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Road to recovery: Five stories of species staging a comeback 31 Dec 2025 06:15:43 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/road-to-recovery-five-stories-of-species-staging-a-comeback/ author: Hayat Indriyatno dc:creator: Shreya Dasgupta content:encoded: Amid accelerating biodiversity loss and shrinking ecological spaces, it’s easy to lose hope. But every year, there are stories of optimism: of species that are making a comeback after being nearly wiped out. Here are five such species whose recovery Mongabay reported on in 2025: Cape vulture The Cape vulture (Gyps coprotheres), southern Africa’s largest vulture species, saw its conservation status improve from endangered to vulnerable on the IUCN Red List in 2021. The bird’s recovery is thanks to more than five decades of conservation efforts, which include reducing conflict with landowners, mitigating electrocution on power lines, and rehabilitation and captive breeding. However, researchers warn that some colonies are still seeing localized extinctions. (Full story) A Cape vulture. Image by Arno Meintjes via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Green turtle After decades of decline, green turtles (Chelonia mydas) are recovering in some parts of the world. The species was reclassified from endangered to least concern on the IUCN Red List this year. The recovery in some regions is thanks to legal protections against international trade and direct hunting, and conservation measures like protecting nesting beaches and the use of turtle excluder devices to keep them from getting entangled in fishing gear. (Full Story) A green turtle. Image by Bernard DUPONT via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) Campbell’s keeled glass-snail Campbell’s keeled glass-snail (Advena campbelli) was once presumed extinct. But after discovering a small population of the snail on Norfolk Island, off the Australian mainland, organizations came together to create a snail-breeding program at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo in…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Amid accelerating biodiversity loss and shrinking ecological spaces, it’s easy to lose hope. But every year, there are stories of optimism: of species that are making a comeback after being nearly wiped out. Here are five such species whose recovery Mongabay reported on in 2025: Cape vulture The Cape vulture (Gyps coprotheres), southern Africa’s largest vulture […] authors: | ||
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Mongabay’s investigative reporting won top environmental journalism awards in 2025 31 Dec 2025 05:49:11 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/mongabays-investigative-reporting-won-top-environmental-journalism-awards-in-2025/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Bobby Bascomb content:encoded: In 2025, Mongabay’s investigative journalism earned international honors for stories exposing environmental crime, corruption, and abuse of both people and the environment. Mongabay journalists uncovered hidden public health risks, schemes to take advantage of Indigenous groups, and took personal risk traveling to underreported regions on nature’s frontlines. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes won first place in the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism for her investigative report, “Revealed: Illegal cattle ranching booms in Arariboia territory during deadly year for Indigenous Guajajara.” In this three-part series, Mendes uncovered a direct connection between the cattle industry and a spike in violent crime against local Indigenous Guajajara people in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory of the Brazilian Amazon. Federal prosecutors said they will use Mendes’s reporting as evidence in a trial for the murder of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, a forest guardian allegedly killed by loggers in 2019. Contributor Gloria Pallares won in the Innovation & Investigative Journalism category of the International Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award, and received an honorable mention from the Trace Prize. Both honors were for her story “False claims of U.N. backing see Indigenous groups cede forest rights for sketchy finance.” Pallares’s investigation dug into false claims by entities in Latin America that they had the backing of the U.N. to convince Indigenous groups to give up economic rights to their forests for decades to come. The Rio Grande do Sul Press Association awarded second place for national reporting to Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, Philip Jacobson and Fernanda Wenzel, alongside the Pulitzer…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: In 2025, Mongabay’s investigative journalism earned international honors for stories exposing environmental crime, corruption, and abuse of both people and the environment. Mongabay journalists uncovered hidden public health risks, schemes to take advantage of Indigenous groups, and took personal risk traveling to underreported regions on nature’s frontlines. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes won first place in the […] authors: | ||
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Cyclone-ravaged Sri Lanka set to apply for ‘loss and damage’ funding 31 Dec 2025 02:20:53 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/cyclone-ravaged-sri-lanka-set-to-apply-for-loss-and-damage-funding/ author: Dilrukshi Handunnetti dc:creator: Malaka Rodrigo content:encoded: COLOMBO — Veteran environmental activist Hemantha Withanage of Sri Lankan NGO the Center for Environmental Justice has been a regular presence at United Nations climate conferences for years, repeatedly calling for compensation for countries in the Global South severely impacted by climate change-related disasters. At each of these conferences of the parties, or COPs, Withanage and like-minded activists have pressed wealthy, high-emitting nations to accept responsibility for the damage caused by human-induced climate change to establish a fund to cover what’s known as loss and damage. These long-standing demands turned deeply personal this year. Sri Lanka is now preparing to become one of the first countries to seek assistance from the newly established Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), following the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah in late November. The cyclone killed at least 650 people, left around 200 missing, and triggered widespread destruction across the island. “I never imagined that my own country would be among the first applicants to the fund,” Withanage said. Climate activists who long campaigned for the creation of a loss and damage fund are pushing for increased financial contributions to support countries facing the impacts of climate change. Image courtesy of Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD). Assessment on physical damage A report by the World Bank Group’s Global Rapid Post-Disaster Damage Estimation (GRADE) puts the direct physical damages from the cyclone at $4.1 billion, equivalent to about 4% of Sri Lanka’s GDP. According to the report, infrastructure including roads,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah’s devastating impact, Sri Lanka plans to apply for payment from the U.N.’s newly implemented loss and damage fund, designed specifically to help climate-vulnerable developing countries cope with severe, unavoidable climate change impacts. - Ditwah, a tropical cyclone that caused direct damage estimated at $4.1 billion, equivalent to about 4% of Sri Lanka’s GDP, hit infrastructure and livelihoods, while intangible losses such as impacts on social systems and ecosystem services remain harder to quantify. - Accessing the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will require rigorous climate attribution and institutional capacity, experts say, noting that Sri Lanka must scientifically demonstrate the extent of losses directly attributable to climate change and strengthen governance, legal frameworks and coordination to secure the funding. - The FRLD remains under-resourced, with an initial allocation of $250 million, far below the tens to hundreds of billions needed annually, prompting calls for quicker, direct funding mechanisms to support urgent rebuilding and climate resilience. authors: | ||
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A new frog species emerges from Peru’s cloud forests — and it’s already at risk 30 Dec 2025 22:32:24 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-new-frog-species-emerges-from-perus-cloud-forests-and-its-already-at-risk/ author: Morgan Erickson-Davis dc:creator: Astrid Arellano content:encoded: Deep within the cloud forests of the San Martín region of Peru lie two places so high, cold and remote that they remained virtually unexplored for decades. In 2022, and again in 2025, monitors from three Indigenous and local associations guided a team of scientists from Peru and France on a series of expeditions to unravel their mysteries. It was there, within the Bosques de Vaquero Biocorridor, that one of the most striking discoveries emerged: a small, previously unknown frog hidden among the fallen leaves. They named it Shunku Sacha, which in Kichawa-Lamista means “heart of the forest.” The scientific name of the new species, Oreobates shunkusacha, honors the territory where it was discovered — a place that, along with the frog, is now threatened by the rapid destruction of the forest. O. shunkusacha was formally described in a study recently published in the German journal Salamandra. Due to the threats facing the species and its small known range, the study’s authors say it should be considered endangered. A collaborative effort The research was carried out by local associations and scientists from Nature Conserv’Action and the Ararankha Association–Ecology and Conservation, who have been working in the area since 2022, with the aim of bringing science closer to local organizations that protect the forests. The species has been named Oreobates shunkusacha, with Shunku Sacha meaning “heart of the forest” in Kichawa-Lamista. In their study, researchers propose “Shunku Sacha big-headed frog” as the species’ common name. Image courtesy of Nature Conserv’Action Perú.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Local communities and scientists have discovered a new-to-science frog species, Oreobates shunkusacha, in the cloud forests of the Bosques de Vaquero Biocorridor, in the San Martín region of Peru. - Its name, Shunku Sacha, which in Kichwa-Lamista means “heart of the forest,” honors the local communities leading conservation work in the area. - In a study describing O. shunkusacha, researchers write that the species is likely endangered. - Over the past 40 years, the Lake Sauce sub-basin, where the frog lives, has lost nearly 60% of its forest cover, placing both the survival of the newly discovered species and the stability of this ecosystem at risk. authors: | ||
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Indonesia closes 2025 with rising disasters and stalled environmental reform 30 Dec 2025 22:23:08 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/indonesia-closes-2025-with-rising-disasters-and-stalled-environmental-reform/ author: Isabel Esterman dc:creator: Hans Nicholas Jong content:encoded: JAKARTA — Indonesia closed 2025 facing an uncomfortable reality: climate disasters are escalating while policy direction has remained largely unchanged during President Prabowo Subianto’s first year in office, with the country still heavily dependent on fossil fuels and extractive industries such as palm oil and mining. One of the deadliest disasters in Indonesia in recent years struck in November 2025, when days of intense rainfall triggered flooding and landslides across three provinces on the island of Sumatra: Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra. Scientists and environmental groups say the destruction should not be treated as an isolated natural event. Instead, they point to long-standing problems in land use, energy planning and governance that have left large parts of the island more vulnerable to extreme weather. They argue that forest loss, industrial expansion and weak controls on permits and spatial planning have worsened the impact of heavy rain. River catchments, upstream forests and steep slopes that play a key role in absorbing water are still allowed to be legally deforested under current land-use rules. Disasters as warning signs, not anomalies For Leonard Simanjuntak, the Indonesia country director for Greenpeace, the disasters were a “hard warning” that the country’s environmental carrying capacity has reached a critical point — a warning that, he said, has largely gone unheeded. “I think the Sumatra disaster was a very strong warning,” he told Mongabay. “But over the past year, there have been many other warnings too, and they seem not to have been taken seriously.” Leonard…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Deadly floods and landslides in Sumatra in late 2025 underscored how deforestation, weak spatial planning and extractive development have increased Indonesia’s vulnerability to extreme weather — problems scientists and activists say the government has largely failed to confront. - Forest loss surged nationwide in 2025, with Sumatra overtaking Borneo as the main deforestation hotspot, while large areas of forest in Papua were redesignated for food estates, agriculture and biofuel projects, raising concerns over carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. - Despite international pledges to phase out coal, national energy plans continued to lock in coal, gas and biomass co-firing for decades, while palm oil expansion and mining — including in sensitive areas like Raja Ampat — remained central to development strategy, often prompting action only after public pressure. - Civil society groups increasingly turned to lawsuits amid shrinking space for dissent, rising criminalization of Indigenous communities and activists, and growing militarization of land-use projects — trends campaigners warn are weakening democratic safeguards and environmental protections alike. authors: | ||
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Tatiana Schlossberg, environmental journalist, has died, aged 35 30 Dec 2025 22:09:47 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/tatiana-schlossberg-environmental-journalist-has-died-aged-35/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: She wrote about damage that accumulated slowly, in places most people did not look, and about the systems that allowed it to be ignored. When her own life was overtaken by illness, she approached that, too, as a problem to be understood rather than transcended. She died today, aged 35, after a year and a half spent moving between hospital rooms and home, and between reporting and waiting. For much of her career she worked as an environmental journalist, explaining climate change and biodiversity loss without relying on apocalyptic framing. Her reporting for The New York Times favored mechanisms over exhortation. She was interested in how harm became normalized: how energy use hid inside data centers, how consumption displaced pollution elsewhere, how environmental cost was made abstract enough to live with. She resisted the consolations of individual virtue, arguing instead that climate change was sustained by systems that rewarded convenience and obscured responsibility. That reporter was Tatiana Schlossberg. In 2019 she published Inconspicuous Consumption, a book that traced the environmental consequences of ordinary life, not to assign blame but to show how difficult it had become to opt out of damage once it was built into infrastructure and supply chains. That same method shaped the essay she published in The New Yorker in November 2025, announcing that she had terminal cancer. The diagnosis came hours after the birth of her second child in May 2024, when a routine blood test showed a white-cell count that could not be dismissed. The…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Tatiana Schlossberg was an environmental journalist who focused on how climate damage accumulates through systems most people rarely see, favoring explanation over exhortation in her reporting and writing. - Her work, including the book Inconspicuous Consumption, traced the environmental costs embedded in ordinary life, arguing that responsibility is shaped less by individual choices than by infrastructure and incentives. - In November 2025 she published an essay describing her terminal leukemia, diagnosed shortly after the birth of her second child, writing about illness with the same precision she brought to reporting. - Her final writing centered on interruption, care, and memory, including the knowledge that her children would grow up with only fragments of her presence. authors: | ||
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Satellite data show forest loss persists in Brazilian Amazon’s most deforested reserve 30 Dec 2025 21:51:05 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/satellite-data-show-forest-loss-persists-in-brazilian-amazons-most-deforested-reserve/ author: Morgan Erickson-Davis dc:creator: Morgan Erickson-Davis content:encoded: Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area encompasses an area of Amazon Rainforest more than half the size of Belgium. Or at least it used to. The embattled reserve has lost around half of its primary forest cover since it was created in 2006, according to satellite data from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab and visualized on monitoring platform Global Forest Watch. The data show 2024 had the highest rate of forest loss, rocketing 400% over 2023. Preliminary data show forest loss continued in 2025, concentrated in the northern portion of the 1.7-million-hectare (4.2-million-acre) reserve, where most of the largest tracts of forest remain. Satellite data from the University of Maryland show primary forest loss jumped 400% between 2023 and 2024. Image by Mongabay. Google Timelapse shows forest loss advancing rapidly through Triunfo do Xingu. This has given Triunfo do Xingu the dubious distinction of being the protected area with the highest rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The main cause? Cattle. Triunfo do Xingu lies in the heart of Brazil’s cattle country, where cows outnumber people 38 to one. To feed this legion of cattle, ranchers carve pasture from forest, often using slash-and-burn techniques to clear areas and renew degraded soil. During a visit in 2023, Mongabay reporters observed the charred remains of sawed-down trees, and were told by local small-scale famers and officials that fires set by ranchers can spread out of control, consuming crops, homes and forest alike. “They set…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area was established to protect a swath of the Amazon Rainforest from the cattle industry. - However, satellite data show the reserve has lost around 50% of its primary forest cover since it was created in 2006. - The data show forest loss peaked in 2024, and continued into 2025. - Research indicates rates of deforestation are higher in Triunfo do Xingu than in the unprotected areas around it. authors: | ||
