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By Marta Kasztelan
- Poland’s border with Belarus runs through the Białowieża Forest, Europe’s last ancient woodland, home to lynx, wolves and European bison.
- To strengthen national security and deter Russian and Belarusian attacks, Poland launched the East Shield in 2024 — a 700-km (435-mi) border fortification project running along its northeastern and eastern flanks.
- But Polish scientists and conservationists say the East Shield would result in widespread damage to Białowieża Forest; they convinced the military to instead implement “WarWilding” techniques that forgo concrete in favor of using nature to create a defensive barrier called the Green East Shield.
- However, WarWilding proponents say road construction projects threaten to undermine progress on the Green East Shield and are harming the forest and its wildlife.
By Naina Rao
Humpback whales found in the Arabian Sea are likely a distinct subspecies, having evolved in isolation for tens of thousands of years, according to a newly published genetic analysis. “Arabian Sea …
By Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) — Tropical Storm Isaias formed Wednesday in the warm waters off eastern Mexico and forecasters said it was expected to strengthen into the first hurricane of the Atlantic season before h…
By Ana Norman Bermúdez
- A government-run wildlife rescue center in northeastern Thailand rehabilitates and releases dozens of leopard cat cubs every year.
- Rescue numbers have risen sharply since 2023, a trend staff at the center attribute to a combination of worsening habitat fragmentation, fire activity and increased use of a government hotline.
- Although the center can monitor camera traps for footage of released cats, they currently have no way to be certain how many of the cats survive after release.
By Aimee Gabay
- A report from funders of a pledge to support Indigenous peoples and local communities’ land rights found that donors delivered $2.35 billion between 2021 and 2025, exceeding the $1.7 billion target made at the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference by 38%.
- The findings also show that 7.2% of funding in 2025 went directly to Indigenous peoples and local communities, up from 2.9% in 2021.
- Authors of the report warn that underfunded regions remain particularly vulnerable to aid cuts, deforestation and extractive pressures.
- A new $1.8 billion five-year pledge announced at COP30 aims to expand its reach to support Afro-descendant communities and other ecosystems, promising more direct, flexible and long-term financing.
By Christine Heinrichs
- A deadly strain of avian flu, H5N1, has spread across the globe since it emerged in Europe in 2020, infecting hundreds of species and decimating domestic poultry, seabird and marine mammal populations.
- In June, bird flu breached the last uninfected continent, Australia, and has since infected numerous bird species — and spilled over into mammals, including critically endangered Australian sea lions.
- Wildlife disease tracking and data collection are guiding current mitigations, such as carcass removal. The New South Wales government launched an immunization trial for vulnerable captive birds in August and began vaccinating little penguins in the wild on Sept. 18. But little can be done to stop the spread.
- A comprehensive One Health perspective that incorporates human, wildlife and livestock health could aid efforts to prevent outbreaks of zoonotic disease that pass between them all.
By Elizabeth Claire Alberts
- At the recent biennial meeting of the International Whaling Commission, Antigua and Barbuda introduced a controversial resolution on the “sustainable use” of whales, which introduced a path toward the reintroduction of commercial whaling. The resolution was ultimately withdrawn.
- A separate bid to establish a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary failed to pass, as it has at several previous meetings.
- Delegates did approve resolutions aimed at addressing cetacean strandings, the fish maw trade and vessel strikes, as well as the “Hobart Declaration” commemorating the 80th anniversary of the IWC.
- Observers criticized the IWC for failing to adequately address climate change, but also praised the body as a whole for remaining steadfast in supporting the ban on commercial whaling and for its contributions to science and conservation efforts.
By Mongabay.com
More than half of the world’s wild tulip species assessed so far are threatened with extinction, reports Mongabay’s Shreya Dasgupta. “For a flower this famous, it may surprise people how rare i…
By Catherine Ellis
- Colombia’s new president has pledged to reopen the door to fracking, reviving plans for two pilot projects in Puerto Wilches municipality that were halted under his predecessor, Gustavo Petro.
- Supporters say fracking could help shore up dwindling gas supplies, while critics warn it could expose communities and ecosystems to environmental risks and prolong the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.
- Puerto Wilches’s wetlands and waterways support communities and threatened wildlife, including West Indian manatees, Magdalena River turtles and Magdalena catfish, raising concerns over water use, wastewater, and other impacts from fracking.
- The debate reflects a broader tension in Colombia’s energy transition, with renewable energy expanding rapidly even as delays and declining gas reserves fuel calls for continued investments in fossil fuels.
