topic: Video

topic: Video

Social media activity version | Lean version

VIDEO: Can bioplastics help shape a more sustainable future? | Problem Solved
- Humanity produces roughly 400 million metric tons of plastic each year, yet only recycles or reuses 9%, at most, of all the plastic collected.
- The global waste crisis is evident in the immense amount of plastic trash that ends up polluting the land, water, atmosphere, wildlife, and even our bodies.
- While nations are currently locked in negotiations to design a global treaty meant to rein in plastic production and address plastic pollution, researchers are working to develop fully biodegradable and naturally occurring plastic polymers known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs).
- In this episode of Mongabay’s “Problem Solved” video series, we take a look at how PHAs are made, and what else experts say needs to be done to combat the global plastic pollution crisis.

VIDEO: Unmasking the environmental impact of tires | Consumed
- Ever since they were invented, tires have changed the way we live; today, we produce almost 2.5 billion tires annually.
- However, the way we make, use and discard tires has left a trail of destruction that has polluted our water, land and air.
- Consumed is a video series by Mongabay that explores the environmental impacts of products we use in our daily lives.
- In the latest episode of the series, we take a look at how tires impact our planet

Video: A sanctuary for elephants and forests in Cambodia
- The Elephant Valley Project in eastern Cambodia is a sanctuary where aging captive elephants can live out their days amid the forested foothills of the Annamite Mountains supported by tourism.
- But tourists stopped coming when the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns began and the world ceased traveling in 2020, leaving the project searching for ways to continue its work with the elephants and the nearby communities.
- Leaders of the project said it has provided jobs, education and health care support, and protection for a key area of mature forest along the edge of Keo Seima, Cambodia’s most biodiverse wildlife sanctuary.
- One possible avenue for funding may be the nearby REDD+ forest conservation project in Keo Seima, based on the protection of the forest from threats like illegal logging and hunting that the presence of the elephants and their mahouts has provided.

Seaweed: The untapped economic potential for Bangladesh
- Bangladesh currently produces some 400 tons of seaweed, valued at 55 million taka (about $500,000), while a study suggested the country could produce 50 million tons of seaweed annually by 2050.
- Despite the potential to grow and earn more foreign currency through export, the sector is dealing with a number of difficulties, including inadequate investment as well as proper guidelines and regulations.
- According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), seaweed farming is one of the fastest-growing aquaculture sectors globally, with an annual production of about 33 billion tons, valued at $11.8 billion.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for October 2023
- In September, Mongabay released videos about the Dutch dairy farmers’ protests and related politics, typhoon-battered villages in the Philippines, and farmers growing rice for wild elephants in India.
- Watch why an Indigenous community in Brazil is pushing ahead with sustainable solutions despite resistance and threat, how bats roosting in south India’s temples are in trouble, and what an Indigenous kingdom in Panama is doing to secure its right to the forest.
- In India, pharmaceutical drugs are adding to water pollution even as a village waits decades for its clean source of water polluted by big industries.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Video: Rice as a peace offering in India’s human-elephant conflict capital
- Assam state in northeastern India, where farmers and elephants jostle for space and food, has one of the highest incidences of human-elephant conflict in the country.
- Conservationists from Hati Bondhu, a nonprofit organization, are working with farmers in Assam’s Golaghat district to pursue a more peaceful human-elephant coexistence.
- Their first experimental project, which was to grow rice in some fields dedicated to elephants so farmers could harvest separately elsewhere, was a success.
- They’re now planning solutions to overcome the limitations of this short-term project, involving more villages and planting more species outside of farmlands in large-scale projects.

Mongabay Explains: How high-tech tools are used for successful reforestation
- This Mongabay Explains’ episode is part of a four-part Mongabay mini-series that examines the latest technological solutions to help tree-planting projects achieve scale and long-term efficiency.
- Using these innovative approaches could be vital for meeting international targets to repair degraded ecosystems, sequester carbon, and restore biodiversity.
- Advanced computer modeling, machine learning, drones, niche models using data, robotics and other technologies are helping to restore hundreds of millions of hectares of lost and degraded forest worldwide.

Video: Rio de Janeiro’s defender of mangroves
- Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro has suffered for decades from inefficient sewage treatment, oil spills and mangrove deforestation.
- For more than 30 years, biologist Mario Moscatelli has been fighting to reverse this process and revitalize the landscape.
- For denouncing corruption, environmental crimes and government inaction, he faced intimidation and even death threats.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for August 2023
- Mongabay’s videos in July covered stories about local foods known to local communities are becoming more popular across their countries, how farmers are using apps and technologies to cope with climate change, and how scientists are trying restoration projects on rivers and wetlands.
- In Bosnia, scientists are using rapid biological surveys to protect rivers from dams. In India, Delhi has seen the worst floods in four decades due to neglect.
- Watch how a luxury project threatens the Atlantic Forest and traditional communities in Brazil, and the latest in solar power developments in India.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for July 2023
- In June, Mongabay released videos showing the rodeo culture that’s developed in the Amazon, how wild jungle cat in India has adapted to an agricultural landscape, and why researchers are fitting the Amazon dolphins with radio transmitters.
- A video documentation from Madagascar shows how NGOs and communities are trying to restore a reforestation effort that was destroyed by wildfires. From India, watch how renewable energy projects are rising in a district once famous for illegal mining.
- Watch a video interview of a Munduruku Indigenous leader in Brazil at the “Free Land Camp” event, documented by a collective of young Munduruku people.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for June 2023
- Mongabay’s May videos show new discoveries of hydrothermal vents from deep in the oceans and blind fish from shallow aquifers, success and failure narratives in waste management in India, and stories of small-scale farmers in the Philippines and Cambodia.
- Watch how herders from Senegal are fighting for their land and the country’s drinking water against a U.S. agricultural company, why the Indigenous and local community in Colombia is divided over a Canadian mining company, and what the construction of a Chinese-funded dam means to a Philippine Indigenous community.
- In India, city-dwellers have taken to urban and peri-urban agriculture to encourage sustainability, and Indigenous women are gaining financial independence through traditional jewelry that uses natural materials
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for May 2023
- Mongabay’s April videos covered stories about pollution affecting food sources in India, the relationship between gold and Indigenous communities in Brazil, farmers’ plight in Cambodia, sustainable civet coffee in the Philippines, and more.
- In Japan, a reforestation method practiced by the fishing community for decades has just been proved to work by the scientific community. More farmers in India are opting natural farming and agroforestry methods to adapt to climate change.
- Among the wildlife videos, watch how the most endangered ape in the world, the Tapanuli orangutan, is losing habitat to a development project in Indonesia. Technology in wildlife is helping us understand shark pregnancies and katydid mating practices better.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for April 2023
- In March, Mongabay released videos showing how mining in different countries is devestating both ecosystems and local communities for a long time, and how the communities are fighting back.
- Watch how changing climates, growing populations and burgeoning industrialization are the reasons for the food crisis becoming an increasingly serious concern in Kenya, and how development projects in Southeast Asia are threatening the critical environmental areas.
- Watch interviews with conservation players from India — documentary director Kartiki Gonsalves, author and authority on wildlife M.K. Ranjitsinh Jhala, and energy expert Purnima Jalihal.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for March 2023
- In February, Mongabay covered how conservationists in Ukraine are working through the war, how remote communities in the Amazon are using solar energy, and the benefits of introducing agroecology in India’s coconut plantations.
- Indigenous political representatives and lawmakers in Brazil discussed with Mongabay the issues they are about to start tackling now that the government and political intentions have changed.
- In Mongabay’s latest episodes of Mongabay Sessions, host Romi Castagnino spoke with the ‘Wildcat’ documentary team about rescuing a baby ocelot from the black market and releasing it in the wild.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

