Scarlet macaw chicks that may have otherwise died in the wild are getting a second chance at life through a hand-rearing program managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Guatemala.

The scarlet macaw’s (Ara macao) conservation status is classified as being of least concern on the IUCN Red List, primarily because of its broad geographic distribution, WCS Guatemala scientist Rony García-Anleu told Mongabay by email. However, the Central American subspecies, Ara macao cyanoptera, has a limited range and few breeding sites in Mesoamerica’s Maya Forest, which includes parts of Guatemala, he added.

This subspecies is considered critically endangered in Guatemala, primarily due to poaching for the pet trade and habitat loss through fires lit to clear forested areas for pasture. Within the Maya Biosphere Reserve, where García-Anleu and his colleagues work, only a few hundred individuals remain.

“Over the years, we have consistently observed that, although nests typically contain four to five eggs during routine inspections, only one or two chicks usually survive to fledge — three fledglings are rare,” García-Anleu said.

He added that after the first two eggs hatch, the parents start leaving the nest more frequently to bring food for the newly hatched chicks, leaving little time to incubate the remaining eggs. “[As] a result, the remaining eggs — when they do hatch — produce smaller, weaker chicks. These late-hatching chicks often struggle to compete for food and parental attention, leading to high mortality.”

To help the neglected chicks, WCS’s field technicians collect the third or fourth eggs from macaw nests and bring them to a field laboratory “equipped with solar-powered incubators and brooders that provide the necessary warmth and conditions for the chicks’ early development,” García-Anleu said.

The chicks are hand-raised, and when possible, released to foster nests in the wild, “a strategy that has proven very successful,” he added. “Scarlet Macaws are excellent foster parents and generally don’t distinguish between their own chicks and newcomers. As soon as a foster chick is placed in the nest, the adults begin feeding it almost immediately.”

When there are more hand-raised chicks than foster nests, the team implements a “soft-release” program, wherein the chicks leave once they can fly and feed independently.

WCS works closely on the program with the local Q’eqchi’ community of Paso Caballos, near key nesting sites. While some community members used to be macaw poachers, years of engagement and collaboration with WCS and the Guatemalan Park Service has turned them into strong conservation allies, García-Anleu said.

Since 2011, WCS has released 131 scarlet macaw chicks to the wild, representing 36% of all chicks recorded in Laguna del Tigre National Park within the Maya Biosphere Reserve over the past 14 breeding seasons. “By increasing fledgling survival rates and supplementing the wild population, our work has helped stabilize numbers in key nesting areas. Additionally, community involvement and ongoing monitoring efforts continue to support long-term conservation outcomes,” García-Anleu said.

Banner image of scarlet macaws in Guatemala by Rony Rodriguez.

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

In an age of noise and haste, Jim Brandenburg found greatness in patience. A single wolf mid-leap between ice sheets, a timber wolf peering shyly from behind a tree — his photographs distilled the wild into fleeting moments of clarity and made him one of the most revered nature photographers of his generation. He died April 4th, aged 79.

Raised on the prairies of southern Minnesota, Brandenburg spent his life circling back to the landscapes that had shaped him. Though his career took him across the Arctic, Africa and beyond, it was the quiet woods and cold rivers of home that stirred his soul. For National Geographic, he produced 23 major stories, working with a thrift of film and an abundance of instinct. His images graced not only covers but the public imagination, changing how people saw the natural world.

Wolves were his great passion. Where others saw menace, he saw social grace and fragile beauty. In Brother Wolf and White Wolf, he celebrated a misunderstood species with the care of a journalist and the eye of a poet. It was fitting that four of his photographs were chosen among the 40 most important nature images of all time by the International League of Conservation Photographers.

Brandenburg’s work was marked by technical mastery but never overwhelmed by it. His experiments with digital photography, his haunting low-light exposures and his restraint — all marked him as an artist who served his subject, not his ego.

Yet he was never content to merely bear witness. He founded Concerts for the Environment to rally musical support for conservation and later helped establish the Brandenburg Prairie Foundation to rescue remnants of Minnesota’s vanishing grasslands. He served for 15 years on the board of Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center, teaching thousands of children not just to love nature, but to understand it.

Despite accolades from the United Nations, the BBC and the National Press Photographers Association, Brandenburg wore his fame lightly.

“More passion than brains,” he said once, with characteristic modesty. But passion, directed with precision, was more than enough.

Banner photo: of Jim Brandenburg courtesy of Grant Hunter

Critically endangered axolotls that were captive-bred then released into wetlands in Mexico City have successfully adapted to the wild, a new study has found, giving new hope to scientists trying to save the species from extinction.

Axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum), found only in Lake Xochimilco, are one of the world’s most adored — and threatened — salamanders. Between 2017 and 2018, a team of researchers released then tracked 18 captive-bred axolotls in the ancient lake south of Mexico City, and in a nearby artificial wetland, to see how they would fare in the wild.

