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Conservation news

Environmental science and conservation news

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How rain can reveal what lives in rainforest treetops

Conservation news ·

2025/08/20

Perched high above the forest floor, the tropical canopy is a reservoir of biodiversity that has long resisted scrutiny. Its inaccessibility has left many of its inhabitants — orchids, epiphytes, ants, monkeys, frogs — poorly studied and poorly protected. But a new study offers a workaround: let the rain do the climbing. Scientists led by […]

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NGOs launch novel community projects to conserve...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/20

CONHUAS, Mexico — Esteban Dominguez has lived for more than 20 years close to one of the biggest conservation areas in southeastern Mexico — Calakmul Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatán Peninsula. He’s used to spotting monkeys, coatis, eagles, tapirs, deer, wild turkeys, owls, and even pumas and jaguars. But he recalls only a couple times […]

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Argentina’s elephant seals face 100-year recovery...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/20

Biologist Valeria Falabella’s voice breaks as she describes the devastating scene. It was October 2023 when she and her team climbed down onto Punta Delgada Beach, in the Valdés Peninsula, a remote corner of central Argentina. While they were aware that avian flu had made its way across the Pacific, nothing had prepared them for […]

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Brazil’s new licensing accord is a gateway to forest...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/20

On July 15, Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA) and the Ministry of Transportation reached an “accord” for licensing the notorious BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway reconstruction project. The Ministry of Transportation will contract a company to perform a “strategic environmental assessment” (AAE) over eight months to recommend policies to control deforestation, strengthen local […]

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As fast-spreading mussel sweeps across Asia, Sri...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/18

COLOMBO — The discovery of the black mussel (Mytella strigata) in coastal shrimp farms in Sri Lanka’s northwestern coastal belt has raised concerns among scientists, who warn against its potential to disrupt the country’s fragile aquatic ecosystems. Clusters of these mussels were first discovered attached to hard surfaces and each other at the bottom of […]

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Air quality study of East Java waste-to-energy plant...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/16

A 54-day monitoring by Indonesia’s largest environmental group around a waste-to-energy plant in East Java revealed frequent air quality levels breaching World Health Organization safety limits, raising concerns for public health. Indonesian NGO Walhi has recently published its findings from stationary and mobile monitoring of the air quality at five locations in the vicinity of […]

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UN plastic treaty negotiations end in failure, again

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

Representatives from 184 countries recently gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, to tackle the growing plastic crisis. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting (INC 5.2) went into overtime but failed to produce an agreement. Two main issues were supposed to be resolved by this, the last scheduled round of negotiations: whether the treaty should include a cap on […]

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The death toll from flash floods in northwest...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Officials say flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed over 280 people in India and Pakistan and left scores of others missing. Rescuers on Friday had brought to safety some 1,600 people from two mountainous districts in the neighboring countries. Flooding began on Thursday in Indian-controlled Kashmir and spread to […]

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Don’t quit: A podcaster’s charge to listeners &...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

Recently, a listener to Mongabay’s podcast sent us an email thanking us for our work and asking, “how can you keep going?” amid all the systems at play that are destroying nature. They wondered how to do even more to save our planet and feel less helpless and depressed. These are good questions. I take […]

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Lioness sighting in Central African Republic a...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

An adult lioness has been photographed for the first time in six years in Bamingui-Bangoran National Park in the Central African Republic. The photo, taken in April by a camera trap installed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, shows a lactating female, possibly with cubs nearby, wandering the forest at night — the first evidence of […]

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New report warns 54% of turtles and tortoises are at...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

“Most people have a turtle story, whether that’s seeing a turtle at an aquarium, having a turtle as a pet as a kid, or they helped one cross the road, or one happened across their backyard one day,” Jordan Gray, from the Turtle Survival Alliance, told Mongabay. For many Indigenous cultures, turtles hold profound spiritual […]

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From counting trees to enhancing climate resiliency,...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

KAMPALA — Ten years ago, Uganda’s capital Kampala was facing a strange problem: trees were falling over on the city’s streets, injuring people and damaging cars and property. The municipality investigated, and found that the problem was mainly caused by aging and unhealthy trees. What followed was an initiative by the Kampala Capital City Authority […]

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What’s at stake for the environment in Bolivia’s...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

Bolivians will go to the polls on Aug. 17 to vote for a new president, vice president and 166 combined members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. When it comes to environmental policies, the country has many important decisions to make about climate change commitments, development of the lithium industry, illegal gold mining, […]

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Will we still eat beef in 50 years?

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

When drought became a perennial visitor to the Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado in the late 1990s, Steve Wooten remembers telling his family, “We got to do something different.” Between 1997 and 2003, the Wootens, who have been raising cattle in this arid landscape since 1929, had to sell off cows — a last resort […]

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Greece, Spain and Portugal race to contain wildfires...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Fire crews in Greece, Spain and Portugal raced to contain wildfires on Thursday, taking advantage of calmer winds that slowed the blazes even as much of southern Europe remained at high risk under hot, dry conditions. A drop in wind speeds allowed firefighting aircraft in the three hard-hit countries to step up water drops, concentrating on existing […]

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Seized corals find safe harbor in New York Aquarium

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

In May this year, wildlife inspectors for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seized a shipment of 232 live stony corals at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The corals are now being kept at New York Aquarium for rehabilitation and propagation, in the hopes of helping raise awareness about corals, the Wildlife […]

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Learning to live with lions: Interview with Claw...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/15

Andrew Stein had been working across Africa for more than 15 years when he first heard of lion poisoning incidents in Botswana. In a bid to protect their livestock, communities were poisoning the big cats when they came close to their villages. It was a precarious situation. On one hand, populations of lions (Panthera leo) […]

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It’s time to update the language of human-wildlife...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/14

Language shapes the way we view our world. In the field of wildlife conservation, even very subtle word choices drive peoples’ perceptions around individual species or situations. These word choices can be illustrated by the language associated with wildlife value orientations (WVO). When asked about views toward wildlife, individuals often fall into one of two […]

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PFAS ‘forever’ chemicals found in 98% of US waters...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/14

A recent study from the U.S.-based environmental nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance has found “forever chemicals” contamination in 98% of the waterways it tested in the United States. The findings come at a time when representatives from the world are gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, for the United Nations plastics treaty negotiations to hammer out a plan to […]

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As climate change burdens grow, community mental...

Conservation news ·

2025/08/14

“We are not causing climate change, yet we are the ones heavily affected,” says 26-year-old Solomon Islands health worker Matthew Bibao Paikea, as he expresses ongoing frustration over failing crops, rising disease and an island home slowly succumbing to the sea. “I can’t do anything to change this,” he notes, with resignation and recognition of […]

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