By Naina Rao
The reported death of a 28-year-old laboratory technician in eastern Siberia has triggered regional quarantines and international attention over fears of the cause of death and a lack of transparency…
By Liz Kimbrough
- Researchers have identified a new species of extinct long-snouted crocodile from 45-million-year-old fossils found in the same limestone formation used to build Egypt’s Great Sphinx.
- The fossils were dug up in the 1920s and lumped in with the living false gharial, but CT scans revealed features that set the ancient crocodile apart as its own species.
- Its closest living relatives, the gharial and false gharial, are critically endangered and endangered respectively.
- Today, many species of crocodilians face conservation threats, though some have seen tremendous recovery due to conservation efforts
By Basten GokkonMike DiGirolamo
Indigenous activist and filmmaker Kynan Tegar joins the Mongabay Newscast this week to discuss the impacts of the fires devastating Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. Some 48…
By Rhett Ayers Butler
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Twenty months after the dismantling of USAID, a new analysis docu…
By Associated Press
SANTAREM, Brazil (AP) — Off-grid solar power is spreading across Brazil’s Amazon, helping remote communities prepare for severe drought while replacing costly, polluting diesel generators. In Nov…
By Liz Kimbrough
- A survey of 25 organizations working on rainforest restoration in Australia’s Wet Tropics found that nearly all monitor their sites, but about half keep no records and simply check sites visually.
- The groups ranked habitat connectivity, biodiversity, and threatened species habitat as their top goals, yet measured success mainly by canopy closure, tree survival, and the end of weeding.
- About 42% stop monitoring once the canopy closes, usually within three to five years, long before the slower recovery of rainforest plants and animals can be tracked.
- Most groups said monitoring would be a high priority if they had more funding, and the survey authors warn that short-term checks won’t provide the proof of recovery that carbon and biodiversity markets require.
By Jennifer Cole
- In Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, a partnership between the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, Redd Fish Restoration Society and West Coast Kelp grows kelp at scale to support an ecosystem in decline.
- The fur trade eradicated sea otters; their return enables kelp to thrive.
- Underwater cameras are monitoring the newly formed kelp forest.
- The success of the project will be measured by science and the return of ecological abundance.
By Akane Nishimura
- The world is facing an El Niño event of unprecedented proportions.
- Millions of Indonesians have already been breathing toxic wildfire smoke and bravely fighting the blazes for months, although this event’s likely record-breaking fire season has barely kicked into gear.
- “These communities are inspiring, and they can teach us some lessons about resilience and fortitude in the face of a Super El Niño that’s coming for many of us,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
By Yenni Kwok
- Hong Kong-based biologist Astrid Andersson and arborist Harry Wong run a conservation project that seeks to protect the city’s feral yellow-crested cockatoos (Cacatua sulphurea).
- The critically endangered species enjoys a stable population in Hong Kong, numbering around 200 or about 10% of the global population.
- With few natural nesting spaces available, Andersson and Wong make artificial nest boxes and install them in public parks and on school campuses.
- Each box is equipped with an internal camera connected to a mobile signal, allowing researchers to remotely monitor breeding behavior.
By Naina Rao
Researchers surveying garden and wild flowers across northern Thailand have uncovered 16 previously unknown species of black, yeast-like fungi living inside the flowers, according to a recent study. …
By Shanna Hanbury
Right-wing candidates made big gains in both houses of Congress in Brazil’s Oct. 4 general election. Brazil’s main Indigenous organization, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil APIB, …
By Jonathan Vit
Every year, thousands of salamanders and frogs try to cross from their wooded winter homes in the U.S. state of New Hampshire to the swamps they breed in. But the road is a dangerous place — unless…
By Dyna RochmyaningsihPhilip Jacobson
- Indonesia’s forestry ministry has posted a notice saying it will use a controversial internet law to prosecute anyone who downloads geospatial data without its written permission, threatening prison terms of up to nine years.
- A ministry official clarified it was restricting access only to data in the widely used shapefile format.
- Legal scholars say the data are protected under Indonesian law and should be freely accessible.
By Rhett Ayers Butler
On June 17, 2015, Philippine officials confiscated thousands of turtles in cement tanks from a warehouse in Palawan, an island province in the Philippines. More than 3,800 of them were endangered Pal…
By Shanna Hanbury
In Brazil’s general election on Oct. 4, incumbent leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva finished second to far-right Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, …
By Maxwell Radwin
- Suriname President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons announced a task force in August to investigate illegal settlements destroying the rainforest, many of them Mennonites moving from other countries.
