location: Canada

location: Canada

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First Nations lead the return of salmon to Canada’s Upper Columbia River
- First Nations in British Columbia, western Canada, are working to restore salmon to the Upper Columbia Basin and leading ceremonial salmon fry releases to reestablish connections between salmon and salmon people.
- The Columbia River was once one of the greatest salmon-bearing rivers in North America, but the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, built without fish passage mechanisms, blocked salmon from a significant portion of the river’s length.
- The loss of salmon has profoundly affected Indigenous nations and tribes, with a loss of food sovereignty and cultural connections.
- The Bringing the Salmon Home initiative, led by the Secwépemc, Syilx-Okanagan and Ktunaxa nations, in partnership with the governments of British Columbia and Canada, is advancing salmon reintroduction to the Upper Columbia Basin, with technical studies showing reintroduction is feasible.

How to stitch a massive wildlife corridor through the Rocky Mountains
- Across the world, roads, railways, towns and farms sever habitat, preventing wildlife from moving across the landscape. Cutting off animals’ ability to connect can limit genetic exchange and cause entire populations to decline — and ultimately, collapse.
- The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y, is trying to create a giant connected area stretching across the Rocky Mountains from the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem in the U.S. to Canada’s Yukon Territory. It will allow animals to move, meet and mate.
- Across Canada, the U.S. and the world, countries are building wildlife crossings that reconnect habitat and keep motorists safe from costly, potentially deadly collisions with animals.

In the Canadian Arctic, an experiment aims to stabilize thinning sea ice
- Climate tech startup Real Ice is trialing sea-ice thickening in the Arctic coastal community of Ikaluktutiak, also known as Cambridge Bay, in Nunavut, Canada, where thinning ice affects many aspects of residents’ lives.
- The company is attempting to thicken the ice by drilling holes in it and pumping seawater onto the surface during winter, which activates refreezing.
- Work has been limited to a 1-square-kilometer (0.4-square-mile) test site in Ikaluktutiak, but the team hopes to scale up the project if it proves viable and environmentally safe.
- While the results have been promising, geoengineering projects like Real Ice’s work have also attracted controversy for the possible risks they pose to the environment.

‘Bear-dar’ aims to give Arctic communities a heads-up on nearby polar bears
- An early-warning system, aided by radar and AI, aims to help mitigate human-polar bear encounters in the Arctic.
- Bear-dar scans the landscape for polar bears and alerts people if a bear is spotted approaching human settlements.
- In May, the system detected a polar bear family and helped people at a weather station guide them back onto sea ice.
- As sea ice rapidly melts due to global warming, polar bears are losing their habitats; as a result, they’re increasingly foraging for food on land, putting them in growing contact with humans.

Bill Montevecchi showed what seabirds could tell us about the sea
- Bill Montevecchi spent more than five decades showing how seabirds could reveal changes in the North Atlantic, helping establish them as indicators of ocean health, fisheries, pollution, and climate change.
- Based at Memorial University in Newfoundland, he combined field research with public communication, believing scientists had a responsibility to explain their work beyond academic journals.
- His research informed marine conservation, fisheries management, and environmental policy, while his mentorship and interdisciplinary collaborations influenced generations of seabird scientists.
- Montevecchi approached birds as sources of evidence rather than symbols, arguing that careful observation and rigorous science offered one of the clearest ways to understand a rapidly changing ocean.

Could a blighted urban inlet become a global beacon of waterway renewal?
- A group of advocates is seeking to transform False Creek, a tidal inlet in Vancouver, Canada, from a polluted city inlet into a place where nature thrives and people can safely swim in the water.
- Facing jurisdictional challenges over who gets to decide the future of this once vital marine ecosystem, advocates have explored various governance models for the inlet, such as getting it designated as an urban marine park or granted environmental personhood.
- Not everyone agrees, and now, they are pushing for the surrounding community to voice their desires and negotiate for False Creek’s future.

Six marine sanctuaries recognized as Blue Parks, four of them in Africa
- On June 16, the Marine Conservation Institute recognized six marine protected areas, three in Madagascar and one each in Senegal, Chile and Canada, as Blue Parks.
- The awards, announced at the Our Ocean conference in Mombasa, Kenya, recognize MPAs whose management is “durable, equitable and effective” at protecting marine life.
- Under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, countries agreed to protect 30% of the world’s land, freshwater and marine areas by 2030, but experts say that protection must be meaningful, not just symbolic.
- One of the common features of the awardees is the existence of some form of co-management with Indigenous peoples and local communities.

