Mongabay

TOKYO (AP) — Downpours on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu caused flooding and mudslides on Monday, injuring a number of people and disrupting travel during a Buddhist holiday week. Evacuation advisories were issued and several people were reported missing. A low-pressure system has been stuck over the region since last week, dumping torrential rain over the southern prefecture of Kagoshima and the island’s northern part. The Japan Meteorological Agency early Monday issued the highest-level warning in the prefecture of Kumamoto, saying rainfall had exceeded 40 centimeters (15.7 inches) in the last 24 hours and more was expected through Tuesday afternoon over Kyushu. The agency later downgraded the alert for Kumamoto as the showers moved east toward the Tokyo region, but kept a lower-level warning for western Japan, where up to 20 centimeters (7.8 inches) of rainfall was expected by noon Tuesday. The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said local authorities have issued evacuation advisories to tens of thousands of people in Kumamoto and six other prefectures in the region. Defense troops were deployed to Kagoshima to provide fresh water to the residents in the affected areas, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said. In Kumamoto, rescue workers were looking for missing people. A man who went missing while three of his family members waited in a car to head to an evacuation center just as a mudslide hit. The people in the car were rescued, but the man was later found with no vital signs, according to prefecture officials. At another location in Kumamoto,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

The new international airport in Nepal’s tourism capital of Pokhara lies close to prime vulture sites, raising risks for the already severely threatened birds. But 40-year-old Hemanta Dhakal keeps vigil, monitoring the interaction of vultures with aircraft from his rooftop daily, and working with airport staff to better manage their presence, reports Mongabay’s Abhaya Raj Joshi. Pokhara hosts all nine species of vultures found in South Asia, including the critically endangered white-rumped (Gyps bengalensis) and slender-billed vultures (Gyps tenuirostris), and the endangered Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus). At the same time, Pokhara draws much of Nepal’s tourism air traffic, mostly domestic flights from the capital, Kathmandu. While Pokhara’s old domestic airport was located away from the rivers and cliffs where vultures nest, the new international airport, built with financing from China, is closer to prime vulture sites such as the Bijaypur River and an old landfill, Joshi reports. The landfill site has since been relocated, but a study published in June found that vultures still visit the old site likely because of food availability and proximity to forests, cliffs and river. Soon after the airport’s opening on Jan. 1, 2023, a plane struck a steppe eagle upon approach for landing, killing the bird. “Although there were some problems with the old airport as well, the new one brings the problems to the fore,” said Dhakal, a seasoned ornithologist and conservation campaigner. The new airport’s 2.5-kilometer (1.6-mile) runway, for example, sits right on the flight path of the vultures. The large birds…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

I often return to this image, which I took in 2022 in Jambi, Indonesia. At first glance, it seems to capture something hopeful: a full-circle rainbow arcing over a lush green landscape. But look closer, and you’ll see what lies beneath the beauty: a vast oil palm plantation, carved out of what was once native rainforest. For me, the photo encapsulates one of the central paradoxes we face in environmental journalism: the coexistence of wonder and loss, resilience and destruction, all in the same frame. The deeper we go into environmental journalism, the more paradoxes we encounter. At Mongabay, we sit with a particularly difficult one: The more intimately we understand the scale of ecological loss, the harder it becomes to stay hopeful. Yet the people living closest to the crisis are often the ones imagining the boldest futures. Our work demands precision. It requires us to report on vanishing rainforests, vanishing species, vanishing time. To bear witness to lives uprooted by mining, by heat, by flood. To document not just data, but grief. There is no room to look away. And yet, only reporting on what’s broken isn’t enough. A steady drumbeat of devastation can numb readers, or worse, convince them that nothing can be done. That’s where the other side of the paradox comes in. When we highlight real-world responses — stories of reforestation, Indigenous leadership, coral restoration, and agroecology — we don’t dilute the truth; we expand it. We show that amid the unraveling, people are still…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

