topic: Parks

topic: Parks

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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.

As Kathmandu’s birds get used to humans, biodiversity suffers, studies show
- Rapid urbanization in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, has led to changes in bird behavior, with urban birds showing increased tolerance toward humans.
- The urban sprawl has caused habitat loss, with the city’s built-up area expanding by 112% between 1989 and 2019, largely at the expense of open green spaces and trees crucial for bird nesting.
- Birds such as the house crow have adapted by using urban materials, such as wires and human clothes, for nesting, while other species have become scarce or disappeared entirely from urban areas.
- Despite government efforts, researchers highlight the need for more native trees in urban areas to preserve bird habitats and promote biodiversity.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Kenyan baobab trees uprooted for export to Georgia; critics call it ‘biopiracy’
- Georgia’s former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has built a dendrological park that is home to numerous species of giant trees from around the world, as well as exotic birds; now, several living baobab trees in Kenya’s Kilifi region have been uprooted and prepared for export to the park in Georgia.
- The plan to export baobab trees has sparked a public outcry in Kenya and accusations of biopiracy; some baobab species endemic to Madagascar are already endangered or critically endangered, and research shows that the type of baobabs that grow in Kenya face significant threats from climate change.
- Local farmers in Kilifi reportedly were offered cash payments for the trees, which can help them meet their daily needs; while baobab fruits can be sold for use in snacks and other foods, the returns aren’t as much as the farmers could earn by signing a contract to have the trees uprooted and moved.

Soil carbon in urban parks important in fighting climate change, study shows
- A recent study shows that urban parks and green spaces throughout the world have a similar amount of carbon stored in their soils as in natural regions close to cities, which means urban green spaces can be important to global carbon sequestration and mitigating the potential effects of climate change.
- Soil microbes in urban green spaces play a vital role in carbon storage, but that carbon is also vulnerable to loss through microbial respiration in an increasingly warmer world; researchers emphasize the need for greater understanding of the soil microbiome in urban policies and planning.
- For context, Suriname has 93% forest cover nationwide and is often referred to as the world’s “greenest” country — but the capital city, Paramaribo, lacks a structural approach to urban greenery.
- Researchers conducted a project to promote a greener and more livable Paramaribo, with the aim of mitigating the effects of climate change and raising awareness among citizens.

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.

Award-winning, Indigenous peace park dragged into fierce conflict in Myanmar
- Two years since the Feb 1, 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Indigenous activists continue their struggle to protect the Salween Peace Park, an Indigenous Karen-led protected area, from conflict.
- The park was subject to military-led deadly airstrikes in March 2021 and renewed violence in the vicinity of the park continues to force people to flee their homes into the forest.
- The Salween Peace Park was launched in 2018 and encompasses 5,485 square kilometers (nearly 1.4 million acres) of the Salween River Basin in one of Southeast Asia’s most biologically rich ecoregions.
- With many examples around the world, peace parks seek to preserve zones of biodiversity and cultural heritage using conservation to promote peacebuilding. The SPP includes more than 350 villages, 27 community forests, four forest reserves, and three wildlife sanctuaries.

How you save the world with three words (commentary)
- David Gadsden, a geographer with more than two decades of experience applying geospatial technology to address complex humanitarian and conservation challenges, argues that the “30 by 30” conservation target could catalyze progress on a range of challenging issues.
- Progress will be enabled and accelerated by new mapping tools and technologies that are increasing the accessibility and utility of geospatial data that informs decision-making in protecting and restoring ecosystems.
- “There is so much data now — from sensors, from satellites, from commercial operations — that many questions about impact that could hardly be asked 20 years ago can now be answered with a few clicks And all that data can be layered onto the same map, so everyone with an interest is working from the same framework,” writes Gadsden. “Tools that used to be highly specialized — exclusively in the hands of data professionals — are now instantly available. They’re democratizing.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Despite pledges, obstacles stifle community climate and conservation funding
- As science has increasingly shown the importance of conservation led by Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), donors have begun to steer funding toward supporting the work these groups do.
- In 2021, during last year’s COP26 U.N. climate conference, private and government donors committed $1.7 billion to secure the land rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
- But a recent assessment of the first year of the pledge shows that little of the funding goes directly to them, often going first through international NGOs, consultancies, development banks and other intermediaries.
- Most aid intended to support IPLC-led conservation work follows this path. Now, however, donors and IPLC leaders are looking for ways to ease the flow of funding and channel more of it to work that addresses climate change and the global loss of biodiversity.

Breeding success raises hopes for future of endangered African penguin
- Two African penguin chicks have hatched at a nature reserve in South Africa where conservationists have been working for years to entice the endangered birds to breed.
- The colony was abandoned more than 10 years ago after a caracal killed a number of penguins.
- The recent hatching comes at a time when survival prospects for Africa’s only resident penguin species look grim, due mainly to declining food stocks.
- But encouraging new colonies at sites close to abundant food sources could help to bring the species back from the brink.

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.

Small conservation areas provide large benefits for biodiversity (commentary)
- Small conservation areas are disproportionately important to maintaining biodiversity, according to a recent study.
- Many small patches, with the same total area as a few large areas, are less likely to see a complete local loss of a species.
- Such small conservation areas are extra important near urban areas, and are also of great benefit to people living in those areas, a new op-ed explains.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

First Nation reclaims territory by declaring Indigenous protected area in Canada
- The Mamalilikulla First Nation has declared part of its traditional territory on British Columbia’s Central Coast that it lost to colonialism to be an Indigenous protected and conserved area (IPCA).
- The Nation views the declaration to be a step toward sovereignty and is seeking “co-governance” with Canadian federal and provincial governments; the latter typically talk of “co-management,” which would retain settler authority.
- Canada and British Columbia have their own policies for protecting nature, but some conservationists and Indigenous groups argue that Indigenous peoples are better at sustainable management. The area of the IPCA has been degraded by logging and fishing.
- The Mamalilikulla have a plan to restore the land and sea and are calling for a five-year moratorium on logging and immediate protection of a marine area called Hoeya Sill, home to rare corals and sponges.

Oil exploration in DR Congo peatland risks forests, climate and local communities
- The Democratic Republic of Congo is putting 16 oil exploration blocks up for auction, including nine in the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale.
- Environmentalists warn that oil exploration and infrastructure for production could release huge amounts of carbon stored in the peatland and threaten the rights of local communities.
- The Congolese government says it needs to exploit its natural resources in order to generate income to develop the country, much as countries in other parts of the world have done before it.

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.

Greek conservationists collaborate to protect endemic species in face of climate change
- Across Greece, conservation NGOs are working in close collaboration to study and save numerous endemic species found nowhere else.
- Often working in areas famed for Greek mythology like Mount Olympus and Mount Oiti, the plants and animals now need what seems like divine intervention to survive the ravages brought by climate change.
- Why so many endemic species? Greece has “an amazing diversity of climates and also soils. This creates an amazing diversity of life,” one conservationist tells Mongabay.

To save the oceans, we need MPAs that emphasize actual protection of marine ecosystems (commentary)
- Saving the ocean is possible but it requires getting serious about stopping its destruction, not everywhere, but especially in designated places called marine protected areas, a new op-ed argues.
- But for MPAs to work, “protected” has to mean what it says. There should be no halfway measures, no empty promises, no conservation that happens only on paper.
- There have been several opportunities in recent months to take action on such measures, including at the current UN Environment Assembly, which ends on March 2.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

A conservation paradigm based on Indigenous values in DR Congo (commentary)
- Colonialism and the gazettement of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern DRC led to the evictions of Batwa Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and a number of human rights abuses that continue today.
- To seek to address historical and contemporary injustices, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is emphasizing Indigenous values and entering a partnership with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) to take actions that ensure that the rights of the Batwa peoples are respected and protected.
- This commentary is written by the Executive Director of Rights + Communities at the WCS, and a Congolese Lawyer and former Chairperson of the U.N. Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Elephant protector and fossil hunter Richard Leakey leaves outsized legacy in Kenya
- Famed paleontologist and conservationist Richard Leakey died on January 2nd, 2022 at the age of 77.
- Leakey made his mark on the field of wildlife conservation after he assumed the helm of Kenya’s Wildlife Service in 1989.
- Leakey cracked down aggressively on poachers and fortified the country’s national parks, arresting the ongoing decline in wildlife populations in the country and revitalizing the tourism sector.
- But his approach proved controversial, leading him to step down from the head of the agency in 1994. Leakey continued to be active in conservation and paleontology through the last years of his life.

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.

Congo Peatlands

In 2017 a team of Congolese and British scientists discover that a sprawling wetland known as the Cuvette Centrale spanning the border between the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) actually contains a massive amount of peat. Their research revealed that these peatlands are the largest and most intact across the world’s […]
The past, present and future of the Congo peatlands: 10 takeaways from our series

This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay published a four-part series on the peatlands of the Congo Basin. Only in 2017 did a team of Congolese and British scientists discover that a […]
Carbon and communities: The future of the Congo Basin peatlands
- Scientific mapping in 2017 revealed that the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale in the Congo Basin are the largest and most intact in the world’s tropics.
- That initial work, first published in the journal Nature, was just the first step, scientists say, as work continues to understand how the peatlands formed, what threats they face from the climate and industrial uses like agriculture and logging, and how the communities of the region appear to be coexisting sustainably.
- Researchers say investing in studying and protecting the peatlands will benefit the global community as well as people living in the region because the Cuvette Centrale holds a vast repository of carbon.
- Congolese researchers and leaders say they are eager to safeguard the peatlands for the benefit of everyone, but they also say they need support from abroad to do so.

Holding agriculture and logging at bay in the Congo peatlands
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin are perhaps the most intact in the tropics, but threats from logging, agriculture and extractive industries could cause their rapid degradation, scientists say.
- In 2021, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced that it was planning to end a moratorium on the issuance of logging concessions that had been in place for nearly two decades.
- The move raised concerns among conservation groups, who say the moratorium should remain in place to protect the DRC’s portion of the world’s second-largest rainforest.
- Today, timber concession boundaries overlap with the peatlands, and though some companies say they won’t cut trees growing on peat, environmental advocates say that any further issuance of logging concessions in the DRC would be irresponsible.

Layers of carbon: The Congo Basin peatlands and oil
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin may be sitting on top of a pool of oil, though exploration has yet to confirm just how big it may be.
- Conservationists and scientists argue that the carbon contained in this England-size area of peat, the largest in the tropics, makes keeping them intact more valuable, not to mention the habitat and resources they provide for the region’s wildlife and people.
- Researchers calculate that the peatlands contain 30 billion metric tons of carbon, or about the amount humans produce in three years.
- As the governments of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo work to develop their economies, they, along with many policymakers worldwide, argue that the global community has a responsibility to help fund the protection of the peatlands to keep that climate-warming carbon locked away.

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.

The ‘idea’: Uncovering the peatlands of the Congo Basin
- In 2017, a team of scientists from the U.K. and the Republic of Congo announced the discovery of a massive peatland the size of England in the Congo Basin.
- Sometimes called the Cuvette Centrale, this peatland covers 145,529 square kilometers (56,189 square miles) in the northern Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and holds about 20 times as much carbon as the U.S. releases from burning fossil fuels in a year.
- Today, the Congo Basin peatlands are relatively intact while supporting nearby human communities and a variety of wildlife species, but threats in the form of agriculture, oil and gas exploration and logging loom on the horizon.
- That has led scientists, conservationists and governments to look for ways to protect and better understand the peatlands for the benefit of the people and animals they support and the future of the global climate.