As Canada eyes Arctic road expansion, Indigenous guardians race to understand caribou
- Indigenous guardians in the Northwest Territories, Canada, are going out into the field to monitor how roads affect Arctic caribou, which undertake the longest terrestrial migration on the planet, through events on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road.
- In the last six years, they have documented a pattern of how caribou avoid roads that bisect the land: When they will avoid crossing, only walk parallel, get trapped on the other side and wait 24 hours of zero disturbance to cross.
- Canada and some Indigenous governments plan to expand roads across the north, like the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor, as part of an Arctic development plan to boost economic opportunities and mining in northern communities.
- As plans for the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor advance, Indigenous guardians and stakeholders underline the need for caribou protections and local jobs in conservation to offer alternatives to industrial opportunities.

Accountability advocates ‘shocked’ as Canadian government eliminates watchdog agency
- Canada created a watchdog agency in 2019 to investigate human rights abuses overseas involving Canadian corporations, including leading mining concerns. It was called the office of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE). But for more than a year, its top position remained vacant.
- Mongabay reported earlier this month that the office had at least 24 active complaints and that additional communities around the world were ready to make complaints once the office was properly staffed.
- Now, in a move that stunned observers and drawn sharp criticism from activists, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced he has closed the agency.

Canada’s watchdog post vacant as overseas mining complaints mount
- Canada’s independent watchdog for overseas human rights complaints against Canadian companies has been leaderless since May 2025, leaving at least 24 active cases effectively stalled.
- Communities in the Dominican Republic, Namibia, Pakistan and elsewhere say delays have left them without a meaningful avenue to seek accountability for alleged environmental and human rights harms linked to Canadian mining and energy projects.
- Critics argue the office of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) was already limited by weak investigative powers, and the year-long vacancy has further undermined confidence in the mechanism.
- The leadership gap comes as Canada promotes mining investment tied to growing demand for critical minerals. The vacancy is prompting renewed calls from advocates, former officials and the United Nations for the office to be strengthened and a new ombudsperson appointed urgently.

Sea cucumber tissue survives for years in open water, study finds
Severed tissue from a cold-water sea cucumber can survive, heal, and even move independently for years in natural seawater, researchers recently found. Some animals have the ability to regenerate tissues and body parts. Certain lizards can regrow their tails, for example. Some sea stars and sea cucumbers, including Psolus fabricii that live in the cold […]
Canadian government endorses a plan to move whales from shuttered Marineland park to US and Spain
TORONTO (AP) — Canada’s government endorsed a plan Wednesday to move the last remaining captive whales from a shuttered theme park in Ontario to aquariums in the United States and Spain — a plan that could save them from mass euthanasia if the deal goes through. There are 30 belugas and four dolphins left in the Marineland park […]
Canada aims to double its electric grid by 2050 with clean energy and lower costs for users
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled a clean electricity strategy Thursday he says will help double Canada’s electricity grid by 2050 and lower energy costs for the majority of Canadian households. Canada is facing major challenges, including tariffs imposed by the United States, higher energy costs resulting from the war with Iran, plus the effects of climate change, Carney said. […]
‘Time stamps’ in shrubs show when beavers began invading Canadian Arctic
Beavers are expanding their range into Canada’s western Arctic, and a recent study has reconstructed when these ecosystem engineers first became active in the area — sometime around 2008. Historically, North American beavers (Castor canadensis) have been associated with boreal and temperate waterways. However, they’re increasingly being observed moving northward in the Arctic tundra. This […]
New data platform aims to reduce conflicts between First Nations and businesses in Canada
- Mongabay spoke with Robert Jago, founder of a comprehensive Indigenous-led data platform compiling information on every First Nation in Canada.
- The platform organizes and verifies contact information, territory maps, governance background and more, to facilitate collaboration between Indigenous communities, business and government.
- A goal of the platform, Jago said, is to reduce conflicts between extractive industries and Indigenous peoples, given that lack of access to accurate information is at the root of many such conflicts.
- Canada has plans to expand extractive, energy and infrastructure projects across the country, including on Indigenous lands and in the Arctic region.

