A journey into Nepal’s Limi Valley is always profound. We at the Himalayan Wolves Project first visited the area more than a decade ago and were immediately struck by its…
The sun is already sharp against the terraced slopes, the scent of thyme and rosemary rising from the rocky ground. Dry wind whistles through esparto grass, and somewhere in the…
The forest in northern Gabon didn’t look like a battleground. It was a patchwork of hunting trails and village paths, home to fruit trees and ancestral graves. When a…
The gorilla should have vanished. In the late 1980s, the mountain gorilla clung to survival in the misted borderlands of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Poaching,…
Despite concerted efforts to control illegal wildlife trafficking globally, more than 13 million items of wildlife parts were seized and reported in 162 countries in just the last seven years,…
“Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people’s property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant.…
In 2013, a small group of Brazilian forestry engineers ecologists, and other scientists formed a special operations unit. Known as the Grupo de Especialização de Fiscalização (GEF), the unit operates…
The Białowieża Forest is unparalleled in the world. It harbors the best-preserved fragments of lowland deciduous and mixed forests in the European Lowlands, where natural processes, including all stages of…
I write this while waiting for my tablet to die. Tomorrow, I’ll return to air-conditioning, stable WiFi and refrigeration, but here in Long Moh, deep in the remote Upper Baram…
A year ago, deep in the heart of the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland, the lifeless body of Gaia, a jaguar known and loved by conservationists, was found charred…
You don’t need safari experience to understand the allure: spotting majestic wildlife in sweeping landscapes is inherently captivating, and it’s the reason this type of adventure travel has stood the…
In June 2023, after nearly two decades of negotiations, the international community adopted the “Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and…
On July 15, Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA) and the Ministry of Transportation reached an “accord” for licensing the notorious BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway reconstruction project. The…
The deep sea, the planet’s most expansive and least understood ecosystem, remains largely unexplored. Yet while the deep sea may seem a dark and distant space, events underwater directly impact…
Corvus splendens — Corvus meaning ‘raven’ in Latin and splendens meaning ‘shining’ or ‘brilliance’ — is a fitting name for the strikingly intelligent birds that house crows are. Crows have…
Recently, a listener to Mongabay’s podcast sent us an email thanking us for our work and asking, “how can you keep going?” amid all the systems at play that are…
Language shapes the way we view our world. In the field of wildlife conservation, even very subtle word choices drive peoples’ perceptions around individual species or situations. These word choices…
For decades, environmental, social and governance systems have focused on stopping harm before it happens. Standards, certification schemes and corporate sustainability policies have all aimed to deter destruction, especially in…
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining employs more than 15 million people globally and generates a fifth of global gold supplies. It supports 100 million people indirectly, more than any other…
Having receded by 350 million hectares (almost 865 million acres) since 1850, trends in Latin American forests are now inflecting away from further losses of tree-covered habitats and toward their…
On July 17, 2025, Royal Manas National Park, Bhutan’s oldest protected area, posted on its Facebook page: “Wild Friends Aren’t Always Friendly.” The message referred to a midnight incident in…
A recent study in the US, UK, and Australia showed that referring to the terms “climate change” or “global warming” did not affect whether people accepted what the science tells us—that…
Cambodia’s Indigenous peoples have a deep relationship to forests, land and natural resources, which they traditionally manage in their cultural practices and everyday lives. There are 22 distinct Indigenous communities…
For millennia, Indigenous peoples have cultivated diverse, adaptive and evolving food systems, rooted in deep relationships with land, water and ecosystems. Their traditional knowledge embeds agroecological principles, emphasizing balance with…
Despite being the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal — more than elephants, rhinos and tigers combined — pangolins remain virtually unknown to the public. These shy, scaly creatures are primarily…
Our vibrant nation of the Philippines is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. Subject to tropical cyclones, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, it ranks number one globally on…
In the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, local communities are leading the charge against environmental crime — and they’re succeeding. Our new peer-reviewed study published in Conservation Biology has found…
These are turbulent times for the global economy and multilateralism. Uncertainty lies at every turn, yet for Antigua and Barbuda — and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like ours…
While supporting conservation research in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental with teams from the U.S.-based Columbia University and San Diego Zoo Global, I assisted in work involving the endangered thick-billed parrot.…
Conservation is often framed as a scientific or technical challenge — a matter of policies, protected areas and enforcement. But that lens has led conservation astray. Around the world, biodiversity…
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was silent while the “bill of devastation” (formally PL 2159/2021) moved through the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, and passed…
On July 1, 2025, the reassessment of Swedish hydropower plants will resume under the framework of its national plan – a necessary and long-delayed effort. Swedish rivers are heavily impacted…