The last spotted ground thrush on Malawi’s lonely mountain
- An expedition to Malawi’s highest mountain sought to confirm the presence of a rare subspecies of spotted ground thrush, last spotted in 2005.
- Two birds and one nest with baby birds were found in the Chisongeli forest, the biggest intact block of Afromontane rainforest left in Malawi, which experts say lacks adequate protection.
- Illegal logging and snares threaten the birds and other endemic wildlife in the Chisongeli forest, with the ground thrush expedition finding 68 hunting snares in just one 100-meter (330-foot) transect.
- The researchers say complete protection of the forest is needed to save the last spotted ground thrush and other endemic wildlife on Malawi’s Mount Mulanje.

30×30 is not a one-size-fits-all biodiversity target (commentary)
- This week, delegates meeting at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) issued the Kunming Declaration to lay the foundation for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) to reverse the global extinction crisis.
- A coalition of governments and NGOs are pushing for the inclusion of the “30×30” target to protect 30% of Earth by 2030. But Karl Burkart, Deputy Director of One Earth, says that “30×30 is not a one-size-fits-all goal” — some countries will need to go beyond that target to stave off mass extinction.
- Burkart cites the concept of a “Global Safety Net” — articulated in a 2020 paper of which he was a co-author — to make the case for “a ‘common but differentiated’ approach wherein each country sets a national target based on the available inventory of natural lands within its boundaries, with all countries striving collectively to protect a full 50% of the terrestrial surface.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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

African Parks secures $100M for conservation in Africa
- African Parks has secured a $100M commitment from the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation to support protected areas in Africa.
- The money will be split between a $75 million endowment and near-term support for parks under African Parks’ management.
- The pledge is the largest-ever gift to African Parks’s endowment.
- African Parks is a South Africa-based conservation group that manages 19 protected areas covering 14.7 million hectares in several African nations.

Shoe-leather science helps quadruple protected area in Peruvian Amazon
- Rapid biological and social inventories produced by a team from Chicago’s Field Museum were the basis for new areas dedicated to conservation in Peru, a new study shows.
- In the Amazonian department of Loreto, territory covered under some category of conservation went from 2 million hectares to 8.5 million hectares (4.9 million acres to 21 million acres).
- The study found that advances in protecting Loreto allowed not only the region, but also Peru as a whole, to meet the Aichi Goal of getting 17% of the country’s territory under some category of protection.

Road construction imperils tree kangaroo recovery in PNG
- The Torricelli Mountains of northwestern Papua New Guinea are home to a wide variety of wildlife, including three species of tree kangaroos.
- Recently, construction of a road that could potentially be used by loggers has pushed closer to the border of a proposed conservation area that, if gazetted, would be the country’s second-largest.
- The Tenkile Conservation Alliance, a Papua New Guinean NGO, has worked with communities for around two decades in the Torricellis with the goal of improving the lives of humans and wildlife living in the mountains.
- Now, the group’s leaders fear that the road could jeopardize a tenuous recovery by several of the area’s threatened tree kangaroo species.

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.

Scientists call for solving climate and biodiversity crises together
- A new report from United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) highlights the importance of confronting climate change and biodiversity loss together.
- Global climate change and the unprecedented loss of species currently underway result from a similar suite of human-driven causes, the report’s authors write.
- As a result, solutions that take both issues into account have the best chance of success, they conclude.

Can Biden’s 30×30 plan put U.S. on a positive conservation track?
- On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we discuss the 30x30 conservation plan recently released by the administration of US President Joe Biden and its potential to transform the way the US conserves its natural resources.
- Joe Walston, executive vice president of global conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society, tells us that the Biden 30x30 plan has been welcomed by environmentalists, even though many important details of the plan still need to be hammered out, and that it sends a signal to the rest of the world that the US is once again looking to lead the world in conservation.
- Sarah Derouin, a Mongabay contributor and a producer of the weekly radio show and podcast "Big Picture Science," tells us about two agroforestry programs that are already changing the way food is produced in the US and how agroforestry might help meet the 30x30 targets.

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.

An engaged society is key for the future of African conservation, says WWF Africa’s Alice Ruhweza
- Protecting Africa’s charismatic megafauna often come first to mind when Westerners think about conservation in Africa, but this is a narrow view that doesn’t capture the range of issues involved in conservation efforts across the continent.
- Alice Ruhweza, the regional director for Africa for WWF, says conservation in Africa is about about ecosystems and people: “As the home of humankind, Africa and its ecosystems have evolved together with people. When we talk about conservation in Africa we are really talking about people and nature.”
- Ruhweza says that growing recognition of this connection is driving “a shift to a more people-centered and rights-based conservation,” including within WWF.
- Ruhweza spoke about these issues and more during a recent interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

New Australian marine parks protect area twice Great Barrier Reef’s size
- The Australian government has moved to create two new marine protected areas that cover an expanse of ocean twice the size of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
- The two parks will be established around Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean to the northwest of continental Australia.
- The new parks, which cover to 740,000 square kilometers (286,000 square miles) of ocean, raise the protected share of Australia’s oceans from 37% to 45%.
- The decision was immediately welcomed by conservation groups.

In the Honduran Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an illegal road for cattle and drugs
- Multiple sources, backed by satellite data, say an illegal road is being cut through the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Sources say the road will facilitate land invasions into the biosphere and is likely to be used as a drug-trafficking route.
- The road has created divisions between Indigenous groups, with the Bakinasta Miskito denouncing its presence and demanding the government step in to halt it.
- Despite knowing about the road for more than a year, the Honduran government has not taken definitive action to enforce the law.

Biden lays out vision for protecting 30% of US land, waters by 2030
- Today the Biden Administration formally laid out its vision for conserving 30 percent of America’s land and waters by 2030.
- The report, released by the Departments of Commerce, Interior, and Agriculture, includes few specifics but conceptualizes how the U.S. can better protect and restore biodiversity, improve the resilience of ecosystems to climate change, and increase the accessibility of the nation’s parks and wilderness areas.
- The “America the Beautiful” report envisions farms and ranches functioning as wildlife corridors and carbon sinks, fishery management practices that stabilize fish stocks, and a job creation plan through a Civilian Climate Corps akin to the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s.
- It also proposes creating more “safe outdoor opportunities in nature-deprived communities” and supporting tribally-led conservation and restoration initiatives as well as increasing access for outdoor recreation, including hunting, fishing, and hiking across public lands that are currently inaccessible.

Rewilding public lands in Patagonia and beyond: Q&A with Kris Tompkins
- In the early 1990s, Kris and Doug Tompkins began buying up vast amounts of land in Chile and Argentina and setting it aside for conservation.
- Since the early 2000s, their non-profit Tompkins Conservation has donated over 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of wilderness in Chile and Argentina, which spurred the permanent protection of nearly 6 million hectares (15 million acres) and the establishment of 13 new national parks.
- The Tompkins had performed “a kind of capitalist jujitsu move” as Kris Tompkins put it in her 2020 TED talk: “We deployed private wealth from our business lives and deployed it to protect nature from being devoured by the hand of the global economy.”
- Kris Tompkins spoke about her organization’s conservation work, rewilding, and the costs of our current industrial model during a February 2021 conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

Saving Africa’s biodiversity is a challenging, but urgent necessity, says Rodger Schlickeisen
- Rodger Schlickeisen made a name for himself in conservation circles from the early 1990s thanks to his leadership at Defenders of Wildlife, which grew rapidly in membership and influence during his 20 years at the helm. The group became known as a staunch advocate for wildlife via its defense of the U.S. Endangered Species Act and conservation policies.
- Schlickeisen left Defenders in 2011 to embark on a second career in conservation as head of the Wildcat Foundation, the philanthropy funded by U.S. investor and businessman David Bonderman. The Wildcat Foundation supports efforts to protect wildlife in Africa, including place-based conservation projects and initiatives that aim to combat the wildlife trade.
- Having worked in conservation in both the U.S. and Africa, Schlickeisen sees similarities and sharp contrasts between the two geographies. Some of the key differences between the U.S. and Africa, he says, are the legal and institutional infrastructure that enable effective conservation.
- Schlickeisen discussed these issues and more in a February 2021 interview with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler. The views expressed in the interview are not necessarily those of Mongabay.

Indigenous community wins recognition of its land rights in Panama
- A ruling by Panama’s Supreme Court of Justice in November 2020 led to the official creation of a comarca, or protected Indigenous territory, for the Naso Tjër Di people in northern Panama.
- The 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca is the result of a decades-long effort to secure the Naso’s land rights.
- Panama’s former president had vetoed legislation creating the comarca in 2018, which he said was unconstitutional because it overlapped with two established protected areas.
- Other Indigenous groups in Panama with longstanding comarcas still struggle to hold back outside incursions for projects such as dams and power transmission lines.

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

Protesters hold back military takeover of Balkans’ largest mountain pasture
- A 2019 decree by the government of Montenegro sets forth the country’s intention to set up a military training ground in the highland grasslands of Sinjajevina in the northern part of the country.
- But the pastures of Sinjajevina have supported herders for centuries, and scientists say that this sustainable use is responsible in part for the wide array of life that the mountain supports; activists say an incursion by the military would destroy livelihoods, biodiversity and vital ecosystem services.
- A new coalition now governs Montenegro, one that has promised to reevaluate the military’s use of Sinjajevina.
- But with the country’s politics and position in Europe in flux, the movement against the military is pushing for formal designation of a park that would permanently protect the region’s herders and the environment.

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.

Big mammals are at risk in the world’s poorest countries, even within parks
- Forty years of global conservation research reveals that mammal populations are declining due to hunting in poor countries and within preserved areas, especially in Africa.
- Large mammals are particularly vulnerable, since their slow growth and reproduction rates make it harder for them to bounce back from poaching.
- In Asia, protected areas with tighter enforcement actually have higher rates of population loss, likely because the most sought-after species only exist within these strict enclaves.

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.

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

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.

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.

Vietnam creates new nature reserve, possible home to elusive ‘Asian unicorn’
- Conservationists have hailed the establishment of the new Dong Chau-Khe Nuoc Trong Nature Reserve as a major step for the protection of Vietnam’s wildlife.
- The new reserve is home to a number of threatened species, including two species of muntjac deer (Muntiacus vuquangensis and M. truongsonensis), the Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi), the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica), the southern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus siki), the red-shanked douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), and the crested argus (Rheinardia ocellata), which resembles a peacock.
- Conservationists debate whether it may also shelter the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), a mysterious antelope-like bovine so rare it has been called the “Asian unicorn.”
- Critical threats such as poaching and deforestation remain, however, and conservationists say enforcement of new protective measures will be key to the reserve’s success.

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.

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.

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.

Protecting African wildlife: A defense of conservation territories (commentary)
- W National Park, so named for its shape, spans Benin, Niger, and Burkina Faso, and has been called a ‘paper park.’
- Along with the adjacent Pendjari National Park, it represents one of the last best refuges for wildlife in western Africa.
- African Parks Network recently announced it would formally take over the management of the Benin side of W. To succeed, it must learn from the past and consider deploying fences and fines.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Life among the turtles: Traditional people struggle inside an Amazon reserve
- The Brazilian Amazon’s Trombetas River is well known for its exceptional biodiversity, including nesting turtles. In 1979, to protect flora and fauna there, the REBIO Trombetas was founded; it’s a highly restrictive form of conservation unit where today only very limited economic activity is permitted.
- The two traditional communities inside the reserve — the Último Quilombo and Nova Esperança Quilombo (Afro-Brazilian communities of runaway slave descendants) — complain that the government has unfairly penalized them for conducting forest and river livelihoods including Brazil nut collecting and fishing.
- Local residents also contend that while they’re fined for such minor infractions, MRN, the world’s fourth largest bauxite mining company, located near the REBIO, has done extensive ecological damage due to ore ship traffic and water pollution, which severely impacts turtle populations.
- In fact, MRN’s mines, ore processing and bauxite waste lagoons are located inside the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, a protected area known as a FLONA, on the Trombetas River. MRN has been fined often for its environmental violations there, fines it has appealed and not yet paid; the firm says it’s operating within the law.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.”