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A small preserve leads a big effort to save native plants in the Bahamas 30 Dec 2025 19:37:19 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-small-preserve-leads-a-big-effort-to-save-native-plants-in-the-bahamas/ author: Nandithachandraprakash dc:creator: Marlowe Starling content:encoded: ELEUTHERA, Bahamas — Tucked away beside the main road that runs along Eleuthera, a narrow island in the Bahamas, the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve holds 12 hectares (30 acres) of dense subtropical dry forest. Black witch moths (Ascalapha odorata), as large as bats, zigzag between the branches as fluorescent wasps hum along the path’s edge. Orchard spiders (Leucauge venusta) sit on sprawling webs between mangrove roots. Meter-high termite mounds surround the bases of tree trunks. Native Jamaican slider turtles (Trachemys terrapen) sunbathe in the artificial wetland. Tree lizards, frogs and nonvenomous snakes make the preserve their home, too. Just two decades ago, the same plot of land belonged to a hotel, with stretches of abandoned farmland. After philanthropist Shelby White purchased the land, and after many years of restoring the property, it became an accredited botanical garden. Today, it’s known for its conservation, research and education on native Bahamian plants. The Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve is funded and managed through a partnership between the Bahamas National Trust, which oversees the country’s national parks, and the philanthropic Leon Levy Foundation based in New York City. Now, it’s the island’s standout example of native plant diversity and a hub for Caribbean plant knowledge. Native Jamaican sliders (Trachemys terrapen), freshwater turtles found in the Bahamas and other Caribbean islands, bask in the artificial wetland. Image by Marlowe Starling for Mongabay. Regrowing the forest The Bahamas’ subtropical dry forests are characterized by nutrient-poor soils, lots of limestone, shrubs, hardwood trees, and frequent…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - The Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve is a 12-hectare (30-acre) estate on Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, dedicated to conserving and educating people about the island-nation’s native plants. - Since 2009, resident botanist Ethan Freid has led a local restoration effort prioritizing native plants of the Bahamas’ subtropical dry forest ecosystem. - The Levy preserve also offers a summer internship for university students interested in environmental science and biology, which teaches them about native plant taxonomy — filling a generational knowledge gap. - Though small in scale, the project provides a haven for the Bahamas’ native plants; has a herbarium of plant specimens for research; and manages an online digital database of Caribbean plant species. authors: | ||
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Rare bats at risk as iron ore mine advances in Guinea’s Nimba Mountains 30 Dec 2025 14:47:23 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/rare-bats-at-risk-as-iron-ore-mine-advances-in-guineas-nimba-mountains/ author: Terna Gyuse dc:creator: Victoria Schneider content:encoded: In 2018, researchers from Bat Conservation International, Cameroon’s University of Maroua and the American Museum of Natural History entered abandoned mining tunnels in Guinea’s Nimba Mountains as part of an environmental and social impact assessment for an iron ore project. They wanted to better understand the habitat and behavior of the critically endangered Lamotte’s roundleaf bat (Hipposideros lamottei) in order to mitigate the negative impacts of a proposed mining project. As they were prowling in the horizontal shafts of mines left behind in the 1970s and ’80s, they encountered a distinctive and distinctly unknown-to-science bat species. It was joy for the scientists, and potential disaster for U.S. miner Ivanhoe Atlantic (formerly HPX), which is seeking to develop an open-pit iron ore mine amid the rich biodiversity of the Nimba Mountains, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Residents of the villages around Nimba had previously reported sightings of a bat with bright orange fur here in the mountains, around 1,400 meters (4,600 feet) above sea level, but the 2018 survey was the first formal record of the bat. The scientists searching the abandoned mine shafts were able to trap, examine and release just two individuals on two occasions, one male and one female. They also recorded echolocation at a total of five adits, the access tunnels to the old mines, that matched the vocalizations of the bat they’ve formally named Myotis nimbaensis. In the 2021 paper announcing the bat’s identification, the researchers explained its relationship to other members of the…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Guinea’s government is assessing the potential impacts of a mining project in the Nimba Mountains, in a biodiversity hotspot that has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site while being threatened by mining. - U.S. mining company Ivanhoe Atlantic recently submitted an environmental impact assessment for an iron ore mine at a site that is the only known home of two unique bat species, as well as critically endangered chimpanzees and threatened toads and frogs. - Conservationists say open-pit mining in this ecologically sensitive region could spell extinction for Lamotte’s roundleaf bat and the orange-furred Nimba Mountain bat if their forest habitat is disturbed for mine infrastructure. authors: | ||
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Ditches on peatland oil palm plantations are an overlooked source of methane: Study 30 Dec 2025 14:18:37 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/ditches-on-peatland-oil-palm-plantations-are-an-overlooked-source-of-methane-study/ author: Isabel Esterman dc:creator: John Cannon content:encoded: The water-filled ditches that laced through the oil palm plantation in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, nagged at Kuno Kasak when he saw them in 2022. He knew that these canals, used to draw water out of spongy peatlands to make them suitable for agriculture, had been shown to be sources of methane. But just how much remains an open question, with too few data points to make estimates with certainty. Though methane dissipates more quickly in the atmosphere than CO2, it’s more than 20 times more effective at trapping heat. It’s also responsible for nearly a third of the global temperature rise since the industrial revolution, making accurate methane accounting imperative for addressing climate change. Kasak, a professor of environmental technology at Estonia’s University of Tartu, is the lead author of a recent study in which he and his colleagues report that methane from these drainage canals accounted for as much as 10% of the total greenhouse gases from a given hectare of the oil palm plantations they studied. At the same time, the ditches covered no more than 4% of the plantations’ total area. “This is significant because it means that previous estimates of emissions from drained peatlands likely underestimate the contribution from ditches, which are often ignored in global carbon accounting,” Kasak told Mongabay in an email. They also found that the ditches were sources of CO2. One of the oil palm plantations where Kasak and his colleagues sampled emissions from drainage ditches.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Ditches that drain peatlands for agriculture are significant but often-overlooked sources of greenhouse gases, including methane, according to a recent study. - Methane doesn’t last as long as CO2 in the atmosphere, but it is many times more potent in warming the climate. - The researchers analyzed emissions from ditches on two oil palm plantations in Malaysian Borneo and found that the ditches play an outsize role in the overall carbon emissions from converted peatlands. - Their findings underscore the need to account for emissions from these ditches to better understand the implications of draining peatlands. authors: | ||
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Andy Mahler, advocate for public forests in America 30 Dec 2025 11:28:56 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/andy-mahler-advocate-for-public-forests-in-america/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: In the late 20th century, forest conservation in the eastern United States was rarely a matter of sweeping victories or clean resolutions. It was a practice shaped by hearings that dragged on, injunctions that arrived too late, and landscapes divided among agencies with overlapping mandates and uneven resolve. The work tended to fall to people willing to read environmental-impact statements closely, show up repeatedly, and keep doing so after public attention moved elsewhere. Out of that terrain emerged a form of activism that was neither professionalized nor episodic. It relied on local knowledge, personal trust, and a refusal to accept that extractive outcomes were inevitable simply because they were customary. It was also suspicious of hierarchy. Movements rose and fell, coalitions shifted, and leadership often came from those most able to hold people together through disagreement. One of the figures most closely associated with that approach was Andy Mahler, who died on August 30th 2025. He spent more than five decades working to protect forests in the Midwest and Appalachia, bringing to the work the instincts of an organizer and a belief that politics began with place. Mahler was best known as a central force behind Heartwood, a loose yet persistent network of grassroots forest defenders active across several states. Heartwood was never designed to scale efficiently. It functioned through gatherings, shared meals, and long discussions that made room for conflict and resisted easy resolution. Mahler believed that alliances built too quickly were brittle. What mattered was whether people stayed…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Forest conservation in the eastern United States often depended on persistence rather than decisive victories, shaped by slow regulatory processes and fragmented governance that rewarded those willing to keep showing up after attention faded. - Out of this context grew a form of grassroots activism grounded in local knowledge and personal trust, skeptical of hierarchy and resistant to the idea that extractive outcomes were inevitable or natural. - Andy Mahler embodied that approach through decades of work protecting public forests, most notably as a central figure in Heartwood, a decentralized network built on sustained relationships rather than efficiency or scale. - He favored patient, place-based engagement over professionalized advocacy, believing that lasting protection came from continued involvement and shared responsibility rather than fixed outcomes or abstract measures. authors: | ||
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New species of jewel-babbler from Papua New Guinea may be endangered 30 Dec 2025 10:44:53 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/new-species-of-jewel-babbler-from-papua-new-guinea-may-be-endangered/ author: Hayat Indriyatno dc:creator: Shreya Dasgupta content:encoded: Within a forested limestone landscape of Papua New Guinea lives a shy, striking bird that’s new to science. This bird is also incredibly rare and may already be endangered, according to a recent study. Researchers have photographed fewer than 10 individuals of the newly described hooded jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa urrissia) in about 10 years of monitoring — all within a 100-hectare (250-acre) area of Iagifu Ridge, located in the Agogo mountain range of Papua New Guinea. Extrapolating from these figures, “we estimate that Iagifu Ridge may support some 50-100 individuals,” Iain Woxvold, study co-author from the Australian Museum Research Institute, told Mongabay by email. “However, an accurate estimate will require further research, and the actual number may well be fewer.” Jewel-babblers are ground-dwelling birds with distinctive black masks and white throats or cheeks. Four species were known until now, all from the island of New Guinea. Woxvold and colleagues first chanced upon the hooded jewel-babbler in 2017. They had set up camera traps to survey biodiversity on Iagifu Ridge, and among the images were those of two birds on the forest floor with distinctive coloration. “We were fairly certain it was a new taxon in 2017 … However, at that stage we were still not 100% sure that it was a new species,” Woxvold said. More of these birds turned up during subsequent camera-trapping surveys in 2019 and later. “It was strange and wonderful to see them in those early photographs!” Woxvold said. “In 2022, we also set a video camera…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Within a forested limestone landscape of Papua New Guinea lives a shy, striking bird that’s new to science. This bird is also incredibly rare and may already be endangered, according to a recent study. Researchers have photographed fewer than 10 individuals of the newly described hooded jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa urrissia) in about 10 years of monitoring […] authors: | ||
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Mongabay’s multimedia reporting wins international journalism prizes in 2025 30 Dec 2025 10:12:33 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/mongabays-multimedia-reporting-wins-international-journalism-prizes-in-2025/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Bobby Bascomb content:encoded: In 2025, Mongabay’s team of multimedia journalists won international journalism prizes for audio, visual and digital storytelling. The content they produced range from an immersive audio series exploring bioacoustics, to a visually rich investigation into organized crime, and a video on reviving Indigenous culture. Mongabay strives to meet people where they are and make high-quality reporting available to as many people as possible. These awards are a recognition of the type of multimedia work that Mongabay plans to expand upon over the coming year. Digital Mongabay Latam won two major awards: first place in the large outlet category of the Global Shining Light Award, and first place for digital storytelling in the Future of Media award. The winning story for both awards, “Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories,” found that 67 airstrips have been carved into the Peruvian Amazon for drug flights. The team used satellite imagery and AI to identify potential sites for these airstrips, then spent a year interviewing more than 60 sources and traveling to the region to ground-truth the findings. What emerged was a data-rich picture of the deadly toll that narcotrafficking has had on Indigenous communities and the forest. The investigation found that at least three reserves set aside for Indigenous people living in voluntary isolation have been inundated with six illegal airstrips. Written Mongabay’s Malavika Vyawahare was one of 12 recipients of the 2025 Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership (SEAL) award. The award is given to journalists whose…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: In 2025, Mongabay’s team of multimedia journalists won international journalism prizes for audio, visual and digital storytelling. The content they produced range from an immersive audio series exploring bioacoustics, to a visually rich investigation into organized crime, and a video on reviving Indigenous culture. Mongabay strives to meet people where they are and make high-quality […] authors: | ||
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Most Watched Video Stories of 2025 30 Dec 2025 09:15:58 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/most-watched-video-stories-of-2025/ author: Lucia Torres dc:creator: Lucia Torres content:encoded: This was a big year for the Mongabay Video Team. We leaned into solution-focused stories, in collaboration with the Solutions Journalism Network, highlighting the people, communities and projects making a difference for wildlife, ecosystems and climate. We experimented with new series such as Wild Targets and Against All Odds. We commissioned crucial short docs such as Yaku Raymi: The Quechua Ritual to Save a Glacier and The Clearing: Young Activists Risk All to Defend Cambodia’s Environment. We also joined forces with the Associated Press to produce a powerful video on women reclaiming Aztec floating farms in Mexico City. Plus, we launched our first Amazon grant with One World Media, awarded to Felipe Pérez, supporting independent stories that inform, inspire and make an impact, while our video investigation The price of Europe’s paper packaging boom won the first prize of the Hostwriter Creators 2025. These top 10 most-watched videos of the year showcase our approach: curious, eye-opening, and sometimes downright surprising stories from around the world. Top Video Features This year’s top features explore some of the most surprising and inspiring ways people are interacting with nature. These films highlight the challenges and creative solutions shaping the future of wildlife and ecosystems. Two of these stories are part of our Wild Targets series on illegal wildlife trade, with Season 2 coming early next year. Why is this snake one of the most trafficked species in India? | Wild Targets The red sand boa is harmless, non-venomous, yet myths and superstitions make…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - This year, we told stories that show how people and communities are taking action for wildlife, ecosystems and climate. - We experimented with new formats and series, from Wild Targets to Conservation Entangled, making both long and short videos more engaging than ever. - Through global collaborations, including with the Associated Press and our first grant with One World Media, we expanded the reach and impact of our storytelling. authors: | ||
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Elizabeth Erasito, custodian of Fiji’s parks and places 30 Dec 2025 04:04:38 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/elizabeth-erasito-custodian-of-fijis-parks-and-places/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: The work of conservation in small island states is rarely abstract. It is shaped by land that is limited, institutions that are thinly resourced, and pressures that arrive from far beyond national borders. Decisions about forests, rivers, reefs, and historic sites are often framed as technical choices, but they are more often political ones, balancing development promises against damage that cannot easily be reversed. In Fiji, those tensions were especially visible in the management of protected areas and heritage sites. National parks were expected to serve several purposes at once: conservation, public access, cultural continuity, and economic opportunity. They were also expected to endure storms, fires, invasive species, and illegal extraction, frequently with too little staff and money. Holding those contradictions together required patience, administrative skill, and a tolerance for slow progress. One of the figures who spent much of her working life doing exactly that was Elizabeth Erasito. She joined the National Trust of Fiji in 1997 and rose to become its director, a position she held for more than two decades. Under her leadership, the Trust managed a small but symbolically important network of parks and historic places, from coastal dunes to forest reserves and archaeological sites. Her focus was less on expansion than on making protection function in practice. Elizabeth Erasito. From the National Trust. She spoke plainly about constraints. Monitoring, she argued, mattered more than declarations. In public remarks she described the need for practical tools to track encroachment, fires, invasive species, and illegal sand mining.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Conservation in small island states is portrayed as a political and administrative challenge shaped by limited land, scarce resources, and external pressures, where development choices often carry irreversible consequences. - In Fiji, protected areas were expected to deliver conservation, public access, cultural continuity, and economic value at once, while facing storms, fires, invasive species, and illegal extraction with limited capacity. - Elizabeth Erasito’s career at the National Trust of Fiji centered on making protection work in practice, managing a modest but significant network of parks and heritage sites with an emphasis on monitoring and enforcement rather than expansion. - She argued that parks should remain accessible and grounded in everyday life, and that short-term development gains rarely justified long-term damage, valuing steady institutional endurance over visible triumphs. authors: | ||
