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Conservation news

Environmental science and conservation news

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Kenya court upholds cancellation of 1,050 MW coal...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/06

Kenya’s Environment and Land Court has upheld a 2019 ruling that revoked the environmental license for the proposed 1,050-megawatt Lamu coal-fired power plant, effectively halting the controversial project. Justice Francis Njoroge dismissed an appeal from the Amu Power Company, finding the project’s environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) was inadequate and public participation deficient. The […]

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Vietnam’s protected areas fall short of safeguarding...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/06

Furry, feisty, and often on the wing, bats are tricky to observe, let alone to protect. Some species hibernate deep in caves or tree cavities for months at a time; many migrate long distances in search of food, shelter and potential mates. Their diversity of lifestyles often makes it difficult to include all bats within […]

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In Honduras, local communities miss out on benefits...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/06

CHOLUTECA, Honduras — Under the slogan “Without human rights, there is no energy sovereignty,” more than 100 community members and activists gathered in mid-July at the Casa Real Hotel in Choluteca, a city in southern Honduras near the Nicaraguan border. At the event, participants — a mix of nonprofit leaders and community members — questioned […]

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Women can help rebuild our relationship with lions:...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/06

This series, Voices from the Land, brings together opinion pieces led and written by Indigenous peoples from around the world. Through these commentaries, we share our lived realities and reflections on urgent issues shaping our time — environmental destruction, our relationship with nature, and systemic injustice. We write from the heart of our communities, where […]

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Karen community fighting corn and coal for clean air...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/06

MAE CHAM/OMKOI, Thailand — Rain lashed down in the northern Thai village of Nong Krating as Sawattiphon Wongkasettakon described the worsening air pollution that sweeps in through the mountains here each year. “It didn’t used to be so bad, but in the last three years it’s become impossible to ignore,” Sawattiphon, a former deputy chief of […]

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Armored worms and death-ball sponges among array of...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/05

In the darkness of the deep ocean, where pressure crushes and light fails, an expedition has found an astonishing array of life, including a carnivorous “death-ball” sponge (from the genus Chondrocladia) covered in tiny prey-catching hooks; “zombie worms” (genus Osedax) lacking mouths but harboring symbiotic bacteria that digest whale bones; armored scale worms of iridescent […]

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Journalism is failing to report on environmental...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/05

Protecting the jungle “justifies all the struggles. … what’s the value of your life if you have nothing to die for?” Ángela Maldonado, Whitley Award winner and director of the NGO Fundación Entropika, said to me once during an interview. Her answer got tattooed in my mind and soul. For years, I have met […]

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Congo Basin communities bear the costs of industrial...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/05

Governments and investors are seeking minerals, timber and oil in the Congo Basin to fuel the global economy and the green transition. However, communities that have lived in the world’s second-largest rainforest for generations are paying the highest price for extraction, according to a new report published ahead of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change […]

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Interpol announces a new global fight against illegal...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/05

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Interpol and partners launched a global law enforcement effort Wednesday aimed at dismantling criminal networks behind illegal logging, timber trafficking and gold mining, which drive large-scale deforestation and generate billions in illicit profits each year. The effort announced ahead of the U.N. COP30 climate summit in Brazil will focus mainly on tropical forests […]

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Climate finance must reach Indigenous communities at...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/05

As the COP30 climate summit in the Amazon draws near, pressure is mounting to get funding directly into the hands of Indigenous and local community organizations who are the frontline defenders of the world’s rainforests. Donors are waking up to the powerful truth that funding Indigenous and local communities is one of the highest-impact investments […]

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Witch Hunt: Virulent fungal disease attacks South...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/05

As smallholder farmers in French Guiana walked their fields in 2023, they noted a disturbing pattern. Their healthy cassava plants, once green and thriving, had begun to turn yellow. Leaves wilted, stalks withered, and small shoots looking like broomsticks sprouted from the plants. When they dug up their harvest, instead of unearthing large foot-long bunches […]

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Brazil can protect its forests while growing its...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/05

Brazil’s climate conversation has a habit of returning to the same question: how can a country that depends so much on its natural riches also protect them? Renata Piazzon, who leads the São Paulo–based Instituto Arapyaú, naturally straddles that line. A lawyer by training, she has become one of Brazil’s clearest voices for aligning conservation […]

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What might lie ahead for tropical forests (commentary)

Conservation news ·

2025/11/02

Heading into COP30, where tropical forests are set to be a central theme, it seemed worth attempting a thought experiment: to trace today’s trajectories a little further forward and imagine where they might lead. What follows are a series of scenarios—some improbable, others already taking shape. In 2024, the tropics lost 6.7 million hectares of […]

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Nigeria passes tough new wildlife law; enforcement...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/31

The Nigerian Parliament recently passed sweeping legislation to protect endangered wildlife from illegal trafficking. Once the president signs it into law, offenders could face fines of up to 12 million naira ($8,300) and up to 10 years in prison for trafficking elephant ivory, pangolin scales, and other products from threatened species. The bill, hailed as […]

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The price of a monkey

Conservation news ·

2025/10/31

The long-tailed macaque has lost a battle for its survival — but won one for scientific integrity, reports Mongabay’s Gerald Flynn. In early October, the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, reaffirmed the species’ endangered status, rejecting an appeal by the U.S. National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR). The lobby group had argued that the […]

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Belize’s blue reputation vs. reef reality: Marine...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/31

Belize sells itself as a small-country answer to a big problem: how to keep the sea alive and the people who depend on it working. The pitch is strong. A debt-for-nature “blue bond” shaved public debt and created a 20-year conservation finance stream. Targets for 30% ocean protection by 2026 are now embedded in policy. […]

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Night dives reveal hidden alliances between young...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/31

Since 2016, Rich Collins has been plunging into the pitch-black waters off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida, at night, camera in hand, in pursuit of blackwater photography. These nighttime dives have given him a unique window into the lives of sea creatures, including many that usually stay hidden in deeper waters, but come up […]

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Floods kill 13 in Central Vietnam as rescue...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/31

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Rescue operations intensified Friday across central Vietnam as floodwaters receded after days of record rain and deadly landslides that left at least 13 people dead, 11 missing and tens of thousands displaced. The receding waters allowed rescue teams to reach previously cut-off communities and nearly 26,000 residents have been evacuated from flooded or […]

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Six new tube-nosed bats described from the Philippines

Conservation news ·

2025/10/31

Researchers have recently described six new-to-science species of tube-nosed bats from the Philippines, named after their unique nostrils that protrude from the snout. All the specimens were collected from either primary or secondary forests, currently threatened by mining and shifting agriculture, the authors write in a new study. “These bats are notoriously elusive, so the […]

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Scientists map Italy’s entire coast to guide seagrass...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/31

ROME and GENOA, Italy — In the urban waters off Naples, shoals of bream, wrasses, as well as crustaceans, mollusks and bryozoans are returning after decades of absence to Gaiola Submerged Park Marine Protected Area. “This MPA has turned into a significant repopulation zone for the surrounding coast of Posillipo,” Maurizio Simeone, a marine biologist […]

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