Gibbons, commonly called lesser apes, aren’t as well-known as some of their great ape cousins like chimpanzees or gorillas. But the lives of these highly arboreal primates are no less fascinating. They reside in the canopy of the tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia, living in small family groups, each patrolling its own territory, and communicating through highly musical, haunting songs. Their diet, consisting predominantly of fruits, makes them key seed dispersers.

Yet gibbons are among the most threatened primate groups in the world: of the 20 known species, five are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, and 14 are endangered. All gibbon species are targeted by the international wildlife trade.

Today, on International Gibbon Day, we present some recent Mongabay stories about these agile, long-limbed apes.

Signs of hope

The endangered Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch), found only on the Indonesian island of Java, are mostly confined to small forest patches today. Two such groups have become isolated from a larger forest area by farms and settlements in Central Java province.

A local NGO, SwaraOwa, is working with farmers in the region to cultivate native trees and plant them to build forest corridors, Mongabay reported in a video published in June. The gibbon population there has increased from about 800 individuals 10 years ago to 1,000 in 2023.

“Our motivation as young people is that future generations will not just hear stories about the gibbons, they’ll be able to see them from their backyards if they want,” said Rohim, a Mendolo farmer.

Meanwhile, in the remote forests of northern Vietnam, a community conservation team saw two baby Cao-vit gibbons (Nomascus nasutus), one of the world’s rarest apes, Kristine Sabillo reported in March. This critically endangered species survives only in a fragmented forest patch bordering Vietnam and China, and female gibbons give birth only once every four years or so, making this sighting a rare one.

Increase in gibbon trafficking

There’s growing demand for gibbons as pets. India, for instance, has seen an increase in seizures of gibbons at its airports and border areas, Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman reported in January. Most of these gibbons, such as the siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus) and the agile gibbon (Hylobates agilis), come from the forests of Southeast Asia.

The gibbons in the pet trade are usually caught when they’re young, said primatologist Susan Cheyne. “The only way to get a young gibbon from a species that lives 30-40 meters [100-130 feet] up in the tree is to kill the mum.”

The siamang in particular has become one of the most trafficked apes globally, conservationist Sinan Serhadli wrote in a commentary. Found in the forests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, it’s the largest of all gibbon species, slower moving, and easier to catch.

“The crisis is a huge conservation issue that is undermining healthy and viable populations,” Serhadli wrote, “while also being a crisis of immense cruelty and suffering.”

Banner image: White-handed gibbon in Thailand by JJ Harrison via Wikimedia Commons (CCBY3.0).

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

After decades spent protecting forests, fighting for human rights and shaping climate policy, Nigel Sizer has turned his attention to what’s on our plates. As the new CEO of the Good Food Institute (GFI), he argues that how humanity produces meat may determine the future of both the planet and public health.

“Our food system drives many crises,” he told Mongabay in September, “but it also has huge potential to be part of the solution.” He believes alternative proteins, made from plants, fermentation or cultivated animal cells, can relieve pressure on forests, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases.

Sizer brings the instincts of a coalition builder. At the World Resources Institute, he helped launch Global Forest Watch, a pioneering satellite tool for tracking deforestation. At GFI, he will apply that same skill to uniting farmers, scientists, regulators and investors around a shared goal: transforming protein production into an engine of climate resilience and economic opportunity.

His early priorities are pragmatic. Internally, he is learning the machinery of GFI’s global operations. Externally, he is urging governments and development banks to back alternative protein projects with the kind of public investment that once jump-started renewable energy. Such funding, he argues, would create jobs, improve nutrition and protect biodiversity long before crises strike.

Sizer also wants to bring farmers and producers into the transition. Diversifying crops and supply chains, he says, can strengthen rural economies while reducing waste and emissions.

He knows the challenge is vast, but so is the prize. “The future of meat,” Sizer says, “is not just about taste or price. It’s about reshaping an entire system.”

Read the full interview with Nigel Sizer here.

Banner image: Cultivated poke bowl produced by Ivy Farm. Image courtesy of Ivy Farm.

Environmental justice activists have spoken out against coal and iron mining in South Africa, telling a recent human rights hearing that the industry violently undermines the country’s promised energy transition. They also pointed to the continued threats, displacement and killings faced by community organizers resisting land grabs by mining companies.

The fifth Human Rights Defenders People’s Hearings, held at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on Oct. 22, was convened by Life After Coal, a joint campaign by local NGOs Earthlife Africa, groundWork, and the Centre for Environmental Rights.

Israel Nkosi of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation told the hearing about how he and other activists campaigning against the Tendele coal mine in KwaZulu-Natal province had been forced into hiding after gunmen opened fire on their homes at night.

“A woman activist was intimidated. We had to help her relocate from the area. Violence will never stop where there are mines in the area,” Nkosi said.

