Researchers in Thailand have used archived camera-trapping data to identify a stronghold for Asian tapirs in the Khlong Saeng–Khao Sok Forest Complex, a lush network of protected areas in the…
Conservation has never lacked ideas. Protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, community management, certification schemes, and public campaigns have all been promoted as solutions to biodiversity loss. What has…
The production of food continues to eat its way into the world's tropical forests. Agricultural expansion drives nearly 90% of global deforestation, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of…
OJUELEGBA, Nigeria — On the bustling streets of this central Lagos neighborhood, it’s easy to buy a drink. Hawkers weave between buses and motorcycles with wheelbarrows of bottled water and…
Rainfall is often treated as a gift of geography — a function of latitude, oceans, and atmospheric circulation. A growing body of research suggests that in the tropics, it is…
Brazil’s latest satellite alerts indicate that deforestation in the Amazon has continued to fall into early 2026, extending a downward trend that began after a sharp rise earlier in the…
A deceptively simple question underlies many global environmental policies: where, exactly, are the world’s forests? A new study suggests the answer depends heavily on which map one consults—and that the…
For decades, a dominant argument for protecting forests has focused on carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, store it in wood and soils, and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. A…
In Manchester this week, governments endorsed a report that tries to do something business has long resisted: treat biodiversity as economically material. The new assessment from the Intergovernmental Platform on…
The focus of experts in global security tends to orbit familiar threats. War in Europe and the Middle East. Trade disruption and financial volatility. Technology shocks and threats to information integrity. But the most…
For farmers, sometimes the easiest way to save a crop or prevent catastrophic insect damage is to spray a pesticide. But this common practice is wreaking havoc on the soil,…
Word that the Washington Post would be cutting roughly one-third of its staff spread quickly this week. Among those affected were at least a dozen reporters, editors, and visual journalists…
Chimpanzees appear to be the biggest daredevils when they're infants. Humans tend to take more chances and put themselves in the most danger in adolescence, so the expectation has been…
North Atlantic long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas) now have 60% lower concentrations of some legacy PFAS than they did a decade ago, offering rare good news about the effectiveness of…
Britain’s national security thinking has traditionally been shaped by familiar concerns: hostile states, terrorism, energy supply, and, more recently, cyber threats. A new assessment from the U.K. government adds a…
Division was four years old when he died, a young age even by the shortened standards now applied to North Atlantic right whales. His body was found in late…
Mongabay recently launched the Australian Biodiversity Special Reporting Project, which will produce sustained, high-quality journalism on Australia’s unique wildlife, ecosystems, and the threats they face—including habitat destruction, invasive species, climate…
Brazil is the world’s most biodiverse country, and the title is not closely contested in absolute numbers: between 10% and 15% of all known species live within its borders.…
For much of South America’s history, the arrival of a missionary has carried two reputations at once. One is charitable: a figure with medicine, schooling, and a language of human…
For most of modern history, the open ocean has been treated as a place apart. Beyond the 200-nautical-mile limits of national jurisdiction, it was governed by custom, fragmented rules, and…
In most forests, a visitor’s eye is trained on what can be reached. The trunk can be measured. The leaves can be plucked. A specimen can be pressed, labeled, and…
For most of modern history, the open ocean has been treated as a place apart. Beyond the 200-nautical-mile limits of national jurisdiction, it was governed by custom, fragmented rules, and…
Doug McConnell spent much of his adult life doing something that sounds simple and is not: he helped people look closely at the places where they lived. For decades he…
Glaciers are often treated as scenic features or scientific curiosities. In fact, they are critical infrastructure. Though they cover roughly a tenth of the Earth’s land surface, meltwater from glaciers…
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…
Conservation often presents itself as a technical enterprise: how much land to protect, which species to prioritize, what policies deliver results. A recent paper in Nature argues that this framing…
It was 27 December 2004. I was sitting at my computer in my office in Jakarta, Indonesia, my mind busy with plans for the New Year party I had organized…
CAPE TOWN — Western leopard toads have been listed as endangered since 2016. Andrew Turner, scientific manager for CapeNature, the government body that manages protected areas and conservation in South…
In India, arguments about nature are often treated as friction in the path of progress. Madhav Gadgil insisted they were arguments about power: who gets to decide what happens to…
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…
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…