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Fishing ‘modernization’ leaves Tanzania’s small-scale crews struggling to stay afloat 30 Dec 2025 00:15:12 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/fishing-modernization-leaves-tanzanias-small-scale-crews-struggling-to-stay-afloat/ author: Malavikavyawahare dc:creator: Mongabay.com content:encoded: KILWA, Tanzania — For some fishers in Tanzania’s Kilwa district who were among the first to receive fishing boats under a government-sponsored program, the vessels are proving to be a costly burden. The initiative, launched in November 2023 by the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries under President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s administration, was designed to transform the fishing sector by replacing outdated wooden boats with modern vessels. When Hassan visited Kilwa two months earlier, she pledged that small-scale fishers would receive the boats through low-interest loans. The promise generated excitement among fishing communities long constrained by aging vessels and with limited access to capital to buy new boats. To finance the initiative, the government partnered with the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB), which provides concessional loans to fishing groups. The loans come with very low interest rates, offer long repayment periods, and include a grace period of about five to 10 years before repayment begins. “We publish a national announcement when boats become available,” said Mohammed Sheikh, director of fisheries at Tanzania’s Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries. “Interested cooperatives apply, and once approved, they receive boats that are fully insured and ready for operation.” Each boat’s value depends on its size (typically 5-14 meters, or 16-46 feet), with an average cost of around 80 million shillings ($32,200). The program promised to boost productivity, create jobs and discourage destructive fishing practices, such as the use of dynamite and undersized netting. The latter captures small juvenile fish that haven’t had a chance to…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Tanzania’s boat modernization program aims to empower small-scale fishers with affordable, government-distributed vessels, but has instead left many struggling with unreliable vessels and unsustainable loans. - In Kilwa district, fishers say the boats they received were poorly equipped, costly to operate and prone to mechanical failure, forcing them to rent missing gear and spend more on fuel. - Mounting repayment pressure is driving some fishers toward illegal or risky fishing practices, undermining the project’s goal of promoting sustainability. - Experts warn that poor consultation, mismatched designs and a lack of community input threaten to turn Tanzania’s fisheries modernization plan into a long-term burden rather than a solution. authors: | ||
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Southeast Asia’s 2025 marked by fatal floods, fossil fuel expansion and renewed mining boom 29 Dec 2025 21:58:15 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/southeast-asias-2025-marked-by-fatal-floods-fossil-fuel-expansion-and-renewed-mining-boom/ author: Isabel Esterman dc:creator: Carolyn CowanGerry Flynn content:encoded: BANGKOK — 2025 saw global conservation plunged into chaos, with an estimated $500 million in funding from the United States government abruptly slashed after Donald Trump returned to office. The ripples of Trump’s policies were felt across the world, disproportionately impacting countries with the least domestic conservation resources. Across Southeast Asia, every element of conservation was disrupted, from wildlife crime prevention to reforestation projects, as well as studies on fish in the Mekong River and vital environmental reporting in Indonesia. Even after the dust settled, very few funding alternatives have emerged, as European countries also cut foreign aid budgets (including funds earmarked for conservation) in favor of military spending. None of this bodes well for Southeast Asia, where the region’s vulnerability to climate change is compounded by a sluggish transition away from the fossil fuels driving climate change, and economies still dominated by the exploitation of natural resources. Trapped in a vicious cycle More than 1,800 people across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka died in extreme flooding events over the course of November and December 2025, with death tolls anticipated to rise as humanitarian efforts continue. Across the three Southeast Asian countries, the deadly floods are believed to have been caused by Cyclone Senyar, which was born out of sudden spikes in heavy rain brought about by human-made global heating. The frequency and intensity of deadly extreme weather events has ramped up in recent years, with the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam all experiencing devastating typhoons in 2024. Yet the…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - 2025 has been a year of global upheaval, and Southeast Asia was no exception, with massive disruption caused by changes in U.S. policy and the intensifying effects of climate change. - The region is poised at a crossroads, with plans to transition away from fossil fuels progressing unevenly, while at the same time a mining boom feeding the global energy transition threatens ecosystems and human health. - On the positive side, deforestation appears to be slowing in much of the region, new species continue to be described by science, and grassroots efforts yield conservation wins. authors: | ||
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A nuclear power plan exposes Kenya’s deeper land rights issues 29 Dec 2025 17:49:09 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-nuclear-power-plan-exposes-kenyas-deeper-land-rights-issues/ author: Latoya Abulu dc:creator: Elodie Toto content:encoded: From the shores of Sanita Kitole’s quiet coastal town of Uyombo in southern Kenya, one can see dolphins bobbing in the water from time to time. The environmental activist has grown deeply attached to the biodiversity of his region, he says, located in Watamu Marine National Park. For several years now, he’s been working with community groups, especially women, to reforest mangroves and develop sustainable businesses in Mida Creek. But over the past two years, the town of Uyombo has made headlines, thanks to the government eyeing the area as the site for the first nuclear power plant in Kenya. According to NuPEA, the national nuclear power regulator, the country’s development ambitions could significantly increase its electricity needs, rendering the current electricity production, generated largely by hydropower, insufficient. The potential project has triggered anger among the largely fishing-dependent local population, who say they fear losing their land, their access to the sea, and their livelihoods. “[The proponent of the nuclear plant] just came here. They tell you this is the place that we have chosen to build the power plant. That’s all. And then you lose everything,” Kitole says. Residents also say the plan for managing radioactive waste is unclear to them, and highlight the project’s proximity to Watamu Marine National Park and Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Protests have erupted over the plans. “They didn’t involve us from the start, didn’t explain what nuclear energy is. When we asked questions, we got arrested,” Kitole says. But despite protests,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Across Kenya, millions of people living on community land remain legally vulnerable, as complex, costly and often obstructive processes prevent them from securing collective land titles under the Community Land Act. - Because untitled community land is treated as state property, county governments can lease or allocate it for large infrastructure and commercial projects, creating power imbalances and exposing communities to displacement with little say or legal protection. - In Uyombo, on Kenya’s southern coast, this systemic problem has resurfaced amid plans for the country’s first nuclear power plant, which residents say threaten their land, livelihoods and access to coastal ecosystems, and has proceeded without meaningful consultation. - The lack of formal land ownership also leaves communities uncertain about compensation, reinforcing fears that development projects can override local land rights — a pattern researchers say is rooted in colonial land policies and persists nationwide. authors: | ||
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Top 10 Indigenous news stories that marked 2025 29 Dec 2025 16:00:06 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/top-10-indigenous-news-stories-that-marked-2025/ author: Latoya Abulu dc:creator: Aimee Gabay content:encoded: 2025 saw a mix of news sweep through Indigenous communities around the world, touching on issues both new and old. Efforts to increase direct funding to support Indigenous peoples’ land rights have persisted for more than two decades now, but this past year dealt a setback to those efforts as a result of the sudden USAID funding cuts in January. That put additional strain on community-led conservation efforts in places like Ethiopia and in the Amazon Basin. Indigenous representation at climate talks was another perennial pain point. And while there was an unprecedented number of Indigenous delegates at this year’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil, COP30, Mongabay reported on the continued failure of these summits to involve Indigenous peoples in decision-making. And as always, Indigenous communities around the world continued the struggle to protect their territories, with the search for so-called critical minerals posing an increasingly serious threat. Many of these mining projects were approved without communities’ consent or sufficient environmental safeguards. Meanwhile, the age-old problem of illegal artisanal mining on Indigenous lands continued, perpetuating the pollution of the forests and rivers they depend on. The past year also saw big solutions stories. Indigenous peoples formed Indigenous guards, some of them led by women, who blend traditional protection strategies with modern technologies to protect their forests and prevent invasions of their lands. Mongabay also reported on Indigenous-led conservation initiatives to save wildlife, restore watersheds and resist the advance of monoculture farming and deforestation — even when few receive compensation for…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Lack of progress on direct funding for Indigenous land rights, poor representation at climate talks, and intensifying mining pressure were central issues that affected Indigenous peoples in 2025 covered by Mongabay. - Our investigations revealed how communities were persuaded to sign over land rights for shady carbon deals, and how a high-profile operation to clear out illegal miners from Amazonian territories has barely made a dent. - We also covered more hopeful stories, highlighting the communities putting forward their own solutions, including women forest guardians in the Amazon, and micro-hydro development in mountainous Philippine villages unreached by the grid. - To end the year, here are Mongabay’s top 10 stories on Indigenous communities that marked 2025. authors: | ||
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Photos: Top new species from 2025 29 Dec 2025 14:22:20 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/photos-top-new-species-from-2025/ author: Lizkimbrough dc:creator: Liz Kimbrough content:encoded: The world still holds its secrets. Hidden under wet rocks, in the ocean’s twilight crevices, and in the minutiae of the genetic code are creatures unknown and unnamed by the human species. Every year, scientists find hundreds of new animals, insects, plants and fungi. This year, researchers described a tiny new marsupial, a new Himalayan bat, an ancient tree, a bright blue butterfly, a parrot snake, and a fairy lantern plant, among others. “I think most people believe that we know most species on Earth,” Mario Moura, a professor at the Federal University of Paraíba in Brazil, told Mongabay, “but in the best-case scenario, we know 20% of Earth’s species.” Some estimate that only 10% of all the species on the planet have been described. Unfortunately, many species may be threatened with extinction before they’re even formally named — victims of human activities like development and climate change. Some of these species could be food or medicine for humans, but each plays a unique role in Earth’s interconnected web of life. “We’re understanding more and more that every species on the planet has a role, and in one way or another, is linked to our well-being through the part they play in ecosystems,” said Boris Worm, a marine conservation biologist who co-authored a study that quantifies the number of undescribed species on land and in the ocean. “We can’t protect them … if we don’t know them.” Atlantic manta ray (Mobula yarae) with a diver off the coast of Mexico. Originally…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Scientists described several new species this past year, including a tiny marsupial, a Himalayan bat, an ancient tree, a giant manta ray, a bright blue butterfly and a fairy lantern, to name a few. - Experts estimate that fewer than 20% of Earth’s species have been documented by Western science, with potentially millions more unknown and unnamed. - Although such species may be new to science, many are already known to — and used by — local and Indigenous peoples, who often have given them traditional names. - Many new species are assessed as threatened with extinction as soon as they are found, highlighting the urgent need for conservation efforts. authors: | ||
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In California’s redwoods, scientists rebuild lost ecosystems high up in the canopy 29 Dec 2025 14:14:51 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-californias-redwoods-scientists-rebuild-lost-ecosystems-high-up-in-the-canopy/ author: Sharon Guynup dc:creator: Marlowe Starling content:encoded: The Van Eck Forest in northwestern California is home to iconic coast redwood trees, which store more above-ground carbon per acre than any other forest type. The oldest trees can grow to heights of more than 90 meters (300 feet) and may be more than 2,000 years old. But due to the region’s extensive logging, which reduced old-growth redwood forests to just 5% of their original extent, very few large, old redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) exist today. Consequently, there are also fewer fern mats high up in the forest canopy: large masses of leather-leaf ferns (Polypodium scouleri), a keystone species that stores water, mitigates forest temperatures and provides habitat for animals. To help restore these historic forests, a conservation nonprofit and a university are experimenting with ways to transplant the mats back into redwood treetops. In a collaboration that began in 2021, the Pacific Forest Trust and scientists from California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, are taking fern mats that have fallen from old-growth trees and replanting them in younger trees to restore the canopy layer. As they grow over decades and centuries, these mats collect decomposing plant matter and germinate seeds, creating swaths of arboreal gardens that are home to salamanders, insects, birds and rare lichens. “It’s like having a little garden up there,” said Laurie Wayburn, co-founder and president of the Pacific Forest Trust. A great horned owl, a common redwood forest resident. Image by B. Washburn via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). ‘Putting back the pieces’ In nature,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Roughly 95% of California’s old-growth redwood forests have been logged at least once, leaving mostly young trees and making the overall ecosystem less diverse. - Fern mats — spongy masses of leather-leaf ferns and decomposed plant matter that build up high in the canopy — are an important part of that system, providing critical habitat for plants and animal in California’s redwood forests. - Now, a pilot project is trying to restore fern mats to the canopies of particularly robust redwood trees. - Scientists are finding that manually planting fern mats is also an effective buffer in a warming climate: they mitigate forest temperatures for salmon, birds and a host of other animals. authors: | ||
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Amazon fishers help scientists map dam harms to Madeira River stocks 29 Dec 2025 14:05:08 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/amazon-fishers-help-scientists-map-dam-harms-to-madeira-river-stocks/ author: Alexandre de Santi dc:creator: Karla Mendes content:encoded: LAGO PURUZINHO, Brazil — Looking at the clear waters of Puruzinho Lake, fisher Raimundo Nonato dos Santos regrets the decline in fish stocks affecting the livelihood of his community in the Brazilian Amazon.Species like pirarucu (Arapaima gigas), tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum) and pirapitinga (Piaractus brachypomus) have “disappeared” from Lago Puruzinho community in northern Amazonas state, dos Santos said. “When we catch one, it’s a surprise.” A resident of Puruzinho since he was born 53 years ago, dos Santos, leader of the Puruzinho community and known by his nickname Leleca, said the construction of the Santo Antônio hydroelectric power plant in neighboring Rondônia state in 2008 “triggered the ruin” of his community. Often promoted as a form of “clean energy” since they don’t run on fossil fuels, hydropower plants have shown severe environmental impacts. Brazil’s fifth-largest power dam, Santo Antônio sparked outcry from environmentalists since the start of its construction on the Madeira River due to its environmental and social impacts, including a reduction in fish stocks and the displacement of traditional communities. Its reservoir spans more than 54,600 hectares (135,000 acres), limiting the natural flow of the Madeira. “Things started to spiral out of control. And the impact was huge for us: the decline in fish stocks, the [milky] water remaining for many months within [the lake in] the community. It affected us a lot,” dos Santos told Mongabay under a tall tree on the banks of Puruzinho Lake, 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away from the city of Humaitá. As the…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Having fishers as protagonists, a recent study disclosed unanswered details about the Amazon communities and fish species most affected by two Madeira River dams. - The dams limited the natural flow of the Madeira, disrupting the currents that fish need and causing up to a 90% reduction in stocks in some locations; species like pirarucu and tambaqui have largely disappeared from traditional fishing communities. - The research serves as evidence to support the decade-long legal battle by fishers in Humaitá who are seeking compensation for losses caused by power plants. authors: | ||