GENEVA — Delegates, experts, and stakeholders from 184 countries and 619 organizations are determined to finalize the treaty on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment. They made this clear at the opening of the second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 5.2), tasked with drafting this instrument, which is being held from Aug. 5 to 14 in Geneva, Switzerland. “We are here today to fulfill an international mandate. This is a unique and historic opportunity for the international community to overcome differences and find common ground,” said Luis Vayas Valdivieso, Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), at the opening of the session. Speaking at the opening as well, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, stated, “Plastic pollution is already present in nature, in our oceans, and even in our bodies. If we continue on this path, the entire world will drown in plastic pollution, which will have significant consequences for our planetary, economic, and human health.” She added, “But this should not be our future. Together, we can meet this challenge. The adoption of a treaty text is the first step in the fight against plastic pollution for all, everywhere in the world.” The difficulty with consensus At the previous negotiating session, in Busan, South Korea in 2024, despite a majority of parties supporting reduced production of plastic, the meeting was unable to reach an agreement. A “High Ambition Coalition” of more than 60 countries co-chaired by Rwanda and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

With its enchanting eyes, powerful jaws, acute senses and haunting howls, the gray wolf (Canis lupus) — the largest member of the dog family — is a wilderness icon. Once the most widespread mammal on the planet, gray wolves roamed across large swaths of North America, Europe and Asia. However, as human settlements grew, these livestock-killing canids became “vermin” and were hunted to near-extinction in many parts of their range. By the mid-20th century, wolves were extirpated from the contiguous U.S. Their remarkable comeback since the 1980s, thanks in part to their reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park, has sparked joy, controversy and conflicts. The latest saga is playing out in California, where there’s a lot of potential for conflict: It’s the most populous U.S. state with nearly 40 million people. Some 7 million cattle graze on 57 million acres of rangeland, half of which are privately owned. California’s wolves, which naturally dispersed south from Oregon, are now further expanding their territories, with more  frequent encounters — and conflict — with humans . “Almost every pack does overlap to some degree with an agricultural area with livestock,” said Axel Hunnicutt, a biologist who coordinates the wolf program for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Almost every group has killed livestock. “That’s one thing that unites all of the packs in California, unfortunately,” he added. Gray wolves are the largest members of the dog family and are widespread across North America, Europe and Asia. Image by Raed Mansour via Wikimedia…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

NAIROBI — Mountains of waste stretch as far as the eye can see, smoking in places, giving off an acrid stench that stings the eyes and catches in the throat. These are the first sensations that overwhelm you upon arrival at the Dandora dump in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, one of the largest open-air landfills in Africa. Starting early each morning, men, women and marabou storks — huge, vulture-like birds —scavenge the site to find enough to sustain them through another day. Plastic bottles to resell, a bone to gnaw on … But there’s something else here: A close look reveals countless scraps of fabric from discarded apparel. Most of these clothes didn’t originate in Kenya. An investigation by the Changing Markets Foundation reveals that more than 900 million items of used clothing were exported to Kenya from Europe, the U.K., the U.S., Canada and China in 2021 alone. Of these items, more than half were considered waste, unsellable, and more than a third likely contained plastic-based fibers that don’t biodegrade. Instead, they break down into ever smaller microfibers that can contaminate food or be breathed into the lungs. Gikomba market, Nairob. Image by Elodie Toto. “Plastic is so cheap to make that we can now find plastic making the majority of our clothes,” says Imogen Napper, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth, U.K. “And it was only invented 100 years ago. We know it under the name of polyester, acrylic, nylon …” Napper initiated the first study…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Brazil’s largest Indigenous organization has launched the country’s first Native-led strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on Aug. 9. The idea is for the plan to be incorporated into the Brazilian government’s own emissions reduction plan, the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which the country updates and submits every five year as part of its obligations as a party to the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The Indigenous NDC was drawn up by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), representing Indigenous peoples and organizations from across the country. APIB’s NDC contains 36 demands for inclusion into the Brazilian NDC and National Climate Plan, which set out targets and pathways for cutting emissions and adapting to climate change impacts. “This document is important because it outlines to Brazilian and international authorities the goals we hope the Brazilian government will adopt, attaching the Indigenous NDC to the Brazilian NDC before COP30 [the 2025 U.N. climate conference],” APIB executive coordinator Dinamam Tuxá told Mongabay by text message. “Furthermore, this document becomes a reference for Indigenous advocacy on the climate agenda, both for our grassroots [movements] and for Indigenous movements in other countries.” The Indigenous NDC features six themes central to the climate agenda, from mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts, to climate finance and a just energy transition. The main demand is the demarcation and protection of Indigenous territories. According to Funai, Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs, there are 794 Indigenous lands…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

