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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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Agroforestry grows in popularity among central Colombia’s coffee farmers (analysis) 23 Dec 2025 18:05:36 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/agroforestry-grows-in-popularity-among-central-colombias-coffee-farmers-analysis/ author: Erik Hoffner dc:creator: Juliana Cajiao Raigosa content:encoded: Colombia is the world’s third-largest coffee producer and the main producer of Arabica coffee, which is known worldwide for its quality. The nation began developing commercial production in 1870, which now accounts for 22% of the national gross domestic product (GDP). According to the National Federation of Coffee Growers, there are approximately 560,000 farms in the country dedicated to coffee production, most of them small scale and accounting for 15% of total production. Coffee in Colombia has become part of the national identity and is also considered part of its cultural heritage. Besides this, it has been of vital importance for the economy, representing up to 80% of total exports, and is undoubtedly partly responsible for the changes that took place between 1870 and 1930, which allowed for the integration of the country’s economy and generated positive political and social effects. However, only 5% of smallholder farmers are technically efficient (TE), reflecting poor agronomic management strategies such as inadequate uses of inputs, irrational uses of fertilizers and pesticides, low phytosanitary control and monitoring strategies, lack of labor and substandard production conditions, among other factors. Mr. Arlisson Neussa, an agricultural engineer, assisting with coffee berry borer monitoring on a coffee plantation. The agroforestry coffee system, in which the coffee is interplanted within a native forest, can be clearly seen. Image courtesy of Juliana Cajiao Raigosa. The main coffee-producing departments of the “cafetal zone” are Risalda, Caldas, Antioquia and Quindío. Coffee in these areas is considered a cultural heritage and is mainly…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - As the world’s third-largest coffee producer and a nation that has been growing the popular Arabica variety since 1870, there’s not much that Colombia doesn’t know about growing the crop. - In some areas of the country, though, growing coffee via diverse agroforestry systems is now gaining popularity, thanks to its sustainability and benefits for local biodiversity. - However, a new analysis also shares that in some areas, there still exists a low level of technical understanding among small-scale growers as to how to grow coffee well while reducing pests and diseases with agroecological methods. - This post is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay. authors: | ||
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As Cyclone Ditwah battered land, Sri Lanka’s oceans absorbed a silent shock 23 Dec 2025 17:59:34 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/as-cyclone-ditwah-battered-land-sri-lankas-oceans-absorbed-a-silent-shock/ author: Dilrukshi Handunnetti dc:creator: Malaka Rodrigo content:encoded: COLOMBO — Cyclone Ditwah, which claimed around 650 lives and left at least 200 people missing, cast a heavy pall of gloom over Sri Lanka from the moment it entered the island’s skies Nov. 28. By Dec. 2, the storm had finally moved on, leaving behind silence, debris and grief — but also, in some places, an unexpected calm. Along stretches of the Jaffna coast in northern Sri Lanka, the returning sunshine revealed a strange and startling sight. Thick patches of snow-like white foam had gathered along the shoreline, astonishing residents who said they had never seen anything like it before. For children, especially, the sight felt surreal. Amid a nation still mourning its losses, they ran barefoot along the beach, laughing and playing with the foam, as if it were snow. The fleeting scene offered a gentle contrast to the scale of devastation elsewhere, but it also raised questions about how the ocean responds to land-based disasters. In the aftermath of the floods, fears spread that polluted waters sweeping through industrial zones and sewage systems had contaminated the sea, and the foam was visible evidence of that pollution. Scientists, however, say the phenomenon was natural. “Such sea foam can form naturally after powerful storms and strong winds, like those experienced in Jaffna during the northeast monsoon,” said Ganapathypillai Arulananthan, former director-general of the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA). “Rough seas churn microscopic algae and plankton, releasing organic compounds that act like natural surfactants. When waves trap…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Following the tropical Cyclone Ditwah, unusual sea-foam appeared along parts of Sri Lanka’s northern coast, a natural phenomenon caused by storm-driven turbulence and organic compounds released by plankton, not marine pollution, scientists say. - Extreme rainfall from Ditwah released an extraordinary volume of freshwater into the ocean, and researchers estimate that nearly 10% of Sri Lanka’s average annual rainfall was received in a single day and rapidly drained to sea through the island’s river network. - Flood-driven sediments and sudden changes in salinity may stress coral reefs and coastal ecosystems, but Sri Lanka lacks systematic sediment monitoring at river mouths, leaving scientists with limited data on downstream impacts. - The floods also swept plastics, debris and nutrients into coastal waters, potentially intensifying plankton blooms and fish aggregations while increasing the risk of algal blooms, oxygen depletion and long-term marine pollution. authors: | ||
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Tropical forests in Australia are emitting more carbon than they capture: Study 23 Dec 2025 15:54:26 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/tropical-forests-in-australia-are-emitting-more-carbon-than-they-capture-study/ author: Lizkimbrough dc:creator: Liz Kimbrough content:encoded: When it comes to capturing carbon, trees have always been our go-to. But a sinister switch is underway. A study published in the journal Nature reveals that moist tropical forests in Australia are now emitting more carbon than they capture. Researchers examined nearly five decades of forest monitoring data from the far northeast of Queensland state. Between 1971 and 2019, they tracked roughly 11,000 tree stems across 20 rainforest plots, measuring changes in the carbon locked away in trunks and branches. Around the year 2000, the study reports, the rate at which these forests absorbed carbon slowed and reversed, making them net emitters instead. It’s the first documented case of tropical forest woody biomass making this flip. “We analysed this long-term data and found a clear signal: woody biomass switched from being a carbon sink to a carbon source about 25 years ago,” the authors of the paper write in The Conversation. The core problem? Tree deaths have doubled compared to earlier decades, and new growth isn’t keeping pace. A famous strangler fig (Cathedral Fig) in Queensland, Australia. Image by James Niland / Flickr – Creative Commons Before 2000, the forests pulled in approximately 0.62 metric tons of carbon per hectare each year. By the most recent decade studied, they were hemorrhaging 0.93 tons per hectare annually. What’s killing the trees? Climate change tops the list. These rainforest species evolved for warm, wet conditions, but they’re now facing temperature extremes and extended droughts that damage their tissues and stunt growth.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - A newly published study reveals that moist tropical forests in Australia are now a net carbon emitter, making this the first documented case of tropical forest woody biomass making the flip from sink to source. - Researchers analyzed nearly five decades of data and found that around the year 2000, these forests stopped absorbing more carbon than they emitted and went into a reversal. - They identified tree deaths as the core problem, showing that these doubled compared to earlier decades, with new growth unable to keep pace. - Climate change and cyclones are to blame, as rainforest species evolved for warm, wet conditions, but are now facing temperature extremes and extended droughts that damage their tissues and stunt growth. authors: | ||
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Photos: Tourism ambitions clash with local livelihoods on Indonesia’s Lombok Island 23 Dec 2025 15:45:28 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/photos-tourism-ambitions-clash-with-local-livelihoods-on-indonesias-lombok-island/ author: Philip Jacobson dc:creator: Helena Ureta content:encoded: TANJUNG AAN BEACH, Indonesia — Here on the southern coast of Indonesia’s Lombok Island, dozens of residents have been told to dismantle their food stalls and leave the shoreline to make way for the Mandalika tourism development project. Once a place where families sold coconuts, rented out surfboards and cooked for visitors, Tanjung Aan Beach is now lined with debris, temporary shelters and the remains of the structures that stood for years. “I’ve had my warung [food stall] here for more than a decade,” says Ani, who now sells snacks from a table built with scrap wood. “They told us to move, but they didn’t give us a clear place to go.” The Mandalika project is part of Indonesia’s “10 New Balis” strategy, meant to establish tourism hubs in lesser-known parts of the archipelago and boost international visitors. A race circuit built as part of the project has already hosted international events like the MotoGP and World Superbike races, with resorts and other facilities still being developed. But while officials have promoted the jobs and infrastructure they say the project will bring, many residents say they were given little notice before being told to leave, and that they received no compensation or alternative livelihood assistance. Their accounts offer a picture of a community trying to adapt while watching their source of income disappear. An excavator clearing the ground for new construction along Tanjung Aan Beach. Image by Helena Ureta for Mongabay. The landscape of ruins left after the demolition of…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Residents of Tanjung Aan Beach on the Indonesian island of Lombok say they were evicted with little notice or compensation as the Mandalika tourism project advances, leaving many without livelihoods or alternatives. - The government-controlled developer has defended its process, citing compensation paid in a different land zone, but locals say support didn’t reach the coastal community now being cleared. - Perspectives diverge sharply: locals describe loss, fear and declining income, while some foreigners and investors argue the development is legal, overdue and ultimately beneficial. - Younger Lombok residents highlight deeper systemic issues — weak regulation, rising costs and limited opportunities — saying tourism growth increasingly serves visitors, not locals. authors: | ||
