers say.
- Decline in elephant and cattle numbers in the region, an increase in browsing livestock, and increased drier conditions could have resulted in the increasing tree cover.

New report: Brazil’s Cerrado could sidestep conversion for agriculture
- Home to almost half of Brazil’s agriculture, the country’s leaders are looking toward the Cerrado to accelerate economic development.
- The Cerrado is also home to indigenous communities and traditional societies, such as the quilombolas, descendants of escaped African slaves.
- The report argues for a more inclusive process that preserves traditional farming practices, intensifies existing large-scale agriculture and protects the Cerrado’s water, habitat and biodiversity.

Beef consumers’ role in causing deforestation in South America (commentary)
- Beef production has proven to be a top driver of tropical deforestation in South America and globally.
- In South America, land ultimately used for cattle ranches frequently replaces tropical forests.
- Although many companies spin their deforestation-free beef commitments and practices as robust and comprehensive, we found all 13 of the companies that we scored in our recent report have gaps in their commitments and practices that can allow for continued deforestation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Savannas and grasslands are more biodiverse than you might think — and we’re not doing enough to conserve them
- The notion that grassy biomes arise from degraded forests and therefore harbor low levels of biodiversity is not only inaccurate, it also helps drive the lack of concern over their fate.
- Given the high rates of land-cover conversion, especially in Neotropical grassy biomes, however, they should be a high conservation priority and should be included in more protected areas, the authors argue.
- The grassy biomes of tropical Africa and Australia are still relatively intact, making them the least vulnerable to biodiversity loss in the near future.

“Ecological recession”: Researchers say biodiversity loss has hit critical threshold across the globe
- The researchers examined 2.38 million records of 39,123 terrestrial species collected at 18,659 sites around the world to model the impacts on biodiversity of land use and other pressures from human activities that cause habitat loss.
- They then estimated down to about the one-square-kilometer level the extent to which those pressures have caused changes in local biodiversity, as well as the spatial patterns of those changes.
- They found that, across nearly 60 percent of Earth’s land surface, biodiversity has declined beyond “safe” levels as defined by the planetary boundaries concept, which seeks to quantify the environmental limits within which human society can be considered sustainable.

Building roads for agricultural expansion in Brazil is aiding the spread of insects that harm crops
- Scientists studied an explosion in the population of leaf-cutter ants along roadsides in the Brazilian Cerrado.
- Though it is an iconic and ecologically important species, leaf-cutter ants can cause millions of dollars in crop losses each year even when highly toxic pesticides are in use.
- The researchers are warning of severe ecological and economic impacts as new roads in the Cerrado facilitate the expansion of leaf-cutters into more cropland.

West African countries come together to stop the illegal rosewood trade
- Several species of rosewood, belonging to the genera Dalbergia and Pterocarpus and collectively known as hongmu, are highly sought after by Chinese furniture manufacturers, who use them to make products that are coveted status symbols.
- The majority of rosewood imports into China have traditionally come from Southeast Asian countries, but West Africa has become one of the largest exporting regions feeding China’s growing demand for rosewood in the past few years.
- In 2014, nearly half of China’s rosewood imports came from Nigeria, Ghana, and other African countries, which supplied just 10 percent of Chinese rosewood imports a decade ago.

Rekindling Australia’s Aboriginal past to fight climate change (Commentary)
- Australian’s indigenous communities traditionally managed land through low-intensity burning, which helped prevent larger fires later on.
- But Eurocentric land management, proscribing fire at all costs, was based on a belief that newly settled territories were wild places where the first people exercised no custodianship over nature. This, say researchers, allowed flammable vegetation to build up and fuel catastrophic wildfires that release significant amounts of greenhouse gases.
- Australia has started programs that encourage low-intensity burning to prevent big fires and reduce emissions, while enhancing biodiversity and improving livelihoods. Some say this practice could be used in other countries to help achieve emissions reductions targets.
- This post is a commentary – the views expressed are those of the author.

Brazil’s Cerrado region: A new tropical deforestation hotspot
- A vast tropical savannah comprised of interspersed grasslands and forests, Brazil’s Cerrado is being converted for agricultural purposes at an alarming rate, researchers have found.
- The researchers used satellite data to determine that cropland within a 45 million-hectare study area has doubled over the past decade, increasing from 1.3 million hectares in 2003 to 2.5 million hectares in 2013.
- Crops are replacing the Cerrado’s natural vegetation so quickly, in fact, that the scientists say it could impact the region’s water cycle.