On Rábida Island in the Galápagos, where red-tinged beaches meet ancient lava formations, Mares’s leaf-toed gecko (Phyllodactylus maresi) is back. Once thought extinct on this island, a genetically distinct population has survived here against all odds, scientists have now confirmed. For more than a century, despite intensive collecting efforts across the Galápagos, no living specimen of P. maresi had been recorded on Rábida. The only evidence of their historical presence came from ancient subfossil bones dating back 5,700 to 8,540 years. The cause of their downfall? Rats. Invasive brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), most likely brought by pirates or whalers in the 17th or 18th centuries, spread and created an ecological nightmare for native species. These new predators devoured gecko eggs, disrupted nesting sites, and disturbed the island’s delicate ecosystem balance. Native species either disappeared or retreated to precarious refugia. However, in 2011, conservationists came in for the kill. Galápagos National Park, in partnership with NGOs Island Conservation, the Charles Darwin Foundation and The Raptor Center, launched a precision rodent eradication program targeting every invasive rat on Rábida Island. Teams deployed poisoned bait, specifically for rats, across the island while carefully protecting native wildlife, said Island Conservation. The eradication had to be complete; leaving even a few breeding pairs would allow the rat population to recover within months. Mares’s leaf-toed gecko (Phyllodactylus maresi) made a comeback on Rábida Island after rat eradication. Photo courtesy of Rory Stansbury/IslandConservation With the rats out of the way, the ecological response was swift and dramatic.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For most Americans, the loss of a tree might pass unnoticed. For Rex Mann, it changed the course of his life. As a boy growing up in the mountains of western North Carolina, Mann listened to his father — once a moonshiner, later a Baptist lay minister — describe the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) not in botanical terms, but as kin. The tree was food, lumber, income, shelter. It was culture. Its demise, caused by a blight introduced to the United States in 1904, reduced a foundation species to scattered root sprouts. By the time Mann was born in 1944, most chestnuts were already dead. But their ghosts still stood — gray, silent, and imposing — in the forests where he would make his career. Mann joined the U.S. Forest Service in 1967 after graduating from North Carolina State University. He spent more than four decades in the field, first in Virginia, later in Georgia, Arkansas and Kentucky. A natural leader and no stranger to wildfire, he directed large-scale fire response operations in Florida and Montana. His contributions earned him recognition in the White House Rose Garden, but retirement didn’t temper his sense of purpose. Instead, he devoted his remaining years to resurrecting the tree that had haunted his youth. In 2000, Mann co-founded the Kentucky chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, eventually serving as a board member emeritus. A self-described “chestnut evangelist,”…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