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Mongabay shark meat investigation wins national journalism award in Brazil 23 Dec 2025 14:57:54 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/mongabay-shark-meat-investigation-wins-national-journalism-award-in-brazil/ author: Karla Mendes dc:creator: Mongabay.com content:encoded: A Mongabay investigation that revealed Brazilian state-run institutions bulk-buying shark meat for public schools, hospitals and prisons has won second place in the national category of the 67th ARI/Banrisul Journalism Award, one of the country’s most prestigious journalism prizes. Mongabay, working in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center, published the investigation in late July revealing that Brazilian authorities had issued 1,012 public tenders since 2004 for the procurement of more than 5,400 metric tons of shark meat, worth at least 112 million reais ($20 million). These tenders were issued by 542 municipalities in 10 of Brazil’s 26 states, raising environmental and public health concerns. Shark meat can contain high levels of mercury and arsenic, which scientists say can be harmful to human health when consumed in large quantities; at the same time, overfishing can deplete populations of sharks, which are recognized as critical to the marine environment. A second article published as part of the investigation found that government agencies across Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, had issued tenders for at least 211 metric tons of angelshark, which are endangered. In a Dec. 12 statement announcing the ARI/Banrisul award, the Rio Grande do Sul Press Association (ARI) said the award “recognized the talents” in professional and university categories amid a record number of entries, up 40% from the 2024 edition. Senior editor Philip Jacobson and investigative reporters Karla Mendes and Fernanda Wenzel were the Mongabay authors of the two-part investigation, along with Kuang Keng Kuek Ser, the Pulitzer Center’s…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - A Mongabay investigation that revealed Brazilian state-run institutions bulk-buying shark meat for public schools, hospitals and prisons won second place in the ARI/Banrisul Journalism Award, one of Brazil’s most prestigious journalism prizes. - In collaboration with the Pulitzer Center, Mongabay revealed how authorities had issued 1,012 public tenders since 2004 for the procurement of more than 5,400 metric tons of shark meat, raising environmental and public health concerns. - In a statement, the Rio Grande do Sul Press Association (ARI) said the award “recognized the talents” in professional and university categories amid a record number of entries, up 40% from the 2024 edition. - Following the revelations, the investigation sparked several impacts, from a call for a public hearing in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, a citation in a lawsuit to ban shark meat from federal procurements, to an industry debate questioning the harms of shark meat consumption. authors: | ||
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Mekong sand mining risks collapse of SE Asia’s largest freshwater lake, study finds 23 Dec 2025 11:08:48 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/mekong-sand-mining-risks-collapse-of-se-asias-largest-freshwater-lake-study-finds/ author: Isabel Esterman dc:creator: Carolyn Cowan content:encoded: Rampant sand mining in the Mekong River is directly weakening critical seasonal river flows that sustain Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, new research indicates. The Mekong’s annual wet season flood pulse that feeds water into Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake has been dwindling year by year. Experts have long pointed to upstream hydropower dams in China and Laos that trap sediments and alter the Mekong’s flow, combined with droughts intensified by climate change, as major drivers of the gargantuan river system’s declining vitality. A new study by researchers from the U.K. and Vietnam now shows that sand mining in the Lower Mekong Basin countries of Cambodia and Vietnam has a far greater impact on the flood pulse-lake dynamics than previously understood. “Upstream dams do have a measurable effect,” said lead author Quan Le, a flood risk researcher at Loughborough University in the U.K. “However, the primary driver of the declining Tonle Sap flood pulse is extensive downstream sand mining.” The Mekong’s heartbeat Tonle Sap Lake, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, lies within the lower basin of the Mekong River, the world’s second-most biodiverse aquatic ecosystem (after the Amazon). Each wet season, the lake swells up to five times in size as the Mekong’s annual flood pulse surges up the Tonle Sap River, reversing its flow. The situation then flips during the dry season, when water flows out of the lake downstream into the densely populated Mekong Delta. This rhythmic expansion and contraction is often referred to as the Mekong’s “heartbeat” due to…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Surging demand for sand used in construction projects poses an existential threat to Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, new research indicates. - The seasonal expansion and contraction of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake is often referred to as the Mekong River’s “heartbeat” due to its fundamental role in sustaining ecosystems and human lives across the region. - Sand mining in the Mekong River, particularly in Cambodia and Vietnam, has deepened the river channel, effectively halving wet season flows into Tonle Sap Lake between 1998 and 2018, the study found. - The stark findings underscore the severity of sand mining impacts, adding urgency to calls for improved and coordinated river governance throughout the Mekong Basin. authors: | ||
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New miniature bright-orange toadlet found in southern Brazil and named after Lula 23 Dec 2025 09:33:34 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/new-miniature-bright-orange-toadlet-found-in-southern-brazil-and-named-after-lula/ author: Shreya Dasgupta dc:creator: Mongabay.com content:encoded: In a small stretch of the Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil lives a bright-orange species of frog that’s new to science, researchers report in a recent study. The miniature amphibian measures just over a centimeter long, less than half an inch, or the length of an average fingernail. The team has named the toadlet Brachycephalus lulai, in honor of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The genus Brachycephalus, also called flea toads or saddleback toads, are all tiny and live among leaf litter in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest. Of the 42 known species, 35 have been described since 2000. Individuals of the latest species to be described, B. lulai, were found hidden in the leaf litter of the montane Atlantic Forest at two nearby sites on the southeastern slopes of Serra do Quiriri in the state of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. The researchers collected 32 individuals and compared different features of the frogs, including their DNA and vocalizations, with those of other Brachycephalus species. Their analysis showed that it was indeed a new-to-science species. B. lulai has a bright-orange body dotted with tiny green and brown spots. Males measure just 8.9-11.3 millimeters (0.35-0.44 inches) in length, while females are slightly larger at 11.7-13.4 mm (0.46-0.53 inches). The males produce a very distinct call to attract females that’s unique to the species, the researchers found. Currently, the sites where B. lulai was found appear to be intact, without any significant threats. As such, the researchers suggest the species be categorized as…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: In a small stretch of the Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil lives a bright-orange species of frog that’s new to science, researchers report in a recent study. The miniature amphibian measures just over a centimeter long, less than half an inch, or the length of an average fingernail. The team has named the toadlet Brachycephalus […] authors: | ||
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Neddy Mulimo treated ranger welfare as conservation 23 Dec 2025 07:40:50 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/neddy-mulimo-treated-ranger-welfare-as-conservation/ 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 much of Africa, conservation is discussed in the language of landscapes and species: elephant corridors, lechwe floodplains, and the slow arithmetic of births and deaths. On the ground, it is also a labor question. The work is done by people who walk long hours, sleep badly, work in dangerous circumstances, and carry responsibility that is rarely matched by pay, equipment, or public notice. A ranger can spend days without clean water and still be expected to make good judgments at night, under stress, against armed men, in places where help may be hours away. That gap between what the job requires and what it is given was one of the subjects that Neddy Mulimo returned to, with a mixture of pride and impatience. “According to a recent study, the average ranger works almost 90 hours a week. Over 60% have no access to clean drinking water on patrol or at outpost stations. And what’s more, over 40% regularly go without overnight shelter,” he wrote, arguing that better welfare was not charity but strategy. Funding, he thought, should buy competence and resilience as much as boots and rifles. Mulimo, a Zambian who spent roughly four decades in conservation, began far from the romantic idea of the bush. Growing up in Lusaka’s Matero township, he once wanted to be a truck driver. A school club changed the direction of his life. Later, a trip…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Neddy Mulimo argued that ranger welfare was not charity but strategy, insisting that effective conservation depends on whether rangers have water, shelter, training, and institutional backing to make sound decisions under pressure. - His own path into conservation began far from the bush, shaped by education, mentorship, and early encounters with risk, including a near-fatal buffalo attack that nearly drove him out of the profession. - Over four decades, he rose from driver and educator to anti-poaching leader and mentor, helping build specialist units while remaining focused on the people doing the work, until his death in April 2025 after a battle with cancer. authors: | ||