Threatened West African rosewood species gets CITES protection
- Demand is booming in China and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam for furniture and other goods made from hongmu, or rosewood, a term used to refer to a wide range of richly hued tropical hardwoods.
- Last week, the Secretariat of the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) officially announced the listing of the West African rosewood species Pterocarpus erinaceus on Appendix III of the Convention.
- Pterocarpus erinaceus, known as “kosso” in China, is an increasingly threatened species native to the vulnerable savannah ecosystems of West Africa.

Can Cutting-Edge Drone Technology Help Answer the Age-Old Question of Bipedalism?
- Alex Piel, co-founder of the Ugalla Primate Project, explains the unique benefit to evolutionary research that Issa Valley chimpanzee populations provide.
- The increased variety of drone types are allowing researchers to produce ever-more accurate ecological maps in remote locations.
- The Jane Goodall Institute is all-in for the use of drones as conservation tools.

In the rush to reforest, are the world’s old-growth grasslands losing out?
- Old-growth grasslands contain multitudes of unique species – including underground trees that may be thousands of years old.
- Researchers say that a lack of study may have led to the mislabeling of many ancient tropical grasslands as artificially cleared landscapes, making them prime targets for reforestation activities.
- They urge the need for more research and better technology that will help distinguish old-growth from secondary grasslands.

The Maned wolf: Saving South America’s largest canid
- The Maned wolf mostly inhabits Brazil’s Cerrado, a vast grassland threatened by rampant conversion to croplands and often forgotten by conservationists.
- The species may be adapting to its rapidly changing, and increasingly human influenced habitat, but more must be done to protect the savanna — which has suffered far worse agricultural clearing than the Amazon.
- Ingrained cultural beliefs and misconceptions regarding wolf behavior will also need to be challenged and changed to protect populations in the wild — ending retaliatory killings and hunting.

Tiny Brazilian opossum could be farmers’ friend

A gracile mouse opossum at the Botanic Garden of Brasília. Photo credit: Brendan Borrell André Mendonça pops open the spring-loaded door on the shoebox-sized trap and peeks inside. Two bulging, black eyes glare back at him. He pulls the trap off the tree limb and shakes the stunned, sopping wet creature into a clear plastic […]
King of the jungle returns to Gabon after nearly 20 year absence

Male lion in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Most of the world’s lions are now found in southern and eastern Africa. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. There’s a new cat in town. For the first time since 1996, conservationists have proof of a lion roaming the wilds of the Central African country of Gabon. The […]
How termites hold back the desert

Palm tree and termite mound: typical scenery in Okavango Delta in Botswana. Photo by Tiffany Roufs. Some termite species erect massive mounds that look like great temples springing up from the world’s savannas and drylands. But aside from their aesthetic appeal—and incredible engineering—new research in Science finds that these structures, which can stand taller than […]
Videos: new film series highlights bringing Gorongosa back to life

Tracking lions, photographing bats, collecting insects, bringing elephants home: it’s all part of a day’s work in Gorongosa National Park. This vast wilderness in Mozambique—including savannah and montane rainforest—was ravaged by civil war in the 1980s and 90s. However, a unique and ambitious 20-year-effort spearheaded by Greg Carr through the Gorongosa Restoration Project—and partnering with […]
Good intentions, collateral damage: forest conservation may be hurting grasslands

Tropical grassland biomes often defined, mismanaged as forests Trees absorb CO2 and trap carbon molecules, and countless are lost as forests are felled around the world. So why not plant as many as we can? A recent paper by Dr. Kate Parr and collaborators from the University of Liverpool suggests otherwise; the planting of more […]
Regional court kills controversial Serengeti Highway

Lionness with kill in Tanzania. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The Serengeti ecosystem got a major reprieve last week when the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) ruled against a hugely-controversial plan to build a paved road through Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. The court dubbed the proposed road “unlawful” due to expected environmental impacts. The […]
Good news: Refuge for last blue-throated macaws doubles in size in Bolivia