The lion, with its majestic mane and the loudest growl of all the big cats, is today a vulnerable species with decreasing populations in extremely fragmented habitats. It once ranged widely throughout Africa and Eurasia; today, it’s restricted to parts of sub-Saharan Africa and one small area in western India. For World Lion Day on Aug. 10, Mongabay looks back at some of our coverage this year of the challenges that Panthera leo faces. Victims of wildlife trade Lions makes up the lion’s share of all wildcats in the legal wildlife trade, according to a report in May by Mongabay’s Alex Shaw and Spoorthy Raman. While commercial trade in the Indian lion populations isn’t permitted, it’s very much open for African lions, whose body parts can be traded legally. Shaw and Raman found that 10,401 permits were issued for African lions or their parts in the last 25 years, per data from CITES, the international wildlife trade convention. Most were issued for body parts from lions killed in trophy hunts. These were followed by permits for live lions, skins or fur, skulls, and other body parts. According to CITES data, the U.S., South Africa and Germany were the top countries importing lions. Top exporters were South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. Conflict with farmers African lion populations across Uganda’s protected areas, including the famous tree-climbing lions of Queen Elizabeth National Park, have seen a drastic decline over the past decade, Mongabay contributor Gilbert Nakweya reported about a study published in December 2024.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Mannar, SRI LANKA — The Vidattaltivu Nature Reserve, nestled along Sri Lanka’s northwestern coast in the Mannar district, is home to one of the island country’s largest and most ecologically significant mangrove ecosystems. Recognizing its immense biodiversity value, Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation DWC designated Vidattaltivu as a nature reserve in 2016, bestowing upon it the highest level of legal protection under Sri Lankan law. This designation prohibited any commercial exploitation or development within the area, marking a key milestone in the country’s conservation journey. However, the reserve came under threat from a development proposal put forward by the National Aquaculture Development Authority NAQDA, a separate government agency tasked to promote aquaculture. NAQDA’s plan to convert a section of the reserve into an aquaculture farm met with swift and firm opposition from environmental groups and conservationists. But, in a surprise turn in 2024, the agency managed to secure political support, where the then minister of environment issued a notification de-gazetting around 400 hectares (988 acres) of the protected area, effectively opening it up for development. This controversial decision triggered a strong public response and two prominent environmental organizations: the Environmental Foundation Limited EFL and the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society WNPS took the matter before the supreme court. Their efforts bore fruit when the government, faced with mounting public and legal pressure, conveyed to the court that the cabinet has reversed the original decision, thus reinstating the area’s protected status. A restored mangrove habitat, where the trees have grown. Image courtesy…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

For the pastoralist Nuer people who migrate with the seasons between western Ethiopia’s Gambella region and Africa’s largest wetland, the Sudd, in South Sudan, birds are gaatkuoth or “sacred children of God.” The community has identified at least 71 bird species that are culturally important to them and useful in traditional medicine, as well as to find fish or bushmeat, researcher Abebayehu Aticho said in an interview with Mongabay’s Sonam Lama Hyolmo published in July. “The connection between these birds and people is not just spiritual,” said Aticho, who published a study about the human-bird interaction in western Ethiopia. “The Nuer people depend on them to forecast weather and follow birds to find fish stocks and species in the wetlands.” He added the Nuer observe migratory birds in particular for weather forecasting. “During the rainy season, cranes move from [their] usual areas to isolated breeding grounds and come back in the dry season. This is associated with seasonal changes,” Aticho said. “They hear the birdcalls and associate their behavior, which helps them predict upcoming seasons,” he added. “For instance, when a sedge of cranes gathers, making harmonious calls, they expect that the rainy season will come very soon.” A Nuer village in Gambella, Ethiopia. Image courtesy of Abebayehu Aticho. Of the more than 83 ethnic groups in Ethiopia, the Nuer people are in a relatively secure area with adequate water and grazing lands, Aticho said. He added the group has long coexisted harmoniously with nature, and is largely dependent on…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Brazil has served more than 5,600 metric tons of potentially contaminated shark meat in schools and other public institutions since 2004, a Mongabay investigation has revealed. Shark meat tends to have higher concentrations of toxic heavy metals, as top predators accumulate contaminants like mercury from lower down in the food chain. The metal and metalloid contaminants, which have been shown to cause brain damage, kidney damage and increased cancer risk, are especially harmful to young children. But of the nearly 6,000 public institutions across 10 Brazilian states that purchased shark meat, 90% were schools. Shark meat was bought by more than 1,100 nurseries and preschools. “You’re giving, every week, contaminated meat to children,” Nathalie Gil, director of Sea Shepherd Brazil, told Mongabay by phone. “It’s super absurd.” A study of blue sharks, one of the most common species caught and served as cação, a generic name for shark meat in Brazil, found that 40% of the animals caught off Brazil’s coast were found to have mercury exceeding the safe limit of 1 milligram per kilogram of body weight, or 1 part per million. Mercury concentrations in some of the sharks reached 2.4 mg/kg (2.4 ppm). In Duque de Caxias, a municipality of Greater Rio de Janeiro, nearly 200 public schools serve shark meat every other Monday. Solange Bergami, a local educator, said students routinely complain about the smell and taste of shark meat, and many refuse to eat it. Sharks have cartilage skeletons, which makes them easier to prepare and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