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Grassroots forest protection succeeds where planting drives fail in Nepal 23 Dec 2025 01:17:41 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/grassroots-forest-protection-succeeds-where-planting-drives-fail-in-nepal/ author: Abhaya Raj Joshi dc:creator: Mukesh Pokhrel content:encoded: NAWALPUR, Nepal — At 75, Hasta Bahadur Sathighare Magar says he still remembers the time when the slopes above his village in the rural municipality of Rupsekot, in central Nepal, looked dead. Dust blew freely as cattle marauded the barren land. That view has since changed. The barren slopes have given way to native trees like sal(Shorea robusta), sisau (Dalbergia sissoo), jamun (Syzygium cumini) and bakaino(Melia azedarach), which cast a shade with their canopy. “When I’m in the jungle, I feel as if I gain energy from the plants. Many people like me come here to walk and enjoy nature,” Magar says. Hasta Bahadur Sathighare Magar at the Muse Danda forest. Image by Mukesh Pokhrel The barren hill in Muse Danda is now filled wth trees. Image by Mukesh Pokhrel. The recovery of the Muse Danda Community Forest wasn’t funded by large-scale tree-planting campaigns. Instead, it was driven by small local changes. Community members simply protected the land, and the forest grew back. As the government struggles to restore degraded land across Nepal’s Chure foothills through large-scale tree-planting programs, the success of low-cast, community-led efforts signals that natural regeneration could happen if communities protect the land. The Chure range is Nepal’s green spine: fragile, vital, and now fighting to survive. It covers about 13% of the country’s total area and stretches east to west along the southern foothills of the Himalayas. This biologically rich landscape supports a wide range of species — from tigers (Panthera tigris) and sloth bears (Melursus…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Cases from Nepal suggest that degraded land can regenerate naturally when locals enforce rules such as banning open livestock grazing, restricting access, fining illegal logging and organizing patrols, without the need for costly tree-planting drives. - Native species return within a few years after the land is protected, showing that fertile soil, existing seed banks and wildlife presence can restore forests naturally. - Researchers and community leaders say Nepal should prioritize long-term, community-led forest protection and natural regeneration, which are more effective, sustainable and lower-cost than coordinated tree planting. authors: | ||
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Will Australia’s main environment law continue marginalizing Indigenous authority, despite overhaul? (commentary) 22 Dec 2025 22:50:47 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/will-australias-main-environment-law-continue-marginalizing-indigenous-authority-despite-overhaul-commentary/ author: Erik Hoffner dc:creator: Ali KandiEmma Lee content:encoded: Australia’s main environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), has finally been rewritten. After years of warnings that the old law was “not fit for purpose,” parliament backed sweeping changes: national environmental standards, a new independent environment watchdog, higher penalties for breaches, and the closure of loopholes that had allowed native forest logging and large-scale land clearing to slip through federal oversight. These reforms respond to the 2020 Samuel Review, which warned that Australia’s nature laws were failing to stop habitat loss and biodiversity decline. But one of the most urgent failures of the old regime remains far from resolved: the marginalization of Indigenous authority. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the custodians of Country for tens of thousands of years, are still consulted rather than empowered. Their ecological knowledge and cultural responsibility for land and water are not yet central to the decisions that shape Australia’s environmental future. Now that the overhaul has passed, the debate shifts from whether to modernize the act to a more important question: will this new system finally share power with First Nations, or simply rebuild an old architecture with the same blind spots? Australia’s Indigenous communities identify their territories with the proper term ‘Country.’ Tebrakunna Country is traditional land located in northeastern Tasmania. Image courtesy of Luggarrah. What Canada shows us Across Canada, Indigenous nations have moved beyond being observers in environmental decisions. They hold majority ownership in renewable energy, mining and infrastructure projects, backed by Indigenous loan-guarantee…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Australia’s main environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), was recently updated. - The EPBC overhaul is a major shift in environmental standards, which also appoints a new independent environment watchdog and other changes, but one of the most urgent failures of the old policy remains unresolved: the marginalization of Indigenous input and authority. - The real test in the updated EPBC lies in how it’s implemented, a new op-ed argues: “If governments continue treating First Nations as consultees rather than partners, the new laws will inherit the same weaknesses that allowed deforestation, cultural loss and biodiversity decline under the old regime.” - This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay. authors: | ||
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Taboo against harming strangler fig spirits protects forests in Indonesian Borneo 22 Dec 2025 22:37:14 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/taboo-against-harming-strangler-fig-spirits-protects-forests-in-indonesian-borneo/ author: Lizkimbrough dc:creator: Liz Kimbrough content:encoded: When a young boy went missing near his mother’s rice field in Indonesian Borneo, the entire village searched for him. After nearly a day, he was found near a large strangler fig tree. The boy insisted he hadn’t been hiding. Spirits living in the fig tree had called his name and lured him away, he said, then prevented his mother from seeing him even as she walked around the tree looking for him. The family took him to a shaman, who confirmed the boy had been targeted by spirits dwelling in the strangler fig. To protect him from future encounters, they changed his name entirely. This story, shared with researcher Ditro Wibisono Wardi Parikesit during interviews with an Iban Indigenous community in Sungai Utik, West Kalimantan, illustrates a powerful belief among the community. Almost all (30 out of 32) community members considered large strangler figs to host supernatural entities that may be dangerous if disturbed. New research published in the journal Biotropica reveals that this belief system has measurable ecological benefits. Photo of the largest strangler fig recorded which found in the farmland area. It consists of three different species and stands more than 40 meters tall. Photo by Ditro Wibisono Wardi Parikesit Strangler figs grow by depositing their seeds in the canopy of another tree. Their aerial roots grow downward, surrounding and squeezing the host tree until eventually dies. Once the host dies and decays, a hollow root structure supports the fig tree above. When farmers in the Iban…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - The Iban community in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, says it believes large strangler fig trees are inhabited by dangerous spirits, leading community members to protect these trees from harm wherever they occur. - When clearing land for farming, the community protects the fig tree as well as islands of vegetation around the tree, which together account for 1-2% of their farmland dedicated to protecting the strangler figs. - Research published in Biotropica found that strangler figs are equally or more abundant in the community’s farmland compared with old-growth, with 25 species identified across the landscape. - These protected fig trees and surrounding vegetation serve as crucial refuges and stepping stones for wildlife, demonstrating how traditional spiritual beliefs can have measurable biodiversity benefits that could be replicated elsewhere. authors: | ||
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The rise of CC35 and the business behind its climate deals 22 Dec 2025 22:32:40 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/carbon-and-charisma-how-climate-network-cc35-tricked-its-way-to-the-limelight/ author: Alexandrapopescu dc:creator: Gloria Pallares content:encoded: This investigation was produced with support from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Isabel Alarcón contributed reporting from Ecuador. BARCELONA — Covering more than 65 million hectares (160 million acres) across Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, the Gran Chaco is South America’s second-largest forest after the Amazon Rainforest. Over the last decades, the dry forest ecosystem that fosters thousands of plant and animal species and 9 million people has lost about a quarter of its area to agriculture. In 2024, the Gran Chaco was especially threatened in Argentina’s Santiago del Estero province, where it lost 54,000 hectares (133,000 acres) of forest. A few years earlier, the province’s forest ecosystem was the object of an announcement at COP26 in Glasgow, U.K. On Nov. 2, 2021, Global Carbon Parks Inc., a Miami-based startup, announced a $200-million carbon contract with the province of Santiago del Estero that, according to several sources, would support nature conservation and decarbonization in the region. The startup aimed to trade in carbon credits from subnational protected areas. The announcement of the public-private arrangement was hosted by Capital Cities 35 (CC35), a climate alliance of mayors across the Americas that aims to build capacity to tackle climate change, implement the Paris Agreement and the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda. But findings from a Mongabay investigation suggest that the secretary-general of CC35, Argentinian Sebastián Navarro, used his position at CC35 in ways that benefited private carbon businesses like Global Carbon Parks, which he controlled through majority stakeholder Ethic International, Inc, a holding company…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - The executive secretary of CC35, a climate network of capital cities in the Americas, used annual climate summits and other events to advance private interests in carbon credit businesses, a Mongabay investigation has found. - His plan included persuading a provincial government in Argentina to sign a multimillion-dollar carbon contract with an associate facing fraud allegations in a parallel carbon business. According to a recent Mongabay investigation, the associate had pressured Indigenous communities in Brazil and Bolivia to sign abusive carbon deals, conceding rights for an area larger than Ireland. - The head of CC35, Argentinian Sebastián Navarro, also failed to fulfill CC35’s commitment to cover all costs associated with Ecuador’s pavilion at COP28, after making false claims to the government and creating debts for the country. authors: | ||