Reverend Mbhekiseni Mavuso, a community campaigner against the planned Melmoth iron ore mine, also in KwaZulu-Natal, told of surviving an attempted killing in March 2024 by gunmen who killed fellow activist Mbhekiseni Dladla.

“The hitmen showed us a list in 2011 that they were given 75,000 rand [about $4,300] to kill us,” Mavuso said. “From then we never had peace. I have been shot at in broad daylight. We are just waiting to die at any time because nobody is protecting us. Our parents live by prayer, praying for our lives.”

The government’s Just Energy Transition Partnership plan notes the country will transition away from coal, currently the country’s main source of electricity, and invest in renewable energy, while supporting workers and communities reliant on the coal mines. At the same time, the government has extended the operational life of several coal-fired power plants, delaying their closure until 2030. It has also permitted state electricity utility Eskom to exceed greenhouse gas emissions limits for eight of its coal-fired power plants.

As South Africa’s dependence on coal and the legacy of coal mining persist, so does the exploitation of communities, activists said at the hearing.

Advocate Louisa Zondo, one of the hearing’s jurors, said the testimonies showed there were no consequences for “criminality of all sorts.” She said the mining companies, police, local governments and traditional leaders were complicit in “violating the rights of people.”

“Mental health and well-being are centrally impacted. Rights are violated with impunity in the quest to steal peoples’ land for profit,” Zondo said.

Environmental sociologist Llewellyn Leonard of the University of South Africa told Mongabay that a credible and just transition could only happen once communities damaged by extractive industries were paid reparations, and mines held accountable.

The Department of Minerals and Petroleum Resources hadn’t responded to Mongabay’s questions by the time of publication.

Banner image: Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation leader Fikile Ntshangase was killed in 2020. Image courtesy of Lunga Bhengu/groundWork.

They’re known as the “ghost of the mountains,” so it makes sense that snow leopards can be extremely difficult to spot.

Yet, these majestic, thick-furred cats, living in the high mountains of Asia, are also disappearing from much of their range due to declines in prey, retaliatory killing for livestock predation, the illegal wildlife trade, and changes in their habitat from climate change, mining and large-scale infrastructure. In some places, though, snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are recovering and thriving.

Today, on International Snow Leopard Day, we highlight some recent Mongabay stories about these big cats in India and Nepal.

Snow leopards in India

Two-thirds of India’s snow leopards live in the trans-Himalayan Ladakh landscape of high-altitude plateaus, rugged mountain ranges and cold deserts, a study published in May showed. Researchers followed the cats’ tracks and droppings and deployed camera traps to get an estimate of about 477 snow leopards living across the region.

However, most snow leopard sightings came from outside protected areas. This raises concerns about conflict, since snow leopards sometimes target domestic livestock, especially during winter when their wild prey is scarce. But thanks to conservation initiatives and local communities’ sustainable cultural pastoral practices, cats and humans here coexist largely in peace, contributor Sneha Mahale reported for Mongabay India.

“Snow leopards are not poached here,” said study co-author Yadvendradev Jhala, a senior wildlife scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India. “The combination of the Buddhist culture and economic incentives to preserve the species has allowed their population to increase in density.”

Another snow leopard survey, in India’s Himachal Pradesh state, estimated there are 83 individuals there, up from 51 recorded in 2021, reported Mongabay India’s Manish Chandra Mishra.

Snow leopards in Nepal

Earlier this year, Nepal’s government announced the country’s first-ever aggregated national estimate of snow leopards: about 397 individuals, reported Mongabay’s Abhaya Raj Joshi.

“This national estimate is a historic step in Nepal’s conservation journey,” said Ramchandra Kandel, director-general of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. “It not only provides us with a clearer picture of snow leopard populations but also informs future conservation strategies.”

Separately, researchers tracking four GPS-collared snow leopards in Nepal found they frequently crossed borders, spending up to a third of their time in neighboring India and China, contributor Bibek Bhandari reported in June.

“We now have solid proof,” said Samundra Subba, study lead author and a large carnivore researcher at WWF Nepal. “National borders are human constructs — snow leopards don’t recognize them.”

“What I find heartening in the results of the study in Nepal is that the collared snow leopards did not encounter any significant man-made barriers to their cross-border movement,” said Charudutt Mishra, executive director of the Snow Leopard Trust, a U.S.-based NGO, who wasn’t involved in the study. “This is not common, as borders typically tend to be fenced.”

Banner image of a snow leopard by Ismail Shariff/Snow Leopard Trust via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

The Christmas Island shrew, a tiny mammal once found only on the Australian island of the same name, has been declared officially extinct. It’s at least the fourth small mammal species to be wiped out from the island since the introduction of invasive species there a century ago.

The Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura) was once widespread before humans arrived on the island, which lies much closer to the Indonesian island of Java than to the Australian mainland. John Woinarski, a conservation biologist at Charles Darwin University, Australia, writes in The Conversation that European naturalists first visiting Christmas Island in the 1890s noted “this little animal is extremely common all over the island, and at night its shrill shriek, like the cry of a bat, can be heard on all sides.”

But since 1985, there have been no confirmed records of the species, “despite surveys and many studies,” notes the species’ latest conservation assessment. That assessment, for the IUCN Red List, concludes the species is now officially extinct. It was last assessed in 2016 as critically endangered (possibly extinct).

The shrew’s decline on the island likely started in the early 20^th century when a visiting ship accidentally introduced black rats (Rattus rattus) within bales of hay.

Two of the island’s endemic rat species, found nowhere else on Earth, were soon wiped out, likely from a blood-borne parasite transmitted by the black rats. Maclear’s rat (Rattus macleari) and the bulldog rat (Rattus nativitatis) were last recorded before 1908.

The parasite also likely played a role in decimating populations of the Christmas Island shrew, researchers say. There are just four confirmed records of the shrew in the 20^th century: two in 1958, one in 1984, and the last in 1985. These observations suggested that “a very small proportion of the shrew population must have survived” the parasite outbreak, the IUCN assessment notes.

“However, this small population is likely to have been highly vulnerable to the many other widespread threats that accompanied or followed settlement of the island, including feral cats, clearing, black rats, yellow crazy ants and wolf snakes,” the assessment adds.

Some of these invasive animals likely also wiped out the Christmas Island pipistrelle (Pipistrellus murrayi), a tiny bat species last recorded in 2009 and declared extinct in 2017.

Blyth’s flying fox (Pteropus melanotus), a fruit bat, is the last remaining native mammal species on Christmas Island. However, it, too, is under threat from growing settlements, agriculture and invasive species.

Woinarski writes that the case of the Christmas Island shrew is “a reminder of the enormity of the challenge of preventing further extinctions.”

“I hope the Christmas Island shrew is not extinct; after all it has defied previous calls of its demise. Perhaps somewhere, a small furtive family of shrews are hanging on, elusive survivors, secure in the knowledge of their own existence and waiting to prove the pessimists wrong,” he adds.

Banner image: View of Christmas Island, Australia. Image by David Stanley via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The European Union has dropped plans for another one-year delay to its anti-deforestation law, instead proposing a six-month grace period before enforcement begins. The proposal also introduces simplification measures and exemptions that favor EU nation states, the U.S., Canada, Australia and China.

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), approved in 2023, sets out to ensure commodities including coffee, soy, beef, cocoa and palm oil imported to the bloc do not come from land deforested after Dec. 31, 2020. The EUDR is set to apply from Dec. 30, 2025.

Citing concerns over too much paperwork and the capacity of the EU’s IT system, the EU environment commissioner, Jessika Roswall, announced a “gradual phase in” to the law.

EU authorities will only begin checks and enforcement of the law on June 30, 2026, giving companies an additional six months to adapt.

In 2024, the EUDR’s implementation was delayed by 12 months, and last month, another postponement was discussed. With the latest proposed amendment, the date of enforcement remains unchanged.

“Having the law apply now with a grace period seems a sensible thing to do,” Nicole Polsterer, policy specialist at the environmental NGO FERN, told Mongabay by email.

For countries currently classified as “low risk” under the EUDR — all EU nations, the U.S., China, Australia and Canada — micro and small producers who sell directly to the EU would be exempt from the EUDR’s regulations under the proposal. They will only be required to submit a one-time declaration to the EU providing the postal address of production sites.

Small traders or intermediaries from these countries will also be given an extra year to comply with the EUDR.

However, all other countries will not be given any extra time for compliance or be included in exemptions, including those with smallholders that have reported struggling with access to appropriate technology and compliance costs. Companies not included in the “low risk” exemption must still submit full geolocation data and due diligence statements to export to the EU regardless of their size.

“The IT issue has never been satisfactorily explained,” Polsterer said. “In this vacuum, or under this disguise, German foresters and U.S. lobbying have successfully carved out an exemption from geolocation for themselves.”

“Germany has been banging on about needing exemptions for its foresters, as did the US for all its operations. Both are low risk according to the benchmarking,” she added.

The European Parliament and Council of the EU need to approve the Commission’s proposal before it is legally valid. Roswall said that she is open to “unlimited changes” to the proposal in the coming days and weeks.

“I am convinced that today’s proposal strikes the right balance, addressing the need to maintain strong means to fight deforestation, while reducing the administrative burden for companies,” Roswall said. “We remain fully committed to the objective of fighting deforestation and forest degradation.”

Banner image: EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall. Image courtesy of the European Union.