The Barba Azul extension protects more than 20 small isolated forest islands (including those shown above) which are preferred nesting and roosting sites for the Blue-throated Macaw. Photo by B. Hennessey, Asociación Armonía. A reserve that is home to the world’s largest population of the critically endangered blue-throated macaw (Ara glaucogularis) has been more than […]
Scientists make one of the biggest animal discoveries of the century: a new tapir

Update: The classification of Tapirus kabomani as a distinct species was officially contested in 2014. In what will likely be considered one of the biggest (literally) zoological discoveries of the Twenty-First Century, scientists today announced they have discovered a new species of tapir in Brazil and Colombia. The new mammal, hidden from science but known […]
Scientists discover that threatened bird migrates entirely within Amazon Basin

When one thinks of bird migrations, it’s usually a north-south route that follows seasonal climates. But researchers in the Amazon have tracked, for the first time, a largely-unknown long-distance migration that sticks entirely to the Amazon Basin. Using satellite telemetry, scientists tracked a pair of Orinoco geese (Neochen jubata) from Peru and a male from […]
Zoo races to save extreme butterfly from extinction

In a large room that used to house aquatic mammals at the Minnesota Zoo, Erik Runquist holds up a vial and says, “Here are its eggs.” I peer inside and see small specks, pale with a dot of brown at the top; they look like a single grain of cous cous or quinoa. Runquist explains […]
Little NGO takes on goliath task: conserving the vanishing ecosystems of Paraguay

Landlocked in the navel of South America, the forests, wetlands and savannahs of Paraguay boast rich biodiversity and endemic species, yet the unique landscapes of Paraguay also face increasing threats, primarily from agricultural expansion. Controlled burns and clear cutting have become common practice as wildlands are converted for soy and cattle production. In some areas […]
Saving the Raja of India’s grasslands: new efforts to conserve the Critically Endangered Great Indian Bustard

The flagship species of India’s grasslands and savannas, the Critically Endangered Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps). Photo by: Ramki Sreenivasan/Conservation India. The Great Indian Bustard, one of India’s iconic birds, once ranged across most of the Indian subcontinent. Due to a variety of factors, however, the Great Indian Bustard is also now India’s rarest bird […]
Cambodia loses half its seasonal wetlands in 10 years

Cambodia lost more than half of its seasonally flooded grasslands in ten years due to industrial agricultural conversion, abandonment of traditional farming, and illegal drainage, putting several endangered bird species at risk and undermining traditional livelihoods in the region, reports a new study published in the journal Conservation Biology. The research is based on aerial […]
Africa’s great savannahs may be more endangered than the world’s rainforests

Grasslands in Kenya’s Masai Mara. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Few of the world’s ecosystems are more iconic than Africa’s sprawling savannahs home to elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and the undisputed king of the animal kingdom: lions. This wild realm, where megafauna still roam in abundance, has inspired everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Karen Blixen, and […]
Illegal hunting threatens iconic animals across Africa’s great savannas, especially predators

Lion with a snare around its neck. Photo by: Frederike Otten. Courtesy of Panthera. Bushmeat hunting has become a grave concern for species in West and Central Africa, but a new report notes that lesser-known illegal hunting in Africa’s iconic savannas is also decimating some animals. Surprisingly, illegal hunting across eastern and southern Africa is […]
Conflict and perseverance: rehabilitating a forgotten park in the Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s last herd of zebra run free in Upemba. Photo courtesy of the FZS. Zebra racing across the yellow-green savannah is an iconic image for Africa, but imagine you’re seeing this not in Kenya or South Africa, but in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Welcome to Upemba National Park: […]
Buffer zones key to survival of maned wolf

Maned wolf at Beardsley Zoo. Photo by: Sage Ross. Known for its abnormally long lanky legs, its reddish-orange coat, and its omnivorous diet, the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) is one of the more beautiful and bizarre predators of South America. However its stronghold, the Brazilian Cerrado, is vanishing rapidly to industrialized agriculture and urban development. […]
Chart: Forest loss in Latin America

Change in vegetation cover by biome across Latin America, 2001-2010. Click image to enlarge. Latin America lost nearly 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) of forest — an area larger than the state of Oregon — between 2001 and 2010, finds a new study [PDF] that is the first to assess both net forest loss […]
Climate change to favor trees over grasses in Africa