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Daniel Ole Sambu, who helped lions and people coexist, died at age 51 22 Dec 2025 22:13:09 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/daniel-ole-sambu-who-helped-lions-and-people-coexist-died-at-age-51/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: In the rangelands beneath Kilimanjaro, coexistence between people and wildlife has never been a simple matter. Livestock wander into the paths of lions. Farmers lose cattle they can scarcely afford to lose. Retaliation follows, and with it the slow unraveling of ecosystems that depend on predators to stay whole. Local conservation groups have long understood that progress depends not on fences or warnings, but on trust. And trust depends on people who can speak across the fault lines of culture, history and daily survival. One such figure held that space with unusual steadiness. Daniel Ole Sambu, who died earlier in December at age 51, spent years trying to keep the peace in a landscape where peace was fragile. As the program coordinator for the Predator Compensation Fund run by the Big Life Foundation, he helped design and manage a bargain that only works when everyone believes in it. If a family lost livestock to a predator, they would be compensated. In return, they would not kill the animal. It sounds simple. In practice, it required patient negotiation, long days in homesteads and constant reminders that the health of the ecosystem and the well-being of pastoralists were inseparable. His influence came not from authority but from the confidence of someone rooted in the place he served. He grew up in the broad Amboseli ecosystem and never forgot what it meant to live with wildlife close at hand. His work extended well beyond compensation forms and field visits. He spent years strengthening…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: In the rangelands beneath Kilimanjaro, coexistence between people and wildlife has never been a simple matter. Livestock wander into the paths of lions. Farmers lose cattle they can scarcely afford to lose. Retaliation follows, and with it the slow unraveling of ecosystems that depend on predators to stay whole. Local conservation groups have long understood […] authors: | ||
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BRICS+ offers Indigenous & local communities ways to advance environmental and social goals (analysis) 22 Dec 2025 21:26:58 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/brics-offers-indigenous-local-communities-ways-to-advance-environmental-and-social-goals-analysis/ author: Erik Hoffner dc:creator: Metolo Foyet content:encoded: As the world grapples with climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity, Indigenous and local communities (IPLCs) remain at the forefront of conservation, yet are often sidelined in global environmental governance. Dominant frameworks, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have made strides in acknowledging Indigenous rights, but IPLCs still face significant barriers to meaningful participation. These barriers include one-size-fits-all legal frameworks, insufficient representation, inadequate capacity within IPLC groups, misaligned priorities between donors and IPLCs, persistent language obstacles, trust issues, and the continued influence of powerful global actors whose priorities often overshadow the needs and knowledge systems of IPLCs. However, as the geopolitical landscape shifts, new opportunities are emerging for IPLCs to assert their influence. One such alternative is the BRICS+ alliance, a coalition that has increasingly positioned itself as a counterbalance to Western-dominated global governance structures. The 10 BRICS+ nations (Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates) account for half the world’s population and two-fifths of trade, and include major energy producers and importers. Twelve more nations have applied, and the bloc is starting to build institutions with important implications for energy trade, international finance, supply chains and technological research. For IPLCs, BRICS+ presents a promising advocacy and trade platform for several reasons. The BRICS framework’s emphasis on multipolar governance aligns well with IPLC desire for more decentralized, locally driven approaches to natural resource management. It offers them an opportunity…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - As the world grapples with climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity, Indigenous and local communities remain at the forefront of conservation, yet are often sidelined in terms of global environmental governance. - However, as the geopolitical landscape shifts, new opportunities are emerging for these communities to assert their influence: one alternative is the BRICS+ alliance, a coalition of 10 nations that has increasingly positioned itself as a counterbalance to Western-dominated global governance structures. - BRICS+ “offers unique opportunities for reimagining Indigenous inclusion through their emphasis on multipolarity, South-South cooperation, and alternative development paradigms that could, if strategically leveraged, provide space for Indigenous voices to shape governance from within,” and therefore bring environmental and social goals forward, a new analysis argues. - This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay. authors: | ||
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Can anyone save the Sumatran rhino? 22 Dec 2025 17:28:50 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/specials/2025/12/can-anyone-save-the-sumatran-rhino/ author: Alejandroprescottcornejo dc:creator: content:encoded: Long considered elusive and endangered, the Sumatran rhino is now estimated to have fewer than 50 individuals left in Indonesia’s fragmented forests. In 1984, conservationists captured 40 animals for a global captive-breeding program to stall an extinction that seemed imminent. Decades later, the effort stands as a case study on hope, loss and scientific persistence. Over two years, Mongabay’s Jeremy Hance investigated the species’ crisis and the decades of failed conservation behind it, tracing failures in monitoring, policy paralysis, and the shift from protecting rhinos in the wild to captive breeding. This special documents a decisive moment in the effort to rescue one of Earth’s most ancient and mysterious mammals.This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Long considered elusive and endangered, the Sumatran rhino is now estimated to have fewer than 50 individuals left in Indonesia’s fragmented forests. In 1984, conservationists captured 40 animals for a global captive-breeding program to stall an extinction that seemed imminent. Decades later, the effort stands as a case study on hope, loss and scientific persistence. […] authors: | ||
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Project sees long-term success restoring forests in the high Andes: Study 22 Dec 2025 17:26:49 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/project-sees-long-term-success-restoring-forests-in-the-high-andes-study/ author: Jeremy Hance dc:creator: Ruth Kamnitzer content:encoded: High in the Andes, Polylepis trees, with their stunted gnarled trunks and twisted limbs, cling to steep mountain slopes, boulder fields and sheltered ravines. Growing at altitudes of up to 5,000 meters (about 16,400 feet), they must withstand intense sun, biting wind, nighttime frost and seasonal drought. “They’re just crazy resilient trees,” says Tina Christmann, lecturer in environmental science at Southampton University in the U.K. Over centuries, grazing of the high mountain pastures has pushed Polylepis woodlands, called queñual in the local dialect, into only the most inaccessible locations. Researchers estimate they now cover a tiny sliver of their historic range across the Andes, about 2% of historic distribution in Peru and 10% in Bolivia. Yet the woodlands continue to play vital ecological roles. Polylepis trees have a remarkable ability to capture fog on their tiny leaves and channel water into the soil, feeding streams and rivers that travel all the way to the coast. The trees also weaken floods and stabilize mountain soils. Communities use the woodlands for firewood and medicinal herbs. A mature polylepis tree. Called queñual in local dialects in Peru, the polylepis includes 28 species of trees and shrubs. With their thick peeling bark, small waxy leaves, and stunted growth, polylepis trees are well adapted to the extreme temperatures, frequent droughts, strong winds and periodic fires that characterize the high Andes. Image by Tina Christmann. For decades, various groups have worked to restore Andean forest ecosystems, including the Polylepis woodlands. As part of her Ph.D. research,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - The Polylepis forests of Peru are some of the highest high-altitude forests in the world, playing an essential role in the water cycle. - Over the past few decades, various restoration projects have worked to restore Polylepis forests across their former range. - In 2022, researchers revisited a restoration project in Aquia, Peru, to understand what factors contributed to its success. The study concludes that stakeholder participation and formal conservation agreements helped the project succeed. - Over the past four years, initiatives by ECOAN and Accion Andina have built on previous success. authors: | ||
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Century-old corals reveal the Pacific Northwest is acidifying faster than expected 22 Dec 2025 15:10:57 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/century-old-corals-reveal-the-pacific-northwest-is-acidifying-faster-than-expected/ author: Sharon Guynup dc:creator: Elizabeth Fitt content:encoded: In 1888, researchers aboard the R/V Albatross began the world’s first concentrated marine research expeditions off California’s Pacific coast. The team collected untold plant and animal specimens, including orange cup corals from the Salish Sea, which they carefully preserved and stored in collections at the Smithsonian Institution. These specimens have now become rare physical evidence of ongoing changes in the chemistry of the Pacific Ocean as seawater absorbs the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Researchers recently analyzed these 130-year-old samples, which come from a time before the Industrial Revolution’s greenhouse gas impacts had really kicked in. Then they compared them with new specimens collected in the same locations by a team aboard another research vessel, the R/V Rachel Carson, in 2020. They discovered that this region is acidifying, far faster than models have predicted, findings they recently published in the journal Nature Communications. “Ocean acidification is not a distant or abstract phenomenon. It is already underway, it is amplified in some regions, and it has real consequences for ecosystems and coastal economies today,” study lead author Mary Margaret Stoll, from the University of Washington, told Mongabay. This research focused on the Salish Sea and the cold California Current System, an interweave of four currents predominantly flowing south from the Canadian province of British Columbia to the Mexican state of Baja California. Prevailing winds push water away from the coast along these currents, drawing water up from the deep, bringing nutrient-rich sediments along with it. These…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - When compared with historical samples, corals show that the Salish Sea and California Current System are acidifying faster than anticipated because of greenhouse gas emissions. Models indicate that at this rate, carbon dioxide levels in the oceans will continue rising faster than concentrations in the atmosphere. - Increasingly acidic seas pose growing risks to sensitive marine life, from clams and oysters to any organism with a spine, as well as economically important fisheries and the communities that depend on them. - British marine ecologist Stephen Widdicombe calls the threat existential. Our continued failure to cut emissions can only lead to “a world where uncontrolled climate change including ocean acidification leaves us with an ocean that is less productive, less diverse and less able to provide humans with the wealth of services that we currently all benefit from,” he said. authors: | ||
