‘Mermaids’ dive to study and protect Mexican fishing grounds
Esmeralda Albañez used to be afraid of the sea. Just thinking about it would conjure up images of darkness, of how deep and unknown it was to her. Coming from…
Citizen Science News
Celestún refuge fights illegal fishing & helps revive species in Mexico’s Yucatán
A decade ago, the overfishing of sea cucumber (Isostichopus badionotus) was the center of controversy in Celestún, a small community in the state of Yucatán, Mexico. Extraction of the coveted…
Bats & bees help ni-Vanuatu predict storms — but will climate change interfere?
Weeks before Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Harold loomed over the Vanuatu islands in 2020, Indigenous ni-Vanuatu people received nature’s warning call. Locals secured their thatched roofs and baked taro and…
How a fun women’s gathering led to small wildcat conservation in Peru’s Andes
Ida Auris Arango remembers the day in 2023 when she stumbled upon the Andean cat and its young on the mountainside. While shepherding her alpacas, she heard her dog barking…
Hong Kong as a reef fish haven? These scientists want to get the word out
Kamy Yeung said she wanted to do more scuba diving. So in 2014, she signed up to be a volunteer diver for a newly launched reef fish survey project in…
Small, secretive & highly venomous snake seen for first time in Nepal’s hills
KATHMANDU – In July 2022, Tujin Rai, an undergraduate biology student, saw a dead snake outside his home in Dhankuta in Nepal’s eastern hills. He was curious to identify it.…
In eastern Indonesia, a child adventurer discovers a new giant stick insect
KUPANG, Indonesia — In March 2021, Davis Marthin Damaledo set out on foot accompanied by his father, Dantje, to pursue his childhood fascination with the natural world around his home…
Study: Women, youths can be more effective at driving sustainable farming changes
JAKARTA — A new study has shown that farmers who aren’t traditionally perceived as having the most social and cultural power in their community can be more effective at convincing…
Q&A with Whitley Award winner Sonam Tashi Lama
KATHMANDU — Nepali conservationist Sonam Tashi Lama from the Red Panda Network is one of the six global conservation leaders to win this year’s prestigious Whitley Awards, which carries a…
Amateur naturalists deserve more support and fewer barriers (commentary)
It may be a straw man argument to suggest a distinction between an amateur and professional naturalist (a word that may still mean something). "Natural history" was once like history…
Bird-counting app kindles interest in Nepal’s rich avian life
KATHMANDU — Hundreds of bird lovers in Nepal, who would otherwise have been enjoying the spring weather visiting the various bird-watching sites around the country, stayed home in the second…
Camera trap study shows conservation efforts ‘are working’ on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula: Video
After she collected a set of camera traps from the ridgeline above Corcovado National Park, conservation biologist Eleanor Flatt said that scientists, staff, and tourists all huddled around her computer…
Despite deals, plans and bans, the Mediterranean is awash in plastic
MARSEILLE, France — Pascal Hagmann lowered a manta trawl — a ray-shaped, metal device with a wide mouth and a fine-meshed net — off the side of his sailboat and…
Women on storm-hit Philippine island lead Indigenous effort to restore mangroves
Almost eight years after Typhoon Haiyan barreled into Busuanga Island in the western Philippines, the lesson it left is still etched in the mind of village leader Annabel Dela Cruz.…
Scientists describe new tree frog in push to catalog Indonesia’s amphibians
On a clear night in 2017, a team of students from Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) set out into a lowland forest on the southwest coast of Java, Indonesia’s most…
Sri Lanka’s budding biologists get their science on with iNaturalist
COLOMBO — Sixteen-year-old Pasindu Dilshan from Padukka, a small town in Sri Lanka’s Western province, has always been fascinated by the study of nature. When the COVID-19 lockdown left him…
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…
‘Our life is plasticized’: New research shows microplastics in our food, water, air
In 1997, Charles Moore was sailing a catamaran from Hawaii to California when he and his crew got stuck in windless waters in the North Pacific Ocean. As they motored…
Think you’ve seen a mermaid? This Sri Lankan scientist sets the record straight
COLOMBO — Legend has it that a group of pygmy hominids known as Nittaewo — meaning “long clawed” in the local language — lived in Sri Lanka up until the…
