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Conservation news

Environmental science and conservation news

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A killing with precedent: Kaiowá man’s murder fits a...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Early on November 16th, gunfire broke the quiet around Pyelito Kue in southern Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. By dawn, the Kaiowá were counting their wounded and laying out the body of Vicente Kaiowá e Guarani, a father […]

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Bearing witness to Indonesia’s environmental...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

Indonesia’s environmental issues often feel too vast to take in at once. A nation said to have more than 17,000 islands, it contains the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest and one of its busiest commodity frontiers. For many Indonesians, the story of modern development is told not in charts but in the air they breathe. Some […]

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‘Forever chemical’ contamination could undermine sea...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

Sea otters living along the coastline of Canada’s British Columbia province carry residues of “forever chemicals” in their bodies, according to a new study, and those living near dense human populations or shipping lanes are the most heavily impacted. The research was published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, authored principally by scientists at […]

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Lesotho communities allege greenwashing by project...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

Communities in Lesotho have filed a complaint with the African Development Bank over a controversial initiative that transfers water from the country to neighboring South Africa, one of the biggest such schemes on the African continent. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), currently in its second phase, is funded in part by the African Development […]

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In Thailand, a cheap bottle crate hack gives tree...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

A surprisingly simple and creative innovation could help restoration projects in the tropics, according to a recent study. Researchers from the Forest Restoration Research Unit at Thailand’s Chiang Mai University (FORRU-CMU) found that cultivating saplings inside repurposed bottle crates substantially improves the survival and growth rate of nursery-grown native saplings for reforestation. Climate change, the […]

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Experts say wealthy nations owe Africa double its...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

As negotiations at this year’s United Nations climate summit, or COP30, near the finish line in Belém, Brazil, the gap in financing for climate adaptation continues to be a sticking point. New pledges amounting to $135 million for the Adaptation Fund, a U.N.-backed financial mechanism to help vulnerable countries cope with the impacts of climate […]

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It’s time to end the carbon offset era, COP30...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

At COP30 in Belém, the first climate summit held in the Amazon, something rare has happened. For years, the risks and failures of carbon offsetting have been dismissed as activist exaggeration or technical teething problems. But this week, Brazil’s leading scientists publicly said what many Indigenous and frontline communities have long argued: forests cannot be […]

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IDB financed meat & poultry company that polluted...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

In Peripa, an Indigenous Tsáchila village in Ecuador, there are still traditional healers, but medicinal plants are disappearing. Rivers no longer heal — instead, they make people sick. In the late 1990s, the company Pronaca set up pig farms nearby, in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, southwest of Quito. Soon after, residents […]

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Why don’t forest protectors get paid? asks Suriname’s...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP30, in Brazil, Suriname is taking a large step into the spotlight, reports Mongabay’s Max Radwin. With about 93% forest cover and a status as one of only three nations to boast […]

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A forest worth more standing: Virgilio Viana on what...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/21

The first time Virgilio Viana saw the Amazon up close, he was a 16-year-old with a backpack, two school friends and very little sense of what he was walking into. They arrived by land, drifting along dirt roads that had more potholes than surface, then continued by riverboat as the forest thickened around them. Something […]

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Congo Basin nations roll out community payments for...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

Congo Basin countries have announced the launch of a payments for environmental services, or PES, initiative at the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, intended to encourage practices favorable to forest protection and restoration. The financial mechanism, announced Nov. 18 and supported by the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), transfers direct payments via a mobile […]

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Inside California’s race to document its insects: A...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

Christopher C. Grinter has spent much of his life surrounded by insects, though not in the way most people imagine. As Senior Collection Manager of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, he oversees one of the world’s major scientific archives of insects, a record of life that stretches from the smallest moth to the […]

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For sharks on the brink of extinction, CITES Appendix...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

Sharks are some of the most threatened animals on Earth, with approximately one-third of all species assessed as threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List. These animals are not only older than dinosaurs, but older than trees, and yet they face a very real risk of extinction within our lifetimes. Their number one threat […]

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Study finds important Nassau grouper spawning site in...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

HOPKINS, Belize — The Nassau grouper is drawn by the winter moon, between December and March, to special places where hundreds of the cryptic fish engage in a reproductive dance that sometimes lasts days. Northeast Point at Glover’s Reef Atoll, off the coast of southern Belize, is one of those places. The Nassau grouper (Epinephelus […]

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Fighting for food sovereignty at COP30: Interview...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

At the COP30 climate summit currently underway in Belém, Brazil, adapting to climate change impacts is a major focus of discussions. This is particularly the case for delegates from Africa, where agriculture, on which the majority of the continent’s people rely for their livelihoods, is directly affected by erratic and extreme weather and rising average […]

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Wolf hauls up crab trap to eat bait, hinting at...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

Researchers in Canada have documented a wild gray wolf hauling a crab trap out of the water to eat the bait inside, according to a recent study. Researchers suggest it may be the first recorded example of possible tool use by a wolf (Canis lupus). The finding emerged from a program maintained by Indigenous Haíɫzaqv […]

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Gold mining exposes Indigenous women in Nicaragua to...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

Indigenous women of childbearing age from Nicaragua’s Waspam municipality have been exposed to toxic levels of mercury, according to a new report by the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). The researchers took hair samples from 50 women between 18 and 44 years old. The women live in the Indigenous communities of Li Auhbra and Li […]

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The land deal threatening a vital piece of Bolivia’s...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

A large forest in eastern Bolivia is on the verge of being sold to an international agriculture company, raising concerns that it might be razed to make room for new cropland. The 30,019-hectare (74,179-acre) plot in Bolivia’s northeastern Chiquitano dry forest has been sustainably managed for years. But now the land is on the verge […]

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EU touts climate leadership while undermining...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

BELÉM, Brazil — At a Nov. 19 press conference at the U.N. climate summit currently underway in Brazil, European Union officials spoke for half an hour without a single mention of forests or efforts to halt deforestation — even though COP30 is taking place in a city dubbed the “gateway to the Amazon.” For Boris […]

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Makassar women press for water as taps and wells run...

Conservation news ·

2025/11/20

MAKASSAR, Indonesia — For years, Rahma paid a monthly rate for water that never flowed to her home in eastern Indonesia’s largest urban area, here where the Tallo River meets the Pacific Ocean. “If I’m late by one day, I’ll be fined,” Rahma told Mongabay Indonesia near the coast of Makassar, the largest city on […]

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