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Sámi reindeer herders protest EU-backed graphite mine, fearing lost grazing ground 22 Dec 2025 14:47:13 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/sami-reindeer-herders-protest-eu-backed-graphite-mine-fearing-lost-grazing-ground/ author: Latoya Abulu dc:creator: Aimee Gabay content:encoded: Sweden has granted the Australia-based battery anode and graphite company, Talga Group, the necessary permits to move forward with its Nunasvaara South graphite mine near Vittangi in northern Sweden. The move comes after the mine, backed by the E.U., went through a community consultation process and studies to reduce its impacts, and after the Swedish Supreme Court dismissed a series of appeals by Indigenous Sámi people and environmental groups. But various Indigenous Sámi leaders and activists are picking apart the company’s consultation process, studies and environmental safeguards as insufficient. According to the Saami Council and community land analysis, company plans to share the mining area with reindeer herders for half the year will leave some grazing lands unusable and disturb habitats and rivers with air pollution. Compensation plans, sources told Mongabay, include schools the community already has and the company made little effort to meaningfully dialogue with communities according to international law. The council is also concerned EU backing of the project as a strategic project has rushed the permitting process. “There are several groups in the community which will have nowhere to go in the winter,” Fredrik Prost, a Sámi artisan and handicraftsman from Viikusjärvi village, told Mongabay over a video call. “It might be the end for all of them or most of them. They have to stop herding.” In an email to Mongabay, Talga insisted it has redesigned the mine area to minimize the negative impact on nature. “We have engaged with the Sami villages on an…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Sweden has approved the EU-backed Nunasvaara South graphite mine by Australia-based battery anode and graphite company Talga Group on land Sámi reindeer herders use for winter grazing. - The mining company told Mongabay it has designed the mine area to limit the impact on nature and it plans to shut down operations for six months of the year to allow reindeer to graze on their winter grounds. - But Sámi residents, who depend on herding, told Mongabay they fear their reindeer will be displaced because their winter grazing grounds will be destroyed, and they criticize the company’s environmental safeguards. - They also said the mine’s inclusion as a strategic project under the EU Critical Raw Minerals Act has allowed it to be fast-tracked without essential environmental safeguards and that the company has made little attempt to meaningfully communicate with affected communities. authors: | ||
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The Amazon in 2026: A challenging year ahead, now off the center stage 22 Dec 2025 14:27:23 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-amazon-in-2026-a-challenging-year-ahead-now-off-the-center-stage/ author: Alexandre de Santi dc:creator: Alexandre de Santi content:encoded: The Amazon enters 2026 carrying the bitter taste of compromise. The world’s attention was fixed on Belém for the COP30 summit in November, transforming the Brazilian city into a brief, intense stage for climate diplomacy, where ambitious calls for a fossil fuel phaseout ultimately died on the negotiating floor. Yet, in 2025, the true battle for the rainforest was fought far from the Blue Zone. In the quiet shadows, powerful political forces moved to roll back environmental protections in Brazil (which holds 64% of the rainforest), successfully passing the anti-conservation bills and green-lighting critical infrastructure projects. This dual reality — grand promises versus accelerated development on the frontier — set the defining tension for the year, even as a more hopeful, grassroots movement gained momentum, finding new, valuable purpose for biodiversity in innovations, proving the rainforest is worth far more standing than cut. COP30 was wrapped in global expectations. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the summit by proposing a road map to enable humankind to overcome its dependence on fossil fuels in a fair and planned manner and to halt deforestation. However, the ambitious calls for a fossil fuel phaseout were excluded from the official COP outcomes. In response, Brazil, alongside the Colombian and Dutch delegations, agreed to develop road maps outside the formal U.N. process. This effort will culminate in the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, scheduled for April 2026, in Santa Marta, Colombia, to negotiate an equitable Fossil Fuel…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - As Belém’s COP30 ended in compromise, political forces moved swiftly to accelerate destruction far from the global spotlight. - New infrastructure projects, critical minerals, fires and novel threats to the Amazon remain looming for 2026 after a year in the spotlight preparing for COP30. - In 2025, the rainforest saw illegal miners finding new smuggling routes and an increasing backlog of families waiting for settlement in Brazil. - As carbon credit schemes and violence against environmental defenders continue to loom, products made from Amazon raw materials renew hope for the value of a standing forest. authors: | ||
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Ethiopian youth groups restore Rift valley lake & livelihoods 22 Dec 2025 12:52:08 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/ethiopian-youth-groups-restore-rift-valley-lake-livelihoods/ author: Terna Gyuse dc:creator: Solomon Yimer content:encoded: Abijata-Shalla National Park, ETHIOPIA — Under the scorching midday sun in the upper catchment of Ethiopia’s Abijata-Shalla National Park, a local youth group toils along the edges of a deep gully carved into the hills by erosion. The young men shovel soil from the loose edges of the gorge, while women fill sandbags they stack in the gullies, building barriers to hold back the next rains that strike this battered landscape “The land is healing, and so are we,” says Hamid Belo, chairman of the Mekane Fike Forest Conservation Association. Once covered with acacia woodlands and fed by steady streams, the land here has been steadily stripped bare. The loss of tree cover has allowed erosion to scar the hillsides and upset the flow of water into the lakes in this closed river system. Abijata and Shalla — the two lakes that give the national park its name — now receive less water and more sediment — their boundaries have shrunk and the quality of the water has changed, affecting fish and other aquatic life, along with flamingos and other migratory birds that once crowded their shores. For the past five years, this group of youth has been working to prevent degradation of soil and water in the landscape and begin restoring the ecosystem. Increased sediment and reduced water have caused Lake Abijata’s shoreline to retreat, but its water levels are now beginning to rise. Image courtesy of Berihun Tadele. Lake Abijata. The satellite image on the right shows lakes…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Youth groups are restoring the ecosystem in and around Ethiopia’s Abijata-Shalla National Park, once covered with acacia woodlands but stripped bare in recent years as water has been lost to irrigation and a soda-ash factory. - Spanning 887 square kilometers, the park is a vital refuge for biodiversity, hosting migratory birds and a range of species, making it one of the region’s most important wildlife strongholds. - Wetlands International staff have trained local youth and community members in sustainable land management, teaching them how to identify and correct unsustainable practices such as overgrazing, deforestation and farming on steep slopes. - The work relies heavily on consultations with local communities, ensuring solutions align with community needs. authors: | ||
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Mongabay contributor Glòria Pallarès wins top anti-corruption reporting award 22 Dec 2025 12:38:05 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/mongabay-contributor-gloria-pallares-wins-top-anti-corruption-reporting-award/ author: Shanna Hanbury dc:creator: Mongabay.com content:encoded: Journalist Glòria Pallarès won the Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award for her investigation into corrupt forest finance schemes published in collaboration with Mongabay. The award ceremony was held in Doha, Qatar, on Dec. 16. The investigation, published in January 2024, exposed a scheme in which companies registered in Peru, Bolivia and Panama were using false claims of U.N. backing to win contracts with Indigenous communities, some lasting several decades. The contracts granted the companies economic rights to a total of more than 9.5 million hectares (23.5 million acres) of Indigenous forested land. The agreements were signed without following the correct procedures to guarantee full community consent and were often based on murky promises of jobs and local development. In some cases, the agreements also promised a financial return from carbon credits and green bonds. Referring to Pallarès’ investigations over a decade, the award wrote in a statement, “She has led major cross-continental investigations exposing corruption in forest and carbon governance across Central Africa and Latin America.” It added, “Her reporting uncovered a fraudulent scheme targeting over 9.5 million hectares of Indigenous forest land in Peru, Bolivia, and Panama, empowering the Matsés Nation to reject it and prompting international action.” Following Pallarès’ investigation, several Indigenous communities in Peru, Bolivia and Panama that were misled into handing over their rights to millions of hectares of forest were able to challenge or terminate their contracts. Most notably, the Matsés people in Peru scrapped a contract that had granted a sketchy shell company, Get Life,…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Journalist Glòria Pallarès won the Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award for her investigation into corrupt forest finance schemes published in collaboration with Mongabay. The award ceremony was held in Doha, Qatar, on Dec. 16. The investigation, published in January 2024, exposed a scheme in which companies registered in Peru, Bolivia and Panama were using false claims […] authors: | ||