“The amazing news is that they all survived,” study lead author Alejandra Ramos, a biologist at the Autonomous University of Baja California, told BBC News. “And not only that, but the ones that we recaptured had gained weight — so they’re hunting.”

Axolotls retain juvenile features into adulthood, a rare trait called neoteny, which contributes to their reputation as “incredibly cute” with their wide eyes, feathery gills and smile-shaped mouth.

They can also regrow limbs and organs, garnering interest in the medical world, particularly in antiaging animal experimentation and cancer research. “If an axolotl loses an arm or leg, it grows back within two months, and it functions as before. The same with its eyes or brain,” biologist Vania Mendoza, the 2024-2025 Axolotl Census coordinator, previously told Mongabay contributor Boris Van Der Spek.

Fascination with axolotls has led to a boom in captivity, with most individuals of the species today being kept in homes and labs. Meanwhile, axolotl populations in the wild are estimated to have dropped by more than 80% in less than two decades. The species has been classed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2006.

Axolotl numbers fell by 99% between 1998 and 2014 in Lake Xochimilco due to environmental degradation and a severe decline in water quality largely driven by sewage and chemical pollution from agriculture.

But efforts to recover the historic lake’s chinampas, a human-made canal ecosystem of raised beds first built by the Aztecs that have historically served as refuges for axolotls, has given the salamanders another chance. Researchers released 10 individuals, five male and five female, into a 500–square-meter (5,380-square-foot) restored chinampa refuge equipped with filters to improve water quality and exclude exotic fish. In the artificial pond, they released four pairs.

In both wetlands, the axolotls could successfully hunt and forage. In Lake Xochimilco, though, two individuals were eaten by great egrets (Ardea alba), a common wetland bird. The study’s authors write that training future batches of axolotls in predator awareness before release could improve survival results.

Study co-author Luis Zambrano, a biologist at the Autonomous National University of Mexico, said that if the axolotl’s population and habitat can be restored in a city of more than 20 million people, “I feel that we have hope for humanity.”

Banner image: A purple axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum). Image by Raphael Brasileiro via Pexels.

When Marielle Ramires disclosed her cancer diagnosis in December 2024, she chose honesty without despair, revealing vulnerability while emphasizing resilience. Her approach was pragmatic, yet deeply hopeful.

“I embraced my destiny,” she wrote, taking each step “one drop at a time.”

For a woman who dedicated her life to articulating collective struggles, her illness became another front in which she championed community, solidarity, and mutual care.

Ramires co-founded Mídia NINJA in 2013, Brazil’s influential network of independent communicators that challenged traditional media paradigms. From the mass protests of June 2013 to the turbulent years under Presidents Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro, NINJA’s cameras and microphones brought unseen narratives from the streets directly to the public. Its unapologetic partiality was a guiding principle, rooted in the belief that journalism should amplify marginalized voices rather than claim neutrality. Ramires herself epitomized this ethos: always present, quietly orchestrating the dissemination of critical stories, particularly from the front lines of environmental justice and Indigenous rights.

Her contributions were profound. Friends and colleagues describe her as gentle yet fiercely effective, often working quietly behind the scenes to build bridges between disparate groups—from Indigenous communities in Brazil’s Amazon to global movements in Indonesia and Latin America. She played a key role in initiatives like Peoples For Forests, a global gathering of environmental activists seeking collaborative responses to the ecological crises of our time. Her writings around this event emphasized collective healing, insisting that the path forward lay in collaboration rather than isolation.

“Monoculture suffocates, monoculture kills,” she wrote. “The solution must be collective.”

Born in Cuiabá, Ramires began her activism in culture and human rights early, eventually shaping policy through positions at Brazil’s Ministry of Culture and the UNDP. She was instrumental in organizing the groundbreaking 2018 presidential campaign of Sonia Guajajara, the first Indigenous woman to run for national office in Brazil, an event emblematic of her commitment to intersectional justice.

In recent years, she gained increasing international recognition, engaging audiences in Latin America and beyond on the importance of free, decentralized media. But the core of her work remained the same: to empower communities to tell their own stories, leveraging technology not as an end but as a means of societal transformation.

Marielle Ramires leaves behind a legacy not only of movements and organizations, but of a profoundly humanist vision.

She once described hope as a “stubborn girl” that insists upon renewal, organically growing “with us, or despite us.”

Her passing was mourned via posts on social media as deeply as her life was celebrated, marking a profound loss for Brazil’s activist communities.

Yet, as she herself often reminded her followers, “the grass will grow again. With time.”

A newly published study has found that nearly 75% of bird species in North America are sharply declining across their ranges, and eight in 10 plummeting in the very areas where they’re thought to be thriving and plentiful. Nearly every species, 97%, had gains and losses in their populations depending on the location, the study found.

