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How Mexican fishers are protecting an endemic oyster — and its ecosystem
- In Mexico’s Nayarit marshes on the Pacific Coast, the work of a fishing group called Ostricamichin has enabled the recovery of the Cortez oyster, an endemic and economically important mollusk, along with other marine species.
- The Marismas Nacionales Nayarit National Reserve, where the Cortez oyster is cultivated, accounts for 45% of Mexico’s national fishing production, thanks to floating rafts that help grow the endemic species in its waters.
- However, members of Ostricamichin say their project is threatened by climate change and illegal fishing. But the biggest threat, currently, is a proposed dam project which, they say, would devastate the delicate ecosystem.
The colonial ghosts of Uganda’s ‘Queen Elizabeth’ park
- Queen Elizabeth National Park, a 1,978-km2 (764-mi2) UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve in western Uganda, is one of the country’s oldest protected areas.
- The park was established by British colonial authorities, who relocated many of its traditional occupants and banned most of their livelihood activities.
- The legacy of this dispossession has shaped the relationship between park authorities and the descendants of those who were resettled.
In Malawi reserve, contraceptives help balance lion and prey populations
- African Parks, a conservation nonprofit, introduced lions to Malawi’s Majete Wildlife Reserve in 2012, and since then, their number has grown to between 80 and 100, increasing the risk of prey depletion and human-wildlife conflict.
- To minimize risks and ensure balance in the ecosystem, African Parks introduced contraceptives in 2022 to manage the population in the 700-square-kilometer (270-square-mile) wildlife reserve and lower the productiveness of some lionesses.
- For contraception, only particular lions were chosen. About 80% of the population received the treatment, with adult females of breeding age serving as the main candidates, Craig Thomas, a conservation manager at Majete Wildlife Reserve, informs Mongabay.
- Contraception can potentially decrease birth rates in African lions by increasing the age of first reproduction or the intervals between births, an expert not associated with the project says.
How one woman’s wolf ‘moon shot’ changed Yellowstone forever: Interview with director Tom Winston
- A new documentary film, “Mollie’s Pack,” tells the story of the then-head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mollie Beattie, and the controversial, but ultimately triumphant, restoration of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995.
- The filmmakers were able to find and access lost footage to make a compelling and emotional film about success and loss.
- The restoration of wolves into Yellowstone was a “moon shot” moment, according to director Tom Winston.
- Winston says the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone will be “a motivating factor” for future rewilding initiatives around the world.
US national park staff cuts put nature and visitors at risk
The Trump administration, as part of its downsizing of the federal government, fired roughly 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) employees, who manage protected areas in the U.S. With more terminations on the horizon, former NPS employees are sounding the alarm that critical visitor services and research won’t be conducted, to the detriment of U.S. public […]
The environmental toll of the M23 conflict in eastern DRC (Analysis)
- The escalating armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had significant — and overlooked — environmental impacts. The rate of tree cover loss in Kahuzi-Biega and Virunga National Parks has sharply increased since the conflict reignited in late 2021.
- Armed groups, both state and non-state, have profited by taxing the illegal charcoal and timber trade coming from inside these protected areas.
- Yet the impacts are complex: the broader geopolitical context also provides incentives for the M23 group to support conservation efforts in order to project themselves as providers of good governance in the region.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Elusive wildlife shows up for photographer’s camera traps in Congo
- Photographer Will Burrard-Lucas deployed high-definition cameras at four sites in the Republic of Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park throughout 2023.
- The cameras captured a selection of beautiful photographs of seldom-seen wildlife.
- Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park is home to significant populations of endangered mammals, including gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants.
108 federal protected areas in Mexico remain without actual management plans
- A Mongabay analysis has found that almost half of Mexico’s 232 federally protected areas — 108 of them — do not have management plans.
- Among those without plans are protected areas that were decreed more than 50 years ago even though, by law, the environmental ministry has one year to publish plans after a decree is issued.
- Some National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) officials and researchers told Mongabay the backlog is due to funding issues, unrealistic timelines and a fault in the country’s application of international conservation policy.
- Without protected area management plans, park managers, conservationists and communities have no clear roadmap to guide them, and areas can remain vulnerable to threats and overexploitation.
Mexico misses one-year deadline to submit new protected areas’ management plans
- Exactly one year ago, Mexico announced 20 new protected areas covering roughly 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) across the country.
- According to Mexican law, the environment ministry has one year to publish a protected area’s management plan after a decree is issued, but Mongabay found that none of the 20 protected areas have management plans yet.
- Scientists, conservationists and communities have been pushing for these plans to be published, concerned that the absence of a roadmap means these areas are still vulnerable to threats and overexploitation.
- Some National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) officials and researchers told Mongabay the delay was due to a change in Mexico’s leadership, funding concerns, a historic backlog and other issues.
Jaguar tracks still stained with blood in Bolivia
- In Ixiamas, an Amazonian town in Bolivia, community members are fighting to prevent jaguars from continuing to be victims of wildlife trafficking. Several jaguar deaths have been recorded between 2023 and 2024 but very little has been done to clarify the facts.
- Despite the increase in trafficking in jaguars and jaguar parts in Bolivia, there has been just one conviction, which was for the death of a jaguar in Santa Cruzand involved a Chinese citizen who was exporting fangs back to China.
- The Bolivian government has developed a jaguar conservation plan, which it plans to update next year. However, the project has not achieved the expected results.
Park rangers enforce deadly violence in Uganda
UGANDA – In Africa, debates over “fortress conservation” have raged for years. Mongabay visited one of Uganda’s largest protected areas, the Queen Elizabeth National Park, in October 2023 to take a deeper look at this debate. Our reporter, Ashoka Mukpo, wanted to see how strict conservation practices play out in and around Africa’s national parks. […]
‘Like you, I fear the demise of the elephants’
- There are nearly 9,000 inland protected areas across the African continent, covering 4.37 million square kilometers (1.69 million square miles).
- These protected areas are at the center of conservation policymaking by African countries hoping to safeguard nature and threatened wildlife.
- Under the UN Global Biodiversity Framework’s “30×30” target, the amount of conserved land in Africa would significantly expand.
- As part of a reporting series on this goal, Mongabay visited protected areas in three countries: Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya.
Armed conflict, not Batwa people, at heart of Grauer’s gorillas’ past decline in DRC park
- The decline in critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas between 1994 and 2003 in the highland sector of Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo was due to the impacts of armed conflict, rather than the presence or absence of Indigenous communities, according to a new study.
- The finding, including recent analysis of forest loss in parts of the park where Indigenous Batwa people returned, challenges simple but competing narratives that the region’s Batwa people are either forest destroyers or forest guardians, say various primatologists.
- After the onset of the Rwandan genocide and Congo Wars, which drove an influx of refugees, poaching, hunting and mining in the region, estimates of Grauer’s gorillas dropped from about 258 to 130 individuals, only to rise again once the Second Congo War ended.
- Researchers and conservation authorities say conservation in Kahuzi-Biega National Park remains challenging, but that Indigenous people should be included in environmental stewardship.
Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Tesso Nilo National Park was created to protect one of the largest remaining tracts of lowland forest on the island of Sumatra, and as a refuge for threatened wildlife such as critically endangered Sumatran tigers and elephants.
- Despite being declared a National Park in 2004 and expanded in 2009, Tesso Nilo has experienced continued deforestation in recent years, largely driven by the proliferation of oil palm plantations.
- Satellite data show Tesso Nilo lost 78% of its old growth rainforest between 2009 and 2023.
- Preliminary data for 2024, coupled with satellite imagery, show continued forest loss this year.
Monitoring group cracks down on deforestation in Cameroon gorilla sanctuary
- Mengame Gorilla Sanctuary was created to protect some 26,780 hectares in southern Cameroon, and is the only large functional protected area in the region.
- In addition to critically endangered western lowland gorillas, Mengame is a refuge for an abundance of wildlife, including forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) — also critically endangered — and endangered chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).
- Logging concessions and villages surround Mengame, and satellite data show forest loss encroaching on the sanctuary and trickling into it.
- Cameroonian civil society organization Action for Sustainable Development investigated encroachment into the reserve after noticing deforestation alerts via satellite data.
Nepal’s rhino translocations to continue amid concerns over effectiveness
- Nepal’s government will continue the translocation of greater one-horned rhinos within Chitwan National Park to address overpopulation in the western sector, despite opposition from local tourism entrepreneurs citing potential economic impacts.
- The translocation aims to ensure a sustainable and evenly distributed rhino population, mitigate non-poaching-related deaths, and reduce risks from flooding and poaching in the western region, officials say.
- Tourism entrepreneurs in the western sector, however, argue that the relocation lacks adequate research, will harm local tourism-dependent economies, and say the western region remains the most suitable habitat for rhinos.
Reserve in Brazilian Amazon struggles as ‘aggressive’ deforestation spreads
- Triunfo Do Xingu Environmental Protected Area was created to protect rich Amazonian forest and shield adjacent reserves.
- But deforestation has been rampant within the reserve and is spreading to nearby areas
- From 2006 to 2023, the reserve lost 41% of its primary forest cover.
- Preliminary satellite data for 2024 from show deforestation picking up even further, and spreading into nearby areas including Terra do Meio Ecological Station and Serra do Pardo National Park
Nepal’s top court to rule next month on law allowing development in protected areas
- Nepal’s Supreme Court has completed hearings on a petition challenging changes to conservation laws and permitting infrastructure development in protected areas. A ruling is expected by Dec. 20.
- The law being challenged allows the government to designate areas within national parks as falling outside “highly sensitive zones” and thus opening them up to development projects like roads and hydropower.
- Conservationists argue this new definition threatens habitats and undermines decades of conservation progress.
- Conservationists fear that the law could exploit natural resources, displace local communities, and shrink critical habitats, jeopardizing Nepal’s protected area system and wildlife.
Paraguay’s pumas adapt, with some help, to a ranch-filled landscape
- The creation of two biological corridors linking Paraguay’s largest national park to other protected areas is boosting efforts to conserve pumas, jaguars and other wildlife in country’s northern Chaco landscape.
- Paved roads, habitat fragmentation due to the expansion of the agricultural frontier, poaching, and conflicts over livestock predation are the main threats to the area’s big cats.
- Regulations for achieving sustainable development in the region include a requirement to maintain more than 25% of native forests across each farm, and stiff fines for noncompliance.
Can cattle and wildlife co-exist in the Maasai Mara? A controversial study says yes
- Conventional conservation wisdom has held that cattle herds managed by Indigenous Maasai in East Africa compete with wildlife for grazing land and degrade protected areas like Kenya’s Maasai Mara and Tanzania’s Ngorongoro.
- But a new research study shows that, in a small study patch of the Maasai Mara, cattle herds didn’t cause a decline in forage quantity or quality, nor did wildlife steer away from areas where cattle had grazed.
- The finding has drawn criticism from other researchers, who question its methodology and say the overwhelming evidence points to the need for restrictions on cattle grazing inside these protected areas.
- The study authors say they hope their findings spark new thinking about how pastoralists like the Maasai can be seen as potential conservation partners rather than excluded as they’ve been for decades.
Conservationists mobilize to save Sierra Leone national park and its chimpanzees
- Sierra Leone’s Loma Mountains National Park (LMNP) encompasses the highest mountain peak in West Africa, along with valuable habitat for many threatened animals — including critically endangered western chimpanzees.
- However, satellite data show the park lost 6% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2023.
- Clearing in the park is being driven by farmers and ranchers who say there is not enough agricultural land in their communities and no other livelihood options; illegal marijuana cultivation is also an issue in the park.
- Conservationists, park officials, international agencies and local residents are working together to protect the park through efforts such as planting trees, training rangers, implementing educational programs in schools and promoting alternative livelihoods for surrounding communities.
At COP16, conservationists will be neighbors with the legacy of fortress conservation (commentary)
- This month, the U.N. biodiversity conference, COP16, will be held in Cali, Colombia, at the foothills of Los Farallones de Cali — a national park with a history of “fortress conservation” methods that have displaced local people.
- These methods have generated lasting tensions between state-sponsored conservation groups and the people who reside in and depend on their local environment.
- Illegal gold mining presents complex challenges for conservationists and officials, with even some of the most essential stakeholders in preserving the local environment of Los Farallones becoming involved in its destruction due to economic necessity.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
West Africa’s forgotten felines endangered by conflict and research gaps
- The WAP Complex of protected areas that straddles the border region of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger is one of West Africa’s most important protected areas and a haven for many iconic endangered species.
- Servals, caracals and African wildcats are also found in the WAP Complex, but almost nothing is known about their status, distribution, ecology or threats.
- Covert surveys of medicine markets in the region have found serval and caracal skins, though it’s not known if the skins originated within the WAP Complex.
- The presence of jihadist militants in the region severely impacts conservation and research, particularly in the Niger and Burkina Faso portions of the complex.
Hotel built without permits on disputed land riles neighboring Paracas reserve in Peru
- A controversial hotel opened its doors to the public in 2023 in the Paracas National Reserve’s buffer zone, which acts as a protective strip around the reserve to minimize any impact on the protected area.
- The Hotel Boutique Atenas is owned by a former police officer with a history of land ownership conflicts. The hotel does not appear to have the required permits from Peru’s National Service of Natural Protected Areas, Mongabay Latam found.
- It was also built on a property currently subject to a land dispute. Marine farmers who work there claim to have been forcefully displaced from this area.
News of rich mineral reserves in Burundi forest reserve sparks debate
- The news that a large quantity of cassiterite and coltan ores has been found in a nature reserve in Burundi has led to widespread misunderstandings.
- Mining industry experts have been critical of the exploration claims and process, and conservationists are worried about the possible environmental impact of mining the deposits.
- Meanwhile, the government bodies responsible for overseeing the environment and mining say that all operations will be carried out in line with the mining and forestry codes.
- Some communities that are dependent on the reserve say they fear a wave of unforeseen evictions.
Congo looks to monetize its high-integrity forests
- The Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Forest Economy, in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society, has launched an investment plan for high-integrity forests in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park.
- The HIFOR initiative aims to fill the funding gap for well-preserved forests that aren’t eligible for carbon offsetting schemes.
- Nouabalé-Ndoki in the north of the Republic of Congo is recognized for its ecological integrity.
- By integrating sustainable economic practices, the project promises to strengthen conservation efforts while supporting local communities.
Logging has a ‘lasting legacy’ on Gabonese forest soundscapes
Noncertified logging concessions in Gabon have much quieter soundscapes, a proxy for vocalizing wildlife, than either national parks or sustainably logged concessions, according to a recent study. However, forests that have never been logged are home to the highest diversity of vocalizing wildlife, researchers found. “Therefore, conserving these increasingly rare never logged forests, in combination […]
Narco activity takes heavy toll on Colombia’s protected forests, satellite data show
- Deforestation inside protected areas in central Colombia appears to be picking up pace this year, suggesting the steep drop-off from 2022-2023 was just a blip, according to satellite data.
- The most affected areas include Llanos del Yarí Yaguara II Indigenous Reserve, two national natural parks — Sierra de la Macarena and Tinigua — and the surrounding La Macarena Special Management Area.
- Threats to the region and its protected areas include agricultural expansion, along with the cultivation of illegal crops such as coca and marijuana, and illegal gold mining.
- The region’s protected areas are increasingly falling under the control of armed groups emboldened and funded by the drug industry, according to monitoring agencies and local residents interviewed by Mongabay.
Nepal court rules protected areas and forests off-limits for land distribution
- Nepal’s government can’t distribute land in national parks and forest areas to landless individuals, the country’s Supreme Court has ruled, emphasizing the protection of natural resources.
- Land ownership in Nepal has historically been concentrated among the powerful, leaving marginalized communities without land titles — a key grievance during the country’s Maoist-led rebellion from 1996-2006.
- The Forest Act and other regulations prevent the use of forest and public lands for settlement, complicating the government’s efforts to provide land to the landless without violating conservation laws.
Ecuador’s Los Lobos narcotrafficking gang muscles in on illegal gold mining
- For the last several years, one criminal gang has become increasingly involved in illegal gold mining in seven of Ecuador’s 24 provinces, according to intelligence reports seen by Mongabay and investigative news outlet Código Vidrio.
- Los Lobos, affiliated with Mexico’s notorious Jalisco New Generation cartel, have entered illegal gold mining areas, removing or extorting miners, and taken control of almost all stages of the mineral’s supply chain.
- The group has reached remote areas, including inside Podocarpus National Park, where reports show thousands of illegal miners are operating — part of what experts say is a criminal assault on Ecuador’s Amazon region that’s driving violent crime.
- Indigenous leaders say they’re increasingly afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation, while several local officials opposed to illegal mining have been attacked or even killed.
Amid ravaging wildfires in Venezuela, experts cite institutional collapse
- Since the start of the year, Venezuela has been experiencing record-breaking fires. Apart from the highest number of fires in any January and February for the last two decades, wildfires continued all the way to early May, devastating national parks and affecting the capital of Caracas.
- Some experts say that in 2024 so far, up to 2 million hectares (4.94 million acres) of land appear to have already burned.
- Higher temperatures, drought and the fact that Venezuela lacks fire-tolerating plants have been contributing to more intense fires, which have been made worse by the country’s institutional failures.
- Experts say that a lack of adequate institutions, a collapse of public services and an absence of planning and monitoring strategies have resulted in Venezuela being unable to handle the wildfires.
Sierra Leone cacao project boosts livelihoods and buffers biodiversity
- The Gola rainforest in West Africa, a biodiversity hotspot, is home to more than 400 species of wildlife, including endemic and threatened species, and more than 100 forest-dependent communities living just outside the protected Gola Rainforest National Park and dependent on the forest for their livelihoods.
- In the last few decades, logging, mining, poaching and expanding agriculture have driven up deforestation rates and habitat loss for rainforest-dependent species, prompting a voluntary REDD+ carbon credit program in 2015 to incentivize conservation and provide alternative livelihoods.
- One activity under the REDD+ project is shade-grown cacao plantations, which provide a wildlife refuge while generating income for cacao farmers in the region.
- Independent evaluations have found that the REDD+ program has slowed deforestation, increased household incomes, and avoided 340,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually — all while enjoying support from local communities.
Malawi police arrest elephant poachers in Kasungu National Park
- Police and wildlife authorities in Malawi have arrested two men suspected of having killed an elephant in Kasungu National Park.
- Residents of villages just outside the park’s boundaries informed police about two men selling elephant meat, who were subsequently found in possession of 16.6 kg (36.6 lbs) of ivory.