How Spoorthy Raman tells the world’s wildlife stories from a desk in the middle of the Atlantic
- Spoorthy Raman is a staff writer at Mongabay, where she covers wildlife, biodiversity and the complexities of the wildlife trade.
- She began her environmental journalism journey with a Mongabay internship in 2022, which opened the door to writing for other outlets including Hakai, Audubon, BioScience, Nature and others.
- Raman says her inspiration comes from a lifelong curiosity about science, a love for nature, and an admiration for the living world.
- She’s especially proud of her reporting on biodiversity, wildlife and Indigenous food traditions, including award-winning work on baby Dungeness crabs, wild rice restoration in the Great Lakes, and species affected by the wildlife trade.

Reciprocity, not extraction: Centering an Indigenous approach to forestry
Forester and scientist Suzanne Simard is well known for her landmark 1997 paper, which demonstrated that two distinct species of trees could share resources. At the time, it turned traditional Western forestry thinking on its head. Instead of the Darwinian view of trees as being in competition with each other, it introduced the idea that […]
Canada offers mines and more in $730b investment bid slammed as unsustainable
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has touted his country’s natural resources as the main attraction for securing more than $700 billion in new investments over the next five years — a plan that a mining watchdog has blasted as “robber baron capitalism.” Carney announced in a press release a summit scheduled for Sept. 14-15 in […]
Canadian muskoxen hit by double punch of novel diseases and climate change
- New emerging diseases and other threats, including climate change, are upending muskox recovery in parts of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
- An emerging pathogen, dubbed Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae Arctic clone, was linked to widespread muskox mortalities on Victoria and Banks islands from 2009-14. Another outbreak was identified on Ellesmere Island in 2021.
- Brucellosis, a zoonotic disease, is now appearing in muskoxen on Victoria Island and parts of the mainland, with rates increasing since 2015.
- These emerging diseases were identified, researched and tracked via an innovative community-based wildlife health surveillance program that teams up Inuit hunters and trappers, scientists and government agencies. Muskoxen are a key food source for many Inuit communities and play a vital role in Arctic ecology. Their loss could put food security and Indigenous culture at risk.

Canada invests $1m into mining exploration on Indigenous land
A First Nation in Canada’s subarctic Northwest Territories has received C$1.5 million ($1.1 million) in federal funding to explore for elements on its traditional lands. The Tłı̨chǫ own a 39,000-square-kilometer (15,000-square-mile) stretch of boreal forest and tundra. On March 3, they announced a three-year prospecting project with the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. Exploration will […]
Indigenous groups demand halt to Belo Sun Amazon gold mine
More than 120 Indigenous protesters have occupied a federal building in Altamira in the Brazilian Amazon since Feb. 23. They are demanding that authorities block a Canadian mining company’s license to open one of the country’s largest open-air gold mines on the Xingu River. Led by a movement of Indigenous women, the protest follows a […]
Belugas facing euthanasia at shuttered Canada theme park may find new homes in US
- In August 2025, Canada’s only entertainment park with cetaceans, Marineland of Canada, closed for good, prompting concern about the fate of 30 beluga whales and four dolphins remaining at the facility.
- After a plan to transfer them to a theme park in China was blocked by the Canadian government, Marineland called for euthanizing the animals. The Canadian government has now conditionally approved their possible transfer to four U.S. institutions.
- Keeping highly intelligent and social creatures in concrete-lined tanks adversely affects their health and well-being, experts say.
- With changing public perceptions and a growing number of countries, including Canada, banning the keeping and breeding of whales and dolphins, conservationists are calling for alternatives to house the more than 3,700 cetaceans in captivity worldwide, including building seaside sanctuaries.

A hundred-year vision: Gary Tabor on the rise of large landscape conservation
- Gary Tabor’s career marks a shift in conservation from protecting isolated “island” parks to designing vast, interconnected ecological networks.
- Informed by his early years in the Adirondacks and a decade in East Africa, Tabor’s work emphasizes that wildlife survival depends on the “connective tissue” between protected areas.
- Through founding the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, he has moved connectivity into the global mainstream, focusing on practical engineering like wildlife crossings and the human work of community organizing.
- Tabor spoke with Mongabay’s Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler in February 2026.

