Video: Romania’s deadly fight against illegal logging
For thousands of years, Romania’s forests have played a central role in shaping its dramatic history. Over the centuries, large swathes of this precious ecosystem have made way for empires,…
Conservation Technology News
Wildtech provides news and information on how the conservation community can better leverage technology. Mongabay is a non-profit.
An eye in the sky on deforestation: Q&A with Jean Jardeleza and Kim Carlson
Though other stories might have dominated the headlines, 2020 was a year of tremendous change in land use and land cover. Massive fires burned across Australia, the Amazon, and the…
How to turn climate ambitions into reality: Q&A with Nigel Topping
2020 was supposed to be a landmark year for taking stock on climate and biodiversity commitments and determining how societies move forward to address the world's most pressing problems. Instead,…
How to transform systems: Q&A with WRI’s Andrew Steer
Between the pandemic, rising food insecurity and poverty, and catastrophic disasters like wildfires, storms and droughts, 2020 was a year of challenges that prompted widespread calls for systemic change in…
Top positive environmental stories from 2020
All told, this was a pretty bleak year. The COVID-19 pandemic brought tragedy and confusion; fires razed parts of Australia, the Amazon, and the Western U.S.; and the world is…
Bold sustainability commitments: An interview with Microsoft’s Lucas Joppa
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been the year of the climate commitment, with a number of companies and governments announcing plans to reduce carbon emissions by a specified level…
To save life on Earth, consult this new map
Reversing biodiversity loss, halting climate change and even preventing the emergence of new pandemics may seem like isolated objectives, but they are not. A group of scientists set out to…
Clean up efforts won’t solve the plastic pollution crisis in the world’s seas
The Ocean Cleanup is a highly touted nonprofit with the ambitious goal of cleaning up 90 percent of the ocean’s plastic. In reality, the initiative’s impact on the world's floating…
Podcast: Lemur love and award-winning plant passion in Madagascar
Madagascar is known for its lemurs, and we’ve got some recordings of Madagascar’s most famous fauna to listen to on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast. But today we’re looking…
As energy needs drive demand for minerals, forests face greater threats
Mining and deforestation go hand in hand, with impacts that include displacement of species and pollution of water sources. A 2012 study attributed only 7% of global forest loss to…
Whale zone ahead: A cetacean speed trap tags ships going over the limit
The CMA CGM Brazil, a huge cargo freighter carrying more than 15,000 containers, powered through the Atlantic Ocean, headed for New York City. North of Nantucket, it entered what’s known…
Where to patrol next: ‘Netflix’ of ranger AI serves up poaching predictions
On a humid morning in 2019, Lily Xu watched as a patrolling ranger driving a motorbike down a remote forest road in Cambodia signaled his group to stop and pull…
Esri co-founder Jack Dangermond: ‘People and planet are inextricably linked’
Today, maps are a critical part of nearly all place-based conservation efforts. Maps enable scientists and conservation practitioners to identify where they operate, allocate resources, organize and present data, and…
A mountain of a reef, taller than the Eiffel Tower, found on Great Barrier Reef
Researchers have just made a remarkable discovery in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia. While mapping the seafloor off the coast of far north Queensland state, scientists onboard…
The turtle egg that pinged back: Tracing a poaching pathway in Costa Rica
Early on the morning of Sept. 16, 2018, an olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) hauled herself out of the ocean along a beach on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. Moving…
The rhino in the room: 3D scan brings near-extinct Sumatran species to virtual life
Lured with watermelon, Harapan, a 13-year-old captive Sumatran rhino moseyed into a metal-framed enclosure rigged with 24 cameras. When he stepped in front of the lenses, all of the cameras…
Madagascar experiments with drones for its massive reforestation effort
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — To achieve its ambitious large-scale reforestation goals, Madagascar is turning to the sky. The country will use drones to plant trees in isolated areas. The plan is…
The social network of coral reef fish: Q&A with ecologist Mike Gil
Unless you’re thinking of the colorful characters in the movie Finding Nemo, the first word you think of for coral reef fish is probably not “social.” But after spending a…
With the help of an app, Nunavut hunters document the changing Arctic
It’s fall in Nunavut, Canada, and Richard Kakk is hunting caribou. Snow that started in September has placed him in a landscape of white, broken only by the ice-crusted slate…
Podcast: Can the planet support a clean energy transition?
On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we look at whether or not mining is compatible with the clean energy revolution. Listen here: In order to rein in global climate…
Don’t cross this tiger mom: Close encounter in Russia’s Far East
On Sept. 15, Aleksandr Rybin was checking a camera trap in Russia’s Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve when something red and long-tailed darted in the bushes in front of him. “A thought…
New partnership brings high-resolution satellite imagery of the tropics to all
Satellites are powerful tools for monitoring deforestation. Now, a new partnership aims to make high-resolution, satellite imagery of the tropics free and accessible to everyone. Norway's Ministry of Climate and…
New artificial intelligence could save both elephant and human lives
When the elephant arrived in the night, on the hunt for sugarcane, Uthorn Kanthong was waiting for him. Like many of his neighbors, the 69-year-old Thai farmer had taken to…
Philippine wildlife reporting app promises to upgrade fight against trafficking
MANILA — In the Philippines, it’s normal for neighbors to share their food, and — since most areas are still under a form of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic…
For the Amazon’s rarest wild dog, deforestation is a very real threat
It’s a warm May morning in 2015, and beneath a chorus of birds and insects, a small gray-brown dog plops down in front of a camera perched in the Amazon…
Indigenous-led technology solutions can boost biodiversity and ensure human rights (commentary)
Over recent years there have been high profile legal challenges, investigative articles in the media, and important reports on the relationship between conservationists and Indigenous peoples. In the latest of…
App harnesses citizen power to keep tabs on Philippines’ coral reefs
MANILA — On June 8, an evidence of coral bleaching in a colony of corals was captured by diver and bleach patroller Dina Mae Rañises in Taklong Island National Marine…
Bubbles, lasers and robo-bees: The blossoming industry of artificial pollination
In an episode of the Netflix dystopian sci-fi show “Black Mirror,” artificial bees have been deployed to pollinate the world’s plants after a massive pollinator extinction. A great idea, until…
Study: Chinese ‘dark fleets’ illegally defying sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters
Chinese “dark fleets” illegally fished a $440 million haul of the squid species Todarodes pacificus in North Korean waters during 2017 and 2018, according to a study published today in…
Using technology, indigenous monitors in the Amazon combat environmental crime
In 2006, when the first large environmental monitoring project began in the Peruvian Amazon, its objective was not to uncover new environmental crimes in the forest. Instead, the project was…