- Attempts at eviction have proven much more complicated than it first appeared, observers say. Settlers are allegedly ignoring court orders, and officials are confused about which people are breaking what laws.
- Rabindre Parmessar, leader of the National Democratic Party in the National Assembly, said he plans to meet with the president’s task force to better understand the legal procedures of eviction and why the Mennonites haven’t been removed yet.
- He will also take steps to create a parliamentary group to investigate the situation independently of the president’s task force, he said.
By Associated Press
BANGKOK (AP) — Thai authorities on Monday warned of more rain and flash flooding as the death toll from floods across the country since mid-September rose to 31. Thunderstorms, strong winds and hea…
By Hans Nicholas Jong
- In Indonesia, fires are burning in rainforests that contain 13 of the 20 largest remaining populations of Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus).
- Without urgent action, thousands more orangutans could be killed, injured or displaced, warns the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group, a network of primatologists, field researchers and conservation experts.
- Actions must include long-term measures, including community-led efforts, beyond emergency firefighting to tackle the fires, say experts.
By Victoria Schneider
The brown clockfig, an extremely rare succulent growing in the hot, arid border region of Namibia and South Africa, was recently assessed as critically endangered by the IUCN, the global wildlife con…
By Mongabay.com
More Amazonian species, in larger numbers, are appearing for sale on the other side of the planet in Southeast Asia’s exotic pet trade, reports contributor Gloria Dickie for Mongabay. Over the past…
By Mongabay.com
Fewer than half of tiger poaching and trafficking arrests in Southeast Asia result in convictions or legal penalties, providing little deterrent to an illegal black market that is driving wild tigers…
By Spoorthy Raman
A multi-day thunderstorm over the Mediterranean Sea struck Malta, stranding hundreds of passing migratory birds on Sept. 14, 2026. Hunters in the country then shot hundreds of those birds, including …
By Juan Maza
Vast tracts of Thai farmland have been poisoned by chemicals linked to mining in Myanmar, With toxins carried into Thailand by at least six transboundary rivers. A Mongabay investigation has found mo…
By Shanna Hanbury
Oil slicks from ships and offshore oil platforms cover nearly 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles) of the ocean surface each year, an area slightly larger than the nation of Mongolia.…
By Associated Press
SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s upcoming presidential election could reshape the Amazon’s future. Control of the country, which contains about 60% of the rainforest, could pass to Sen. Flávio Bolson…
By Minh L Tran
- As Hanoi leans on fishers to hold the line in contested waters, a distant war and a demanding European compliance regime are squeezing the same boats from opposite directions.
- The fuel crisis caused by the Iran War adds to the pressure.
- Data shows a nearly-19% year-on-year drop in fishing activity during March and April 2026, the height of the fuel crisis.
By Allessandra DiCorato
- A new field study found that two treatments of beneficial bacteria each protected reef corals from bleaching during a heat wave in the Red Sea.
- A heat-killed version of one of the bacterial treatments also protected the corals and may provide a cheaper, more shelf-stable alternative to live probiotics.
- Future studies are needed to determine whether the treatments also help corals stay alive over longer periods of time.
- Though wider implementation of probiotics faces barriers, researchers say many approaches are needed to protect corals in the long term.
By Liz Kimbrough
- As Earth warms, greenhouse gases released by thawing permafrost, wetlands, wildfires, and freshwaters could cause 0.2°-0.4°C (0.4°-0.7°F) of additional warming by 2100, a new study estimates.
- That would amplify human-caused warming since 2020 by 20-30%, with methane accounting for roughly half of the added warming.
- Most climate models leave these natural feedbacks out, so projections of future warming are likely too low and remaining carbon budgets too generous, the authors say.
- Cutting human emissions remains essential, but because some natural sources have no off switch, researchers are exploring ways to remove methane from the atmosphere.
By David Akana
- Ali Thani and Lorna Slade shared frustration with top-down conservation and a belief that coastal communities could manage their own resources led them to come together to create the Mwambao Coastal Community Network.
- Their partnership grew from different experiences. Thani, a Tanzanian from the coast who had worked in government and with international conservation groups, brought intimate knowledge of coastal communities; Slade brought decades of experience and understanding of the international institutions financing conservation.
- Mwambao has since grown into a multimillion-dollar organization and helped communities experiment with fisheries closures, co-management and livelihood programs. But its experience has not been uniformly successful, with different degrees of acceptance from communities.
- Its growth also raises a harder question for its founders: can a community-led model remain truly community-led as the organization itself becomes larger?
