In the Indian Himalayas, numerous species of colorful pheasants roam the understory, pecking at seeds, roots, leaves, berries, and insects. These large, ornate birds are vital to the Himalayan ecosystem. But some species now face increasing pressures from habitat degradation and hunting, reports contributor Hirra Azmat for Mongabay India.

Among them is the white-crested kalij pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos hamiltoni). It’s a highly adaptable bird capable of living in habitats ranging from coniferous forests to scrublands and forest edges near human settlements.

“Like other pheasant species, it plays an essential role in Himalayan ecosystems by forming a major prey base for carnivores and raptors,” said Arif Nabi Lone, a researcher at the University of Kashmir’s Department of Zoology. “Besides, it also acts as a seed disperser and soil aerator.”

The white-crested kalij pheasant isn’t considered threatened on the IUCN Red List. However, in a 2025 study, Lone and his colleagues interviewed communities around two protected areas in the Indian-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir, and identified several threats to the bird, including habitat degradation, hunting, livestock grazing, and mushroom collection.

“Timber and firewood collection, resource extraction and deforestation are degrading its habitat,” Lone said. “Hunting and overgrazing are other serious threats. Mushroom collection is particularly concerning because it coincides with the breeding season, and people searching for mushrooms often disturb nesting females, reducing their breeding success.”

Human activities may also be threatening a rarer pheasant species: the western tragopan (Tragopan melanocephalus). Listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, the bird is endemic to the western Himalayas, where it depends on undisturbed oak and conifer forests with a dense understory of shrubs.

Riyaz Ahmad, former head of the Jammu and Kashmir chapter of wildlife conservation for the nonprofit Wildlife Trust of India, told Mongabay India that the western tragopan is also vital to the Himalayan ecosystem as prey, predator, and seed disperser. However, it’s an extremely shy bird that flees at the slightest disturbance, making it difficult to study.

“The bird is usually detected during the breeding season, when males become more vocal and advertise for mates,” Ahmad said. Some estimates based on their calls suggest there may be fewer than 300 of the birds left in Jammu and Kashmir, though long-term population trends remain unknown.

What’s certain is that their forest home is increasingly being degraded and fragmented by livestock grazing, tree felling, collection of forest resources, and other human pressures, Ahmad said. Climate change could also push the species to higher elevations to find suitable habitats, a 2020 study suggested.

“The western tragopan is a barometer of pristine habitats,” Ahmad said. “If its numbers decline, it is a warning that something is going wrong in these ecosystems. Regular monitoring, especially within protected areas, can help us assess whether our conservation efforts are working.”

Read the full story by Hirra Azmat here.

Banner image: The western tragopan depends on undisturbed mountain forests for survival. Image courtesy of Jainy Maria.

A new study has found that in Ecuador’s Amazon, Indigenous territories without formal conservation contracts maintained forest conditions just as well as formal protected areas.

Ecuador has three different approaches to forest governance: Forests protected by government institutions, forests managed by local communities under formal conservation agreements and Indigenous territories without formal conservation agreements.

To find out the state of forests under these different policies, researchers used satellite data to examine three metrics: Long-term changes in vegetation greenness as an indication of degradation or improvement in forest cover; abrupt changes in forest condition due to more acute disturbances like human settlements, roads and agricultural fields; and how forest productivity responded to the 2015-2016 El Niño drought — a climate phenomenon that causes extreme changes in rainfall and temperature patterns.

They found that community-protected forests performed best overall in some measures, particularly resilience after drought. These forests were under formal contracts such as a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program, which provides communities with financial incentives to refrain from any commercial activity that disturbs the natural forest. However, Indigenous territories without similar formal conservation agreements and who can use natural resources for subsistence and cultural preservation also had forest condition patterns comparable to the other governance regimes. In fact, they had the greatest proportion of areas showing positive long-term trends in vegetation greenness.

“From a practical perspective, our results suggest that conservation is not only about drawing lines on a map,” lead author Fernando Troya, currently based in Ecuador, who conducted this study as part of his doctoral studies at the KU Leuven University in Belgium, told Mongabay in an email. “It is also about governance, local participation, and creating systems that help people manage forests sustainably over the long term.”

The researchers found the largest proportion of negative long-term vegetation trends, suggesting long-term degradation, within forests protected by government institutions, where extractive activities are prohibited, but communities living in the area are allowed to use the land sustainably. Such government-protected forests in northern Ecuador showed substantially more degradation than in the south, with 78.6% of analyzed pixels showing declining greenness compared with 57.1% in the south.

The researchers say this could partly be because much of the forest of this category lies in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, where roads, population pressure and oil development are greater than in the rest of the country.

“These activities have been shaping the landscape for decades and create continuous pressure on forests, even when those forests remain standing,” Troya explained. “For people outside science, the message is simple: if we want forests to continue providing clean water, climate regulation, biodiversity, and economic opportunities for future generations, we need to understand which management approaches are actually working on the ground.”

