A Mongabay investigation has uncovered exclusive details about the clandestine market for gorilla and chimpanzee body parts in northeastern Nigeria, revealing that the trade works in a larger area than previously believed and kills more critically endangered gorillas than previously acknowledged.

Speaking to hunters, traffickers and customers of a trade steeped in both taboo and tradition, Mongabay contributor Orji Sunday found that prices for ape parts have recently skyrocketed, pushing some of the rarest great apes closer to extinction.

The illegal trade targets some of the region’s most threatened species, most crucially the critically endangered Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), found only in a few isolated forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border. The IUCN estimates three are killed each year, a devastating rate for a species with fewer than 300 individuals left in the wild.

However, hunters told Mongabay they regularly find and kill gorillas in Taraba state, an area not officially known to host gorillas, suggesting either an undocumented local population, or that western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) are making their way to Taraba. Either way, as traffickers consolidate operations and law enforcement in the region is compromised, the threats are mounting.

Hunters themselves can also pay a huge social price in exchange for the financial benefit of killing gorillas.

Benjamin Dauda, a former hunter from Taraba state, said desperation led him to kill a gorilla in 1997, after his father died and he risked dropping out of school if his tuition wasn’t paid.

“I had to kill it [the gorilla] because of money. It is a terrible thing to do,” said Dauda from the Sunkuru community. “When I came close to the dead body, it was exactly like a human being. The only difference is that we humans dress in clothes but gorillas wear fur. I was scared to touch it. I was shivering.”

After the hunt, Dauda faced social ostracization, with relatives refusing to share meals with him for a time. For locals, a hunter who kills a gorilla may face death, debilitating illnesses or attract grave misfortunes and tragedies, but those who survive are celebrated for their bravery. Dauda eventually became chief of the Ndola-speaking people of Ngada and gave up hunting.

Today, hunting is a booming business.

“If you visit Ose main markets, you can get up to 50 to 100 ape heads if you so desire. Their supply of ape body parts is quite large,” Ekene Ezenwoke, an ape body part trader who operates from one of the major markets in southeast Nigeria, told Mongabay.

Some traditional healers are now shifting to using body parts from domesticated animals like cows and goats, but with skyrocketing prices, the illegal trade continues to drive threatened gorillas toward extinction.

Banner image: The Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli) is considered one of the most threatened primate species on the planet. Image by Julie Langford via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

At least 30 people were killed and more than 48,000 hectares, or 119,000 acres, of land was burned in fires that raged over the last week of March in South Korea, media reported.

According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, the fires started on March 21 and were accompanied by strong winds and dry weather. Local authorities issued wind advisories on March 21 and 22 warning people to refrain from burning trash and agricultural waste. But by then, large forest fires were already recorded.

The disaster is reportedly South Korea’s largest recorded wildfire as the blaze raged on for several days. Most of the fires were contained starting March 28, although new fires appeared days later.

The Associated Press reported that the fatalities included four firefighters and a pilot whose helicopter crashed while fighting the blazes. The others killed were civilians, mostly elderly people who were unable to evacuate. Another 45 people were injured, nine in serious condition.

The report said 6,000 structures were damaged or destroyed. Tens of thousands of people had to evacuate after their houses caught fire. More than 3,100 people fled to 114 temporary shelters, while the towns of Uiseong, Andong, Cheongsong, Yeongyang and Yeongdeok were declared special disaster zones, CNN reported.

To help fight the wildfire, South Korea deployed 10,000 firefighters, police and civil servants, as well as 7,500 ground troops and more than 420 helicopters, according to reports.

A truck driver told AFP that the wildfire “was like the apocalypse.” Residents and monks were devastated by the destruction of temples, especially Gounsa Temple in Uiseong, one of the largest in the town and built in 618 C.E., the BBC reported.

Police in North Gyeongsang province said they suspect one of the wildfires was caused by a man setting fire to clear grass around a family grave in Uiseong. Police say the other fires were likely also accidents caused by sparks from welding or burning trash.

South Korea is experiencing “unusually warm” spring temperatures that dried out vegetation and contributed to the fast-moving fires. Prime Minister and Acting President Han Duck-soo told CNN the wildfires caused “unprecedented damage.” He also said that since the start of the year, 244 wildfires have already been recorded in the country, a figure 2.4 times higher than during the same period last year.

Based on daily maximum temperatures, researchers from Climate Central confirmed that “Human-caused climate change has significantly amplified the likelihood of this heat, further intensifying fire risks in areas already grappling with severe drought.”

Banner image of South Korea wildfires by NASA (Public domain).