Communities join global push to protect European, Arctic & US peatlands
- A conservation effort across Finland, Canada’s Arctic and the U.S. is trying to establish one of the first coordinated efforts to protect and restore peatlands in Europe and North America.
- At the same time, communities and organizations are leading research activities, preserving Indigenous knowledge and creating artistic spaces to raise awareness about peatland conservation.
- Although peatlands cover only about 3-4% of the Earth’s surface, studies show they contain up to one-third of the world’s soil carbon.
- Given that peatlands are overlooked and face growing risks, sources say a cross-regional approach is timely for advancing peatland conservation while helping communities become better prepared and more resilient to climate change and mining impacts.

Growing native plants to heal land at Indigenous owned nursery in British Columbia
- The Ktunaxa First Nation owned Nupqu Native Plant Nursery in south-eastern British Columbia propagates over 60 native plant species, with a focus on locally-collected seed.
- The nursery grows 700,000 seedlings on site, and through five partner nurseries, supplies 2.5 million seedlings a year for restoration, mostly within Ktunaxa territory in Canada.
- Over the past five years of operation, the nursery has built up a wealth of knowledge on how to propagate many tricky species.
- Nupqu is now working with partners to build up an Indigenous-led native plant nursery industry in British Columbia.

Investor Dick Bradshaw took a long view of conservation
- Conservation philanthropy often rewards urgency.
- Dick Bradshaw took a longer view, funding research, fellowships, and land protection with an emphasis on permanence rather than campaigns.
- His support helped steady conservation science in Canada by investing in people and institutions built to last.
- Bradshaw died in December 2025.

A rare bright spot for whales: Decades of conservation pay off for endangered population in Canada
- Northern bottlenose whale populations have struggled to rebound, even though commercial whaling was outlawed in their habitats more than 50 years ago.
- Long-term monitoring shows that one population of the species has begun to recover since their year-round habitat, a submarine canyon off Canada’s east coast known as the Gully, became a Marine Protected Area in 2004.
- The Gully MPA provides a rare marine conservation success story, but protection for marine mammals that migrate is more complex.

‘Forever chemical’ contamination could undermine sea otters’ fragile recovery in Canada
- Sea otters living along the coastline of Canada’s British Columbia province are exposed — and absorb — forever chemicals, a new study shows.
- Each of the 11 sea otters tested carried residues PFAS chemicals, with concentrations higher for those living near dense human populations or shipping lanes.
- The Canadian government released an assessment earlier this year recommending that PFAS be classed as toxic and is moving toward adopting tighter rules for these chemicals. Environmentalists support the initiative.

Wolf hauls up crab trap to eat bait, hinting at possible tool use
Researchers in Canada have documented a wild gray wolf hauling a crab trap out of the water to eat the bait inside, according to a recent study. Researchers suggest it may be the first recorded example of possible tool use by a wolf (Canis lupus). The finding emerged from a program maintained by Indigenous Haíɫzaqv […]
Scientists slam Canada-US proposal to lower trade protections for peregrine falcons
- Peregrine falcons, the world’s fastest and most widespread raptors, recovered spectacularly after pesticides that nearly drove them to extinction were banned and captive-bred birds were rewilded, making the effort a remarkable conservation success story.
- Although the species is no longer endangered, international commercial trade in this bird, coveted by falconers, is banned for wild-caught specimens and highly regulated for captive-bred ones. Canada and the U.S. propose loosening those restrictions, a proposal that will be voted on at the upcoming meeting of CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty.
- Some raptor scientists have concerns. The Canada-U.S. downlisting proposal includes population estimates of just a few subspecies; many others are understudied. Some populations have declined in recent years and illegal trade continues.
- Until there are safeguards against unsustainable trade and accurate assessments for all subspecies, conservationists say lowering protections could undo the efforts that have brought this bird back from the brink.