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George Teariki-Mataki Mateariki, the Birdman of Atiu, has died, aged 67 29 Dec 2025 14:00:35 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/george-teariki-mataki-mateariki-the-birdman-of-atiu-has-died-aged-67/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: In small island states, conservation has often depended less on formal institutions than on vigilance: watching harbors, checking traps, noticing what does not belong. The work is repetitive, practical, and easily overlooked. It rarely comes with titles or funding cycles that last longer than a season. Yet in places where a single invasive species can erase centuries of evolution, that kind of attention determines whether a bird persists or disappears. The Cook Islands learned this lesson the hard way. By the late 20th century, several endemic birds were reduced to remnant populations, pushed to the margins by introduced predators and the slow erosion of habitat. Rescue efforts combined outside science with local knowledge, but success depended on whether those plans were enforced daily, at airstrips, wharves, and forest edges, long after visiting researchers had left. One of the people who made that enforcement real was George Teariki-Mataki Mateariki, who died on December 17, 2025. Known widely as Birdman George, he was neither an academic nor a policy advocate. He described himself as “a naturalist from the bush,” and he meant it literally. He learned by growing up on Atiu, by listening to elders, and by paying attention to birds closely enough to know when something was wrong. Atiu, a raised coral island without mass tourism or large resorts, became central to the recovery of the Rarotongan flycatcher, or kakerori. By the early 1990s only 29 remained, all on Rarotonga, where ship rats had overwhelmed them. When conservationists decided to create…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In small island states, conservation often hinges on daily vigilance rather than formal institutions, where routine tasks like watching harbors and checking traps determine whether endemic species survive invasive threats. Such work is repetitive, underfunded, and easily overlooked, yet decisive. - In the Cook Islands, late-20th-century bird recoveries paired outside science with local enforcement, showing that plans mattered only insofar as they were sustained on the ground at airstrips, wharves, and forest edges. - George Teariki-Mataki Mateariki, known as Birdman George, embodied this approach by monitoring birds, trapping predators, and responding quickly to changes, helping establish Atiu as a refuge for the critically endangered kakerori and later the Rimatara lorikeet. - Through guiding visitors, sharing practical knowledge, and maintaining constant vigilance, he treated conservation as prevention rather than rescue, asking not for admiration but for attention, and making extinction less likely through persistence rather than spectacle. authors: | ||
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SE Asia’s smallholders struggling to meet EUDR: Interview with RECOFTC’s Martin Greijmans 29 Dec 2025 10:59:05 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/se-asias-smallholders-struggling-to-meet-eudr-interview-with-recoftcs-martin-greijmans/ author: Isabel Esterman dc:creator: Carolyn Cowan content:encoded: Smallholders produce significant quantities of Vietnam’s coffee, Indonesia’s palm oil, and Thailand’s rubber exported into the EU. Yet under the bloc’s upcoming deforestation-free regulation (EUDR), industry experts say small-scale producers across Southeast Asia need more support to help prepare them to comply with the new rules. The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is set to take effect at the end of 2026, after EU lawmakers voted earlier this month to postpone its implementation for the second year in a row, citing technical concerns. Its goal is to ensure that forest-linked products imported into the EU are deforestation-free by introducing mechanisms that enable companies trading seven commodities — cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and timber — to track their products’ origins throughout the entire supply chain. While experts say increased oversight is a vital step to reduce the footprint of EU consumption on forests, others have warned that without appropriate support and governance mechanisms, the new rules could introduce inequities that harm small-scale producers. Many smallholders lack the capacity and capital to comply with some aspects of the new regulations, for instance. This could see them sidelined in favor of bigger producers who can more easily adapt, according to Martin Greijmans, community enterprise program lead at RECOFTC, a Thailand-based community forest nonprofit. Further complicating matters are limited resources to inform smallholders about how the regulations will affect their businesses, underscoring the need for greater efforts by governments and private companies to help smallholders adapt, he says. “One shocking thing…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is set to take effect at the end of 2026, after EU lawmakers voted to postpone its implementation for a second year. - The legislation aims to reduce commodity-driven deforestation and illegal trade in forest products by enabling companies importing into the EU to trace entire supply chains. - Experts say the increased oversight is a vital step to reduce the footprint of EU consumption on forests, but caution that many smallholders across Southeast Asia need more support to prepare for compliance, especially on land documentation and geolocation data. - Without appropriate technical, financial and governance support, observers warn, the new rules could sideline smallholders or push them into less regulated markets, deepening already existing inequities. authors: | ||
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Fights against development projects marks 2025 for Nepal’s Indigenous people 29 Dec 2025 10:22:25 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/fights-against-development-projects-marks-2025-for-nepals-indigenous-people/ author: Abhaya Raj Joshi dc:creator: Sonam Lama Hyolmo content:encoded: As Indigenous peoples and local communities globally struggle to safeguard their rights over their land and forests, Nepal hasn’t been an exception. In the face of socioeconomic and environmental threats, from infrastructure development projects including hydropower, cable car and mining, Nepal’s communities protested and took corporations to court to uphold their rights. At COP30 in Belém this year, although Nepal’s Indigenous participation was minimal, the country’s delegation pushed for negotiations on climate finance for adaptation and secured inclusion of language surrounding mountain ecosystems in the Global Mutirão, the main outcome document of COP30. Indigenous peoples (IPs) and local communities (LCs) in Nepal faced realities of infrastructure development and energy transition with growing cable car and hydropower projects that manifested in environmental harm, displacement, loss of ancestral lands and disturbance to sacred ties with nature. Here are some of the stories from the communities that Mongabay covered in 2025. Nepal Indigenous leaders refile writ petition against hydropower project Indigenous Bhote-Lhomi Singsa people refiled a writ petition in November at Nepal’s highest court against a hydropower project that has allegedly submitted a flawed EIA. Community leaders initially filed a lawsuit in 2024 against the project which, according to the EIA, would directly impact Indigenous lands and communities in Chyamtang, Ridak and Thudam villages that depend on subsistence agriculture, yak herding and herbal medicine trade for their livelihoods. While the hydropower company has continued the construction work since the project started in 2021, felling more trees than cited in the EIA, communities revisited…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - From protests to court rulings, for Nepal’s Indigenous peoples and local communities, 2025 was marked by activism and struggles to secure their forests, land and territories from infrastructure projects. - As threats from hydropower, cable cars and mining projects increased, communities lost touch with their forest, lands and sacred connection with nature, which impacted biodiversity conservation. - However, communities pushed legal action against these projects that operated without FPIC, community consultation, environmental regulation and safeguards. authors: | ||
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From ‘extinct’ to growing, a rare snail returns to the wild in Australia 29 Dec 2025 09:53:18 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/from-extinct-to-growing-a-rare-snail-returns-to-the-wild-in-australia/ author: Hayat Indriyatno dc:creator: Shreya Dasgupta content:encoded: Rarely do species presumed extinct reappear with renewed hope for a better future. But researchers in Australia not only discovered a wild population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail on Australia’s Norfolk Island in 2020 — they’ve now bred the snail in captivity and recently released more than 300 individuals back into the wild, where they’re multiplying. This translocation, according to the Australian Museum, is the first large-scale reintroduction of a snail species in Australia. Officially, Campbell’s keeled glass-snail (Advena campbelli) is still listed as extinct on the IUCN Red List, based on a 1996 assessment. In Australia, it’s considered critically endangered. In 2020, Isabel Hyman and colleagues from the Australian Museum, with the help of a Norfolk Island resident, confirmed there was still a small population of the snail living in a sheltered rainforest valley in Norfolk Island National Park. To boost its survival prospects, organizations including Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, Norfolk Island National Park, Western Sydney University and the Australian Museum started collaborated on a snail-breeding program at Taronga Zoo in 2021. The teams knew very little about the snail’s life history, diet, behavior, or what negatively impacts it, Hyman told Mongabay by email. But with “a lot of careful, painstaking work and record keeping from the husbandry team,” they began seeing progress, she said. The zoo-bred population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail has now grown to more than 800 individuals. In June, the teams flew about 600 snails to Norfolk Island, which sits in the South Pacific, closer to New Zealand…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Rarely do species presumed extinct reappear with renewed hope for a better future. But researchers in Australia not only discovered a wild population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail on Australia’s Norfolk Island in 2020 — they’ve now bred the snail in captivity and recently released more than 300 individuals back into the wild, where they’re multiplying. […] authors: | ||
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Striking ‘red gold’ with saffron farming in Algeria: Interview with Keltouma Adouane 29 Dec 2025 09:16:00 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/striking-red-gold-with-saffron-farming-in-algeria-interview-with-keltouma-adouane/ author: Terna Gyuse dc:creator: Anna Weekes content:encoded: The world’s most expensive plant, saffron, is as delicate as it is valuable. Each purple flower blooms for less than three weeks a year, and only its three tiny, fragile red stigmas are edible. Harvesting them is a painstaking process: picked by hand at dawn and dried with extreme care, as even the slightest pressure can dull their aroma and flavor. It takes nearly 200,000 flowers to yield a single kilogram of dried saffron, just over 2 pounds, and the plant may take up to two years to flower. In 2015, Algerian schoolteacher Keltouma Adouane fell seriously ill; a saffron-infused drink was an important part of her recovery and continued health, she told Mongabay, but it was very expensive in the Béjaïa region where she lives. So she decided to experiment with growing her own saffron from bulbs. “I planted them and after waiting for almost two months, the result was there. And to tell you the truth, the result was truly spectacular. I was really fascinated. I couldn’t believe what I saw when I saw the big purple carpet of flowers that emerged from the ground.” Adouane bought more saffron bulbs and joined the Association of Rural Women of Béjaïa (AFUD), an Algerian nonprofit that supports rural women’s projects related to crafts, farming and food sovereignty, and links them to markets. She took training courses in mushroom cultivation, cheesemaking and cosmetics production alongside other enterprising women. Algeria’s mostly rural Béjaïa province is home to 388,000 people. Most farmers tend…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Farmers in Béjaïa, on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast, have been affected by drought in recent years, depressing their harvests and discouraging them from investing in expansion. - In 2018, Keltouma Adouane bought a kilo of crocus saffron corms; experts doubted they would thrive in Béjaïa’s coastal climate, but she succeeded in growing them and now sells a range of saffron products to local buyers. - She is working with other women in this province, where agricultural income has stagnated, to develop cultivation and marketing of this valuable crop. authors: | ||
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How Mongabay’s journalism made an impact in 2025 29 Dec 2025 08:51:32 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/how-mongabays-journalism-made-an-impact-in-2025/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Bobby Bascomb content:encoded: The guiding star at Mongabay isn’t pageviews or clicks; it’s meaningful impact. As 2025 draws to a close, we look back at some of the ways Mongabay’s journalism made a difference this year. Empowering Indigenous and local communities A Mongabay Latam investigation found 67 illegal airstrips were cut into the Peruvian Amazon to transport drugs, resulting in deforestation and a surge in violence against local Indigenous groups. The report was republished by national news outlets, bringing broader attention to the threats against an often marginalized group. National media also picked up a Mongabay story about an Indigenous community protecting a biodiversity corridor in Colombia and a report about an Indigenous group in Mexico protecting mangroves from an ammonia facility. From newsroom to classroom Mongabay Kids was named a media partner by the U.S.-based nonprofit Lemur Conservation Network “to create and share content about lemurs and Madagascar” every October during the World Lemur Festival. A French article about a great ape census in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now being used as educational material for conservation stakeholders. Serving as evidence An analysis, made at the request of Mongabay, found two carbon credit projects in the Brazilian Amazon are linked to illegal timber laundering. The Brazilian federal police have since indicted the people identified in Mongabay’s reporting. Following an investigation into the Brazilian government’s practice of purchasing shark meat for public institutions including schools and hospitals, members of Brazil’s Congress said they would call for a parliamentary…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: The guiding star at Mongabay isn’t pageviews or clicks; it’s meaningful impact. As 2025 draws to a close, we look back at some of the ways Mongabay’s journalism made a difference this year. Empowering Indigenous and local communities A Mongabay Latam investigation found 67 illegal airstrips were cut into the Peruvian Amazon to transport drugs, […] authors: | ||
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On Indonesia’s longest river, a Borneo community passes crucial public health milestone 29 Dec 2025 08:18:14 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/on-indonesias-longest-river-a-borneo-community-passes-crucial-public-health-milestone/ author: Mongabay Editor dc:creator: Anggita Raissa content:encoded: SEKADAU, Indonesia — Children’s laughter skimmed over water the color of mud as mothers wrung laundry over banks where the Sekadau joins the Kapuas, the longest river in Indonesia. Local testimony along the Kapuas River, which flows 1,143 kilometers (710 miles) east to west from Borneo’s Müller Mountains out into the Natuna Sea, suggests this river — like many flowing across the world’s largest archipelagic country — may be losing prominence as a center of community life. “The river is dirtier now and no longer a gathering place like before,” an older resident told researchers from Tanjungpura University downriver in Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province, for a study published in September. But here in Sekadau, the river remains central to daily life — a place to bathe, wash vegetables, and, until recently, to defecate. Research conducted on the Kapuas from 2020-2022 and published in the Journal of Aquaculture and Fish Health last year recorded double the legal limit of lead, a heavy metal pollutant that impairs neurological development — and 24 times the maximum coliform bacteria level for rivers permitted by Indonesia’s government. The study authors said the dangerous coliform level reflected the rapid population growth that has taken place in recent decades along the banks of the Kapuas. Some here in the village of Sekadau, the seat of an eponymous district on the Kapuas, say they hope the hardening of Borneo’s main arterial river can still be mended. From 2002-2024 West Kalimantan province lost one-fifth of its…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Sekadau is the largest settlement in a district of the same name on Indonesia’s longest river, the Kapuas River in Borneo. - Historically, Sekadau has recorded higher rates of acute illness that local authorities suggested may be attributable to the widespread practice of open defecation in the river, a public health menace that exacts a range of costs from economic productivity to child stunting. - This year, the district of Sekadau announced it had eliminated open defecation from all 94 villages in the district of 211,559 people, thanks in part to a campaign to build affordable toilets. - Data collected by local authorities showed instances of ill health have declined swiftly over the last decade. authors: | ||
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Beyond human loss, floods from Cyclone Ditwah devastate Sri Lanka’s wildlife 29 Dec 2025 04:15:29 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/beyond-human-loss-floods-from-cyclone-ditwah-devastate-sri-lankas-wildlife/ author: Dilrukshi Handunnetti dc:creator: Malaka Rodrigo content:encoded: COLOMBO — Sri Lanka continues to grapple with the human toll of Cyclone Ditwah, which triggered devastating floods and landslides killing 650 people and leaving another 200 missing. In the wake of the human disaster, however, a different tragedy has unfolded largely unnoticed. Across floodplains, protected areas and farmlands, thousands of animals have also fallen victim to one of the worst flooding events the Indian Ocean island has experienced in decades. Unlike the human casualties, however, the true scale of wildlife deaths may never be known. In Somawathiya National Park, one of Sri Lanka’s most important dry-zone wildlife refuges, wildlife officers have reported extensive mortality among wild animals as well as livestock. The park, which lies within the Mahaweli River Basin, is naturally adapted to seasonal flooding. But the sheer intensity and duration of Ditwah-induced floods appear to have overwhelmed even these flood-tolerant ecosystems. Carcasses of spotted deer, left, and wild boar, right, were discovered after floodwaters receded inside Somawathiya National Park. There were several instances of dead wildlife being found, underscoring the heavy toll on animals. Image courtesy of Amitha Sri Nalaka. Dozens of dead deer in single location According to Amitha Sri Nalaka, a local wildlife officer stationed at Somawathiya, large numbers of sambar (Rusa unicolor) and spotted deer (Axis axis) were found dead across the park after the floodwaters began receding. “Cattle herders who entered the park searching for their lost livestock reported seeing dozens of dead spotted deer at single locations in several places,” Nalaka told…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Cyclone Ditwah caused extensive flooding across several protected areas in Sri Lanka in late November and early December, resulting in mass deaths of deer and other wildlife that perished largely unreported. - Wildlife officers rescued several stranded elephant calves separated from their herds, including around five still dependent on milk, with fears that more may have perished. - Floodwaters destroyed roughly 860 kilometers (534 miles) of electric fencing, about one-sixth of the national total, raising the risk of human-elephant conflict in affected regions. - Floods also drove venomous snakes into residential areas, prompting wildlife officers and volunteers to carry out urgent rescue operations. authors: | ||
