BANJUL, Gambia (AP) — A “sea war” is brewing off the West African nation of Gambia as desperate local fishermen attack foreign commercial fishing vessels, and each other. The fight is driven by market forces and foreign seafood appetites that are far beyond their control. The Associated Press exclusively obtained video of one attack that documents the emerging problem in the fight for dominance. The fighting threatens to tear fishing communities apart, while overfishing undermines livelihoods for everyone. There are concerns that the fish population off Gambia could collapse in the coming years. That would be a business and environmental disaster in the small nation.

Watch the video here.

By Grace Ekpu, Associated Press

Banner image: Artisanal fishermen cast their nets in the waters off the coast of Gambia, on March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Grace Ekpu)

Most plants get their coloration from pigments, but an endangered South African cycad gets its unique silvery-blue hue from wax crystals and an underlying chlorophyll-rich layer, according to a recent study. Researchers say understanding how such layers work could pave the way for creating materials that protect from UV and water exposure.

Cycads, sometimes described as “living fossils,” are an ancient group of cone-producing plants that appeared around 270 million years ago, predating even the dinosaurs.

The study examined the “remarkably glaucous” or bluish leaves of Encephalartos horridus, the Eastern Cape blue cycad. The species is native to shrubland and rocky areas of South Africa. It’s listed as endangered due to declining subpopulations and poaching.

The study explained that land plants are typically coated with a water-repelling layer called a cuticle, which protects plants from environmental stresses. Cuticular wax comes in two types: intracuticular wax found inside, and epicuticular wax (EW), found outside the cuticle. The genus Encephalartos, which includes cycads, diverged around 9 million years ago and evolved to have substantial layers of EW.

“To the best of our knowledge, visually detectable EW deposits have been primarily documented in angiosperms [flowering plants] and are largely absent in other major plant lineages,” the researchers wrote. “Thus, studying the unique properties of an extant gymnosperm species such as E. horridus may provide valuable insights into plant adaptations to challenging environments.”

Researchers learned that the cycad’s EW is mostly composed of a wax compound that forms tubular crystals that reflect light from ultraviolet to blue wavelengths, resulting in the bluish sheen.

The study noted that the wax is common in gymnosperms — the group of plants that produce uncovered seeds, including cycads — and has even been found in ginkgo fossil records dating back 300 million years. This suggests the ability of plants to produce this wax compound “emerged early in land plant evolution.” But only a few species can use it to produce color.

“The leaf surface is coated with ultra-thin wax crystals about one ten-thousandth of a millimeter wide,” Takashi Nobusawa, study co-author and assistant professor at Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life, said in a press release. “Peeling off the leaf’s surface layer makes the blue disappear. But placing it back on a dark surface [rich in chlorophyll] brings the blue back, as if by magic.”

Nobusawa added in an email to Mongabay that, “The study is fascinating because it shows how an evolutionarily ancient plant lipid can self-assemble into crystals that both change color and add protective functions.”

He said that understanding the process to create such a wax compound “could open the way to bio-based coatings that are reflective, UV-protective, and water-repellent — for example, a sustainable alternative to car wax.”

Banner image of an Encephalartos horridus in a greenhouse under natural sunlight. Image courtesy of Takashi Nobusawa/Hiroshima University.

In late August, high in South Africa’s Jonkershoek Mountains, a small group of botanists picked their way across steep ground in search of one of the world’s rarest plants. They were surveying Penaea formosa, a critically endangered shrub thought to number fewer than 50 individuals. Donovan Kirkwood, curator of the Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden, was with them. He slipped, fell, and did not return. He was 51.

His death on August 26th was as stark as it was telling. Fieldwork, he observed, was not all “exciting trips into pristine wilderness” but often involved long treks to degraded remnants, fences and roadside verges, where fragments of rare flora cling to survival. Such places, he believed, deserved just as much attention as the postcard landscapes. In his years at Stellenbosch, he turned a tiny garden of 1.7 hectares into a force in plant conservation, advancing methods to propagate species on the very brink of disappearance.

The Cape Floristic Region, where he worked, is a global hotspot, rich in species found nowhere else but heavily damaged by farming and urban sprawl. Of the 10,000-odd plants in the Western Cape, nearly 40% are considered at risk. He set out to shift the odds. His most noted success came with Marasmodes undulata, a shrub once down to three surviving plants in the wild. From 90 banked seeds, he coaxed eight into life, eventually producing hundreds of offspring, many replanted in the field. The effort was painstaking and fragile, yet for him emblematic of what persistence could yield.

Conservation for him was not confined to science. He helped establish the James and Shirley Sherwood Botanical Art Collection, pairing art with botany to spark public engagement. He saw the garden as not only a scientific hub but also a place where people might, in his words, “fall hopelessly in love with plants and nature.”

Before arriving at Stellenbosch in 2018, he spent years at CapeNature, the provincial conservation agency, shaping reserve management plans and strategies for protected-area expansion. His PhD in ecology, completed at the University of Cape Town, trained him in population dynamics and floristic survey. But his temperament—energetic, curious, and willing to combine meticulous field data with imaginative outreach—was as decisive as his credentials.

Colleagues remember him as “enigmatic, enthusiastic, colorful, kind.” Under his stewardship, the botanical garden earned recognition from Botanic Gardens Conservation International as one of a handful worldwide accredited for threatened-species conservation. He also experimented with “satellite” conservation plots outside traditional gardens, including one in a corporate office building in Cape Town. The idea, radical to some, was to expand capacity by any means necessary.

In the end, he was working much as he always had: in the field, after a plant many had forgotten. That, he believed, was where the future of South Africa’s flora would be secured—one species, one patch of ground, at a time.

