Fishers in the Philippines’ Batangas Bay are struggling to make ends meet and feed their families as nearby coastal areas are developed into a natural gas import hub, Mongabay contributor Nick Aspinwall reported in July.

Families that have been fishing in Batangas Bay for years have been asked by local officials to leave to make way for the expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in the area as the government eyes the development of a shipping “superhighway” for LNG, Aspinwall wrote.

“They told me, ‘Do not be an obstacle to the development of this town,’” Wilma Abanil, a resident of the fishing village of Santa Clara, told Mongabay.

The nearby Verde Island Passage is a known biodiversity hotspot and a frequent fishing location. But the construction of a large LNG terminal on the adjacent coast of Ilijan has seen armed security guards turning away fishers, who are prohibited from fishing within 300 meters (about 1,000 feet) of the terminal.

Jaime Ulysses Gilera, a fisher, said he hasn’t been able to catch much fish, with the waters off Ilijan now inaccessible. He also said sediment from the plant construction have worsened the condition of the nearby corals, which are already bleaching due to climate change.

According to Gilera, their fish catch has been reduced to just one-tenth of what they used to get 10 years ago.

“There will be a domino effect in the marine environment,” said Jayvee Saco, head of the Verde Island Passage Center for Oceanographic Research and Aquatic Life Sciences at Batangas State University, Lobo.

Saco said that with the sedimentation, rising temperatures and other stresses on the marine ecosystem, “There’s a high possibility of shifting from a coral reef area to a seaweed dominated area.”

Advocacy groups warn that crucial spawning grounds for fish are being heavily affected amid the construction of LNG terminals.

Aspinwall wrote that the Philippines has been investing heavily in LNG. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. envisions the country as an LNG trading and transshipment hub for the region. Almost two dozen LNG terminals are planned along Batangas Bay and the Verde Island Passage, close to the capital, Manila.

While LNG burning is said to produce less air pollution than coal, it still has a huge carbon footprint across its entire production cycle.

“LNG is not a transition fuel. The carbon intensity is about the same as coal,” Kurt Metzger, head of the energy transition program at Singapore-based Asia Research & Engagement, told Aspinwall.

Read the full report by Nick Aspinwall here.

Banner image of a First Gen tanker off the shore of Santa Clara, October 2024. Image by Nick Aspinwall for Mongabay.

How rain can reveal what lives in rainforest treetops

Perched high above the forest floor, the tropical canopy is a reservoir of biodiversity that has long resisted scrutiny. Its inaccessibility has left many of its inhabitants — orchids, epiphytes, ants, monkeys, frogs — poorly studied and poorly protected. But a new study offers a workaround: let the rain do the climbing.

Scientists led by Lucie Zinger at the France-based Center for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (CBRE) have shown that water dripping from the canopy carries traces of DNA, or environmental DNA (eDNA), from the organisms above. By capturing and analyzing this “rainwash” in low-tech collectors, they identified hundreds of species across plants, insects, birds, amphibians, and mammals.

The plants and animals detected in rainwash of an old-growth forest compared to a plantation plot.

The study, conducted in French Guiana, compared samples from a mature Amazonian forest and a nearby tree plantation. The results were striking. Diversity was markedly higher in the undisturbed forest, where passive collectors accumulated eDNA over a 10-day period. Crucially, the rainwash signal was both local and persistent. Even after heavy rain, biodiversity signatures remained spatially distinct at the scale of tens of meters and stable for up to 40 days.

Unlike airborne or stream-based eDNA, which can drift and muddle geographic origin, rainwash captures a sharp snapshot of the immediate canopy. It can also be deployed at scale with minimal cost. The researchers propose that this method could become a cornerstone of biodiversity monitoring in tropical forests — habitats that are increasingly threatened and chronically undersurveyed.

That’s not to say it’s a panacea. Detection remains limited to species that shed detectable DNA, and to wet seasons when rainfall is sufficient. But in a field stymied by logistical and financial constraints, the ability to “listen” to the canopy through its own runoff is a conceptual advance. In the future, the hum of the rainforest may be traced not through what can be seen and heard, but through what the rain leaves behind.

Banner image of a strawberry poison dart frog, by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

The Philippines has officially designated a new marine protected area after an 18-year campaign by local communities, fisher associations, civil society organizations and government agencies, the Wildlife Conservation Society announced Aug. 13.

The newly created Bitaug Marine Protected Area (MPA), which covers nearly 150 hectares (about 370 acres), is the largest MPA in Siquijor province in the Central Visayas region of the country.