African gray parrots, one of the world’s most trafficked birds, can no longer be captured or traded across the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Tshopo province, a key transit route for traffickers, according to a recent decree passed by the provincial government.

Known for their intelligence and ability to mimic human speech, gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus) are highly sought after in the international pet trade. However, their widespread capture from the wild has led to severe population declines across their range in Africa, leading to them being listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2016.

Their “slow rate of reproduction, and tendency to aggregate in large flocks makes them highly vulnerable to overexploitation,” Rowan Martin, U.K.-based director of the Africa Conservation Programme at the NGO World Parrot Trust, told Mongabay by email.

Tshopo is the third DRC province, after Maniema and Sankuru, to ban the capture and sale of the parrots.

The Tshopo ban is significant because the province is central to the gray parrot trade, funneling parrots from other provinces “through its major national airport Bangoka and through its River ports — including from the provinces of Ituri, Maniema, Bas Uele, and Mongala,” Terese Hart of the NGO Lukuru Foundation that works to protect gray parrots in the DRC, told Mongabay by email.

The decree effectively cuts off transport in and through Tshopo, she added, which will disrupt the movement of parrots to international airports, like in Kinshasa, the DRC capital.

“The main driving force behind the trade in DRC is very high international demand,” Hart said. This is despite the gray parrot being included in Appendix I of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, in 2016. That listing means all international commercial trade in wild-caught gray parrots is prohibited.

At a February meeting of the CITES Standing Committee in Geneva, experts noted that the trade in gray parrots in the DRC “continues at very high levels.”

The recent Tshopo decree bans the capture and trade of both gray and red-fronted parrots (Poicephalus gulielmi), also called the “green” parrot. It also notes that any aircraft found carrying gray or green parrots without the required authorization “will be considered complicit.”

Including both parrot species in bans is important because traffickers often conceal gray parrots within consignments of red-fronted parrots, which can be legally exported from the DRC under existing CITES rules, Martin said.

In August 2024, for example, Turkish authorities seized a shipment of 309 gray parrots, falsely declared as green parrots, which had originated from Kinshasa.

“It’s vital that wildlife trade regulations take into account these vulnerabilities and we’re encouraged that the decree is forward thinking in this regard,” Martin said.

Banner image of gray parrot by L.Miguel Bugallo Sánchez via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

A recent report assessing the health of U.S. bird populations presents a grim outlook: Birds in the U.S. are declining, and a third of the species — 229 to be precise — are in need of urgent conservation actions.

Among the 112 “Tipping Point species” that have lost more than half of their population in the last 50 years, are the West Coast native Allen’s hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin), the tricolored blackbird (Agelaius tricolor) endemic to California, and saltmarsh sparrow (Ammospiza caudacuta) found in the tidal salt marshes of the East Coast.

The report comes five years after a groundbreaking study that showed North America has lost more than three billion birds since 1970. These declines, the report finds, are ongoing for all bird groups—shorebirds, grassland birds, arid land birds, and forest birds. Even birds that were trending up since 1970, such as ducks, have experienced population declines as climate change has taken hold in recent years.

The report is a “cause for alarm,”  Jeff Walters, from the American Ornithological Society, one of the organizations involved in writing the report, said in a statement. He added that it is also a “cause for hope” because of the heightened public interest in birds and the wealth of information available about the status of every bird species.

The report also highlights how conservation initiatives across the U.S. have helped reverse some declines. Coordinated coastal restoration initiatives on the U.S. East Coast, for example, have increased American oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus) breeding population by 43% in the last 15 years. Bird-friendly ranching programs in North Dakota propelled a 20% increase in the population of the Baird’s sparrow (Centronyx bairdii) between 2017 and 2020. Translocation projects in Hawaii and other Pacific Islands have increased populations of several seabird species.

“We have clear evidence that conservation works in halting declines,” said Michael J. Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy, also involved in the report, in a statement. “What we now need more than ever are programs and funding that match the scale of the greatest challenges birds face today.”

Bird conservation also benefits people and the economy, the report notes. Restoring bird habitats provides clean water, climate-resilient landscapes and jobs. A 2022 survey found roughly 100 million Americans enjoy bird watching as a hobby that contributes $279 billion to the country’s economy yearly and supports 1.4 million jobs.

“This report is very timely,” told conservationist and birdwatcher Chris Shepherd from Monitor Conservation Research Society, Canada, in an interview.

Shepherd, who wasn’t involved in the report, said people can help with the crisis of declining bird populations by keeping cats indoors and supporting conservation organizations to help reverse the trend. “Conservation organizations need support more now than ever, and so does wildlife, birds included.”

