| news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia |
|
The conservation ledger: What we lost and what we gained in 2025 (January 1, 2026) https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/the-ledger-what-we-lost-and-what-we-gained-in-2025/ - 2025 was a year shaped by both loss and persistence, marked by species formally declared extinct, hundreds of organisms newly described, and uneven conservation outcomes across forests, reefs, and the open ocean. - The year showed that extinction and discovery are rarely moments, but slow processes driven by delay, uncertainty, and institutional choices—often recognizing loss long after it occurs and naming life only as threats close in. - 2025 also revealed the human cost of environmental protection, through the lives of scientists, rangers, Indigenous leaders, and advocates whose endurance, rather than visibility, sustained ecosystems under pressure. - Rhett Ayers Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay, concludes that what was lost was not only species but time—and that what remains is proof the future is still shaped by policy, financing, enforcement, and whether protection is built to last. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Emma Johnston, a marine ecologist with institutional reach, has died at 52 (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/emma-johnston-a-marine-ecologist-with-institutional-reach-has-died-at-52/ - Emma Johnston, who died at 52 in December 2025, moved between marine science and university leadership, arguing that evidence matters only if it can be understood and acted upon beyond the laboratory. - Trained as a marine ecologist, she built influential research programs on human impacts in coastal ecosystems and became a prominent public advocate for science in an era of misinformation and political noise. - Her career expanded into national leadership roles, including president of Science & Technology Australia and senior research posts at UNSW and the University of Sydney, before she became vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne in 2025. - Though her tenure as vice-chancellor was brief, she pressed a strategy centered on resilience and education, leaving Australian science without a leader who could connect data, institutions, and public life with unusual clarity. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Deforestation climbs in Central America’s largest biosphere reserve (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/deforestation-climbs-in-central-americas-largest-biosphere-reserve/ - Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve has lost more than a third of its primary forest cover since the turn of the century. - 2024 marked the biggest year of deforestation, with 10% of Bosawás cleared in just one year. - Cattle ranching is among the top causes of forest loss, with outsiders encroaching into Bosawás to clear forest for pasture. - Indigenous advocates and residents say the loss of forest is threatening their way of life, and that they have faced violence due to encroachment. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Deep-sea ‘hotels’ reveal 20 new species hiding in Pacific Ocean twilight zone near Guam (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/deep-sea-hotels-reveal-20-new-species-hiding-in-oceans-twilight-zone/ - Scientists from the California Academy of Sciences retrieved 13 underwater monitoring structures from the deep reefs off the Pacific island of Guam, which have been gathering data there at depths up to 100 meters (330 feet). - The devices, called ARMS (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures), yielded 2,000 specimens, including 100 species never before recorded in the region and at least 20 species new to science. - Temperature sensors on the ARMS revealed that ocean warming is occurring even in the twilight zone. - The Guam expedition marks the start of a two-year effort to retrieve 76 ARMS from deep Pacific reefs to help protect these ecosystems from fishing, pollution and climate change. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Up close with Mexico’s fish-eating bats: Interview with researcher José Juan Flores Martínez (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/up-close-with-mexicos-fish-eating-bats-interview-with-researcher-jose-juan-flores-martinez/ - The fish-eating bat (Myotis vivesi) catches fish and crustaceans thanks to its long legs, hook-shaped claws and waterproof fur. - The species is found only on islands in Mexico’s Gulf of California; it’s considered endangered under Mexican law. - Invasive species such as cats and rats threaten the bats. - Researcher José Juan Flores Martínez has been studying fish-eating bats for more than 25 years, and discusses his fascination with the species and the threats it faces. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Mercury, dredges and crime: Illegal mining ravages Peru’s Nanay River (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/mercury-dredges-and-crime-illegal-mining-ravages-perus-nanay-river/ - Mongabay Latam flew over the basins of the Nanay and Napo rivers, in Peru’s Loreto region, and confirmed mining activity in this part of the Peruvian Amazon. - Environmental prosecutors say that there may be even more boats and mining machinery hidden in the ravines of both rivers. - During the flyover, authorities confirmed the use of not only dredges, but also of mining explosives, which they say destroy the riverbanks. - Almost 15,140 liters (4,000 gallons) of fuel have been confiscated from illegal mining networks around the Nanay River in the last two years, but authorities’ efforts seem insufficient. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Mongabay’s most popular stories of 2025 (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/mongabays-most-popular-stories-of-2025/ - In 2025, Mongabay published more than 7,300 stories across eight languages and expects to reach over 110 million unique readers, reflecting both the scale of its newsroom and the continued appetite for evidence-based environmental reporting. - Large audiences, however, are not a proxy for impact: stories traveled widely for many reasons, including timing, platform dynamics, and curiosity, with popularity often uneven and only loosely connected to depth or consequence. - Because Mongabay measures success by real-world outcomes rather than virality, the most-read articles should be seen as a snapshot of attention, not a ranking of importance, in an information environment shaped as much by chance as by substance. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