More than a decade ago, a mysterious illness killed billions of sea stars, particularly along the North American Pacific coast. The sea star wasting disease caused the stars to develop lesions, their arms to fall off and their bodies to disintegrate. Now, researchers in a recent study say they have zeroed in on the cause: a bacterium called Vibrio pectenicida. The 2013-2014 outbreak caused mass die-offs of more than 20 species of sea stars. The illness still lingers at low levels today. Over the years, researchers have proposed several possible causes, including a virus, but none were proven to be definitive. To find definitive proof, scientists conducted experiments between 2021 and 2024 on the sunflower sea star (Pycnopodia helianthoides), a species that’s particularly vulnerable to the wasting disease. Once ranging widely from Baja California in Mexico to Alaska in the U.S., the disease wiped it out from much of its southern range in the continental U.S. It’s now listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. For the experiments, the researchers housed both healthy looking and diseased sunflower sea stars separately in quarantined laboratory conditions. They found that even immersing the healthy sea stars in water from a diseased star’s tank made the former ill. The researchers also created slurries of both the diseased stars’ tissues, and their coelomic fluid, essentially their “blood.” When they injected either of those into healthy stars, the latter became sick. As a control, when they heated up the slurries to kill any potential…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

VILLEROUGE LA CREMADE, France (AP) — Firefighters and local authorities remained on high alert Friday after France’s largest wildfire in decades was contained in the south of the country, amid forecasts of very high temperatures which could reignite the blaze. Over three days, the fire spread across more than 160 square kilometers (62 square miles) in the Aude wine region and claimed one life, forcing hundreds of residents to flee their homes. In hot and dry weather, the blaze quickly spread with a perimeter reaching 90 kilometers and local authorities said they need to remain vigilant throughout the weekend as temperatures are expected to rise above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) during another heat wave. Region administrator Christian Pouget said some 1,000 people have not yet been able to return to their homes after the fire swept through 15 communes in the Corbières mountain region, destroying or damaging at least 36 homes. One person died at home, and at least 21 others were injured, including 16 firefighters, according to local authorities. Some 1,300 homes were still without electricity on Friday morning after infrastructure was extensively damaged, the Aude prefecture said. Residents have been warned not to return home without authorization, as many roads remain blocked and dangerous. Those forced to flee have been housed in emergency shelters across 17 municipalities. “On Tuesday when the fire started, we learned that the inhabitants of the nearby village of Durban-Corbières were arriving in Tuchan,” Beatrice Bertrand, the mayor of Tuchan, told The Associated Press.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Singapore, the smallest country in Southeast Asia, lost most of its original forest cover in the early 1800s to agriculture. But since the 1960s, when Singapore began pursuing urban greening initiatives, Singapore has greened 47% of its spaces, according to an episode of Mongabay’s podcast published in July. Speaking with host Mike DiGirolamo, Anuj Jain, director and principal ecologist at the biomimicry consultancy bioSEA, said that as Singapore’s economy intensified following independence, it mostly abandoned agriculture, allowing secondary forests to grow. Singapore is tropical, Jain said. “So, if you leave the land right, very quickly, it becomes secondary forest.” Although urbanization pushed the conversion of some secondary forests, “a significant chunk was actually still left for secondary forests, for different land use types, including military, including as reserve land, which may be developed in the future,” added Jain, who helps build environments that are ecologically sustainable and functional for both people and wildlife. Today, 18-20% of Singapore’s area has secondary forests and a small percentage is primary forest, while the remaining green areas are parks and gardens. Jain said the country’s greening efforts were particularly encouraged by its founding father and first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who was also a fan of gardening. “So that really changed how the government saw greenery. There was a lot of streetscape, cityscape, planting to green the city, the streets, parks and gardens were created at that time,” he said. Today, Singapore has been working to integrate greenery in buildings through vertical gardens that…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Endangered angelsharks have been served to schoolchildren in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul for years, as well as in hospitals, clinics, shelters and other public institutions, Mongabay has found. We identified 52 tenders totaling more than 211 metric tons of “peixe anjo,” a common name for angelshark, issued by the state and city administrations since 2015. As endangered species, angelsharks can’t be caught in Brazil, but imported specimens can be traded legally. Brazil’s IBAMA enforcement agency has requested the environment ministry close this exemption, which some call a loophole. After we asked them for comment on past procurements, the state government and two municipal administrations said they wouldn’t buy angelshark anymore. This article is the second one in a two-part series. Read the first one here. This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, where Philip Jacobson was recently a fellow. (Leia em português). PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil — Delicious, firm and boneless: It’s no wonder peixe anjo, which means “angel fish” in Portuguese, is a top choice at hundreds of schools and early childhood education centers in Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. The same goes for dozens of shelters, hospitals, clinics, community centers and other public institutions here. Behind the angelic name, however, are three of the world’s most threatened sharks, all of them illegal to catch in Brazil due to their endangered status: the angular angelshark (Squatina guggenheim), hidden angelshark (S. occulta) and Argentine angelshark (S. argentina).      “I was shocked by this,”…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