Photos: Drones help First Nations track down cold-water havens for salmon amid warming
- Indigenous fisheries association and river guardians, representing several Mi’kmaq nations in eastern Canada, have launched a drone-based thermal-mapping campaign to locate and protect cold-water refuges vital for threatened Atlantic salmon.
- Warming temperatures are pushing the Atlantic salmon beyond their ideal thermal tolerance, compounding existing pressures on the species, such as overfishing.
- Warming waters and declining river flows during droughts are impacting both the fisheries and the cultural lifeblood of Mi’kmaq society.
- Indigenous river guardians hope the project will pre-emptively shield cool-water habitats before key spawning and migration corridors become unviable.

Chris Allnutt, negotiator who helped protect the Great Bear Rainforest, died on September 21st
- Chris Allnutt, a veteran labor negotiator, brought the same patience and moral clarity that defined his union leadership to the campaign that protected British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest.
- As head of the Hospital Employees’ Union in the 1990s, he led thousands of mostly immigrant women through an illegal strike against government privatization—losing his job but later vindicated by a Supreme Court ruling.
- Afterward, he became project director of the Rainforest Solutions Project, guiding environmental groups, industry, governments, and First Nations toward the landmark 2016 agreement safeguarding 85% of the rainforest’s old growth.
- Friends remembered him as calm, principled, and quietly forceful—a man who believed fairness could be negotiated, that empathy was strength, and that even in the hardest fights, listening was a radical act.

From Chile to Greece, ‘ghost gear’ from fish farms haunts the seas
- Studies and NGOs have documented lost or abandoned gear from open-net aquaculture operations in coastal areas across cold and temperate latitudes, where fish farming in the sea expanded rapidly in the 1980s and ’90s.
- In Chile, Greece and Canada, for example, observers have reported finding disused buoys, sections of rusting platforms, expanded polystyrene, net cages and other debris washed up on shorelines, or sunk in the water.
- Guidelines published by the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), a worldwide alliance of groups seeking solutions to fishing gear pollution, say neglected or mismanaged aquaculture gear can disperse in the environment and break down into debris of various sizes, posing risks such as entrapping marine life, damaging habitats or contributing to microplastic pollution.
- Some industry groups say current regulations and practices suffice to prevent ongoing pollution and they are working to resolve legacy contamination.

Sustainable biomass certification scheme is flawed, degrades forests, report finds
- The Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) is a private certification scheme developed by the bioenergy industry to assure the sustainability of biomass for fuel. A new report alleges that SBP is certifying biomass whose production has caused forest degradation.
- The NGO-commissioned report raises questions about SBP’s certification process, especially methods for verifying wood pellet producer and supply chain sustainability claims to safeguard against deforestation and forest degradation. SBP certification is used to justify green subsidies to the industry, mostly by European nations, but increasingly in Asia.
- SBP acknowledges the concerns raised by the report and said it is open to dialogue. The organization emphasized that its standards are designed to assess “the sustainability and legality of biomass sourcing at the level of the Biomass Producer, not at the forest management unit level” and that it does not “make overarching climate impact claims.”
- The nonprofit environmental groups that commissioned the report question how SBP can assure sustainability without assessing forest management and climate impacts.

A sales-pitch pivot brings deep-sea mining closer to reality
Early on, Canada-based The Metals Company cast the rocks it seeks to mine from the deep seafloor as a crucial resource for electric vehicle batteries and other green technologies, positioning them as a solution to the accelerating climate crisis. However, in 2024, another message overtook the first in TMC’s communications, according to an analysis by […]
Saving polar bears and beluga whales: Interview with Alysa McCall
- Beluga Cam is a long-running initiative that aims to document the migration of almost 57,000 beluga whales through Hudson Bay in Canada.
- The project is run by the nonprofit Polar Bears International in a bid to collect more data about beluga migration as well as to create more awareness about the species.
- The initiative got an upgrade this year with a new boat that houses the cameras and other equipment deployed for the work.
- As the Arctic rapidly loses sea ice, species such as beluga whales and polar bears bear the brunt in terms of losing access to food and their habitats.