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.

Western lowland gorillas may be territorial, a new study finds
- A new study presents evidence of territoriality among western lowland gorilla groups in the Republic of Congo.
- Camera trap images revealed that groups avoided one another and also stayed away from the central area of each other’s home ranges — evidence that the species may be more territorial than previously thought.
- An estimated 80% of western lowland gorillas live outside of protected areas, where shrinking territory due to forest loss and habitat fragmentation is a big problem.
- This new information on their territoriality, combined with their shrinking habitat, means gorillas may experience increased competition for food as well as for the limited space.

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

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.

Cost-effective conservation: Study identifies key ‘umbrella’ species
- A new study has found that incorporating threats, actions and costs into the selection of priority species for conservation can markedly increase the efficiency of these efforts.
- The researchers created a new list of “umbrella” species for Australia, incorporating these factors.
- They found that the new list of umbrella species would lend protection to 46% of Australia’s threatened species — a sevenfold increase over the current list.

2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.

Tropical forests’ lost decade: the 2010s
- The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. The world looked like it was on track to significantly reduce tropical deforestation by 2020.
- By the end of the 2019 however, it was clear that progress on protecting tropical forests stalled in the 2010s. The decade closed with rising deforestation and increased incidence of fire in tropical forests.
- According to the U.N., in 2015 global forest cover fell below four billion hectares of forest for the first time in human history.

Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers
- A census of one of the two populations of mountain gorillas living in eastern Africa revealed an increase from 400 to at least 459 individuals, bringing the total count for the subspecies to 1,069 gorillas.
- Teams conducted the survey in the Bwindi-Sarambwe ecosystem straddling the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
- An earlier survey of the other population living in the Virunga Mountains of DRC, Uganda and Rwanda showed that gorilla numbers there are also on the rise.
- That led to a change in the subspecies status on the IUCN Red List from critically endangered to endangered.

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.

$65 million deal to protect Congo’s forests raises concerns
- The Central African Forest Initiative negotiated a deal with the Republic of Congo for $65 million in funding.
- The aim of the initiative is to protect forest while encouraging economic development.
- But environmental organizations criticized the timing and the wording of the agreement, which they argue still allows for oil drilling and exploration that could harm peatlands and forest.
- Two companies in the Republic of Congo recently found oil beneath the peatlands that could nearly triple the Central African country’s daily production.

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.

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.

Connecting an island: Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway
- The Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah are in the midst of building more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of the Pan Borneo Highway.
- The goal is to boost the states’ economies and connect them with the Indonesian provinces on the island of Borneo as part of the Trans Borneo Highway.
- Advocates of the highway, including many politicians, say the upgraded, widened and in some places entirely new stretches of highway will link markets and provide a jolt to the promising tourism sector in Malaysian Borneo.
- But skeptics, including scientists and conservationists, argue that parts of the highway cut through ecologically sensitive areas and that planning prior to construction didn’t adequately account for the damage that construction could cause.

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

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.

Altered fish communities persist long after reefs bleach, study finds
- In a new study, bleached reefs in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Seychelles had fewer predators like snappers and groupers and more plant-eating fish such as parrotfish and rabbitfish.
- The researchers found that this change in the composition of fish species persisted for more than a decade and a half after bleaching occurred in 1998.
- Scientists expect bleaching events to occur more frequently as a result of climate change, making it likely that these shifts in fish communities will become permanent.

New film details wrenching impact of illegal rhino horn trade on families
- A new short film, titled Sides of a Horn, looks at the impacts of the illegal trade of rhino horn on a community in South Africa.
- The 17-minute film follows two brothers-in-law, one who is a wildlife ranger and another who contemplates poaching as a way to pay for his ailing wife’s medical care.
- A trip to South Africa in 2016 inspired British filmmaker Toby Wosskow to write and direct the short feature, which was publicly released June 25.

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.

Logging road construction has surged in the Congo Basin since 2003
- Logging road networks have expanded widely in the Congo Basin since 2003, according to a new study.
- The authors calculated that the length of logging roads doubled within concessions and rose by 40 percent outside of concessions in that time period, growing by 87,000 kilometers (54,000 miles).
- Combined with rising deforestation in the region since 2000, the increase in roads is concerning because road building is often followed by a pulse of settlement leading to deforestation, hunting and mining in forest ecosystems.

Primates lose ground to surging commodity production in their habitats
- “Forest risk” commodities, such as beef, palm oil, and fossil fuels, led to a significant proportion of the 1.8 million square kilometers (695,000 square miles) of forest that was cleared between 2001 and 2017 — an area almost the size of Mexico.
- A previous study found that 60 percent of primates face extinction and 75 percent of species’ numbers are declining.
- The authors say that addressing the loss of primate habitat due to the production of commodities is possible, though it will require a global effort to “green” the international trade in these commodities.

Leopards get a $20m boost from Panthera pact with Saudi prince
- Big-cat conservation group Panthera has signed an agreement with Saudi prince and culture minister Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammad bin Farhan Al Saud in which the latter’s royal commission has pledged $20 million to the protection of leopards around the world, including the Arabian leopard, over the next decade.
- The funds will support a survey of the animals in Saudi Arabia and a captive-breeding program.
- The coalition also hopes to reintroduce the Arabian leopard into the governorate of Al-Ula, which Bader heads and which the kingdom’s leaders believe could jump-start the local tourism sector.

Out on a limb: Unlikely collaboration boosts orangutans in Borneo
- Logging and hunting have decimated a population of Bornean orangutans in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park in Indonesia.
- Help has recently come from a pair of unlikely allies: an animal welfare group and a human health care nonprofit.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration to meet the needs of ecosystems and humans is becoming an important tool for overcoming seemingly intractable obstacles in conservation.

Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds
- A dam in southern Ethiopia built to supply electricity to cities and control the flow of water for irrigating industrial agriculture has led to the displacement and loss of livelihoods of indigenous groups, the Oakland Institute has found.
- On June 10, the policy think tank published a report of its research, demonstrating that the effects of the Gibe III dam on the Lower Omo River continue to ripple through communities, forcing them onto sedentary farms and leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses.
- The Oakland Institute applauds the stated desire of the new government, which came to power in April 2018, to look out for indigenous rights.
- But the report’s authors caution that continued development aimed at increasing economic productivity and attracting international investors could further marginalize indigenous communities in Ethiopia.

Altered forests threaten sustainability of subsistence hunting
- In a commentary, two conservation scientists say that changes to the forests of Central and South America may mean that subsistence hunting there is no longer sustainable.
- Habitat loss and commercial hunting have put increasing pressure on species, leading to the loss of both biodiversity and a critical source of protein for these communities.
- The authors suggest that allowing the hunting of only certain species, strengthening parks and reserves, and helping communities find alternative livelihoods and sources of food could help address the problem, though they acknowledge the difficult nature of these solutions.

The health of penguin chicks points scientists to changes in the ocean
- A recent closure of commercial fishing around South Africa’s Robben Island gave scientists the chance to understand how fluctuations in prey fish populations affect endangered African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) absent pressure from humans.
- The researchers found that the more fish were available, the better the condition of the penguin chicks that rely on their parents for food.
- This link between prey abundance in the sea and the condition of penguin chicks on land could serve as an indicator of changes in the ecosystem.

Interest in protecting environment up since Pope’s 2015 encyclical
- New research into the usage of environmentally related search terms on Google suggests that interest in the environment has risen since Pope Francis released Laudato Si’ in 2015.
- Laudato Si’, a papal encyclical, argues that it is a moral imperative for humans to look after the environment.
- Researchers and scholars believe that the pope’s support for protecting the environment could ripple well beyond the 16 percent of the world’s population that is Catholic.

Bolivia: Nature rights tribunal condemns TIPNIS project
- Bolivia has “violated the rights of nature and of indigenous peoples as defenders of Mother Earth and have failed to comply with its obligation to respect, protect, and guarantee the rights of Mother Earth…” the International Rights of Nature Tribunal has ruled.
- In 2018, a delegation from the tribunal was refused entry to the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory. The group was trying to assess the claims of communities affected by the project, but they were blocked from entering the area.

Social media enables the illegal wildlife pet trade in Malaysia
- Conservationists say that prosecuting wildlife traffickers in Malaysia for trading in protected species isn’t easy, as traders have several loopholes to aid their efforts.
- One wildlife trafficker known as Kejora Pets has been operating in Peninsular Malaysia for years, selling “cute” pets to individuals through social media.
- Malaysia’s wildlife act doesn’t address the posting of protected animals for sale on social media, and operators like Kejora Pets appear to avoid ever being in possession of protected animals, allowing them to skirt statutes aimed at catching illicit traders.
- Proposed changes to Malaysia’s wildlife act could offer some relief to besieged populations of protected species by making it easier to prosecute online trafficking of protected animals.

’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.

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.

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.

Hunting pumas to save deer could backfire, new research suggests
- A new study finds that the age of individual pumas near Jackson, Wyoming, had the greatest influence over the prey they chose to hunt.
- Older mountain lions went after elk, among the largest prey species in the study area, while the younger cats hunted small animals like raccoons as well as mule deer.
- The research calls into question the validity of recent wildlife management plans in the western United States to grow mule deer populations by culling mountain lions, the authors say.

Climb confirms that the world’s tallest tropical tree tops 100 meters
- A team of scientists has found and mapped the tallest tree on record in the tropics, standing at more than 100 meters (328 feet).
- Climber Unding Jami with the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership scaled the tree and verified its height.
- The structure of the tree, determined from airborne lidar surveys as well as laser scans from the ground and drone photographs, provides insight into why these trees grow so high.

Farming communities abused at troubled DRC mega-farm, campaigners say
- The Bukanga Lonzo agro-industrial park, located nearly 300 kilometers (186 miles) east of Kinshasa, was conceived as a way to boost mechanized food production in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- But now, the park is in shambles, and a new report by the Oakland Institute says that community members were misled and abused during its construction.
- The primary investor in the park, Africom Commodities, is currently seeking nearly $20 million in damages from the Congolese government for non-payment of expenses at the park.

New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
- A new study maps out how disruptive human changes to the environment affect the individual ranges of more than 5,400 mammal, bird and amphibian species around the world.
- Almost a quarter of the species are threatened by human impacts in more than 90 percent of their range, and at least one human impact occurred in an average of 38 percent of the range of a given species.
- The study also identified “cool” spots, where concentrations of species aren’t negatively impacted by humans.
- The researchers say these “refugia” are good targets for conservation efforts.

Proximity to towns stretches giraffe home ranges
- A recent study found that female giraffes that live close to towns have larger home ranges than those living further afield.
- The study’s authors believe that large human settlements reduce giraffes’ access to food and water.
- The team cites the importance of understanding the size of the area that giraffe populations need to survive to address the precipitous decline in the animal’s numbers across Africa in the past 30 years.

In a predator-infested forest, survival for baby birds comes by the road
- Fledglings of a common bird, the white-rumped shama, in a tropical forest in Thailand were more likely to survive if they came from nests near a roadway than if they fledged deeper in the forest, researchers have found.
- The scientists believe that predators’ preference for the forest’s interior at this study site led to the difference in survival rates.
- Still, they caution that the apparent benefits of one road for a small subset of a single species don’t necessarily extend to the broader bird community, and say that planners should avoid building roads through areas of high conservation value.
- More research is necessary to determine if this effect is specific just to this study site.

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.