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15 forces that could reshape conservation in the next 10 years 28 Dec 2025 20:24:02 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/15-forces-that-could-reshape-conservation-in-the-next-10-years/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: Conservation debates are usually framed by damage already visible. Forests are cleared, fisheries decline, protected areas invaded, and budgets cut. Less attention is paid to developments that have not yet hardened into crises, partly because they are unfamiliar and partly because they fall between established fields. A recent horizon scan led by William J. Sutherland of Cambridge University and published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution sets out to correct that imbalance by asking a strategic question: which emerging changes, still poorly understood, are most likely to shape biodiversity outcomes over the next decade? The exercise is not an attempt at prediction. It is closer to a risk register for people who would rather be early than surprised. The fifteen issues identified span technology, climate dynamics, biology, and finance. They are linked less by certainty than by the scale of their potential effects. Several of the most consequential developments stem from advances in computation. Tiny machine-learning systems, designed to run on minimal power without internet access, promise to extend ecological monitoring into places long beyond the reach of conventional data collection. That matters for conservation, which still relies heavily on observation in remote and underfunded regions. However the efficiency comes with a trade-off. When models process information on site and discard what they do not classify as relevant, the opportunity for later reanalysis is lost. Intelligence becomes cheaper, but at the expense of what can later be reexamined. Related gains are emerging from optical AI chips that use light rather than electricity. These…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - A recent horizon scan led by William J. Sutherland shifts conservation thinking away from visible damage toward emerging developments that could shape biodiversity outcomes over the next decade, even if they have not yet hardened into crises. - The fifteen issues identified span technology, climate, biology, and finance, with a particular emphasis on computational advances that could expand monitoring and modeling while also narrowing what can later be revisited or challenged. - Alongside technological change, the scan highlights physical, institutional, and biophysical pressures, from drone-related plastic pollution and new forest finance mechanisms to drying soils, darkening oceans, and abrupt shifts in the Southern Ocean. - The authors also situate these risks against two background constraints already underway—eroding environmental data systems and tightening conservation finance—and, looking back ten years, argue that the value of horizon scanning lies less in prediction than in improving preparedness before change becomes costly. authors: | ||
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Brigitte Bardot, who turned fame into a lifelong fight for animals 28 Dec 2025 14:24:53 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/brigitte-bardot-who-turned-fame-into-a-lifelong-fight-for-animals/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: In the second half of the 20th century, animal protection was often treated in public debate as a minor cause, sentimental at best and unserious at worst. It sat uncomfortably beside politics, economics, and diplomacy, and was rarely allowed to intrude on questions of trade, tradition, or national sovereignty. Those who tried to force it into public debate were usually dismissed as eccentrics or moral scolds. One figure helped shift that balance by refusing to treat animals as a side issue. She did not argue from policy papers or institutional authority. She argued from outrage, persistence, and the leverage of fame, insisting that suffering without a human voice was still suffering, and that wild animals were among the most exposed of all. That figure was Brigitte Bardot. Known first as a film star, she abandoned cinema while still a global celebrity and redirected her public life toward animal advocacy. What distinguished her work was not only its longevity, but its scope. She did not limit her concern to pets or laboratory animals. From the 1960s onward, wildlife became a central focus of her activism. Her most consequential campaigns targeted the commercial seal hunt. Bardot traveled to the ice floes of Canada and later to Arctic regions, confronting hunters and drawing international media attention to the killing of harp seal pups. The imagery was powerful, but she framed the issue in blunt terms. In a statement widely reported by the Associated Press, she said, “Man is an insatiable predator.” The problem,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In a period when animal protection was often dismissed in public debate as sentimental or marginal, Brigitte Bardot used the force of her celebrity to insist that cruelty toward animals, especially wildlife, was a serious moral and political issue. - She redirected her fame toward sustained campaigns against practices such as the commercial seal hunt, whaling, fur trapping, and bullfighting, arguing bluntly that wild animals were among the most defenseless victims of modern economic systems. - By formalizing her activism through the Fondation Brigitte Bardot and maintaining an uncompromising public stance long after leaving cinema, she treated wildlife protection not as a gesture or phase, but as a permanent measure of society’s restraint. - Bardot died on December 28, 2025 in Saint-Tropez, France. She was 91. authors: | ||
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A ‘national pride’ highway meets Indigenous resistance in ancient Nepali settlements 28 Dec 2025 11:53:16 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-national-pride-highway-meets-indigenous-resistance-in-ancient-nepali-town/ author: Abhaya Raj Joshi dc:creator: Bibek Bhandari content:encoded: KHOKANA — For generations, Manhera Shrestha’s family has cultivated the same ancestral land in Khokana, an ancient settlement perched on the southern edge of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. Life here has long been rooted in the land and its harvest. But in 2016, a land acquisition notice issued by the government carried an ominous warning: a highway would cut through their fields. Under the plan, Shrestha’s family would lose about 0.3 hectares (0.75 acres) of their land to the road. The fertile land that sustains the household of 12 and anchors their livelihood would be lost, threatening their livelihood, home and a way of life rooted in the soil. “We will lose everything,” Shrestha says, standing outside her house under a balmy winter sun. “It’s not only about our land and house. Once the highway comes, it will not just change the settlement but also our culture and traditions. Khokana will not remain Khokana anymore. We will lose our identity.” Kathmandu’s urban sprawl with the town of Khoknaa to its south-west. The Kathmandu Valley and the town of Nijgadh to its south. The proposed expressway connects Kathmandu with Nijgadh via Khokana. The quiet, agrarian settlements of Khokana and neighboring Bungamati — homes to the Indigenous Newa people and centuries-old traditions and vibrant festivals — have become flashpoints in the controversy surrounding the Kathmandu–Terai Fast Track highway. The Nepali government has promoted the project as a “national pride” initiative, promising it will shorten travel times between Kathmandu and Nijgadh in the southern…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Nepal’s Indigenous Newa communities in Khokana and Bungamati are resisting the Kathmandu–Terai Fast Track expressway, which would cut through their ancestral lands, threatening livelihoods, settlements and cultural identity rooted in centuries-old traditions. - The government promotes the highway as a “national pride” project to boost connectivity and economic growth, but locals say it was pushed forward without meaningful consultation and dismisses Indigenous rights and heritage. - Resistance is fueled not only by the highway but by fears that it will trigger a cascade of additional infrastructure projects, including an outer ring road, Bagmati Corridor road expansion, transmission lines, a railway line, and a planned satellite city. - Community members stress their fight is not about compensation but survival, arguing that money cannot replace their land, culture and civilization, and warning that the expressway would permanently erase their Indigenous way of life. authors: | ||
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Clark Lungren and the case for compromise in conservation 28 Dec 2025 00:02:31 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/clark-lungren-and-the-case-for-compromise-in-conservation/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: The history of conservation in West Africa is often written as a record of loss: wildlife depleted, institutions stretched thin, and well-intended projects undone by conflict or poverty. Less often does it include examples of enduring recovery. When such cases do exist, they tend to rest on compromises that look unorthodox on paper but make sense on the ground. One of those compromises took shape in southern Burkina Faso in the late 1970s and 1980s, at a time when elephants were scarce and hunting had shifted from subsistence to eradication. The idea was simple and, to many specialists, implausible: allow local communities to retain a controlled right to hunt, in exchange for protecting wildlife and habitat. The approach ran against prevailing conservation doctrine. It also ran against the expectations of international development experts, many of whom dismissed it outright. The person who pursued this arrangement despite the skepticism was Clark Lungren, who was raised in what was then Upper Volta and spent most of his life there. When he proposed that villagers who had long depended on hunting should become partners in conservation, he was told the plan would fail. It did not. At Nazinga, a game reserve south of Ouagadougou, wildlife populations rebounded sharply over the following years, including elephants that had all but vanished from the area. Tourism followed. Some of the men employed as wardens and guides were former poachers. Lungren’s authority in such negotiations did not come from formal credentials. He did not hold a university…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Clark Lungren spent most of his life in Burkina Faso, where he worked on conservation not as an external intervention but as a local, becoming a naturalized citizen and embedding himself in village life. His authority came less from formal credentials than from long familiarity with people and place. - He was best known for his role in the recovery of the Nazinga area, where wildlife rebounded after communities were granted controlled hunting rights in exchange for protection. The arrangement, initially dismissed by many experts, proved durable. - Lungren argued consistently that conservation would only last if it aligned with local governance and incentives, a view reflected in community-managed hunting zones and buffer areas around protected lands. He favored workable compromises over strict orthodoxy. - Active well into his seventies, he continued training, research, and advocacy through a demonstration farm near Ouagadougou. The systems he helped build persisted in a region where many conservation efforts were short-lived. authors: | ||
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Joann Andrews, a patient force behind Yucatán’s protected landscapes 27 Dec 2025 21:36:39 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/joann-andrews-a-patient-force-behind-yucatans-protected-landscapes/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: Conservation has a habit of being treated as either romance or emergency. In practice it is closer to logistics: permits, budgets, awkward meetings, long drives, and the slow work of persuading people who would rather be left alone. In places where the state is under-resourced and land is already spoken for, success often depends less on grand theory than on an ability to make institutions behave decently. That was the terrain in which Joann Andrews operated for more than four decades on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. She helped turn a region better known to outsiders for ruins and resorts into a proving ground for modern Mexican conservation, one that tried to protect wildlife without pretending that communities could be edited out of the landscape. She died on December 22nd 2025 in Mérida, aged 96. She arrived in Yucatán in 1964 after marrying the archaeologist E. Wyllys Andrews IV. When he died of cancer in 1971, she faced the choice that confronts many expatriates after tragedy: return to the familiar, or stay with the life already built. She stayed. The decision kept her in Mexico with six children and anchored her to a peninsula whose natural systems she would come to know with the intimate specificity of a field notebook. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, on January 10th 1929, she studied political science at Columbia University, graduating in 1951, and later took a master’s degree in international economics at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. Before Mexico, she spent a decade…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Joann Andrews helped professionalize conservation on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, treating it less as romance than as practical work: building institutions, securing funding, and negotiating the political and social realities of protecting land. She died on December 22, 2025, in Mérida at 96. - After arriving in Yucatán in 1964 and losing her husband to cancer in 1971, she chose to remain in Mexico with six children, a decision that tied her future to the region’s environmental fate. Her background in political science, international economics, and a decade in the U.S. diplomatic service shaped a style that was disciplined and unsentimental. - She began with logistics for archaeological research but became a serious orchid student, contributing to early documentation of Yucatán’s orchid diversity and publishing on the subject; an orchid species, Lophiaris andrewsiae, was named in her honor. Her scientific curiosity later broadened into full-time environmental work. - In 1987 she co-founded Pronatura Península de Yucatán, which became a leading conservation organization in the region, and she helped launch the Toh Bird Festival to broaden support for nature protection. She emphasized youth engagement and warned that conservation would always require persuading people and managing development pressure, not just celebrating nature. authors: | ||
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Sri Lanka looks to build disaster-resilient housing after devastating cyclone 27 Dec 2025 04:41:49 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/sri-lanka-looks-to-build-disaster-resilient-housing-after-devastating-cyclone/ author: Dilrukshi Handunnetti dc:creator: Kamanthi Wickramasinghe content:encoded: ARANAYAKA, Sri Lanka — Bandara Jayaratne from Beraliya, a village in the Aranayaka region in Sri Lanka, is among the fortunate individuals who escaped a landslide on Nov. 28 that occurred right behind his house. Landslides aren’t a new phenomenon in this part of the country. In 2016, at least a 100 people died when a massive landslide occurred in the same area. It also displaced more than 2,000 families and affected some 350,000 people. Due to the vulnerability of this location, many families were evacuated in 2016, but most returned to their homes once the weather conditions improved. Today, though, after the landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah at the end of November, many residents say they’re reluctant to return home, and are instead awaiting assistance from the government for relocation to safer sites. “I managed to take my parents to a relative’s house near the town as a temporary measure,” Jayaratne, who is temporarily displaced, tells Mongabay. “Right now, I’m unable to go to my house as the roads are still blocked and my house is no longer safe to be inhabited.” Features of a disaster-resilient house suitable for slopes according to Sri Lanka’s newly formulated hazard-resilient construction manual. Image courtesy of NBRO. Cyclone Ditwah affected thousands of people like Jayaratne, who saw their homes damaged or outright destroyed by landslides. The recent most report from Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC) says 6,228 houses were fully damaged, and more than 100,000 partially damaged. A landslide hazard zonation mapping…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - More than 1,200 landslides were recorded in two provinces in Sri Lanka following Cyclone Ditwah in late November, resulting in crisis evacuations to safeguard vulnerable populations. - Most of the disaster-impacted people continue to live in high-risk regions due to the lack of alternative housing. - The country’s mandated institution for landslide risk management, the National Building and Research Organisation (NBRO), says it’s working on the first national building code to establish minimum standards for the design, construction and maintenance of hazard-resilient housing. - Following the significant loss of lives and homes in the recent disaster, the NBRO is also introducing specific types of housing models suitable for flat and sloped terrains. authors: | ||
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Jay M. Savage, witness to disappearing frogs and builder of tropical science 27 Dec 2025 03:38:34 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/jay-m-savage-witness-to-disappearing-frogs-and-builder-of-tropical-science/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: In the late 1980s, something began to go wrong in places that were supposed to be safe. Protected cloud forests, buffered from chainsaws and bulldozers, started losing animals that had persisted through far rougher times. Amphibians—often abundant, often overlooked—were vanishing in patterns that did not fit the usual explanations. Field biologists, trained to distrust drama, found themselves comparing notes with an unfamiliar unease. “A bunch of us got together and started comparing notes,” recalled Jay Mathers Savage, then a professor of biology at the University of Miami, in a 1992 interview with the New York Times. “People were struck by the fact it seemed to be occurring on a worldwide basis.” He had the credibility to make that observation land. For decades he had worked at the seam where taxonomy meets ecology, building arguments from specimens, notebooks, and repeated returns to the same humid places. His specialty was amphibians and reptiles, especially those of Central America—a region he came to know through sustained work rather than brief expeditions. One of those projects produced an animal that later became a symbol. In 1964, in what is now the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica, Savage and a colleague documented a toad that seemed almost designed to defy understatement. Its scientific name was Bufo periglenes. In life it was better known as the golden toad, the male an improbable Day-Glo orange. It spent most of its time underground and then surfaced for an annual, explosive breeding season—a brief, concentrated ritual that…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In the late 1980s, Jay M. Savage was among the first to recognize that amphibian declines in protected cloud forests were not isolated anomalies but part of a broader, global pattern that defied familiar explanations. - His long career combined meticulous field science with institutional foresight, including foundational work in Central American herpetology and a central role in building the Organization for Tropical Studies as a durable base for tropical research and training. - Savage treated institution-building and mentorship as integral to science itself, quietly supporting generations of students while insisting on continuity, rigor, and collaboration over spectacle or quick results. - He approached extinction not as tragedy alone but as evidence with consequences, attentive to what disappears as much as what remains, and to the slow signals detected by those who return often enough to notice absence. authors: | ||