The MPA includes a core zone of 44 hectares (about 110 acres) and a buffer zone of 105 hectares (260 acres), according to the Philippine Information Agency (PIA), a government body.

The coastal waters the MPA covers are home to a high diversity of corals, reef fish and seagrass. They also host high biomass of commercially important fish species, turtles, sharks and other marine wildlife.

WCS, one of the NGO partners involved in the Bitaug MPA’s creation, said in its statement that sharks and rays are prohibited from being caught in the protected area, unless for research purposes. It added the MPA’s management framework will allow ecotourism activities such as snorkeling and diving, with the revenue invested back into the community and local conservation efforts.

WCS and the PIA both credited the successful creation of the MPA to the Bitaug Fisherfolk Association (BitFA), which will co-manage the area with the local government. “Hopefully, in time, we will truly take charge of managing and caring for our MPA. This is the beginning of what we’ve been dreaming of for almost eighteen years,” Othello Manos, president of BitFA, said in the WCS statement.

The PIA added that efforts to protect Bitaug’s coastal waters started in 2007, when the provincial government started promoting village-level marine sanctuaries. The Bitaug village leadership revived discussions a decade later, followed by a community perception survey that showed widespread support for a protected area. Later, surveys by the Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation (CCEF), WCS and the University of the Philippines’ Marine Environment and Resources Foundation (UP-MERF) confirmed the coastal waters’ rich biodiversity.

WCS called the new MPA “a testament to the power of persistence, strong community leadership, and multi-sectoral collaboration,” serving as a roadmap for other coastal municipalities to follow suit.

“Our coral reefs, seagrass beds, and mangroves are interconnected. They must be protected together if we truly want to secure our environment and our future,” said Kristine Kate Lim, country director for WCS Philippines.

BitFA secretary Jackelyn Balucan told PIA they made the MPA happen “because we believe in protecting our seas. Our coastal area is rich in mangroves, which serve as breeding grounds for fish.”

“We are hoping that within two years this MPA will generate income for us. We worked hard to have this marine sanctuary because we saw the benefits it brought to other towns,” Manos told PIA.

Banner image: Corals and fish within the Bitaug MPA. Image © Dean Apistar/WCS Philippines.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon are urging South American presidents meeting in Bogota this week to turn promises to protect the region’s rainforest into concrete action, and to give Indigenous groups more say in the region’s future.

The Fifth Presidential Summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, officially opening Tuesday in the Colombian capital, brings together leaders alongside scientists and Indigenous representatives. The agenda includes public forums, cultural events and high-level meetings, culminating Friday with a joint declaration setting regional priorities on environmental protection and climate policy.

Indigenous leaders hope to meet with national leaders face-to-face for the first time at such a summit. Indigenous groups from all eight Amazonian nations issued a statement Monday evening, calling the rainforest a global lifeline that provides about one-fifth of the world’s freshwater and acts as one of the planet’s largest carbon sinks, absorbing vast amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. They said decades of deforestation, mining, fossil fuel drilling and large-scale farming have pushed the region toward a point of no return.

Among their demands are legal protection of Indigenous lands, recognition of their communities as official decision-makers within the treaty body, and a ban on new oil, gas and mining projects in the rainforest. They also propose a working group on a “just transition” — a shift to cleaner energy and away from coal, oil or natural gas — and an observatory to track threats against environmental defenders.

The groups noted that many commitments made in the 2023 Belem Declaration — a joint pledge by Amazon nations to cooperate on protecting the rainforest — have yet to be implemented, and cautioned against another round of “empty promises.” They stressed that violence against activists continues to rise across the Amazon, calling for regional protection measures.

The program includes an “Amazon Dialogues” forum bringing together civil society, scientists and Indigenous leaders; a panel on the rainforest’s water vapor that helps regulate South America’s climate; and a “Road to COP30” event meant to shape the Amazon’s voice at the next U.N. climate conference in Brazil in November.

“There is no solution to any of the threats the Amazon is facing without its communities,” said Raphael Hoetmer, a senior advisor at Amazon Watch, a U.S.-based nonprofit, attending the summit.

“There is an historical opportunity to create a mechanism for permanent and direct dialogue and participation with Indigenous peoples through the ATCO,” he said, referring to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, a bloc of eight Amazonian countries.

Leaders from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela are expected to attend, with hopes that it will be the first time Indigenous representatives will meet directly with heads of state during the summit.

“There will be no future without Indigenous peoples at the center of decision-making,” the groups said in the statement.