Challenges persist in TMC’s bid to mine the deep sea, even after boost from Trump
After years of delay, the deep-sea mining plans of Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC) now appear to be progressing as it pursues a controversial new path to securing a license to mine in international waters under U.S. jurisdiction. Yet critics and some industry observers question how smoothly TMC’s ambitious plans might unfold, citing the […]
Sheila Colla, advocate for bees, died on July 6th, aged 43
- In 2009, Sheila Colla spotted Canada’s last known rusty-patched bumblebee, a discovery that marked the culmination of years of fieldwork and a lifelong commitment to pollinator conservation.
- A pioneering scientist and professor, Colla warned early about the decline of native bees—long before it became mainstream—and translated complex research into action for policymakers, citizens, and children.
- Through bestselling books and the Bumble Bee Watch citizen-science platform, she mobilized tens of thousands to protect North America’s wild bees, emphasizing their solitary, vital, and often overlooked roles.
- Colla’s legacy lives on not only in ecological science but in the inclusive community she built—opening doors for marginalized voices in science and championing justice until her final days.

Canada’s Pacific Coast hit hard by trawling, with limited transparency: Report
- Trawling vessels pursuing fish are damaging marine ecosystems in Canada’s West Coast waters and could be operating illegally in some cases, and yet they work with insufficient transparency, a new NGO report says.
- Nine large trawlers have together trawled swaths of the ocean collectively larger than the size of Ireland since 2009; they have likely trawled in prohibited zones at least 47 times and have disrupted Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) migratory routes, which are foraging areas for an endangered population of killer whales (Orcinus orca), the report says.
- A trawling industry group dismissed the NGO’s findings, saying they lacked context and the fishery was very well regulated.
- A Canadian regulatory agency said the fishery was well managed, with strict monitoring and enforcement of rules.

Banks bet big on fossil fuels, boosting financing in 2024, report finds
- Bank financing for the fossil fuel sector rose by $162.5 billion in 2024, more than 20% compared to 2023, according to a Rainforest Action Network report.
- Fossil fuel-related financing declined in 2022 and 2023, but in 2024 almost 70% of the 65 banks analyzed increased their funding for companies involved in fossil fuels.
- Experts say the findings demonstrate the limits of voluntary climate-related commitments by the banking industry, with many institutions backsliding on their promises to decarbonize their portfolios.
- They also highlight the importance of government regulation and civic action to address ongoing financial support for fossil fuel infrastructure and expansion.

Bring the forest to the farm or the farm to the forest? Agroforestry faces a dichotomy
- A new comment article published in Nature Climate Change makes the case for more forest-based agroforestry — integrating crops into existing forests — as an underutilized climate and livelihood solution.
- The authors find that there’s a noticeable lack of funding for forest-based methods compared to field-based agroforestry, in which trees are added to pasture and croplands, which they say has led to missed opportunities for carbon storage and biodiversity.
- A lack of consensus and understanding on how to define agroforestry is another factor in the misalignment of intentions and outcomes of agroforestry as a climate solution.
- The authors call on policymakers and scientists to fund and study forest-based agroforestry methods with more rigor, especially in places where people depend on rural livelihoods such as agriculture.

With offerings in 4 languages, Mongabay’s podcasts expand global reach
Mongabay now produces podcasts in four languages: Indonesian, English, Spanish and, the latest addition, French. “Producing podcasts in multiple languages is part of our nonprofit news outlet’s strategy to reach people where they are, in the mediums they prefer, and in the language that they use,” Rhett Ayers Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay, said in […]
Manage people more and bears less, say Indigenous elders in world’s ‘polar bear capital’
- Indigenous residents of Churchill in Canada’s Manitoba province have coexisted with polar bears for thousands of years, emphasizing respect for the animals and staying out of their way.
- The province-run Polar Bear Alert Program also aims to keep the community safe from overly curious or dangerous bears, but some of its practices have been called into question by locals.
- Churchill’s tourism industry drives the local economy and is also the source of most problematic human-bear interactions.
- As climate change causes bears to spend more time on land, Churchill leaders are working with local and regional stakeholders to improve human-polar bear coexistence.

An alternative approach to bridge Indigenous knowledge and Western science for conservation (commentary)
- The idea of integrating Indigenous and Western knowledge systems is often well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided, write the authors of a new commentary who were part of a project for WCS Canada and the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation in the Yukon.
- Their new study offers an alternative approach, in which these knowledge systems can exist independently and simultaneously, without seeking to control or validate one another.
- “It is our hope that this work sparks a greater conversation about land-use planning across Canada, in pursuit of a world where wildlife and people can thrive in healthy and valued lands and seas,” the authors write.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

New research sheds light on Canada lynx-snowshoe hare cycle, human impacts
- It’s long been known that snowshoe hare numbers in North American forests rise and fall dramatically in a predictable 10-year cycle. A year or two later, Canada lynx populations follow the same pattern.
- After decades of research, the dominant view is that the hare cycle is largely driven by predation, though there are still many mysteries to uncover.
- New research is shedding light on the lynx’s hunting behaviors and the asynchronicity of population cycles from region to region.
- Researchers are also looking at how human causes, including forestry practices, climate change and escalating wildfires, may be impacting lynx-hare cycles.