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Year-end ‘good news’ as flat-headed cats reappear in Thailand after 29-year absence 26 Dec 2025 22:15:25 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/year-end-good-news-as-flat-headed-cats-reappear-in-thailand-after-29-year-absence/ author: Isabel Esterman dc:creator: Sean Mowbray content:encoded: Flat-headed cats haven’t gone extinct in Thailand after all. A population is clinging on in the peat swamp forests of Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary, in the country’s south, after eluding detection for nearly three decades. Camera traps set up by wildcat NGO Panthera and Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) picked up 13 records of flat-headed cats (Prionailurus planiceps) in 2024 and a further 16 earlier this year. “Rediscovering flat-headed cats in southern Thailand is an extraordinary moment for conservation,” Wai Ming Wong, Panthera’s small cat conservation science director, told Mongabay via email. In what Wong describes as a “profoundly encouraging” sign, they also spotted a female with a cub. “It shows that, where wetlands and river systems remain intact, even the most elusive and threatened carnivores can persist,” he added. A camera-trap image of a flat-headed cat and cub in Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand. Evidence of reproduction is encouraging, particularly as flat-headed cats birth only one cub at a time. Image courtesy of DNP/Panthera. This elusive felid, one of the world’s most endangered and least-known wild cat species, was last spotted in the country by researchers in 1995 on the Thailand-Malaysia border. That led to the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, declaring it was “possibly extinct” in Thailand, in its last assessment of the species, in 2014. Flat-headed cats are also present in wetlands and tropical rainforests in Borneo, Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, with the species’ total population estimated to be around 2,500 across…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Camera traps in Thailand’s Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary picked up 13 flat-headed cat records in 2024 and 16 more earlier this year. - The last confirmed sighting of the species in Thailand was in 1995; across its range, which includes Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra, about 2,500 flat-headed cats are thought to survive. - Elusive, nocturnal and semiaquatic, flat-headed cats are notoriously difficult to study, but conservationists say they hope their rediscovery in Thailand will galvanize interest in the species. - Conservationists also call for increased protection of the peat swamp forest where the population has been found, noting the risk of trafficking that might accompany the announcement of the rediscovery. authors: | ||
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Kristina Gjerde, defender of the deep ocean, has died 26 Dec 2025 21:09:25 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/kristina-maria-gjerde/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: Half the planet lies outside any country’s border. In those waters, rules have long been thinner than the myths: freedom to fish meant freedom to take; “out of sight” became “out of mind.” The deep ocean and the high seas were treated as a backdrop to coastal concerns, even as they stored carbon and heat, generated oxygen, and held most of Earth’s living space. The legal problem was not a lack of treaties so much as a lack of fit. Shipping, fishing, mining, and conservation each lived in their own institutional compartments, with mandates that rarely added up to stewardship. The further from shore one went, the more governance faded into procedure: meetings, footnotes, and a slow erosion of responsibility. Changing that required someone willing to take committee work as seriously as fieldwork, and to make diplomats care about places they would never see. That someone was Kristina Maria Gjerde, a lawyer by training and an ocean advocate by vocation, who died today, December 26th, of pancreatic cancer. She was 68. For much of her career Gjerde worked through the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), where she became one of the most persistent architects of efforts to protect biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. Admirers sometimes called her the “mother of the high seas.” The phrase was affectionate, but also descriptive: she helped raise an idea from an obscure concern into a mainstream obligation. Gjerde’s focus sharpened as industrial activity pushed deeper and farther offshore. Bottom trawling flattened ancient…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Much of the global ocean lies beyond national borders, where governance long lagged behind industrial expansion and responsibility thinned with distance from shore. - Kristina Maria Gjerde helped reframe that problem as one of law and institutions, combining science, legal craft, and persistence to make protection of the high seas politically workable. - Over two decades, she built and sustained coalitions that turned scattered warnings about deep-sea damage into a binding international framework. - That effort culminated in the 2023 High Seas Treaty, an agreement whose force lies less in sudden ambition than in the accumulation of careful, patient work. authors: | ||
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The year in rainforests 2025: Deforestation fell; the risks did not 26 Dec 2025 20:11:46 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-year-in-rainforests-2025-deforestation-fell-the-risks-did-not/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: The story of the world’s tropical forests in 2025 was not one of dramatic reversal, but one shaped by accumulated pressure. In several regions, deforestation slowed. In others, loss continued in less visible forms, shaped by fire, degradation, and political choices not limited to large-scale clearing alone. Governments continued to speak the language of protection, even as infrastructure, extraction, and energy projects advanced into forest landscapes. Progress was real, though uneven, and the distance between policy commitments and conditions on the ground remained substantial. What distinguished the year was the growing influence of indirect forces, rather than a single driver of loss. Heat, drought, and past damage increasingly shaped forest outcomes, even where new clearing slowed. Commodity markets rewarded persistence more than short-lived price spikes. Finance shifted away from individual projects toward broader fiscal tools. Enforcement mattered, alongside institutional credibility and the ability to operate consistently over time. At the global level, climate diplomacy continued, with limited appetite for binding decisions. COP30 avoided collapse and deferred the hardest choices. Forests remained prominent in rhetoric while enforceable outcomes remained limited. Market-based tools—carbon credits, trade regulation, and conservation finance—advanced unevenly, shaped as much by political confidence and capacity as by technical design. Taken together, 2025 underscored that tropical forests are now shaped more by interacting systems rather than single policies. Finance, science, enforcement, conflict, and climate stress increasingly operate together, often reinforcing one another. This review traces where those systems functioned, where they faltered, and what that means for the forests caught…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - This analysis explores key storylines, examining the political, environmental, and economic dynamics shaping tropical rainforests in 2025, with attention to how policy, markets, and climate stress increasingly interact rather than operate in isolation. - Across major forest regions, deforestation slowed in some places but degradation, fire, conflict, and legacy damage continued to erode forest health, often in ways that standard metrics fail to capture. - Global responses remained uneven: conservation finance shifted toward fiscal and market-based tools, climate diplomacy deferred hard decisions, and enforcement outcomes depended heavily on institutional capacity and credibility rather than formal commitments alone. - Taken together, the year showed that forest outcomes now hinge less on single interventions than on whether governments and institutions can sustain continuity—of funding, governance, science, and oversight—under mounting environmental and political strain. authors: | ||
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Africa mulls gap in climate adaptation finance for agriculture 26 Dec 2025 18:30:01 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/africa-mulls-gap-in-climate-adaptation-finance-for-agriculture/ author: Latoya Abulu dc:creator: Aimable Twahirwa content:encoded: The agriculture sector’s adaptation to climate change in Africa remains severely underfunded, say stakeholders after the U.N. climate talks came to a conclusion in November 2025. Despite an increase in financial pledges for adaptation at the climate conference, on the ground, there’s a gap of approximately $365 billion through 2035, and skepticism that international institutions will help fill the shortfall. “We need to keep reminding the world that this is a matter of urgency. The longer we wait to address issues, the more exponentially the costs rise,” Jiwoh Abdulai, the environment minister of Sierra Leone, told Mongabay. “We say this because we understand governments around the world are tightening their budgets, they’re reducing overseas development assistance.” According to latest estimates by the Global Center on Adaptation, at current funding levels, Africa will have $195 billion for overall adaptation by 2035, falling short of the more than $1.6 trillion researchers say may be needed. Agriculture remains the major recipient of current climate adaptation finance, receiving around 26% (or $3.4 billion) per year. “The current gap in climate adaptation finance for African agriculture is not just a funding shortfall — it is a continuation of an unequal global economic order where those who did the least to cause the crisis carry its heaviest burdens,” said Samuel Ogallah, head of the climate change unit at the African Union. African governments provide almost as much adaptation finance in the form of grants as multilateral and bilateral financiers. In Tishimale Village, Ethiopia, Belachew and 147…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Agricultural adaptation in Africa is underfunded and smallholder farmers remain highly vulnerable to climate shocks despite in international funding pledges, say African stakeholders. - They call for increased adaptation funding for the agricultural sector, but are skeptical that other countries will fill the shortfall. - Climate finance is concentrated in a few countries and largely excludes the most vulnerable nations, leaving farmers with limited access to funds for climate-smart practices. - Stakeholders call for public financing, better early-warning systems, loss-and-damage support, and the implementation of climate-smart agriculture. authors: | ||
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Record fossil fuel emissions in 2025 despite renewables buildout, report says 26 Dec 2025 15:22:34 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/record-fossil-fuel-emissions-in-2025-despite-renewables-buildout-report-says/ author: Bobbybascomb dc:creator: Shanna Hanbury content:encoded: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are projected to reach a record 38.1 billion metric tons in 2025, an increase of 1.1% from 2024, according to the 2025 Global Carbon Budget. The report, now in its 20th edition, was released Nov. 13 as a preprint. It compiles national energy and emissions data from 21 countries, with contributions from more than 100 researchers. The projections for 2025 are based on preliminary data and modeling. Researchers predict that emissions rose in several of the world’s largest economies. U.S. emissions were expected to have increased by 1.9%, India’s by 1.4% and China’s by 0.4%. Emissions from international aviation were a standout, with a projected rise of 6.8%. “With CO2 emissions still increasing, keeping global warming below 1.5°C [2.7°F] is no longer plausible,” Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute who led the study, said in a statement. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration increased from 317 parts per million (ppm) in 1960 to a projected 425.7 ppm in 2025. About 8% of this increase is linked to climate change weakening the ability of land and ocean ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide. Renewable energy made huge strides in 2025, but not enough to keep pace with the increase in overall emissions, according to data by Ember Energy. Solar and wind supplied more than 17% of global electricity in 2025, largely thanks to China’s solar power industry, which now provides more than half of the world’s solar panels.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are projected to reach a record 38.1 billion metric tons in 2025, an increase of 1.1% from 2024, according to the 2025 Global Carbon Budget. The report, now in its 20th edition, was released Nov. 13 as a preprint. It compiles national energy and emissions data from […] authors: | ||
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Declared extinct in 2025: A look back at some of the species we lost 26 Dec 2025 11:50:33 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/declared-extinct-in-2025-a-look-back-at-some-of-the-species-weve-lost/ author: Hayat Indriyatno dc:creator: Shreya Dasgupta content:encoded: Some species officially bid us farewell this year. They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the global authority on species’ conservation status. We may never see another individual of these species ever again. Or will we? Slender-billed curlew This grayish-brown migratory waterbird, known to breed in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe, and migrate to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, long evaded detection. The last known photo of the slender-billed curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) was taken in February 1995 on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. Since then, researchers suspected it had gone extinct, but only recently did assessments confirm this. “We arguably spent too much time watching the bird’s decline and not enough actually trying to fix things,” Geoff Hilton, conservation scientist at U.K.-based charity Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, previously told Mongabay. Christmas Island shrew The Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura) was once widespread on Australia’s Christmas Island. But in the 20th century, there were just four confirmed records of this tiny mammal: two in 1958, one in 1984, and the last in 1985. The species’ latest conservation assessment concludes it has gone extinct. Researchers say a blood-borne parasite transmitted by accidentally introduced black rats, which wiped out two of the island’s endemic rat species, may have also helped decimate populations of the Christmas Island shrew. Australian mammals Three Australian species of bandicoots — the marl (Perameles myosuros), southeastern striped bandicoot (Perameles notina) and Nullarbor barred…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Some species officially bid us farewell this year. They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the global authority on species’ conservation status. We may never see another individual of these species ever again. Or will we? Slender-billed curlew This […] authors: | ||
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‘The bargain of the century’: An economist’s vision for expanding clean energy access in Africa 26 Dec 2025 08:10:47 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-bargain-of-the-century-an-economists-vision-for-expanding-clean-energy-access-in-africa/ author: Malavikavyawahare dc:creator: John Cannon content:encoded: Many observers see industrialization as the key to boosting clean electricity access for people living in Africa and across the Global South. They argue that building up economies with industry will bring about the investments needed to upgrade the power grid and related infrastructure to provide power to the 600 million people in Africa who currently lack any electricity. But making sure the transition is fair means thinking about the coal workers who could lose their livelihoods and also about those who mine critical minerals essential for the renewable energy sector. The “just transition” toward renewable energy and away from fossil fuels got a boost at the November U.N. climate conference (COP30) in Brazil with the approval of the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM). The details of the BAM have yet to be sorted out, beyond a foundation of integrating existing endeavors toward low-carbon energy. But advocates applauded mentions of the rights of workers and Indigenous communities, as well as the inclusion of calls for more grants — as opposed to loans — to ease the transition. However, delegates failed to include a plan for phasing out oil, coal and gas. “The move to establish a just transition mechanism is positive and shows the power of civil society organising,” Friederike Strub, a climate finance campaigner at the Netherlands-based nonprofit Recourse, said in a statement. “But to make the just transition happen we need public finance backing, systemic economic reform, and a clear roadmap to end fossil fuels.” Even amid these signs…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - The recent U.N. climate conference (COP30) in Brazil resulted in the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) to bring about a just energy transition that embraces renewable energy and expands access to power. - But details on how the transition will be accomplished remain elusive. - Economist Fadhel Kaboub contends that the transition should not reinforce existing inequalities in Africa and other parts of the Global South. - Kaboub sees an opportunity in the energy transition to remedy those power imbalances, which he calls “the bargain of the century.” authors: | ||