Urbanization in Asia provides a window of hope for tigers, study finds
- The transition to cities by Asia’s human population is likely to affect the continent’s remaining tiger populations, according to a new study.
- Depending on policy decisions around migration, urbanization, education and economics, the trend toward urbanization could provide more space for tiger numbers to rebound.
- A team of researchers modeled five different “socioeconomic pathways” for the continent, showing that a focus on sustainable living could result in fewer than 40 million people living within the tiger’s range by the end of the century.
- But that number could also balloon to more than 106 million people if countries veer away from international cooperation and poor management of urbanization.

Rhinos or roads? Nepal deals with a tricky balancing act
- Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is home to the world’s second largest population of greater one-horned rhinos, as well as nearly 100 Bengal tigers and more than 54 other mammal species.
- After a 2016 mission, UNESCO warned that Chitwan could be placed on the World Heritage in Danger list if a number of planned infrastructure projects were completed as proposed.
- Since then, the largest projects have been suspended or rerouted; now, conservationists say they are more concerned by the impacts of unplanned urbanization and local flood-control projects.
- Local officials often struggle to balance protecting Chitwan’s ecosystem against the popular demand for infrastructure development projects.

‘Ecosystem guardians’ remain passionate despite dicey conditions
- A recent investigation conducted by several conservation groups has found that working conditions for wildlife rangers in Central America are difficult and in some cases dangerous.
- Most of the rangers surveyed reported facing life-threatening situations during the course of their duties.
- However, these ‘ecosystem guardians’ also remain passionate about their role in protecting Central America’s natural treasures.

Karen indigenous communities in Myanmar have officially launched the Salween Peace Park
- Last month, indigenous Karen communities, the Salween Peace Park Committee, and the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) officially launched the Salween Peace Park in the Mutraw District of Myanmar’s Kayin State.
- A three-day event in mid-December 2018 that featured traditional Karen ceremonies and performances was held to mark the ratification of Salween Peace Park’s charter, which was developed by Karen communities to embody their “aspirations for genuine peace and self-determination, environmental integrity and cultural preservation,” according to a statement.
- The Salween Peace Park encompasses 5,485 square kilometers (nearly 1.4 million acres) of the Salween River Basin, including more than 340 villages, 139 demarcated Kaw, 27 community forests, four forest reserves, and three wildlife sanctuaries.

Dam drove ‘collapse’ of rainforest bird populations in Thailand
- A 165-square-kilometer (64-square-mile) reservoir in the lowland rainforest of Thailand has led to the “collapse” of the region’s bird populations, according to recent research.
- Built in 1986, the Ratchaprapha dam altered the habitat and led to deforestation, resulting in the decline of many species and the local extinction of perhaps five.
- The authors of the study say their findings highlight concerns about whether hydroelectric dams “are worth the environmental costs.”

Virtual meetup highlights networked sensor technology for parks
- To encourage communication between the conservation community and technology developers, the WILDLABS platform began a series of virtual meetups earlier this month.
- Speakers in the first meetup represented three groups developing and deploying networked sensors for improving wildlife security and reducing human-wildlife conflict.
- The three tech developers described lessons they’ve learned on meeting the needs of rangers and reserve managers, using drones to fight poaching, and adapting technology to function in remote areas under difficult conditions.

Map pinpoints ‘last chance’ locations of endangered species
- A new assessment updates the last known ranges for nearly 1,500 species of animals and plants at 853 locations around the world.
- The three-year effort is aimed at helping scientists, governments and conservationists identify the threats that could lead to the extinction of these species and find ways to address them.
- Governments are already using this information to identify target areas for conservation to protect the last remaining habitats of threatened species.
- Nearly half of the sites identified lack formal protection, despite many of them having been flagged as important more than a decade ago.

‘Not all hope is lost’ as outlook for mountain gorillas brightens
- The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) changed the status of mountain gorillas from Critically Endangered to Endangered today.
- The new assessment cites the subspecies’ growing numbers, now at around 1,000 individuals, and the conservation efforts on its behalf.
- Scientists say that, while this is an important milestone, mountain gorillas’ survival depends on continued conservation.

Honduras aims to save vital wildlife corridor from deforestation
- Honduras has pledged to remove livestock from the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site that’s home to jaguars, tapirs and macaws.
- The reserve is found in the Moskitia region’s rainforests, around 30 percent of which have been cleared in the past 15 years, largely due to cattle and livestock ranching.
- Conservation groups hailed the move as one that would benefit both Honduras and the world because of the region’s biodiversity and carbon stocks.

Roads divide opinions along with forests, study finds
- A team of researchers found that support for new road construction was split among indigenous communities living in Malaysia.
- In general, people living in communities near an existing highway were more likely to support roads than those living in villages farther away from the highway.
- The authors write that the findings lend support to the need for comprehensive social impact assessments before and during the construction of new roads.

Call to protect dwindling wilderness ‘before it disappears forever’
- Just 23 percent of wilderness on land and 13 percent of wilderness at sea remains, according to new maps of global human impacts.
- Five countries — Russia, Canada, Australia, the United States and Brazil — contain 70 percent of the remaining wilderness.
- The authors of the suite of studies argue that wilderness protection should move to the forefront of the conservation agenda.

‘At capacity’? A Nepali park reckons with its rhinos
- An investigation into a recent increase in natural deaths among the 600 greater one-horned rhinos in Chitwan National Park suggested the park may have reached its carrying capacity for the species.
- The park and its resources are facing pressure both from a growing population of rhinos within the park and from increasing human settlement on its periphery.
- Assessments of the park’s carrying capacity for rhinos vary wildly, ranging from 500 to more than 2,000, leading to differences of opinion about the role overcrowding could play in rhino deaths.

Language and conservation (insider)
- Using an example from a trip to Zimbabwe and Botswana, Jeremy Hance writes about the words we choose matter when it comes to conservation.
- A trip to Africa to see its wildlife should be an experience that goes well beyond entertainment: it should be educational, enlightening, moving, spiritual and, ultimately, transformative.
- When a guide refers to species by silly nicknames, one can’t help but feel that the guide places little value on their own wildlife.
- This is an insider story. To read, please become a member.

What’s killing Nepal’s rhinos?
- Nepal has had remarkable success at tackling the poaching of its greater one-horned rhinos. But since 2015, it has witnessed a sharp increase in deaths from unknown or natural causes.
- A number of theories have been advanced to explain the deaths: habitat degradation in Chitwan National Park and its surroundings leading to increased conflict over resources; the area reaching its natural carrying capacity for rhinos; a “baby boomer” die-off; or a simple shift in cause of death from death by poaching to death by natural causes.
- The government commissioned a study into the problem, but the report has not been published

Absent for decades, zebras reintroduced to park in southern Tanzania
- Staff from the Wildlife Conservation Society and its partners in Tanzania released 24 zebras into Kitulo National Park on Oct. 12 and 13.
- The Kitulo Plateau in Tanzania’s southern highlands includes high-elevation grasslands, a unique habitat that requires fire and grazing animals to maintain its plant diversity.
- The reintroduction, with plains zebras from Mikumi National Park, is part of a broader effort to “rewild” the southern highlands after decades of wildlife hunting and livestock grazing.

Environmental delegation blocked from entering Bolivian national park
- A delegation from the International Rights of Nature Tribunal was recently refused entry to the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) in Bolivia.
- The commission had planned a discussion with leaders of the TIPNIS regarding the construction of a highway that would cross through the protected area. Some leaders are in favor of the highway, while others are opposed.
- The Rights of Nature representatives had received an invitation from the Indigenous Council of the South (CONISUR) to visit the area, but CONISUR representatives were among those blocking the way.
- After five hours of not being allowed to advance or to retreat back to Cochabamba, nor to get out of their vehicles, the delegation was able to peacefully leave the area with a police escort.

In a first, DRC communities gain legal rights to forests
- Provincial authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have approved forest concessions for five communities.
- Following the implementation of a new community forest strategy in June, this is the first time the government has given communities control of forests.
- Sustainable use of the forest is seen by conservation and development organizations as a way to both combat rural poverty and fight deforestation.

Scientists map the impact of trawling using satellite vessel tracking
- Using satellite tracking data, researchers have come up with new maps showing the impact of trawling in 24 regions around the world.
- Trawling produces a sizable portion of the world’s seafood but is also seen as destructive and indiscriminate.
- The team found that trawlers fished 14 percent of the ocean in the areas they studied, leaving 86 percent untouched.
- But the study did not include parts of the world known to have high levels of trawling activity, leading one researcher to question whether the authors “over-interpreted” their results.

$25m in funding to help African gov’ts prosecute poachers, traffickers
- The African Wildlife Foundation has pledged $25 million to projects aimed at combating the illegal wildlife trade across the continent over the next four years.
- The Nairobi-based NGO invests in outfitting wildlife rangers, training sniffer dogs to detect illicit shipments, and community-based development.
- AWF president Kaddu Sebunya emphasized the need to invest in homegrown solutions to the crisis when he announced the funding at the Illegal Wildlife Trade conference, held Oct. 11-12 in London.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Kenya’s Maasai Mara, detection dogs are a ranger’s best friend
- For World Ranger Day 2018, we highlight how detection dogs help rangers keep wildlife — and the rangers themselves — safe in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve.
- Sniffer dogs search vehicles for ivory and firearms, while tracker dogs enable rangers to track and capture wildlife poachers, thieves in lodges, and cattle rustlers in surrounding villages.
- The dogs have enabled rangers to follow up on intelligence and increase their arrest rate, which they hope will make poaching less viable for local communities and improve security in the region.

Global marine wilderness has dwindled to 13 percent, new map reveals
- New research examining the effects of 19 human stressors on the marine environment shows that only 13 percent of oceans can still be considered wilderness.
- Of the remaining wilderness, much of which is located in the high seas and at the poles, less than 5 percent falls under protection, and climate change and advances in technology could threaten it.
- The authors of the study call for international cooperation to protect the ocean’s wilderness areas, including a “Paris Agreement for the Ocean,” which they hope will be signed in 2020.

Forest communities pay the price for conservation in Madagascar
- In a two-year investigation of a REDD+ pilot project, a team of researchers spoke with more than 450 households affected by the establishment of a large protected area called the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor, a 3,820-square-kilometer (1,475-square-mile) tract of rainforest in eastern Madagascar.
- The REDD+ project, supported by Conservation International and the World Bank, was aimed at supporting communities by providing support for alternative livelihoods to those communities near the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor protected area.
- They found that the REDD+ project’s preliminary studies identified less than half of those negatively affected by the Corridor’s designation.
- The team also discovered that the value of the one-off compensation, in the form of support to pursue other livelihoods, fell far short of the opportunity costs that the communities are likely to face as a result of losing access to the forest in the coming decades.

Cross-border camera trap research puts wild Amur leopard number at 84
- Scientists working in Russia and China have used camera traps to estimate that 84 Amur leopards remain in the wild.
- Previous studies tracked the cats using their footprints in snow, but the camera trap photographs allowed the researchers to identify individual animals by their unique spot patterns.
- The team found that 20 percent of the Amur leopards appeared on both sides of the border between China and Russia, highlighting the importance of cross-border collaboration.

Bold initiative aims to protect coral reefs in the Dominican Republic
- Coral reefs of the northern Caribbean have undergone widespread change over the past century, driven by coastal development, pollution, over-fishing, the introduction of invasive species, and increasing ocean temperatures.
- A new and unique marine protected area, the Southeast Marine Sanctuary, has recently been declared, covering 786,300 hectares of reef environment, thus making it one of the largest protected areas in the Caribbean.
- The marine sanctuary will be divided into two zones, each to be co-managed by a diverse group of stakeholders organized into a nonprofit. The structure of its oversight – a collaboration among numerous stakeholders, from the federal government to local fishermen and from environmental groups to hotel associations – makes this new marine sanctuary remarkable.