- Kasungu forms part of a transfrontier conservation area that extends into Zambia, a previous poaching hotspot where authorities have spent the past five years strengthening enforcement in collaboration with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
- In July 2022, 263 elephants were translocated to Kasungu from Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi; communities have reported increased raids by elephants on farms and granaries since then, with four people killed by elephants between July and October.
Protected areas bear the brunt as forest loss continues across Cambodia
- In 2023, Cambodia lost forest cover the size of the city of Los Angeles, or 121,000 hectares (300,000 acres), according to new data published by the University of Maryland.
- The majority of this loss occurred inside protected areas, with the beleaguered Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary recording the highest rate of forest loss in what was one of its worst years on record.
- A leading conservation activist says illegal logging inside protected areas is driven in part by demand for luxury timber exports, “but the authorities don’t seem to care about protecting these forests.”
- Despite the worrying trend highlighted by the data, the Cambodian government has set an ambitious target of increasing the country’s forest cover to 60% by 2050.
Conservation comeback in Central African Republic’s Manovo-Gounda St Floris National Park (commentary)
- Manovo-Gounda St. Floris National Park is the largest park in the Central African savannas, covering 17,400 square kilometers, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 due to its Outstanding Universal Value.
- However, the combined effects of poaching, livestock intrusions, artisanal mining, and other threats saw it added to the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1997.
- Recent cooperative efforts between the Central African Republic, NGOs and UNESCO to enact a new management plan have greatly improved the situation, and were recognized by the International Coordinating Council of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme last year.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Big problems for little animals when floodwaters rise, study finds
- Increasingly frequent and severe weather events are testing the resilience of both human and animal communities across Africa; Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique in 2019, caused massive flooding that killed more than 1,600 people.
- Researchers studying the aftermath of Idai in Gorongosa National Park found many smaller-bodied animals in low-lying areas drowned or starved before forage recovered from the severe flooding that followed the cyclone.
- Larger animals were able to both reach higher ground ahead of rising waters and adapt to reduced availability of food in the long months it took for the floodplain to dry out and recover.
- The study is a rare example of close monitoring of animals before, during and after an extreme weather event, and provides conservationists with important insights into planning and managing protected areas in a changing climate.
Bolivia’s El Curichi Las Garzas protected area taken over by land-grabbers
- Curichi Las Garzas is a natural refuge where thousands of wood storks (Mycteria americana) arrive each year to reproduce before continuing their journey.
- Land grabbers have destroyed 300 of the protected area’s 1,247 hectares in the municipality of San Carlos, planting rice and soybean crops.
- The encroachers claim to have endorsement from the INRA (Bolivia’s National Institute of Agrarian Reform), but the INRA has denied this and has asked the mayor to intervene. In the last three months, more than 4,500 deforestation alerts have been recorded along with a peak of 42 fire alerts, the highest number for the last 10 years.
Authorities struggle to protect Bolivian national park from drug-fueled deforestation
- Amboró National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area is located in the Santa Cruz department of central Bolivia, at the confluence of three different ecosystems: the Amazon, the northern Bolivian Chaco and the Andes.
- Amboró has been losing forest cover to illicit activities such as the cultivation of coca crops for the production of cocaine.
- National and departmental officials say Amboró authorities aren’t doing enough to keep encroachers out of the park.
- But rangers in Amboró say they don’t have enough resources to effectively enforce regulation.
African Parks vows to investigate allegations of abuse at Congolese park
- In late January, the Daily Mail published allegations that rangers working with African Parks at Odzala-Kokoua park in the Republic of Congo had beaten and raped Baka community members.
- In a statement, African Parks said it had hired the U.K.-based law firm Omnia Strategy to investigate the allegations, which were raised in a letter sent to a board member by the advocacy group Survival International last year.
- African Parks said it became aware of the allegations through that letter, but in 2022, a local civil society group in the Republic of Congo released a statement accusing rangers of committing “acts of torture.”
Mexico announces 20 new protected areas despite budget cuts
- Mexico recently announced 20 new protected areas covering roughly 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) across the country.
- The protected areas, which include national parks, sanctuaries and flora and fauna protection areas, are located in the states of Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Chiapas and eight others, as well as the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of California.
- Mexico’s environmental agencies under the Obrador administration have been subjected to consistent cuts in funding since 2016, raising concerns among experts that the departments will not have the personnel or resources to protect the country’s 225 protected areas.
Forest restoration planned for Colombia’s Farallones de Cali National Park
- Farallones de Cali National Park, located on the Pacific coast, will undergo long-term habitat restoration to reverse the damage done by illegal gold mining, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development said in an announcement late last month.
- The $3.7-million project could take several decades because of the severity of the environmental damage done by illegal mining, which has deforested the park and polluted its rivers with mercury.
- The 196,364-hectare (485,226-acre) national park is an important biological corridor along Colombia’s Pacific coast.
Conservation ‘setback’ looms as Nepal opens protected areas to hydropower projects
- Nepal’s government has approved a controversial new proposal allowing the development of large-scale hydropower plants within protected areas, prompting concerns about conservation setbacks.
- The “Construction of Physical Infrastructure Inside Protected Areas” procedures was officially approved Jan. 4, permitting hydropower developers to build projects entirely within protected areas, release minimal water during the dry season, and acquire land more easily.
- Conservationists, lawyers and Indigenous communities have opposed the policy, calling it legally flawed and warning that it threatens conservation achievements in the face of climate change.
- More than two dozen conservationists submitted feedback during the policy’s public consultation phase, but these weren’t accommodated to any significant degree in the final document.
Colombian Amazon park rangers face violence, threats by illegal armed groups
- In the last five years, at least 15 threats have been reported against the park rangers who guard the protected areas of the Colombian Amazon. Other issues include the transfer of personnel due to violence, the burning and looting of five control checkpoints and several deaths between 2008 and 2011.
- By overlapping data from the organization Indepaz about the presence of illegal armed groups and the locations of protected areas in the Colombian Amazon, it was determined that these groups are present in 35 of the 39 municipalities that include protected areas. In some cases, FARC dissidents ordered park rangers to leave and declared them “military objectives.”
- In four Amazonian protected areas, almost 2.5 tons of cocaine were seized between 2017 and 2022, after the signing of the peace agreement.
Smallholders and loggers push deeper into Sumatra’s largest park
- Kerinci Seblat National Park on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has lost more than 4% of its primary forest cover over the past 20 years, satellite data from Global Forest Watch show.
- Much of the deforestation is driven by nearby communities logging and farming, in particular potatoes, and possibly also illegal gold mining.
- The park hosts a diversity of wildlife like nowhere else — tigers, elephants, helmeted hornbills and barking deer, among others — but these are now threatened by loss of habitat and poaching.
- Kerinci Seblat was at one point a stronghold of the Sumatran rhino, but this critically endangered species has since gone extinct from the park.
Drug trafficking imperils national park and Indigenous reserves in the Peruvian Amazon
- Deforestation for illegal drug production is on the rise in and around Otishi National Park, Asháninka Communal Reserve and Machiguenga Communal Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon.
- During aerial reconnaissance, Mongabay Latam reporters observed clearings, trails and unauthorized airstrips in the park and Indigenous reserves.
- The NGO Global Conservation is beginning work to train members of Indigenous communities to monitor and enforce forest protection regulations.
Indonesia’s besieged Tesso Nilo National Park hit hard by yet more deforestation, satellites show
- Sumatra’s Tesso Nilo National Park boasts one of the highest levels of lowland plant diversity known to science and harbors an estimated 3% of the planet’s mammal species.
- But industrial tree plantations, encouraged by the COVID-19 pandemic and boosted by high palm oil prices, are quickly supplanting the park’s remaining habitat.
- Satellite data show the park lost 87% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2022, most of which was cleared after the government expanded Tesso Nilo’s boundaries in 2009
- Preliminary data from GFW, along with satellite imagery, indicate 2023 has been another particularly bad year for the park’s remaining habitat, with clearings nearly severing Tesso Nilo’s last large tract of forest by September.
Nepal’s constitutional bench halts ‘triple taxation’ on community forests
- Nepal’s Constitutional Court has issued a stay on the laws that require community forest user groups to pay taxes to the local, provincial and federal governments, which are seen as unfair and contradictory to the constitution.
- Community forest user groups manage about 34% of Nepal’s forested area under a participatory conservation model that has been praised for increasing forest cover and empowering local communities.
- The petitioners argued that the taxation system violates the constitutional provision of balance between development and environment, and that only the federal government can determine taxes for community forests.
- The court ordered the government not to implement the taxation laws until a final verdict is passed, and the user groups hope that the court will rule in their favor.
Conservationists condemn Nepal proposal to allow hydropower in protected areas
- The Ministry of Forest and Environment has proposed a new procedure that would allow large-scale hydropower development inside protected areas, with fewer environmental safeguards and more legal loopholes.
- Conservationists and legal experts have criticized the proposal as going against the Constitution and the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act as well as risking the biodiversity and ecosystem services of Nepal’s protected areas.
- They have also warned that the proposal could undermine the balance between development and conservation and expose the country to more climate change impacts such as floods and landslides.
- The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation has defended the proposal as documenting the existing practices and bolstering the balance, not upsetting it.
Ken Burns discusses heartbreak & hope of ‘The American Buffalo,’ his new documentary
- Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough spoke with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns about his upcoming documentary, “The American Buffalo,” which premieres in mid-October.
- The buffalo was nearly driven to extinction in the late 1800s, with the population declining from more than 30 million to less than 1,000, devastating Native American tribes who depended on the buffalo as their main source of food, shelter, clothing and more.
- The film explores both the tragic near-extinction of the buffalo as well as the story of how conservation efforts brought the species back from the brink.
- Burns sees lessons in the buffalo’s story for current conservation efforts, as we face climate change and a new era of mass extinction.
Skepticism as Cambodia expands protected areas by more than a million hectares
- Cambodia expanded the coverage of its protected areas by 1.06 million hectares (2.62 million acres) in July and August, a flurry of subdecrees shows.
- However, civil society groups have expressed skepticism about the lack of consultation involved in the process and the ability of authorities to police this much larger area, given the ineffective enforcement of existing protected areas.
- Much of the newly protected land appears to be corridors neighboring existing protected areas, where homes and farms are already established.
- This has raised concerns about a surge in conflicts over land and access to natural resources, particularly affecting Indigenous communities.
New concession in Botum Sakor National Park handed to Cambodia’s Royal Group
- Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park continues to be carved up and its ostensibly protected land awarded to private developers with close links to the country’s ruling party.
- In the latest development, approved Jan. 25 but only announced Aug. 14, local conglomerate Royal Group was awarded a 9,968-hectare (24,631-acre) concession that adjoins another land parcel it received in the park in 2021.
- This leaves Botum Sakor with 20,000 hectares (less than 50,000 acres) of land that’s not in private hands, or just one-ninth of its original area when it was declared a national park in 1993.
- Civil society groups have expressed concern over the lack of transparency surrounding the new concessions being issued in Cambodia’s protected areas, especially when the recipients are tycoons with reputations for illegal logging, forced evictions and environmental destruction.
Elephants invade as habitat loss soars in Nigerian forest reserve
- Elephants straying out of Afi River Forest Reserve in the Nigerian state of Cross River are reportedly damaging surrounding farms.
- This uptick in human-wildlife conflict comes as satellite data show continuing and increasing deforestation in the Afi River reserve and other protected areas.
- The habitat in Afi River Forest Reserve provides a crucial corridor that connects critically endangered Cross River gorilla populations in adjacent protected areas.
- As in other Nigerian forest reserves, agriculture, poverty and a lack of monitoring and enforcement resources are driving deforestation in the Afi River reserve.
Mexico announces 13 new protected areas, with more to come
- Mexico introduced six new national parks and seven flora and fauna protection areas covering 17,918 hectares (44,276 acres) to be overseen by the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanp).
- The protected areas are located in the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, Sinaloa, Oaxaca and Guerrero.
- Mexico now has 200 federally protected areas.
In Brazil’s Amazon, a ‘new agricultural frontier’ threatens protected lands
- Deforestation in the southern region of Amazonas state, long one of the best-preserved slices of the Brazilian Amazon, is spreading rapidly as illegal gold miners, farmers, ranchers and land grabbers advance in the region.
- The four municipalities leading destruction in this region – Apuí, Novo Aripuanã, Manicoré and Humaitá – together accounted for nearly 60% of deforestation alerts detected in Amazonas in the first six months of the year.
- Environmental advocates and Indigenous leaders say the destruction is threatening the way of life of communities that depend on the forest for survival and splintering an important ecological mosaic brimming with plant and animal species
Translocation hurdles prompt new efforts to save rare swamp deer in Nepal
- Swamp deer, a rare and threatened species, have disappeared from Chitwan National Park after a failed translocation attempt.
- A new study maps the potential habitat of swamp deer in Nepal’s western Terai and suggests ways to conserve and restore the habitat.
- Researchers and officials stress the need for improving connectivity between habitats in Nepal and India and creating a second population of swamp deer in Chitwan.
Cambodia awards swath of national park forest to tycoon Ly Yong Phat’s son
- A Cambodian tycoon notorious for his association with illegal logging has expanded his grip over the country’s largest national park, with a swath of forest awarded to his son’s rubber company.
- This gives Ly Yong Phat, a ruling party senator, and his family members effective control of tens of thousands of hectares of land inside Botum Sakor National Park.
- The carving up of the park, awarded in parcels to politically connected tycoons, has led to widespread deforestation that’s driven both people and wildlife out of Botum Sakor.
- Longtime residents evicted by Ly Yong Phat’s various operations in the park have protested to demand their land back, but to no avail, with many even being jailed for their activism.
Cambodian conglomerate sparks conflict in Botum Sakor National Park
- For decades Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park has been carved up and the land handed out to companies as economic concessions, at the expense of the ecosystem and local communities.
- In 2021, a massive swath of the park, including its densest expanse of forest, was handed over to the Royal Group, led by politically connected business tycoon Kith Meng.
- While the companies developing the national park promised jobs, as well as homes with running water and electricity, and access to schools and health centers, none of this has materialized, affected residents say.
- Royal Group’s presence, and the threat of more companies grabbing a piece of the park, has instead sparked disputes that residents acknowledge they’re likely to lose.
Return of the lions: Large protected areas in Africa attract apex predator
- It’s a critical time for lion conservation as the species declines across Africa. Globally, the lion population has dropped by 43% over the past 21 years.
- Lions are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN, with the species facing a high risk of extinction in the wild. In many of the lion’s core ranges across Africa, populations have plummeted due to, among other reasons, habitat fragmentation and poaching.
- But some African lion populations are increasing, with the big cats spotted after years of absence in parks in Mozambique and Chad. The reason: the creation of vast protected landscape mosaics, with natural corridors stretching far beyond core protected lands, which consider the large areas lions need to roam seasonally.
- This strategy entails collaboration between multiple stakeholders and across varied land uses, including state lands and private property not formally protected. These examples are showing that conservation across landscape mosaics is possible in Africa, and offer the promise of wider benefits to ecosystems and people.
Intense fires threaten water supply and habitats in Mexico’s Pico de Orizaba
- For four days in February an intense forest fire ravaged the border of Pico de Orizaba National Park in Mexico, with 40% of the affected area lying inside the protected park, preliminary data show.
- Inhabitants of communities in the region say they fear forest fires will impact their water supply, which originates from the alpine forests and glacier on the Pico de Orizaba volcano.
- Official data show an intense period of burning, with 500 fire-related events recorded throughout Mexico between Jan. 1 and Feb. 16, 2023.
As tourism booms in India’s Western Ghats, habitat loss pushes endangered frogs to the edge
- India’s Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot, is home to many endemic and endangered species of amphibians, some of which are new to science and others suspected of lying in wait of discovery.
- Deforestation due to infrastructure and plantation expansion in the southern Western Ghats threaten the region’s amphibian species, many of which have highly restricted habitats.
- Adding to their woes is an increased risk of landslides in parts of Kerala due to erratic, heavy monsoon rains and erosion due to loss of forest.
- To save them, experts are calling for a systematic taxonomic survey of amphibians in the region and for legal protection of endangered species.
Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in
- Since the colonization of the Congo Basin by Europeans, many Indigenous communities have been cordoned off from land they once relied on in the name of conservation.
- The contentious “fortress conservation” model remains popular with some governments in Central Africa, but conservation leaders are shifting their opinion, signaling a desire to move toward inclusive and rights-based approaches to protected areas and ecosystems, including in declarations such as the Kigali Call to Action.
- However, Indigenous leaders and conservation experts say action, not just talk, is urgently needed to achieve the goals outlined by the 30x30 initiative, and to make good on promises to address injustices faced by Indigenous communities across the basin.
- On this episode of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, Cameroonian lawyer and Goldman Prize winner Samuel Nguiffo, Congolese academic Vedaste Cituli, and Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo detail the troubling history of fortress conservation in Central Africa, the role of paramilitary forces in it, the impacts on local communities, and ways to address the conflicts it has created.
Targeting 3% of protected areas could accelerate progress on 30×30 goals, says Global Conservation’s Jeff Morgan
- In December, world leaders adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, targeting the conservation of 30% of Earth by 2030.
- However, Jeff Morgan, founder of Global Conservation, points out that simply designating protected areas is not enough to safeguard nature. His organization, therefore, focuses on strengthening protection within UNESCO World Heritage Sites in lower and middle-income countries, utilizing cost-effective technologies for law enforcement against poaching, illegal logging, and more.
- Global Conservation currently operates across 22 national parks and 10 marine parks in 14 countries and aims to expand its work to 100 sites by 2033. Morgan believes that this focus on existing national parks and habitats is the most efficient and cost-effective way to achieve climate goals.
- Morgan recently spoke with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler about Global Conservation’s approach.
It’s time to embrace community-led conservation vs. the colonial kind (commentary)
- Conservation NGOs often enter countries like Fiji and advise local and Indigenous communities on how to protect their land and sea territories, or worse, acquire land and preclude the traditional residents from it.
- More NGOs are embracing community-led conservation, though, and we must embrace this, a new op-ed by a former Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji argues.
- “Fiji does not need new ideas on how to protect their ‘iqoliqoli’ (marine areas). Instead, Fiji has a lot to teach the rest of the world,” the author writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Ecuador project aims to protect Yasuní park borders & Indigenous peoples
- The Yasuní Strip of Diversity and Life (Franja de Diversidad y Vida), on the western border of the Yasuní National Park, was created to protect the area’s Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and to uphold the rights of Indigenous and farming communities in the region.
