Mongabay · Page 73

Agriculture and nature are closely intertwined, with millions of farmers around the world relying on nature-based activities as their source of livelihoods. Yet the adverse impacts of agriculture on the environment, climate, and biodiversity cannot be…

Large-scale monoculture plantations have devastated tropical forests worldwide, but a recent study finds that creating islands of native trees can be a way to restore biodiversity on degraded lands. The Indonesian island of Sumatra is one of the most…

YAOUNDE – In Cameroon, home to one of the largest forest massif in Africa, the production of charcoal is a growing threat to the environment. To combat this, Steve Djeutchou transforms organic waste, such as banana peels, into ecological charcoal, or…

BOUGAINVILLE, Papua New Guinea — The climate is changing, science shows. And according to some estimates, it could create anywhere between 200 million and 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050. As people flee floods, failed harvests, dried rivers or destroyed…

India’s government organization dedicated to developing technologies for exploring and harnessing ocean resources has been exploring parts of the Indian Ocean for the last few years. In October, the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) conducted a…

Bottlenose dolphins leapt and torpedoed through the shallow turquoise waters off Florida’s Sarasota Bay. Then, a research team moved in, quickly corralling the small pod in a large net. With the speed of a race car pit crew, veterinarians, biologists and…

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Mohammad Monir, a fish vendor from Khilgaon in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, was arranging a new batch of pabda fish (Ompok pabda) in his tray. Due to the high demand for the fish, his first batch had sold out quickly. Every evening, he…

For decades, the slender-billed curlew, a grayish-brown migratory wetland bird with a long, arched bill, has evaded detection, prompting speculation about whether the species is still out there. Now, a new study has confirmed that the species is indeed most…

Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve comprises more than 2,640 square kilometers (1,020 square miles) of semi-arid forest and tropical savannah in the heart of southern Bolivia’s Chiquitania region. However, this protected area and surrounding habitat…

Certain minerals and elements, including cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel, are crucial for the manufacture of renewable energy technologies, including electric vehicles and solar panels. However, the extraction and processing of those minerals often takes…

Negotiators at the ongoing U.N. climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, have adopted a controversial provision on carbon trading that critics say will enable rich countries and companies to simply pay to continue emitting. The adoption of Article 6 from the Paris…

The last wild Round Island hurricane palm, a rare tree native to Mauritius, snapped during a windstorm in mid-September, marking its extinction.  Once thriving on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, the tree had stood alone for decades as the only survivor of…

COLOMBO — Environmental activists in Sri Lanka are celebrating the end of a 2020 decree that left the island’s nonprotected forests more vulnerable to agriculture and development projects. “This is a landmark victory for the protection of these important…

Emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas several times more potent than carbon dioxide, increased at record-high rates between 2020 and 2022. A new study suggests that rather than fossil fuels, microbes were responsible for this recent methane surge. Until the…

At last month’s United Nations biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, the Brazilian delegation proposed an ambitious program: Under its newly revised initiative to restore native ecosystems, it would reforest 12 million hectares of land — about 30 million…

The task at hand was nothing short of grueling.  In the depths of the Amazon Rainforest earlier this year, it was a mad scramble as six teams deployed cutting-edge technology to survey a 100-hectare (250-acre) plot of the forest within 24 hours. The only…

ULLAPOOL, U.K. — The fish float on the surface by the dozen, their bellies pointing toward the still-dark sky of the early morning. We are peering into a cage of an intensive Atlantic salmon farm, owned by the Norwegian multinational Mowi, in Upper Loch…

In the forest’s fecund gloom, José Muchavisoy leads the guardians of the territory as they scan the undergrowth for trails left by their target. Strangely splayed paw prints, dung among the leaf litter and mud wallows where the creature cooled off during…

Camera-trap surveys have documented a sizeable but struggling population of Sumatran tigers clinging on in unprotected forests in Indonesia’s Aceh province. The study is the most robust evidence to date of the presence of the critically endangered big cats…

KATHMANDU — Nepal is home to a diversity of butterfly species, with more than 676 identified. More than two dozen species and subspecies have been found to be endemic to Nepal. Despite this, research on butterflies in Nepal is still in its nascent stage,…