Smartphone app helps indigenous communities fight deforestation
- Using a system called ForestLink developed by Rainforest Foundation UK, members of the Masenawa community documented the presence of an illegal gold mining camp in the Madre de Dios region of Peru.
- The police then responded by destroying the mining equipment at the camp and arresting five people suspected of participating in illegal mining.
- The biodiverse Madre de Dios region of the Amazon has been besieged by illegal gold mining, which has caused widespread deforestation.

Honduras: Indigenous Garifuna use radio to fight for their land
- The Garifuna, an Afro-indigenous ethnic group, have inhabited eastern Honduras since the late 18th century, collectively owning and conserving large tracts of Honduras’s rich coastal ecosystems.
- In recent decades both their way of life and their ancestral lands have been increasingly threatened by the relentless encroachment of powerful private interests in Honduras’s burgeoning tourism and biofuel industries.
- The Garifuna have been mounting a resistance, aided in part by a network of community radio stations.
- In addition to serving up traditional music and shows on health and nutrition, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other topics, the stations have helped raise the profile of people struggling to protect indigenous lands and ways of life and serve as a strong means of mobilization, according to local activists.

DRC adopts a strategy that will bolster community forestry, conservation group says
- A new community forestry strategy in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could help provide Congolese communities with a say in the management of the country’s forests.
- A group of local and international organizations, government agencies and community groups developed the strategy to strengthen the capacity of provincial authorities and ensure that the country’s community forestry laws do in fact include and benefit communities.
- The plan calls for an “experimental phase” over the next five years to gradually provide access to areas of the roughly 700,000 square kilometers (more than 270,000 square miles) of available forest through community management permits.

Primate-rich countries are becoming less hospitable places for monkeys, apes and lemurs
- New research shows that many of the 65 percent of the world’s primate species found in four countries — Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo — face the threat of extinction.
- The scientists involved in the study used maps of primate ranges and information on the threats they face to predict what might happen to the animals through the end of the 21st century.
- They found that increases in the amount of land turned over for human food production could cause the primate habitats to shrink substantially in these countries.
- However, the team also found that intensive conservation measures could dramatically reduce the loss of primate habitat by 2100 and potentially avert the mass extinction of these species.

DRC’s Virunga National Park closes until 2019 due to violence
- Last month Mai Mai militia attacked a Virunga park vehicle carrying tourists from the city of Goma, killing park ranger, Rachel Makissa Baraka.
- Immediately following the incident, Virunga National Park said it was closing to visitors until June 4. Now officials are saying the park will be closed to tourists through the end of the year, until the security situation is more under control.
- Virunga is Africa’s oldest national park. It is best known for its population of mountain gorillas.

Field Museum honors Peruvian organization for its conservation work with indigenous groups
- The Instituto del Bien Común, a Peruvian organization that works with indigenous communities, has received this year’s Parker/Gentry award for conservation from the Field Museum of Chicago.
- The organization has mapped more than 7,000 indigenous territories in Peru, which serve as a baseline for the Peruvian government on indigenous land.
- The group was also involved in the effort to designate Yaguas National Park, the country’s newest protected area, in January this year.

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

Documenting the African elephant’s ‘last stand’: Q&A with filmmakers Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson
- “Walking Thunder,” a film by Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson, tracks elephants across Africa.
- The couple’s son, Lysander, guides viewers through his discovery, first of the elephants and peoples of Africa, and then of the threats they face.
- Christo calls the film a “prayer” for the species.

Humans are leaving their mark on the world’s protected areas, study finds
- About one-third of the world’s total protected area — around 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles) — bears the scars of substantial degradation at the hands of humans, according to research published in the journal Science.
- The researchers found that large parks and reserves held to the toughest standards are doing significantly better than those with laxer controls.
- The authors argue that assessments of the effectiveness of protected areas should be considered, especially as governments try to meet one of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets calling for protecting 17 percent of the Earth’s land area by 2020.

Sifaka lemurs listed as “critically endangered” amid mysterious die-off
- In the last month and a half, at least 31 Verreaux’s sifakas (Propithecus verreauxi) have died in Berenty Reserve near Madagascar’s southern tip.
- It’s one of the largest lemur die-offs scientists can remember.
- Experts believe that a parasite or tick-borne disease is likely to blame, but the exact cause remains unknown.
- At a large IUCN meeting held last week in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital, primate specialists decided to uplist all nine sifaka species from endangered to critically endangered.

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

Pleistocene climates help scientists pick out targets for conservation in Brazil’s forests
- A team of scientists looked for places in the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest that have had stable weather patterns for a long time — going back to the Pleistocene Epoch — but that don’t fall within the boundaries of existing parks or reserves.
- They measured the efficiency of the current network of protected areas in these areas, and they also came up with a prioritization scale for conservation efforts that incorporated the locations of intact forest landscapes.
- The team reports that protected areas in the Amazon are four times as efficient at safeguarding these “climatically stable areas” as protected areas in the Atlantic Forest.

Black rhinos return to Zakouma National Park in Chad
- The NGO African Parks and its partners in South Africa and Chad reintroduced six black rhinos to Zakouma National Park on May 4.
- Chad’s oldest national park had not had rhinos since the early 1970s, when they were wiped out by hunting.
- After a brief acclimation period in transitional bomas, or enclosures, the rhinos will be released into a protected sanctuary in the park.
- Around 5,000 black rhinos remain on the African continent, and poaching for their horns, used in traditional Asian medicine, continues to be a threat to their survival as a species.

More gorillas and chimpanzees living in Central Africa’s forests than thought
- A study led by WCS researchers pulled together wildlife survey data collected between 2003 and 2013 at 59 sites in five countries across western Central Africa.
- They then developed mathematical models to understand where the highest densities of gorillas and chimpanzees are and why, as well as broader trends in the populations.
- They found that more than 361,000 western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and almost 129,000 central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) inhabit these forests — about 30 percent more gorillas and 10 percent more chimpanzees than previously estimated.
- The team’s analyses also demonstrate that western lowland gorilla numbers are slipping by 2.7 percent a year.

Restoring flagging oil palm plantations to forest may benefit clouded leopards, study finds
- A team of biologists fitted four clouded leopards in the Kinabatangan region of Malaysian Borneo with satellite collars, and they gathered several months of data on the animals’ movements.
- They found that the cats stuck to areas with canopy cover, and they avoided land cleared for oil palm.
- Converting underperforming oil palm plantations back to forest could help the clouded leopard population with minimal impact on the state’s production of palm oil, the authors predict.

Island logging must go beyond current ‘best practices’ to avoid erosion: New study
- In a new study, a team of ecologists modeled what would happen if companies were allowed to log the forests of Kolombangara Island under several management scenarios, including those designed to minimize soil erosion and protect water quality.
- As the model simulated higher proportions of land clearance, the most stringent methods couldn’t stop the soil erosion that would foul clean water and agricultural land for the island’s people, as well as the habitats of local aquatic plants and animals.
- The Kolombangara Island Biodiversity Conservation Association is spearheading an effort to get intact forests at elevations higher than 400 meters (1,310 feet) designated as a national park on the island.

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

Vine-like lianas alter the edges of fragmented forests: New study
- A new study has found that a group of climbing plants called lianas spring up in higher numbers along the edges of fragmented forests than they do in less-disturbed patches.
- Previous research has shown that lianas can cause trees to die or to stockpile less carbon, and they can also affect the mix of tree species present in the forest.
- To ensure a healthy, functioning ecosystem, managers can set aside a buffer zone around the edges of these patches or increase the size of the protected area as a whole.

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

Oil palm, rubber could trigger ‘storm’ of deforestation in the Congo Basin
- Earthsight documented approximately 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of deforestation to clear the way for new rubber and oil palm plantations in Central Africa’s rainforest countries in the past five years.
- The team also found that companies in five Central African countries hold licenses for industrial agriculture on another 8,400 square kilometers (3,243 square miles) of land.
- The investigators warn that thousands of hectares of forest could fall to industrial agriculture in the COngo Basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest, if governance of the forest doesn’t improve.

Jaguar numbers rising at field sites, WCS says
- WCS reports that jaguar numbers have risen by almost 8 percent a year between 2002 and 2016 at study sites in Central and South America.
- The sites cover around 400,000 square kilometers (154,440 square miles) of jaguar habitat.
- Despite the promising findings, WCS scientists caution that habitat destruction, hunting in response to livestock killings, and poaching for their body parts remain critical threats to jaguars.

African Parks to manage gorges, rock art and crocodiles of Chad’s Ennedi
- African Parks will manage the 40,000-square-kilometer (15,444-square-mile) Ennedi Natural and Cultural Reserve in Chad.
- The reserve is home to unique rock formations, ancient human art, and wildlife, including a small population of crocodiles.
- Two semi-nomadic groups currently depend on the oases found in the Ennedi Reserve.

‘Photo Ark’ a quest to document global biodiversity: Q&A with photographer Joel Sartore and director Chun-Wei Yi
- The film “RARE: Creatures of the Photo Ark” follows National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore as he travels the world snapping pictures of thousands of different animal species.
- In the last 12 years, Sartore has photographed nearly 8,000 species.
- “RARE: Creatures of the Photo Ark” was named Best Conservation Film at the New York WILD Film Festival.

Protected areas with deforestation more likely to lose status in Brazilian state
- A recent study finds that ineffective protected areas stand a lower chance of surviving if deforestation has occurred within their boundaries.
- The research took place in the state of Rondônia in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The team of scientists also found that protected areas that work are less likely to be carved up for development.
- The authors argue that removing safeguards, even from degraded areas, does not take into account the benefits that we may derive from existing protected areas, including carbon storage and clean water.

East Africa’s Albertine Rift needs protection now, scientists say
- The Albertine Rift in East Africa is home to more than 500 species of plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet.
- Created by the stretching apart of tectonic plates, the unique ecosystems of the Albertine Rift are also under threat from encroaching human population and climate change.
- A new report details a plan to protect the landscapes that make up the Rift at a cost of around $21 million per year — a bargain rate, scientists argue, given the number of threatened species that could be saved.

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

Mesoamerican Reef gets improving bill of health
- The Healthy Reefs Initiative released its report card on the state of the Mesoamerican Reef. In the last decade, the grade has risen from poor to fair.
- The Mesoamerican Reef runs along about 1,000 kilometers of the coastlines of Mexico, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala.
- Fish populations have grown, as have the coral that make up the reef.
- But scientists were concerned to see an increase in macroalgae on the reef, which results from runoff and improperly treated sewage effluent.

Pope set to visit site of deforestation, indigenous struggle in Peru
- Pope Francis plans to visit Puerto Maldonado in the Peruvian region of Madre de Dios Friday morning on his trip to South America.
- He will speak with indigenous communities in a coliseum.
- Madre de Dios had the second-highest rate of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon in 2017, with 208 square kilometers (80 square miles) of forest cover loss as a result of farming, logging and mining.

U.S. National Park Service advisory panel disintegrates
- On Monday, 9 of 12 members of the advisory council resigned in a letter to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, citing more than a year of waiting for meetings that are required by law.
- The board is responsible for National Parks stewardship, and they often interface with the public and scientific experts.
- Advisory councils generally for agencies and their board members are chosen or re-approved by the administration of the newly-elected leader.

Natural World Heritage Sites in trouble, especially in the Tropics
- From the Great Barrier Reef to the Galapagos Islands and the forests of central Africa, over a third of Natural World Heritage Sites designated by UNESCO are under threat from myriad problems.
- Of the seventeen locations with a critical conservation outlook, sixteen are in the Tropics, and the majority of those are in Africa. Less than half of African World Heritage sites received a “good” outlook. Lack of funding in developing nations is a major problem.
- Sites harboring rich biodiversity, such as Virunga and Garamba national parks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras, are especially at risk.
- The most common threats to Natural World Heritage Sites are invasive non-native species, unsustainable tourism, poaching, hydroelectric dams, and logging, with climate change the fastest growing threat.