Grassland in Kenya As the world warms, scientists are working rapidly to understand how ecosystems will change, including which species will benefit and which will falter. A new study in Nature finds that elevated CO2 concentrations should favor trees and woody plants over savannah and grasslands in Africa. While the study’s climate change models predict […]
Humans drove rainforest into savannah in ancient Africa

The Congo rainforest today in Gabon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Three thousand years ago (around 1000 BCE) several large sections of the Congo rainforest in central Africa suddenly vanished and became savannah. Scientists have long believed the loss of the forest was due to changes in the climate, however a new study in Science […]
Richard Leakey: ‘selfish’ critics choose wrong fight in Serengeti road

To read more about Tanzania’s recent announcement related to the Serengeti road: Unpaved road through Serengeti to progress. The controversial Serengeti road is going ahead, but with conditions. According to the Tanzanian Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekiel Maige, the road will not be paved and it will be run by the Tanzanian park […]
Unpaved road through Serengeti to progress

To read more about Tanzania’s recent announcement related to the Serengeti road: Richard Leakey: ‘selfish’ critics choose wrong fight in Serengeti road. After a week of confusion, the Tanzanian government has finally clarified its position on the hugely-controversial Serengeti road. The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekiel Maige, confirmed that a paved highway will […]
Last search for the Eskimo curlew

The Eskimo curlew painted by Archibald Thorburn. The Eskimo curlew is (or perhaps, ‘was’) a small migratory shorebird with a long curved beak, perfect for searching shorelines and prairie grass for worms, grasshoppers and other insects, as well as goodies including berries. Described as cinnamon-colored, the bird nested in the Arctic tundra of Alaska and […]
How do tourists view the Serengeti?

Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, an immense expanse of East African savanna, is a world famous tourist destination because of its plentiful megafauna, particularly the great migrating herds of wildebeest. Yet despite huge visitor numbers and the annual revenue of millions of US dollars, local poverty and increasing population continue to imperil the reserve. A […]
Conversion of Brazil’s cerrado slows

Destruction of Brazil’s cerrado, a woody savanna that covers 20 percent of the country, slowed during the 2008-2009, reports Brazil’s Ministry of Environment. Data from Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) shows that cerrado conversion amounted to 7,637 square kilometers between 2008 and 2009, down from the 14,179 square kilometers cleared annually from 2002 to […]
Complaint lodged at FSC for plantations killing baboons

The African environmental group, GeaSphere, has lodged a complaint with the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) for certifying tree plantations as sustainable that are culling baboons in South Africa, as first reported by FSC-Watch. The primates are trapped with bait and then shot. According to the complaint, “unofficial numbers from reliable sources state that more than […]
Brazil’s cerrado wins protection, but will it be enough to save the wildlife-rich grassland?

Brazil announced a plan to protect the cerrado, the vast woody savanna that covers 20 percent of the country but has become the nation’s biggest single source of carbon emissions due to conversion for agriculture and cattle pasture, reports Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment. Unveiled today in Brasilia, the $200 million initiative establishes the “political […]
U.S. signs debt-for-nature swap with Brazil to protect forests

75 percent of birds and dung beetles remain even after a forest is logged twice. The United States will cut Brazil’s debt payments by $21 million under a debt-for-nature that will protect the Latin American country’s endangered Atlantic Rainforest (Mata Atlantica), Caatinga and Cerrado ecosystems. The agreement, announced Thursday, comes under the Tropical Forest Conservation […]
Road through the Serengeti will eventually ‘kill the migration’

Tourists, conservationists, individuals, and tour companies have launched an international outcry against the Tanzanian authorities in response to the announcement of the planned construction of the trans-Serengeti Highway highway. There is even a Facebook group and an online petition with 5,038 signatures. But the government has responded by saying that the plans are still on […]
Emissions from cerrado destruction in Brazil equal to emissions from Amazon deforestation

Damage to Brazil’s vast cerrado grassland results in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those produced by destruction of the Amazon rainforest, said Carlos Minc, the country’s Environment Minister. Speaking on National Cerrado Day on September 11, Minc said that 21,000 square kilometers of cerrado was destroyed per year between 2002 and 2008, twice the rate […]
Community engagement is key to saving the rarest zebra