‘If Brazil starts with us, why did we arrive last?’: Q&A with Indigenous lawmaker Célia Xakriabá
- Indigenous lawmaker Célia Xakriabá says the fight for the climate emergency was key to her election to Brazil’s Congress last year, which drew votes from people with a completely different political party alignment.
- “We were not only elected by progressive people [voting]. It is the environmental issue, the issue for life, the issue of the right to water, the issue of the right to food without poison [pesticides]” — issues that she tells Mongabay must go beyond the progressive parties.
- In this video interview, Célia Xakriabá says one of her priorities in Congress is to create a secretariat for Indigenous education within the Ministry of Education, and establish quotas for Indigenous people at several levels, including Indigenous professors in universities and job posts in embassies.
- Another priority is an update to the statute on Indigenous peoples, which she says is still written “in a racist way and in a retrograde way.” Change is already coming on this front: on its first day in office, the new government changed the name of the federal Indigenous affairs agency from the National Indian Foundation to the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for February 2023
- Mongabay’s videos from January show the effects agriculture and food farms have on local populations in Liberia, India and Chile alike. Watch also how climate change is impacting the food systems, and thus farmers and the Indigenous, in India and Brazilian Amazon.
- Mongabay spoke with the newly elected Indigenous representatives in Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva government about how the new developments mark a “new era” for Indigenous populations and the environment.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Joenia Wapichana: ‘I want to see the Yanomami and Raposa Serra do Sol territories free of invasions’
- In this video interview two weeks before the health disaster outbreak in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, Joenia Wapichana, the first Indigenous woman named president of Brazil’s national Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, says one of her priorities at the institution is the expulsion of 20,000 illegal gold miners from the area.
- “Indigenous health is a chaos there. Children are dying of malaria and malnutrition. So, it is not simply a matter of removing the miners, but you have to take immediate action to ensure security there,” she tells Mongabay at Funai’s headquarters in Brasília.
- Joenia Wapichana says coordinated actions are required among several governmental entities with “permanent oversight” to put an end to this crisis: “It’s not simply remove [the wildcat miners] and leave no one there to protect.”
- Given Funai’s precarious budget of 600 million reais ($118 million) per year, she says cooperation agreements with other countries, a successful strategy in the past, will be key to carrying out the demarcation of Indigenous lands in the Amazon that were stalled under the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Sonia Guajajara: Turnaround from jail threats to Minister of Indigenous Peoples
- In this video interview a week before her official inauguration, Sonia Guajajara tells Mongabay what the four years of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s government meant for Native peoples, and she describes the turnaround preceding the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples — an unprecedented act in Brazil’s history — with a behind-the-scenes account of her appointment.
- “It was really [like a] hell. Everything we talked about was monitored,” she recalls the Bolsonaro government while speaking at her office in the newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples in Brasília.
- She says she never imaged herself a minister but she took the position due to the need for Indigenous peoples to participate directly in the country’s public decision-making powers, which she says she believes will also help end prejudice against Native peoples.
- After four years of consistent dismantling of Indigenous policies, she says a task force is working on the main “urgencies and emergencies,” including the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, in northern Roraima state, where a public health emergency was declared Jan. 22 given high levels of death due to malnutrition and diseases, including malaria, as a consequence of 20,000 illegal miners in the area.

Mongabay’s What-to-Watch list for January 2023
- Mongabay’s December videos covered an investigation of land grabbing in Brazil, a biomass producer outed by a whistleblower in the U.S., farmers facing drought in India, rising seas in Sierra Leone, and more.
- While the Chasing Deforestation episode shows us how a religious group is clearing the Amazon in Peru, the latest Mongabay Explains episode throws light on why bottom trawling is so controversial.
- Watch how monoculture has degraded the soil in Brazil, how the government means to secure fast-eroding islands in India, how cocoa plantations in Brazil helped recover degraded land, and India’s experiments with cage-based aquaculture.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for December 2022
- Mongabay’s videos from November covered how land grabbing and pollution alike are affecting Indigenous and local communities in Brazil, India, Nigeria and the Amazon.
- Watch how wildlife in India’s Kashmir, America’s Montana, and a park in Brazil are influenced by human action, both positively and negatively.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Video: Wildlife crossings built with tribal knowledge drastically reduce collisions
- The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes collaborated with the Montana Department of Transportation to design and build one of the largest networks of wildlife highway crossings in the U.S.
- Previously known as one of Montana’s most dangerous roads, Highway 93 was upgraded to include 42 wildlife crossings that were built based on Indigenous traditional knowledge and values.
- According to a 2015 study, animal collisions declined by 71%.
- Today, more than 22,000 animals use these wildlife crossings annually, camera traps show.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for November 2022
- Mongabay’s October videos show how the world’s consumption of products have multiple effects on the environment in various regions and on ecosystems, and what consequences road and railway projects have on forests and communities in Brazil and Mexico.
- Watch Afro-Brazilian communities practising their traditional agriculture that bring together production and conservation around Brazil’s Atlantic forests, and how authorities and communities are dealing with human-wildlife conflicts in India and Indonesia in their own ways.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for October 2022
- Mongabay dove into research and talked with experts to answer a question more and more people are asking now: should we have kids? The latest episodes of Mongabay’s Problem Solved explains how having, or not having, more children affects the environment and climate change.
- Another Mongabay series Candid Animal Cam takes a peek into the lives of the migrating bearded pigs of Southeast Asia, while Mongabay Explains shows us why the Earth’s water cycle is nearing breaking-point.
- In Brazil, a record number of Indigenous candidates are running in the general elections this month and farmers have turned into firefighters. In Mexico, Indigenous communities are fighting drought with water wells.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for September 2022
- In August, Mongabay covered a mangrove restoration project in the Philippines and an Indigenous community’s effort to domesticate a rare flower. We also released videos showing the connection between climate change and extinction, and climate change and clean energy.
- Watch how the cocaine industry is impacting the environment, how the Mediterranian countries are dealing with invasive crabs, and why avocado farms aren’t all that palatable in Mexico’s agricultural sector.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Seaweed an increasingly fragile lifeline for Philippine farmers
- Commercial seaweed farming began in the Philippines in the 1970s and has grown to be one of the country’s most significant aquaculture enterprises, supporting more than 200,000 coastal families.
- In communities in Palawan, seaweed farming also plays a role in protecting marine life, with small farmers serving as extra eyes and ears in the fight against illegal fishing.
- As climate change intensifies, warmer waters are making seaweed farms more susceptible to pests and diseases, threatening the survival of the industry and the families that depend on it.