How are California’s birds faring amid ever more frequent wildfires? (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/how-are-californias-birds-faring-amid-ever-more-frequent-wildfires/ - Long-term research in California shows that many bird populations increase after wildfires and can remain more abundant in burned areas for decades, especially following moderate fires. - Although some bird species are adapted to fire and benefit from low to moderately severe blazes, megafires in California are becoming more frequent. - Megafires, scientists say, are unlikely to benefit most bird species and harm those that depend on old-growth forests. - Wildfire smoke poses a serious threat to birds’ health, with evidence linking heavy exposure to particulate matter in smoke to reduced activity, weight loss and, possibly, increased mortality. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Investor Dick Bradshaw took a long view of conservation (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/investor-richard-frederick-bradshaw-took-a-long-view-of-conservation/ - Conservation philanthropy often rewards urgency. - Dick Bradshaw took a longer view, funding research, fellowships, and land protection with an emphasis on permanence rather than campaigns. - His support helped steady conservation science in Canada by investing in people and institutions built to last. - Bradshaw died in December 2025. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Latin America in 2025: Conservation promises collide with crime and extraction (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/latin-america-in-2025-conservation-promises-collide-with-crime-and-extraction/ - Organized crime, the expansion of extractive industries and climate extremes intensified environmental pressures across Latin America in 2025, driving deforestation, biodiversity loss and growing risks to local communities. - Even as Latin America championed environmental protection internationally, wide gaps persisted in domestic enforcement of environmental regulations and prevention of environmental crimes. - Country trajectories diverged sharply, with Colombia showing relative international policy leadership, while Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador saw marked environmental deterioration amid political instability and extractivist pushback. - Looking toward 2026, experts warn that elections, fiscal constraints and security priorities could further erode environmental governance in Latin America. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Fish deformities expose ‘collapse’ of Xingu River’s pulse after construction of Belo Monte Dam (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/fish-deformities-expose-collapse-of-xingu-rivers-pulse-after-construction-of-belo-monte-dam/ - Independent monitoring has found a high prevalence of deformities in fish in the Volta Grande do Xingu area of the Brazilian Amazon, following the construction of the massive Belo Monte dam. - Potential factors could include changes in the river’s flood pulse, water pollution, higher water temperatures, and food scarcity, all linked to the reduced flow in this section of the Xingu since the dam began operating in 2016. - Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing the dam’s impact, alongside independent researchers, and at the recent COP30 climate summit warned of “ecosystem collapse.” - Both scientists and affected communities say the prescribed rate at which the dam operator is releasing water into the river is far too low to simulate its natural cycle, leaving the region’s flooded forests dry and exacerbating the effects of drought. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Road to recovery: Five stories of species staging a comeback (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/road-to-recovery-five-stories-of-species-staging-a-comeback/ Amid accelerating biodiversity loss and shrinking ecological spaces, it’s easy to lose hope. But every year, there are stories of optimism: of species that are making a comeback after being nearly wiped out. Here are five such species whose recovery Mongabay reported on in 2025: Cape vulture The Cape vulture (Gyps coprotheres), southern Africa’s largest vulture […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Mongabay’s investigative reporting won top environmental journalism awards in 2025 (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/mongabays-investigative-reporting-won-top-environmental-journalism-awards-in-2025/ In 2025, Mongabay’s investigative journalism earned international honors for stories exposing environmental crime, corruption, and abuse of both people and the environment. Mongabay journalists uncovered hidden public health risks, schemes to take advantage of Indigenous groups, and took personal risk traveling to underreported regions on nature’s frontlines. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes won first place in the […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Cyclone-ravaged Sri Lanka set to apply for ‘loss and damage’ funding (December 31, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/cyclone-ravaged-sri-lanka-set-to-apply-for-loss-and-damage-funding/ - In the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah’s devastating impact, Sri Lanka plans to apply for payment from the U.N.’s newly implemented loss and damage fund, designed specifically to help climate-vulnerable developing countries cope with severe, unavoidable climate change impacts. - Ditwah, a tropical cyclone that caused direct damage estimated at $4.1 billion, equivalent to about 4% of Sri Lanka’s GDP, hit infrastructure and livelihoods, while intangible losses such as impacts on social systems and ecosystem services remain harder to quantify. - Accessing the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will require rigorous climate attribution and institutional capacity, experts say, noting that Sri Lanka must scientifically demonstrate the extent of losses directly attributable to climate change and strengthen governance, legal frameworks and coordination to secure the funding. - The FRLD remains under-resourced, with an initial allocation of $250 million, far below the tens to hundreds of billions needed annually, prompting calls for quicker, direct funding mechanisms to support urgent rebuilding and climate resilience. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
A new frog species emerges from Peru’s cloud forests — and it’s already at risk (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-new-frog-species-emerges-from-perus-cloud-forests-and-its-already-at-risk/ - Local communities and scientists have discovered a new-to-science frog species, Oreobates shunkusacha, in the cloud forests of the Bosques de Vaquero Biocorridor, in the San Martín region of Peru. - Its name, Shunku Sacha, which in Kichwa-Lamista means “heart of the forest,” honors the local communities leading conservation work in the area. - In a study describing O. shunkusacha, researchers write that the species is likely endangered. - Over the past 40 years, the Lake Sauce sub-basin, where the frog lives, has lost nearly 60% of its forest cover, placing both the survival of the newly discovered species and the stability of this ecosystem at risk. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Indonesia closes 2025 with rising disasters and stalled environmental reform (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/indonesia-closes-2025-with-rising-disasters-and-stalled-environmental-reform/ - Deadly floods and landslides in Sumatra in late 2025 underscored how deforestation, weak spatial planning and extractive development have increased Indonesia’s vulnerability to extreme weather — problems scientists and activists say the government has largely failed to confront. - Forest loss surged nationwide in 2025, with Sumatra overtaking Borneo as the main deforestation hotspot, while large areas of forest in Papua were redesignated for food estates, agriculture and biofuel projects, raising concerns over carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. - Despite international pledges to phase out coal, national energy plans continued to lock in coal, gas and biomass co-firing for decades, while palm oil expansion and mining — including in sensitive areas like Raja Ampat — remained central to development strategy, often prompting action only after public pressure. - Civil society groups increasingly turned to lawsuits amid shrinking space for dissent, rising criminalization of Indigenous communities and activists, and growing militarization of land-use projects — trends campaigners warn are weakening democratic safeguards and environmental protections alike. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Tatiana Schlossberg, environmental journalist, has died, aged 35 (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/tatiana-schlossberg-environmental-journalist-has-died-aged-35/ - Tatiana Schlossberg was an environmental journalist who focused on how climate damage accumulates through systems most people rarely see, favoring explanation over exhortation in her reporting and writing. - Her work, including the book Inconspicuous Consumption, traced the environmental costs embedded in ordinary life, arguing that responsibility is shaped less by individual choices than by infrastructure and incentives. - In November 2025 she published an essay describing her terminal leukemia, diagnosed shortly after the birth of her second child, writing about illness with the same precision she brought to reporting. - Her final writing centered on interruption, care, and memory, including the knowledge that her children would grow up with only fragments of her presence. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Satellite data show forest loss persists in Brazilian Amazon’s most deforested reserve (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/satellite-data-show-forest-loss-persists-in-brazilian-amazons-most-deforested-reserve/ - Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area was established to protect a swath of the Amazon Rainforest from the cattle industry. - However, satellite data show the reserve has lost around 50% of its primary forest cover since it was created in 2006. - The data show forest loss peaked in 2024, and continued into 2025. - Research indicates rates of deforestation are higher in Triunfo do Xingu than in the unprotected areas around it. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
A small preserve leads a big effort to save native plants in the Bahamas (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-small-preserve-leads-a-big-effort-to-save-native-plants-in-the-bahamas/ - The Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve is a 12-hectare (30-acre) estate on Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, dedicated to conserving and educating people about the island-nation’s native plants. - Since 2009, resident botanist Ethan Freid has led a local restoration effort prioritizing native plants of the Bahamas’ subtropical dry forest ecosystem. - The Levy preserve also offers a summer internship for university students interested in environmental science and biology, which teaches them about native plant taxonomy — filling a generational knowledge gap. - Though small in scale, the project provides a haven for the Bahamas’ native plants; has a herbarium of plant specimens for research; and manages an online digital database of Caribbean plant species. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Rare bats at risk as iron ore mine advances in Guinea’s Nimba Mountains (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/rare-bats-at-risk-as-iron-ore-mine-advances-in-guineas-nimba-mountains/ - Guinea’s government is assessing the potential impacts of a mining project in the Nimba Mountains, in a biodiversity hotspot that has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site while being threatened by mining. - U.S. mining company Ivanhoe Atlantic recently submitted an environmental impact assessment for an iron ore mine at a site that is the only known home of two unique bat species, as well as critically endangered chimpanzees and threatened toads and frogs. - Conservationists say open-pit mining in this ecologically sensitive region could spell extinction for Lamotte’s roundleaf bat and the orange-furred Nimba Mountain bat if their forest habitat is disturbed for mine infrastructure. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Ditches on peatland oil palm plantations are an overlooked source of methane: Study (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/ditches-on-peatland-oil-palm-plantations-are-an-overlooked-source-of-methane-study/ - Ditches that drain peatlands for agriculture are significant but often-overlooked sources of greenhouse gases, including methane, according to a recent study. - Methane doesn’t last as long as CO2 in the atmosphere, but it is many times more potent in warming the climate. - The researchers analyzed emissions from ditches on two oil palm plantations in Malaysian Borneo and found that the ditches play an outsize role in the overall carbon emissions from converted peatlands. - Their findings underscore the need to account for emissions from these ditches to better understand the implications of draining peatlands. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Andy Mahler, advocate for public forests in America (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/andy-mahler-advocate-for-public-forests-in-america/ - Forest conservation in the eastern United States often depended on persistence rather than decisive victories, shaped by slow regulatory processes and fragmented governance that rewarded those willing to keep showing up after attention faded. - Out of this context grew a form of grassroots activism grounded in local knowledge and personal trust, skeptical of hierarchy and resistant to the idea that extractive outcomes were inevitable or natural. - Andy Mahler embodied that approach through decades of work protecting public forests, most notably as a central figure in Heartwood, a decentralized network built on sustained relationships rather than efficiency or scale. - He favored patient, place-based engagement over professionalized advocacy, believing that lasting protection came from continued involvement and shared responsibility rather than fixed outcomes or abstract measures. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