Efforts to protect the world’s largest and rarest species of zebra — Grévy’s Zebra (Equus grevyi) — hinge on engaging communities to lead conservation in their region, says a Kenyan conservationist. Belinda Low, Executive Director of the Nairobi-based Grevy’s Zebra Trust, says her group’s programs, which employ members of local communities as scouts and conservation […]
Brazil to step up efforts to save the cerrado grassland

Brazil will try to reduce deforestation of the cerrado, a wooded grassland ecosystem in Brazil that is being destroyed twice as fast as the Amazon rainforest, according to the country’s Environment Minister Carlos Minc. Outlining the new policy Wednesday at the Reuters Alternative Energy Summit in Brasilia, Minc said the government will increase monitoring, create […]
Painted Dog population falls 99%, but community efforts could save species

Painted Dog population falls 99%, but community efforts could save species Painted Dog population falls 99%, but community efforts could save species An interview with Peter Blinston of Painted Dog Conservation Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com September 29, 2008 The painted dog, or African wild dog, was once found widely across Africa but relentless persecution by […]
40% of Australia is undisturbed wilderness
40% of Australia is undisturbed wilderness 40% of Australia is undisturbed wilderness mongabay.com August 27, 2008 More than 40 percent of Australia—three million square kilometers—is undisturbed wilderness, reports a new study by Pew Environment Group and Nature Conservancy. The extent of Australia’s wildlands ranks with the Amazon rainforest, Antarctica, Canada’s boreal forest, and the Sahara […]
Biofuels can reduce emissions, but not when grown in place of rainforests

Biofuels can reduce emissions, but not when grown in place of rainforests Biofuels can reduce emissions, but not when grown in place of rainforests mongabay.com July 22, 2008 Biofuels meant to help alleviate greenhouse gas emissions may be in fact contributing to climate change when grown on converted tropical forest lands, warns a comprehensive study […]
Some grasslands resilient against climate change, according to 13 year study

Some grasslands resilient against climate change, according to 13 year study Some grasslands resilient against climate change, according to 13 year study Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com July 7, 2008 In Buxton, England–a spa town lying in the county of Derbyshire–scientists have spent 13 years subjecting grasslands to temperature increases and precipitation shifts consistent with climate change […]
REDD could trigger bias in conservation funding towards carbon-rich ecosystems

REDD could trigger bias in conservation finance towards carbon-rich ecosystems REDD could trigger bias in conservation funding towards carbon-rich ecosystems Rhett Butler, mongabay.com June 12, 2008 The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism proposed as a means to fight global warming and protect forests may leave some ecosystems at risk to development argue […]
Marauding kangaroos may drive extinction of earless dragons in Australia

Marauding kangaroos may drive extinction of earless dragons in Australia Marauding kangaroos may drive extinction of earless dragons in Australia mongabay.com May 21, 2008 A plague of kangaroos overgrazing sensitive grasslands near Australia’s capital city Canberra is jeopardizing habitat critical for the survival of endangered species including the golden sun moth (Synemon plana) and the […]
Deforestation a greater threat to the Amazon than global warming

Deforestation a greater threat to the Amazon than global warming Deforestation a greater threat to the Amazon than global warming Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com February 25, 2008 Some researchers doubt the Amazon is on the brink of a major die-off due to climate change. Human disturbance is a greater threat, they say. If past conditions […]
Land-clearing fires send smoke across Argentina, Paraguay

Land-clearing fires send smoke across Argentina, Paraguay Land-clearing fires send smoke across Argentina, Paraguay mongabay.com September 11, 2007 Thousands of fires likely set for land-clearing are sending thick smoke over southern South America, reports NASA. Tuesday the space agency released satellite images that reveal fires burning across Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. NASA said […]
U.S. grazing lands at risk due to rising CO2 levels

U.S. grazing lands at risk due to rising CO2 levels U.S. grazing lands at risk due to rising CO2 levels mongabay.com August 27, 2007 Rising carbon dioxide levels could cause significant changes to open grazing lands and rangelands around the world, reports a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences […]
Biofuels driving destruction of Brazilian cerrado

Biofuels driving destruction of Cerrado savanna in Brazil Biofuels driving destruction of Brazilian cerrado Rhett Butler, mongabay.com August 21, 2007 Demand for biofuels is driving the destruction of Brazil’s cerrado, one of the planet’s most biodiverse savanna ecosystems. The cerrado, wooded grassland in Brazil that once covered an area half the size of Europe, is […]

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