By Ashoka Mukpo
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have signed a 10-year agreement to co-manage a portion of Queen Elizabeth National Park, famous for its tree-climbing l…
By June Wong
- Hong Kong’s heat stress warning system has been widely criticized as ineffective, failing to raise alerts even when temperatures hit a record high.
- Although the system has since been revamped, critics say the government’s heat stress guidelines to protect workers are flawed.
- Unlike mainland China and other countries, Hong Kong doesn’t require employers to stop high-risk work or let workers rest when heat warnings are issued.
- Workers’ rights advocates also urge authorities to codify heatstroke as an occupational disease.
By Spoorthy Raman
- Sulawesi’s critically endangered maleo birds are increasingly targeted by wildlife traffickers, according to a new study that documented seizures of smuggled birds Some were carried by families with children, young couples or single mothers to try to avoid detection.
- Researchers found that 25 live juvenile maleos were seized by enforcement agents in 2024 in India or en route there. Conservationists say they may have been smuggled from hatcheries built to conserve the critically endangered species. None were repatriated alive to Indonesia.
- Maleos are a protected species in Indonesia, and all international commercial trade is banned under CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty.
- Researchers urge authorities in India, Indonesia and Thailand to increase surveillance and enforcement in airports and build a mechanism to return seized birds to Indonesia, where they could potentially be released back into the wild.
By Taufik Wijaya
- Data from remote sensing platforms indicates Indonesia is likely experiencing its worst wildfires crisis in years as a strong El Niño deepens the country’s main dry season over Sumatra and Borneo islands.
- In South Sumatra province, rubber tree growers in the Tempirai customary zone say they use fire only after the end of the dry season, after they have planted food crops, and that fires began to afflict this area of South Sumatra province after the oil palm industry began operating in the peatland.
- That may reflect the relative resilience of oil palm trees to wildfires compared with rubber trees, which are much more vulnerable to incineration.
- “If a fire breaks out here, we’re finished — so right now, fire is our enemy,” one latex tree grower told Mongabay Indonesia.
By Mongabay.com
In the Indian Western Himalayas, women are the primary first responders to escalating forest fires. They risk their physical safety to protect homes and livelihoods despite receiving little formal su…
By Isabel Gil
- Mangrove forests can help protect tropical coastal areas from rising sea levels and storm surges.
- New research presents a model by which to predict how much mangroves can reduce — or attenuate — large waves associated with severe storms such as typhoons.
- The researchers also created an online tool that can be used by practitioners to estimate the attenuation impact of mangroves anywhere around the world.
- The authors say their work can be used for ecological restoration and coastal engineering, and to help “vulnerable coastal communities deploy adaptive defenses before disaster strikes.”
By Mongabay.com
Isolated and contacted Indigenous tribes in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands face threats from illegal fishing, mega-development projects and misinformed government welfare policies that undermi…
By Euan Marshall
- In restinga shrub areas of the Atlantic Forest on the coast of Paraná state, researchers have carried out the first yellow fever vaccinations of black-faced lion tamarins.
- The initiative took place in July 2026 and aims to protect the species, known locally as the “caissara lion tamarin,” from disease outbreaks that could further reduce its small wild population.
- The primate is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, with a population estimated at fewer than 400 individuals in the wild and none in captivity, increasing the risk of sudden extinction.
By Associated Press
SCHIPKAU, Germany (AP) — A wind turbine described by its developer as the world’s tallest now rises 365 meters (1,197 feet) above the sparsely populated landscape of eastern Germany, surpassing t…
By Maxwell Radwin
A new initiative between the U.S. and Argentina is meant to bolster investment opportunities and strengthen supply chains for critical minerals that could be used in the clean energy transition, such…
By Mongabay.com
Renewable energy companies are driving most of Brazil’s plans for new data centers, according to a recent joint analysis by The Intercept Brasil and Mongabay. As of December 2025 there were 68 requ…
By Molly Helfend
- Gabon passed a decree this year requiring benefit sharing for commercial uses of the medicinal plant iboga, its derivatives, and associated traditional knowledge, but the mechanisms for distributing those benefits are still being built.
- A community association in Ogooué-Ivindo province earned the equivalent of about $50,000 from three legal iboga shipments since 2023, yet its promised share of value created further downstream has still not arrived.
- The decree is unusually broad, attempting to cover ibogaine, analogs, and compounds made through synthetic or alternative sources, although how Gabon could enforce those claims abroad remains unresolved.
- In September, Gabon moved to halt exports of iboga and all derivatives while it develops a new national framework, freezing even the legal community-based trade the country had previously encouraged.