New species of jewel-babbler from Papua New Guinea may be endangered (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/new-species-of-jewel-babbler-from-papua-new-guinea-may-be-endangered/ Within a forested limestone landscape of Papua New Guinea lives a shy, striking bird that’s new to science. This bird is also incredibly rare and may already be endangered, according to a recent study. Researchers have photographed fewer than 10 individuals of the newly described hooded jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa urrissia) in about 10 years of monitoring […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Mongabay’s multimedia reporting wins international journalism prizes in 2025 (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/mongabays-multimedia-reporting-wins-international-journalism-prizes-in-2025/ In 2025, Mongabay’s team of multimedia journalists won international journalism prizes for audio, visual and digital storytelling. The content they produced range from an immersive audio series exploring bioacoustics, to a visually rich investigation into organized crime, and a video on reviving Indigenous culture. Mongabay strives to meet people where they are and make high-quality […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Most Watched Video Stories of 2025 (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/most-watched-video-stories-of-2025/ - This year, we told stories that show how people and communities are taking action for wildlife, ecosystems and climate. - We experimented with new formats and series, from Wild Targets to Conservation Entangled, making both long and short videos more engaging than ever. - Through global collaborations, including with the Associated Press and our first grant with One World Media, we expanded the reach and impact of our storytelling. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Elizabeth Erasito, custodian of Fiji’s parks and places (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/elizabeth-erasito-custodian-of-fijis-parks-and-places/ - Conservation in small island states is portrayed as a political and administrative challenge shaped by limited land, scarce resources, and external pressures, where development choices often carry irreversible consequences. - In Fiji, protected areas were expected to deliver conservation, public access, cultural continuity, and economic value at once, while facing storms, fires, invasive species, and illegal extraction with limited capacity. - Elizabeth Erasito’s career at the National Trust of Fiji centered on making protection work in practice, managing a modest but significant network of parks and heritage sites with an emphasis on monitoring and enforcement rather than expansion. - She argued that parks should remain accessible and grounded in everyday life, and that short-term development gains rarely justified long-term damage, valuing steady institutional endurance over visible triumphs. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Fishing ‘modernization’ leaves Tanzania’s small-scale crews struggling to stay afloat (December 30, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/fishing-modernization-leaves-tanzanias-small-scale-crews-struggling-to-stay-afloat/ - Tanzania’s boat modernization program aims to empower small-scale fishers with affordable, government-distributed vessels, but has instead left many struggling with unreliable vessels and unsustainable loans. - In Kilwa district, fishers say the boats they received were poorly equipped, costly to operate and prone to mechanical failure, forcing them to rent missing gear and spend more on fuel. - Mounting repayment pressure is driving some fishers toward illegal or risky fishing practices, undermining the project’s goal of promoting sustainability. - Experts warn that poor consultation, mismatched designs and a lack of community input threaten to turn Tanzania’s fisheries modernization plan into a long-term burden rather than a solution. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Southeast Asia’s 2025 marked by fatal floods, fossil fuel expansion and renewed mining boom (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/southeast-asias-2025-marked-by-fatal-floods-fossil-fuel-expansion-and-renewed-mining-boom/ - 2025 has been a year of global upheaval, and Southeast Asia was no exception, with massive disruption caused by changes in U.S. policy and the intensifying effects of climate change. - The region is poised at a crossroads, with plans to transition away from fossil fuels progressing unevenly, while at the same time a mining boom feeding the global energy transition threatens ecosystems and human health. - On the positive side, deforestation appears to be slowing in much of the region, new species continue to be described by science, and grassroots efforts yield conservation wins. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
A nuclear power plan exposes Kenya’s deeper land rights issues (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-nuclear-power-plan-exposes-kenyas-deeper-land-rights-issues/ - Across Kenya, millions of people living on community land remain legally vulnerable, as complex, costly and often obstructive processes prevent them from securing collective land titles under the Community Land Act. - Because untitled community land is treated as state property, county governments can lease or allocate it for large infrastructure and commercial projects, creating power imbalances and exposing communities to displacement with little say or legal protection. - In Uyombo, on Kenya’s southern coast, this systemic problem has resurfaced amid plans for the country’s first nuclear power plant, which residents say threaten their land, livelihoods and access to coastal ecosystems, and has proceeded without meaningful consultation. - The lack of formal land ownership also leaves communities uncertain about compensation, reinforcing fears that development projects can override local land rights — a pattern researchers say is rooted in colonial land policies and persists nationwide. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Top 10 Indigenous news stories that marked 2025 (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/top-10-indigenous-news-stories-that-marked-2025/ - Lack of progress on direct funding for Indigenous land rights, poor representation at climate talks, and intensifying mining pressure were central issues that affected Indigenous peoples in 2025 covered by Mongabay. - Our investigations revealed how communities were persuaded to sign over land rights for shady carbon deals, and how a high-profile operation to clear out illegal miners from Amazonian territories has barely made a dent. - We also covered more hopeful stories, highlighting the communities putting forward their own solutions, including women forest guardians in the Amazon, and micro-hydro development in mountainous Philippine villages unreached by the grid. - To end the year, here are Mongabay’s top 10 stories on Indigenous communities that marked 2025. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Photos: Top new species from 2025 (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/photos-top-new-species-from-2025/ - Scientists described several new species this past year, including a tiny marsupial, a Himalayan bat, an ancient tree, a giant manta ray, a bright blue butterfly and a fairy lantern, to name a few. - Experts estimate that fewer than 20% of Earth’s species have been documented by Western science, with potentially millions more unknown and unnamed. - Although such species may be new to science, many are already known to — and used by — local and Indigenous peoples, who often have given them traditional names. - Many new species are assessed as threatened with extinction as soon as they are found, highlighting the urgent need for conservation efforts. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