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Stuart Brooks, peat protector, has died 26 Dec 2025 08:02:17 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/stuart-brooks-conservationist-of-unfashionable-landscapes/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, peatlands sat awkwardly at the edge of public consciousness. Neither conventionally scenic nor easily commodified, they were drained, burned, planted over, or dismissed as wasteland. Only gradually did they come to be understood as systems of consequence: for biodiversity, for water, and, increasingly, for climate. That shift owed less to sudden revelation than to sustained, patient work by a small number of specialists who understood both the science and the politics of land. Among them was Stuart Brooks, who died on December 11, aged 56. He spent much of his career explaining why peat mattered and persuading institutions to act accordingly. He was not the first to do so, but he was unusually effective at translating technical knowledge into policy, and policy into practice. His professional life unfolded largely in Scotland, though he was not born there. Trained as a geographer, he encountered peatlands as a student and stayed with them as they moved from obscurity to prominence. In the 1990s he worked on raised bog restoration and helped assemble what was then a scattered body of practical knowledge. That effort culminated in Conserving Bogs: The Management Handbook, published in 1997, which became a standard reference for practitioners. He later rose through the Scottish Wildlife Trust, eventually serving as its director of conservation. From there he moved to the John Muir Trust, first…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Stuart Brooks was part of a small group of conservationists who helped shift peatlands from the margins of environmental policy to a recognized priority for climate, biodiversity, and land management. His influence came through persistence rather than spectacle. - Trained as a geographer, he built practical expertise in peatland ecology early in his career and helped consolidate it into guidance that became standard for restoration work in the UK and beyond. - In senior roles at the Scottish Wildlife Trust, the John Muir Trust, and the National Trust for Scotland, he worked to align conservation practice with public policy, often arguing for approaches that respected natural processes over intervention. - As a founder and chair of the IUCN UK Peatland Program, he translated specialist knowledge into institutions, strategies, and protections that continue to shape peatland restoration at national and international levels. authors: | ||
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Conservation wins in 2025 that pushed us closer to the 30×30 goal 26 Dec 2025 07:17:29 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/conservation-wins-in-2025-that-pushed-us-closer-to-the-30x30-goal/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Bobby Bascomb content:encoded: The “30 by 30” biodiversity target to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and ocean by 2030 is fast approaching — and the world is far off the pace needed for success: Less than 10% of oceans and just 17.6% of land and inland waters enjoy some sort of protection. Still, 2025 saw some significant progress for land conservation. This year marked a move away from purely aspirational goals toward “more concrete planning and formal recognition in some countries and regions,” Mitchelle De Leon, chief impact officer with SkyTruth, a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks progress toward the 30×30 goal, told Mongabay in an email. While the progress is encouraging, De Leon cautions that we must also “assess how much impact protected areas are having on land use change over time, not just how much land is designated.” Some conservation wins and announcements from 2025: Colombia creates territory to protect an uncontacted tribe In March, Colombia established a 1.1-million-hectare (2.7-million-acre) protected territory for the uncontacted Yuri-Passé people in the Amazon. The decision followed petitions from neighboring Indigenous communities who were alarmed by growing threats from mining and organized crime on the Yuri-Passé land. The new territory marks the first time the Colombian government has established a protected area specifically for people living in voluntary isolation. Colombia bans new oil and mining projects in the Amazon In November, Colombia announced it would no longer approve new oil or large-scale mining projects in the Amazon. The announcement will protect roughly 48.3 million hectares…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: The “30 by 30” biodiversity target to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and ocean by 2030 is fast approaching — and the world is far off the pace needed for success: Less than 10% of oceans and just 17.6% of land and inland waters enjoy some sort of protection. Still, 2025 saw some […] authors: | ||
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10 notable books on conservation and the environment published in 2025 25 Dec 2025 08:05:40 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/10-notable-books-on-conservation-and-the-environment-published-in-2025/ author: Hayat Indriyatno dc:creator: John Cannon content:encoded: The year 2025 might be seen as one of backsliding when it comes to tackling the environmental crises that face our planet. Political leadership in places like the U.S. and elsewhere chose to throw their support behind the increased use of fossil fuels and cutting protections long put in place for the lands and waters that house wildlife and nurture critical ecosystem services. Progressive rules aimed at slowing deforestation, like the European Union’s regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR), met with further delays and attempts to weaken their provisions. And amid a clawback in overseas development aid from wealthy countries, key thought leaders like Microsoft founder Bill Gates played down the threat that humanity faces from climate change. All of that can lead to a feeling of helplessness, as though the world is heading in the wrong direction, particularly as scientists amass ever more telling data about the ill state of Earth’s health. And yet, a bevy of storytellers, from the fields of journalism and science, the law and the visual arts, have put years into the subjects they’ve dissected for Mongabay’s book list this year. They offer a clear-eyed look at the scary situations that we face on this planet. They tell the stories of the people who have made it their life’s work to find solutions, whether the problems they’re confronting are the crash of fisheries, the loss of habitat connectivity for iconic and not-so-iconic species alike, or the dangers of bearing witness to the environmental crimes that happen…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - As challenging as 2025 has been for conservation and environmental issues, the dogged struggle to address the crises we face remains a central focus for scientists, activists and communities around the globe. - Their stories hold the promise of a brighter future in the years to come. - The list below features a sample of important literature on conservation and the environment published this year. - Inclusion in this list does not imply Mongabay’s endorsement of a book’s content; the views in the books are those of the authors and not necessarily of Mongabay. authors: | ||
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Tell Hicks, reptile artist 25 Dec 2025 07:46:12 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/tell-hicks-reptile-artist/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For much of the late 20th century, reptiles occupied an awkward place in the public imagination. They were admired by specialists, feared or misunderstood by many others, and rarely treated with the same aesthetic seriousness afforded to birds or mammals. Field guides existed, but art that lingered on texture, posture, and individuality was scarce. The people who cared most about snakes, lizards, and turtles tended to find one another at the margins: in societies, at shows, or out in the field, comparing notes. One figure moved easily among those worlds. At reptile expos, he could often be found at an easel, quietly building an image layer by layer while conversations unfolded around him. In museums and private collections, his work carried the same animals into spaces where they were more often absent. The paintings did not dramatize their subjects. They paid attention to them. That artist was Tell Hicks, a British wildlife painter whose name became familiar to herpetologists on both sides of the Atlantic. He specialized in reptiles and amphibians, not as symbols or curiosities, but as organisms worth close, patient study. His snakes were not coiled for effect. His turtles were not softened for charm. They appeared as they were, alert and particular. Hicks was largely self-taught. As a child in England, he drew constantly, filling sketchbooks with animals. A book of prehistoric illustrations by Zdeněk Burian left a lasting impression,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Tell Hicks helped bring reptiles and amphibians into serious artistic view, treating snakes, lizards, and turtles as subjects worthy of close, unsentimental attention rather than symbols or curiosities. His paintings emphasized accuracy, individuality, and restraint. - Largely self-taught, he traveled widely and worked directly from field observation, developing meticulous techniques in egg tempera and later fast-drying oils to support highly detailed work, often produced in public settings. - He became a central figure in herpetological communities in Britain and the United States, helping found the International Herpetological Society, serving as its president, and contributing artwork that circulated through museums, shows, and educational spaces. - After a life-altering accident left him paralyzed, he adapted his practice and returned to painting, continuing to attend reptile shows and engage with the community that had long formed around his work. authors: | ||
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France’s largest rewilding project 25 Dec 2025 04:10:58 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/frances-largest-rewilding-project/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. He has spent much of his life in the shadow of the Dauphiné Alps in southeastern France, where limestone cliffs catch the morning light and the silhouettes of horned ibex move across the ridgelines. To Fabien Quétier, who helps steer Rewilding Europe’s newest and largest French project, these animals and their battered landscape are reminders of what had slipped away — and what might return, if given a chance, reports contributor Marlowe Starling for Mongabay. Rewilding was a young idea when Quétier began working on it, more theory than practice. In the 1990s, it sounded utopian: let nature repair itself by restoring the species that once shaped it. But in the past decade, the notion took on urgency. Forests were collapsing under heat, rivers ran dry in late summer, and even here, in this quiet corner of the western Alps, droughts and fires arrived with unsettling regularity. A “fixed approach to nature doesn’t really work anymore,” Quétier tells Starling. Rewilding, he believes, offers something sturdier than nostalgia. Quétier admires the region’s stubbornness. Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and marmots (Marmota marmota) crept back in the mid-20th century, drawing in wolves (Canis lupus) and Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber) that crossed from Italy. Friends who share Quétier’s faith nominated the area as France’s first rewilding site in 2019. It wasn’t starting from nothing, says Olivier Raynaud, director of the subgroup Rewilding France and Quétier’s colleague. The…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. He has spent much of his life in the shadow of the Dauphiné Alps in southeastern France, where limestone cliffs catch the morning light and the silhouettes of horned ibex move across the ridgelines. To Fabien Quétier, who […] authors: | ||
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Environmentalist hugs tree for 72 hours for Kenya’s native forests 25 Dec 2025 04:04:51 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/environmentalist-hugs-tree-for-72-hours-for-kenyas-native-forests/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Shanna Hanbury content:encoded: A Kenyan environmentalist hugged a palm tree for 72 straight hours in Nyeri county to draw attention to the rapid loss of the country’s native forests, many of which face extinction. Truphena Muthoni’s feat, reported by Mongabay contributing editor Lynet Otieno, is in the process of being considered for a new Guinness World Record. It surpassed the previous longest tree hug, also held by Muthoni, by more than 24 hours. She didn’t eat or sleep for the duration of the hug. Muthoni began her embrace of a royal palm (Roystonea regia) tree on Dec. 8 and ended the 72-hour feat around midday on Dec. 11, cheered on by crowds that included the Nyeri county governor, Mutahi Kahiga, as well as an online audience of hundreds of thousands. “I want to inspire people to fall in love with nature and treat it with care,” Muthoni told Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation. “Conservation begins with love. Nowadays, there are many tree-planting initiatives, but people often replace Indigenous forests with saplings, believing it is mitigation, yet it is not. We must first protect what we already have.” According to the latest State of the World’s Trees assessment, Kenya is home to 1,131 tree species, but more than 13% are threatened with extinction due to deforestation, climate change and urbanization. The royal palm that Muthoni hugged isn’t native to Kenya; it comes from the American tropics. Of Kenya’s 49 endemic tree species on record, most are under some level of threat. Nineteen are endangered and…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: A Kenyan environmentalist hugged a palm tree for 72 straight hours in Nyeri county to draw attention to the rapid loss of the country’s native forests, many of which face extinction. Truphena Muthoni’s feat, reported by Mongabay contributing editor Lynet Otieno, is in the process of being considered for a new Guinness World Record. It […] authors: | ||
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Top ocean news stories of 2025 (commentary) 24 Dec 2025 20:39:43 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/top-ocean-news-stories-of-2025-commentary/ author: Rebecca Kessler dc:creator: Alfredo GironAna SpaldingErin SkoczylasVanessa Constant content:encoded: 2025 was a key year for ocean policymaking, marking the midway point in the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The past 12 months brought landslide multilateral wins for ocean policy, unprecedented financial commitments for marine conservation, and increasing momentum to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Here, marine scientists, policy experts and a communications expert lay out the key ocean stories from the past year. 1. Multilateral breakthroughs reshape ocean governance In a rare breakthrough for ocean governance, two multilateral treaties reached enough ratifications by member states in 2025 to trigger their legal entry into force. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Treaty, known commonly as the High Seas Treaty, reached the milestone of 60 ratifications in September, triggering its entry into force in January 2026. The treaty is a legally binding international agreement safeguarding marine life in areas beyond the jurisdiction of any nation. Making up two-thirds of the ocean, these regions play a critical role in the planet’s life support system, regulating the climate and providing oxygen, and host critical ecosystems and species. Following the milestone, in November the High Seas Treaty won the Earthshot Prize in the “Revive Our Seas” category, celebrating two decades of advocacy and international cooperation to make the treaty a reality. The World Trade Organization’s treaty to ban harmful fisheries subsidies also came into force in September this year, after 24 years of negotiations. The treaty, called Fish One, bans government subsidies that support the fishing of already-overfished…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Marking the midway point in the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, 2025 was a key year for the ocean. - The past 12 months brought landslide multilateral wins for ocean policy, unprecedented ocean financial commitments, and increasing momentum to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030. - Here, marine scientists, policy experts and a communications expert lay out the key ocean stories from the past year. - This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay. authors: | ||
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Cyclone Ditwah exposes climate risks to nature-based tourism in Sri Lanka 24 Dec 2025 16:22:38 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/cyclone-ditwah-exposes-climate-risks-to-nature-based-tourism-in-sri-lanka/ author: Dilrukshi Handunnetti dc:creator: Malaka Rodrigo content:encoded: COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s misty hill country, a hub for nature-based tourism, is currently grappling with the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah. Landslides, flash floods and damaged infrastructure have disrupted the peak tourist season and raised questions about the resilience of these ecosystems in a changing climate. Stretching across the Central Highlands, the region is famed for its scenic mountains, waterfalls, cloud forests and wildlife-rich protected areas. UNESCO World Heritage sites such as the Knuckles Conservation Forest, Horton Plains National Park, Peak Wilderness and dozens of breathtaking waterfalls form the backbone of Sri Lanka’s nature tourism, attracting visitors from across the globe and generating substantial local income. A landslide-hit sections of a trail leading to the famous Adam’s Peak, a route frequented by thousands of pilgrims and hikers forming a part of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Peak Wilderness. Image by Shaminda Ranshan. Peak season interrupted December to March is traditionally the busiest tourism season for Sri Lanka. In Ella, one of the island’s most popular scenic towns, hotels and homestays reported mass cancellations after access roads were damaged and landslide fears escalated following days of relentless rain. “For many small operators, the peak tourist season supports livelihoods for an entire year,” said Mithila Bandara, spokesperson for the Hill Country Tourism Bureau. “There were many cancellations in early December, but we are hopeful of conditions improving soon.” Local communities dependent on tourism for a living are facing a double blow — from direct landslide damage and the resulting loss of income. Image…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In late November, Cyclone Ditwah triggered landslides and flooding across Sri Lanka’s biodiversity-rich hill country, disrupting nature-based tourism during the peak travel season. - UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Knuckles Conservation Forest, Horton Plains and Peak Wilderness, faced trail closures, access restrictions and infrastructure damage. - Popular destinations faced cancellations and closures, hitting local families who depend on tourism for their livelihoods, though they remain hopeful of a swift recovery. - Experts warn that reopening of these sites should not be unnecessarily rushed, emphasizing safety, environmental protection and long-term sustainability to preserve both livelihoods and biodiversity. authors: | ||
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New pitcher plant found in the Philippines may already be critically endangered 24 Dec 2025 11:34:26 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/new-pitcher-plant-found-in-the-philippines-may-already-be-critically-endangered/ author: Hayat Indriyatno dc:creator: Shreya Dasgupta content:encoded: Researchers have described a new-to-science species of carnivorous plant that’s known from only three locations on the Philippines’ Palawan Island. The newly described pitcher plant, which grows on very difficult-to-access vertical limestone walls, may already be critically endangered given its extremely restricted range and tiny population, the researchers say in a recent study. Nepenthes is a group of tropical carnivorous plants found in South and Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and parts of Australia. Their leaves are modified into specialized pitchers that function as slippery, passive traps: small prey like insects fall into a fluid at the base of the trap, where enzymes liquidize them for the plant to consume. Researchers have named the newly described species Nepenthes megastoma, its species name meaning “large mouth,” referring to the pitcher’s large opening. Ecologists first spotted a few individuals of the plant with binoculars in 2013. The plants were hanging off the vertical face of a limestone cliff within the Mount Saint Paul karst formation of Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (PPSRNP) on Palawan island. At the time, they thought these were specimens of N. campanulata, a pitcher plant native to Borneo. However, thanks to a local nature guide, researchers were made aware of another, more-accessible location where the same pitcher plant seemed to be growing. A few expeditions and drone surveys later, the researchers were able to study the plant’s morphology and ecology, eventually confirming that the species was new to science. So far, N. megastoma is only known from three locations…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Researchers have described a new-to-science species of carnivorous plant that’s known from only three locations on the Philippines’ Palawan Island. The newly described pitcher plant, which grows on very difficult-to-access vertical limestone walls, may already be critically endangered given its extremely restricted range and tiny population, the researchers say in a recent study. Nepenthes is […] authors: | ||