Header image: Donovan Kirkwoord. Image courtesy of Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden.

Five months after the World Bank’s private investment arm submitted its action plan to address community grievances against a rubber plantation it funds in Liberia, affected residents are still waiting for its implementation.

The case goes back to a 2019 complaint filed by four Liberian NGOs with the internal watchdog of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO). The complaint was filed on behalf of 22 communities in Margibi and Bong counties who live around a Salala Rubber Corporation plantation, alleging sexual harassment of workers, inadequate compensation for crops, pollution of groundwater sources, desecration of sacred sites, and land grabbing. The CAO validated these allegations in its investigation report in December 2023. It took the IFC until March 2025 to issue a management action plan (MAP). Since then, community representatives told Mongabay, no progress has been made toward addressing the violations.

“We are concerned about how the implementation of the MAP is going,” said Windor Smith from the Alliance for Rural Democracy (ARD), one of the NGOs representing the communities. “Until now we have not seen any tangible differences in the communities, at all.”

Smith added the IFC hasn’t communicated with them since March.

At the time of the complaint in 2019, Salala was owned by Luxembourg-based multinational Socfin, but it sold the plantation to India’s Jeety Rubber just after the CAO investigation concluded in 2024.

It’s unclear whether and how Socfin, or Jeety, will engage in the remedial action. The MAP includes commitments to implement community development programs that improve livelihoods, women’s economic empowerment, and measures to end gender-based violence and harassment.

Paul Larry George from ARD said that while Jeety has taken over the plantation with its existing grievances and liabilities, the new owner hasn’t engaged with ARD or the communities yet, nor shown any signs of getting involved in bringing redress to them.

According to the IFC’s first progress report, released in June 2025, the institution says it has conducted three missions to Liberia and several virtual meetings from March-June 2025. During these meetings, the IFC reportedly engaged with new plantation owner Jeety, former owner Socfin, and Socfin’s consultancy Earthworm Foundation, which found the same grievances in its own investigations.

An IFC spokesperson told Mongabay by email that it “continues to explore opportunities to implement MAP actions as envisioned.”

Jeety didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment. Socfin, too, hadn’t sent its responses by the time this article was published.

The IFC has been under scrutiny for years for failing to ensure that the companies it invests in uphold its own social and environmental standards. Despite adopting two major policies intended to tackle environmental and social issues throughout its investment cycles, concrete actions to redress communities for harm and loss remain to be seen.

The institution’s next progress update is due in December 2025.

Banner image of Jorkporlorsue town, surrounded by rubber trees owned by Salala Rubber Corporation. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.

THE SANTA ROSA PLATEAU ECOLOGICAL RESERVE, Calif. (AP) — Efforts to restore the red-legged frog to Southern California, where it had all but disappeared, seemed doomed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and restrictions were put in place at the U.S.-Mexico border. But scientists were able to airlift coolers of frogs’ eggs from a tiny population on a remote ranch in Mexico and race them across the border to plant them in American ponds. Biologists have been using artificial intelligence to confirm that the batch not only hatched but went on to breed in a remarkable experiment to restore an ecosystem. The red-legged frog is the latest species to see success from binational cooperation along the near-2,000-mile border.

By Julie Watson, Associated Press

The Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) recently announced the creation of a formal role for Indigenous peoples, giving them a voice for the first time in one of the Amazon Basin’s most important intergovernmental bodies.

The announcement was made during ACTO’s fifth summit of presidents of Amazonian countries in Bogotá, Colombia, marking a historic shift that grants Indigenous peoples more influence over important issues including deforestation, biodiversity and protected-area management.

“Our ways of life already offer concrete solutions to confront climate change and biodiversity loss with justice and effectiveness,” a coalition of Indigenous peoples from the nine countries of the Amazon Basin said in an opening statement at the summit last week. “That’s why we emphasize that we’re not only guardians: We are climate and environmental authorities.”

ACTO’s members — Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela — coordinate a regional agenda for protecting the Amazon’s natural resources. (The ninth Amazonian territory, French Guiana, isn’t part of ACTO.) Traditionally, ACTO has been composed of each member country’s minister of foreign affairs along with various commissions, drawing criticism that the organization’s structure excludes Indigenous voices.

Its new Amazon Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (MAPI) will include two Indigenous delegates from each member country. They will meet annually to discuss threats to their ancestral territories, including from illegal mining, wildlife trafficking, food insecurity and poverty, among others. MAPI will also issue reports and recommendations to other bodies within ACTO, with the goal of promoting Indigenous knowledge systems and languages.

“This is the result of a high-level political commitment and a historical debt to Amazonian Indigenous peoples, whose contribution to biodiversity protection, climate change mitigation and cultural preservation is invaluable,” ACTO coordinator for Indigenous affairs Freddy Mamani said in a statement.

The announcement comes at a crucial moment as member countries work toward implementing policies that build on the Belém Declaration from 2023, including reducing deforestation and carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation. Officials are also preparing climate and conservation financing plans ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30), scheduled for November in Belém, Brazil. At the summit, they reinforced their support for the Tropical Forests Forever Fund that will be discussed at COP30, a mechanism to pay countries for protecting their forests.

“The responsibility is enormous, and the challenges are many. But this alliance between governments and Indigenous organizations has all the foundations to succeed in achieving our common goal: protecting our forest, our home,” said Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of Indigenous peoples, during the meeting.

Banner image: Ecuadorian Vice President María José Pinto, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro speak at the closing of a meeting of leaders of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Bogotá, Colombia, on Aug. 22, 2025. Image by AP Photo/Fernando Vergara.