Marine heat waves have become longer and more frequent along the U.S. West Coast, as elsewhere in the world. But heating doesn’t always lead fish to change their location. A…
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…
Environmental and territorial defenders in Guatemala face a critical moment as violence targeting them increases across the country. In 2024, at least 20 such defenders were killed for their work,…
In the early 2000s, José Juan Flores Martínez was studying for a bachelor’s degree in biology and working as a volunteer in a program designed to control invasive rodents on…
In the forests of the Sierra Nevada, the black-backed woodpecker is without parallel. The bird appears almost born of fire, thriving on the flames that flicker through California’s coniferous forests…
Conservation philanthropy often favors urgency: campaigns, deadlines, the language of crisis. A smaller group of donors has worked differently, treating environmental protection as a problem of capacity and continuity. They…
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 the late 20th century, forest conservation in the eastern United States was rarely a matter of sweeping victories or clean resolutions. It was a practice shaped by hearings that…
The Van Eck Forest in northwestern California is home to iconic coast redwood trees, which store more above-ground carbon per acre than any other forest type. The oldest trees can…
In 1888, researchers aboard the R/V Albatross began the world's first concentrated marine research expeditions off California's Pacific coast. The team collected untold plant and animal specimens, including orange cup…
Getting to The Cedars, an ecological preserve in California’s Sonoma county, is a slog. Multiple rivers and creeks must be crossed, and it can be tough going on an often…
The sea otter pup was tiny, probably less than 2 weeks old, alone in Morro Bay on an October morning earlier this year. A kayaker scooped it out of the…
In the vast savanna grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa towers the giraffe, draped in mosaics of brown and tan patches. Long regarded as a single species, this iconic African megafauna was…
Southeast Asia’s Mekong River is one of the world’s most diverse and productive freshwater ecosystems, home to more than 1,000 fish species, including both the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish…
MEXICO CITY — In its fiscal budget for 2026, passed in November, the Mexican government promised funds for renewable energy, protected areas and other environmental concerns. But much of what’s…
This is the fourth part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. A lone gray wolf (Canis lupus) named…
As the world desperately searches for a way out of its global climate change and plastic pollution crises, nations are increasingly turning to burning municipal waste to make fuel as…
An international team of scientists has issued a stark warning that current toxicology and chemical regulatory regimes are failing to protect public health and the environment from a host of…
On the beaches of Topsail Island in North Carolina, the sight of a sea turtle crawling ashore has long signaled both urgency and hope. For many years, a woman with…
This is the third part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read the first and the second parts. In late October, wildlife authorities in the U.S.…
In October, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at California's Otay Mesa border crossing noticed an odd bulge inside a man's pants. Jesse Agus Martinez, a U.S. citizen who…
Sea otters living along the coastline of Canada’s British Columbia province carry residues of “forever chemicals” in their bodies, according to a new study, and those living near dense human…
Christopher C. Grinter has spent much of his life surrounded by insects, though not in the way most people imagine. As Senior Collection Manager of Entomology at the California Academy…
The crow-sized, slate-blue-backed peregrine falcon, with its bright yellow feet, soars across the skies from Greenland’s Arctic tundra to the steppe plains of Patagonia in South America. Falco peregrinus is…
The United States is the main market for “ornamental” marine fish, those that end up as pets in aquariums. Now, a new study of U.S.-based online retailers has found that…
In 1985, with two young daughters and little money, Roxanne Swentzell, a Native American sculptor and ceramic artist, returned from her studies in Portland, in the U.S. state of Oregon,…
In undercover raids carried out in late September, Mexican authorities discovered 2,339 wild-caught turtles crammed into bins in five locations in Jalisco and Baja California states. Along with the live…
GASPÉSIE, Canada — In Quebec's Gaspésie region, Indigenous river guardians say they are in a race against climate change to protect the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). The Mi'gmaq Wolastoqey Indigenous…
By the time New York Climate Week wrapped up in September this year, Robin Whytock had a point to make. Over the course of the summit, the ecologist was part…
Some revolutions begin not with technology, but with a feeling. For Gregg Treinish, that feeling was guilt. He was spending years on long wilderness expeditions—crossing ranges, sleeping rough, watching the…
Since 2016, Rich Collins has been plunging into the pitch-black waters off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida, at night, camera in hand, in pursuit of blackwater photography. These nighttime…
California has a way of exaggerating things—mountains, deserts, and egos. But its insects? They take excess to another level. Somewhere between the redwoods and the Salton Sea live perhaps 60,000,…