- The Terramaz project seeks to promote sustainable practices in order to fight against deforestation. These ideas, however, do not resonate with some inhabitants of the strip, where there is an urgent need for basic infrastructure and services: 82% of Indigenous inhabitants there live in extreme poverty.
- The undefined status of the western limits of the Yasuní National Park and the lack of land titles for the region’s inhabitants have provoked conflicts in the strip, which is also affected by oil drilling.
Rare hispid hares feel the heat from Nepal’s tiger conservation measures
- The deliberate burning of grasslands in Nepal to maintain tiger habitat poses a threat to another endangered species: the elusive and little-known hispid hare.
- The burning is meant to promote the growth of fresh grass shoots for tiger prey, and to prevent grasslands from turning into forests.
- However, intact grasslands are important habitat for hispid hares, which need dense ground cover for resting, feeding and mating.
- Researchers say the annual grassland burning should be done selectively and outside of the hare’s breeding season to save the species.
Paraguay weighs natural gas drilling in Médanos del Chaco National Park
- Congress is considering opening up natural gas exploration and extraction in Médanos del Chaco National Park, a protected area in Paraguay’s Gran Chaco, a savannah and dry forest ecosystem along the northwest border.
- The 605,075-hectare (1,495,172-acre) national park has unique ecosystems and endemic flora and fauna, and is home to several Indigenous communities who rely on freshwater reserves that could be compromised by future drilling.
- Modifications to a key law were approved by the country’s chamber of deputies last year then rejected by the senate this week. But it has another opportunity to pass later this year.
For rescued rhino calves in Nepal, return to the wild is a fraught option
- Conservation officials in Nepal are considering what to do with three juvenile rhinos rescued from the wild after being separated from their mothers.
- One option is to return them to the wild in a national park or wildlife reserve with suitable habitat — but with the risk that they could fall prey to tigers.
Rhino translocations in Nepal have a poor record — only 38 of 95 rhinos transferred from Chitwan to Bardiya National Park survive, with the rest killed by poachers or farmers.
- That leaves a third option on the table, which is to gift the animals to a foreign country, as part of Nepal’s “rhino diplomacy,” which would leave the young animals facing a lifetime in human company.
Video of rare West African lion cubs sparks hope for the population
- New video of a West African lioness and her three cubs is exciting news for conservation as it sparks hope for the recovery of a population perilously close to extinction in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park.
- The lioness in the video, named Florence or Flo by researchers, was the first lion fitted with a tracking collar in Senegal by Panthera and is considered NKNP’s matriarch. She had given birth to three healthy cubs while denning in the dense forest.
- West African lions are critically endangered, with only 120 to 374 remaining in the wild. Florence is the mother of an estimated nine cubs, including the first males in NKNP.
- Panthera and Senegal’s Department of National Parks have been monitoring the small West African lion population in Senegal since 2011, and after hiring anti-poaching brigades, the lion population has more than doubled from 10-15 individuals to 30. Their goal is to reach 100 lions by 2030.
Study confirms Bolivian Indigenous park as stronghold for horned curassow
- The critically endangered horned curassow is a bird found only in three protected areas in Bolivia, where it plays an important role in dispersing seeds across the forest.
- A three-month camera-trapping survey in Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) indicates this area is home to the largest horned curassow population.
- In carrying out the survey, conservationists from Asociación Armonía worked closely with the Indigenous Yuracaré communities living in the park.
- They emphasized the need to support the communities with sustainable livelihood opportunities as a way to conserve the ecosystem.
‘You don’t kill people to protect forests’: New Thai parks chief raises alarm
- After playing a key role in an anti-corruption sting operation that toppled the head of Thailand’s department of parks and wildlife, senior forest officer Chaiwat Limlikit-aksorn was promoted to head of Thailand’s office of national parks.
- Human rights activists say the appointment raises serious concerns, citing a string of abuses that occurred while Chaiwat was head of Kaeng Krachan National Park.
- Cases against Chaiwat during this period include two murder charges and a corruption investigation.
- Chaiwat’s tenure in his new post will likely be short: He faces mandatory retirement in less than two years, as well as a reopened murder case and an ongoing corruption investigation.
Four-day music festival in Sri Lanka elephant territory set to continue, despite protests
HABARANA, Sri Lanka — As a four-day reggae, rock and hip hop music fiesta got underway Feb. 17, putting many wild animals inhabiting a forest reserve in Habarana in Sri Lanka’s North Central province at risk, authorities have chosen to look the other way. The Deep Jungle Music and Cultural Festival 2023 is organized by […]
Bolivian national park hit hard by forest fires in 2022, satellite data show
- Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Bolivia’s largest parks, encompasses a variety of ecosystems and provides habitat for more than 1,100 vertebrate species.
- According to satellite data, fires burned across a region comprising an estimated 18% of the park’s total area between August and November 2022, and damaged around 200 km2 (77 mi2) of its forests.
- When adding in other forest loss in 2022, the data suggest Noel Kempff Mercado lost a total of 250 km2 (97 mi2) of its tree cover last year, marking a new deforestation record since measurements began at the turn of the century.
- The fires in Noel Kempff Mercado National Park coincide with fire activity outside of the park, where Intentional burning is commonplace as farmers clear land and reinvigorate soil ahead of planting.
Corruption scandal in Thai parks agency has far-reaching impacts, activists say
- The head of Thailand’s parks department, Rutchada Suriyakul Na Ayutya, was arrested Dec. 27 after anticorruption authorities found envelopes and gift boxes in his desk containing the equivalent of nearly $150,000 in cash.
- Rutchada had allegedly demanded bribes from underlings to secure positions, as well as a cut of departmental budgets.
- Conservationists say corruption in the department, as well as recent budget cuts, has had severe implications for the country’s protected areas.
Wildlife at risk in Bangladesh as roads run rampant through protected forests
- Mongabay has identified 1,618 kilometers (1,005 miles) of roads in 38 restricted forests in Bangladesh using remote sensing data, with many of these routes passing through important national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
- Unlike in neighboring India, where the formal guidelines ensure the environment ministry has a say in infrastructure projects running through forested areas, Bangladesh lacks such provisions, allowing for the proliferation of roads, railways and power lines.
- In addition to killing animals, this linear infrastructure also encouraged illegal logging, mining, hunting and poaching, the introduction of exotic species, pollution, and illegal settlements.
- Experts say it should be “common sense” to account for the needs of wildlife when planning infrastructure, and recent projects are starting to incorporate canopy bridges and over- and underpasses to accommodate animal movement.
‘Panic’ sets in as armed groups occupy, deforest Colombian national park
- Once covering an expanse of more than 2,140 square kilometers (826 square miles) of the Colombian Amazon Rainforest, Tinigua National Natural Park has lost 29% of its forests over the past 20 years; the majority of this loss has occurred since 2018.
- Satellite data and monitoring suggest forest loss has kept a quick pace in 2022.
- Authorities say illegal cattle ranching, coca growing and land-grabbing are driving deforestation in the park, much of it reportedly done at the hands of armed groups affiliated with FARC dissident factions.
- Local communities have also reportedly been threatened by these groups.
Work on cable car line to Indonesian volcano to begin despite concerns
- Construction will begin this month on a cable car line to Mount Rinjani on the Indonesian island of Lombok, a UNESCO-listed geopark.
- Environmental activists have expressed concern about the project, noting that local authorities have still not published the environmental impact analysis and feasibility study for public review.
- Authorities insist the cable car line won’t cross into Mount Rinjani National Park, and have touted a series of measures to minimize the environmental impact.
In Chile, drought and human expansion threaten a unique national park
- La Campana National Park in Chile is home to threatened species of plants and animals, many found nowhere else.
- The region has been suffering a 12-year drought, and in spite of rains this year, experts say it’s too early to say whether the climate trend has been reversed.
- The park also faces pressure from expanding farmland and urbanization, including the conversion of native vegetation to fruit monocultures, and the encroachment of domestic animals that can spread disease to wildlife.
Bolivian protected areas hit hard by forest fires
- Nearly 9,000 square kilometers (3,475 square miles) had been burned across Bolivia by mid-September, according to government figures.
- Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife and Otuquis National Park, both in the semi-arid Chiquitania region of southern Bolivia, have been among the protected areas most affected by fire in 2022.
- Satellite data show fires burned across some 130 square kilometers (50 square miles)—or 5%— of Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife in September, and reignited in early November. In Otuquis, a fire that began Aug. 31 had spread across around 80 kilometers (50 miles), mostly along a road, by Sept. 3.
- In addition to habitat loss for the region’s wildlife, smoke from the fires reportedly has resulted in vision and respiratory problems for residents of nearby communities.
Harpy eagle’s return to Costa Rica means rewilding’s time has come (commentary)
- An adult harpy eagle was recently photographed in northern Costa Rica, which made national headlines and waves on social media.
- Most believed these gigantic eagles had been extirpated from the region, but consistent efforts to restore forests and rewild ecosystems in the country mean they may return in greater numbers, if conditions allow.
- A new commentary argues this signals it’s time to ramp up reintroductions of animals like giant anteaters, too, and prey for eagles and also jaguars: “Why not establish herds of white-lipped peccary into Piedras Blancas National Park, where they have been absent for over 40 years?” the writer wonders.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- Ermi Mauke, 73, has spent the past 40 years planting a mix of trees on the fringe of Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park in eastern Indonesia’s Gorontalo province.
- Small farmers here have produced palm sugar for centuries using traditional techniques, but their labor-intensive methods face challenges.
- Ermi’s self-taught agroforestry system yields varied food commodities that help meet her family’s daily needs while safeguarding the landscape.
Venezuelan Amazon deforestation expands due to lawlessness, mining, fires: Reports
- Multiple recent reports show that deforestation has greatly increased in Venezuela’s Amazonian states of Bolívar and Amazonas, largely due to illegal mining, expanded agriculture and fires.
- Venezuelan protected areas have been especially hard hit, with illegal incursions and major deforestation occurring inside Caura, Canaima and Yapacana national parks.
- Soaring deforestation rates are blamed partly on Colombian guerrillas operating illegally within Venezuela’s borders, an invasion that one report alleges has been supported by the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
- Forest loss has been well confirmed via satellite, while ground truthing has been obtained via firsthand accounts.
It’s time to center African people in the conservation agenda (commentary)
- The African Protected Areas Congress was launched to position African protected and conserved areas within the broader goals of economic development and community well being.
- As the first Congress of its kind, APAC is an important step away from ‘fortress conservation’ approaches and towards African-driven biodiversity conservation.
- Developing a unified African voice and vision is key to influencing global conventions relating to climate change, biodiversity conservation and wildlife trade: now that the congress is over, it is up to us to make this new African vision for protected and conserved areas a reality, a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
In Bolivian Amazon, oil blocks encroach deep into protected areas
- Investigative journalism alliance ManchadosXelPetróleo has found that oil blocks auctioned off by the Bolivian government overlap with protected areas in the country’s Amazonian region, in some cases up to 100%.
- Oil exploration blocks currently overlap with 21 of the 53 national and subnational protected areas located in the Bolivian Amazon.
- While there haven’t been any oil spills, exploration activities have nevertheless caused environmental damage in the region.
- The Tacana Indigenous peoples in Madidi National Park are among those affected by these activities, and warn of even greater damage to come.
Study warns of increased poaching if road through Brazil’s Iguaçu is reopened
- A recent study validates environmental groups’ concerns that reopening a long-closed road through Brazil’s Iguaçu National Park would lead to an increase in environmental violations in the protected area.
- Two bills currently before Congress call for reopening the Estrada do Colono, or Settler’s Road, which was shut in 2001 and has since been reclaimed by the jungle.
- The study found that reopening it would expose at least 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of the park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to wildlife poaching, illegal fishing, and extraction of juçara palm heart.
- Between 2009 and 2019, more than 1,300 notices of environmental violation were issued in the park; with the road reopened, the study projects a 10% increase in illegal fishing and a nearly 15% increase in palm heart harvesting.
Jumbo task as Malawi moves 263 elephants to restock a degraded national park
- Over the last month, 263 elephants were relocated from Liwonde National Park to Kasungu National Park, both in Malawi.
- Liwonde, managed by African Parks, an NGO, hosts some 600 elephants, more than its ecosystem can support.
- Kasungu’s elephant population was previously decimated by poaching, but officials say the park is ready to host more elephants after years of anti-poaching and community engagement efforts.
White rhino conservation project attempts paradigm shift by including local community
- A project to reintroduce white rhinos in western Zimbabwe has been launched for the first time on community-owned land.
- Two rhinos have so far been released in a small sanctuary comprising grazing land voluntarily donated by villages located near the southern boundary of Hwange National Park.
- A key pillar of the rhino protection strategy has been to recruit scouts from the local community and compensate them fairly.
- As it grows, it’s hoped the sanctuary will raise tourism dollars for community development, and also create a buffer zone to protect farmers’ crops and livestock from Hwange’s elephants, lions and hyenas.
Authorities and Yobin communities clash as deforestation spikes in Indian national park
- Namdapha National Park is India’s third-largest national park and is home to thousands of species, including tigers, clouded leopards and an endemic species of flying squirrel that has only been observed once by scientists.
- Satellite data show deforestation has increased in the park over the last two decades.
- Members of an Indigenous group called the Yobin have been living in portions of the park for generations, but park authorities consider Yobin settlements to be “encroachments” and the main driver of deforestation and poaching in Namdapha National Park
- In the last few months, authorities have destroyed at least eight Yobin settlements inside the park.
Construction begins on controversial water project inside Lake Malawi National Park
- The government of Malawi has initiated construction works for a water project inside Lake Malawi National Park, despite court challenges and sustained protests from conservationists who say the project threatens the park’s UNESCO-recognized biodiversity and archaeological sites.
- Eyewitness reports say construction vehicles are currently blasting rocks, bulldozing boulders and uprooting trees, ripping through a pristine forest.
- The project is expected to bring potable water to around 93,000 people in the lakeshore district of Mangochi, and enjoys political support both locally and nationally.
- Conservationists say they don’t object to the project itself, but call on the government to locate it outside of the park’s boundaries.
Satellites show deforestation surging in Indonesia’s Tesso Nilo National Park
- Tesso Nilo National Park is a refuge for Sumatran wildlife, including critically endangered tigers and elephants.
- But the park lost 67% of its primary forest between 2010 and 2021, with the deforestation rate in 2021 nearly triple that of 2020 and the highest it has been since 2016. Satellite imagery shows further clearing of primary forest in 2022.
- Much of the deforestation of Tesso Nilo is due to the illegal development of large-scale plantations to grow oil palm and other tree crops.
- In early 2022, park officials distributed a circular to surrounding communities that reiterated the ban on plantation agriculture in the park, but conservationists say more concerted enforcement action is necessary to curb deforestation.
Yellowstone’s wolves defied extinction, but face new threats beyond park’s borders
- Since their reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park in the Mountain West of the United States in the 1990s, the North American gray wolf has recovered, once again taking up the mantle of a keystone species in its environment.
- But the wolf’s resurgence has raised the ire of ranchers and hunters, and new laws allowing expanded wolf hunts have sprung up across the region.
- Biologists contend that wolves play a critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems, and data suggest that the threat to overall livestock numbers is exaggerated.
- Still, an entrenched fear, perhaps dating to humans’ earliest interactions with wolves, has helped to stir up a desire for vengeance against the species.
Nepal’s key habitat could lose 39% of its tigers in 20 years, study says
- Nearly two-fifths of adult tigers in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park could be killed over the next 20 years as a result of vehicle strikes on the roads near the park, a new study says.
- The projection is based on tiger movement data going back to the 1970s, and shows that the addition of a proposed railway line would result in an additional 30 tiger deaths.
- Chitwan is home to 133 tigers, and the large number of projected losses would be devastating to the population, which is already increasingly cut off from its range in neighboring India as a result of human-made obstacles, including roads.
- The study authors say this worst-case scenario should be a wake-up call to authorities to plan infrastructure projects with wildlife mobility as a key concern.
Troubled waters: A massive salmon farm off the coast of Maine is stalled
- Norwegian-backed American Aquafarms was slated to build the largest salmon farm in North America along the coast of the U.S. state of Maine, using a closed-pen system said to minimize waste.
- But opponents say the closed-pen technology is untested at such a large scale, and warn that environmental impacts will devastate the pristine waters.
- The proposed salmon farm would have been right at the shorelines of Acadia National Park, threatening the region’s untarnished views and noise pollution.
- Currently, the project is indefinitely delayed as state officials terminated the lease application on April 19th. However, with Maine leasing the ocean for only $100 an acre ($250 a hectare) per year, opponents worry that future investors will see the coast as a lucrative target.
Côte d’Ivoire’s chimp habitats are shrinking, but there’s hope in their numbers
- Despite a decade of uncontrolled poaching, researchers have found what they describe as a “healthy” population of 200 chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire’s Comoé National Park.
- With the help of camera-trap footage, researchers found that the Comoé chimps display unique types of behaviors not found in other chimp populations in West Africa.
- Like elsewhere in West Africa, the chimps’ habitat remains under pressure from farming and herding.
‘No’ to corporate-driven tourism development in Komodo National Park (commentary)
- Plans to build tourism resorts inside Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, home to the world’s biggest lizard, have for years faced pushback from local communities.
- Opponents of the projects point to the potential for ecological and social disruptions.
- Instead of tourism based on corporate investment, the government should develop a model of community-based tourism, argues Venansius Haryanto, a researcher at Sunspirit for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group based in Labuan Bajo.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Rangers in DRC gorilla park abused Indigenous villagers, report says
- According to a new investigative report by Minority Rights Group (MRG), 20 Indigenous Batwa were killed, 15 women were raped and 2 children were burnt alive by park guards and soldiers in the DRC’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBNP), home to the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla.
- The acts were committed between 2019 and 2021 under the knowledge and paramilitary support of U.S and German government agencies and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), say the report’s researchers who obtained evidence through interviews with eyewitnesses and park guards involved in the attacks.
- WCS denies allegations brought against the organization, saying it had no involvement in military operations. The KBNP bulletin denied similar reports of violence during a visit by the government agency that manages the park in February.
- German government agencies and a cabinet secretary are calling for an independent investigation into allegations of abuses, which MRG says is just the “tip of the iceberg”. According to sources, another investigation is underway.
Razing of Indigenous hamlet highlights Nepal’s conservation challenge
- On March 27, Nepali authorities evicted about 100 members of the Indigenous Chepang community living in Chitwan National Park and set fire to their huts.
- They allege the community members are encroaching on national park land, famous for its rhinos and tigers, and building new settlements despite warnings and resettlement plans rolled out by the government.
