Mongabay News

4 April 2025. Palm oil company uses armed forces, tear gas against protesting villagers in Cameroon – Villagers in Cameroon have denounced the use of tear gas by authorities to break up their protest on March 25 against the replanting of oil palm trees by the plantation company Socapalm on disputed land in the country’s southwest. Residents of the village of Apouh à Ngog say the land should have been returned to […]

4 April 2025. Lithium Triangle mining may strain water sources more than expected, study says – Global demand for lithium is expected to increase by nearly 500% over the next few decades, as countries invest more in batteries and electric vehicles meant to reduce their carbon footprint. But lithium also brings its own environmental concerns, putting stress on freshwater supplies in the desert areas where the mineral is most common. Measuring […]

4 April 2025. Colombian farmers switch from coffee to cacao as temperature and prices soar – RISARALDA, Colombia — “Before, anyone who wanted to grow cacao at 1,200 or 1,500 meters [3,900 to 4,900 feet] altitude was considered crazy,” says Orlando Quintero Gonzales, an agronomist in Colombia’s Eje Cafetero, or the Coffee Axis. “Today, with climate change reshaping agricultural landscapes, these altitudes could become optimal for this crop.” As small-scale farmers […]

4 April 2025. Study delves into increase in humpback whale sightings in UK and Ireland – Earlier this year, U.K. media reported an increase in humpback whale sightings in British and Irish waters. Between December 2024 and January, The Guardian reported some 17 sightings of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) from the Isles of Scilly in southwest England. Meanwhile, the nonprofit Sussex Dolphin Project reported more than 50 sightings from Sussex in […]

4 April 2025. Fishing cats in India struggle to survive outside protected areas – The wetlands of West Bengal in eastern India are one of the country’s best habitats for the fishing cat, a species vulnerable to extinction. But a significant population of these fish-eating, mid-sized wildcats lives outside protected areas, putting them at high risk of road accidents and retaliatory killing, reports contributor Nabarun Guha for Mongabay India. […]

4 April 2025. Kanzi the bonobo shattered boundaries between humans and apes – Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives, and story summaries. Few apes have done more to unsettle human certainties than Kanzi the bonobo. He wasn’t the first nonhuman primate to use symbols to communicate, but he was the first to do so with such fluency, subtlety and apparent […]

3 April 2025. Farmers turn to living ‘yam sticks’ to grow their crop and spare the forest – Yams are considered one of the world’s most important crops. A starchy, nutrient-rich root vegetable of the genus Dioscorea, the yam thrives in a tropical belt across West Africa, with outliers in the Caribbean and some Asian countries such as Japan. In 2023, nearly 90 million metric tons of yam were produced globally, according to […]

3 April 2025. After outcry, Brazil Supreme Court nixes proposal for mining on Indigenous lands – Brazil's Supreme Court backed down and withdrew its proposal to open up Indigenous territories to mining and economic activities from a controversial bill that critics say violates the Constitution.

3 April 2025. Uttarakhand’s extreme weather wreaks havoc on crops, livelihoods & futures – Rita grew up in a small village in Uttarakhand with mountains forming the backbone of her childhood. In a recent call with her sister, she laughed, repeating a little rhyme they used to recite as school-going children: January mein jarjar, February mein farfar aur March mein paper (January is spent shivering, February flies away briskly […]

3 April 2025. Betting on future forest carbon storage endangers Paris Agreement targets – Banking on the capacity of global forests to continue storing huge amounts of carbon could put the Paris Agreement climate targets out of reach and incur huge economic costs. That’s the warning expressed in a new modeling study which finds the ability of forests to absorb and permanently store carbon dioxide is not a given, […]

3 April 2025. Nepali farmers switch crops to reduce human-elephant conflict – A village on Nepal’s border with India has found a way to reduce conflicts with wild Asian elephants in recent years: By switching their crops from rice and maize, which elephants love to eat, to tea and lemon, the farmers of Bahundangi are now seeing fewer elephants devouring their harvest, Mongabay contributor Deepak Adhikari reported […]

3 April 2025. ‘Plastic People’ documentary exposes the human health threats from plastic  – Microplastics are a growing ecological and human health crisis: Scientist have found the tiny plastic particles everywhere they’ve looked for them, including human placentas and brains. In a new documentary, Plastic People, filmmakers Rick Smith and Peter Raymont delve into the plastic pollution that contaminates people from before birth and can bring about early death. […]

3 April 2025. Amid fuzzy data, scientists urge monitoring of Hong Kong’s tokay gecko trade – Tokay geckos (Gekko gecko), named after their characteristic “to-kay” calls, are among the largest geckos in the world and inhabit rainforests and human-modified landscapes across South and Southeast Asia. As nature’s pest control, they are vital to the ecosystem, and their bright spots are favored in the pet trade. But for many humans, these colorful […]

3 April 2025. Floods devastate normally arid parts of Australia’s Queensland – Intense flooding submerged usually dry areas of Queensland state in eastern Australia during the last week of March, forcing many people to evacuate and leave their livestock behind. David Crisafulli, the Queensland premier, called the floods “unprecedented” as several places in western Queensland recorded the worst floods in the last 50 years, CNN reported. Some […]

3 April 2025. Groundwater overuse puts Brazil’s river flow at risk, study finds – In many parts of Brazil, rivers may be losing water to the ground instead of gaining from it. A recent study found that groundwater levels in several regions are lower than those of nearby rivers, pulling river water underground. This shift, potentially driven in part by intensive pumping of groundwater, could reduce streamflow and have […]

