Mongabay · Page 33

Half a million barrels of toxic waste lurking beneath the waves just miles from California’s coastline sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller. Yet this environmental catastrophe is real, as documented in the award-winning film Out of Plain Sight,…

ALTAMIRA, Brazil — Bartolomeu Moraes, better known as Brasília, was a peasant leader and trade unionist in Brazil involved in a long, bloody land war. In 2002, he was killed after years of opposing powerful local ranchers along the BR-163 highway area,…

For a plant, life in Argentina’s Monte Desert is hard enough. Daily temperatures can fluctuate dramatically; it rarely rains, and there are few nutrients in the parched soil for a hungry plant. To add to their struggles: Across this desert, a long history of…

Three young conservationists were recently named winners of the 2025 Future For Nature (FFN) Awards for their initiatives to conserve amphibians, pangolins and Andean wildlife. The winners will each receive 50,000 euros ($54,000), FFN said in a statement.…

COLOMBO — Monkeys were expected to be among the chief culprits identified as Sri Lanka carried out a nationwide survey on March 15 of crop-raiding animals. But in a small village near the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an unusual…

On March 13, U.S federal Judge James Bredar issued an order requiring the Trump administration reinstate thousands of probationary federal employees recently fired as part of government downsizing. The reinstatement order applies across 18 agencies including…

OLEMBÉ, Cameroon — About 10 kilometers (6.3 miles) north of the Cameroon capital of Yaoundé, local members of the Yanda community say the construction of a stadium has resulted in the clearing of their ancestral forest, depriving roughly 600 people — 52…

Conservation authorities and groups, along with Māori people, recently established a new population of the critically endangered kākāriki karaka, or orange-fronted parakeet, on a New Zealand island. Thirty-four kākāriki karaka (Cyanoramphus malherbi),…

After more than a decade studying California ground squirrels, Jennifer Smith felt she had a solid understanding of their behavior. Then, in the summer of 2024, her students spotted something she never expected: one of the squirrels chased, killed and ate a…

Unusually heavy rainfall struck southern Botswana and eastern South Africa from Feb. 16-20, flooding cities and killing at least 31 people. In Botswana, the government said nearly 5,500 people were affected, and more than 2,000 people evacuated. A new rapid…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Walhi, has filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, accusing 47 companies of environmental destruction and corruption. The companies, which operate in industries like palm oil, mining…

A moving coming-of-age story of two Kenyan teenagers brought together in friendship by a murder, the documentary film Searching for Amani opens a window into complex tensions between conservationists, crop-growing farmers and pastoralists in Kenya as extreme…

In the rainforests of West Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, the Indigenous Dayak Iban listen to what they call “omen birds,” or birds they say sing messages from spirits, Mongabay’s Sonam Lama Hyolmo reported in November 2024. These omen birds include…

A study in the United States found a dramatic 22% decline in butterfly populations between 2000 and 2020. Previous research has focused on a specific butterfly species or regions of the country. For this study, researchers wanted to understand overall…

CORUMBAÍBA, Brazil — The hoary fox (Lycalopex vetulus) is a small canid found only in Brazil. Although commonly seen running across the open grasslands of the Brazilian Cerrado, surprisingly little is known about the species. Researchers Fernanda Cavalcanti…

The tropics are celebrated as hotspots of biological diversity and renowned as supply houses for food, fiber and pharmacies. They also harbor linguistic diversity, a proxy for cultural diversity, critical to people’s health, well-being and identity. Embedded…

At this point in history, the hubristic belief that people are above nature has allowed humans to bring immeasurable change to the natural systems that all of life depends upon for survival. The documentary A Life Among Elephants — a collaboration between…

For more than 10 years, researchers, civil society and community members and government officials in Ghana worked to create the West African nation’s first marine protected area (MPA). In January, the newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly froze…

Rosie knows the Lighthouse Reef Atoll like the back of her fin. She calls this atoll home and is a matriarch of the thriving population of Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus perezi) living there. Her signature scar on her dorsal fin makes her easy to identify…

JAKARTA — A renewed plan by the Indonesian government to turn coal into gas or liquid fuel forms has received mounting backlash from climate experts who say it will be ecologically and economically disastrous. The coal gasification proposal was among the…