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The first amphibian to halt a hydroelectric dam now takes on the climate crisis 22 Dec 2025 10:19:10 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-first-amphibian-to-halt-a-hydroelectric-dam-now-takes-on-the-climate-crisis/ author: Xavier Bartaburu dc:creator: Thamys Trindade content:encoded: ARVOREZINHA, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil — The admirable little red-bellied toad is the size of a thumb, but it has achieved giant feats: In 2014, it prevented the construction of a small hydroelectric dam that threatened to alter its only habitat forever. Endemic to a small stretch of the Forqueta River, in the municipality of Arvorezinha, Rio Grande do Sul, Melanophryniscus admirabilis is one of the rarest and most threatened species on the planet. Recently, after the floods that devastated the state in 2024, researchers returned to this refuge to assess whether the little toad that once halted the construction of a dam has survived the force of the waters. In October 2025, almost a year and a half after the biggest climate disaster in Rio Grande do Sul, I joined a team of researchers that would document what remained of the small habitat where just over a thousand little red-bellied toads used to live. The destination was Perau de Janeiro, a hidden fold of rocks and humid forest. Seen from above, the place, which is surrounded by tobacco plantations and pastures, looks like a common forest scene. But as we go down a steep trail, the atmosphere changes immediately. The smell of moss, the shining wet outcrop, the sound of the powerful flow of the river that ends in a waterfall: It was there that the little toad halted progress. And it was there where we wanted to find out if it still vocalized. Researcher Michelle Abadie with…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Known in Brazil as the admirable little red-bellied toad, the rare Melanophryniscus admirabilis is endemic to a stretch of the Forqueta River in Rio Grande do Sul state. It made history in 2014 when it halted the construction of a hydroelectric dam that would have destroyed its only habitat. - After the 2024 floods, researchers returned to the area to assess the impacts of the state’s biggest climate catastrophe on its environment. - With just over a thousand individuals in the wild, the species is listed as “critically endangered”; in addition to climate change, the little toad suffers from the advance of monocultures and the threat of wildlife trafficking. authors: | ||
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In the Amazon, law enforcement against environmental crime remains controversial 22 Dec 2025 10:00:10 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-the-amazon-law-enforcement-against-environmental-crime-remains-controversial/ author: Mayra dc:creator: Timothy J. Killeen content:encoded: Trust in the criminal justice system varies among countries in the Pan Amazon, but in no country do citizens have an overall positive view of the police. In the Andean Republics, distrust of the police is probably due to their proclivity to extort bribes; however, it may also reflect their role in repressing public protests, most recently in Bolivia (2019, 2023), Peru (2022) and Ecuador (2022). They are widely assumed to be suborned by narco-traffickers, an accusation that robs them of legitimacy and further diminishes their standing among citizens. The failure of police to intervene when land grabbers invade communal lands is a textbook example of a crime of omission, particularly along the Rio Ucayali (Peru) and in Chiquitania (Bolivia), where ongoing land rushes are being fomented by local politicians seeking to benefit economically or electorally from an influx of migrants. Image of a Colombian police operation against illegal mining dredgers in Bajo Cauca in 2019. Credit: Police. In Brazil, the police do not extort bribes, but they are frequently accused of using excessive force in their campaigns against criminal gangs. In Amazonian jurisdictions, the Policia Militar looms large because its role in keeping public order in rural areas forces it to adjudicate disputes between landholders and landless workers. Faced with a thankless task under the best of circumstances, the PM has an unfortunate history of collaborating with private security forces (Jagunços) to forcefully eject squatters without a proper court order. Since the Catholic Church started monitoring this type of…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - In general terms, the reputation of police forces throughout Latin America lacks legitimacy and public trust. In the case of environmental conflicts, the issue takes on overtones of violence and corruption in areas where the state’s presence is scarce. - In Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, it is almost tacitly understood that the police are, for the most part, colluding with organized crime. Meanwhile, in Brazil, their role as a shock force is excessive and, in rural areas, they may associate with private security forces to carry out evictions. - The Catholic Church began monitoring these types of conflicts in the early 1990s, and since then, disputes have caused the deaths of 773 people. authors: | ||
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Bethany “Bee” Smith, researcher who documented a megamouth shark alive, died in a diving accident, aged 24 22 Dec 2025 07:34:53 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/bethany-bee-smith-researcher-who-documented-a-megamouth-shark-alive-died-in-a-diving-accident-aged-24/ 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. The risks of field science are usually described in abstract terms. Weather turns. Equipment fails. The sea does not always behave as expected. These dangers are well understood by those who work in and on the ocean, and they are rarely romanticized by the people who face them. Most accept them as the price of proximity to what they study. In recent years, the distance between research and spectacle has narrowed. Social media has rewarded scientists who can explain their work plainly and show it directly. This has brought new audiences to obscure species and neglected ecosystems. It has also placed young researchers, often far from institutional protection, in physically demanding situations that combine documentation, conservation, and exposure. Bethany “Bee” Smith belonged to this generation. She was 24 when she died in July during a freediving accident in Indonesia while working on a shark conservation project. Her death was sudden and, by all available accounts, medical in nature. It followed a dive to modest depth, in conditions she would have recognized. There is no tidy lesson in it, and no reason to pretend otherwise. She had already done the thing she set out to do. Earlier this year, after years of planning, permits, and failed attempts, she entered the water with a megamouth shark, one of the rarest large animals on Earth. Fewer than 300 have ever been recorded, most of them dead.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Bethany “Bee” Smith was part of a generation of scientists who worked in the field while also explaining their work publicly, narrowing the distance between research and spectacle without denying the risks that came with it. - Trained as a marine biologist, she spent years studying sharks, working with fishing communities and researchers, and focusing on conservation problems where trust and policy mattered as much as data. - After years of preparation and failed attempts, she achieved a rare feat: documenting a live megamouth shark, one of the least understood large animals on Earth, in work focused on evidence rather than thrill. - She died at 24 during a freediving accident in Indonesia while working on a shark conservation project, after reaching a goal that had occupied years of careful effort and preparation. authors: | ||
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In Nepal, the world’s smallest otter continues to elude researchers 22 Dec 2025 05:34:20 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-nepal-the-worlds-smallest-otter-continues-to-elude-researchers/ author: Abhaya Raj Joshi dc:creator: Abhaya Raj Joshi content:encoded: KATHMANDU — A year ago, the appearance of the Asian small-clawed otter in Nepal created a buzz, given that the species hadn’t been seen in the country in 185 years. Since then, however, it’s disappeared once again, with no confirmed sightings in the past year, leaving researchers flummoxed on the question of whether it’s still found in the country. The November 2024 discovery of a juvenile Asian small-clawed otter (Aonyx cinereus) in Dadeldhura district, on Nepal’s western border with India, left researchers hopeful of more sightings would follow. However, limited funding and difficulties in DNA analysis have left them relying on scattered clues rather than certainty, even as the species is formally incorporated into the country’s conservation plans. “Despite multiple reports of suspected signs, such as scats recovered from different river systems, there hasn’t been a second verified sighting of the Asian small-clawed otter anywhere in the country,” Mohan Bikram Shrestha, a leading otter researcher, told Mongabay. “We firmly believe that the animal is present in the eastern river systems as well.” The lone confirmed record from 2024 was remarkable not only for being the first recorded sighting since 1839, but also for raising the possibility that overlooked populations of the world’s smallest otter species might still roam Nepal’s rivers and wetlands. A rescued Asian small-clawed otter with its distinct webbed feet in Dadeldhura, Nepal. Image by Rajeev Chaudhary. Since then, however, there’s only been indirect evidence of a possible otter presence. Community members and researchers have collected suspected otter…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - The Asian small-clawed otter was rediscovered in Nepal in 2024 after 185 years. Since then, however, it’s gone dark again, with no more confirmed sightings. - Identifying the animal remains challenging due to its small size, dietary overlap with other carnivores, and resemblance to common species such as the crab-eating mongoose. - Funding and logistical constraints impede targeted surveys, as conservation priorities in Nepal focus mainly on larger, charismatic species such as tigers and rhinos. - Despite this, conservationists are already planning measures to reduce potential threats to the animal by including it into the national otter conservation action plan. authors: | ||