Video: Biodiversity underpins all, as California is finding out the hard way
- A new episode of “Mongabay Explains” delves into the biodiversity crisis in California, which is known to be one of the most biodiverse states in the U.S., hosting about 6,500 animal species, subspecies and plants.
- California has been bearing the brunt of climate change in recent years as wildfires and drought transform the land.
- The film focuses on three species that are being negatively affected by the climate crisis: California tiger salamanders, acorn woodpeckers, and monarch butterflies.
- The filmmaker says California is the “poster child of what’s happening to our ecosystems around the world.”

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for August 2022
- Mongabay’s July videos show how Indigenous communities in Brazil are recovering native crops, why a coastal developmental project in India is facing protests, how the weather can be used to control forest fires in the Amazon, and other issues globally.
- Two Mongabay YouTube series — Chasing Deforestation and Mongabay Webinars — released new episodes, about Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem and about how to cover oceans and fisheries, respectively.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Where do the guitarfish go? Scientists and fishers team up to find out
- In late March and early April of this year, a team of researchers and local fishers caught, sampled and released more than 50 sharks and rays in the Bijagós Archipelago of Guinea-Bissau, including several threatened species.
- A first for conservation, researchers tagged members of a critically endangered ray species, the blackchin guitarfish (Glaucostegus cemiculus), with satellite transmitters.
- Team leader Guido Leurs says the research will provide crucial information for policymakers to better protect sharks and rays in Guinea-Bissau.
- Fisheries management within the archipelago, which spans 12,950 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) and 88 islands, is a challenge for the West African nation.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for July 2022
- Mongabay’s videos from June show communities in Mexico and Jordan taking up landscape restoration and reforestation projects to protect native ecosystems, and how a group of Indigenous women in the U.S. have started farming sugar kelp to fix nitrogen pollution.
- Mongabay series Problem Solved explored technology in conservation to protect endangered species from extinction. Another Mongabay series Candid Animal Cam gives us a glimpse into the lives and habits of the black bears in North America.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Can conservation technology help save our rapidly disappearing species? | Problem Solved
- Humanity knows, in a best-case scenario, only 20% of the total species on Earth.
- Yet humans have, at a minimum, increased species extinction 1,000 times above the natural extinction rate, raising concerns among field monitoring experts who worry they may be “writing the obituary of a dying planet.”
- The establishment of protected areas often depends on the ability of conservationists to effectively monitor and track land-based species — but is this happening fast enough?
- For this episode of “Problem Solved,” Mongabay breaks down three of the most innovative pieces of conservation technology and how they can advance the field of species monitoring, and ultimately, conservation.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for June 2022
- Mongabay’s May videos show how communities in the Philippines and Jordan are restoring landscapes to fight climate change, and how India’s landscapes are changing and affecting communities around rivers and coasts.
- Watch the sloths in Costa Rica using bridges, humans fighting for bees’ rights, and how renewable energy is helping with women empowerment in India.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for May 2022
- Mongabay’s April videos show why Indigenous communities in Brazil turned to videography and graffiti to raise awareness, how wind farms in India have their downsides, and what journalists can do to cover reforestation better.
- Watch camera trap footage of Côte d’Ivoire’s chimpanzees’ unique way of drinking water using sticks during the dry season, and videos of the elusive caracal that are not so elusive anymore in South Africa.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for April 2022
- In March, Mongabay covered landscape restoration projects in different countries, injustice to Brazil’s Indigenous communities regarding land rights, human-elephant conflict in India due to oil palm plantations, and other issues worldwide.
- Three YouTube series — Mongabay Explains, Problem Solved, and Candid Animal Cam — released new episodes featuring coral reefs, aerosol issues, technology-critical elements, and the gray brocket deer, respectively.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Can we save coral reefs? | Problem Solved
- Since the 1950s the world has lost half of its coral reef ecosystems.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that with 1.5°C (2.7°F) of warming above pre-industrial levels we could lose up to 90% of the world’s coral reefs.
- This amount of warming could happen in as little as six years.
- Experts say there’s still time to save coral reefs, but it’ll require swiftly addressing the three largest impacts to reefs: land-based pollution, overfishing and, most importantly, climate change.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for March 2022
- In February, Mongabay covered agroforestry among Costa Rica’s Indigenous people, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, the environmental problems of human sewage, and the unanticipated downsides of the solar energy sector in India.
- Watch a rare video where chimpanzees are seen being medical practitioners, and how dedicated rangers are protecting endangered apes in the forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.
- Get a peek into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

The chimp doctor will see you now: Medicating apes boost the case for conservation
- Researchers in Gabon’s Loango National Park observed chimps applying insects to their own wounds, as well as the wounds of other individuals.
- Researchers identified 76 instances of this behavior being repeated on 22 different chimps.
- Experts say these findings could help guide conservation efforts for not just these endangered great apes, but also their entire ecosystem.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for February 2022
- In January, Mongabay videos explored agroforestry, sustainable solutions, a conservation project that affects local population, wildlife in the city, and more.
- Watch how a new species of penguins were discovered in Antarctica, and what an African civet does in its natural habitat.
- Get a peak into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for January 2022
- In December, the Mongabay video team covered news about illegal timber activities in Mekong, pollution and sacred groves in India, the importance of the Congo Basin peatlands, and the sea turtles’ battle against climate change.
- The premiere of our series Chasing Deforestation looked closely into the deforestation in Nigeria’s Cross River, home to critically endangered apes.
- Get a peak into the various segments of the environment across the globe. Add these videos to your watchlist for the month and watch them for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s 10 most watched videos of 2021
- Here we rewatch the ten top most watched videos of 2021 on Mongabay’s YouTube channel.
- This year, our video coverage ranged from Indigenous stories, animals caught on camera traps, explainers making environmental issues more understandable, governments and politics, climate change effects, agroecology, extractive projects, and much, much more.
- Mongabay launched a new video series on YouTube in 2021, “Problem Solved,” where we explore big, systemic, environmental issues and exa k e potential pathways to addressing them.