- However, community members say that only providing shelter, and not land for subsistence farming and their traditional livelihoods, does not solve the community’s problems.
- Stringent policing of parks like Chitwan has been credited with helping Nepal boost its populations of iconic species like rhinos and tigers, but has come at the expense of the Indigenous communities who once occupied those areas.
In Benin, the line between conservation and counterinsurgency blurs
- On Feb. 8-10, a series of roadside bombings in northern Benin’s W National Park killed seven employees of the conservation group African Parks, including four rangers and a French anti-poaching trainer.
- The attack is suspected to have been carried out by Islamist militants based in the forests of neighboring Burkina Faso, raising fears that violence in the Sahel is spilling over into Benin, with the country’s national parks as its front line.
- Over the border in Burkina Faso, militants have targeted forestry and conservation officials, hoping to capitalize on local discontent over park restrictions and gain new recruits.
- According to some researchers, African Parks has been thrust into the uneasy role of border security and “counter-terrorism” in northern Benin.
It’s a girl: Super rare Sumatran rhino born in captive-breeding center
- Indonesia has reported the birth of a Sumatran rhinoceros in a captive-breeding program targeted to save the critically endangered species from extinction.
- The new calf is the first child of captive rhino Rosa at the Way Kambas Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary, and Andatu, a male who was himself born at the sanctuary in 2012.
- This new captive birth of a Sumatran rhino has rekindled hopes among experts and officials for more newborns in the future.
In Nigeria, a decade of payoffs boosted global wildlife trafficking hub
- An investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times and Mongabay has found evidence of systematic failure by Nigerian law enforcement and the judicial system to hold wildlife poachers and traffickers accountable.
- Our analysis of official wildlife crimes data, supported by numerous interviews with prosecutors, environmental campaigners and traders at wildlife markets in Lagos, Cross River, Abuja, Ogun and Bauchi states, found a near-total reliance on minor out-of-court settlements in trafficking cases.
- Despite numerous high-profile, multimillion-dollar trafficking busts at Nigeria’s ports since 2010, no one has faced jail terms as a result.
- The reliance on informal payments to local officials encourages corruption, experts say, while sporadic crackdowns on wildlife markets have not stopped traders operating in the country’s commercial capital.
Thai authorities demolish resorts in parks, but struggle to prosecute encroachers
- More than a twenty luxury resorts and mansions illegally built in national parks in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex have been demolished or ordered to be demolished since October 2020.
- Officials say prosecutions for encroachment rarely succeed, due to legal ambiguities created by legislation that allows people to remain on land they owned prior the declaration as a national park.
- Under the law, residents allowed to remain on park land cannot transfer land outside of their families, but one park official estimates that close to 20% of this land has, in fact, been sold.
- The owners of the newly demolished buildings include retired military generals and prominent businesspeople.
A community in Mexico reforests its land against the advance of illegal logging
- A community in rural Mexico has for the past 15 years led the conservation of the forest on its communally managed land, or ejido, in a region wracked by illegal logging.
- The Nueva Vaquería forestry program near Pico de Orizaba National Park has seen the community reforest nearly 500 hectares (more than 1,200 acres), in stark contrast to the deforestation unfolding inside the park and neighboring communities.
- The ejido members are doing this with barely any government support, and have called on the authorities to do more to help, including cracking down on illegal logging in the region.
- “We try not to demolish the forest,” says a community member, “but I feel that the government does not see this; it does not help us to further conserve the forest, to give an example to our people.”
‘Everything is on fire’: Flames rip through Iberá National Park in Argentina
- Fires in the central Corrientes province of northeast Argentina have burned through nearly 60% of Iberá National Park, home to protected marshlands, grasslands and forests that hosts an array of species.
- Many of the fires originated from nearby cattle ranches, and spread across significant portions of the park due to a prolonged drought.
- Conservationists are working to relocate a number of reintroduced species, including giant river otters and macaws, to places of safety.
- While experts say they expect a substantial loss to biodiversity, they add that the park should mount a rapid recovery thanks to all the rewilding work already done.
Giant anteaters lead biodiversity resurgence in Argentina’s Iberá
- In 2007, the first pair of giant anteaters was reintroduced into Argentina’s Iberá reserve, a region from which it had gone extinct decades earlier.
- The success of that program created the blueprint for reintroducing other native species, including Pampas deer, giant river otters, and red-and-green macaws.
- The reintroduction program rescued anteaters from hunters and people keeping them as pets in northern Argentina.
- Today, more than 200 anteaters live free in four population centers in the Iberá reserve.
Can ecotourism save Cambodia’s ‘ghost parks’?
- Cambodia’s 2021 signing into law of Sub-decree No. 30, which removed official protection from some 127,000 hectares of land formerly included in national parks, reserves and wildlife sanctuaries in Koh Kong province, has conservationists concerned about the ecological integrity of southern Cambodia.
- But experts caution that other protected areas in the country are hardly faring better, claiming that “a lack of commitment and vision, systemic corruption at varies levels and competing interests by state and private actors” is contributing to the rapid degradation of Cambodia’s remaining protected forest.
- There is some agreement between conservationists and government officials that the country does not have the resources to effectively manage its protected areas.
- As a solution, some point to Africa, where public-private ecotourism partnerships have been successful at preserving habitat. But others disagree.
Endangered wildlife face perilous future as vital habitat loses protection in Cambodia
- In March 2021, this imbalance has widened into a chasm as Cambodia’s government signed Sub-decree No. 30 into law, effectively revoking protection from some 127,000 hectares of land in reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the southern province of Koh Kong province.
- One of the protected areas affected is Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary, which lost almost a third of its total land area to the sub-decree — meaning these habitats are now for sale.
- Peam Krasop is home to species threatened with extinction, such as the hairy-nosed otter — the world’s rarest otter species — and the fishing cat.
- Researchers say the degradation of these habitats could result in “trophic cascades“ in which the loss of key species destabilizes entire ecosystems , which in turn may lead to further loss.
How a ‘dirty gambling company’ may have set the standard for habitat destruction in Cambodia
- Union Development Group (UDG) is a Chinese company that was granted a 36,000-hectare concession in Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park in 2008, followed by an additional 9,100-hectare concession granted in 2011. Much of Botum Sakor National Park’s forests have been cleared by UDG and other companies.
- On Sep. 15, 2020, the United States Treasury Department, sanctioned UDG for “serious human rights abuses and corruption,” noting that UDG had enlisted the support of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces to evict and harass residents, and also managed to skirt the 10,000-hectare limit on land concessions by “falsely registering as a Cambodian-owned entity.”
- In 2021, the Cambodian government signed into law Sub-decree No. 30, which transformed some 127,000 hectares of protected land in Koh Kong province into state-private land.
- Conservationists, researchers and local residents interviewed by Mongabay worry that the sub-decree will mean that many other parts of Koh Kong province will follow in the destruction of Botum Sakor.
‘Central African Forests Forever’: Meindert Brouwer’s book looks to solutions
- “Central African Forests Forever” is a new, 17-chapter book by independent conservationist and writer Meindert Brouwer.
- One unique aspect of the book is the author’s focus on how Chinese pioneers in sustainable forest management have put forth solutions to safeguard the rainforests of Central Africa, the world’s second-largest after the Amazon.
- Brouwer’s book is available in French, English, and Chinese, and is free to download online.
Bare-faced curassows return to Argentina’s Iberá after 50-year absence
- After being missing for 50 years from the Iberá region of Argentina, three bare-faced curassow chicks were born there last year thanks to a reintroduction program that also works with other native species.
- Scientists are also working to reintroduce the curassow into the country’s Chaco forests to strengthen the small wild populations of the bird that remain.
- The main threats to the bare-faced curassow are hunting and loss of habitat due to deforestation.
‘Only the rains will stop it’: Bolivia forest fires hit protected areas
- In the first 10 months of 2021, forest fires in Bolivia razed nearly 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) in the department of Santa Cruz alone, exceeding the figure for the whole of 2020.
- In Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s biggest department, 58% of the burned land was in protected areas, stoked in part by temperatures reaching as high as 43°C (109.4°F).
- Across Bolivia as a whole, forest fires had affected 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres).
- Officials say an increase in the number of firefighters and an early-warning system should help contain the burning, but add that “only the rains are able to stop it.”
Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2021
- The world’s largest rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
- Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever.
- The rainforest as a whole remains a net carbon sink, thanks to conservation areas and Indigenous territories, where deforestation rates remained low.
- Indigenous communities continued to be hit by a barrage of outside pressure, from COVID-19 to illegal miners and land grabbers, while community members living in Brazil’s cities dealt with persistent prejudice.
‘Unprecedented’ fires in Madagascar national park threaten livelihoods and lemurs
- Ankarafantsika National Park protects an oasis of dry forest in northern Madagascar, providing vital habitat to critically endangered lemurs and other wildlife.
- In September and October, fires raged across the southern portion of the park, burning more than 40 square kilometers (15 square miles).
- While fire is a natural part of Ankarafantsika’s ecosystems, researchers say fire on this scale is “unprecedented” and amounting to a “conservation crisis.”
- The fires are also drying out the landscape and reducing neighboring communities’ crop yields, which conservationists warn could have knock-on effects for nearby forests as people turn to natural resources to survive.
Illegal roads pierce Indigenous reserve, national parks in Colombian Amazon
- A series of roads in the Colombian Amazon are cutting through national parks and an Indigenous reserve, satellite imagery shows.
- Residents of the reserve and environmental experts say the authorities have done little to stop the expansion of the road network, which has been accompanied by extensive deforestation.
- Experts and anonymous sources say well-funded operators are behind this pattern of deforestation and the land grabbing that follows.
- Residents of the Yaguará II Indigenous Reserve, already facing violence from ex-guerrillas who once controlled this region, say they’re worried about the roads bringing in more settlers occupying their territory.
How Andean Condors in Peru saved the California condor from extinction (commentary)
- The California Condor narrowly dodged extinction in the 1980s thanks to conservation efforts involving Andean Condors reintroduced to Peru’s Illescas peninsula.
- The Illescas wilderness will soon be officially protected as Illescas National Reserve, a development which spurred Enrique Ortiz, Senior Program Director at the Andes Amazon Fund, to recount the story of how Andean Condors helped save the California Condor.
- The Spanish version of this piece originally appeared on Mongabay-Latam.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
For Indigenous Zoró, the Brazil nut is a weapon against deforestation
- The Indigenous Zoró people in the Brazilian Amazon have struck a balance between generating income and keeping their forest standing, thanks to the Brazil nut.
- They harvest the fruit and sell it through the COOPAVAM farmers’ cooperative, which guarantees fairer prices than dealing with the traditional network of middlemen.
- The success of this sustainable model since 2018 saw most Zoró villages abandon their previous ties to the illegal loggers operating in their territory.
- But with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic hardship, many villages have fallen back on these links, compounding existing threats to their forests posed by illegal mining and cattle ranching.
Deforestation soars in Nigeria’s gorilla habitat: ‘We are running out of time’
- Afi River Forest Reserve (ARFR), in eastern Nigeria’s Cross River state, is an important habitat corridor that connects imperiled populations of critically endangered Cross River gorillas.
- But deforestation has been rising both in ARFR and elsewhere in Cross River; satellite data show 2020 was the biggest year for forest loss both in the state and in the reserve since around the turn of the century – and preliminary data for 2021 suggest this year is on track to exceed even 2020.
- Poverty-fueled illegal logging and farming is behind much of the deforestation in ARFR. Resource wars have broken out between communities that have claimed the lives of more than 100, local sources say.
- Authorities say a lack of financial support and threats of violence are limiting their ability to adequately protect what forest remains.
Deprived of their forests, Uganda’s Batwa adapt their sustainable practices
- Three decades since the Batwa people in Uganda were evicted from their ancestral lands to create national parks, members of the group live in poverty and marginalization at the fringes of society.
- Lack of land rights and access to natural resources has eroded traditional knowledge in the hunter-gatherer community, especially concerning herbal medicine and endemic plant species.
- Despite these circumstances, some Batwa groups are adopting new conservation practices involving regenerative agriculture on small plots of land donated to them by the United Organisation of Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU).
On Nigeria-Cameroon border, joint patrols throw a lifeline to threatened apes
- The rugged, isolated forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border support a vast array of wildlife, including Cross River gorillas, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, and forest elephants.
- Historically, limited law enforcement in the border zone has left the ecosystem vulnerable to hunting and logging.
- Since the early 1990s, though, NGOs have been working alongside both governments to enhance transboundary conservation efforts, including joint patrols by rangers from both countries.
- This cross-border collaboration faces many obstacles today, including bureaucratic delays, treacherous terrain, armed poachers, and violent conflict in Cameroon, but participants remain optimistic about the potential for cooperation.
In Guinea, an illegal $6b gold ‘bonanza’ threatens endangered chimpanzees
- Earlier this year, Australia’s Predictive Discovery announced that it had found more than $6 billion in “bonanza”-grade gold deposits in eastern Guinea.
- A Mongabay investigation has found that the company’s exploration is taking place inside the boundaries of Haut Niger National Park, in violation of the law establishing the park.
- The park is home to an estimated 500 western chimpanzees, one of the highest concentrations of the critically endangered primate in West Africa.
Indonesian park officials douse wildfire in Javan leopard habitat
- Authorities in Indonesia have put out the second major fire of the current dry season in Indonesia’s Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, an area that’s home to rare leopards and eagles.
- The fire spread from nearby community lands on Oct. 9 and were put out by the next day.
- Burning is an annual problem in the park, with farmers in adjacent communities using fire to clear the land for planting, or tourists inside the park leaving behind lit campfires or discarding cigarette butts.
- The park is home to iconic wildlife like the Javan leopard and Javan hawk-eagle, and endangered plants like the Javan edelweiss.
High risk, low pay for DRC rangers entrusted to guard a gorilla sanctuary
- Marie Jeanne Bora Ntianabo was drawn to the extraordinary commitment of park rangers while she was still a child.
- Now 29, she loves her job as a ranger despite danger of being ambushed by poachers or armed groups operating in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
- The work doesn’t pay well, especially due to reduced numbers of tourists that the park depends on for revenue, but Ntianabo says she isn’t tempted by the profits others seek while harming the park’s ecosystems and wildlife.
The great Koh Kong land rush: Areas stripped of protection by Cambodian gov’t being bought up
- A regulation issued earlier this year in Cambodia’s Koh Kong province purported to take land from protected areas and grant the land titles to families living in the area.
- But developments since then, and interviews with residents and brokers, paint the scheme as a massive land grab orchestrated by the country’s political elite.
- Politicians and companies have been snapping up the newly degazetted land, among them a firm suspected of being a front for pulpwood giant APP.
- Among those said to be profiting from the land grab is Ly Yong Phat, dubbed “The King of Koh Kong,” a politician and businessman with a long history of quashing the rights of those who occupy land he desires.
Brazil leads Amazon in forest loss this year, Indigenous and protected areas hold out
- Satellite imagery brings us a first look at this year’s deforestation hotspots, areas where forest cover was lost in high densities across the Amazon, amounting to more than 860,000 hectares (2.1 million acres).
- The majority of deforestation (76%) occurred in Brazil and was clustered around roads, according to a recent report from Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP); many of the areas deforested this year in Brazil have also burned.
- In Colombia, deforestation hotspots this year were in and around numerous protected areas, including Tinigua and Chiribiquete national parks, as well as Indigenous reserves, particularly Yari-Yaguara II and Nukak Maku; in Peru, rice farming and a new Mennonite colony drove recent deforestation.
- Of primary forests loss across the western Amazon between 2017 and 2020, three-quarters were outside protected areas and Indigenous territories, highlighting the importance of these key land use designations for safeguarding the remaining Amazon rainforest.
Deforestation sweeps national park in Brazil as land speculators advance
- Between January and early September, 3,542 deforestation alerts have been confirmed in primary forest within Campos Amazônicos National Park, according to satellite data, representing a 37% jump over the average amount of forest loss for the previous five years.
- Much of the occupation of the Campos Amazônicos park is happening through illegitimate land claims, fueled by hopes that protections on the park may be loosened in the future, environmentalists say. Even though the park is under federal protection, this hasn’t stopped invaders from falsely registering slices of it as their property.
- Environmentalists warn the social and environmental impacts could be devastating. Campos Amazônicos wraps around the Tenharim do Igarapé Preto Indigenous Reserve, which was until recently under attack by illegal miners who descended on the territory in search of cassiterite; sources say the fresh incursions into Campos Amazônicos could put the area back at risk.
- The park also holds one of the most striking enclaves of cerrado in the Amazon rainforest, housing stretches of shrubs, grasslands and dry forest typical of the savanna biome.
Campos Amazônicos is also part of the Southern Amazon Conservation Corridor that represents one of the best-preserved stretches of the rainforest.
‘Stampede’ of legislation threatens accelerated destruction of the Amazon
- A series of bills being deliberated in Brazil threatens to legalize illegally occupied land, change demarcation rules for Indigenous reserves and open them up to mining, and ease concessions inside public forests.
- One of the bills targets the Amazonian state of Acre, proposing a reduction of the important Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve and a downgrade in the protected status of Serra do Divisor National Park.
- In another Amazonian state, Rondônia, a state bill was passed this year that significantly shrank the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve and the Guajará-Mirim State Park, setting a worrying precedent, activists say.
- They warn this wave of legislation is part of the current administration’s bid to “run the cattle” through environmental protections for the benefit of commercial sectors such as agribusiness and mining.
Overcoming community-conservation conflict: Q&A with Dominique Bikaba
- Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is renowned for its biodiversity. The area is also home to the Batwa people, who are highly dependent on its forests for their livelihoods and cultural traditions.
- Efforts to protect these forests are challenged by conservation’s mixed record: Kahuzi-Biega’s expansion in the 1970s forced the displacement of thousands of local people, turning them into conservation refugees and sowing distrust in conservation initiatives.
- One of the local organizations leading efforts to overcome these challenges is Strong Roots Congo, which was co-founded by Dominique Bikaba in 2009. Strong Roots Congo puts the needs of local people at the center of its strategy to protect endangered forests and wildlife in eastern DRC.
- “Strong Roots’ approach to conservation is bottom-up, collaborative, and inclusive,” Bikaba said during a recent conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
In DRC, community ownership of forests helps guard the Grauer’s gorilla
- The Congolese government has officially recognized community ownership of a conservation area linking two national parks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, giving hope for the survival of the Grauer’s gorilla, a critically endangered species.