3 April 2025. Traffic noise turns Galápagos warblers into angry birds – Traffic noise isn’t just unpleasant; in the Galápagos Islands, it can also make songbirds aggressive, a recent study has found. Once famed for their undisturbed natural ecosystems, the Galápagos Islands have seen a rise in road infrastructure and traffic in recent decades. Researchers wanted to understand how birds react to the increased noise. So they […]

2 April 2025. Maltese Falcon Poachers: European hunters endanger Egypt’s birds – The New Arab and The Shift co-published a set of edited versions of this investigation. As the sun hung low over the Nile, casting golden ripples across the water, we navigated Lake Nasser. The air carried whispers of wings overhead, the soft rustle of migratory birds seeking refuge during their epic winter journey from Europe […]

2 April 2025. Photos: Colombia’s Indigenous Nasa push back against cultural loss to reconnect with nature – PANCE, Colombia — Ofelia Opocué’s life has been shaped by loss, she says. Twenty-three years ago, the FARC gave her family an ultimatum: leave their fertile land in Toribío, in Colombia’s southwestern Cauca department, within 72 hours or become part of their armed group. The family chose to flee, leaving behind cornfields, livestock and, what […]

2 April 2025. Nearly one-third of fungi on IUCN Red List are threatened with extinction – The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently updated its Red List of Threatened Species to include an additional 482 fungi, bringing the total to roughly 1,300 species of mushrooms, puffballs and other fungi. More than 400 of the species assessed are at risk of extinction, primarily threatened by agricultural expansion, deforestation and climate […]

2 April 2025. Global seabed regulator concerned by mining company’s unilateral actions – The International Seabed Authority has expressed concern following reports that the U.S. subsidiary of The Metals Company is seeking deep-sea mining permits from the U.S. instead of waiting for the global regulator’s finalization of a mining code. Mongabay recently reported that The Metals Company (TMC), based in Canada, has started a process to apply for […]

2 April 2025. The price for Europe’s packing paper boom – The rapid rise of e-commerce and food delivery services has transformed consumption patterns worldwide. In an effort to reduce plastic waste, the European Union introduced policies such as the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, aimed at a shift from single-use plastics to single-use paper products. While these initiatives aim to address the environmental crisis, they […]

2 April 2025. An oil-rich West African island offers decades of insight into the wild meat trade – The volcanic island of Bioko, about 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, northwest of mainland Equatorial Guinea, is carpeted in lush green tropical rainforest. This forest is home to many endemic animals, including Bioko drill monkeys (Mandrillus leucophaeus poensis), listed as endangered, and black colobus monkeys (Colobus satanas satanas), critically endangered. Interspersed in the landscape are […]

2 April 2025. Ground-level ozone pollution poses growing threat to planetary health – Kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the ozone layer protects humanity and all life from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. But in the troposphere, at ground level, this gas can wreak havoc on planetary health in myriad ways. As temperatures increase due to climate change, the ozone problem is forecast to worsen in many parts of […]

2 April 2025. Peruvian fishers sue for additional compensation after big December oil spill – In the early hours of Dec. 22, 2024, fishermen working in the Talara Sea in northern Peru hauled in their nets. But instead of the day’s catch, they found oil impregnating their gear. Hours later the disaster was confirmed: The tide had moved a huge oil spill northward, and it had now coated 10 kilometers […]

2 April 2025. Innovators battling wildfires with AI, drones & fungi get $50k grants to scale up – To address the devastating effects of wildfires in Western North America, the nonprofit Conservation X Labs (CXL) and its partners have awarded $50,000 each to 12 shortlisted teams seeking to scale up novel technologies and processes to lower wildlife risk and increase ecosystem and community resilience. CXL announced the 12 finalists of its first Fire […]

2 April 2025. Longer periods of drought threaten Brazilian amphibians – Brazil is home to the world’s greatest diversity of amphibians: Of the more than 8,000 species known worldwide, some 1,200 are found in the country, mainly in the Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes. But their future is at risk due to longer dry periods in their habitats. Drought and amphibians are not a viable combination: […]

2 April 2025. Rare polar bear cub footage offers crucial conservation insights – To a layperson, it’s footage of adorable polar bear cubs with their moms against the backdrop of endless Arctic snow. For researchers who study the animals, however, it’s a rare and incredibly important observation that could potentially inform conservation strategies. Scientists have captured rare footage of female polar bears emerging from maternal dens with their […]

2 April 2025. New strategy launched to protect Tanzanian biodiversity hotspot – Conservationists have launched a 20-year-long project to protect what is arguably Tanzania’s most biologically rich landscape: the Udzungwa Mountains. The strategy places notable emphasis on communities living here, with more than half of its budget allocated to social and economic projects and managing human-wildlife conflict. The Udzungwa Mountains’ evergreen forests, woodlands and grasslands are home […]

2 April 2025. The vast venomous world of plants, fungi, bacteria: Study – Venom isn’t just a feature of some animals; it’s found across the living world, from plants and fungi to bacteria and viruses, says a new study. Lead author William Hayes, an ecologist at Loma Linda University, U.S., has long studied venomous rattlesnakes. It was while teaching a course on the biology of venom that he […]

2 April 2025. Brazilian rescue center returns trafficked animals to the wild – A wildlife rescue center in Rio de Janeiro is giving animals a second chance after they’ve been torn from the Atlantic Forest by poachers, a Mongabay short documentary showed. At the Vida Livre (Free Life) Institute, the team of volunteer veterinarians and biologists rehabilitate thousands of wild animals — from parrots with broken beaks to […]