Winter warming and rain extreme events pose overlooked threat to Arctic life
- Accelerated Arctic warming is reshaping the polar environment, but focusing only on the impacts of long-term annual temperature rise can miss key consequences of shorter-lived, but extreme, weather shifts coming as a result of climate change.
- A new meta-analysis highlights how extreme weather events in winter, such as rain-on-snow and temperature spikes, are increasing across the Arctic — though not every region gets the same extreme whiplash weather.
- Even short surges of wild winter weather — 24 hours of rainfall on snow-covered ground, for example — can decimate animal and plant populations and change an ecosystem for generations. One such rain-on-snow event in 2023 killed nearly 20,000 musk oxen in the Canadian Arctic.
- Better understanding of Arctic winter weather extremes (along with their immediate and long-term effects on flora and fauna), and factoring these into climate models, could help create more accurate, effective, region-specific conservation plans.

Innovators battling wildfires with AI, drones & fungi get $50k grants to scale up
To address the devastating effects of wildfires in Western North America, the nonprofit Conservation X Labs (CXL) and its partners have awarded $50,000 each to 12 shortlisted teams seeking to scale up novel technologies and processes to lower wildlife risk and increase ecosystem and community resilience. CXL announced the 12 finalists of its first Fire […]
Surge in rat numbers linked to climate warming, urbanization: Study
What’s new: Cities experiencing warmer temperatures, fewer green spaces and denser human populations are seeing a rise in rat numbers, a recent study shows. What the study says: Jonathan Richardson, a biology professor at the University of Richmond, U.S., and his colleagues wanted to check if anecdotal media claims about increasing urban rat (Rattus spp.) […]
Striking image of badger and graffiti twin wins top photography prize
A badger glancing at a gun-wielding graffiti version of itself has won the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. British photographer Ian Wood took the image, titled “No Access,” at the seaside town of St. Leonards-on-Sea in England after chancing upon the Eurasian badger (Meles meles) […]
Indigenous knowledge helps explain bird population changes in Canada’s BC
- The types of birds that visit and thrive on the islands of Yáláƛi, the Goose Island Archipelago, a Canadian Important Bird Area, have changed dramatically in the past 70 years.
- The Haíɫzaqv people, stewards of the land for millennia, and academics have analyzed ecosystem data and traditional knowledge to uncover the drivers of change.
- The discovery that varying patterns of mammals, human use and natural disasters has reshaped biodiversity on the archipelago offers vital lessons for stewardship elsewhere on Haíɫzaqv territory.

Right whales can live to 130, but in North America they die young
- A new study indicates that right whales have extremely long lifespans of 130 years or more, adding to growing evidence of extreme whale longevity.
- The research draws attention to the plight of North Atlantic right whales, which are critically endangered. It found that despite their long potential lifespan, their actual lives are far shorter than those of southern right whales, a close relative.
- The authors and other experts believe North Atlantic right whales’ lives are being cut short due to threats in the “highly industrialized” waters off the eastern United States and Canada where they live; these include fishing gear, which can entangle the whales, and vessel strikes.

Atlantic puffins are perilously attracted to artificial light
- When they make their first journey into the ocean, fledgling Atlantic puffins are prone to being stranded on land, imperiling them. For years, scientists have wondered what leads to these strandings.
- A new study provides experimental evidence to show that artificial light lures young puffins toward land, contributing to strandings.
- The study found pufflings don’t have a strong preference for any particular light source or color. However, once stranded, they move more under darkness and high-pressure sodium lights than under LED lights.
- Reducing artificial lights along the coast and offshore could save puffin lives, say conservationists, as Atlantic puffin populations are decreasing in parts of Europe. It can also save other threatened seabirds, such as Leach’s storm petrel found off Canada’s coast.