Mongabay Explains: Do carbon offset markets really work?
- Companies with high carbon footprints around the world have made pledges to reduce carbon emissions, aiming to become carbon neutral and even carbon negative.
- The solution they are turning to is ‘carbon offset trading,’ which allows them to invest in environmental projects as a counterweight to their carbon-emitting industrial activities.
- But carbon offset markets’ increasing popularity has met with controversy about corporations absolving themselves without contributing to an overall reduction in emissions, and questions about how they can ensure the schemes’ success without physically visiting the projects.
- In this video, Mongabay explains if carbon offset markets really do work.

‘Thousands of trees’ burned and logged in Cambodia: Q&A with filmmaker Sean Gallagher
- In 2020, filmmaker Sean Gallagher released a short film titled “Cambodia Burning,” which looks at the burning and logging of Cambodia’s forests to make way for agricultural development.
- The Cambodian government has claimed that no large-scale deforestation is happening in the country’s protected areas, but Gallagher says he filmed illegal logging taking place directly inside the confines of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary.
- Cambodia lost an estimated 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) of forest between 2001 and 2019, accounting for 26.4% of the forest cover that existed in 2000, according to a new report.
- Activists working to protect Cambodia’s remaining forests have faced threats, intimidation and incarceration.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for December 2021
- Mongabay has just launched a new video series on YouTube, “Problem Solved,” where we examine big, systemic, environmental issues and build potential pathways to addressing them.
- We continued reporting on extractive projects affecting local residents of the area as well as reforestation and rewilding efforts from different countries, this time about mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Philippines and nature-based solutions in the U.K. and in India.
- Add these videos to your watchlist for the month — you don’t need a Netflix, Prime or Disney+ subscription; watch these for free on YouTube.

A bridge of trees reunites gibbons separated by a railway line in India
- For the hoolock gibbons of India’s Hoollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, a rail line bisecting the forest has for decades proved an impassable barrier, dividing the animals into two separate areas.
- In 2006, conservationists, the local forest department and communities began planting thousands of trees along the tracks in an effort to create a natural canopy bridge.
- The tree-planting effort finally bore fruit in 2019, when the first gibbons were observed crossing over the tracks.
- This year, an entire family has been observed making use of the bridge.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for October 2021
- In September, Mongabay covered news from India, Brazil, Mongolia, the U.S., and the oceans about agroforestry, climate change, extractive projects, and ghost fishing gear.
- We spoke to farmers about their views on agroforestry and mining in surrounding regions, and with scientists about oil palm monoculture and climate resilience using traditional knowledge.
- Add these videos to your watchlist for the month — you don’t need a Netflix, Prime or Disney+ subscription; watch these for free on YouTube.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for September 2021
- In August, Mongabay explored sounds in Nature, the importance of homegardens, conservation of rhinos, sustainable solutions for overfishing and invasive plants, protecting forests around the world, and more.
- Researchers have found that growing biodiverse gardens at our houses is comparable with natural forested regions in the area, and that poking into rhino poop can help determine crucial information about the critically endangered animal.
- Add these videos to your watchlist for the month — you don’t need a Netflix, Prime or Disney+ subscription; watch these for free on YouTube.

Captive breeding of Sumatran rhinos: Where the program stands today
- In a series of video interviews, Mongabay speaks with Sumatran rhino experts to get up-to-date information on efforts to breed the species in captivity.
- The interviews focus on three locations that host the vast majority of Sumatran rhinos, whose entire population is believed to number no more than 80.
- The interviews reveal fears stemming from the dire state of the species, as well as optimism that officials and conservationists are finally working with united purpose to keep the species from sliding into extinction.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for August 2021
- In the last month, Mongabay has published videos looking at the impacts of climate change on the Arctic, flamingos and beyond.
- We also covered stories around community initiatives and the history of Indigenous people in Latin America.
- You don’t need a Netflix, Prime or Disney+ subscription to watch these videos, just check out our YouTube channel.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for July 2021
- As heat waves hit all over the world, we’re bringing you environment and conservation videos you can add to your watchlist while you’re trying to stay cool in the shade.
- In the last month, Mongabay’s video teams have explored the intersection between tech and animal conservation, and community-led initiatives to protect natural spaces.
- Add these videos to your watchlist for the month — you don’t need a Netflix, Prime or Disney+ subscription; watch these for free on YouTube.

Brazil’s Uru-eu-wau-wau document COVID-19 victory with new video
- As of June 1, 2021, Brazil has confirmed more than 16.5 million COVID-19 cases and over 462,000 deaths, with devastation particularly severe among the Amazon’s Indigenous communities.
- But one Indigenous group has done an exceptional job protecting its people: The Uru-eu-wau-wau in Rondônia state sealed off their territory in March 2020 — no small feat considering that the federally demarcated territory suffers from an onslaught of invaders, including illegal miners, loggers and land grabbers.
- In a new video, shot entirely by Indigenous cinematographers and exclusive to Mongabay, the Uru-eu-wau-wau tell their own story of how they survived the pandemic for more than a year without a major case inside their territory.
- Their battle is ongoing as they continue resisting invasions of their reserve, where three highly vulnerable uncontacted Indigenous groups also live. The dismantling of Brazil’s rural health care infrastructure by the Bolsonaro administration has been particularly daunting to the Uru-eu-wau-wau during the pandemic.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for June 2021
- Does reforestation help mitigate climate change? And how effective is reforestation? In May, Mongabay delved into these questions through video explainers and on-the-ground reporting.
- In May, we also published a few behind-the-scenes videos for anyone who wants to take a peek behind the curtain and learn more about how Mongabay does its reporting.
- May was also another big month for stories on animals and new discoveries about animal behavior.
- Add these videos to your watchlist along with your favorites from Netflix, Disney+ or Prime.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for May 2021
- In April we published the result of a year-long dive into census data from Brazil that identified Indigenous populations living in cities. We interviewed people across Brazil about their experiences as Indigenous people in urban spaces.
- We published multiple videos from Indonesia on vulnerable ecosystems affected by plastic pollution and overfishing.
- As part of our ongoing explainer series, we looked at two planetary boundaries: freshwater and the ozone layer.