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William Bond, grasslands researcher who reminded conservation that context matters, has died 24 Dec 2025 08:03:39 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/william-bond-grasslands-researcher-who-reminded-conservation-that-context-matters-has-died/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In recent years, one of the loudest ideas in environmental policy has been that trees are the planet’s universal remedy. Plant enough of them, in enough places, and carbon will be soaked up, water will return, and biodiversity will rebound. The proposition is tidy, optimistic, and easily communicated. It is also, in many landscapes, wrong. The resistance to this way of thinking did not come from campaigners or contrarians, but from ecology. Over decades, evidence accumulated that vast parts of the world long assumed to be degraded forests were neither degraded nor forests at all. They were ancient grasslands and savannas, shaped by fire, herbivores, and time. Treating them as failed woodlands, and covering them with trees, risked destroying the very systems being “restored.” Few scientists did more to clarify this than William Bond. Bond spent much of his career insisting on an unfashionable idea: that openness mattered. Sunlit systems, he argued, were not empty spaces awaiting trees, but complex ecosystems with their own histories, rules, assemblages, and riches. Grasslands and savannas were not provisional stages on the way to forests. They were alternative outcomes, maintained by processes as fundamental as rainfall or soil. This view ran against powerful currents. International agencies, governments, philanthropists, and corporations were eager for simple climate solutions, and trees were visible, plantable, and symbolic. Bond did not object to forests. He objected to careless generalization. Where forests were…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - William Bond spent his career challenging the assumption that forests are nature’s default state, arguing that grasslands and savannas are ancient ecosystems shaped by fire, grazing, and long evolutionary history. - As enthusiasm for mass tree planting grew, he became a leading critic of blanket afforestation, warning that well-intentioned climate policies could damage biodiversity, water systems, and carbon stores when applied without context. - His research emphasized scale and evidence, showing that trees do not universally increase rainfall, replenish rivers, or solve climate change, and that soils and open landscapes often matter more than slogans suggest. - By insisting that conservation begin with understanding how landscapes actually function, he forced policymakers and scientists alike to slow down, look closer, and accept that complexity is not an obstacle but a necessity. authors: | ||
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Cape Town’s new plan for baboons: Fence, capture and possibly euthanize 24 Dec 2025 04:58:18 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/cape-towns-new-plan-for-baboons-fence-capture-and-possibly-euthanize/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Bobby Bascomb content:encoded: Authorities in Cape Town, South Africa, have released an updated baboon action plan aimed at reducing conflict between people and baboons, which regularly enter urban areas in search of food. The plan, which includes euthanasia of some baboons, has drawn criticism from animal welfare groups. The plan says the population of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) in the Cape Peninsula has increased from 360 in 2000 to more than 600 in 2024, leading to increased conflict with humans. To address these, the plan calls for nonlethal measures such as erecting baboon-proof fences that trained rangers will monitor and maintain. Baboons that breach the northern fence will be humanely euthanized, the plan says. The plan also notes that certain troops will be captured and relocated to the mountain side of the northern fence. However, it adds “the likelihood of success is very low” due to limited suitable habitat. If baboons return to the urban side of the fence, they may be euthanized. Another troop will be relocated to a 1.5-hectare (3.7-acre) baboon sanctuary where males will undergo a vasectomy. If the first enclosure proves successful, two more will be built; if it fails due to animal welfare concerns or lack of funding, the animals will be euthanized, the plan says. The plan also sets upper limits for baboon populations: 250 for the northern subpopulation and 175 for the southern one. If the limits are exceeded for more than six months, “animals will be humanely euthanized” starting with the old, sick and injured.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Authorities in Cape Town, South Africa, have released an updated baboon action plan aimed at reducing conflict between people and baboons, which regularly enter urban areas in search of food. The plan, which includes euthanasia of some baboons, has drawn criticism from animal welfare groups. The plan says the population of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) […] authors: | ||
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2025: A year of consequence for Mongabay’s journalism 24 Dec 2025 01:14:06 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/2025-a-year-of-consequence-for-mongabays-journalism/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: In 2025, environmental journalism faced a familiar paradox. The evidence was clearer than ever, but attention was harder to hold. Governments softened commitments and cut funding for programs many hold dear. Corporate language grew smoother as obligations narrowed. Public fatigue was real, shaped by anxiety over the state of the planet, political polarization, a deteriorating information environment, and pressure on democratic institutions and press freedom. Yet decisions with long tails were still being made—often discreetly, locally, and with incomplete information. This was the context in which Mongabay worked. 2025 also brought losses that landed close to home, including the deaths of Ochieng Ogodo, Mongabay’s East Africa editor, and Jane Goodall, a longtime Advisory Council member whose work reshaped how the world understands and values animals. Their passing sits within a broader year of loss for environmental defenders and conservation practitioners. Mongabay marked many of these lives through dozens of tributes, aiming to honor individuals by making their work visible beyond their immediate circles, so others could carry it forward. That approach reflects Mongabay’s growing emphasis on solutions reporting as a way to show where progress is possible, even when the odds seem long. As an organization, Mongabay will publish more than 7,300 stories across eight languages in 2025. Two of those—Swahili and Bengali—were new this year. Traffic is not impact in itself. But reach matters when it puts information in the hands of people who can use it. We expect website readership to exceed 110 million unique visitors in 2025,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In a year marked by public fatigue, political polarization, and pressure on democratic institutions and press freedom, Mongabay operated in an information environment where attention was scarce but decisions with lasting consequences were still being made, often quietly and locally. - 2025 also brought significant loss, including the deaths of East Africa editor Ochieng Ogodo and Advisory Council member Jane Goodall, alongside many other environmental defenders; Mongabay honored these lives through dozens of tributes aimed at making their work visible and carrying it forward through solutions-focused reporting. - Mongabay published more than 7,300 stories across eight languages, expanded into Swahili and Bengali, reached an expected 110 million unique visitors, grew its team to 130 people, and earned international recognition that reinforced the credibility and practical value of its journalism. - Across regions, Mongabay’s reporting directly shaped policy, enforcement, markets, and science—from hunting bans and mining reforms to financial blacklisting and new conservation priorities—and the organization enters 2026 focused on deepening impact through fellowships, expanded coverage, multilingual short news, and the launch of its Story Transformer tool. authors: | ||
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The top 10 most listened-to podcasts of 2025 from Mongabay 23 Dec 2025 22:05:51 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-top-10-most-listened-to-podcasts-of-2025-from-mongabay/ author: Hayat Indriyatno dc:creator: Mike DiGirolamo content:encoded: With 2025 drawing to a close, Mongabay’s flagship podcast has added more than 40 episodes over the course of the year. From professors and authors to Mongabay staffers, conservationists and advocates, we’ve hosted a diverse group of individuals, detailing their investigations, research, advocacy philosophy — all in service to shining a light on the existential and environmental threats humanity faces The following are the top 10 interviews listeners stayed with the longest. These audience favorites are also among my own, so if you want to hear some of the best conversations from 2025, start here. As Africa eyes protected areas expansion of 1 million square miles, concerns over enforcement persist In one of the most listened-to episodes of the year, Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo takes the audience to Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, where park rangers are alleged to have carried out extrajudicial killings of suspected bushmeat poachers. With an additional million square miles of protected land to be established across Africa, “the amount [of] violence and aggressive enforcement” has “led to a lot of mistrust,” Mukpo says. Listen: What environmental history reveals about our current ‘planetary risk’ Sunil Amrith, professor of history at Yale University, explains the planetary risks posed by the current global political landscape and what history has to teach us about it. Amrith offers listeners a glimpse into the past and the unique urgency humanity faces in this moment. Listen: Listening to whales is key to their conservation How does listening to extremely low…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Another year has come and gone on Mongabay’s flagship podcast with over 40 episodes added to the catalogue. - The following are the top 10 interviews people listened to the most. - This chronological list includes professors, authors, Mongabay staffers, conservationists, and advocates detailing investigations, research, advocacy philosophy, examining the existential and environmental threats humanity faces. - The editorial team agrees with the audience: if you want to hear some of the best conversations from 2025, start here. authors: | ||
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How ‘Adventure Scientists’ provide pioneering data for conservation 23 Dec 2025 21:32:35 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/podcast/2025/12/how-adventure-scientists-provide-pioneering-data-for-conservation/ author: Erik Hoffner dc:creator: Mike DiGirolamo content:encoded: Gregg Treinish didn’t start out as an outdoor enthusiast, but found solace and purpose in nature during his youth. After years of enjoying the outdoors, he was left feeling a need to give something back to the world. He found fulfillment by using his passion for outdoor adventures to gather critical data that researchers need for conservation and scientific research. That’s how his nonprofit organization, Adventure Scientists, came to be. “We harness the collective power of the tens of thousands of people that are outside every day — who love the outdoors and have a passion for exploring the outdoors — and we give them real scientific missions that they can do while they’re out there that benefit conservation,” Treinish says. Those missions have helped create the largest ever data set on microplastics (at the time), aid research into antibiotic resistance, and collect critical data on threatened species. All of these impacts, Treinish says, derive from the shared sense of purpose among volunteers who feel their actions truly matter and make a difference in the world, an ingredient he argues is necessary to bring about positive change. “It is so fulfilling to watch somebody who felt helpless against climate change, the microplastics issue, biodiversity loss — any one of these massive problems we’re facing — [and] give them a way [to feel] they matter and that they can have a positive impact. And it changes their lives. It changes the way they see the world,” Treinish says. His team is…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Gregg Treinish didn’t start out as an outdoor enthusiast, but found solace and purpose in nature during his youth. After years of enjoying the outdoors, he was left feeling a need to give something back to the world. He found fulfillment by using his passion for outdoor adventures to gather critical data that researchers need […] authors: | ||
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Huge ‘blue carbon’ offsetting project takes root in the mangroves of Sierra Leone 23 Dec 2025 20:15:00 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/huge-blue-carbon-offsetting-project-takes-root-in-the-mangroves-of-sierra-leone/ author: Morgan Erickson-Davis dc:creator: Edward CarverMohamed Fofanah content:encoded: BONTHE, Sierra Leone — On the island of Sherbro in Sierra Leone, as in much of the country, there’s limited access to vital services needed to make ends meet. “Here our people only rely on fishing and a few on agriculture and have nothing else to occupy our children, our youths,” Nenneh Sumaila, the chief of Gbomgboma, a village of about 300 people on the island, told Mongabay. “There are no good roads, no proper health facilities, there’s poor housing, electricity is a dream and the standard of living is poor.” One of the ways to make ends meet in Gbomgboma is by cultivating oil palm trees. But to process the fruit into palm oil, they need fuel for fire, which often comes from mangroves — one of many local uses for the wood. Cutting mangroves unsustainably turns them from a carbon sink into a source of greenhouse gas emissions and hurts their ability to foster biodiversity and provide other ecosystem services. “Blue carbon” projects aim to reverse this trend, and one called the Sherbro River Estuary Project has just been launched with more than 124 communities there. A wholly owned subsidiary of West Africa Blue, a Mauritius-based company, reportedly signed a deal with the communities in October that will reward them financially for conserving and restoring their mangroves. Company representatives told Mongabay that the funds will be generated by selling offsets on the voluntary carbon credit market, with revenues shared between West Africa Blue, the communities and the government…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In October, a wholly owned subsidiary of West Africa Blue, a Mauritius-based company, signed a “blue carbon” offsetting deal with the 124 communities on the island of Sherbro in Sierre Leone. - The agreement will reward the communities financially for conserving and restoring their mangroves, which act as a carbon sink. - The funds will be generated by selling offsets on the voluntary carbon credit market, with revenues shared between West Africa Blue, the communities and the government of Sierra Leone. - Though carbon offsetting projects have been subject to criticism in the past, community members on Sherbro say they’re optimistic about the improvements to their livelihoods that the project could bring. authors: | ||
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Joanna Macy, author and teacher who turned despair into connection and agency 23 Dec 2025 18:18:35 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/joanna-macy-author-and-teacher-who-turned-despair-into-connection-and-agency/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: For much of the late 20th century, environmental writing oscillated between alarm and reassurance. One strand emphasized catastrophe; another urged optimism. A smaller, more demanding tradition insisted on neither denial nor consolation, but attention. It asked what it meant to remain fully present to ecological loss without turning away or hardening into fatalism. That question animated a body of work that emerged alongside the nuclear age and matured as climate disruption moved from prediction to lived experience. Its premise was disarmingly simple: despair is not a failure of character, nor a symptom to be treated away, but evidence of care. If people could be helped to face grief for the world directly, the argument went, they might discover not paralysis but agency. The scholar who developed this approach drew from Buddhist thought, systems theory, and what came to be called deep ecology. She was less interested in prescribing solutions than in changing the conditions under which people perceived themselves and their place in the living world. Humans, she insisted, were not observers standing outside ecological collapse, but participants within a larger body that could be injured and renewed. Only after those ideas had begun to circulate widely did their author become a recognized figure. Joanna Macy, who died in July at 96, spent decades teaching that emotional honesty was a prerequisite for environmental action. She rejected the language of motivation and instead spoke of belonging. What people needed, she believed, was permission to feel what they already felt, in the…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Joanna Macy — who died on July 19, 2025 at the age of 96 — argued that despair in the face of ecological and nuclear threat was not a weakness but a sign of care, and that refusing to feel it led to paralysis rather than protection. She encouraged people to stay present to what was being lost instead of numbing themselves. - Drawing on Buddhism, systems theory, and deep ecology, Joanna Macy helped people see themselves not as observers of crisis but as participants within a larger living system. This shift in perspective was central to how she understood responsibility and action. - Through what became known as the Work That Reconnects, Joanna Macy developed group practices that allowed grief, fear, and anger to be named collectively and transformed into resolve. The emphasis was less on solutions than on restoring a sense of connection and agency. - As climate change replaced nuclear war as the dominant existential threat, Joanna Macy’s work remained focused on attention rather than reassurance. She insisted that hope was a practice grounded in relationship, not optimism about outcomes. authors: | ||
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