This is the second article in a three-part series. Read Part One and Part Three. PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — In 2017, an elephant in Cambodia’s Kirium National Park was electrocuted…
This is the first article in a three-part series. Read Part Two and Part Three. PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — “I was detained for a night, the authorities had come to…
MEDAN, Indonesia — A politician arrested on charges of bribery last month in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province was also found to be keeping several rare animals as as illegal pets,…
This is the second in a two-part series. Read Part One. Palm oil, a popular cooking oil as well as an ingredient in an ocean of products ranging from cookies to cosmetics,…
This is the first in a two-part series. Read Part Two. San Javier de Cachaví is a small village of some 120 families in Ecuador near the Colombian border. The…
A February U.N. meeting will address the urgent need for a treaty to control plastics pollution, but whether the forthcoming draft agreement will regulate global plastics supply chains from cradle to grave, or be limited to protecting oceans, is unknown.
Vast quantities of tropical hardwood from deforestation hotspots around the world continue to enter Vietnam, in spite of new regulations to clean up supply chains. In 2018, the country signed…
The second episode in the New Guinea series of Mongabay Explores covers the struggles faced by Indigenous communities in Papua New Guinea to protect their customary land rights, and one…
JAKARTA — Indonesia has recorded mixed progress in its dual programs of restoring tropical peatlands and mangroves, acknowledging that achieving the latter goal will be far more challenging than for…
Botanist Álvaro Pérez didn’t expect to discover a new species of magnolia while hiking through Ecuador’s Canandé Reserve. He said it was the enormous, unique fruit that tipped him off.…
After reaching a historic low, the population of monarch butterflies overwintering in California has increased a hundredfold, according to the annual Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count. More than 247,000 butterflies were…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This month we’re meeting an African viverrid: the African civet. The African…
On July 19th, 1989, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi lit the match on twelve tons of elephant tusks soaked in gasoline. The elephants had been the victims of a relentless…
7.8 billion people produce a lot of waste, but governments, entrepreneurs and NGOs are developing a host of technologies that work with nature to transform a dirty problem into a suite of elegant sustainable solutions.
2022 has already started out with a series of extreme climate events, reminiscent of last year’s record-breaking storms, heat, drought, and flood events, which displaced nearly 30 million people. In…
Animals that eat fruit and spread the seeds in their droppings offer an all-inclusive transportation service for half the world’s flora. But as more seed-dispersing birds and mammals die off…
Tiger conservationists in Thailand are reeling following the recent killing of two tigers in Thong Pha Phum National Park. Authorities confiscated the two carcasses and are investigating the incident and…
When scientists described the Popa langur (Trachypithecus popa) as a species new to science in 2020, it was already staring extinction in the face. Fewer than 260 of the fluffy…
"Ecuador is proud to announce the creation of the Hermandad Marine Reserve in the coming days," the country's president declares in an opinion piece shared with Mongabay. His country had…
Two of the world’s most ubiquitous and important crops have a 7,000-year-old backstory, which can be traced to the Andes in South America, where maize and potatoes have long been…
KWALE COUNTY, Kenya — More than 20 years ago, along the lush southeastern coast of Kenya, the area known as Vanga Bay was home to a mangrove forest spanning 4,428…
When researchers found a begonia plant twice as tall as a person, they knew they had something extraordinary. Of the more than 2,000 known begonia species, most are the size…
DENPASAR/JAKARTA — The Indonesian government plans to have a network of dozens of villages with aquaculture farms by the end of the year, in a bid to spur the post-pandemic…
“All of a sudden, in one little lump, this project leaked into my mind,” Thomas Lovejoy recalled to writer David Quammen for the book The Song of the Dodo, about…
It's difficult to overstate the enormity of biodiversity on the island of New Guinea. It contains over 13,000 endemic plant species (meaning these plants grow nowhere else in the world).…
Between rising deforestation in the Amazon, new financial and political commitments to reduce deforestation, and growing interest in “nature-based solutions” like conservation and reforestation, 2021 may prove to be a…
Scientists analyzed levels of chemical pollutants in native jataí bees across eight landscapes in Brazil’s São Paulo state. They found that in landscapes with more vegetation, the bees had fewer pollutants, at lower levels, indicating that the plants act as a filter and protective barrier
Update 2/2022: In late January, correspondence found among the late E.O. Wilson's papers connected him with J. Phillipe Rushton, whose research in the 1980s and 1990s has been linked with…
Chances are, if you live in North America, you’ve eaten corn from the Corn Belt, a region in the United States Midwest that produces 75% of U.S. corn. Scientists have…
ORE, Nigeria — More than two decades ago, fate took Tajudeen Babalola to his lifelong ambition. The 52-year-old longed for a more serene life that offered hope for survival away…