Mongabay’s What-To-Watch list for April 2021
- In March, Mongabay’s coverage from Latin America took a deep look at the conflicts surrounding the expansion of palm oil in Brazil.
- We published multiple videos from Southeast Asia focused on dam expansion in the Philippines.
- Our coverage of interesting species continued through our Candid Animal Cam series and through an animated video on the critically endangered Sumatran rhino.

Video: Communities struggle against palm oil plantations spreading in Brazilian Amazon
- Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and conflict in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are now playing out. Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their rivers and lands, and driving fish and game away.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued Brazil’s leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years–alleging the companies are contaminating water supplies, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples–charges the companies deny.
- This video was produced as part of an 18-month investigation into the palm oil industry in the Brazilian state of Pará.

Video: Doomed or viable? Sumatran rhino captive breeding faces a dilemma
- A new animated short film from Mongabay, illustrated by artist Roger Peet, depicts one of the most urgent questions facing experts trying to save the Sumatran rhino from extinction.
- With no more than 80 Sumatran rhinos left on Earth, many of them isolated into groups too small to be viable, the species’ natural birthrate is so low that experts have reached a consensus that human intervention is necessary to stave off extinction.
- The question now is which rhinos to capture: Isolated ones are less likely to be healthy and fertile, but removing rhinos from populations that are still breeding in the wild could risk the survival of these last few viable groups.

‘The river will bleed red’: Indigenous Filipinos face down dam projects
- For more than five decades, Indigenous communities in the northern Philippines have pushed back against the planned construction of hydropower dams on the Chico River system.
- The river is of great importance to Indigenous communities in the provinces of Kalinga and Mountain Province, who call it their “river of life” and have depended on it for generations.
- The Upper Tabuk and Karayan dams have been proposed in some form or another since the 1970s, but are now backed by corporations created by Indigenous groups, causing divisions among communities.
- Critics of the dams have questioned the Indigenous consent process, a requirement for a project on tribal lands, alleging that some of the community support was obtained through bribery.

Activists in Malaysia call on road planners to learn the lessons of history
- To its proponents, the 2,000-kilometer (1,200-mile) Pan Borneo Highway holds the promise of economic development for the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo.
- But activists in Sabah say that poor planning and an emphasis on extracting resources mean that the highway could harm communities and ecosystems in Sabah’s forests and along its coastlines.
- A new film captures the perspectives of people living closest to the highway’s proposed path and reveals the struggles that some have faced as the road closed in on their homes.
- Meanwhile, an environmental historian argues that Pan Borneo Highway planners are repeating the same mistakes British colonists made in focusing on extraction, rather than trying to find ways to benefit Sabah’s communities.

Colombia, ethnobotany, and America’s decline: An interview with Wade Davis
- Wade Davis is a celebrated anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and author who has written thought-provoking accounts of indigenous cultures around the world. Through his writing, Davis has documented the disappearance of indigenous languages and cultures, the loss of which is outpacing the destruction of the world’s rainforests.
- Davis’s newest book, Magdalena: River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia, traces the path of the Magdalena River as a vehicle to tell the story of Colombia, including the nation’s tumultuous recent past, the tenuous peace of its present, and its future promise. Colombia holds a special place for Davis: it trails only Brazil in terms of biodiversity, is geographically and culturally diverse, and has gone to great lengths to recognize indigenous rights and protect its forests.
- Davis’s research into Colombia, indigenous cultures, and other societies has given him an unusually broad perspective with which to evaluate recent developments in the United States, which he compared to a collapsing empire in a commentary he authored in August for Rolling Stone.
- Davis talked about his career path, his new book, and the decline of America in an October 2020 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

Video: In this Philippine community, women guard a marine protected area
- Women in the central Philippines have banded together to protect their marine sanctuaries from poachers and illegal fishers.
- Armed with only paddles and kayaks, these women willingly risk their lives to manage their marine protected area.
- Philippine waters are teeming with rich coral reefs and fish diversity and abundance, but protecting the seascape is challenging due to illegal fishing and climate change.

App harnesses citizen power to keep tabs on Philippines’ coral reefs
- A series of coral bleaching events have affected reefs across the Philippines in previous years, and this year alone 11 such incidents have been reported.
- But bleached reefs aren’t necessarily dead, with some still able to recover if they are resilient enough and if no further stressors come into play.
- Given that the Philippines has an estimated 33,500 square kilometers (nearly 13,000 square miles) of reefs, a volunteer group is relying on a small but growing army of citizen scientists to keep track of these bleaching incidents by submitting photos online or through an app.
- Citizen science could also help identify other threats to coral reefs, including crown-of-thorns infestation and disease outbreaks, as well as identify corals that are more resilient.

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

World’s top tapir expert prepares for unprecedented Amazon mission
- Brazilian conservation biologist Patrícia Medici first won a Whitley Award, the “Green Oscars” for conservation science, in 2008; this year, she’s the recipient of the top tier of the prize, the Whitley Gold Award.
- She will use the $75,000 prize to fund the new stage of her studies, in which she plans for the first time to study the lowland tapir in the Amazon.
- Medici has already spent two decades studying the species, South America’s largest land mammal, in the Atlantic Forest, the Pantanal wetlands, and the Cerrado grassland.
- She hopes to use the next stage of the study, in the Amazon, to expand understanding of the species by seeing how it reacts to deforestation driven by mining, large-scale agriculture, and logging.

What are the secrets of the giraffe? Candid Animal Cam meets the tallest land animal on earth
- 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.

What is an American alligator? Candid Animal Cam goes to North America
- 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.

Caught on camera: Rare finless porpoises sighted in Hong Kong waters
- Video of the Indo-Pacific finless porpoise, a rare and elusive species, was recently captured by drone off the coast of South Lantau Island in Hong Kong.
- A 2002 study estimated there to be about 220 finless porpoises left in the Hong Kong area, while more recent reports give a slightly higher number.
- In 2019 alone, there were at least 42 strandings of finless porpoises in Hong Kong, which has raised concerns about the current population in that region.
- The finless porpoise has a large range across Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East, but the elusive nature of the species makes it hard to survey.

What is a sambar deer? Candid Animal Cam meets the vulnerable deer
- 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.

What is a brown bear? Candid Animal Cam explores the lives of some of the largest bears in the world
- Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the second largest terrestrial carnivore on the planet: the brown bear.