- The gorilla, found only in DRC, faces threats from habitat loss, poaching for bushmeat, and the effects of lingering civil unrest in the region.
- The Nkuba Conservation Area is co-managed by local communities and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, with the latter providing jobs and training initiatives for women.
- The years-long effort to develop the conservation area and now to maintain it points to the importance of engaging local communities in conservation.
Deforestation spikes in Virunga National Park, DRC
- Satellite data has detected several dramatic spikes in deforestation activity in Virunga National Park in 2021.
- Virunga National Park is situated in the northeastern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), right over its border with Uganda.
- Virunga is home to many endangered species and subspecies, including mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei).
- The park’s major threats include logging for charcoal production and clearing for agriculture, both of which are driven by poverty.
Slash-and-burn clearing nears Indigenous park as Brazil’s fire season ignites
- Xingu Indigenous Park shields one of the last remaining large tracts of old growth rainforest in Brazil’s “arc of deforestation,” and is inhabited by dozens of Indigenous communities.
- The park experienced a jump in deforestation in 2020, quadrupling the amount of primary forest it lost in 2019.
- Most of this deforestation was caused by wildfires, which likely spread from slash-and-burn activity on nearby agricultural fields.
- Satellite data and imagery show agricultural fields and fires expanding towards the park in 2021 despite a prohibition on dry-season burning and a drought the likes of which haven’t been seen in nearly a century.
Drugs, fire, settlers poised to wipe out one of Paraguay’s most biodiverse forests
- San Rafael National Park/Proposed National Reserve encompasses one of the most unique, biodiverse and threatened forests in Paraguay.
- Fires in late 2020 burned an estimated 45% of the reserve, and biologists say it may take decades for the area to recover.
- Meanwhile, drug traffickers are expanding illegal marijuana plantations within San Rafael and on May 21, more than a hundred outsiders reportedly crossed into the reserve where they are clearing trees and establishing settlements.
- Despite its international categorization as a national park, a 2002 recategorization error left San Rafael unrecognized as a protected area in Paraguay, making the area ineligible for proper protection.
Belize’s Maya Forest Corridor a ‘missing link’ to giant rainforest reserve (commentary)
- With nearly 40% of its lands under protection, Belize already contributes significantly to the IUCN’s post-2020 biodiversity framework of preserving 30% of the planet by 2030.
- Now conservationists hope to create the Maya Forest Corridor, connecting the massive Belize Maya Forest in the country’s northwest with the Maya Mountains Massif network of protected areas in southern Belize.
- It would also connect these areas of Belize with adjacent protected areas of La Selva Maya in Guatemala and Mexico, and become the largest rainforest preserve north of the Amazon, a haven for threatened and endangered species including the jaguar, the Central American river turtle and spider monkey, and Baird’s tapir.
- “My hope is the corridor will be approved and a massive expanse of Central American rainforest will be fused together,” writes a research professor with Northern Arizona University in this commentary piece. The views expressed are of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Protected areas now cover nearly 17% of Earth’s surface: U.N. report
- A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature reveals that countries are closing in on the target set in 2010 of protecting or conserving 17% of the Earth’s surface.
- Since 2010, the area of the marine environment that’s under protection has more than tripled, although global coverage is less than 8%, falling short of the 10% goal set in Aichi Target 11.
- While there has been some success, international leaders agree there should be more focus on quality as well as quantity in designating protected and conservation areas.
- As the U.N. Biodiversity Conference scheduled for October 2021 in Kunming, China, approaches, the report calls for a stronger emphasis on the contributions of Indigenous and local communities, while also ensuring that the world’s poorest don’t shoulder an outsize burden from these efforts.
Settlers invading, deforesting Colombian national parks ‘at an unstoppable speed’
- Colombia’s Tinigua National Natural Park is experiencing one of the highest levels of deforestation of any such protected area in the country, and has lost more than a quarter of its primary forest since 2002.
- Sources say this deforestation is happening due to settlers who are illegally invading and establishing roads, settlements and farms in protected forest – and clearing it in the process.
- Other national parks and Indigenous territories in the Colombian Amazon are also experiencing incursions.
- Sources say they are happening at such a scale that the government has been unable to effectively stop it.
A Colombian national park reveals its natural secrets through camera traps
- Forty-four camera traps have recorded various species in El Tuparro National Natural Park in Colombia’s Orinoco region, from jaguars and pumas, to deer, tapirs and peccaries, reflecting the park’s healthy ecosystems.
- A separate survey also recorded a Guianan white-eared opossum (Didelphis imperfecta), a species never before recorded in Colombia.
- The protected area has just turned 40 years old, and although it represents a rare conservation success story, rangers and researchers say it continues to face pressures from fires, sport and commercial fishing, and hunting.
- Compounding the problem is the growing human presence in and around the park, as the economic and political crises in neighboring Venezuela drives an influx of people across the border in search of food.
Casinos, condos and sugar cane: How a Cambodian national park is being sold down the river
- Botum Sakor National Park in southern Cambodia has lost at least 30,000 hectares of forest over the past three decades.
- Decades of environmental degradation go back to the late 1990s when the Cambodian government began handing out economic land concessions for the development of commercial plantations and tourist infrastructure.
- NGOs in Cambodia are said to be unwilling to speak out against the destruction of Botum Sakor because they are afraid they will not be allowed to operate in the country if they do.
- The government says economic activity is vital to improve people’s livelihoods and reduce poverty.
Deforestation rises in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Park as cattle invade
- Chiribiquete National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest continental protected area in Colombia, comprising more than 4 million hectares (40,000 square kilometers or 17,000 sq miles) of land in the Colombian Amazon.
- For the past several years, the Colombian Amazon has been hit harder by deforestation than any other region in the country, according to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies (IDEAM).
- Satellite data from the University of Maryland registered an “unusually high” number of deforestation alerts in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Park in January.
- A report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) revealed that over 1,000 hectares inside Chiribiquete National Park were deforested between September 2020 and February 2021.
Deforestation surge threatens endangered species in Tanintharyi, Myanmar
- The Tanintharyi region of Myanmar boasts remote, unique forests that provide vital habitat for endangered species found nowhere else in the world.
- But deforestation is mounting in the region, with satellite data showing a surge in tree cover loss so far in 2021.
- Research suggests plantation expansion and small farms have been increasingly eating into native forest over the past couple decades.
- The recent surge in forest loss also coincides with military attacks on Tanintharyi Karen communities, which reportedly have displaced thousands of people who have nowhere to go but into the forest.
‘A disgrace’: Luxury housing plans threaten Cambodia’s Bokor National Park
- Bokor National Park, also known as Preah Monivong Bokor National Park, sits on the southern coast of Cambodia and is a refuge for many threatened plants and animals, as well as a popular tourist site.
- But conservationists warn Bokor’s habitat is under threat from the development of luxury residential estates that are planned to occupy 19,000 hectares inside the park.
- The park gained official protected status in 1993, yet was awarded to Cambodian tycoon Sok Kong in 2007 as a 99-year concession for $1 billion. In the intervening years, Kong’s company has developed an access road, luxury hotels and condominiums in Bokor.
- Meanwhile sources say international and local NGOs, which ordinarily play a meaningful role in preventing widespread forest loss in Cambodia, have been muzzled in the country.
The controversial hunt for a multibillion-dollar treasure in a Chilean park
- The treasure is thought to consist of 800 barrels of gold coins, jewels and precious stones, and is estimated to be worth $10 billion.
- In 2020, crews searching for the treasure began to use backhoes, causing erosion in Archipiélago de Juan Fernández National Park in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.
- The crews began using heavy machinery without an environmental impact evaluation because SEA, the government’s Environmental Evaluation Service, dismissed the need for one.
Brazil flower-gatherers win acclaim: ‘Efficient, long-lasting, resilient’
- For three centuries communities of “flower-gatherers” have lived self-reliantly in the Serra do Espinhaço, a mountain range bordering Brazil’s Cerrado savanna on its east. Many are descended from former slaves, but they’ve mingled with Indigenous and descendants of Portuguese migrants.
- Their several hundred communities have long fostered a cooperative relationship with nature, using fire judiciously and a code of sustainable rules to keep their communal pastures and natural landscapes in balance.
- In 2020, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recognized their way of life, designating the flower-gatherers’ traditional farming system as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. But encroaching mining and agriculture, and a national park all now put this unique culture at risk.
- “The struggle of the flower-gatherers is a profound struggle. It is a struggle for a way of life, a way of thinking the world, of relating with the Serra [mountain range], and constructing a future they want for their children,” says one academic.
France contributes to protection of Amazon stronghold, Yasuní National Park
- France and Ecuador have announced a plan to curb deforestation in famed Amazonian national park, Yasuní, while promoting its improved administration.
- Peru, Colombia and Brazil are expected to see similar agreements with France as part of President Emmanuel Macron’s growing environmental initiatives in the region.
- The contentious EU-Mercosur trade agreement is still up for ratification, but EU members appear to be split over weak environmental regulation.
Smallholder agriculture cuts into key Sumatran tiger habitat
- Satellite data show several surges in deforestation in Kerinci Seblat National Park in 2020.
- Kerinci Seblat provides vital habitat for critically endangered Sumatran tigers, as well as many other species.
- The primary driver of this deforestation appears to be the expansion of small farms.
- Initiatives in the area are attempting to reduce smallholder expansion by encouraging the adoption of more sustainable farming practices.
6% of Earth’s protected land is used to grow crops, study finds
- Protected areas are intended safeguard the planet’s vulnerable inhabitants – including 83% of its endangered species.
- A new study reveals that cropland takes up 13.6% of the planet’s ice-free surface area and overlaps with 6% of its protected areas.
- While some species are at home in agricultural fields, many are not – particularly the endangered species many protected areas were created to safeguard.
- The study’s authors call for national and international sustainability goals to implement a more holistic, data-driven approach when it comes to improving food security and preserving habitat.
Big cat comeback: Jaguars prowl Argentina’s Iberá Wetlands after 70 years
- Conservationists recently released three jaguars — a mother and two cubs — into Gran Iberá Park in northeastern Argentina’s Corrientes province in an attempt to rewild the local ecosystem.
- Jaguars haven’t been present in the Iberá Wetlands for the past 70 years, after hunting and habitat loss drove them to local extinction.
- The ultimate goal of the jaguar reintroduction program is to reestablish a healthy, genetically diverse population of jaguars in Gran Iberá Park, which has the capacity to hold about 100 jaguars, according to conservationists.
Patches of Amazon untouched by humans still feel impact of climate change
- Researchers looking at the abundance of insect-eating birds in a pristine patch of forest deep in the Brazilian Amazon have seen populations of dozens of species decline over the past 35 years.
- The remoteness of the site and the still-intact tree cover rule out direct human activity as a factor for the population declines, with researchers attributing the phenomenon to the warmer and more intense droughts caused by climate change, which in turn puts stress on the birds and their food sources.
- The finding calls into question the idea that an area protected from human activity is sufficient to guarantee the conservation of its biodiversity.
- A similar phenomenon has been observed in the Caatinga shrubland ecosystem of northeastern Brazil, where rising temperatures, severe droughts, and irregular rainfall may lead to the extinction of birds and mammals over the next 60 years, even inside national parks.
‘Devastating’ fires engulf Brazilian Pantanal wetlands – again
- Wildfires erupting in August have ravaged much of Brazil’s Pantanal Matogrossense National Park, which is a part of the Pantanal region, the world’s largest tropical wetland.
- Fires have so far consumed nearly 4.5 million hectares across the Pantanal, totaling about 30% of the biome and nearly 22 times the area lost between 2000 and 2018.
- This year’s intense fires added to damage already done in 2019, when flames engulfed hundreds of thousands of hectares across the Pantanal.
- Sources say most of the fires started from slash-and-burn farming, which is becoming more prevalent due to the weakening of environmental agencies under the Bolsonaro administration.
Restaura Cerrado: Saving Brazil’s savanna by reseeding and restoring it
- The Cerrado is Brazil’s second largest biome, and the most biodiverse tropical savanna in the world. It is of vital importance for Brazil’s watersheds, for global biodiversity, and is an important but undervalued carbon stock.
- But in recent decades, half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has been destroyed to make way for cattle, soy, and other agricultural commodities. In the southern Cerrado, scientists are now shifting their focus to restoring the native vegetation
- However, scientific knowledge on savanna restoration is scarce. So one collaborative network, Restaura Cerrado, is bringing together scientists, seed collectors, and the public to advance practical knowledge about restoration. The group’s goal is to achieve the means for ongoing effective Cerrado restoration.
- Restaura Cerrado is a collaboration between ICMBio, the University of Brasília, the Cerrado Seeds Network, and Embrapa (the Brazilian Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Research Enterprise); together they hope to use restoration to bring sustainable development to the savanna region.
Herd opportunity: Hundreds of elephants return to DRC’s Virunga
- A group of about 580 savanna elephants recently returned to Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after crossing over from Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.
- The reappearance of the elephants brings hope to a park that’s been beset with civil unrest, violence, and poaching for decades.
- In May, Virunga National Park closed due to the spread of COVID-19, which caused serious financial damage to the park.
Planned road to bisect pristine, biodiverse Brazilian Amazon national park
- The BR-364 highway stretches for 4,325 kilometers across Brazil, ending in Acre state. Now authorities, backed by Acre’s state government and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, want to extend it with a 152-kilometer branch road through Serra do Divisor National Park, near demarcated Indigenous reserves, and to the Peru border.
- Meanwhile, the Brazilian Congress is moving a bill forward to fast track the branch road’s approval by degrading the conservation status of the national park and reclassifying it as an APA, an Área de Proteção Ambiental, which would allow timber harvesting, ranching, agriculture and mining.
- Environmentalists and Indigenous communities warn that the planned road and the reduction in protections for Serra do Divisor National Park would open up the conservation unit and a pristine portion of the Brazilian Amazon, providing access to loggers, cattle ranchers and landgrabbers.
- Though the road is still not approved, local sources say as much as 30 kilometers of forest along the route have already been cleared to the park’s border. “With each day, each year that passes, the deforestation advances further. The destruction of humans is relentless… And for us, it’s really difficult to witness,” said one Indigenous leader.
Alleged gov’t-linked land grabs threaten Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains
- The Cardamom Mountains sit off the Gulf of Thailand in southern Cambodia and provide important habitat for a multitude of plant and animal species, many of them already threatened with extinction.
- Due to Cardamoms’ remoteness, they had largely been spared the human encroachment that has razed much of the rainforest across the country – until infrastructure development in 2020 opened up the area to loggers, poachers, and others seeking to exploit the region’s forests.
- Satellite data show deforestation is continuing to surge in the Cardamoms despite most of the range being formally demarcated as protected land.
- Sources familiar with the issues say the Hun Sen government is encouraging land-grabbing in protected areas in a bid to build public support ahead of the 2022 election season, and that Cambodia’s systemic corruption is enabling timber and plantation companies to move in and clear forest.
Indigenous leader who fought for communities and conservation mourned in Peru
- Benjamín Rodríguez Grandez, a leader from the Huitoto tribe who dedicated his life to preserving Indigenous customs and the natural resources they depend on in the Peruvian Amazon, died of COVID-19 on July 16, 2020.
- Rodríguez was a key player in efforts to lobby for the creation of Peru’s Yaguas National Park, an area of 868,927 hectares (2.15 million acres) of forest home to more than 3,000 species of plants, 500 species of birds, and 550 fish species.
- He was also a teacher and a “judge of the peace,” a special title in Peru that allows community leaders to resolve certain disputes even if they don’t have a law degree.
- “If Benjamín convened the meeting, everyone attended,” one source told Mongabay. “He had that influence in the area.” His work for the Yaguas National Park would later be noted by the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize.
Road-paving project threatens a wildlife-rich reserve in Indonesia’s Papua
- The Indonesian government plans to pave a stretch of highway running through an ecologically important wildlife reserve in the country’s Papua region.
- Experts warn the paving will encourage greater encroachment into Mamberamo Foja Wildlife Reserve, which is home to at least 332 bird species and 80 mammal species.
- Another section of the Trans-Papua Highway was constructed through Lorentz National Park earlier, and studies show it’s already having an impact in terms of increased deforestation.
Public lands and parks are our common heritage: Bruce Babbitt
- Until recently, protecting the environment was a bipartisan issue for Americans. But in an era marked by bitter divides, this is no longer the case.
- Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior in the Clinton Administration, believes that environmental protection can again be a unifying issue for Americans. But to get there, advocates will need to rebuild consensus around issues that have wide support, like public lands and the benefits afforded by a healthy environment, and engage stakeholders who have often been ignored.
- Babbitt’s views are grounded in his long career in public office where he had to consistently navigate political divides: first as a Democratic governor in a traditionally conservative state with a Republican legislature, then as a member of the cabinet in the Clinton Administration when Republicans controlled Congress from 1994 through 2000.
- Babbitt spoke about his work, his ideas on how to build constituencies to bridge political divides on environmental issues, and his concerns about climate change during an October 2020 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
In Guatemala, refugees find new calling as park rangers
- In recent years, the number of migrants and refugees entering Guatemala after fleeing violence at home has grown.
- FUNDAECO, a local conservation NGO, has partnered with UNHCR and other groups to find jobs for some refugees working as park guards in Guatemalan biodiversity hotspots.
- Fifty-five refugees have been employed in the “Green Jobs” program so far, with FUNDAECO hoping that number will reach at least 100.
Gorongosa National Park is being reforested via coffee and agroforestry
- Gorongosa National Park is reforesting itself with the help of shade-grown coffee and other agroforestry crops.
- Marketed internationally, Gorongosa Coffee and other related ventures employ many local and indigenous people via this regenerative form of agriculture.
- The park’s plantings are beneficial to wildlife, too: in addition to birds that frequently visit the agroforests, these plots are home to numerous species including a couple new-to-science ones which have just been described, including a species of bat.
- Agroforestry is the intentional planting of crops like coffee and cashew among other woody perennials such as rainforest trees, in this example: this kind of agriculture also sequesters much carbon from the atmosphere, which helps slow climate change.
Fires raze nearly half of Indigenous territories in Brazil’s Pantanal
- Data indicate that some of the fires began on private land that was supposed to have been conserved, before spreading to Indigenous territories and state and national parks.
- Indigenous people say the fires “came from outside” and “destroyed everything,” including the food and medicinal plants that form an important part of their culture.
- Firefighting officials say there was ample warning about a higher-than-average number of fires this year, but budget cuts and a delay in hiring dashed any chance of efforts to prevent the burning.
- This year’s surge in the number and extent of fires comes amid a plunge in the number of fines imposed by the Brazilian government for environmental crimes, including those related to burning and deforestation.