In California’s redwoods, scientists rebuild lost ecosystems high up in the canopy (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/in-californias-redwoods-scientists-rebuild-lost-ecosystems-high-up-in-the-canopy/ - Roughly 95% of California’s old-growth redwood forests have been logged at least once, leaving mostly young trees and making the overall ecosystem less diverse. - Fern mats — spongy masses of leather-leaf ferns and decomposed plant matter that build up high in the canopy — are an important part of that system, providing critical habitat for plants and animals in California’s redwood forests. - Now, a pilot project is trying to restore fern mats to the canopies of particularly robust redwood trees. - Scientists are finding that manually planting fern mats is also an effective buffer in a warming climate: they mitigate forest temperatures for salmon, birds and a host of other animals. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Amazon fishers help scientists map dam harms to Madeira River stocks (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/amazon-fishers-help-scientists-map-dam-harms-to-madeira-river-stocks/ - Having fishers as protagonists, a recent study disclosed unanswered details about the Amazon communities and fish species most affected by two Madeira River dams. - The dams limited the natural flow of the Madeira, disrupting the currents that fish need and causing up to a 90% reduction in stocks in some locations; species like pirarucu and tambaqui have largely disappeared from traditional fishing communities. - The research serves as evidence to support the decade-long legal battle by fishers in Humaitá who are seeking compensation for losses caused by power plants. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
George Teariki-Mataki Mateariki, the Birdman of Atiu, has died, aged 67 (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/george-teariki-mataki-mateariki-the-birdman-of-atiu-has-died-aged-67/ - In small island states, conservation often hinges on daily vigilance rather than formal institutions, where routine tasks like watching harbors and checking traps determine whether endemic species survive invasive threats. Such work is repetitive, underfunded, and easily overlooked, yet decisive. - In the Cook Islands, late-20th-century bird recoveries paired outside science with local enforcement, showing that plans mattered only insofar as they were sustained on the ground at airstrips, wharves, and forest edges. - George Teariki-Mataki Mateariki, known as Birdman George, embodied this approach by monitoring birds, trapping predators, and responding quickly to changes, helping establish Atiu as a refuge for the critically endangered kakerori and later the Rimatara lorikeet. - Through guiding visitors, sharing practical knowledge, and maintaining constant vigilance, he treated conservation as prevention rather than rescue, asking not for admiration but for attention, and making extinction less likely through persistence rather than spectacle. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
SE Asia’s smallholders struggling to meet EUDR: Interview with RECOFTC’s Martin Greijmans (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/se-asias-smallholders-struggling-to-meet-eudr-interview-with-recoftcs-martin-greijmans/ - The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is set to take effect at the end of 2026, after EU lawmakers voted to postpone its implementation for a second year. - The legislation aims to reduce commodity-driven deforestation and illegal trade in forest products by enabling companies importing into the EU to trace entire supply chains. - Experts say the increased oversight is a vital step to reduce the footprint of EU consumption on forests, but caution that many smallholders across Southeast Asia need more support to prepare for compliance, especially on land documentation and geolocation data. - Without appropriate technical, financial and governance support, observers warn, the new rules could sideline smallholders or push them into less regulated markets, deepening already existing inequities. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Fights against development projects marks 2025 for Nepal’s Indigenous people (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/fights-against-development-projects-marks-2025-for-nepals-indigenous-people/ - From protests to court rulings, for Nepal’s Indigenous peoples and local communities, 2025 was marked by activism and struggles to secure their forests, land and territories from infrastructure projects. - As threats from hydropower, cable cars and mining projects increased, communities lost touch with their forest, lands and sacred connection with nature, which impacted biodiversity conservation. - However, communities pushed legal action against these projects that operated without FPIC, community consultation, environmental regulation and safeguards. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
From ‘extinct’ to growing, a rare snail returns to the wild in Australia (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/from-extinct-to-growing-a-rare-snail-returns-to-the-wild-in-australia/ Rarely do species presumed extinct reappear with renewed hope for a better future. But researchers in Australia not only discovered a wild population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail on Australia’s Norfolk Island in 2020 — they’ve now bred the snail in captivity and recently released more than 300 individuals back into the wild, where they’re multiplying. […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Striking ‘red gold’ with saffron farming in Algeria: Interview with Keltouma Adouane (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/striking-red-gold-with-saffron-farming-in-algeria-interview-with-keltouma-adouane/ - Farmers in Béjaïa, on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast, have been affected by drought in recent years, depressing their harvests and discouraging them from investing in expansion. - In 2018, Keltouma Adouane bought a kilo of crocus saffron corms; experts doubted they would thrive in Béjaïa’s coastal climate, but she succeeded in growing them and now sells a range of saffron products to local buyers. - She is working with other women in this province, where agricultural income has stagnated, to develop cultivation and marketing of this valuable crop. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