What is a short-eared dog? Candid Animal Cam meets one of the most elusive mammals of the Amazon

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting one of the most elusive mammals of the Amazon basin: the short-eared dog. The short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) can be found in the South American Amazon rainforest region of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, […]
For nesting hawksbill turtles, this Philippine community is a sanctuary
- For centuries, hawksbill sea turtles have returned to a shoreline in the eastern Philippines to lay their eggs, even as the human community has expanded along the same stretch of beach.
- Hawksbill sea turtles’ low survival rates in the wild are caused by natural predators and, recently, exacerbated by rising sea levels. Another key threat is poaching for their meat and shells.
- Despite the lack of financial support, locals continue to look after the eggs, coming up with their own ways to protect them until the hatchlings are ready to be released back into the sea.

What is a lowland tapir? Candid Animal Cam takes us to the South American forests
- 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.

Averting an agricultural and ecological crisis in the Philippines’ salad bowl
- Centuries of growing highland vegetables to sustain the Philippines’ food supply has taken a toll on the farms in the Cordilleras, a mountainous region in the country’s north, which supplies 80% of vegetables in the whole archipelago.
- Farms have expanded into forest areas and affected water supply. Soil quality has likewise declined over the decades because of heavy chemical use by farms gunning for high yields.
- Government agencies have proposed solutions including agroforestry, crop programming and organic farming aimed at limiting the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides and preventing encroachment into forested areas.
- These interventions have yet to gain momentum, but the upswing of local tourism, and the success of a local coffee farmer, have motivated some farmers to diversify their crops and plant crops alongside trees.

What is a spectacled bear? Candid Animal Cam takes us to the Andes
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay will bring you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our new show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

Mining could topple community-managed forests in Mexico: New film
- Community residents in the state of Puebla in southeastern Mexico are concerned about the exploration for gold currently underway in their region.
- Mining concessions currently cover around 30% of the state.
- Opponents of the project say it will sap vital water sources and destroy the local economy, which is currently based on sustainable management of forests for timber, farming and ecotourism.

A Philippine conservation park juggles funding needs with animal welfare
- The Mari-it Wildlife and Conservation Park on the island of Panay is home to at least 62 threatened animals that are endemic to the Philippines.
- Its funding dried up in 2014, and after struggling to get by on scant resources from the local government, the park decided in June this year to open its gates to tourists.
- Since then, however, it has had to deal with numerous instances of rowdy tourists taunting the animals, highlighting the need for better management mechanisms to protect the animals under its care while still finding a way to stay financially secure.

These rare pigs can dig it. With a tool, that is. And moonwalk too
- A viral video shows a family of Visayan warty pigs (Sus cebifrons) using a piece of tree bark or branch to build a nest at a zoo in Paris.
- Tool use has been widely reported among vertebrates, particularly primates, but this is the first published study and first recorded video of pigs using tools.
- The study suggests that using a stick is a socially learned behavior, and expands the possibility of tool use and social learning among pig species.
- There are limited studies on the Visayan warty pig, a critically endangered species in its native Philippines, due to its dwindling population in the wild.

At India’s Assam Zoo, decades of experience lead to rhino-breeding success
- Assam State Zoo in northeastern India has been breeding greater one-horned rhinos in captivity since the 1960s.
- However, until 2011 the country lacked a formal, nationally coordinated program dedicated to maintaining a viable captive population of the species, which is considered by the IUCN to be vulnerable to extinction due to poaching.
- India launched an official captive-breeding initiative in 2011. One calf has already been born at the Assam Zoo as part of the program, and another is on the way. An additional six have been born in the Patna Zoo in India’s Bihar state.

For India’s flood-hit rhinos, refuge depends increasingly on humans
- Kaziranga National Park in India’s Assam state is home to almost 70 percent of the world’s 3,500 greater one-horned rhinos.
- The park regularly floods during monsoon season. This natural phenomenon is essential to the ecosystem, but can be deadly for animals: 400 animals died in the 2017 floods, including more than 30 rhinos. This year, around 200 animals have died so far, including around a dozen rhinos.
- With increased infrastructure and tourism development around the park, animals’ natural paths to higher ground are often blocked.
- Authorities have responded by building artificial highlands within the park. Some criticize this approach, but park officials credit the highlands for reducing the death toll of this year’s floods.

Manila’s informal settlers face relocation in exchange for clean bay
- The Philippine government has begun the process of relocating more than 200,000 families living along waterways to restore Manila Bay, the main body of water in the capital.
- Some residents worry about their impending displacement, citing a lack of jobs in resettlement sites.
- Relocating informal settlers is part of a seven-year program to rehabilitate Manila Bay, one of the most polluted bodies of the water in Metro Manila.
- Increased rainfall due to extreme weather events poses threats to informal settlers in the area as it could cause landslides and flooding.

Baby whale wears a camera, reveals its travel and nursing behavior: video
- A video taken by a camera carried by a baby whale shows underwater nursing behavior from the calf’s perspective.
- The CATS Cam camera used in the filming incorporates multiple environmental sensors, such as depth and temperature, as well as movement and acceleration by the calf.
- The unusual perspective may help researchers better understand the nursing process of a baby whale, including surfacing to breathe while its mother remains underwater and suckling from mammary slits on each side of its mom.

Inside an ambitious project to rewild trafficked bonobos in the Congo Basin
- A decade ago, a troop of formerly captive bonobos was for the first time reintroduced to the wild in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Following that successful reintroduction, a new troop of 14 bonobos is now in the process of being released and is anticipated to be fully in the wild by September.
- Congolese conservation group Amis des Bonobos du Congo (ABC) is working to make sure the communities surrounding the release site feel invested in the project.

Virtual Reality 360-degree video: An “empathy-generating machine” for conservation outreach?
- New video technology that films in 360 degrees brings viewers into the middle of the action and is set to become a powerful outreach tool to build understanding and empathy for wildlife and wild places.
- Small off-the-shelf cameras rugged enough to film in the wild are relatively inexpensive, easy enough for field researchers and other filming novices to use, and sufficiently sophisticated to collect videos of resolutions higher than 5 megapixels.
- At a recent presentation at National Geographic, four VR-360 filmmakers strongly endorsed the technology as a tool to inspire and nurture empathy in viewers for a range of conservation issues.

Peru: Get to know the diverse wildlife of the cloud forests of Pampa Hermosa | VIDEOS
- Biologist Sean McHugh, along with filmmaker and photographer Jasmina McKibben, recently traveled to the Colibri cloud forest in Peru’s Pampa Hermosa district in search of the spectacled bear.
- At least 25 different species of mammals were observed in a rarely-investigated area of the Junín region of Peru.
- Two spectacled bears and a new population of yellow-tailed woolly monkeys were captured on video.