Overworked, underpaid and lonely: Conservationists find a new community online
Last year, Jessie Panazzolo, like many young conservationists (and some middle-aged ones too), didn’t so much feel her career had stalled as that it had been cut out by the…
A celebratory kind of revolution: Peruvian villagers hold a bird festival (commentary)
They left at five o’clock in the morning and traveled all day, sitting in their dugout canoes called peke-peke under the punishing tropical heat — all to attend a meeting.…
Facebook and Instagram posts help locate pygmy seahorses in Taiwan
Pygmy seahorses are fascinating animals. These tiny, colorful seahorses measure less than an inch (2.7 centimeters) and match their body colors and textures to those of the vibrant corals they…
‘Fantastic grandmothers’ snorkel, help uncover large sea snake population
A group of seven women in their 60s and 70s, who call themselves “the fantastic grandmothers,” have helped uncover a surprisingly large population of venomous sea snakes in the waters…
“Part of something bigger”: the social movement around New Zealand’s Predator-Free 2050 goal
In Whāingaroa/Raglan on New Zealand’s (NZ’s) west coast, trapping for introduced mammals that prey on endangered native birds is something of a competitive sport. Karioi Project, a local conservation NGO…
Volunteers find bones of new species of extinct heron at Florida fossil site
In November 2017, two volunteers assisting researchers of the Florida Museum of Natural History dig through a large excavation site in North Florida unearthed the bones of a bird. Those…
Models, maps, and citizen scientists working to save the Great Barrier Reef
Any aquarist who has tried to grow a variety of the colorful Acropora coral in a hobby tank knows how delicate they are – “not for beginners.” And yet this…
Trekking the boreal forest for biodiversity (insider)
Near the Arctic Circle in late summer 2011, I waited at a petrol station on the outskirts of a large tract of Sweden’s boreal forest. My Volvo had completely cooled…
Combining artificial intelligence and citizen science to improve wildlife surveys
A research team testing the capacity of both citizen scientists and machine learning algorithms to help survey the annual wildebeest migration in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania found that both…
Latam Eco Review: Scandal rocks famed Easter Island park and a freshwater crab discovery
Scandal surrounds indigenous management of a major Easter Island protected area, a newly described freshwater crab species in Colombia, declines in Central America’s peccaries, and a man who can recognize…
Top camera trapping stories of 2018
Everyone loves camera trap photos. Remotely installed cameras triggered by motion or heat of a passing person or animal, have helped research projects document the occurrence of species or describe…
10 ways conservation tech shifted into auto in 2018
You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of…
Drone 3D models help assess risk of turtle nesting beaches to sea level rise
After months of fasting as she traveled hundreds of kilometers across the ocean, a female loggerhead sea turtle hauls herself up onto the sand: the shoreline she has returned to…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- In Brazil’s Amazon, land invasions — and fires — threaten a protected reserve
- A Guatemalan reserve turns from civil war refuge to deforestation hotspot
- Narco activity takes heavy toll on Colombia’s protected forests, satellite data show
- Photos confirm narcotraffickers operating in Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Reserve
Oceans
- Plan for close season rings alarm bells for Liberia’s artisanal fishers
- Lab-grown corals resisted bleaching during Caribbean’s worst marine heat wave
- Six months after first Houthi ship sinking, attacks slick Red Sea with oil
- $35m debt-for-nature deal aims to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- In the DRC, a government commission is taking funds owed to people relocated by mines
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
- Can nations ever get artisanal gold mining right?
Endangered Environmentalists
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
- Mongabay video screening at Chile’s Supreme Court expected to help landmark verdict in Brazil
- Indonesian activist freed in hate speech case after flagging illegal shrimp farms
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
- To build its ‘green’ capital city, Indonesia runs a road through a biodiverse forest