World’s protected areas lack connections, recent study finds
- A recent study, published in the journal Nature Communications, has found that 9.7% of the world’s protected areas are connected by land that’s considered intact.
- The study used the human footprint database, which maps out human impacts, such as roads and farmland, across the planet.
- The research showed that, while some countries have protected 17% of their land — a goal set forth in the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi targets — others, including repositories of biodiversity such as Vietnam and Madagascar, are lagging with little to no connectivity in their networks of reserves.
- The authors suggest that the research could help guide decisions on which areas of land to protect and how to connect them in a way that gives species the best shot at survival.
Rangers on the run: Half-marathon aims to raise funding for front-liners
- Wildlife ranger groups across Africa are struggling to maintain operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic drying up funding sources, which has resulted in ranger redundancies and salary reductions.
- Tusk, a U.K. nonprofit, is spearheading the Wildlife Ranger Challenge, a race and fundraiser that aims to help keep wildlife rangers employed.
- $2 million has already been distributed as emergency funding to several wildlife ranger groups.
Madagascar reopens national parks shuttered by COVID-19
- On Sept. 5, Madagascar began reopening all its national parks. They’d been closed since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The pandemic has been devastating for local economies, which depend heavily on tourism.
- Madagascar authorities also announced further easing of restrictions throughout much of the island nation and the resumption of limited international flights.
In Brazil’s Pantanal, a desperate struggle to save a hyacinth macaw refuge from fire
- Firefighters are working around the clock to protect a forested ranch in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state that’s an important refuge of the threatened hyacinth macaw.
- The Pantanal wetlands in which the ranch is located are experiencing severe wildfires, sparked by human activity and exacerbated by drought and climate change.
- The São Francisco do Perigara ranch is home to around 1,000 hyacinth macaws — 15% of the total population of the species in the wild, and 20% of its population in the Pantanal.
Can public lands unify divided Americans? An interview with John Leshy
- It might be hard to believe in the current political climate, but public lands were a unifying issue for Americans until quite recently. Most Americans have supported the idea of the government owning and managing large areas of land for public use, and that bipartisan consensus has culminated in the creation of vast network of national parks, forests and monuments which are collectively visited by tens of millions of people annually.
- Does that mean public lands could serve as an opportunity to bridge gaps in a polarized America? John Leshy, an emeritus professor of law at the University of California Hastings and general counsel at the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration, thinks it’s possible.
- Leshy has spent much of the past five decades working on public lands issues. Leshy is now working on “Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands”, a forthcoming title from Yale University Press.
- During a September 2020 interview with Mongabay, Leshy spoke about how public lands could help a divided America find common ground and heal as it works to address the daunting new challenges posed by climate change.
Threatened species caught in crossfire of ongoing land conflict in Myanmar
- Conflict over how best to protect the biodiversity of Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region may be contributing to the rapid loss of its forest cover.
- Habitats of globally threatened species, including the critically endangered Gurney’s pitta and recently discovered geckos, face destruction due to logging, agriculture and other human pressures.
- Researchers fear that entire species may be driven to extinction without ever being documented if habitats aren’t protected fast.
Park rangers, the guardians of Ecuador’s biodiversity, face job insecurity
- For their part, the rangers say the change creates instability and deprives them of job security.
- Park rangers have been working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, even handing out assistance kits to communities.
- Protected areas account for a fifth of Ecuador’s territory, and include ecologically important areas like the Galápagos Islands and Yasuní National Park.
Agrochemicals and industrial waste threaten Argentina’s Gran Chaco
- Farmers in Argentina are using increasing amounts of herbicides and other agrochemicals to boost their crop yields.
- In the country’s Gran Chaco region, the unregulated use of agrochemicals has had devastating ecological effects, including the contamination of water sources that residents depend on.
- The Gran Chaco’s waterways are also under pressure from industrial pollution, heavy metals, oil spills, and arsenic found naturally in underground reservoirs.
The lost forests of the Argentine Gran Chaco
- Data from Argentina’s environment ministry show that Argentina’s section of the Gran Chaco, a dry forest in South America that’s about twice the size of California, has lost around 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) of native forest in the past two decades.
- Scientists and environmentalists say that administrative irregularities and noncompliance with regulations have allowed the constant expansion of the agricultural and livestock frontier into the Chaco.
- These incursions impact biodiversity, poverty and the frequency of droughts and floods.
Fires in the Pantanal: ‘We are facing a scenario now that is catastrophic’
- Devastating wildfires that burned out of control in late 2019 and early 2020 in Brazil’s Pantanal wetland are back. Around 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) in the region have been burned so far.
- The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland and straddles the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia – with Brazil containing the lion’s share.
- The Brazilian Pantanal has seen the number of fires more than double so far in 2020, up some 200% over the same period in 2019. Sources say the fires were started by human activity – likely to clear land for agriculture – and are difficult to control due to a lack of access to the region and because the fires are burning underground, fueled by highly combustible peat and exacerbated by drought.
- Faced with the surging number of fires in June and July, state and federal authorities moved to reinforce bans on burning. However, early signs suggest these measures are doing little to mitigate fires.
Understaffed and under threat: Paraguay’s park rangers pay the ultimate price
- Protected areas in eastern Paraguay are beset by illegal marijuana cultivation and logging. Government interventions have had limited success, with clearing resuming shortly after agents leave an area.
- Park rangers tasked with monitoring the country’s reserves and parks say they routinely encounter hostile criminal groups when on patrol. These encounters can take a violent turn – several rangers have been murdered over the past decade while patrolling protected areas for illegal activity.
- According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the ideal number of park rangers is one for every 1,000 hectares. However, in Paraguay, there is just one park ranger for more than 38,000 hectares.
- Rangers say they need more resources and support to do their job safely and effectively.
No choice: Why communities in Paraguay are cutting down forests to survive
- Illegal deforestation for marijuana cultivation is a growing problem for eastern Paraguay’s protected areas.
- Sources say much of the clearing is done by indigenous community members and small farmers who are beset by poverty and have no other options.
- A joint project between the Paraguayan government and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations seeks to provide more opportunities for rural communities, but has been stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mozambique’s trailblazing Gorongosa Park celebrates 60th anniversary, announces 60 new schools (commentary)
- July 23, 2020 marks the 60th birthday of Mozambique’s flagship national park: Gorongosa. The official ceremony featured just 20 guests due to the pandemic, but one of them was the President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi.
- Once at the center of the country’s civil war, the park emerged battered but has recovered remarkably in recent decades, and is now recognized as a place where successful restoration is benefitting nature, wildlife, and humans.
- The park’s strong focus on employment and education of local people is a cornerstone of its redevelopment, so it is fitting that the construction of 60 new schools was announced during the anniversary ceremony.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Protected areas in Paraguay hit hard by illegal marijuana farming
- Agriculture has deforested much of eastern Paraguay’s Upper Parana Atlantic Forest, an endangered ecoregion of which less 10% remains today.
- More recently, illegal marijuana cultivation has become a driving force of deforestation in the region. Even protected areas are not immune from destruction, with satellite data and drone footage confirming large swaths of protected primary forest have been cleared for marijuana cropland over the past year. Sources say timber and charcoal are also being produced as by-products of clearing for marijuana and are illegally transported out of protected areas.
- Four protected areas have been particularly affected: Mbaracayú Reserve, San Rafael National Park/Proposed National Reserve, Morombí Reserve and Caazapá National Park.
- Forest rangers working in the protected areas say there aren’t enough enforcement staff to combat the illegal encroachment.
‘On the edge’: Endangered forest cleared for marijuana in Paraguay
- The Upper Parana is also one of the world’s most endangered forests. The ecoregion has been almost entirely cleared in Brazil, and Argentina holds the largest remaining areas of connected habitat. In Paraguay, studies estimate less than 10% remains, mostly as fragmented forest islands scatted across a largely unprotected, denuded landscape.
- Agriculture is the driving force of deforestation in Paraguay, with much of the country’s forests cleared legally to make way for cattle, soy, corn and sugar cane fields over the past half-century.
- But clearing for illicit marijuana cultivation is also taking a toll on the eastern Paraguay’s forests. According to the National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD), 81,871 kilos (180,494 pounds) of marijuana were seized and 797 parcels were destroyed in Paraguay’s portion of the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest between 2015 and 2020. Investigation by Mongabay and La Nación found marijuana farms carved out of several national parks and reserves in eastern Paraguay.
- Government officials and NGO representatives say to more enforcement is needed on the ground, and that those found guilty of environmental crimes should be given harsher sentences.
Madagascar remembers Guy Suzon Ramangason, a champion of protected areas
- In April, Madagascar lost a prominent champion of the country’s system of protected areas.
- Guy Suzon Ramangason was director-general of Madagascar National Parks, the quasi-governmental agency that manages many of the country’s protected areas, for 16 years.
- He helped develop and promote numerous protected areas across the country during his long career in conservation.
In Madagascar’s capital, pollution threatens an oasis for birds
- Tsarasaotra Park, located in the center of Antananarivo, is one of the few remaining refuges for the waterbirds of Madagascar’s highlands.
- The park is the first private site to be classified as a wetland of international importance by the Ramsar Convention.
- The fast pace of urbanization in the capital is degrading the park’s biodiversity and putting the birds at risk.
Indonesia reopens national parks to tourists as COVID-19 cases rise
- Indonesia is reopening 29 national and nature parks to local and foreign tourists despite a growing number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
- The parks were closed earlier this year to prevent the possible spread of the novel coronavirus to wildlife populations.
- Authorities say the parks will be allowed to open with strict health protocols, including limiting visitors to half capacity.
- Some of the parks allowed for reopening are home to rare and threatened species such as orangutans, proboscis monkeys, Javan hawk-eagles, and silvery gibbons.
‘Saving sun bears’: Q&A with book author Sarah Pye
- A new book, “Saving Sun Bears,” chronicles the efforts of Malaysian wildlife biologist Wong Siew Te to protect sun bears in Borneo.
- Author Sarah Pye tells Wong’s story, from his boyhood in peninsular Malaysia, to his studies of animal husbandry and wildlife around the world.
- Wong’s journey led him to return to Malaysia and start the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, the only facility of its kind in the world, in 2008.
Indonesia struggles to restore peatlands as fires strangle national parks
- More than a million hectares across Indonesia burned in 2019, according to the government’s numbers. The fires released an estimated 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere, costing the country more than $5 billion in economic losses that year, according to the World Bank.
- Sumatra was particularly affected, with fires consuming large swaths of primary forest in protected areas like Berbak-Sembilang National Park, which is home to endangered wildlife like Sumatran tigers and elephants, and false gharials.
- Illegal logging and the expansion of plantations in the region area over the past decades has rapidly transformed the park and the surrounding area, draining peat swamps and turning them into degraded, easily flammable patches of land. Following Indonesia’s peatland destruction-fueled fire crisis of 2015 President Joko Widodo established the Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) in Jakarta in 2016. The agency planned to restore over 2.6 million hectares of degraded peatlands, including those in concession areas and in protected areas like Berbak-Sembilang.
- However, BRG president Nazir Foed acknowledged that restoration “progress has not been optimal.” Critics say the effort has been stymied by a lack of collaboration between stakeholders and a lack of consensus on what even constitutes a restored peatland.
Bison: (Back) home on the range
- The Rosebud Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota plans to bring the American bison back to around 11,300 hectares (28,000 acres) of prairie on the reservation.
- Over the next five years, tribal groups will work with WWF and the U.S. Department of the Interior to release as many as 1,500 bison on the Wolakota Buffalo Range, which would make it the largest Native American-owned herd in North America.
- The Lakota people of Rosebud have an abiding connection with the bison, or buffalo, and the leaders of the project say that, in addition to the symbolic importance of returning the Lakotas’ “relatives” to their land, the herd will help create jobs, restore the ecological vigor of the landscape, and aid in the conservation of the species.
After a century of mistaken identity, a Balinese gecko gets its own name
- A group of researchers has described as a new species a gecko endemic to the Indonesian island of Bali.
- Cyrtodactylus jatnai was for nearly a century thought to be Cyrtodactylus fumosus, a species found almost a thousand miles away in Sulawesi Island.
- In their newly published paper, the researchers identify distinctive physical characteristics that make the Bali species unique in its own right.
- They named the species in honor of Bali-born ecologist Jatna Supriatna, hailed by Conservation International as “the conservation warrior of Indonesia.”
New data show world lost a Switzerland-size area of primary rainforest in 2019
- Last year the world lost around 119,000 square kilometers (45,946 square miles) of tree cover, according to satellite data collated by the University of Maryland (UMD) released today by World Resources Institute (WRI). Almost a third of that loss came from primary humid tropical forests.
- Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia took the top three spots in terms of absolute primary forest loss, followed by Bolivia, Peru and Malaysia. The data also show some success stories, with deforestation trending down in several countries, including Colombia, Madagascar, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
- In order to stop deforestation, researchers say emphasis must be placed on changing the incentives driving forest loss on a domestic, local level.
- Researchers are also worried about how the COVID-19 crisis could affect forests in 2020.
Healing the world through ‘radical listening’: Q&A with Dr. Kinari Webb
- Kinari Webb is a medical doctor and founder of Health in Harmony, a nonprofit aimed at curbing global warming by protecting rainforests and empowering the human communities that live within them.
- Over the past 10 years, Health in Harmony has helped lift communities in Indonesian Borneo from poverty by providing sustainable, local livelihoods that have dramatically reduced their reliance on logging.
- Webb says she and her colleagues were able to accomplish this by listening to what communities really needed and to their ideas about possible solutions; she says Health in Harmony’s model could be applied to other communities around the world, even those in developed countries.
- On a larger scale, Webb says governments need to stop prioritizing economic growth; she says the COVID-19 crisis highlights the danger of reliance on global supply chains, and that working together and moving toward a “regenerative economy” would help humanity weather future pandemics — as well as prevent them from happening in the first place.
Indigenous groups in Myanmar lash out at ‘restrictive’ conservation policies
- Attempts to nominate northern Myanmar’s Hkakaborazi Landscape as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site in 2017 sparked fierce debate over who should manage natural resources in the biodiverse region.
- Indigenous communities in Myanmar’s northernmost Hkakaborazi region claim that Forest Department oversight and regulations upended traditional approaches to resource management.
The debate brought longstanding local grievances against the Forest Department and its international partner, the Wildlife Conservation Society, to a head. Communities expelled the groups in 2018, vowing to protect the forest themselves.
- Whether communities and outside conservation efforts can find common ground remains to be seen. UNESCO itself has welcomed the opportunity for the problems to be discussed in the open.
- This story was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund, an initiative of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
National parks in Africa shutter over COVID-19 threat to great apes
- Wildlife authorities in some parts of Africa have effectively locked down parks that are home to gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, amid concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic could make the jump to great apes.
- Humans and great apes share more than 95% of the same genetic material, and are susceptible to many of the same infectious diseases, ranging from respiratory ailments to Ebola.
- Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shut its doors to tourists this week, while in Rwanda all parks hosting gorillas and chimpanzees were also shut; Uganda is considering doing the same, with its parks de facto closed because of a drop in tourist arrivals.
- Even if the apes avoid COVID-19, the loss of tourism revenue for the parks and potential loss of income for people who work to protect these species could cause enduring damage to conservation efforts, experts say.
National parks pay the price as land conflicts intensify in Colombia
- Last month, authorities extinguished a fire in Sierra de la Macarena National Park that nearly reached the banks of the Caño Cristales river. A well-known tourist attraction, the Caño Cristales provides habitat to a sensitive species of underwater plant called Macarenia clavigera, which explodes into a living rainbow of gold, olive green, blue, black and red for a few months every year.
- The Colombian Ministry of Defense and Reuters reported the blaze was set by FARC guerrillas who have rejected the peace process, known by the government as “FARC dissidents,” as they attempted to expand coca cultivation in the region. However, local sources suspect small farmers called campesinos or cattle ranchers set the fires to protest the government’s recent anti-deforestation operations that have been blamed for the displacement of families residing within the country’s national parks.
- Satellite data show deforestation is intensifying in Sierra de la Macarena, as well as in two adjacent national parks: Tinigua and Cordillera de los Picachos. This trend is not limited to these parks, with a new study finding dramatic increase in deforestation in the majority of Colombia’s protected areas and buffer zones following the demobilization of the FARC in 2016. The study said armed groups, especially FARC dissidents, are consolidating within national parks such as Tinigua, assigning land to farmers and promoting livestock and coca crops as an economic engine of the colonization process. Local sources say areas without FARC presence are being invaded by large-scale landowners.
- Meanwhile, the Colombian government has reportedly given the go-ahead to petroleum exploration projects in and around Tinigua and Cordillera de los Picachos national parks, attracting criticism for launching offensives against small farmers while greenlighting extractivist industries.
COVID-19 prompts closure of Indonesian parks, and a chance to evaluate
- Dozens of Indonesian national parks and conservation sites have been closed temporarily to visitors in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country.
- Some of the affected sites include popular national parks such as Mount Leuser, Komodo, Rinjani and Way Kambas.
- Conservationists have welcomed the temporary closure, calling it an opportunity for authorities and park operators to evaluate the impacts of tourism on the ecosystems in these areas.
- Indonesia has reported 369 positive cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, and 32 deaths as of March 20.
Chile: Expedition to the end of the world, where humpback whales are thriving
- Mongabay Latam joined an expedition to the Francisco Coloane Marine Park near the southern tip of Chile, where the humpback whale population has risen dramatically — from 40 individuals in 2003 to 190 in 2019.
- The park, established in 2003, remains without a management or administrative structure, but that is changing with the development of a conservation and sustainable development plan underway.
- Although the whale population in the area is growing, threats remain, including entanglement in fishing gear, contamination from nearby salmon farms and ship traffic and noise pollution from coal mines.
Qualified success: What’s next for Peru’s Operation Mercury?
- The Peruvian government’s launch of Operation Mercury to crack down on illegal mining had a burst of initial success, cutting deforestation by 92% since its kickoff in February 2019.
- Concerns have surfaced that the operation would simply displace miners, forcing them to deforest new areas.
- However, satellite imagery analysis published in January 2020 revealed that, while deforestation due to mining continues to be a problem in southeastern Peru, Operation Mercury has not led to a surge in forest loss adjacent to the targeted area.
- The government is also investing in programs aimed at providing employment alternatives so that people don’t return to mining.
Critics push back as cable car project for Indonesia’s Rinjani is revived
- Authorities on the Indonesian island of Lombok say they want to build a cable car to Mount Rinjani to allow more non-hikers to visit the national park.