JAKARTA — While most tropical countries experienced record-high deforestation rates in 2024, Indonesia’s forest loss is slowing, bucking a global trend. But beneath the headline figures lies a troubling mystery: Nearly half of the forest cleared last year can’t be linked to any identifiable driver, raising red flags about speculative land clearing, regulatory blind spots and delayed environmental harm. This uncertainty complicates supply chain accountability under laws like the EU Deforestation Regulation, and raises questions about who’s really clearing Indonesia’s forests — and why. In 2024, Indonesia lost 242,000 hectares (598,000 acres) of primary forest, down 14% from 279,000 hectares (689,000 acres) in 2023, according to an analysis by TheTreeMap, a technology consultancy behind the Nusantara Atlas forest monitoring platform. Annual Deforestation in Indonesia (2001-2024). Image courtesy of TheTreeMap. TheTreeMap used satellite and time-series imagery to attribute deforestation to known drivers. They are logging (18%), industrial oil palm (13%), pulpwood/timber plantations (6%), mining (5%), food estate projects (3%) and fires (2.3%). Together, these drivers explain just 47.3% of Indonesia’s 2024 primary forest loss — leaving the majority unattributed, which experts say reflects both data limitations and deeper governance failures. What explains this gap in attribution? A likely reason is that land is cleared but not immediately used. A study published in 2024 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that nearly half of all deforested land in Indonesia remained idle for at least five years — meaning it wasn’t converted to plantations, agriculture or any…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For most people, the bush falls silent after dark. For Edward McNabb, it came alive. In the folds of night across the forests in the Australian state of Victoria, he attuned himself to sounds few others could name: the resonant trill of a sooty owl, the scratch of a glider, the croak of a burrowing frog. Over five decades, he made it his life’s work to listen, record and protect what others too often missed. McNabb began his career as a wildlife ecologist in the 1970s, sparked not in a university lecture hall but while jogging in the Dandenong Ranges. Sunrise and dusk brought him face-to-face with the hidden world of nocturnal fauna. That curiosity turned methodical. He started recording sounds with a parabolic microphone and flashlight, capturing calls that had never been formally documented. Where taxonomy met tape recorder, a new discipline emerged. His contributions to conservation bioacoustics — before the term was widely used — were both scientific and sensory. In Nightlife of Australia’s South-eastern Forests and Frog Calls of Melbourne, he cataloged species through sound, pairing precision with accessibility. These albums became key reference tools for ecologists, landowners and amateur naturalists alike. Though best known for his work on owls, particularly the powerful (Ninox strenua) and sooty owl (Tyto spp.), McNabb’s influence spanned a wide range of forest birds and arboreal mammals. From 1996 to 2012, as a senior scientist…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