Banner image of Allen’s hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin) by Becky Matsubara via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Colombia’s state-led oil company Ecopetrol caused more than 600 instances of major environmental damage between 2010 and 2016, according to internal data leaked by one of their former employees. Mongabay contributor Mie Hoejris Dahl reports that the leaked information suggests the company kept track of spills internally but did not adequately report them to the government.

According to data shared by whistleblower Andrés Olarte Peña with the Environmental Investigation Agency, an international environmental NGO, Ecopetrol failed to report about a fifth of these sites, and none have been fully cleaned up. The investigation also reveals that Ecopetrol had a database to map and monitor 1,200 individuals in areas where the company operates.

Peña says he came by the information while serving as an environmental advisor to the vice president of sustainability at Ecopetrol. He told the BBC he realized “something was wrong” shortly after joining the company in 2017. Managers dismissed his concerns when he raised questions about what he called “awful” pollution data, he claims, and spent the next two years gathering internal evidence.

In Ecopetrol’s 2018 Integrated Sustainable Management Report, the company publicly celebrated “over five years with zero [oil] barrels spilled and zero incidents affecting people and the environment.” But its own database contained 218 incidents in 2018 alone.

Ecopetrol’s largest oil refinery is in the biodiversity-rich Middle Magdalena region in northeastern Colombia. It’s also the site where 40% of the company’s 2,000-plus oil spills took place between 2015 and 2022.

Pollution has upended life for the region’s residents and wildlife. Locals tell Mongabay that the air is thick with pollution while fish and rivers are contaminated by relentless oil spills. A fishing union representative also told the BBC that water pollution has led to a “massacre” of fish and the vulnerable West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus).

“There are so many [oil] spills in these waterways,” Óscar Sampayo, an environmental activist from the region, tells Dahl. “There are places where nature is completely degraded and polluted.”

Sampayo was forced to move in 2021 due to the death threats he and his family received after he denounced the contamination caused by the petroleum industry. He suspects he may be one of the 1,200 individuals tracked in the Ecopetrol database. A Global Witness report found 79 environmental defenders were killed in Colombia in 2023, which is roughly 40% of all reported environmentalist killings that year worldwide.

Ecopetrol did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment but shared that it has filed a complaint with the BBC over “inexact information,” but didn’t specify what was misleading or inaccurate.

Read the full story by Mie Hoeriris Dahl here.

Banner image: An Ecopetrol refinery near Barrancabermeja, Colombia. Image courtesy of EIA.

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

 
Global efforts to restore forests are gathering pace, driven by promises of combating climate change, conserving biodiversity and improving livelihoods. Yet a recent review published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity warns that the biodiversity gains from these initiatives are often overstated — and sometimes absent altogether.

Forest restoration is at the heart of Target 2 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to place 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030. But the gap between ambition and outcome is wide.

“Biodiversity will remain a vague buzzword rather than an actual outcome” unless projects explicitly prioritize it, caution the authors, led by Pedro Brancalion, a University of São Paulo researcher.

Restoration has typically prioritized utilitarian goals such as timber production, carbon sequestration or erosion control. This bias is reflected in the widespread use of monoculture plantations or low-diversity agroforests. Nearly half the forest commitments in the Bonn Challenge to restore degraded and deforested landscapes consist of commercial plantations of exotic species, a trend that risks undermining biodiversity rather than enhancing it.

Scientific evidence shows that restoring biodiversity requires more than planting trees. Methods like natural regeneration — allowing forests to recover on their own — can often yield superior biodiversity outcomes, though they face social and economic barriers. By contrast, planting a few fast-growing species may sequester carbon quickly but offers little for threatened plants and animals.

Biodiversity recovery is influenced by many factors: the intensity of prior land use, the surrounding landscape and the species chosen for restoration. Recovery is slow, often measured in decades, and tends to lag for rare and specialist species. Alarmingly, most projects stop monitoring after just a few years, long before ecosystems stabilize.

However, the authors say there are reasons for optimism. Biodiversity markets, including emerging biodiversity credit schemes and carbon credits with biodiversity safeguards, could mobilize new financing. Meanwhile, technologies like environmental DNA sampling, bioacoustics, and remote sensing promise to improve monitoring at scale.

To turn good intentions into reality, the paper argues, projects must define explicit biodiversity goals, select suitable methods and commit to long-term monitoring. Social equity must also be central.

“Improving the biodiversity outcomes of forest restoration … could contribute to mitigating power asymmetries and inequalities,” the authors write, citing examples from Madagascar and Brazil.

If designed well, forest restoration could help address the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. But without a deliberate shift, billions of dollars risk being spent on projects that plant trees — and little else.

Banner image: a graphic showing different methods of restoration and reforestation courtesy of Brancalion et al.