Those kicks were fast as lightning: Kangaroo rats evade deadly snake strikes
- A research team has shown that desert kangaroo rats fend off predatory rattlesnakes through a combination of speedy reaction times, powerful near-vertical leaps, and mid-air, ninja-style kicks.
- Locating snakes through radio tracking and filming snake-kangaroo rat interactions with high-speed video cameras enabled the team to analyze strike and reaction speed, distance and angle the rats moved to avoid being bitten, and aspects of the impressive maneuverability displayed by most kangaroo rats in the recordings.
- About 81 percent of recorded snake strikes were accurate, yet the snake actually bit the kangaroo rat in just 47 percent of the strikes and latched on long enough in just 22 percent of strikes to actually kill and eat the kangaroo rat.
- The slowed-down videos demonstrate the importance of kangaroo rats’ physical features, including long tails and powerful legs, and mid-air maneuverability in escaping predation.

In the Solomon Islands, making amends in the name of conservation
- The Kwaio people of the Solomon Islands have been working with scientists to protect their homeland from resource extraction and development.
- But violent clashes in 1927 between the Kwaio and the colonial government created a rift between members of this tribe and the outside world.
- To heal those old wounds and continue with their conservation work, a trio of scientists joined the Kwaio in a sacred reconciliation ceremony in July 2018.
- Kwaio leaders say that the ceremony opened the door to a more peaceful future for their people.

Study finds bears react, then habituate, to drones
- Small drones increasingly serve as tools to monitor wildlife, detect habitat change, or search for poachers, but their use may be stressing out the animals being studied or other species.
- A research team tested whether black bears would habituate to the repeated presence of drones flying overhead and, if so, whether they would remain habituated to additional flights conducted after a break.
- The bears showed an increased tolerance to drone flights in the short term, which they maintained after a nearly four-month pause.
- With the expanding use of drones in wildlife and habitat studies, the researchers expect their findings to help inform best practices that could reduce animal disturbance in the long run.

Graphic video reveals brutality of pangolin poaching in northeast India
- Hunters in India are helping supply the illegal pangolin trade, and new research that probes their motivations might point to measures that can reduce the poaching and sale of the species known as “the world’s most trafficked mammal.”
- An undercover video shot during the course of the research could prove to be a deterrent in and of itself, as it shows just how vicious and inhumane the pangolin trade can be.
- Interventions to reduce poverty and promote alternative livelihoods are certainly necessary, the researchers write in the study, but they argue that these measures alone would likely be ineffective in reducing pangolin hunting.

Nearly four decades of cycling race video reveals climate change’s effects
- A team of ecologists has used video from key locations along the route of the annual Tour of Flanders cycling race to understand how plants are responding to regional rises in temperature.
- After watching more than 200 hours of footage from 36 years of the race, the team found that trees began producing flowers and sprouting leaves earlier in the season.
- By 2016, trees were 67 percent more likely to have produced leaves by the time of the race than in the 1980s. By comparison, few if any trees had leaves before 1990.
- The researchers believe that analyses of video from other cycling races and similar annual events could yield new insights into the ecological changes that temperature changes instigate.

Footage of elusive Negros bleeding-heart dove captured in the wild
- New footage of one of one of the most elusive birds in the world — the critically endangered Negros bleeding heart dove — has been released.
- A team with the Bristol Zoological Society, a UK-based conservation and education NGO, spent five days searching for the bird in the forests of the Philippines’ Panay Island in order to capture a video of the rarely seen species in the wild.
- The Negros bleeding-heart (Gallicolumba keayi) is a medium-sized, ground-dwelling species of pigeon endemic to the Philippine islands of Negros and Panay. There are perhaps as few as 70 and no more than 400 individuals of the species left on the two islands it calls home, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Camera trap videos capture biodiversity of conservation area in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula
- Many ejidos, such as Ejido Caoba in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatán Peninsula, run sustainable forestry enterprises on their land, harvesting and selling wood for the benefit of the entire community and replanting the trees they cut down in order to ensure the health of the ecosystem as a whole.
- One way to measure how well an ecosystem has been maintained is through the levels of biodiversity the land is capable of sustaining — and by that measure, Ejido Caoba’s efforts to preserve the ecosystem appear to be quite successful, as the camera trap videos below suggest.
- After this year’s harvest of timber and non-timber forest products comes to an end, the ejido will once again install the camera traps in harvest areas in order to continue monitoring wildlife populations on their land. But for now, you can enjoy these videos captured in November and December 2017.

New short film captures rare spider monkey feeding behavior (commentary)
- A new short film captures rarely seen footage of endangered spider monkeys feeding at a mammal clay lick in the remote Peruvian Amazon.
- A Rainforest Reborn, a short documentary by filmmaker Eilidh Munro, was captured in the Crees Reserve, a regenerating rainforest within the Manu Biosphere Reserve, giving us hope that endangered species can return to previously disturbed forests.
- In this commentary, the filmmaker, Eilidh Munro, talks about the difficulties of filming spider monkeys in a rainforest and the importance of this story for conservation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

From galaxies far, far away to endangered species just over the hill
- Astrophysicists and conservation ecologists have teamed up to apply the heat-detection software and machine-learning algorithms used to find stars to automatically identify people and different animal species.
- The system detects warm, living objects from drone-derived thermal video footage and uses a reference database to identify the various objects efficiently and reliably.
- The research team is refining the system to overcome challenges of variable environmental conditions, as well as hot rocks and other “thermally bright” but uninteresting objects, while building a reference database of multiple target species.

Report finds projects in DRC ‘REDD+ laboratory’ fall short of development, conservation goals
- The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) released a new report that found that 20 REDD+ projects in a province in DRC aren’t set to address forest conservation and economic development — the primary goals of the strategy.
- The Paris Agreement explicitly mentions the role of REDD+ projects, which channel funds from wealthy countries to heavily forested ones, in keeping the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius this century.
- RRI is asking REDD+ donors to pause funding of projects in DRC until coordinators develop a more participatory approach that includes communities and indigenous groups.

Epic battle between tiger and sloth bear caught on film
- Footage of a fight between a male tiger and a mother sloth bear in an India wildlife reserve has gone viral on Facebook.
- The video, shot this week in Tadoba National Park, was captured by Akshay Kumar, the chief naturalist at Bamboo Forest Safari Lodge in Maharashtra.
- The video starts with the tiger chasing off a sloth bear that was headed with her cub toward a water body.
- The bear then charges the tiger and the fight ensues.

‘It’s our home’: Pygmies fight for recognition as forest protectors in new film
- A recent short film, Pygmy Peoples of the DRC: A Rising Movement, tracks the push for the recognition of indigenous land rights in the DRC.
- The film catalogs the importance of the forest to pygmy groups, as well as their role as stewards of the forest.
- A raft of recent research has shown that indigenous groups around the world often do a better job of protecting forests than parks and reserves.

