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Conservation news

Environmental science and conservation news

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After global aid cuts, nonprofits seek new energy and...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/26

NEW YORK (AP) — The many conferences on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders offer a unique forum for companies and philanthropies to help shape an uncertain future. In the face of significant foreign aid pullbacks from the U.S. and other wealthy countries, humanitarian actors described more pragmatic and […]

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The fate of flying rivers could decide Amazon...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/26

Experts often warn about the “tipping point” for the Amazon, a scenario in which the rainforest collapses into a drier, less biodiverse savanna ecosystem. But the term “tipping point” is sometimes misunderstood or generalized, some experts say, suggesting that there will be an instant change to the biome from one day to the next. In […]

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Brazil leads push for novel forest finance mechanism...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/26

As nations struggled during Climate Week (Sept 21-28) in New York City to increase their emission-reduction pledges to slow the alarming rate of global warming, Brazil stepped forward to support and showcase a novel, innovative plan of its own design to incentivize the protection of carbon-absorbing tropical forests around the world. Representatives from more than […]

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Long-lost white shark tag traces remarkable journey...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/26

In May 2012, a satellite transmitter was attached to a subadult female white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) by OCEARCH as part of its shark expeditions in Gansbaai, a fishing town in Western Cape, South Africa. Twelve years and 37,178 kilometers (23,101 miles) later, a fisherman in Indonesia handed over the tag to Project Hiu, a local […]

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How we probed a maze of websites to tally Brazilian...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/26

Mongabay recently published an investigation revealing widespread Brazilian government purchases of shark meat to feed schoolchildren, hospital patients, prisoners and more. The series has generated public debate in the South American country, which, perhaps surprisingly, is the world’s largest consumer and importer of shark meat. The procurements raise concerns because sharks are being overfished — […]

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Grue jay or Bleen jay? Researchers confirm hybrid...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/26

Researchers have for the first time confirmed that a blue jay and a green jay have mated in the wild to produce a rare hybrid with mixed features. Spotted by a birder named Donna in her backyard in San Antonio in the U.S. state of Texas, this hybrid may have resulted from the two jay […]

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Brazil’s first private Amazon road paves new trade...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

A road that once opened the Amazon to destruction is being expanded, and critics fear history will repeat itself.

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Ethnologist Martín von Hildebrand awarded Lovejoy...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

The second recipient of the Thomas E. Lovejoy Prize, launched in 2024, was announced Sept. 23 at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, during New York’s climate week. Martín von Hildebrand, an ethnologist and anthropologist, won the award for his decades of work with Indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon, helping them secure […]

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As Sri Lanka struggles with ghost nets, volunteer...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

COLOMBO —Galle Face Beach in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, Colombo, is a popular spot among city dwellers, watched over by lifeguards assigned by the coast guard unit of the Sri Lanka Navy. But one Sunday morning, lifeguard Chamara Vipulasena’s rescue wasn’t a human swimmer, but a sea turtle entangled in a drifting fishing net. Vipulasena […]

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Indigenous groups criticize Ecuador’s $47 billion oil...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Ecuador’s plans to offer dozens of blocks of land for oil exploration for more than $47 billion has prompted opposition from seven Indigenous peoples in the Amazon. Those groups say 18 of the proposed blocks overlap their ancestral territories and that they were not consulted. Government officials say their plan is […]

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Burkina Faso’s women farmers reviving the land with...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

CASSOU, Burkina Faso — With her daba in hand, her back bent from decades in the fields, Maan — meaning “grandmother” in the local Nuni language of Burkina Faso’s Centre-Ouest region — isn’t ready to put down her hoe just yet. On this July afternoon, as the sun blazes overhead, the septuagenarian works cheerfully alongside […]

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From Chile to Greece, ‘ghost gear’ from fish farms...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

Each year since 2021, Pia Reveco and her husband have set sail from Puerto Montt to spend the Chilean summers navigating Patagonia aboard their sailboat. Last year, they traveled along the fjords and mountains of the Golfo de Penas; three years ago, they reached Laguna San Rafael National Park, where a glacier resembling an ice […]

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Rights of nature concept creates room for life, but...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

Cases granting nature and ecosystems legal rights are increasing worldwide, but perceptions of the rights of nature movement as a revolutionary ecocentric movement are too simplistic, according to the authors of a recent study published in Environmental Research Communications. The study conducted an in-depth analysis of 78 peer-reviewed articles that focused on rights of nature […]

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Alaskan rivers turn orange as permafrost thaws,...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

The writer John McPhee once described Alaska’s Salmon River as having “the clearest, purest water” he’d ever seen. Today, that same river runs orange with toxic metals unleashed by thawing permafrost. “During the summer of 2019, the clear waters of the Salmon turned distinctly orange and have remained discolored and turbid since,” according to a […]

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Turning camera traps into real-time sentinels:...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

Camera traps are ubiquitous in conservation. They’re deployed to monitor biodiversity, study animal behavior, observe habitats over long periods of time, and enforce effective conservation action on the ground. However, they have an inherent shortcoming that’s especially prominent in remote locations like dense forests and cut-off islands. “They’re largely passive. People put them out and […]

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A dancing lemur could help save one of Madagascar’s...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Madagascar’s rainforests often steal the spotlight, with their flamboyant biodiversity and familiar lemur mascots. Less noticed are the country’s dry forests in the west and southwest, which shelter equally remarkable life yet have been steadily eroded by agriculture, […]

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Religion at a crossroads in Indonesia as Islamic...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/25

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s two biggest Islamic organizations usually seize the country’s attention twice a year, when they gather to determine when the religious holidays of Idul Fitri and Idul Adha will be celebrated. But for the past year, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah have caught the spotlight for a different reason: their decision to operate large-scale […]

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China, world’s largest carbon polluting nation,...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/24

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — China, the world’s largest carbon polluting nation, has announced a new climate fighting goal to cut emissions by 7% to 10% by 2035. It came as more than 100 world leaders lined up Wednesday to talk of increased urgency and the need for stronger efforts to curb the spewing of heat-trapping […]

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Indigenous women in Peru use technology to protect...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/24

In 2017, when Betty Rubio began patrolling the forests of her ancestral land, she began to question why she was doing it. It wasn’t easy. She knew that tackling environmental crimes such as illegal logging and mining came with risks, and that as a woman, those risks were even greater. “My children would say to […]

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Ocean acidification threatens planetary health:...

Conservation news ·

2025/09/24

Initiated in 2024, the Planetary Health Check is a comprehensive, science-based global initiative dedicated to measuring and maintaining Earth systems critical to life as we know it. These annual reports were created to provide a regular, comprehensive assessment of the state of our world, utilizing the most current planetary boundaries science — monitoring changes, gauging […]

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1,253 results