How Mongabay’s journalism made an impact in 2025 (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/how-mongabays-journalism-made-an-impact-in-2025/ The guiding star at Mongabay isn’t pageviews or clicks; it’s meaningful impact. As 2025 draws to a close, we look back at some of the ways Mongabay’s journalism made a difference this year. Empowering Indigenous and local communities A Mongabay Latam investigation found 67 illegal airstrips were cut into the Peruvian Amazon to transport drugs, […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
On Indonesia’s longest river, a Borneo community passes crucial public health milestone (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/on-indonesias-longest-river-a-borneo-community-passes-crucial-public-health-milestone/ - Sekadau is the largest settlement in a district of the same name on Indonesia’s longest river, the Kapuas River in Borneo. - Historically, Sekadau has recorded higher rates of acute illness that local authorities suggested may be attributable to the widespread practice of open defecation in the river, a public health menace that exacts a range of costs from economic productivity to child stunting. - This year, the district of Sekadau announced it had eliminated open defecation from all 94 villages in the district of 211,559 people, thanks in part to a campaign to build affordable toilets. - Data collected by local authorities showed instances of ill health have declined swiftly over the last decade. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Beyond human loss, floods from Cyclone Ditwah devastate Sri Lanka’s wildlife (December 29, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/beyond-human-loss-floods-from-cyclone-ditwah-devastate-sri-lankas-wildlife/ - Cyclone Ditwah caused extensive flooding across several protected areas in Sri Lanka in late November and early December, resulting in mass deaths of deer and other wildlife that perished largely unreported. - Wildlife officers rescued several stranded elephant calves separated from their herds, including around five still dependent on milk, with fears that more may have perished. - Floodwaters destroyed roughly 860 kilometers (534 miles) of electric fencing, about one-sixth of the national total, raising the risk of human-elephant conflict in affected regions. - Floods also drove venomous snakes into residential areas, prompting wildlife officers and volunteers to carry out urgent rescue operations. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
15 forces that could reshape conservation in the next 10 years (December 28, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/15-forces-that-could-reshape-conservation-in-the-next-10-years/ - A recent horizon scan led by William J. Sutherland shifts conservation thinking away from visible damage toward emerging developments that could shape biodiversity outcomes over the next decade, even if they have not yet hardened into crises. - The fifteen issues identified span technology, climate, biology, and finance, with a particular emphasis on computational advances that could expand monitoring and modeling while also narrowing what can later be revisited or challenged. - Alongside technological change, the scan highlights physical, institutional, and biophysical pressures, from drone-related plastic pollution and new forest finance mechanisms to drying soils, darkening oceans, and abrupt shifts in the Southern Ocean. - The authors also situate these risks against two background constraints already underway—eroding environmental data systems and tightening conservation finance—and, looking back ten years, argue that the value of horizon scanning lies less in prediction than in improving preparedness before change becomes costly. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Brigitte Bardot, who turned fame into a lifelong fight for animals (December 28, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/brigitte-bardot-who-turned-fame-into-a-lifelong-fight-for-animals/ - In a period when animal protection was often dismissed in public debate as sentimental or marginal, Brigitte Bardot used the force of her celebrity to insist that cruelty toward animals, especially wildlife, was a serious moral and political issue. - She redirected her fame toward sustained campaigns against practices such as the commercial seal hunt, whaling, fur trapping, and bullfighting, arguing bluntly that wild animals were among the most defenseless victims of modern economic systems. - By formalizing her activism through the Fondation Brigitte Bardot and maintaining an uncompromising public stance long after leaving cinema, she treated wildlife protection not as a gesture or phase, but as a permanent measure of society’s restraint. - Bardot died on December 28, 2025 in Saint-Tropez, France. She was 91. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
A ‘national pride’ highway meets Indigenous resistance in ancient Nepali settlements (December 28, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-national-pride-highway-meets-indigenous-resistance-in-ancient-nepali-town/ - Nepal’s Indigenous Newa communities in Khokana and Bungamati are resisting the Kathmandu–Terai Fast Track expressway, which would cut through their ancestral lands, threatening livelihoods, settlements and cultural identity rooted in centuries-old traditions. - The government promotes the highway as a “national pride” project to boost connectivity and economic growth, but locals say it was pushed forward without meaningful consultation and dismisses Indigenous rights and heritage. - Resistance is fueled not only by the highway but by fears that it will trigger a cascade of additional infrastructure projects, including an outer ring road, Bagmati Corridor road expansion, transmission lines, a railway line, and a planned satellite city. - Community members stress their fight is not about compensation but survival, arguing that money cannot replace their land, culture and civilization, and warning that the expressway would permanently erase their Indigenous way of life. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Clark Lungren and the case for compromise in conservation (December 28, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/clark-lungren-and-the-case-for-compromise-in-conservation/ - Clark Lungren spent most of his life in Burkina Faso, where he worked on conservation not as an external intervention but as a local, becoming a naturalized citizen and embedding himself in village life. His authority came less from formal credentials than from long familiarity with people and place. - He was best known for his role in the recovery of the Nazinga area, where wildlife rebounded after communities were granted controlled hunting rights in exchange for protection. The arrangement, initially dismissed by many experts, proved durable. - Lungren argued consistently that conservation would only last if it aligned with local governance and incentives, a view reflected in community-managed hunting zones and buffer areas around protected lands. He favored workable compromises over strict orthodoxy. - Active well into his seventies, he continued training, research, and advocacy through a demonstration farm near Ouagadougou. The systems he helped build persisted in a region where many conservation efforts were short-lived. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Joann Andrews, a patient force behind Yucatán’s protected landscapes (December 27, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/joann-andrews-a-patient-force-behind-yucatans-protected-landscapes/ - Joann Andrews helped professionalize conservation on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, treating it less as romance than as practical work: building institutions, securing funding, and negotiating the political and social realities of protecting land. She died on December 22, 2025, in Mérida at 96. - After arriving in Yucatán in 1964 and losing her husband to cancer in 1971, she chose to remain in Mexico with six children, a decision that tied her future to the region’s environmental fate. Her background in political science, international economics, and a decade in the U.S. diplomatic service shaped a style that was disciplined and unsentimental. - She began with logistics for archaeological research but became a serious orchid student, contributing to early documentation of Yucatán’s orchid diversity and publishing on the subject; an orchid species, Lophiaris andrewsiae, was named in her honor. Her scientific curiosity later broadened into full-time environmental work. - In 1987 she co-founded Pronatura Península de Yucatán, which became a leading conservation organization in the region, and she helped launch the Toh Bird Festival to broaden support for nature protection. She emphasized youth engagement and warned that conservation would always require persuading people and managing development pressure, not just celebrating nature. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Sri Lanka looks to build disaster-resilient housing after devastating cyclone (December 27, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/sri-lanka-looks-to-build-disaster-resilient-housing-after-devastating-cyclone/ - More than 1,200 landslides were recorded in two provinces in Sri Lanka following Cyclone Ditwah in late November, resulting in crisis evacuations to safeguard vulnerable populations. - Most of the disaster-impacted people continue to live in high-risk regions due to the lack of alternative housing. - The country’s mandated institution for landslide risk management, the National Building and Research Organisation (NBRO), says it’s working on the first national building code to establish minimum standards for the design, construction and maintenance of hazard-resilient housing. - Following the significant loss of lives and homes in the recent disaster, the NBRO is also introducing specific types of housing models suitable for flat and sloped terrains. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Jay M. Savage, witness to disappearing frogs and builder of tropical science (December 27, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/jay-m-savage-witness-to-disappearing-frogs-and-builder-of-tropical-science/ - In the late 1980s, Jay M. Savage was among the first to recognize that amphibian declines in protected cloud forests were not isolated anomalies but part of a broader, global pattern that defied familiar explanations. - His long career combined meticulous field science with institutional foresight, including foundational work in Central American herpetology and a central role in building the Organization for Tropical Studies as a durable base for tropical research and training. - Savage treated institution-building and mentorship as integral to science itself, quietly supporting generations of students while insisting on continuity, rigor, and collaboration over spectacle or quick results. - He approached extinction not as tragedy alone but as evidence with consequences, attentive to what disappears as much as what remains, and to the slow signals detected by those who return often enough to notice absence. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Year-end ‘good news’ as flat-headed cats reappear in Thailand after 29-year absence (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/year-end-good-news-as-flat-headed-cats-reappear-in-thailand-after-29-year-absence/ - Camera traps in Thailand’s Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary picked up 13 flat-headed cat records in 2024 and 16 more earlier this year. - The last confirmed sighting of the species in Thailand was in 1995; across its range, which includes Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra, about 2,500 flat-headed cats are thought to survive. - Elusive, nocturnal and semiaquatic, flat-headed cats are notoriously difficult to study, but conservationists say they hope their rediscovery in Thailand will galvanize interest in the species. - Conservationists also call for increased protection of the peat swamp forest where the population has been found, noting the risk of trafficking that might accompany the announcement of the rediscovery. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Kristina Gjerde, defender of the deep ocean, has died (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/kristina-maria-gjerde/ - Much of the global ocean lies beyond national borders, where governance long lagged behind industrial expansion and responsibility thinned with distance from shore. - Kristina Maria Gjerde helped reframe that problem as one of law and institutions, combining science, legal craft, and persistence to make protection of the high seas politically workable. - Over two decades, she built and sustained coalitions that turned scattered warnings about deep-sea damage into a binding international framework. - That effort culminated in the 2023 High Seas Treaty, an agreement whose force lies less in sudden ambition than in the accumulation of careful, patient work. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