Banner image: Isla de la Fantasia Leticia, Colombia, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File)

By Steven Grattan, Associated Press

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

To work in Alaska as a wildlife biologist is to accept hardship as part of the job: blizzards, isolation, and a daily intimacy with life, death, and the difficult questions in between. For John Landsiedel, it was not only worth it — it was the dream. He arrived in Dillingham in 2022 to take up a post many had cycled through and left. But he intended to stay.

Landsiedel had grown up in North Dakota and studied wildlife biology at Montana State University, not far from Yellowstone’s grizzlies and geysers. His path included tracking elk and bears, managing furbearers, and earning a scholarship to become a pilot — a step that would allow him to collar caribou, investigate mortalities, and expand his reach into Alaska’s remotest corners. He was training in a Piper Cub when it went down on the runway.

Landsiedel relished the science, but his real gift was connection: with animals, and with people. He spoke of the Mulchatna caribou herd not as numbers, but as beings whose survival told a story of ecological shifts and human need. Subsistence hunting, he understood, was not sport — it was sustenance, tradition, identity. “You don’t really get a full grasp,” he once said, “of what life is like in a village without traveling to that.”

Colleagues called him enthusiastic and fearless. Family described him as a goofball with a sharp mind. He laughed often and brought people in. His office door was open to hunters, elders, and curious kids alike. He valued data, but also knowledge passed down over generations. He flew, in part, to bridge the distances between that wisdom and the state’s bureaucratic centers.

Even in his final days, Landsiedel was exactly where he wanted to be. As his friend and fellow biologist Justin Priest recalled, the last message he received from John read:

“Man, I’ve been having a blast the last couple of weeks. Flying around counting bears, catching caribou calves, finding wolverines and gyrfalcons, playing with the camera. I feel so lucky to work up here and with these animals.”

“That’s how I’ll remember John,” Priest wrote, “a larger-than-life biologist in love with his work and life.”

He died off duty, but never far from purpose.

Banner image of John Landsiedel from his social media.

Despite years of research into their complex behavior and intelligence, orangutans remain critically endangered on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where they’re endemic.

Mongabay has extensively covered the threats they face from habitat degradation and what studies say about how human activities affect them.

This World Orangutan Day, on Aug. 19, we take a look at how this intelligent great ape is faring in a world quickly changing due to human activity.

Most endangered

In June, Mongabay founder Rhett Butler wrote about the new report “Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates.” The list, which includes the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), aims to highlight the primate species most in need of conservation intervention.

Before the Tapanuli orangutan was formally described in 2017, there were only two distinct species of orangutans: the Sumatran (Pongo abelii) and Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus).

The report says that “high levels of habitat conversion and fragmentation, along with illegal hunting and poaching” caused an “extensive population decline” in Tapanuli orangutans over the last 150 years, leaving just 700 or so individuals in Indonesia’s Batang Toru Forest.

Habitat loss

Mongabay’s Hans Nicholas Jong reported in March of possible mining expansion in Batang Toru, the only known habitat of Tapanuli orangutans. Almost 200,000 people signed a petition opposing the planned development of hundreds of hectares of this forest habitat.

In January, Jong wrote that illegal deforestation for oil plantations is rising to record levels in Sumatra, according to U.S.-based NGO Rainforest Action Network. Of concern is Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to Sumatran orangutans.

In Borneo, an Indonesian company has continued planting acacia, used to produce pulp and paper, despite a 2024 government order to stop logging and start restoring the damaged peatlands, part of Bornean orangutan habitat. Jong reported that any habitat loss could push the already critically endangered Bornean orangutans to extinction.

In April, Jong reported that Indonesian company PT Equator Sumber Rezeki is planning to expand its palm oil plantation in western Borneo. A quarter of the concession overlaps with orangutan habitat.

Behavior and adaptation

Despite such concerning news, local groups are finding ways to help orangutans, including building canopy bridges to avoid traffic accidents.

Mongabay also recently reported on a study that looked into sleep deprivation among orangutans, which can potentially weaken their immune system and affect their mental performance.

Another study examined ape resilience and how they adjust to human-caused disruptions and threats, such as mining, agriculture, urbanization and logging. Mongabay’s Charles Mpaka reported in March that while the apes are able to survive in the short term, adaptation such as changing nesting patterns can cause long-term dangers for orangutans when they put them in conflict with humans.

Banner image of an adult and baby orangutan at Betung Kerihun National Park in Indonesian Borneo, by Sabar Minsyah via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).