- The proposed cable car line would be built outside the park boundaries, but critics say the impact to the environment will ripple into the park itself.
- The government says it plans to complete the project before Lombok hosts the Indonesian leg of next year’s MotoGP racing championship, but a host of studies and permits will be required.
- Rinjani is also part of a global network of UNESCO geoparks, and the cable car project could affect that status when it comes up for evaluation next year.
Chile’s biosphere reserves get supersized, but protection isn’t a given
- Three biosphere reserves in Chile were expanded last year to include buffer zones and transition areas.
- Biosphere reserves are not included in Chilean legislation, so their protection is not guaranteed under the law.
- Experts say that referencing the reserves and their buffer and transition zones in future laws will help ensure their preservation.
In Afghanistan, a new national park carries hopes for conservation and peace
- Afghanistan established its fifth national park last year, the massive Bamyan Plateau Protected Area.
- The site is home to the Persian leopard and ibex, and serves as a key breeding ground for the endemic Afghan snowfinch.
- Local inhabitants were crucial to developing the park and are set to have a voice in its management.
- In addition to conserving the landscape and its plants and wildlife, the protected area is expected to boost tourism and local livelihoods, and serve as a natural respite for a country weary of war.
Activists win reprieve, for now, for Dominican coastline eyed by developers
- A Spanish hotel developer plans to build a new resort on protected coastal land in the Dominican Republic.
- Opposition by environmentalists prompted the government to order a temporary halt to the project in February pending the outcome of an assessment due later in March.
- Environmentalists say they fear that allowing the resort development to go ahead in what was once part of Cotubanamá National Park could open the door to more developments along the pristine beachfront.
- With elections due in May, one of the presidential candidates has backed the opposition and called for the dismissal of the environment minister for permitting the project in the first place.
‘Out of control’: Unprecedented fires ravage Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands
- Stretching 210,000 sq km across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, the Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland. In Brazil, it stretches across the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. The Pantanal is home to many different species of plants and animals, some of them threatened with extinction.
- Fueled by a toxic combination of searing temperatures and high winds, the Brazilian Pantanal was hit by unprecedented fires that engulfed at least 2.4 million hectares across the region in October and November 2019.
- Then in January, just two months after the first bout and during what is supposed to be the rainy season, fires erupted once again. Both times, fires invaded well into Pantanal Matogrossense National Park.
- Local sources say the fires were primarily the result of burning by farmers that spread out of control over an El Niño-dried landscape. Firefighters were caught largely unprepared for the unseasonal fires, as the state normally disassembles its response forces in December and enters a phase of planning for the next fire season. After burning for over a month, the fires were extinguished when rains finally fell in mid-February.
Bolivia and Paraguay unite to protect critically endangered guanacos
- Guanacos (Lama guanicoe) are considered critically endangered in Bolivia and Paraguay. Fewer than 200 exist in Bolivia and as few as 20 in Paraguay.
- Guanacos in Bolivia and Paraguay are threatened by habitat loss and poaching. They live in the Chaco, a dry-forest ecoregion that’s one of the most heavily deforested areas on the planet.
- A camera trapping project spearheaded by Bolivian and Paraguayan NGOs uncovered a population of guanacos living in a national park in Paraguay.
- Meanwhile, across the border in Bolivia, an autonomous indigenous government is in the process of creating a new reserve, which, if established, would create an extensive habitat corridor for guanacos and other Chaco wildlife.
Early deforestation numbers for 2019 reveal trends in the Amazon
- The Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, or MAAP, an initiative of the nonprofit organization Amazon Conservation, has published its analysis of preliminary deforestation data for the Amazon in 2019.
- The figures project that deforestation in 2019 tapered, if slightly, or held relatively steady in four of the five Amazon countries included in the study.
- Bolivia’s loss of forest in 2019 rose in comparison with 2018, likely as a result of widespread fires that burned standing forest.
- The researchers used early-warning alerts of tree cover loss in 2019 to estimate total deforestation in the five countries and then compared the figures with historical rates going back to 2001.
Fiscal meltdown at Easter Island park drives rift among islanders
- At the start of 2018, the Chilean government transferred the management of Rapa Nui National Park on Easter Island to the Ma’u Henua Polynesian Indigenous Community.
- By then, however, there was already conclusive evidence of serious financial inconsistencies in the park’s provisional management by Ma’u Henua’s board.
- During a 20-month period, about $566,000 in payments for services and supplies wound up in accounts belonging to the board chairman’s close relatives.
- The conflict has divided residents of Rapa Nui, resulted in a mob beating and a courtroom set on fire, and sparked ongoing investigations by Chile’s public prosecutor’s office.
Rare trees are disappearing as ‘wood pirates’ log Bolivian national parks
- Mara (Swietenia macrophylla), also known as big-leaf mahogany, is a threatened tree species found in western South America. Growing up to 50 meters (165 feet) tall, mara trees can live for more than a century. Its wood is sought-after for the production of high-end furniture and can sell for high prices at the country’s black markets.
- Lured by profit, gangs of armed loggers routine infiltrate Madidi and Amboro national parks and harvest mara trees from deep within their forests. They transport the timber down waterways to cities in Bolivia and across the border to Peru.
- After mara and other trees are cut down, coca crops – from which cocaine is made – are often planted illegally in the new clearings.
- Spread too thin and threatened with violence, park authorities say they’re powerless to stop the onslaught.
Belize officially declares wildlife corridor in key protected area complex
- A wildlife corridor in northern Belize has been officially declared by government order and, together with a system of three nature reserves in what’s known as the country’s “sugar cane belt,” will now be included in a Special Management Area in perpetuity.
- Belize’s Міnіѕtеr оf Аgrісulturе, Fіѕhеrіеѕ, Fоrеѕtrу, thе Еnvіrоnmеnt, Ѕuѕtаіnаblе Dеvеlорmеnt аnd Іmmіgrаtіоn ѕіgnеd іntо lаw аn оrdеr dесlаring thе Nоrtheаѕtеrn Віоlоgісаl Соrrіdоr on Јаnuаrу 17. Тhe lаw went іntо еffесt оn Јаnuаrу 22, according to a press release issued by the government of Belize.
- The 27,000-hectare Belize Northeastern Biological Corridor includes some 13,600 hectares of private lands. It was designed to connect Shipstern Nature Reserve with Freshwater Creek Forest Reserve and Honey Camp National Park, allowing safe passage for iconic wildlife such as jaguars and pumas in a region where more than 10,000 hectares or 25,000 acres of forest have been lost over the past decade.
Liberia expands a key elephant park again, this time with help of locals
- After the 2017 death of a forest ranger during a riot in a key national park, Liberian officials and conservation groups changed their community relations approach. Now they are working together to establish the park’s borders.
- Sapo National Park is one of the most important protected forests in West Africa.
- The park has a troubled past of illicit mining, hunting, and conflict between communities and conservation efforts.
- Now, the Liberian government is trying to work collaboratively with those communities to establish the boundaries of the park after a contested 2003 expansion.
A national park takes shape in Argentina as the forest disappears
- Officially established in October 2014, Argentina’s Impenetrable National Park partially opened to the public in early 2018.
- The park is home to an estimated 600 species of vertebrates including jaguars and giant anteaters. Conservation organizations and Argentina’s National Parks Administration are planning on reintroducing marsh deer to the park, which have been driven to local extinction in most of their Argentinian range.
- Impenetrable National Park is located in the largely semiarid Gran Chaco ecoregion. The Chaco is one of the most deforested areas on the planet, losing more than 2.9 million hectares (7.2 million acres) of its forest between 2010 and 2018. Argentina is home to 60% of the Chaco – but it’s the site of 80% of Chaco deforestation as farmers clear more and more land for cattle and soy.
- Park officials say hunting is also taking a toll on wildlife, and satellite imagery reveals wildfire burned through more than 1,000 hectares of park forest in late 2019.
Coca farms close in on protected areas, isolated tribes in Peruvian Amazon
- A remote region of the Peruvian Amazon is being invaded by farmers who are rapidly clearing mature forests for farms to grow coca.
- The invasions are occurring in the buffer zone of Alto Purús National Park and two reserves for isolated tribes, seriously threatening the Mashco-Piro, Peru’s largest isolated tribe.
- The farmers are from VRAEM, Peru’s largest cocaine-producing region, and are part of a growing movement of coca farmers from the Andean foothills to biologically and culturally sensitive lowlands near protected areas.
- The invasions are occurring in timber concessions and exemplify the problem with Peru’s reliance on timber companies to properly manage remote forests lacking state presence.
Feral horses gallop to the rescue of butterflies in distress
- A new study suggests that returning feral horses to grasslands in Czech Republic could increase populations of some threatened butterfly species.
- The research shows that the horses’ grazing creates and maintains short grasslands that some butterfly species thrive in.
- The research points to the importance of considering the impacts of species introductions on the restoration of natural ecosystems.
‘Timebomb’: Fires devastate tiger and elephant habitat in Sumatra
- Another heavy fire season in Indonesia has taken a toll on the country’s remaining forest. In Sembilang National Park, on the island of Sumatra, fires raged into primary forest that provides vital habitat for critically endangered Sumatran tigers and elephants.
- Satellite data and imagery indicate the fires may have had a big impact on tigers in the park. In total, around 30 percent of tiger habitat in Sembilang burned between August and September. The fires also encroached into the park’s elephant habitat.
- Fires have also reportedly ravaged elephant habitat in Padang Sugihan Sebokor Wildlife Reserve, which lies southeast of Sembilang and serves as a corridor for wild elephants in South Sumatra. One report estimates that half of the reserve has suffered fire damage.
- Researchers say slash-and-burn clearing techniques likely started most of fires in the area, which were then exacerbated by drier-than-usual conditions and underground peat stores left unprotected by policy rollbacks.s
Myanmar risks losing forests to oil palm, but there’s time to pivot
- The Myanmar government has to date handed out more than 400,000 hectares (nearly a million acres) of oil palm concessions to 44 companies, some of it overlapping with proposed national parks.
- But almost 60 percent of the concessions have not been developed, and remain either forested or occupied by non-rubber tree crops, a new study finds.
- The study’s authors say Myanmar could be headed down the same path as Indonesia and Malaysia, two other Southeast Asian countries that sacrificed large swaths of natural forest for oil palm plantations.
- Given the change from a military junta to a democratic government since the concessions were handed out, conservationists say there may an opening now for forest conservation policies.
Reporter Katie Baker details Buzzfeed’s explosive investigation of WWF
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Katie Baker, a reporter for Buzzfeed News investigating allegations of human rights violations and other abuses committed against local indigenous communities by park rangers in Asia and Africa who receive funding from conservation organization WWF.
- Baker and her colleague Tom Warren have written a series of articles detailing the allegations and WWF’s response. In the latest installment, the journalists report that the director and board of WWF were made aware of the abuses by one of their own internal reports more than a year before Buzzfeed broke the story.
- In this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Baker discusses the findings of her investigative reports, what it took to chase this story down, and the impacts she’s seen so far from her reporting.
How Laos lost its tigers
- A new camera trap study finds that tigers vanished from Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area by 2014, their last stand in Laos.
- Leopards were killed off 10 years prior, making these big cats also extinct in Laos.
- Scientists believe it’s most likely that the last tigers and leopards of Laos succumbed to snares, which are proliferating in astounding numbers across Southeast Asian protected areas.
- The Indochinese tiger now only survives in Thailand and Myanmar, and may be on the edge of extinction.
Demand for charcoal threatens the forest of Madagascar’s last hunter-gatherers
- The Mikea, who number around 1,000 people, are facing what many of them say is an existential environmental problem.
- Their ancestral forest in southwestern Madagascar is partly protected inside a national park.
- However, it is rapidly being chopped down to supply a growing demand for charcoal, the country’s primary source of cooking fuel.
- Some Mikea, having lived their entire lives hunting and gathering, are facing a shortage of game and other food and are now considering whether they must abandon the forest, and their way of life, for good.
As the Amazon burns, Colombia’s forests decimated for cattle and coca
- The environmental corridor that connects the Amazon, the Orinoquía and the Andes mountain range is in danger as a result of the ongoing deforestation.
- Tinigua National Natural Park lost 16,000 hectares (39,500 acres) between 2017 and July 2019, almost all of it primary forest, while the other parks also lost significant amounts of forest.
- The analysis identifies the main cause of the deforestation as the conversion of forests to pastures for land grabbing and livestock ranching, by invaders taking advantage of the scant government presence in the region.
Indigenous communities, nat’l parks suffer as Malaysia razes its reserves
- Forest loss appears to be accelerating in peninsular Malaysia in 2019. Much of this deforestation is happening in “permanent forest reserves,” which are supposed to be under official protection. However, Malaysian state governments have the authority to spontaneously degazette forest reserves for development. Sources say this has created a free-for-all, with loggers rushing to clear forest and sell timber.
- Satellite imagery shows logging happening right up to the border of Taman Negara National Park, which lacks the buffer zone typical around national parks in other countries. Researchers say this is likely to have detrimental impacts on the parks’ wildlife.
- Sources on the ground say deforestation is also affecting forest-dependent indigenous communities. Residents of one such community say mining – which often follows on the heels of logging in Malaysia – is also harming them.
- Earlier this year, 15 Batek residents of the village of Kuala Koh died and more than 100 others were hospitalized due to mysterious illnesses. The government claims the deaths were caused by a measles outbreak, but outside experts say extremely high and unhealthy levels of manganese in their drinking water due to nearby mining may also be to blame. Advocates say the loss of their forests make indigenous communities more vulnerable to disease and illness, referring to the deforestation of their homes as “structural genocide.”
Aimed at linking communities, Malaysian highway may damage forests
- Leaders hope that the construction of a road linking the Pan Borneo Highway between the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak will connect remote communities to markets and to each other.
- But conservationists warn that the highway will cut through some of the last remaining dense forest in Sarawak.
- In addition to the challenges of building in a rainy tropical environment, the mountainous terrain will make construction and maintenance difficult, skeptics of the road say.
The Pan Borneo Highway brings wildlife threats to nat’l park doorstep
- The southern terminus of the Pan Borneo Highway in Malaysia extends to the edge of Tanjung Datu National Park in Sarawak.
- The highway’s proponents say the road is already bringing more tourists who are eager to see the park’s wildlife to the adjacent communities, helping to boost the local economy.
- But one of the world’s rarest primates, the Bornean banded langur, resides in the park, raising concerns in the conservation community that increased access could bring poachers into the park.
David Quammen on ecological restoration, emerging diseases, evolutionary science, and more
- Today we speak with award-winning science writer, author, and journalist David Quammen about some of the most promising and fascinating trends in conservation and evolutionary science.
- In a recent piece for National Geographic, where he is a regular contributor, Quammen profiles Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. His 2014 book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, looks at the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases. Quammen’s most recent book, 2018’s The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, explores the revolution in how scientists understand the history of evolution on Earth sparked by the work of Carl Woese.
- David Quammen appears on the Mongabay Newscast to discuss all of the above as well as what gives him hope that biodiversity loss and destruction of the natural world can be halted.
Congo government opens Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to oil exploration
- In 2018, the government of the Republic of Congo opened up several blocks of land for oil exploration overlapping with important peatlands and a celebrated national park.
- According to a government website, the French oil company Total holds the exploration rights for those blocks.
- Conservationists were alarmed that the government would consider opening up parks and peatlands of international importance for oil exploration, while also trying to garner funds for their protection on the world stage.
Agriculture, mining, hunting push critically endangered gorillas to the brink
- Maiko National Park is one of the most logistically challenging parks in the DRC and one of the most biodiverse. It is one of just two national parks in the world known to contain Grauer’s gorilla, a highly endangered and poorly understood eastern gorilla subspecies, and is also home to the endemic okapi and Congo peafowl, as well as forest elephants, leopards, chimpanzees, and giant pangolins.
- The most major threat to gorillas and other wildlife in Maiko is the bushmeat trade, but this is significantly exacerbated by another threat: artisanal mining. The Second Congo War coincided with a demand spike for a mineral called coltan that forms an essential component of all phones, computers, solar panels, and other electronics.
- Outside of the park, however, there is another threat to wildlife: increasing pressure from rising populations. As villages expand, they require more resources and begin to cut into primary forest to make way for subsistence crops. Satellite imagery show that trees are being cut down near Maiko. As the population expands, such habitat degradation will edge closer to the park itself—bringing even more pressure from the bushmeat trade.
- Villages can be a major threat to wildlife, but they also serve as essential allies to conservation work in the DRC. NGOs working to protect wildlife near Maiko are working closely with local communities to help achieve local buy-in and ensure the long-term sustainable development of the region.
Heart of Ecuador’s Yasuni, home to uncontacted tribes, opens for oil drilling
- Ecuador’s environment ministry has approved the environmental assessment plans to drill for oil in Ishpingo, the last field of the controversial ITT (Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini) project in Yasuni National Park.
- Saving Yasuni from oil extraction has long been a priority for conservationists, since former president Rafael Correa launched the ITT initiative in 2007, asking for international donations in return for keeping oil in the ground. The initiative failed in 2013.
- Ishpingo is the most controversial of the three ITT fields as it overlaps with the Intangible Zone, home to two uncontacted indigenous communities, the Tagaeri and Taromenane; the government claims it will not expand into this area.
- The Ecuadoran government also signed a new decree that now allows oil platforms to be constructed within the Intangible Zone’s buffer area, which was previously forbidden.
National parks: Serving humanity’s well-being as much as nature’s
- A new study finds that living near a protected area in the developing world decreases poverty and increases childhood health.
- Parks with tourism or multi-use were the best at delivering benefits to local populations.
- There is an untold part of this story: conflict with wildlife was not incorporated into the study.
Fire, cattle, cocaine: Deforestation spikes in Guatemalan national park
- Laguna del Tigre, Guatemala’s largest national park, provides habitat for an estimated 219 bird species, 97 butterflies, 38 reptiles and 120 mammals, and is also home to ancient Mayan ruins. But conservationists and archeologists say this biological and cultural wealth is threatened by high levels of deforestation in the park.
- Between 2001 and 2018, Laguna del Tigre lost nearly 30 percent of its tree cover, and preliminary data for 2019 indicate the rate of loss is set to rise dramatically this year. Fire is the dominant driver of deforestation in the park, and is used to clear the land of forest and make it more farmable. Satellite imagery shows vast swaths of recently burned land where old growth rainforest stood less than 20 years ago.