WATCH: Rare sighting of mother Sunda clouded leopard and cubs caught on film
- On the afternoon of November 6, while traveling through Deramakot Forest Reserve in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo, photographer Michael Gordon came across a sight he was not expecting: a Sunda clouded leopard mother with her cubs.
- “When I first saw the clouded leopards from a distance I thought it was just some macaques on the road,” he told Mongabay. “Once I realized that it was actually three clouded leopards I stopped the car right away. I had my camera close by, but with only a 15mm macro lens attached. I wasn’t sure whether to just enjoy the moment or go into the boot of the car and change lenses. I figured I would regret it badly if I didn’t record it.”
- The Sunda clouded leopard, found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, is such a rare and elusive big cat that it’s traditionally been rather difficult to study, never mind casually sight while driving through the forest.

First vaquita ‘rescued’ in bid to save the porpoise from extinction
- A project to save a small, critically endangered porpoise called the vaquita in the Gulf of California succeeded in capturing a 6-month-old calf in mid-October.
- Veterinarians noticed signs of stress, so they made the decision to release it back into the wild, rather than keep it in a sea pen.
- The project’s leaders are heartened by the experience and hope to round up more vaquita to keep them safe from the still-present threat of gillnet entanglement in the northern Sea of Cortez.

Pandas losing ground to hungry livestock in Chinese nature reserve
- A new study finds that a 9-fold uptick in livestock near Wanglang National Nature Reserve has diminished giant panda habitat by more than a third.
- More than half of the panda’s range is protected in China, but overlap with grazing livestock, which eat bamboo leaves, maybe putting pressure on the country’s national symbol.
- The study’s authors call for investment in alternative livelihoods, in sectors such as tourism and forest management, to steer people away from livestock rearing.

How much of a shock can an electric eel deliver? A scientist just found out first-hand
- Last year, Kenneth Catania, a professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, was able to corroborate a centuries-old story about electric eels leaping out of the water to shock would-be assailants.
- One advantage of leaping out of the water to zap attackers is that the eel’s electrical shock doesn’t have to travel through the water first, which causes it to dissipate and therefore pack less of a punch. But just how much of a charge can eels deliver, anyway?
- Catania has now answered that question, as well, in a study published in the journal Current Biology this month.

Story-telling app and website help communities improve their ‘backyards’
- The TIMBY reporting platform applies the wide range of knowledge and experience of journalists, scientists, technologists, designers and security experts.
- Originally developed in Liberia to curb some of the impacts of illegal logging, the design and function of the TIMBY platform has been customized to fit the needs of the people facing conservation issues other locations.
- TIMBY has been used across the globe to address a wide array of issues, including environmental conservation in Chile, women’s health in Kenya, and information dissemination in Liberia.

Documenting the fight to save Borneo’s animals
- After graduating from school, Aaron ‘Bertie’ Gekoski was on a fairly conventional career path for a young businessman.
- But the more successful his agency became, the more Gekoski felt like something was missing.
- So he quit the business and embarked on a totally new adventure: wildlife filmmaking.
- Gekoski spoke about his unusual career path, his passion, and filmmaking during an April 2017 interview with Mongabay.com.

Audio: Paul Simon on his new tour in support of E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth initiative
- The 12-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter recently announced on Mongabay.com that he is embarking on a 17-date US concert tour, with all proceeds benefitting Half-Earth, an initiative of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.
- Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso interviewed Paul Simon about his long-time friendship with E.O. Wilson and why Dr. Wilson’s Half-Earth idea inspired him to get involved in this environmental cause.
- We also feature another Field Notes segment, this time with Zuzana Burivalova, a conservation scientist at Princeton University who has recorded the soundscapes of over 100 sites in the Indonesian part of Borneo.

Big data timber exchange partners with FSC in Brazil
- BVRio pulls together data on the pricing, supply chain and certification of timber and wood products through its Responsible Timber Exchange.
- Since opening in November 2016, the exchange has fielded more than 400 offers for 5 million cubic meters of timber.
- The partnership with the Forest Stewardship Council is aimed at bolstering the market for certified forest products.

Rare beaked whale filmed underwater for the first time
- True’s beaked whale is difficult to spot at sea, and remains a poorly studied species.
- By analyzing stranding data and live sightings of the whale, researchers confirm that the Azores and Canary Islands may actually be a hotspot for studying the natural behavior of the species.
- For the data-scarce whale species, live sightings and video recordings are highly valuable because they add to information that helps identify a species accurately.
- This in turn can help scientists monitor the status of their populations and protect them.

New population of rare Dryas monkey videotaped for the first time
- Fewer than 200 Dryas monkeys are believed to survive in the wild today.
- Videotaping the secretive monkeys was not easy.
- Researchers set up cameras on the ground, in the understory and even climbed very tall trees to attach cameras in the canopy.
- The team hopes that their camera trapping exercise will help them document where new Dryas populations live.

Watch video of baby slow loris born to mother rescued from wildlife traffickers
- Poachers had shot the pregnant loris with an airgun, and pellets were still lodged behind her right eye and in her back when the IAR medical team assessed her.
- The loris, named Canon, gave birth to her baby four days after being taken into IAR.
- Canon seems to be taking good care of her baby, IAR said, and both mother and baby are doing well.
- Two other pregnant lorises gave birth prematurely and their babies didn’t survive, IAR said.

Swallowing swimming pools: New sensory tags capture kinetics of lunge-feeding whales
- Researchers have developed and deployed sensory tags with video cameras to study how rorquals, a type of baleen whale, lunge feed and maximize their consumption despite the huge energetic cost.
- Comprehending the dynamics of lunge feeding and its energy tradeoffs could inform whale conservation and fisheries management.
- The scientists hope to develop the tags with a more compact design, more reliable sensors, and longer battery life, and they want to better understand the baleen and compare and analyze lunge feeding and its energetics across whales.

Could conservation education in virtual reality help change the real world?
- New virtual reality (VR) apps can immerse the public in lifelike environments and experiences that raise ecological awareness and promote environmentally friendly behavior in real life.
- Cutting-edge VR could have myriad applications for conserving dwindling natural habitats, species and resources.
- Future improvements and ubiquity with more releases of competing consumer VR devices will make the technology a prominent environmental education tool.

Greenpeace releases dramatic drone video of Indonesia’s fires
- Greenpeace has released footage from a UAV showing burning forests and smoldering peatlands in Borneo.
- The video shows fires burning on peatlands, rainforests, and oil palm plantations surrounding Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan.
- Vast areas of Gunung Palung’s buffer zone forests and swampy peatlands have been drained and cleared for rubber, palm oil, timber, and pulp production.

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