The year in rainforests 2025: Deforestation fell; the risks did not (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-year-in-rainforests-2025-deforestation-fell-the-risks-did-not/ - This analysis explores key storylines, examining the political, environmental, and economic dynamics shaping tropical rainforests in 2025, with attention to how policy, markets, and climate stress increasingly interact rather than operate in isolation. - Across major forest regions, deforestation slowed in some places but degradation, fire, conflict, and legacy damage continued to erode forest health, often in ways that standard metrics fail to capture. - Global responses remained uneven: conservation finance shifted toward fiscal and market-based tools, climate diplomacy deferred hard decisions, and enforcement outcomes depended heavily on institutional capacity and credibility rather than formal commitments alone. - Taken together, the year showed that forest outcomes now hinge less on single interventions than on whether governments and institutions can sustain continuity—of funding, governance, science, and oversight—under mounting environmental and political strain. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Africa mulls gap in climate adaptation finance for agriculture (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/africa-mulls-gap-in-climate-adaptation-finance-for-agriculture/ - Agricultural adaptation in Africa is underfunded and smallholder farmers remain highly vulnerable to climate shocks despite in international funding pledges, say African stakeholders. - They call for increased adaptation funding for the agricultural sector, but are skeptical that other countries will fill the shortfall. - Climate finance is concentrated in a few countries and largely excludes the most vulnerable nations, leaving farmers with limited access to funds for climate-smart practices. - Stakeholders call for public financing, better early-warning systems, loss-and-damage support, and the implementation of climate-smart agriculture. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Record fossil fuel emissions in 2025 despite renewables buildout, report says (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/record-fossil-fuel-emissions-in-2025-despite-renewables-buildout-report-says/ Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are projected to reach a record 38.1 billion metric tons in 2025, an increase of 1.1% from 2024, according to the 2025 Global Carbon Budget. The report, now in its 20th edition, was released Nov. 13 as a preprint. It compiles national energy and emissions data from […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Declared extinct in 2025: A look back at some of the species we lost (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/declared-extinct-in-2025-a-look-back-at-some-of-the-species-weve-lost/ Some species officially bid us farewell this year. They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the global authority on species’ conservation status. We may never see another individual of these species ever again. Or will we? Slender-billed curlew This […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
‘The bargain of the century’: An economist’s vision for expanding clean energy access in Africa (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-bargain-of-the-century-an-economists-vision-for-expanding-clean-energy-access-in-africa/ - The recent U.N. climate conference (COP30) in Brazil resulted in the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) to bring about a just energy transition that embraces renewable energy and expands access to power. - But details on how the transition will be accomplished remain elusive. - Economist Fadhel Kaboub contends that the transition should not reinforce existing inequalities in Africa and other parts of the Global South. - Kaboub sees an opportunity in the energy transition to remedy those power imbalances, which he calls “the bargain of the century.” | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Stuart Brooks, peat protector, has died (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/stuart-brooks-conservationist-of-unfashionable-landscapes/ - Stuart Brooks was part of a small group of conservationists who helped shift peatlands from the margins of environmental policy to a recognized priority for climate, biodiversity, and land management. His influence came through persistence rather than spectacle. - Trained as a geographer, he built practical expertise in peatland ecology early in his career and helped consolidate it into guidance that became standard for restoration work in the UK and beyond. - In senior roles at the Scottish Wildlife Trust, the John Muir Trust, and the National Trust for Scotland, he worked to align conservation practice with public policy, often arguing for approaches that respected natural processes over intervention. - As a founder and chair of the IUCN UK Peatland Program, he translated specialist knowledge into institutions, strategies, and protections that continue to shape peatland restoration at national and international levels. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Conservation wins in 2025 that pushed us closer to the 30×30 goal (December 26, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/conservation-wins-in-2025-that-pushed-us-closer-to-the-30x30-goal/ The “30 by 30” biodiversity target to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and ocean by 2030 is fast approaching — and the world is far off the pace needed for success: Less than 10% of oceans and just 17.6% of land and inland waters enjoy some sort of protection. Still, 2025 saw some […] | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
10 notable books on conservation and the environment published in 2025 (December 25, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/10-notable-books-on-conservation-and-the-environment-published-in-2025/ - As challenging as 2025 has been for conservation and environmental issues, the dogged struggle to address the crises we face remains a central focus for scientists, activists and communities around the globe. - Their stories hold the promise of a brighter future in the years to come. - The list below features a sample of important literature on conservation and the environment published this year. - Inclusion in this list does not imply Mongabay’s endorsement of a book’s content; the views in the books are those of the authors and not necessarily of Mongabay. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
Tell Hicks, reptile artist (December 25, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/tell-hicks-reptile-artist/ - Tell Hicks helped bring reptiles and amphibians into serious artistic view, treating snakes, lizards, and turtles as subjects worthy of close, unsentimental attention rather than symbols or curiosities. His paintings emphasized accuracy, individuality, and restraint. - Largely self-taught, he traveled widely and worked directly from field observation, developing meticulous techniques in egg tempera and later fast-drying oils to support highly detailed work, often produced in public settings. - He became a central figure in herpetological communities in Britain and the United States, helping found the International Herpetological Society, serving as its president, and contributing artwork that circulated through museums, shows, and educational spaces. - After a life-altering accident left him paralyzed, he adapted his practice and returned to painting, continuing to attend reptile shows and engage with the community that had long formed around his work. | |
| Check Twitter | |
|
France’s largest rewilding project (December 25, 2025) https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/frances-largest-rewilding-project/ Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. He has spent much of his life in the shadow of the Dauphiné Alps in southeastern France, where limestone cliffs catch the morning light and the silhouettes of horned ibex move across the ridgelines. To Fabien Quétier, who […] | |
| Check Twitter | |