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Conservation news

Environmental science and conservation news

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Indonesia court clears wildfire scientists in case...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/17

A lower court in the Jakarta suburb of Bogor ruled in October in favor of environmental scientists Bambang Hero Saharjo and Basuki Wasis, dismissing a lawsuit brought by Borneo plantation firm PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri over a wildfire more than seven years ago. “Hopefully this will set a good precedent to protect environmental defenders and […]

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Green turtle rebounds, moving from ‘endangered’ to...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/17

The green turtle, found across the world’s oceans, is recovering after decades of decline, according to the latest IUCN Red List assessment. The species has been reclassified from endangered to least concern. “I am delighted,” Brendan Godley, a turtle expert from the University of Exeter, U.K., told Mongabay. “It underlines that marine conservation can work, […]

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Nepal seeks World Bank loan to fight air pollution...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/17

KATHMANDU — Nepal’s government is negotiating terms for millions of dollars in loans and grants from the World Bank to fund a project to fight air pollution, even though it has already raised billions of rupees (millions of dollars) by taxing fossil fuel over the past 16 years. The proposed 20.8 billion rupee ($147.9 million) […]

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Chief Kokoi, defender of the Rupununi, died on...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/17

He was born where the forest gives way to the savanna, in the South Rupununi of Guyana, among horses, rivers, and the songs of the Wapichan people. From that landscape, Tony Rodney James—known to many as Chief Kokoi—drew the convictions that would guide his life: that land is not a commodity, that language carries memory, […]

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Indonesia retiree rewilds world’s largest volcano...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/17

SAMOSIR, Indonesia — On retirement from public life, Wilmar Eliaser Simandjorang found a quiet place on a hillside overlooking Lake Toba, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, to write about this landscape sacred to the region’s Batak people. “If we don’t pay attention to this, Lake Toba will be just a memory,” Wilmar told Mongabay […]

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New cluster of Tapanuli orangutans discovered in...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/17

CENTRAL TAPANULI, Indonesia — Since it was first described by scientists in 2017, the Tapanuli orangutan, one of the world’s rarest great apes, was believed to live only in the Batang Toru forest of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province. But new findings reveal that the species (Pongo tapanuliensis) also inhabits a peat swamp forest some 32 […]

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Vast freshwater reserves found beneath Atlantic seafloor

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

Scientists recently discovered vast freshwater reservoirs beneath the Atlantic seafloor, stretching off the U.S. East Coast from the states of New Jersey to Maine. The find was “a beautiful scientific accident,” Brandon Dugan, a professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines, U.S., and co-chief scientist on the expedition, told Mongabay in a video […]

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As wolves roam California, livestock losses remain...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

This is the second part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read the first part here. In May 2025, five counties in northern California — mostly rural farm and ranch land — declared an unprecedented state of emergency. It wasn’t a natural disaster or civil unrest that led to panic, but […]

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A week after floods, swathes of central Mexico reel...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

POZA RICA, Mexico (AP) — The stench of decay spread for several miles around Poza Rica on Wednesday, one of the areas hardest hit by last week’s torrential rains that flooded central and eastern Mexico. In the center of this oil-producing city near the Gulf of Mexico, a lingering cloud of dust hovered over the main avenue […]

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Indonesia falls short in bid to increase its share of...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

Australia and Japan dominate fishing of southern bluefin tuna, but Indonesia is pushing for a larger share of the global catch. However, its request was not officially acted on at a meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), the multilateral body that manages the stock, which Indonesia hosted from Oct. […]

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Indigenous monitoring project helps protect isolated...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

In Colombia’s Amazon, two communities have worked for more than a decade to guard their territory and to protect the right of other Indigenous peoples to remain isolated. The community of Manacaro and the Curare-Los Ingleses Indigenous Reserve, located in the lower Caquetá River region, were fundamental in the federal government’s decision to formally recognize […]

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State-NGO collaboration expands protection for...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

In the southern Argentinian province of Chubut, in the pristine region of Patagonia Azul, arid grasslands give way to steep cliffs, rocky beaches and dense kelp forests, creating a rich and biodiverse habitat, with humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) and sei (Balaenoptera borealis) whales as well as South American sea lions (Otaria flavescens) among the megafauna that […]

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Legal actions to protect the Amazon produce mixed...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

Some legal systems have a civil procedure that empowers a group of people to join forces to create a temporary entity (class), which they use to seek judicial redress from another entity, typically a corporation, for harm caused by an incident, product or service. Known as a ‘class action suit’, this type of litigation was […]

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Drone surveys offer early warnings on whale health...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

How are whale populations faring? Traditionally, getting an answer to that question involved counting whales by taking their photos and identifying them from their natural markings. However, a caveat persisted. Whales live a long time and reproduce very slowly. That means it often takes “a long time to learn about changes in the population as […]

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Benin puts solar power at the heart of its energy policy

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

The government of Benin is focusing on building solar power plants as part of a policy to make renewable energy the main source of the country’s energy supply by 2030. When it met in July, the Council of Ministers approved an updated National Renewable Energy Development Policy (PONADER) for 2020-2030. The policy renews the government’s […]

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20 animal species on the road to recovery: IUCN Red...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

From three species of Arctic seals to more than half of all birds globally, several animals have slipped closer to extinction, according to the latest update of the IUCN Red List. However, 20 species have seen a positive change in their status: they’ve moved farther away from the threat of extinction, thanks to effective conservation […]

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Bangladesh plans to rehabilitate captive elephants in...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

As part of the conservation process for Asian elephants, Bangladesh has taken a new step to retrieve captive elephants from their current owners and rehabilitate them in the wild. According to the Status of Asian Elephants in Bangladesh report, the country has a mean of only 268 resident elephants, with the status of critically endangered, […]

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Nickel mining threatens Raja Ampat ecosystems,...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

JAKARTA — In a new report, marine activists are demanding restoration efforts from nickel miners and the Indonesian government for affected areas of Raja Ampat while also urging authorities to enforce the ban on mineral extraction in coastal and small island regions. The recently published paper combines geospatial analysis with field evidence to reveal mounting […]

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Mamai Lucille Williams, a quiet symbol of dignity...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/16

When the miners came, Mamai Lucille Williams was well into her eighties. Her house in Karisparu, a Patamona village high in Guyana’s North Pakaraimas, stood on the same patch of ground where she had lived since childhood. Around it grew cassava, bananas, and fruit trees she had planted herself, each one a small act of […]

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Warmer climate could slash threatened whitebark pine...

Conservation news ·

2025/10/15

Hotter and drier conditions could whittle away 80% of land where whitebark pine grows by the middle of this century, according to a recent study. Scattered across the highest parts of the Rocky Mountains, the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada in the western U.S. and southwestern Canada, the species is a linchpin of alpine ecosystems. […]

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