By Abhishyant Kidangoor
- Scientists have found that dolphins have separate areas in the ocean where they hunt and socialize.
- Dolphins along Florida’s Atlantic coast were found to communicate using whistling sounds in the nearshore locations where they socialize, and rapid clicking sounds in areas with an abundance of prey fish.
- The data also hinted at the possibility that fish quieten down when they sense a dolphin approaching, indicating that prey might also be listening in to predators.
- The findings could help better inform policies geared toward protecting dolphin habitats, the scientists say.
By Rhett Ayers Butler
- On October 1, 2025, Jane Goodall died at the age of 91.
- Goodall, who began her career in 1960 with little formal training, transformed science’s understanding of chimpanzees and in the process reshaped the boundary between humans and animals.
- She built on that science with activism: founding the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977. In 1991 she established Roots & Shoots, which grew into a vast youth movement spanning more than 100 countries.
- The following is an abridged version of a piece Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler published following her passing.
By David Akana
- Dickson Kaelo grew up herding livestock, while living alongside wildlife. He remembers what it meant when lions killed cattle, elephants destroyed crops or a hyena got into a boma and killed animals a family depended on.
- Nearly three decades ago, fresh from college, he began working with elders in his community to find a way for livestock, wildlife and people to share the same landscape. His first attempt of building community conservancies worked for a while — and then collapsed.
- Today, Kenya has roughly 240 conservancies (land set aside by communities, individual landowners, groups or companies primarily for wildlife conservation) covering close to 15% of the country. Kaelo says their growth has brought benefits, but also problems: Elite capture, poor deals with private investors, land disputes and conservancies that have simply failed.
- Kaelo, who is also the CEO of the Kenyan Wildlife Conservancy Association, was recently in New York, U.S., for Climate Week, held alongside the United Nations General Assembly. Mongabay’s David Akana caught up with him to discuss the promise, challenges and future of community-led conservation.
By Fernanda WenzelSpoorthy Raman
- Documents obtained by Mongabay show Vantara, the controversial private zoo in India run by billionaire Anant Ambani, was in talks with Brazilian authorities to form a “strategic conservation partnership” focused on the country’s threatened species.
- The zoo also proposed a conservation partnership on Spix’s macaw, a parrot species endemic to Brazil but extinct in the wild; 26 of the birds were sent from Germany to Vantara in 2023 without Brazil’s consent.
- Representatives from Vantara met with Brazilian officials in 2025 to discuss this partnership. A Brazilian delegation was scheduled to visit the Indian zoo in 2026; that trip was canceled at the last minute.
- Conservationists say that given the ongoing investigations into Vantara’s links to alleged wildlife trafficking, the country must be transparent about any agreement signed with the zoo.
By Rhett Ayers Butler
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For much of the 20th century, Cuba’s spiders and scorpions rece…
By Shreya Dasgupta
Rising sea levels due to climate change could damage hundreds of thousands of properties and millions of hectares of land along Australia’s coastline by 2100, according to a recent study. This coul…
By Mongabay.com
At least 20 endangered Ganges river dolphins still survive in Bangladesh’s extremely polluted Buriganga River, a 12-month study found, reports contributor Md Jahidul Islam for Mongabay. Skirting th…
By Hans Nicholas Jong
- Indonesia plans to create a new agency to restore and manage peatlands prone to burning, in a repeat of a measure it took in response to the severe fire season of 2015.
- The new agency will replace an older one that shuttered at the end of 2024, raising questions about why its predecessor was allowed to die off and what the new body will do differently.
- The previous agency’s restoration efforts helped reduce fire hotspots, but damaged infrastructure and continued land conversion have limited lasting ecological recovery.
- Experts and environmental groups say the new agency must prioritize fire prevention and landscape-scale restoration, with clear authority, funding, and accountability.
By Gerald Flynn
- Large volumes of critical minerals are being imported from Myanmar into Thailand and then mostly resold to China.
- At least six Thai rivers have been found to be contaminated with heavy metals linked to mining operations in Myanmar.
- Data suggests companies in Myanmar, Thailand and China are profiting from an industry that has created a public health crisis, impacting food and water security for hundreds of thousands across eastern Myanmar and northern Thailand.
- Civil society and Thai political groups are calling for an end to imports of minerals mined in Myanmar in response to the ongoing river pollution crisis.
By Rhett Ayers Butler
With illegal logging and agricultural expansion closing in on their lands, four Indigenous Wounaan and Emberá-Wounaan villages in Panama’s Darién forest started a biodiversity monitoring project …