PHNOM PENH — Mao Man, a 65-year-old ethnic Cham fisher in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh,  says he isn’t sure how many times he’s had to relocate in his life, but he thinks he’ll be evicted again before the Water Festival this November. Today, he and his neighbors live on small wooden boats, which they moor behind a luxury hotel. Like many Chams, being relocated is a constant part of his life, and the lives of his ancestors. But now, the pressures to relocate come wrapped in the language of environmental protection. “When I move, I float like a water hyacinth down the river,” Mao told Mongabay on July 6. Mao Man sits on the shore of the Mekong River near his boat in July, 2025. Image by Vutha Srey for Mongabay. The Chams are one of Cambodia’s largest ethnic minorities, though they aren’t technically Indigenous people. They’re descendants of Champa, a collection of city-states that once ruled parts of southern Vietnam. After the last Cham state was annexed by the Đại Việt monarchy in 1835, and a campaign to forcibly assimilate and dispossess the Chams was instituted, many fled to Cambodia and settled along the Mekong River, converting to a unique form of Islam and taking up fishing. Today, about two-thirds of all Chams live in Cambodia. Mao, like many others, has lived through decades of upheaval. During the Cambodian civil war, he had to flee his village in Kampong Cham, the province with the highest concentration of Chams.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining employs more than 15 million people globally and generates a fifth of global gold supplies. It supports 100 million people indirectly, more than any other extractive sector, yet despite its economic lifeline status, it remains the world’s largest source of mercury pollution and a growing conduit for organized crime, corruption and environmental devastation. A host of international and regional agreements and programs have emerged to target illegal gold mining and associated issues, from the Minamata Convention on Mercury to the planetGOLD initiative. Against this backdrop of pollution, crime and informality, one proposed solution is investment in centralized gold processing plants. A report from the World Gold Council found that if well designed and governed, such plants can help shift workers from informal to formal employment, facilitate due diligence, curb illegal mercury use, and decouple artisanal mining from criminal and illicit economies. Promising experiences in regularizing small-scale gold production from Peru to Tanzania suggest that the focus on such plants offers more than hypothetical returns. The mercury used to amalgamate gold is cheap, effective and toxic. Studies from artisanal and small-scale mining sites across the Amazon reveal catastrophic consequences for human health and ecosystems. Investment in centralized and mercury-free processing plants could be a “missing middle” in the sector, transforming pollutant-intensive livelihoods to cleaner, safer ones. Different types of gold processing plants require different types of interventions. For example, gravimetric plants, which separate gold through density differences rather than chemical processing, require significantly less capital than…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

The command-and-control approach to reducing or eliminating environmental wrongdoing depends on both carrots and sticks. The carrots are largely linked to the private sector and are predicated on access to markets. The sticks all depend on the public sector and include administrative sanctions, such as the denial of environmental licences and the imposition of fines for noncompliance using both administrative and civil law. The biggest stick is law enforcement via the criminal justice system. The application of the criminal code has been lax on pioneer landscapes, including for murder, fraud, slavery and drug trafficking, to name a few of the most common serious felonies. Criminal action flourishes because of the absence of strong institutions, accompanied by a culture of noncompliance reinforced by judicial inaction and political corruption. It is not surprising that environmental crimes, which perpetrators probably view as victimless crimes, are considered acceptable, because broad sectors of society pursue economic models that violate rules governing land use, land tenure, mining, forestry and agriculture. Forest regeneration in the Amazon Rainforest in Orellana, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler. The official policy of all the Pan Amazonian nations is to promote forest conservation and halt, or at least greatly reduce, deforestation. The most successful strategies have been to create and manage protected areas while formalizing the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, as well as restricting the types of productive activities within geographically demarcated multiple-use reserves and communal landholdings. Less successful have been policies intended to motivate landholders to stop clearing forest…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

