After years of uneven progress, deforestation in Indonesia is poised to accelerate, owing to widespread logging, expanding plantations and mining. In December, Indonesia’s forestry minister, Raja Juli Antoni, indicated the…
Myanmar is a country of extremes. From tropical forests, mangroves and wetlands to frost-bitten alpine mountain slopes and jagged limestone karst outcrops, it’s home to tremendous botanical diversity. Orchids alone…
Over the past year, scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the U.K., officially named 125 plants and 65 fungi. The new-to-science species include a parasitic fungus that turns…
A massive Amazonian fish yields the unique and once overlooked leather prized by luxury brands and Texas cowboys.
There are around 60,000 known tree species in the world, and they can do amazing things: store carbon, provide people with food and firewood, shelter creatures big and small, and…
Between 2000 and 2023, more than 6,000 African primates were traded internationally in 50 countries, according to a newly published report. Endangered chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and critically endangered western gorillas…
Why Mongabay is reporting on California’s biodiversity Mongabay’s coverage of biodiversity has long been associated with tropical forests and far-flung frontiers. Yet California—wealthy, populous, and intensively studied—presents a different…
At the end of 2024, the Azores stood as a beacon of hope and a global leader in ocean conservation, having created the largest network of marine protected areas (MPAs)…
More than 145,000 African forest elephants roam the rainforests of Africa, according to a recent population assessment. Published in December by the African Elephant Specialist Group at the IUCN, the…
The death of a well-known wild animal is an odd kind of news. It is intimate, because so many people feel they have met the creature through photographs and video.…
Extinction is rarely a moment. It is a process that unfolds offstage, marked by missed sightings, thinning records, and the slow reassignment of hope to footnotes. Discovery, too, is rarely…
Universities like to present themselves as durable institutions. They outlast governments, ride out recessions, and take pride in the slow accumulation of knowledge. In Australia, that confidence has been tested…
A transparent goby fish drifted through the darkness, its skeleton visible through paper-thin skin. Nearby, a sea slug wore yellow polka dots like a party dress, while an orange fish…
MEXICO CITY — Throughout 2025, Latin America remained a battleground between efforts to conserve some of the world’s most valuable ecosystems and mounting pressure from organized crime and legal extractive…
On Feb. 17, 2016, the gears ground into life at the massive Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, on the “Large Curve” of the Xingu River, or Volta Grande do Xingu, in…
ELEUTHERA, Bahamas — Tucked away beside the main road that runs along Eleuthera, a narrow island in the Bahamas, the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve holds 12 hectares (30 acres)…
In 2018, researchers from Bat Conservation International, Cameroon's University of Maroua and the American Museum of Natural History entered abandoned mining tunnels in Guinea’s Nimba Mountains as part of an…
BANGKOK — 2025 saw global conservation plunged into chaos, with an estimated $500 million in funding from the United States government abruptly slashed after Donald Trump returned to office. The…
The world still holds its secrets. Hidden under wet rocks, in the ocean's twilight crevices, and in the minutiae of the genetic code are creatures unknown and unnamed by the…
In small island states, conservation has often depended less on formal institutions than on vigilance: watching harbors, checking traps, noticing what does not belong. The work is repetitive, practical, and…
Smallholders produce significant quantities of Vietnam’s coffee, Indonesia’s palm oil, and Thailand’s rubber exported into the EU. Yet under the bloc’s upcoming deforestation-free regulation (EUDR), industry experts say small-scale producers…
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka continues to grapple with the human toll of Cyclone Ditwah, which triggered devastating floods and landslides killing 650 people and leaving another 200 missing. In the…
Conservation debates are usually framed by damage already visible. Forests are cleared, fisheries decline, protected areas invaded, and budgets cut. Developments that have not yet hardened into crises tend to…
KHOKANA — For generations, Manhera Shrestha’s family has cultivated the same ancestral land in Khokana, an ancient settlement perched on the southern edge of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. Life here has…
The history of conservation in West Africa is often written as a record of loss: wildlife depleted, institutions stretched thin, and well-intended projects undone by conflict or poverty. Less often…
In the late 1980s, something began to go wrong in places that were supposed to be safe. Protected cloud forests, buffered from chainsaws and bulldozers, started losing animals that had…
Flat-headed cats haven’t gone extinct in Thailand after all. A population is clinging on in the peat swamp forests of Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary, in the country’s south, after eluding…
The story of the world’s tropical forests in 2025 was not one of dramatic reversal, but one shaped by accumulated pressure. In several regions, deforestation slowed. In others, loss continued…
2025 was a key year for ocean policymaking, marking the midway point in the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The past 12 months brought landslide multilateral wins…
BONTHE, Sierra Leone — On the island of Sherbro in Sierra Leone, as in much of the country, there’s limited access to vital services needed to make ends meet. “Here…
A Mongabay investigation that revealed Brazilian state-run institutions bulk-buying shark meat for public schools, hospitals and prisons has won second place in the national category of the 67th ARI/Banrisul Journalism…
NAWALPUR, Nepal — At 75, Hasta Bahadur Sathighare Magar says he still remembers the time when the slopes above his village in the rural municipality of Rupsekot, in central Nepal,…