Lions deal blow to giraffe numbers by targeting young, study finds
- New research demonstrates that lions can diminish the number of young giraffes in a population by more than 80 percent.
- The giraffe species was recently listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, after its numbers dropped by nearly 40 percent in just three decades.
- A 2015 estimate puts numbers at 97,500, down from 157,000 in 1985.
- The findings could prompt the rethinking of conservation strategies aimed at protecting giraffes.

Roads, dams and railways: Ten infrastructure stories from Southeast Asia in 2017
- Southeast Asia is one of the epicenters of a global “tsunami” of infrastructure development.
- As the countries in the region work to elevate their economic standing, concerns from scientists and NGOs highlight the potential pitfalls in the form of environmental degradation and destruction that roads, dams and other infrastructure can bring in tow.
- Mongabay had reporters covering the region in 2017. Here are 10 of their stories.

African Parks backs marine reserve brimming with wildlife in Mozambique
- The conservation NGO African Parks signed an agreement to manage Bazaruto Archipelago National Park in Mozambique.
- Leaders established the park in 1971, but recent illegal fishing and unregulated tourism has threatened the ecosystem and its economic value, African Parks said.
- The park is home to 2,000 species of fish and hundreds of species of birds, reptiles and mammals, including some of the last dugongs in the western Indian Ocean.

CITES rejects Madagascar’s bid to sell rosewood and ebony stockpiles
- The standing committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) had its annual meeting in Geneva November 27 through December 1.
- The committee rejected Madagascar’s petition to sell its stockpiles of seized rosewood and ebony that had been illegally cut from the country’s rainforests.
- CITES delegates agreed that while a future sale of the stockpiles might be possible, Madagascar was not yet ready for such a risky undertaking, which could allow newly chopped logs to be laundered and traded overseas.
- Other notable outcomes of the CITES meeting dealt with the sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis), pangolins, and the critically endangered vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus).

New study: Gorillas fare better in logged forests than chimps
- A study in the northern Republic of Congo found that gorillas and chimpanzees both became scarcer at the onset of logging.
- However, gorillas move backed into logged areas more readily, while chimpanzees were more likely to stay away.
- The researchers believe that gorillas are better able to cope with logging because they’re not as territorial as chimps and they seem to be more flexible in their eating habits.

New carbon maps of Sabah’s forests guide conservation in Borneo
- Airborne LiDAR mapping combined with satellite imagery analysis has provided scientists, government agencies and NGOs with a “wall-to-wall” account of the carbon held in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo.
- The study, led by ecologists from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, revealed that more than 40 percent of the forests with the highest carbon stocks aren’t covered by the state’s most stringent protections.
- The findings give wildlife biologists the chance to examine how carbon stocks correlate with the presence of biodiversity; NGOs the opportunity to identify new high-carbon areas to set aside under oil palm certification schemes; and the Sabah government the information to determine which forests are the most valuable and therefore need further protections.

Water sources under threat from mining in Ecuador’s mountains
- The Azuay páramos are restricted, alpine ecosystems that exist above the tree line but below the permanent snow line.
- Those who live in southern Ecuador’s páramos oppose gold and copper mining planned for in the region.
- Representatives from a mining company claim that the company won’t affect local communities and that they have permission to work.

Madagascar petitions CITES to sell millions in stolen rosewood
- The Madagascar government has petitioned wildlife regulators under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) for permission to sell its stockpiles of seized rainforest wood.
- Some campaigners warn that traffickers stand to benefit from any such sale and fear it could herald a “logging boom” in the country’s remaining rainforests.
- The CITES committee will consider the proposal at the end of this month.

Logjam: Inside Madagascar’s illegal-rosewood stockpiles
- Over the past six years, Madagascar has spent millions of dollars and devoted countless person hours to figuring out how to dispose of vast stockpiles of highly valuable, illegally logged rosewood, much of it cut from the country’s rainforests following a 2009 coup.
- To do so, the government must conduct a comprehensive inventory of the stockpiles, among other requirements issued by CITES. The World Bank has supported the effort with at least $3 million to $4 million in murky ad hoc loans.
- The current state of affairs, with untold thousands of rosewood logs still unaccounted for, and tens of thousands more stacked outside government offices, is widely seen as facilitating continued corruption and illicit activity.
- This is the sixth story in Mongabay’s multi-part series “Conservation in Madagascar.”

Parks and reserves ‘significant’ force for slowing climate change
- Protecting tropical forests between 2000 and 2012 amounted to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to a 29 percent cut in deforestation rates.
- The authors used statistical models to estimate the amount of CO2 that would have been released if currently protected areas in South America, Asia and Africa had instead been cleared.
- The researchers argue that their findings bolster the conservation case for safeguarding tropical forests.

Lemur species losing favorite food to climate change, new study says
- The greater bamboo lemur tends to feed on nutritious bamboo shoots, switching to the woody trunk of the plant only during the dry season.
- A longer dry season due to climate change could force them to subsist on this less-than-optimal food source for more of the year, potentially pushing this critically endangered species closer to extinction, according to a new study.
- This discovery could have implications for other threatened species, like the giant panda, that depend on one type of food.

Another Madagascar environmental activist imprisoned
- Malagasy authorities have held Raleva, a 61-year-old farmer, in custody since September 27 after he asked to see a mining company’s permits to operate near his village.
- His arrest is at least the sixth such case of authorities targeting those opposed to wildlife trafficking or land grabs.
- Environmental activists say they face bribes and threats from traffickers on one side, and jail time and fines from the government on the other.

Study maps out reptiles’ ranges, completing the ‘atlas of life’
- The study’s 39 authors, from 30 institutions around the world, pulled together data on the habitats of more than 10,000 species of reptiles.
- They found little overlap with current conservation areas, many of which have used the numbers of mammal and bird species present as proxies for overall biodiversity.
- In particular, lizards and turtles aren’t afforded much protection under current schemes.
- The authors report that they’ve identified high-priority areas for conservation that protects reptile diversity, ranging from deserts in the Middle East, Africa and Australia, to grass- and scrublands in Asia and Brazil.

Conserving habitat not enough to help species cope with climate change
- New research finds that habitat-based conservation strategies don’t adequately compensate for the range that species in three groups stand to lose due to climate change.
- The team of scientists based in Austria looked at the effects of climate change on 51 species of grasshoppers, butterflies and vascular plants living in central Europe.
- Habitat-based conservation can provide a lifeline, but their model predicts that it won’t be enough to prevent some species from regional extinction.

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

Liberian park protects Critically Endangered western chimpanzees
- The establishment of Grebo-Krahn National Park in southeastern Liberia was approved by the country’s legislature in August 2017.
- The 961-square-kilometer (371-square-mile) park is home to an estimated 300 western chimpanzees.
- There are about 35,000 Critically Endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) left in the wild, and Liberia is home to 7,000 of them.

Ecologist wins Heinz environment prize for airborne mapping that informs policy
- Ecologist Greg Asner of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory will receive a $250,000 award from the Heinz Family Foundation for his work to map rainforests and coral reefs around the world.
- Lawmakers and other key decision-makers use Asner’s research to guide policy in the United States, South America and Southeast Asia.
- Asner said he intends to put the funds toward marine education and outreach in Hawaii, where he began his career.

Deforestation from gold mining in Peru continues, despite gov’t crackdowns
- A team of scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science found that, between 1999 and 2016, gold mining expansion cost the region 4,437 hectares (10,964 acres) of forest loss per year.
- Miners were working an area in 2016 that was 40 percent larger than it was in 2012.
- The findings, along analyses by ecologists at the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, indicate that increased enforcement by the Peruvian government has slowed the rate of deforestation.

Sixth mass extinction ‘tsunami’ coming, but preventable
- Biologist Thomas Lovejoy writes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that we can stop the current spate of biodiversity and species loss that the Earth is experiencing.
- Pointing to a recent study showing that many animals are declining in numbers in addition to those facing the imminent risk of extinction, Lovejoy argues that we need to address all of the impacts that humans have on ecosystems.
- He calls for the restoration of degraded forests and wetlands — activities in which everyone can participate — to facilitate the movement of wildlife between habitats and bring back the services that ecosystems provide.

In Nepal, the rhino evokes national pride
- Nepal’s greater one-horned rhinos were historically revered for their spiritual potency as well as for their value as thrilling quarry for sport hunting.
- The rise of wildlife tourism in the 1960s and 70s brought awareness of the economic value of live, free-roaming rhinos — helping to increase support for conservation.
- As rhino numbers soar, leading to increased human-wildlife conflict, conservationists are working to ensure rhinos don’t become victims of their own success.

Two things you can do for World Ranger Day
- 105 rangers were killed worldwide in the past year.
- Jane Goodall is backing Thin Green Line Foundation to support and better equip rangers everywhere
- The President of The Thin Green Line shares a couple important things you can do this World Ranger Day

Five promising stories for Global Tiger Day
- Since the last Global Tiger Day in 2016, researchers have discovered tiger populations in unexpected areas, such as forested corridors along riverbanks and in areas that recently served as theaters of war.
- Several countries have worked to protect the tigers that live within their borders, including the creation of a massive national park and taking steps to end tiger farming.
- Camera trap surveys continue to prove invaluable to wildlife researchers in tracking down tigers and other species that can range over huge areas.

First ‘intrusions’ into unbroken forests drive pulses of biodiversity loss
- The study examined ‘initial intrusions’ into tropical forests and their effect on the threat status of species.
- The researchers found that deforestation at current rates in high-priority areas such as Borneo, the Congo Basin, and the Amazon could push 121 to 219 species closer to extinction in the next 30 years.
- While the authors point out that their conclusions are not a call to protect only intact landscapes, the data could help policymakers working with limited resources to decide where to place new protected areas.

Orangutans find home in degraded forests
- The study leveraged three years of orangutan observation in the field and airborne mapping of the forest structure using laser-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology.
- The research team found that orangutans make use of habitats that have been ‘degraded’ by logging and other human uses.
- The research is part of a larger effort in collaboration with the Sabah Forestry Department to map carbon stocks and plant and animal biodiversity throughout the Malaysian state of Sabah with the goal of identifying new areas for conservation.

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

Study: Biodiversity poorly protected by conservation areas worldwide
- The study identified the highest concentrations of species, phylogenetic and functional biodiversity on Earth and determined how well the current network of protected areas encompasses these dimensions.
- The three facets of biodiversity overlap on only 4.6 percent of land on Earth, with only 1 percent under protection.
- The research points to areas that could be prioritized to maximize the amount of unique biodiversity protected.

A spotty revival amid decline for China’s endemic leopards
- The North China leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis) is one of nine leopard subspecies and an endemic to China.
- The cats’ population has shown signs of revival in certain parts of the country in recent years, according to conservation groups
- However, industrial development and infrastructure construction remain major threats to the integrity of the leopards’ habitat and conflicts with people over livestock in their mountainous territories are intense.

The women who live alongside rhinos in India
- India’s rising population of greater one-horned rhinos brings residents of villages bordering protected areas into proximity with the animals.
- Women — who are generally responsible for collecting fodder, fuelwood and other forest products — are particularly likely to have encounters with rhinos.
- In Manas and Orang national parks, where authorities allow local women access to the parks’ buffer zones, such sightings are a source of joy and pride.
- In Kaziranga, where access has been cut off, women express resentment that their fortunes have so far not risen in tandem with the rhinos’.