- Authorities blame residents within the park for much of the destruction, as well as industrial cattle operations and cocaine traffickers who set up airstrips on cleared land within the park. But community members have defended what they say is their right to live on the land and to use its resources, in some cases even resorting to violence.
- Wildlife Conservation Society, along with the National Council for Protected Areas, have begun working on peace-building initiatives for the area with international agencies and organizations in the hopes of bridging the gap between environmental protection and human rights. But a lot of work remains.
Why more women should be included in the leadership of Virunga National Park (commentary)
- Since 2014, the number of female park guards serving in Virunga National Park, located in war-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been gradually increasing. Today, 29 women serve in the ranks of this 731-strong force.
- There has been a flurry of international media attention to the women who chose the ranger profession. But so far, nobody has looked at how the presence of these women affects the functioning of the ranger force, and the relations between the park and the population living in its vicinity.
- While gender equality is not a guarantee for improving park-people relations, we believe the integration of women in Virunga’s administrative and security structures needs to be reinforced, in particular at the higher echelons. Gender equality is not only of inherent importance, but — as our research indicates — also corresponds to a strong demand among the population living around the park.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Gold, wood, religion: Threats to Colombia’s isolated indigenous peoples
- The Yurí and the Passé are the two indigenous tribes identified as living in a natural state in the Colombian Amazon. There are indications that some 15 other such tribes exist in the region.
- Mercury from illegal gold mining contaminates the rivers surrounding the protected area where the Yurí and the Passé live in isolation.
- In addition to the contamination, mafia groups and attempts by evangelists at making contact threaten the isolated tribes.
Ecuador’s isolated indigenous tribes: Stuck between oil and state neglect
- Following the dissolution of Ecuador’s Ministry of Justice, responsibility for the country’s isolated indigenous peoples changed hands.
- It’s the latest in a series of shake-ups, yet several experts said the government has not been able to adequately protect vulnerable isolated tribes.
- They said the oil industry’s advance into the rainforest remains the greatest threat to these tribes.
Community buy-in stamps out elephant poaching in Zambian park
- No elephants were poached in Zambia’s North Luangwa National Park in 2018, and the surrounding area had a 50 percent decrease in poached carcasses found.
- The North Luangwa Conservation Programme, a partnership between the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the country’s Department of Parks and Wildlife, has been around since the late 1980s and has focused its efforts on community involvement in stopping poachers from going after elephants, rhinos and other wildlife in the park.
- Staff of the program say the participation of the communities living near the park’s borders is critical to protecting the elephants of North Luangwa.
- The broader Luangwa ecosystem is home to more than 63 percent of Zambia’s elephants.
Human pressure on the Serengeti’s fringes threatens the wildlife within
- Spanning more than 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles), the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in East Africa is one of the largest protected areas in the world.
- A new study shows that human activities at the edges of the ecosystem are affecting wildlife migrations and pushing the animals deeper into the core of the protected area.
- The displaced wildlife have less available land, triggering a cascade of events impacting soils and vegetation, putting the whole ecosystem at risk.
- The study authors are calling for broader conservation strategies that address not only protected areas, but also their surroundings and local communities.
Scientists urge overhaul of the world’s parks to protect biodiversity
- A team of scientists argues that we should evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas based on the outcomes for biodiversity, not simple the area of land or ocean they protect.
- In a paper published April 11 in the journal Science, they outline the weaknesses of Aichi Biodiversity Target 11, which set goals of protecting 17 percent of the earth’s surface and 10 percent of its oceans by 2020.
- They propose monitoring the outcomes of protected areas that measure changes in biodiversity in comparison to agreed-upon “reference” levels and then using those figures to determine how well they are performing.
Indonesia investigates mass shark deaths at captive-breeding facility
- An investigation is underway after 127 sharks died at a captive-breeding facility in a marine national park in Indonesia.
- Experts suspect poor water quality may have triggered the die-off.
- The breeding facility, operating since 1960 and a key attraction inside Karimunjawa National Park, was shut in June 2018 after a visitor swimming in one of the floating cages was bitten by a shark.
Study identifies climate-resilient trees to help orangutan conservation
- Once written off as lost cause for conservation, Indonesia’s Kutai National Park supports one of the last intact forest canopies on Borneo’s eastern coast, a habitat for the critically endangered East Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus morio).
- An IUCN study funded through the Indianapolis Zoological Society has identified tree species native to Kutai National Park that are resilient to climate change and support orangutan populations.
- Climate change has become an emerging threat that is likely to intensify drought conditions and wildfires. Currently, land settlement and human-caused fires pose the greatest existential threat to the park’s ecosystem functions and biodiversity.
- The study authors recommended that the fire-resistant native trees they identified in the study be planted in buffer zones around fire-prone areas. They hope the study will help spur research to enable forest restoration in other parts of the world.
New map shows every forest matters in helping save the Javan leopard
- A new study outlines where Javan leopards live – and where suitable habitat remains on the densely inhabited island.
- National parks remain the most stable habitat for the critically endangered species, but the study finds that half its potential habitat is in unprotected areas.
- Partnering with companies and local people is necessary to keep Java’s last big cat from going extinct.
DRC’s Virunga to welcome visitors again after 8-month closure
- Escalating violence in mid-2018, resulting in the deaths of seven park rangers, forced the closure of Virunga National Park to visitors.
- The park is known for its diverse wildlife, especially its mountain gorillas, as well as its active volcano, but its location in eastern DRC is one of the most volatile regions on earth.
- After assessing the security of the park, officials will reopen stable areas for visitors on Feb. 15 interested in trekking to see the gorillas and to visit the rim of the volcano.
Wildlife rangers in DRC park report waning motivation, job satisfaction
- Surveys of more than 60 rangers in Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo cite poor salaries, few chances for advancement, and security concerns as reasons for their low satisfaction with their jobs.
- The authors of the study, published in the journal Oryx, believe that the rangers’ discontentment leads to waning motivation in protecting the park and its wildlife, which includes the critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla.
- Improved conditions, in the form of better salaries, opportunities for promotion, and better support from the judicial and legal authorities, could translate into improved protections for the park, the researchers write.
Cocaine blamed for rising deforestation in Peru’s Bahuaja-Sonene National Park
- The cultivation of coca is a burgeoning business in southern Peru, where even forests in protected area are being cleared to make room for coca fields.
- Coca is the plant from which cocaine is produced and is a more lucrative and dependable crop than coffee, which has been a staple crop in the region for years.
- Satellite data and a survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show increased clearing in and the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park due primarily to coca farming.
Republic of Congo names new national park, home to gorillas, elephants
- The new Ogooué-Leketi National Park is the Republic of Congo’s fifth national park.
- It borders Batéké Plateau National Park in neighboring Gabon, and together the two parks form a transboundary protected area covering more than 5,500 square kilometers (2,120 square miles).
- The official designation of Ogooué-Leketi National Park comes after three logging concessions that overlapped with the proposed park area were finally closed down.
- All of the rights-holding communities that live close to the Ogooué-Leketi National Park were involved in the process of creating the protected area, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo program.
Haiti may lose all primary forest by 2035, mass extinction underway
- Analysis of satellite imagery and aerial photographs indicate that all of Haiti’s remaining primary forest will disappear in less than two decades if current deforestation rates continue. Results indicate primary forest cover in Haiti shrank from 4.4 percent in 1988 to just 0.32 percent in 2016, and that 42 of Haiti’s 50 largest mountains have lost all of their primary forest cover.
- These forests are home to endangered animals found nowhere else in the world; researchers say the country is already experiencing a mass extinction event due to habitat loss.
- Deforestation-intensified flooding has also been implicated in thousands of human deaths.
- Researchers say Haiti’s forest loss is driven largely by charcoal production and agriculture.
Peru seizes plane with 30kg of cocaine in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park
- Last month, an aircraft was intercepted in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park by the Anti-Drug Directorate of the National Police of Peru. It was carrying multiple passengers, who engaged in gunfire with police.
- A bag containing 30 kilograms of alkaloid cocaine found inside the plane.
- Cocaine is produced from the leaves of coca plants. Bahuaja-Sonene has the largest area of illegal coca cultivation of any protected area, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with at least 118 hectares (292 acres) of coca grown within the park.
Camera trap photos confirm discovery of lowland bongo in Uganda for first time
- Endemic to the tropical forests of Central and West Africa, the lowland bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus eurycerus) is known for its red-brown coat with white-yellow stripes and long, lightly spiraled horns. Adult male bongos can stand as tall as 1.3 meters (or over 4 feet) at the shoulders and weigh as much as 800 pounds.
- Scientists with the UK-based Chester Zoo say that the mostly nocturnal ungulate was captured by motion-sensor camera traps in the lowland rainforests of Semuliki National Park in southwest Uganda, where the East African country borders the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
- The western or lowland bongo, one of two recognized subspecies of bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus), is listed as Near-Threatened on the IUCN Red List. The subspecies faces ongoing population declines due to habitat loss, hunting for meat, and trophy hunting, threats that continue to increase as human settlements and commercial forestry expand ever-farther into their range.
Politics and peace: The fate of Colombia’s forests (commentary)
- Juan Manuel Santos will be forever remembered as the president who ended one of the world’s longest armed conflicts, establishing a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016.
- While the peace accords have shaped his image at home and abroad, they do not represent his entire presidential legacy. In addition to lowering the domestic poverty, unemployment, and murder rates, Santos advanced the country’s environmental agenda during his two terms. This should not be undervalued.
- Deforestation in the post-conflict era has grown at an alarming rate. Rather than a policy solution, Santos’ environmental legacy should be viewed as an initial step in securing the fate of Colombia’s forests.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Scientists, conservationists: Give Nobel Peace Prize to Jane Goodall
- Scientists and conservationists argue that primatologist Jane Goodall should receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
- Goodall’s groundbreaking research uncovered startling revelations, including tool use by chimpanzees, that blurred the lines between humans and animals.
- Goodall, a U.N. Messenger of Peace, now travels around the world to encourage living in harmony with the natural world.
Latam Eco Review: Kissable sharks and spectacled bears
The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam, followed a new green-eyed shark species in Belize, salmon farms in Patagonia, blast fishing in Peru, a cocaine-laden plane in a Peruvian park, and an Andean bear mystery, also in Peru. Belize’s tiny sixgill shark species at risk “A little shark so adorable, you want […]
Latam Eco Review: Shark ceviche, bat-friendly tequila, and protein-rich worms
Recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, revealed Peruvians’ hidden shark diet, new species in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Park, dire predictions from Mexico’s “Batman,” and more. Peruvians are eating shark and don’t know it Three out of four Peruvians recently surveyed were found to have eaten shark meat without knowing it. The problem stems […]
Traditional groups sowing sustainable crops could save Venezuelan park
- Starting in 2009, Afro-Venezuelan and Indigenous peoples and Phynatura, an NGO, signed a series of conservation agreements which are helping safeguard 570 squares miles of largely pristine forest in the Venezuelan Amazon south of the Orinoco River from illegal mining, timber harvesting and wildlife poaching. In 2017, that area was absorbed into Caura National Park.
- The new park conserves the region’s biodiversity and forests, but its founding didn’t automatically protect the ancestral homelands of the indigenous people living there. However, these 52 indigenous communities in El Caura are claiming a legal right to continue to live and pursue sustainable livelihoods within the park. The government has yet to grant their claim.
- Some of these traditional communities are involved in the sustainable agroforestry livelihood projects, with a variety of innovative crops being grown. Agroforestry is seen by local people as offering an alternative income over mining and deforestation.
- Among non-timber crops grown are tonka (a bean used as a flavoring and in cosmetics), quina (also known as cinchona bark, formerly used to treat malaria and now a common ingredient in cocktails), and copaiba oil (a folk medicinal credited with anti-inflammatory qualities). Cocoa, to be made into fine chocolates, and orchids are included among potential exports.
Latam Eco Review: Black market jaguars, freed green macaws
- Here are the recent top stories from Mongabay’s Latin America bureau, Mongabay Latam.
How a national reserve stopped the extinction of the Peruvian vicuña
- In the 1960s, the total number of vicuñas in Peru was approximately 5,000.
- The community of Lucanas was able to overcome violence from internal armed conflicts, and now those in the community use vicuña fur from Pampa Galeras National Reserve.
- Every year, the Lucanas community exports 1,000 kilograms (about 2,200 pounds) of vicuña fur.
- The National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP) will give a “green seal” to the fur sheared off the vicuñas by the community for their outstanding conservation practices.
Conservation groups herald protection of tiger habitat in Malaysia
- The state government of Terengganu has set aside more than 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) for critically endangered Malayan tigers and other wildlife in Peninsular Malaysia.
- The state’s chief minister said the newly created Lawit-Cenana State Park’s high density of threatened species made the area a priority for protection.
- The park is home to 291 species of birds and 18 species of mammals, including elephants, tapirs and pangolins.
Land hoarding: what Colombia’s new administration has inherited
- Local authorities say that they are no longer as trusting of the actions suggested by the federal government.
- Humberto Sánchez, the mayor of San Vicente del Caguán, says that meetings carried out to stop the problem are completely useless.
- San Vicente del Caguán is the most deforested municipality in Colombia.
Fires tear through East Java park, threatening leopard habitat
- Authorities in East Java, Indonesia, are trying to stop a wildfire from spreading into core zone of the Coban Wisula forest, home to Javan leopards.
- The fire is burning within Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, a major tourist attraction. An iconic landscape in the park, known as Teletubbies Hill, has already gone up in flames.
- A local NGO is monitoring the situation to make sure none of the leopards are flushed out of their habitat and into contact with humans, which could turn violent.
Cheap prices lead to more exotic pets in the wild, research finds
- New research shows that exotic amphibians and reptiles sold inexpensively as pets are more likely to end up in the wild, where they can pose problems for native wildlife.
- The authors of the study believe that many pet owners may not fully understand the responsibility of owning these animals, some of which can grow to large sizes and live for decades.
- They suggest that limiting the numbers of certain species popular as pets could help limit their often-destructive impact on ecosystems.
Colombia’s new president faces daunting environmental challenges
- Earlier this month, Iván Duque succeeded Manuel Santos as Colombia’s president.
- Experts highlight the legacy of President Juan Manuel Santos in the declaration and expansion of protected areas and his attempt to strengthen the Ministry of the Environment.
- Among the issues that await the next administration are high rates of deforestation, particularly in the Amazon, and a reduced environmental sector budget.
- Duque will be tasked with managing the tensions between conservation and extraction policies, reforming local environmental authorities, stopping deforestation, and establishing an effective policy for the sustainable use of forests.
Poachers caught on video killing mother bear and cubs at den in Alaska
- Two hunters allegedly killed a female bear and her cubs at the animals’ den in April, in violation of hunting laws.
- The mother bear was part of a wildlife study and wore a tracking collar.
- As part of the study, a video camera had been set up near the den and captured the hunters’ alleged actions.
- The U.S. Humane Society says proposed changes to federal hunting laws that would make killing bears in their dens legal are “cruel and unsporting,” while several hunting groups argue that the law changes are necessary to stop the federal government’s overreach into Alaska’s wildlife management.
Komodo protesters say no to development in the dragons’ den
- Two private developers are set to build a restaurant and accommodation on islands that are home to the rare and threatened Komodo dragon in Indonesia.
- Residents have protested the plans, however, saying the giant lizards’ island habitat should be kept in pristine condition.
- They have also questioned the government’s commitment to the conservation of the dragons and their own livelihoods.
- For its part, the government says the developments will have a minimal footprint and will boost tourism revenue.
Colombia: Govt rushes to save national park from rampant deforestation
- Reports find more than 3 percent of Tinigua’s forest cover was cleared between February and April 2018. Officials worry the situation will worsen in the near future.
- The Secretary of Environment of the Colombian region of Meta says that the government and other entities are preparing combat deforestation.
- Tinigua Park is the only place in Colombia that connects the Orinoquía, the Andes and the Amazon. The park serves as a corridor for animals such as jaguars, mountain lions and brown woolly monkeys.
Camera trap videos help protect biodiversity of Bigal River Biological Reserve in Ecuador
- Bigal River Biological Reserve is located in the southern buffer zone of Ecuador’s Sumaco Napo-Galeras National Park, a less-explored national park that the biological reserve helps to protect, according to Thierry Garcia of the Sumac Muyu Foundation, which founded and manages the reserve.
- As part of its Bigal River Conservation Project, the Sumac Muyu Foundation has maintained camera traps in the reserve since 2014 and has collected hundreds of hours of footage showing big mammals like jaguars and tapirs as well as rare birds and other species going about their business in the foothill forests.
- The main goals of the camera trap program run by the Sumac Muyu Foundation include documenting the mammals present in the reserve and which parts of the reserve they tend to roam, as well as monitoring those mammal populations and studying variations in their behavior due to natural forest dynamics or human pressures.
Madagascar proposes paying illegal loggers to audit or buy their rosewood
- In June, the World Bank facilitated a workshop to discuss what Madagascar should do with its stockpiles of illegally logged rosewood.
- Madagascar has been grappling with the question for years, but has been unable to make a proper inventory of the stockpiled wood or control illegal exports.
- The rosewood could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars on the international market, but the country cannot sell it until it shows progress in enforcing its own environmental laws.
- At the workshop, Madagascar’s government proposed a radical solution: paying loggers for access to their illicit stockpiles in order to keep tabs on the wood, or even buying the wood back from them directly.
A ‘perfect policy storm’ cuts puma numbers by almost half near Jackson, Wyoming
- A 14-year study following 134 tagged mountain lions north of Jackson, Wyoming, found a 48 percent reduction in their numbers.
- The researchers found that the combination of the reintroduction of wolves and increases in elk and mountain lion hunting led to the precipitous drop.
- Lead study author and Panthera biologist Mark Elbroch recommends suspending puma hunting for three years in the region to allow the population to recover.
Latam Eco Review: Witchcraft and wildlife trafficking in Peru
Among the most read stories at our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week were articles about a hydropower project in one of Bolivia’s most diverse protected areas; Colombian Air Force drones that revealed alarming deforestation in Tinigua Park; and wildlife trafficking and witchcraft in Peru. Bolivia’s Ivirizu hydroelectric project threatens the biodiversity of Carrasco National […]
In Vietnam, cable car plans continue to threaten important cave system
- Once construction is finished, the cable car could carry thousands of tourists to Son Doong cave every day.
- Currently, fewer than 800 people visit the caves every year through sustainable eco-tourism company Oxalis.
- There is also growing concern that a cable car could irreparably damage the area’s primary forests.
- An online petition that’s part of the campaign against the development has garnered about 170,000 signatures.
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