Mongabay

KATHMANDU — A Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) found in the Karnali River in western Nepal marks the species’ northernmost record in the country, offering hope for range expansion but raising concerns about its long-term conservation. As the animal was found…

Back in 2010, Peru and Brazil signed an energy agreement that included the construction of several hydroelectric power plants in the Peruvian Amazon, which were meant to provide power to neighboring Brazil. One of the projects, the Pakitzapango dam, planned in…

In the Tang dynasty, Chinese merchants began buying rice on credit with a system that relied on trust and trade to sidestep the authorities — and taxes — to deliver goods immediately. In China it’s called, feiqian, and across the Middle East and South…

In a significant blow to wildlife trafficking, Nigerian authorities recently seized 2 metric tons of pangolin scales, worth tens of thousands of dollars on the black market, and arrested a suspect believed to be a key broker, according to a recent Mongabay…

U.S. canned tuna producer Bumble Bee Foods has asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that it knowingly benefited from its suppliers’ use of forced labor by Indonesian workers. Earlier this year, four Indonesian men filed a complaint in federal court in…

Scientists have warned that extreme rains could become more common in eastern Australia, following heavy downpours from May 19-23 that caused widespread flooding, claimed five lives and left some 50,000 people stranded. The warning is based on a recent rapid…

Dozens of people are reported dead amid torrential rains over the past week in India’s northeastern region, local media reported. The most heavily affected states are Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. In Assam, more than 640,000 people have been affected as the…

Bowhead whales are endemic to the icy waters of the Arctic and prefer living in shallow waters near sea ice, filtering krill and tiny crustaceans called copepods for food. However, the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth, and a recent study…

A eucalyptus boom in Brazil’s biodiverse Cerrado savanna is drying up land and water springs, making subsistence farming more difficult, local authorities and farmers tell Mongabay. Adilso Cruz, a 46-year-old rancher from the Alecrim settlement in Mato…

In 2008, the United Nations recognized June 8 as World Oceans Day to spotlight the rising vulnerabilities facing the oceans that cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface. Seventeen years later, average ocean temperatures have never been higher. Heat stress has…

On June 17, five months before Brazil hosts the COP30 climate summit in November, ANP, Brazil’s federal agency for oil and biofuels, will offer 332 areas to companies interested in prospecting for oil and gas. Media and civil society have been focusing on 47…

The EIA is an integral (high-profile) component of regulatory process that has evolved over the last couple of decades to extend ‘upstream’ into the planning process and ‘downstream’ into the licensing procedure, so that the state (and civil society)…

This May, divers found stony coral tissue loss disease on corals in Laughing Bird Caye National Park, Belize, for the first time. The team from Fragments of Hope, a nonprofit, regularly monitors the site. A month previously there had been no sign at all of the…

Herpetology has long navigated through tangled terrain in Papua New Guinea, where species mislabeling and sparse sampling have clouded scientific understanding. But a recent revision has brought rare clarity—and four unexpected discoveries, reports Akhyari…

On May 19, the head of IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, overrode the technical opinion of the agency’s licensing department and issued a decision allowing proposed oil drilling in the FZA-M-59 drilling block in the mouth of the Amazon River to…

Banks in Latin America are under increasing pressure to develop financial policies that support the transition to a greener economy. Emerging regulations are targeting industries tied to carbon emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss — but many banks…

Sending scuba divers down to survey corals is time-consuming and expensive. In recent years, scientists have developed other methods to determine what kinds of corals are down there just by collecting water samples, sometimes right from the surface. These rely…

Before 1988, Brazil had no contingency plans for unexpected encounters with Indigenous peoples living in isolation. If government officials, developers or explorers accidentally stumbled upon a camp, the protocol was to make contact — a move that can upend…

Fires raged across the Amazon rainforest, annihilating more than 4.6 million hectares of primary tropical forest—the most biodiverse and carbon-dense type of forest on Earth. That loss, which is larger than the size of Denmark, was more than twice the annual…

At least 200 people have been confirmed dead and 500 more remain missing after flash floods devastated a Nigerian market town, media reported. Torrential rain started early on May 29, and within just a few hours caused intense flooding in the town of Mokwa,…