Skewed sex ratio spells danger for rhinos in India’s Gorumara National Park
- Gorumara National Park, in India’s West Bengal State, is home to a small but steadily growing population of greater one-horned rhinoceroses, currently numbering 51 individuals.
- Despite its overall growth, the sex ratio of the park’s rhino population is severely imbalanced, with more reproductive-aged males than females.
- Ideally, there should be more females than males. A male-heavy population threatens the long-term reproductive and genetic viability of the population, as well as leading to increased conflict over mates.
- Until this spring, Gorumara had been relatively free of poaching since the 1990s. However, two dead rhinos were found in April, and another suspected poaching incident was reported May 18.

China’s first national park, an experiment in living with snow leopards
- Sanjiangyuan National Park is expected to open in 2020 as China’s first park in its new national park system.
- As many as 1,500 endangered snow leopards (Panthera uncia) live in the area. The cats are subject to poaching and persecution in retaliation for their predation on livestock, which are edging out their natural prey.
- The new park seeks to capitalize on the reverence many local Tibetan Buddhists have for wildlife, employing a conservation model that engages the public and attempts to ease tensions between people and predators.
- The new national park system is intended to create a more effective kind of protected area than currently exists in China.

Anti-trafficking activist held without trial in Madagascar
- Clovis Razafimalala has been working to end rosewood trafficking in Madagascar since 2009.
- He has been imprisoned since September on charges of unauthorized rebellion and burning state files and property during a protest he maintains he did not participate in.
- No trial date has been announced, although one is supposed to be set by May 26.
- Activists say his case raises concern for the civil rights of Malagasy environmental activists.

Fighting a plant to save rhinos in Nepal
- Mikania micrantha, a plant native to the Americas, has been present in Chitwan National Park since the 1990s. As of 2010, it was present in 20 percent of the park, becoming a threat to wildlife and local people’s livelihoods.
- The plant is particularly prevalent in habitats like wetlands, grasslands and riverine forests, which are also favored habitats for the more than 600 one-horned rhinos living in the park.
- Mikania chokes out native fodder species, pushing rhinos and other grazers out of the safety of the park and increasing human-wildlife conflict, researchers have found.
- Mikania is extremely difficult to eradicate since plants produce up to 40,000 seeds per year and can re-root from even small stems. Efforts are underway to improve removal strategies and engage local communities in the work.

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

Despite numerous challenges, rhinos are thriving in India’s Jaldapara National Park
- Jaldapara National Park in the northern fringe of West Bengal hosts more than 200 one-horned rhinos.
- Growing demand for rhino horn means poaching is a rising threat, especially when anti-poaching measures in neighboring Assam State prompt poaching networks to seek new targets.
- In addition to extensive anti-poaching patrols, the park’s management is relying on cooperation with residents of nearby villages to protect the park’s wildlife.
- The park now shares 40 percent of ecotourism revenue with community-based Joint Forest Management Committees, trains former offenders as wildlife protectors and is developing other projects to integrate the welfare of communities and wildlife.

Brazil moves to cut Amazon conservation units by 1.2 million hectares
- Under the cover of Brazil’s current political crisis, the Congress — dominated by the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby — is pushing forward measures to dramatically slash the size of conservation units in Pará state in the eastern Amazon, removing conservation protection from 1.2 million hectares (2.9 million acres) of forest.
- The moves, yet to be approved by the full Congress, would reduce Jamanxim Flona (National Forest) by 480,000 hectares, Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve by 180,000 hectares, the National Park of Jamanxin by 344,000 hectares, and the Itaituba II National Forest by 169,000 hectares.
- The dismembered portions of the conservation units would be re-designated as Areas of Environmental Protection (APAs), where private land ownership, agriculture and forest clearing is allowed. Brazilian agribusiness — wealthy ranchers and farmers — are likely to benefit significantly from the shift, while forests and biodiversity would suffer.
- Some of the conservation units have received significant funding from foreign donors, including the European Union and the World Bank. The congressional measures must now go for approval to the lower Chamber of Deputies and then to the Senate. Both measures must be approved by the end of May or lose validity. Approval seems likely.

Crystal Davis, director of Global Forest Watch, on conservation and Big Data
- Mongabay has partnered with Global Forest Watch (GFW) over the years, and GFW has even funded some of our coverage of global forest issues.
- Crystal Davis fills us in on how the GFW tool and dataset is being used to inform forest conservation initiatives right now, new features planned for the future, and her thoughts on the ways Big Data is changing how we approach conservation.
- We also speak with Francesca Cunninghame, the Mangrove Finch Project Leader for the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands, in our latest Field Notes segment.

African Parks gets $65M for conservation in Rwanda and Malawi
- African Parks will receive $65 million from the Wyss Foundation to bolster conservation efforts in Rwanda, Malawi, and beyond.
- The funds will go toward African Parks’ management of Liwonde National Park, Majete Wildlife Reserve and Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in Malawi; Akagera National Park in Rwanda; and five still-to-be-identified protected areas in other countries.
- African Parks privately manages protected areas, effectively taking over operations traditionally managed by governments.

Brazilian state invites private companies to run Atlantic Forest parks
- São Paulo — Brazil’s wealthiest state and the country’s industrial powerhouse — has turned over the concessions for 25 state parks to the private sector. The parks protect a large portion of the Atlantic Forest, the most threatened biome in Brazil.
- Environmentalists worry that these company concessions, granted for 30 years, will lead to greater deforestation, though the government denies this possibility.
- Social advocates say that local people who rely on the parks for ecotourism jobs and other employment could easily be excluded from working in the parks by the for-profit companies.
- Critics say the law is unconstitutional because the state did not invite environmentalists and the people that would be impacted by the law to participate in discussions of the legislation before it was enacted.

Protecting gorillas at all costs: park rangers of the Congo
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park is home to a rare subspecies, Grauer’s gorilla, which has just been classified as critically endangered.
- In October, one of the hundreds of rangers employed to patrol the park and protect the gorillas was ambushed and killed by armed gunmen. It was the third such attack in six months – two of which were fatal.
- Thomas Nicolon reports from inside Kahuzi-Biega for Mongabay mere hours before the latest ranger death.

Nigerian superhighway project draws international attention over threats to local communities and wildlife
- The Ekuri Initiative, a forest stewardship organization run by one of the indigenous communities whose land lies in the path of the Cross River Superhighway, has already delivered 253,000 signatures to the federal government asking for their ancestral forests to be protected.
- Several protected areas, including the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, the Afi River Forest Reserve, Cross River National Park, Cross River South Forest Reserve, and Ukpon River Forest Reserve, would also be impacted by development of the highway, WCS notes.
- A number of threatened species live in these protected areas, including forest elephants, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, drills, Preuss’s red colobus monkeys, pangolins, slender-snouted crocodiles, African gray parrots, and many others.

China considers a huge national park for Amur tigers and leopards
- Endangered Amur tigers and Amur leopards are staging a modest recovery in China’s remote northeastern provinces. Over thirty tigers and some 42 leopards now roam the region’s forests.
- The big cats’ habitat remains threatened by human encroachment and experts say the amount of forest currently protected is insufficient to support their growing populations.
- The government of Jilin Province, where most of the big cats live, has proposed a massive new national park focused on the two species that would connect three existing protected areas.
- The park remains under consideration by the central government.

Towards a fairer future for conservation
- The ecosystems that underpin our economies, well-being and survival are collapsing.
- The congress’ theme ’Planet at a crossroads’ underlines that it is not too late to take action for a future that is fairer and more sustainable. But time is running out.
- This post is a commentary — the views expressed are those of the author.

Shifting the debate about conservation justice from rights to responsibilities
- In July 2016, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples drew attention to the historical nature of these abuses in in the conservation sector.
- Conservation activities have direct and indirect implications for human rights. For example, when a community is evicted from their lands without due process, they suffer an infringement of their right not to be evicted or involuntarily relocated.
- This post is a commentary — the views expressed are those of the authors.

Yosemite as a case study in protected area downsizing and habitat fragmentation
- Legal changes to Yosemite’s boundaries demonstrate that even the U.S.’s national parks are not always safe from protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement — often referred to as PADDD.
- Yosemite National Park was downsized twice and had five additions made between 1905 and 1937, resulting in a nearly 30 percent net reduction in the size of the park.
- Researchers found that PADDD leads to habitat fragmentation, so it’s perhaps good news that the team also found that PADDD is reversible.

Controversial park plans in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve
- Mirador-Rio Azul National Park is one of the best-conserved protected areas in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, where illegal logging and agriculture, forest fires, looting, and drug trafficking have contributed to deforestation.
- A plan to increase tourism to the area and redraw the boundaries of the park and adjacent community forest concessions aims to prevent these threats from compromising the area’s rainforest and important archaeological sites.
- Yet the plan has drawn widespread opposition from local communities, environmental NGOs, and the government agency charged with managing the reserve. Opponents say the plan would threaten the region’s ecology, local livelihoods, and community forest concessions that have successfully protected the rainforest.

Making a living inside a reserve: an interview with village head Zou Huagang
- Longxi-Hongkou National Nature Reserve in China’s Sichuan province is part of an important habitat corridor for endangered giant pandas and home to numerous wildlife species, including leopards, golden snub-nosed monkeys, and takin.
- Villages in the area have benefitted from a recent boom in tourism, with the exception of the most remote village inside the reserve, Lianhe, where villagers continue to struggle to make a living.
- Lianhe village, with NGO help, set up forest patrols to protect wildlife and is developing an eco-tourism initiative in hopes of generating new income while maintaining its natural surroundings.

Can China’s first private nature reserve become truly sustainable?
- In 2012, when China’s first privately owned nature reserve was established, local villagers lost their forest-dependent livelihoods.
- Laohegou Nature Reserve has taken steps to help them find new ways to earn a living, hiring some and establishing a program to buy organic food from others.
- However, it hasn’t been enough to support them and today the reserve must take bold steps to help them earn a sustainable living and to secure its own long-term financial footing.
- Other private reserves set up since Laohegou may face similar challenges.

Communities lead the way in rainforest conservation in Guatemala
- The Maya Biosphere Reserve, which covers one-fifth of Guatemala, is one of the most important tropical forest areas north of the Amazon and contains dozens of ancient Mayan archaeological sites.
- The best way to protect the reserve’s rainforest—better than national parks—has turned out to be nine community concessions, forest allotments where locals earn a living from the carefully regulated extraction of timber and plants.
- However, the community concessions’ future remains unclear, with contracts set to expire in the coming years and powerful forces opposing them.

Can conservationists overcome their differences to save life on Earth?
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future.
- The series explores how the world’s biggest conservation groups have embraced a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that has split the field over how best to save life on Earth.
- It also investigates the role of big money in pushing conservation agendas, and the field’s changing relationship with people living in areas targeted for conservation.
- Jeremy Hance reported the Conservation, Divided series over the course of eight months. Stories ran weekly in April and May, generating intense interest from readers.

China’s Wanglang panda reserve, once an ecotourism model, faces new threats
- Established in 1965, Wanglang National Nature Reserve is home to about 30 endangered giant pandas, as well as other rare wild animals.
- Timber-dependent communities near Wanglang, hard-pressed since logging restrictions were enacted in 1998, have turned to illegal poaching, logging, and collecting of wild mushrooms and herbs, often disturbing panda habitat and threatening the effective management of Wanglang reserve.
- After scrapping a successful ecotourism program in Wanglang, the local government is working quickly to expand mass tourism in a way that reserve officials say will threaten panda habitat.

Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve
- The Maya Biosphere Reserve, which covers one-fifth of Guatemala, is one of the most important tropical forest areas north of the Amazon.
- The reserve is a gem of biological and cultural heritage, with more than 500 species of birds, numerous endangered and iconic wildlife species, and dozens of ancient Mayan archaeological sites.
- The reserve’s multiple-use zone has generally succeeded at reducing deforestation and providing sustainable livelihoods for communities living there. But deforestation remains a huge problem in the reserve as a whole, pushed along by complex factors, including illegal settlement by landless migrants, oil development, and the presence of drug traffickers, cattle ranchers, and other armed groups.

Epilogue: Conservation still divided, looking for a way forward
- Ideas promoted under a new philosophy in conservation that focuses on nature’s service to humanity merit continued trial and a fair hearing, Hance writes, but they also require ongoing scrutiny.
- Likewise, Hance writes that the world’s biggest conservation groups, which have embraced the new philosophy, have made major achievements in recent years. But widespread dissatisfaction with their methods within the conservation community means they, too, deserve questioning.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories ran weekly between April 26 and May 17.

Conservation’s people problem
- Since its beginnings, conservation has had a people problem. An ugly history of marginalizing indigenous and local communities living in ecosystems designated for protection has made re-gaining trust and building relationships with these groups one of the toughest aspects of conservation today.
- In Part 4 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how the field has shifted to embrace local communities as partners in conservation — and the work that remains to be done.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories are running weekly between April 26 and May 17.

Conservation today, the old-fashioned way
- There used to be one way to do good conservation: save a species and protect some land or water. But as the human population has exploded, the atmosphere warmed, the oceans acidified, and the economy globalized, conservation has, not surprisingly, shifted.
- In Part 3 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how some conservationists are continuing to focus on traditional methods, even as the field shifts around them.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories are running weekly between April 26 and May 17.

How big donors and corporations shape conservation goals
- In Part 2 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how major donors at foundations, governments, and corporations are pushing conservation groups to adopt a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that some critics say leaves wildlife and wild lands out in the cold.
- Meanwhile, cozy relationships with environmentally destructive corporations have prompted long-running arguments that some of the world’s biggest conservation groups have lost sight of their environmental missions. Yet big conservation and corporations are closer than ever.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories are running weekly between April 26 and May 17.

Has big conservation gone astray?
- In Part 1 of Conservation, Divided, veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance explores how the world’s biggest conservation groups have embraced a human-centric approach known as “new conservation” that has split the field over how best to save life on Earth.
- Neither side of the debate disagrees that conservation today is failing to adequately halt mass extinction. But how to proceed is where talks break down, especially when it comes to the importance of protected areas and the efficacy of the biggest, most recognizable groups.
- Conservation, Divided is an in-depth four-part series investigating how the field of conservation has changed over the last 30 years — and the challenges it faces moving into an uncertain future. Hance completed the series over the course of eight months. Stories will run weekly through May 17.

Conservation giant puts $100M into Amazon protected areas
- The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has pledged another $100 million toward efforts to establish and support protected areas across the Andes-Amazon landscape.
- The five-year commitment, announced yesterday, builds on the $358 million Moore has already invested in Amazon conservation areas and indigenous territories since 2001.
- According to the foundation, the initiative will focus on three “priority strategies”: creating and consolidating existing reserves and indigenous territories; supporting policy that incorporates forest protection into land-use planning; and securing funding mechanisms, management systems, and monitoring platforms for national parks.

Killing of Guatemalan activist in the Maya Biosphere Reserve raises alarm
- Walter Manfredo Méndez Barrios led a farming cooperative involved in sustainable timber harvest and actively opposed hydroelectric dams in the department of Peten. Reports filed by him contributed to the arrest of wildlife poachers and land usurpers.
- The 36-year-old father of six had been receiving threats since last year, according to media reports.
- His murder on March 16 was just the latest in a string of killings of outspoken community and cooperative leaders, as well as park rangers, during the 26 years since the Maya Biosphere Reserve was created.

Perverse outcomes: Can conservation aid spur deforestation?
- Conservation aid may sometimes result in a short-term increase in deforestation, a new study finds – highlighting the incredibly complex network of factors that drive forest loss.
- The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, examined deforestation rates in the wake of nearly $3.4 billion in conservation aid distributed to 42 Sub Sahara Africa (SSA) countries through 1,795 projects between 1980 and 2008.
- The researchers found that in many cases, a 10% increase in conservation aid resulted in a “small but significant” short-term increase in country-wide deforestation.

Can privatization save parks?
- Governments are turning to the private sector to help fund management of protected areas in so-called “public-private partnerships” (PPPs).
- Proponents argue that PPPs not only offer much-needed funds to protected areas, but can improve management and conservation outcomes.
- However, critics contend that they can cede too much control to private interests and put sensitive tasks, such as security and anti-poaching efforts, on the line.

Focus on great apes, draws attention from other species, finds study
- Study found that in African and Asian countries with great apes, scientists tend to focus on few big national parks while ignoring many others.
- Researchers found that 71 percent of published studies focused on mammals, while 31 percent focused on great apes alone.
- Such bias could mean that knowledge of conservation today could become less applicable in the future, researchers say.

Over 40 years, half of China’s land vertebrates disappear
- To quantify China’s loss of biodiversity, researchers analyzed data from 1,385 representative populations of 405 terrestrial vertebrate species: 161 mammals, 184 birds, and 60 amphibians and reptiles.
- Chinese reptile and amphibian populations fared the worst, declining by 97 percent. Primates declined by 84 percent.
- Yet despite these dismal statistics, the report is also sprinkled with kernels of optimism, such as China’s growing bird populations, which rose by 43 percent, and its increasing number of nature reserves.

Photos: Can helping local people save an embattled Nigerian park?
- Gashaka-Gumti national park is home to diverse habitats and wildlife, but illegal poaching, logging, and herding, all driven by grinding poverty, are straining the park’s ecosystems.
- The Gashaka Biodiversity Project is a nascent effort to improve the wellbeing of people living in and near the park, in hopes of reducing pressure on its wildlife and natural resources.
- Some experts believe that tending to human problems will make conservation more viable, and they are now calling for a greater debate about how parks across Africa can better coexist with their human residents.

Needed: Old-age homes for coral reef fish
- While smaller fish with short life spans tend to rebound quickly in protected reefs, larger, longer-lived fish may need more than 100 years of strong protection to fully recover, a new study concludes.
- For the new study, researchers analyzed fish survey data from 324 coral reef sites in the Indian Ocean, spanning eight countries.
- The researchers found that the recovery process in large, well protected marine reserves was faster than in smaller, poorly protected reserves, where they predicted that fish communities would never fully recover from overfishing.

Belize bans offshore oil drilling along barrier reef system
- Reports earlier this year that the government of Belize intended to open up iconic marine protected areas to offshore drilling met with widespread opposition.
- The new ban, approved on December 1, prohibits offshore oil exploration and drilling along the Belize Barrier Reef and within a World Heritage Site comprised of seven marine protected areas in the country.
- The UNESCO World Heritage Committee and national environmental groups applauded the announcement as a step in the right direction.

New fund lands $4M to protect the Amazon
- Efforts to protect the Amazon River’s headwaters got a boost today with a $4 million commitment from the Wyss Foundation to a new conservation initiative.
- The Wyss Foundation announced a multi-year grant to the Andes Amazon Fund in support of “locally-driven conservation initiatives in the headwaters of the Amazon”.
- While launched only this summer, the Andes Amazon Fund (AAF) has already made a name for itself with a million dollar commitment to the world’s newest rainforest reserve: Sierra del Divisor National Park.

Protecting pandas shields other species in China
- China invests millions of dollars to protect giant pandas, but scientists have been uncertain about whether this helps other species.
- New analysis of the ranges of pandas and birds, mammals, and amphibians found only in China’s forests shows major overlap.
- The finding supports the idea of pandas as an “umbrella species,” whose conservation also protects many other animals.

To tackle climate change cheaply, first secure indigenous forest rights
- Over 20 years, the secure forest rights of indigenous groups in the Brazilian Amazon and communities in a Guatemalan reserve will prevent the release of 5.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide – equivalent to the emissions of more than a billion cars in a year – as a result of avoided deforestation, a new report shows.
- The report calculates that the economic benefits from those averted emissions as well as carbon capture in the secure forests will surpass $160 billion.
- A second report finds that the way local communities harvest timber on their concessions in the Guatemalan reserve represents state-of-the-art best practice for tropical forest management.

Conservation win in Madagascar: 7 new reserves established
- Madagascar gets 7 new reserves located in its eastern rainforests.
- Reserves protect endangered lemurs, herps, and other species.
- Initiative led by Rainforest Trust and its local partner, Madagasikara Voakajy.

Scaling bottom-up conservation in Latin America

NCI’s buriti project helps local communities benefit while protecting areas of this wild palm , working to provide added value sales of palm fruit and extracts. Courtesy of NCI. One of the biggest complaints about nature conservation is the business is often a top-down affair, where decisions are made by officials and NGOs in distant […]
Fires rage in Indonesian park illegally trashed for palm oil

Fire burning in Tesso Nilo. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Dozens of fires are raging across Indonesia’s Tesso Nilo National Park National Park, a protected area that has lost more than 40 percent of its forest cover since 2000, reveals new analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI). WRI’s analysis of NASA satellite data shows […]
Video: camera traps highlight wildlife diversity of ‘forgotten’ park

Gaur caught on camera trap in Virachey National Park. Photo by: HabitatID. Things appeared to be on the upswing in Cambodia’s vast Virachey National Park in the early 2000s. Conservation groups were surveying the area and the World Bank had committed $5 million in funds. But then the Cambodia government handed out a mining exploration […]
Can we save the Sumatran rhino? Indonesia holds out hope

Can a sanctuary in Indonesia keep the world’s most imperiled rhino from extinction? “One percent of the world’s population,” veterinarian Zulfi Arsan says as he nods towards Bina, a 714-kilogram (1,574-pound), 30-year-old female Sumatran rhinoceros leisurely crunching branches whole. A gentle and easygoing rhino, pink-hued Bina doesn’t seem to mind the two-legged hominids snapping pictures […]
Rainforest parks cut malaria transmission

Google Earth image showing the Surui tribe’s territory (right) and unprotected areas (left) in the Brazilian state of Rondonia. Strictly protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon are associated with lower rates of malaria transmission than extractive reserves, mining zones, and areas with roads, reports a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy […]
90% of Amazon deforestation occurs outside protected areas

Imazon map showing deforestation in Amazonian conservation units. Ten percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between August 2012 and July 2014 occurred in protected areas, reports new research from Imazon. The study, based on spatial analysis, found that 158,400 hectares of the 1.531 million hectares cleared in the Amazon during the two-year period took […]
Videos reveal rare birds, wild monkeys, and jaguar family in oil-exploited park

Sloth on all fours seeking salt. Photo courtesy of camera trap video compilation from Tiputini Biodiversity Station. A compilation of new camera trap videos from Yasuni National Park shows off rarely seen species like the rufous-vented ground cuckoo (Neomorphus geoffroyi) and the short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) as well as odd behavior, like sloths licking salt […]
Expedition in the Congo rediscovers lost primate

Young primatologist takes first photo ever of Bouvier’s red colobus Detail from the world’s first photo of Bouvier’s red colobus (Piliocolobus bouvieri) taken early March 2015 in the Ntokou-Pikounda National Park in the Republic of Congo. The photo shows an adult female with offspring. Photo by: Lieven Devreese. The last time there was a sighting […]
DRC mulls changing Virunga’s boundaries for oil

Mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park. Photo by: Cai Tjeenk Willink/Creative Commons 3.0. Last Friday, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced it was considering changing the boundaries of Virunga National Park to accommodate oil exploitation. Africa’s oldest park, Virunga is home to around a quarter of the world’s mountain gorillas (Gorilla […]

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