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Many thousands of human-made chemicals and synthetic pollutants are circulating throughout our world, with new ones entering production all the time — so many, in fact, that scientists now say we’ve crossed a critical threshold that heightens the risk of…

Animals that eat fruit and spread the seeds in their droppings offer an all-inclusive transportation service for half the world’s flora. But as more seed-dispersing birds and mammals die off globally, some of these plant species will lose their ability to…

Pesticides have been dropped from planes and even helicopters with the aim of evading IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, for years as a method to clear remote and hard-to-reach areas of the Amazon rainforest. That practice — used more frequently…

For Africa, 2021 was the third-warmest year on record, tied with 2019. Even as the continent clocks record-breaking temperatures, adaptation efforts are failing to keep pace, marred by planning gaps and financing woes. Just six years ago, the continent, like…

Activists in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, say they fear logging will ramp up following the state government’s decision to overturn a ban on exporting unprocessed timber. The ban was imposed by the previous government in May 2018, with the aim of creating job…

When we routinely flush a toilet, the waste is hurled away so quickly that most of us don’t give it a second thought. But that waste, despite our inclination to dismiss its existence, does not in fact, vanish. The disappearance of our waste down the toilet…

According to communications consultant Meindert Brouwer, author of Central African Forests Forever, there are still opportunities to save the Central African — or Congo Basin — rainforest. Brouwer’s 216-page, 17-chapter book is an update of a book by the…

Tiger conservationists in Thailand are reeling following the recent killing of two tigers in Thong Pha Phum National Park. Authorities confiscated the two carcasses and are investigating the incident and possible links to the illegal wildlife trade. The two…

For several weeks in 2015, the sound of chainsaws cutting down trees was incessant in the Angangueo municipality in the Mexican state of Michoacán. When a group of people tried to stop the deforestation, it was already too late: 10 hectares (25 acres) of…

COLOMBO — At his home in Thimbirigasyaya, a highly residential area in the heart of Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo, Eshan Tudawe keeps expensive Japanese koi fish, a species of carp (Cyprinus rubrofuscus), in a pond. But to his dismay, these fish…

KATHMANDU — Stuffed garbage bags float gently down the Bisnumati River in the western part of Kathmandu. The river, sacred to Nepal’s Hindu and Buddhist populations, is one of the main waterways running through the Kathmandu Valley. Brownish water empties…

Biologist Sofía Zalazar wasn’t born yet the last time a bare-faced curassow was seen in the Iberá forests in Argentina. The bird began disappearing from the wild in the 1970s, surviving only in small populations in forest areas in the provinces of Chaco…

When scientists described the Popa langur (Trachypithecus popa) as a species new to science in 2020, it was already staring extinction in the face. Fewer than 260 of the fluffy gray leaf-eating monkeys are estimated to remain across four precariously isolated…

The ocean is now warmer than it’s ever been in recent history, according to a new study. And this isn’t the first time such a record has been set. For the past six years, ocean temperatures have exceeded each previous year in a trend one scientist calls…

For the uninitiated, the first mouthful of the Hawaiian red algae known as limu kohu (Asparagopsis taxiformis) may be an unpleasant one: intensely iodine-rich and bitter, with all the marine intensity of an oyster but none of its sweetness. O‘ahu resident…

Chamela-Cuixmala sits in the western corner of Mexico, where one of the best-studied dry tropical forests continues to serve as a refuge for at-risk species like the jaguar. The story of the area’s conservation begins at the end of the 1970s, when a…

PUTUMAYO, Colombia — When Jonh Jairo Mueses-Cisneros was approached by leadership at Corpoamazonia about turning Colombia’s southwestern department of Putumayo into a bird-watching hotspot more than 10 years ago, he was skeptical. To begin with, he was a…

Once the epicenter of the global trade in gold, illegal mining is once again surging across the Amazon. Its extraction and trade is not only fueling corruption, money laundering and criminal violence – it is accelerating deforestation in the world’s…

On Dec. 9, the Ugandan parliament passed a bill allowing the controversial East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) to proceed. Construction can now begin according to the agreement signed between French oil giant TotalEnergies and the Ugandan government. The…

“Ecuador is proud to announce the creation of the Hermandad Marine Reserve in the coming days,” the country’s president declares in an opinion piece shared with Mongabay. His country had initially announced the expansion of the marine reserve encircling…