This is Part 1 in a short series on efforts to decarbonize the global shipping industry. Since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015, no industry has been governed by a global treaty that sets enforceable decarbonization standards. That could change in October, when more than 100 nations will gather at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London to potentially adopt a “net-zero framework” for the shipping industry. The body finalized the draft of the framework and moved it toward adoption at an April meeting. The shipping sector currently accounts for about 3% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and maritime trade volumes are expected to increase in coming decades. In 2023, the IMO, a United Nations body that regulates shipping, approved a nonbinding strategy to decarbonize “by or around” 2050. The new framework, if it’s adopted and enters into force, will make that vision concrete and binding. Critics, however, say the framework falls short of fulfilling the strategic vision. The framework sets exact emissions targets through 2040, when all large vessels will be required to reduce their greenhouse gas intensity by 65% from a 2008 baseline or pay substantial fees. “That in practice means a fundamentally different energy system for shipping,” Tristan Smith, professor of energy and transport at University College London and a leading expert on shipping decarbonization, told Mongabay. “If the [framework] is adopted, then within 15 years, the entire fleet has to completely change the energy that it uses on board, and the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

A 5-month-old jaguar cub has been spotted along the Bermejo River in northern Argentina’s Gran Chaco region — the first wild-born cub in the region following a rewilding program at El Impenetrable National Park led by conservation nonprofit Rewilding Argentina. Researchers had suspected a birth several months prior, finding paw prints and other indirect signs, but weren’t able to confirm the existence of the jaguar cub. On July 30, local guides spotted the cub with its mother, Nalá, who was released into the wild in August 2024. “It was a wonderful day for me,” Darío Soraire, one of the guides, said in a statement. “I had the incredible luck of seeing Nalá with her cub on the banks of the Bermejo River as I was navigating upstream. I saw them and was struck by their beauty.” Jaguars largely survive today in the Amazon Rainforest and the Brazilian Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, but historically had a much larger range. In Argentina, jaguars have lost more than 95% of their original range; today, an estimated 200-300 individuals remain in the country, clinging on in fragmented habitats. Before the rewilding program began in 2019, fewer than 10 jaguars, all of them male, were known to survive in the Argentine Gran Chaco. The last time a female jaguar was spotted in Argentina’s Gran Chaco was in 1990. Since then, three female jaguars have been reintroduced, Rewilding Argentina told Mongabay. “Wild jaguars are holding out in isolated pockets of northern Argentina, but they…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed

The greed of mining companies in their search for critical minerals in Brazil is threatening food production and the environment, particularly in the Amazon and northeast region states. This is what an investigation by the Mining Observatory reveals about the impact of mining requirements related to strategic substances on the energy transition in settlements established through agrarian reform in Brazil. The analysis identified 3,391 mining processes overlapping 1,432 areas demarcated by the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). These exploration interests cover 25 Brazilian states. Almost half of the mining projects aiming for strategic minerals that interfere with rural settlements are in the Brazilian Amazon region. In the nine states of the Brazilian Amazon, there are 1,765 mining projects overlapping 729 settlements. Pará leads the ranking nationwide, with 1,207 mining processes in 460 settlements. The northeast is the region with the second-highest number of mining processes that overlap rural settlements, accounting for 40% of the occurrences. Bahia (426 mining processes in 188 settlements) and Ceará (358 processes in 177 settlements) concentrate a large number of areas in conflict. In the southeast region, Minas Gerais stands out with 82 processes overlapping 37 settlements. Of the 3,391 mining processes impacting rural settlements that were approved by the National Mining Agency (ANM), 1,938 are at the research authorization stage and 694 are at the research application stage. At least 108 processes are at the mining application stage and 70 are at the mining concession stage. The research considered key substances for the energy…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed