Mongabay · Page 64

KATHMANDU — The year 2024 marked two years since Nepal announced the near tripling of its wild Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) population as part of the 2010 global initiative to save the big cats. Nepal was home to 121 tigers in 2010, the same year…

In 2022, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared that the “lifeline of renewable energy can steer [the] world out of climate crisis.” In saying so, he echoed a popular and tantalizing idea: that, if we hurry, we can erase the climate emergency…

It was another busy year for Mongabay’s podcast team, featuring many fresh interviews, a new season of the Mongabay Explores series, an award, and its first year featuring a two-person co-host team at the microphone. With more than 40 episodes published,…

Amid Myanmar’s ongoing civil war, Karen and other ethnic minority communities have officially launched the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park, a new community-led conservation area in the northern Kayin state. The launch lasted December 10-12, 2024. Organizers…

ALIAĞA, Türkiye — Every day, as dusk settles over the Aegean Sea, small vans ferrying workers homeward bustle in and out of Aliağa, a town nestled against lush, forested hills in the western İzmir province of Türkiye, formerly known as Turkey. Stepping…

On Dec. 6, Iceland’s caretaker government announced it had issued five-year licenses to hunt fin and minke whales in Icelandic waters. It granted the fin whale hunting license to Hvalur hf., the country’s only remaining fin-whaling company, run by…

On June 13, 1959, the Watha hunter Galogalo Kafonde surrendered himself to colonial Kenya’s “Field Force,” Africa’s first militarized antipoaching unit. For centuries, the ethnic Watha had hunted elephants. Killing one was a rite of passage; unlike…

JAKARTA — At the U.N. climate conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, the Indonesian government announced an ambitious plan to reforest 12.7 million hectares (31.4 million acres) of degraded land, an area 80 times the size of London. The government framed…

The spade-toothed whale is among the rarest and least-studied of whales. Until recently, only six records of the species existed, collected over the past 150 years. In early December, scientists and Indigenous Māori cultural experts in Aotearoa New Zealand…

It’s been a century since an onager or Asiatic wild ass was last seen in Saudi Arabia. But in April this year, seven onagers were relocated from neighboring Jordan into one of Saudi Arabia’s nature reserves. One of the onagers has even birthed a female…

When a massive coral colony was recently discovered in the Solomon Islands, it was believed to be the largest in the world. Then last week, scientists found an even bigger one in the waters off the Indonesian island of Bali.  Coral restoration nonprofit Ocean…

ENGGANO ISLAND, Indonesia — Milson Kaitora’s grandparents never had trouble finding water to grow food here on Enggano Island. But today, coastal abrasion is pushing back the shoreline of Milson’s village, and the dearth of freshwater has reduced the…

The world’s top court has finished hearing its largest-ever climate change case. For the first time, 96 countries and 11 international organizations presented their cases before the U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) from Dec. 2-13, arguing about…

In 2023, at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, the Brazilian government proposed a new funding mechanism to help tropical nations keep their forests standing. They called it the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), and its incentive is relatively simple:…

Brazil has passed a law to cap on greenhouse gas emissions from companies and set up a nationwide system to trade carbon credits. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the landmark bill Dec. 12. “The main goal of the law is to position Brazil as a…

In recent years, there has been an enormous increase in awareness about the importance of rainforests to global ecosystems and economies. Meanwhile, another biome – one that covers more than half of the Earth’s terrestrial surface and is similarly…

In Cabo Verde, as in many low-income countries in Africa, the historical record of fish catch is incomplete, making it hard to know what’s been lost and what’s required to fully rebuild. In a new study, researchers used an old-fashioned workaround to…

A new study has concluded that the decline in Grauer’s gorillas in a sector of their main stronghold in the Democratic Republic of Congo was the result of the impacts of armed conflict, rather than the presence or absence of Indigenous communities. With the…

ESQUIPULAS, Guatemala — An estimated 8 million migrants have entered the U.S. during the Biden administration, the highest number in centuries. Many still come from the so-called Northern Triangle, made up of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, as they seek…

Yaounde – African youths have adopted “The Yaounde African call on more than doubling Adaptation Finance for a Resilient Africa,” calling for a large raise in the share of adaptation finance in the overall climate finance portfolio to match the needs and…