The researchers used birdwatcher citizen science data from eBird, an online database where birders can record checklists of all the birds they see at a particular place and time. The researchers analyzed observations from 36 million checklists from 2007 to 2021 that included nearly 500 bird species in North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Rather than just look at population declines for each species, the study identifies specific areas where populations are either declining or increasing, which paints a more comprehensive picture of population trends and highlights areas where conservation actions could be focused.

While three-quarters of all species declined across their ranges, the study found that 83% of bird species experienced significant population decreases in areas where they were most abundant and where habitat is considered most suitable for them — a counterintuitive finding that surprised the researchers. This pattern of decline was pronounced for birds breeding in grasslands and arid lands.

Birds that breed in the Arctic and northern latitudes showed the highest declines. The researchers posit that the warming climate, especially in the tundra, could be impacting breeding habitats there for many of the species, driving the declines.

“That is a worrying signal,” study author Alison Johnston from the U.K.’s University of St. Andrews told Mongabay. “That’s a wake-up call for us in terms of understanding the extent of damage that we’re having on the natural world.”

A 2019 study sounded the alarm on declining North American bird numbers, finding the region lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970. “This new analysis helps us turn that alarm into action by pinpointing where declines are happening within species’ ranges,” James J. Giocomo from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), who wasn’t involved with the study, told Mongabay by email.

Despite the troubling overall decline, the study suggests that most bird species still have small areas in their range where populations are growing, which can potentially serve as refuges to help their populations recover.

“We can learn what is working for those species in those places, and that can help our conservation planning,” Johnston said. “We have so much more knowledge about what’s happening ecologically, and that knowledge is power.”

“For American Bird Conservancy, this kind of spatially explicit trend data is invaluable,” Giocomo said, adding it helps prioritize conservation efforts. “We can use this information to fine-tune our collaborative work with ranchers, farmers, and land managers — targeting resources where they’ll matter most and adapting where needed.”

Banner image: Williamson’s sapsucker (Sphyrapicus thyroideus), one of the birds declining in areas where they’re abundant. Image courtesy of Blair Dudeck/Macaulay Library/Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Shy, solitary leopards might lose out to tigers and lions in the game of charisma, but the rosette-patterned big cats are incredibly adaptable — they can survive in the densest of cities just as easily as in forests, grasslands and high mountains.

While highly adaptable, leopards (Panthera pardus), listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, are declining rapidly across most of their range in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, largely due to habitat loss and conflict with people. The big cats are also one of the most illegally traded animal species, coveted for parts like skins, bones, claws and teeth.

For International Leopard Day on May 3, we look back at some of Mongabay’s recent coverage of leopards, particularly in South Asia where they can often be found living alongside human settlements.

India

India’s leopards frequently make headlines after being spotted around towns and cities. In 2018, Mongabay reported on leopards that live, seemingly comfortably, among people in Mumbai, India’s financial capital. Similarly, leopards in central India are increasingly adapting to cities like Indore and Jabalpur as their natural habitat shrinks and cityscapes expand, contributor Sneha Dhamale reported in February 2025.

“With few studies on urban leopards, assessing their presence in cities is now essential,” ecologist Aniruddha Majumder told Mongabay India.

At the same time, in many parts of India, including the northern state of Uttarakhand, conflicts remain high as leopards attack people and livestock, prompting retaliatory attacks, contributor Varsha Singh reported in February 2023.

Nepal

In Nepal, leopards are contracting the canine distemper virus, a dangerous virus that’s previously killed populations of lions in India and Africa, Mongabay’s Abhaya Raj Joshi reported in September 2024. “We know that at least some of these cases [in leopards] are fatal, and the priority must now be to understand their significance at a wider population level,” wild carnivore expert Martin Gilbert told Mongabay.

Researchers suspect that while feral dogs are likely responsible for initially transmitting the virus to wildlife, various strains of the virus are also circulating among other wild species that may be carriers.

Joshi also reported in 2023 that a warming climate could push Nepal’s three big cat species — tigers, leopards and snow leopards — to higher elevations as these regions become more habitable. What this means for their survival is still unknown.

Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, the leopard’s situation is particularly dire. Leopards were once prevalent across the country, in almost all habitats, as recently as 1940. But they’ve now disappeared from most areas. The leopard is listed as critically endangered on Bangladesh’s Red List, contributor Rafiqul Islam reported in September 2024.

Most of Bangladesh’s leopards now live in the northern districts near the border with India, where conflict with people — and killing of leopards — remains high. Experts stress an urgent need for surveys and conservation actions to bring the neglected species into national conservation focus in Bangladesh.

Banner image of a leopard by Udayan Dasgupta/Mongabay.