We need a North Pole Marine Reserve to secure a healthy future for Arctic waters (commentary)
- In 2024, the cod fishing moratorium on Newfoundland’s Grand Banks was lifted, 32 years after a historically significant ecological collapse of the fish’s population was caused by overfishing.
- The Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement signed in 2019 provides an example of how to address the threat from such overfishing by using the precautionary principle, international collaboration and science led evaluations of fish stocks.
- The future health of Arctic marine ecosystems can be secured by establishing a North Pole Marine Reserve, a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Campaigners celebrate as firm making first-ever GMO fish ceases operations
- AquaBounty Technologies, the first company in North America to get regulatory approval to sell a genetically engineered animal for human consumption — an Atlantic salmon spliced with genes from other fish — announced on Dec. 11 that it was closing its last facility, ceasing fish farming activities, and culling remaining stock.
- A coalition of conservation and Indigenous groups that had campaigned against AquaBounty celebrated the announcement, saying the company’s work posed environmental and public health risks.
- AquaBounty’s proponents contend that the salmon was completely safe and more sustainably produced than some farmed alternatives, and that decades-long campaigning against it had contributed to the company’s failure.

Why are Canadian moose declining? Interviews with Indigenous communities offer new clues
- Ecologists are unclear why moose populations in Ontario, Canada, have declined by 20 percent in the last two decades.
- University researchers and Indigenous community biologists combined peer-reviewed field studies and extensive interviews with First Nations tribal members to explore the possible reasons.
- Both sets of data pointed to climate change as the key factor, but stories and observations from tribal members offered many other potential causes overlooked by Western science.

Bobcats are back, and they’re helping protect people from zoonotic disease
- In the last 125 years, bobcats have recovered significantly from extremely low numbers, with several million individuals found throughout North America today.
- Living at the interface of urban and rural environments, bobcats face many human-caused dangers, including loss of habitat to roam, automobiles, and rodent poisons.
- Bobcats help reduce the spread of diseases from animals to humans partly because they and other large mammals are poor disease vectors. Bobcats also prey on the small rodents that easily transmit pathogens.
- It’s legal to hunt bobcats in most of the United States. California, which has for five years closed the bobcat season, may reinstate hunting in 2025. Some researchers suggest that regulators should more carefully consider the role thriving wildcat populations play in protecting human communities from zoonotic diseases before expanding hunting.

Shorebird populations drop globally, some by a third: Report
Sixteen shorebird species have been reclassified to higher threat categories as the global population of migratory shorebirds across the world saw a substantial decline, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Conservation partnership BirdLife International, which helps examine the status of the world’s birds for the IUCN Red List, […]
Forest fires outside tropics drove 60% CO2 surge since 2001: Study
Global carbon dioxide emissions from forest fires have soared by 60% since 2001, driven largely by the burning of forests outside the tropics, according to a new study. There are now, in fact, more emissions from forests located in higher northern latitudes compared to tropical forests, the researchers found. In some areas, such as the […]
Mining drove 1.4m hectares of forest loss in last 2 decades: Report
Global mining activity is increasingly destroying forests, including protected areas, according to a recent analysis. Between 2001 and 2020, nearly 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) of tree cover, an area a third the size of Denmark, was lost from mining-related activity, the analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) found. The associated greenhouse gas […]
Salmon is ‘everything’ for Lummi Nation highlighted in new PBS documentary
- A new documentary, Scha’nexw Elhtal’nexw Salmon People: Preserving a Way of Life, premieres on PBS Nov. 4, following two Lummi families as they maintain fishing traditions amid declining salmon populations.
- In an interview, co-director Beth Pielert and Lummi fisher Tah Mahs Ellie Kinley discuss the film’s origins, salmon’s importance to Lummi culture, and current threats to wild salmon populations.
- For the Lummi people, salmon fishing is described as “everything” — it’s not just an activity but the foundation of their identity, with families tracing their lineage through traditional reef net sites and finding spiritual fulfillment in continuing ancestral practices.
- The filmmakers hope viewers will walk away with both understanding and hope, recognizing that while salmon face serious threats from fish farms and industrial development, there’s still time to protect these resilient fish that are essential to Lummi cultural survival.

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