Texas sea turtles have lost a conservation hero (commentary)
Carole Allen — founder of HEART (Help Endangered Animals Ridley Turtles) and the first director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network’s Gulf of Mexico office — passed away at the…
United States News
A hundred-year vision: Gary Tabor on the rise of large landscape conservation
Many view conservation as a ledger of discrete gains—acres saved or species rebounded—but for Gary Tabor, the more vital metric is architecture. He focuses on systems that hold when pressure…
Scrutiny grows over DRC-US minerals deal, even as other African nations sign up
On Feb 4, the U.S. hosted the Critical Minerals Ministerial, a summit bringing together delegations from more than 50 countries, including seven African countries, with the aim of securing access…
Indigenous concerns surface as U.S. agency considers seabed mining in Alaskan waters
A U.S. federal agency is considering allowing companies to lease more than 45.7 million hectares (113 million acres) of waters off Alaska for seabed mining. Alaska is the latest of several…
Trump opens only US marine national monument in Atlantic to fishing — again
U.S. President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on Feb. 6 to open a marine protected area off the northeastern U.S. to commercial fishing, in his latest move to deregulate the…
Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, guardian of a stolen lake
In California’s interior, a long, straight aqueduct carries snowmelt south to a city that grew as if water were a birthright. Along the way it passes a valley that was…
How intermediaries are reshaping mangrove restoration
Mangrove forests, located along tropical and subtropical coastlines, are increasingly recognized for their role in buffering climate disasters, storing carbon, supporting wildlife and livelihoods. Yet even as interest in mangrove…
Division’s final journey
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…
Ocean set ‘alarming’ new temperature record in 2025
Every calendar year since 2019, ocean temperatures have reached new record highs. 2025 was no exception, according to a new study. The study, published Jan. 9 in the journal Advances…
Doug McConnell, interpreter of Northern California, has died, aged 80
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…
Study tracks fishing boats to see how heat waves affect fish distribution
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…
How are California’s birds faring amid ever more frequent wildfires?
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…
Tatiana Schlossberg, environmental journalist, has died, aged 35
She wrote about damage that accumulated slowly, in places most people did not look, and about the systems that allowed it to be ignored. When her own life was overtaken…
Andy Mahler, advocate for public forests in America
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…
In California’s redwoods, scientists rebuild lost ecosystems high up in the canopy
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…
Kristina Gjerde, defender of the deep ocean, has died
Half the planet lies outside any country’s border. In those waters, rules have long been thinner than the myths: freedom to fish meant freedom to take; “out of sight” became…
The year in rainforests 2025: Deforestation fell; the risks did not
The story of the world’s tropical forests in 2025 was not one of dramatic reversal, but one shaped by accumulated pressure. In several regions, deforestation slowed. In others, loss continued…
Tell Hicks, reptile artist
Founder's Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For much of the late 20th century, reptiles occupied an awkward place in…
Joanna Macy, author and teacher who turned despair into connection and agency
For much of the late 20th century, environmental writing oscillated between alarm and reassurance. One strand emphasized catastrophe; another urged optimism. A smaller, more demanding tradition insisted on neither denial…
Century-old corals reveal the Pacific Northwest is acidifying faster than expected
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…
Jeff Foott, chronicler of ice, rock, and change, has died, aged 80
For much of the second half of the 20th century, the American outdoors attracted a particular kind of devotee. They moved easily between disciplines, took seasonal work without much…
Statewide survey aims to put California’s fungi on the conservation map
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…
Zombie urchins & the Blob: California sea otters face new threats & ecosystem shifts
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…
Earth’s freshwater fish face harsh new climate challenges, researchers warn
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…
Choosing coexistence over conflict: How some California ranchers are adapting to wolves
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…
Deep-sea mining interests raise alarms among Mariana Trench communities
U.S.-led plans to mine the deep seabed have gained momentum since President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called for the industry’s rapid formation to bolster U.S. national security.…
Boom in burning waste for fuel could put human health and environment at risk
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…
With a target on their bellies, can California’s sturgeon survive?
Following up on a tip to the state’s poaching hotline, game wardens in California rushed to a popular fishing spot, Clifton Court Forebay, in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. They’d…
Another threat to reefs: Microplastic chemicals may harm coral reproduction
As the sliver of a new moon shines over Kāneʻohe Bay, Oʻahu, millions of tiny orbs ascend from a reef and swirl in the water column. These spheres are bundles…
‘Silent epidemic of chemical pollution’ demands radical regulatory redo, say scientists
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…
Jean Beasley, who turned her young daughter’s dying wish into a mission to save sea turtles, has died
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…
First state-authorized killings mark escalation in California’s management of wolves
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.…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Satellite data show burst of deforestation in Myanmar rare earth mining hotspots
- Narco airstrips beset Indigenous communities in Peruvian Amazon
- 15 illegal narco-trafficking airstrips found near Peru Indigenous communities
- Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
Oceans
- Indigenous concerns surface as U.S. agency considers seabed mining in Alaskan waters
- Methane chasers: Hunting a climate-changing gas seeping from Earth’s seafloor
- Scientists call for stronger action to save Indonesia’s vanishing seagrass meadows
- Antarctic conservation summit closes with stalemate on MPAs & krill fishing rules
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
- What’s happening with the global treaty to trace critical minerals?
- In the race for DRC’s critical minerals, community forests stand on the frontline
- Lithium mining may threaten a precious resource — water: Voices from the land (commentary)
- Indigenous guardians successfully keep extractives out of Ecuador’s Amazon forests
Endangered Environmentalists
- A killing with precedent: Kaiowá man’s murder fits a pattern in Brazil
- Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- Environmental journalist in Cambodia shot and killed by suspected logger
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
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
- Flores’ geothermal ambitions collide with justice, culture & local resistance
- An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- 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