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Environmental defenders & conservationists who died in 2025 22 Dec 2025 02:14:45 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/environmental-defenders-conservationists-who-died-in-2025/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: I write short obituaries for people who spent their lives protecting parts of the natural world. I work on them in the margins of other responsibilities, yet they have become a constant. In 2025, I produced over 70. The people I write about are often described as conservationists, scientists, activists, or defenders. Those labels are accurate, but incomplete. What unites them is not a profession so much as a posture: they stood between something living and the forces wearing it down. They did so for decades, usually without much recognition and often at personal cost. Some of the names will be widely recognized. Others will mean little to most readers. That imbalance is part of the point. Public memory tends to favor visibility over impact, and charisma over endurance. Yet many of the most consequential figures in environmental protection work far from cameras and conferences. They negotiate land boundaries, calm conflicts, train rangers, translate science, or stay when leaving would be easier. Their influence is cumulative, and it rarely lends itself to headlines. Writing about death has a clarifying effect. Obituaries strip away what is temporary. What remains is a record of choices. Again and again, the lives I wrote about this year followed a similar arc: an encounter with a place or species, a long commitment to its survival, and years of persistence within systems that were often indifferent or hostile. Success, where it came, was partial. Failure was common. Quitting was always an option, and usually declined. These…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Mongabay’s founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler writes short obituaries—over 70 in 2025—for people who devoted their lives to protecting the natural world, returning to this work consistently alongside my his responsibilities. - The individuals he writes about are less defined by titles than by posture—standing between living systems and the forces eroding them, often for decades, largely unseen, and at real personal cost. - These pieces aim neither to lionize nor to despair, but to clarify—showing how protection happens through sustained, imperfect choices made by ordinary people who kept showing up. authors: | ||
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Jeff Foott, chronicler of ice, rock, and change, has died, aged 80 21 Dec 2025 17:12:06 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/jeff-foott-chronicler-of-ice-rock-and-change-has-died-aged-80/ author: Rhett Butler dc:creator: Rhett Ayers Butler content:encoded: For much of the second half of the 20th century, the American outdoors attracted a particular kind of devotee. They moved easily between disciplines, took seasonal work without much concern for titles, and regarded time in wild places as both education and obligation. Their lives did not unfold along a single career ladder so much as along ridgelines and river corridors. What bound them together was not ambition but sustained attention to the landscapes they moved through. One of them belonged to a generation that learned its craft before the word “environmentalism” had hardened into a movement. He came of age among climbers and skiers who fixed their own gear, slept where they could, and absorbed lessons directly from terrain and weather. Institutions followed later, as did audiences. The ethic was formed earlier, by habit rather than theory. Jeff Foott died on December 3, aged 80, of a rare form of leukemia. He was a climber, a naturalist, and a photographer whose work helped shape how wilderness and wildlife were seen by a mass audience, particularly at a moment when those subjects were still treated as marginal. His path into that work was indirect, even by the standards of his time. As a teenager in Berkeley in the late 1950s, he worked at the Ski Hut alongside climbers who would later become fixtures of Yosemite lore. He fitted carabiner gates for Chouinard Equipment in exchange for gear and spent long stretches living simply so he could stay in the…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Jeff Foott belonged to a generation of outdoorsmen who moved easily between climbing, science, rescue work, and seasonal labor, guided less by career ambition than by close attention to the natural world. His ethic was shaped early, long before environmental concern became institutionalized. - Trained as a marine biologist, he turned to photography and film as a way to show how wildlife lived and what was at risk, producing more than 40 films and widely published images for outlets such as National Geographic, the BBC, and PBS. - His visual work favored clarity and restraint over spectacle, whether documenting sea otters, alpine ice, or red rock landscapes increasingly altered by a warming climate. He remained attentive to environmental change without turning his work into overt argument. - In his own words, what mattered to him was not climbing but whether people would know that some tried to act on concern for climate, democracy, and the things held in common. He let photographs carry the burden of persuasion. authors: | ||
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Statewide survey aims to put California’s fungi on the conservation map 20 Dec 2025 13:08:41 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/statewide-survey-aims-to-put-californias-fungi-on-the-conservation-map/ author: Sharon Guynup dc:creator: Sean Mowbray content:encoded: Getting to The Cedars, an ecological preserve in California’s Sonoma county, is a slog. Multiple rivers and creeks must be crossed, and it can be tough going on an often storm-destroyed road. But it’s home to a rich diversity of species found nowhere else on Earth that are uniquely adapted to serpentine soil, composed of decomposed rock and rich in heavy metals. If you’re a fungi collector, it’s well worth the trip. Over the past two years, a dedicated team of mycologists — specialists in the study of fungi — and experienced mushroom collectors have combed California’s forests, rivers and mountains in often remote locations such as this, searching for and collecting fungi. Those making the arduous journey out to The Cedars have identified more than 100 new species, 25 of which are only known from the area. They snapped photos, which were then uploaded with all pertinent data to iNaturalist, a citizen scientist biodiversity database. Collections have been sent to labs where scientists extracted DNA for sequencing. Dried specimens are stored for safe keeping at California State University, East Bay, and the University of California, Los Angeles. This is part of an expansive effort to map the state’s fungal diversity, which has yielded thousands of specimens and is the first of its kind in North America, says Harte Singer, who heads genetic research at the California Fungal Diversity Survey (CA FUNDIS). The CA FUNDIS team collected thousands of fungi species from across California. Many of those collected are undescribed.…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - A state-funded survey has sampled and collected fungi species from across California, identifying hundreds of new-to-science species. - It’s part of a statewide effort to protect biodiversity, which has yielded thousands of specimens and is the first of its kind in North America. - Fungi are often neglected compared to the attention given to plants and animals, yet they play an important role in maintaining ecological health by supporting plant growth and storing carbon. - Understanding fungi’s role in nature has implications for conservation and for forest restoration as wildfires grow larger and more frequent. Other researchers in California are working on putting fungi to use cleaning up polluted areas. authors: | ||
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A flood of logs post-Cyclone Senyar leaves Padang fishers out of work 20 Dec 2025 05:07:10 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-flood-of-logs-post-cyclone-senyar-leaves-padang-fishers-out-of-work/ author: Philip Jacobson dc:creator: Jaka Hendra Baittri content:encoded: PADANG, Indonesia — At low tide along Padang’s coastline, fishing boats sit idle, not because of rough seas, but because the water is clogged with timber. In late November, flash floods from Cyclone Senyar swept through parts of Sumatra, killing residents and damaging roads and homes. Days later, their aftermath surfaced offshore. Logs carried from upstream forests poured out of river mouths and spread along the coast here in Padang, the capital of Indonesia’s West Sumatra province, blocking access to the sea and cutting off the livelihoods of hundreds of fishers. The mass of floating wood has made it impossible for fishers to pass, with some intact logs measuring up to 90 centimeters (35 inches or nearly 3 feet) in diameter. “For the past two days, the logs have been piling up. If we try to go out, the boats could be damaged,” Syafri Juni, a fisher from Patenggangan Beach in Padang, told Mongabay on Dec. 10. Residents look on at piles of logs from the flash floods at Patenggangan Beach, Padang, on Nov. 28. Image by Jaka Hendra Baittri/Mongabay-Indonesia. The formation of a hurricane in the Malacca Strait was an extremely rare occurrence, scientists say, and a devastating one — the storm killed more than 1,000 people across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. On the island of Sumatra, torrential rains hit a landscape whose capacity to soak up rainfall has been compromised by decades of rainforest clearance. Syafri had not gone to sea for the past week because…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Flash floods in late November swept timber and mud from upstream forests into coastal waters around Padang, blocking access to the sea and cutting off the livelihoods of hundreds of fishers. - Fishers say massive floating logs have damaged boats and halted daily incomes, forcing many families to rely on credit to meet basic needs. - Marine scientists warn that suspended sediment and decaying timber threaten coastal ecosystems by blocking sunlight, disrupting food chains and degrading water quality. - Environmental groups link the disaster to illegal logging and weak forest governance upstream, calling for stronger law enforcement, national disaster status and urgent government action. authors: | ||
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Kenyan wildlife census reveals conservation wins and losses 19 Dec 2025 22:47:26 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/kenyan-wildlife-census-reveals-conservation-wins-and-losses/ author: Bobbybascomb dc:creator: Lynet Otieno content:encoded: Kenya’s 2025 National Wildlife Census report has revealed a complex trend in wildlife: Populations of some iconic animal species are steadily growing, while other populations are declining or remain stagnant. At the launch of the report, compiled by the Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI), Kenya’s President William Ruto described the findings as “a mosaic of wins and urgent conservation emergencies.” The Dec. 11 launch brought together more than a dozen stakeholders in research and conservation. In the report’s recommendation the authors said the findings should shape policy for parks and community conservancies, by integrating “the national wildlife corridor mapping initiative and wildlife census data into national and county spatial and land use plans.” At the launch of the report the CEO of WRTI, Patrick Omondi said, “We also recommend acceleration of enactment and implementation of the Wildlife Conservation Bill (2025) and complementary amendments on the Wildlife Act, 2023.” The report highlighted a 4% increase in the populations of elephants as well as black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) and white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum), since the last census in 2021. The report estimates that Kenya is home to more than 40,000 elephants in the wild and just over 2,100 rhinos. Giraffe (Giraffa) species saw a 5.4% increase in their populations; at least 43,000 individuals were counted. Authorities attribute the growth to decades of efforts to end poaching in the parks, targeted translocation of the mammals, stricter law enforcement, community-led conservation and ecological connectivity. However, the census also revealed the vulnerability of some…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: Kenya’s 2025 National Wildlife Census report has revealed a complex trend in wildlife: Populations of some iconic animal species are steadily growing, while other populations are declining or remain stagnant. At the launch of the report, compiled by the Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI), Kenya’s President William Ruto described the findings as “a mosaic […] authors: | ||
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Rethinking how we talk about conservation—and why it matters 19 Dec 2025 21:56:53 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/rethinking-how-we-talk-about-conservation-and-why-it-matters/ 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 a movement so often framed by loss—and confronting a particularly difficult moment—conservation is relearning how to talk about itself. This shift may signal something deeper than messaging: a recalibration of what persuades people to care, to fund, and to act, especially as the world edges toward 2030 amid ecological strain, political volatility, and thinning public trust. A few months ago, I put out an invitation to the conservation sector: share how you are navigating this moment, which many have described as a period of crisis. That invitation resurfaced recently when Crystal DiMiceli referenced it during a fireside chat with me at the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders’ 20th anniversary event in Washington, D.C. DiMiceli asked what lessons are emerging so far. One of the most consistent responses has centered on communication: “Less crisis, more agency.” Not because the crisis has abated, but because alarm on its own no longer mobilizes as reliably as it once did. If anything, it exhausts. Years of grim headlines have revealed an uncomfortable truth: when people are offered only catastrophe, many disengage. They stop reading, stop caring, and, in some cases, stop believing that anything meaningful can still be done. What seems to be gaining ground instead is a focus on success—often partial, sometimes fragile, but demonstrable. Not triumphalism, but optimism grounded in evidence. Conservation framed as something people actively do, rather than something that merely happens to…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Feedback from across the conservation sector suggests a shift in how the movement talks about itself—from crisis-heavy messaging toward agency and evidence—because constant alarm fatigues audiences while stories of progress keep them engaged. - Respondents to date have emphasized that scalable, durable conservation efforts share core traits: genuine local leadership, transparency about what works (and what doesn’t), visible community benefits, and diversified funding that strengthens resilience. - Practitioners highlighted the importance of aligning human well-being with environmental outcomes, with models like Health in Harmony showing how rights, livelihoods, and conservation can reinforce one another when communities define their own priorities. - This piece builds on a conversation Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler had last week at the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders (EWCL) conference in Washington, D.C. authors: | ||
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Protected areas in Africa are vital but local perceptions vary (commentary) 19 Dec 2025 16:49:33 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/protected-areas-in-africa-are-vital-but-local-perceptions-vary-commentary/ author: Erik Hoffner dc:creator: Diane DetoeufHeidi KretserJessica L’RoeMichelle Wieland content:encoded: Protected areas (PAs) are cornerstones of global biodiversity conservation strategy, yet their social impacts remain contentious. The prevailing narrative often pits global benefits, like biodiversity protection and carbon sequestration, against local costs like restricted access to land and resources, particularly in lower-income nations. This antagonistic framing — the interests of local people vs. the interests of other people elsewhere (or of other species entirely) — can lead to polarized politics with respect to PAs. There are valid reasons for concern, as increasing recognition of the problematic historical legacy of many protected areas created on the African continent rooted in colonial alienation, as well as ongoing human rights concerns in several PA systems, make it clear that PAs can cause harm. Many conservation organizations now recognize that it is critically important that efforts to protect land simultaneously protect the rights and interests of people living there, especially those of Indigenous and local communities. Yet, if we want to protect local interests, we must first understand them. We don’t know as much as we need to about the ways that protected areas can, and do, serve the interests of the people living near them. Harm is often more evident than benefits, particularly in the case of acute episodes of violence or evictions, so much has been described about how protected areas can cause harm. The village of Bapukeli at the entrance of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Democratic Republic of Congo. Indigenous hunter-gatherers divide their time between villages like this and camps deep in the forest. Image by Thomas Nicolon for…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Protected areas are cornerstones of global biodiversity conservation strategy, yet their social impacts remain contentious. - A recent study conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in collaboration with Middlebury College examined perceptions of these areas among thousands of local residents living near five forested regions of Central Africa and Madagascar. - “Conservation practice needs to take seriously how the people living near protected areas perceive those areas, and what benefits and harms they associate with them, in their full unevenness and complexity,” the authors of a new op-ed say. - This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay. authors: | ||
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Researchers find concerning gaps in global maps used for EUDR compliance 19 Dec 2025 14:57:38 +0000 https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/researchers-find-concerning-gaps-in-global-maps-used-for-eudr-compliance/ author: Alexandrapopescu dc:creator: John Cannon content:encoded: A recent scientific review of forest maps used to ensure compliance with the European Union’s Regulation on Deforestation-free products, known as the EUDR, suggests that most may over- or underestimate forest areas, which could lead to inaccurate assessments of deforestation risk. The authors write that those inconsistencies point to the need for EU companies to be discerning about which maps they use to ensure they comply with the regulation. The requirements will go into effect for most companies on Dec. 30, 2026, after a second postponement in as many years by the European Parliament. Only two of the 21 data sets in the assessment met all of the indicators used to assess risk used by the EUDR. The regulation will apply to seven commodities — cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and timber — as well as the products they’re used to make. Companies and government agencies are planning to use maps of satellite and other remote-sensing data to determine whether products entering EU countries are linked to deforestation after Dec. 31, 2020, the regulation’s cutoff date. Importing companies and the EU countries’ government agencies tasked with screening imported goods for compliance will compare georeferenced plots for a commodity with historical maps of forest and tree cover to determine whether it was produced at the expense of recently cleared forest. But many such maps exist, and the EUDR doesn’t specify the use of any one map. That means that a company using one map to verify compliance might come…This article was originally published on Mongabay description: - Most companies importing certain products into the EU must comply with the European Union’s Regulation on Deforestation-free products (EUDR), which will go into application on Dec. 30, 2026. - Satellite and other remote-sensing maps can guide both companies trying to comply with the regulation and government agencies verifying levels of deforestation risk attached to imports. - But a recent review paper suggests that most of the available maps struggle to meet all of the requirements of the EUDR and could over- or underestimate the risk of deforestation for certain products. - A key issue is the maps’ ability to differentiate forest from systems that look similar, such as agroforestry, commonly practiced by smallholder farmers producing cocoa, coffee and rubber. authors: | ||
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