Banner image: Toa Alvarado, a Kichwa leader, listens as activists explain the environmental damage caused by oil extraction while visiting the contaminated areas in Sucumbíos, Ecuador. Image by Dolores Ochoa, Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Carbon credit financing is helping to drive Africa’s clean cooking transition by making cleaner stoves affordable for millions of low-income households. As governments introduce new policies, securing $900 million in fresh financing commitments, companies such as Kenya’s BURN are using carbon credits to subsidize electric and efficient biomass cookstoves across the continent. As such devices replace charcoal stoves and open fires, supporters say the approach could accelerate access to clean cooking, help to reduce deforestation and cut hazardous household air pollution. Still, its long-term success depends on sustained demand for high-integrity carbon credits.

By Allan Olingo, Associated Press

Banner image: Mary Kavutha prepares breakfast using a fuel-efficient cookstove made by BURN in Kiambu, Kenya, on July 31, 2026.  Image courtesy of Allan Olingo, Associated Press.

Scientists recently described a new species of a tiny brown frog found in the Amazonian floodplain forests of Ecuador and northwestern Brazil. It looks nearly identical to related species but its slow, widely spaced out call sets it apart, researchers note in a study.

“I’ve had to get into arguments because people said the frog I study is ugly,” lead author Marianna Borburema, who studied the species as an undergraduate student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and is now a researcher at the University of São Paulo, told Mongabay by phone. “I find it absurd. The frog I study is beautiful! It is super cute.”

Despite dazzling the study’s lead author, the evolution of the frog, named Adenomera varcena, hasn’t been one focused on appearances. Biologists call this a “cryptic species”, a species whose external traits can be very similar to related species. It is roughly 22 to 24 millimeters (0.9 inches) long and has brown skin and dark blotchy patterns.

“Because of natural selection, the pressure isn’t on the frog’s appearance, it’s on the call,” said Borburema, who spent three weeks analyzing the frogs’ sounds. “We understand that evolution happens faster in their call because the song is what interests the female.”

Related species typically call frequently, some up to 70 notes a minute. However, the songs of A. varcenas include just one to five notes a minute, the slowest rate documented in the genus. Each note lasts less than a tenth of a second and lacks the pulsing rhythm found in most frogs of their genus. “It’s as if the frog is feeling lazy,” Borburema said.

Scientists identified A. varcena as one of nine genetically distinct groups within the Adenomera simonstuarti species complex. A. varcena was first flagged by Borburema’s former supervisor, co-author Thiago Carvalho, a herpetologist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Carvalho and colleagues outlined potential lineages using DNA analysis in 2020, and collected more samples in the seasonally flooded forests near the upper Juruá River in Brazil in 2021.

A. varcena is the only species in the lineage to live in floodplains; all of its closest relatives live in dry land forests.

“Even though it’s a small, brown frog that doesn’t call much, it is worthy of being studied, it is worthy of being known, and more than that, it is worthy of being protected,” Borburema said. “A species can only be protected if it is known.”

Banner image: A female Adenomera varcena. Image courtesy of Borburema et al., (2026).

Scientists have identified a new-to-science, reddish-brown snake from specimens found in the forests of Papua New Guinea  and named it after Slash, the lead guitarist of the rock band Guns N’ Roses.

Slash’s groundsnake (Lielaphis slashi) is the twentieth species to be confirmed within the genus Lielaphis, a group of groundsnakes found primarily on the island of New Guinea – which is split between Papua New Guinea in the east and Indonesia in the west, the researchers reported in a recent study.

The snake’s name honors the musician Saul Hudson, professionally known as “Slash”, of Guns N’ Roses, for his lifelong promotion and advocacy of snakes, zoos, and museums, the authors write.

“As a long-time herpephile, I am extremely honored and humbled to have Lielaphis slashi from New Guinea named after me,” Slash said in a press release. “It is really exciting, I never would have imagined this moment would arrive.”

Slash’s groundsnake has a reddish-brown, unpatterned back and an unmarked white or cream underside.

Study co-author Christopher Austin, professor of natural science and curator of amphibians and reptiles at Louisiana State University in the U.S., first found the snake in July 2006 in a largely undisturbed secondary forest in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea.

“Snakes in general are pretty hard to find, and these nocturnal snakes are especially challenging to find,” Austin told Mongabay by email. “Given that there are several venomous snake species in New Guinea, one needs to be especially careful finding these snakes at night.”

Austin added that when he found the first individuals of Slash’s groundsnake, he thought it was a species that was already scientifically described.

The individuals were initially labeled as Lielaphis parvus, but subsequent genetic analysis suggested it was an undescribed species.

Austin said that his team then analyzed the specimens’ physical characteristics, including their scales, and compared them with those of other known Lielaphis species. The analysis confirmed the 2006 specimens indeed belonged to a distinct species.

“These snakes have a very conserved color pattern and without close examination of the scales and other morphology the New Guinea species are hard to tell apart,” Austin said.

Since New Guinea’s groundsnakes look highly similar, have secretive nocturnal habits, and a complex taxonomic history, Lielaphis groundsnakes have remained poorly understood, leaving a high potential for species that are yet to be formally described, the authors write.

They add that very little is known about the natural history of the newly described species. Furthermore, while New Guinea is widely recognized as a biologically diverse hotspot, its unique wildlife faces immediate threats from timber harvesting and industrial plantations, the authors write.

“The habitats that Slash’s groundsnake is from are under threat from industries like coffee farming and mining,” study co-author Sara Ruane, the Field Museum’s Associate Curator of Herpetology, said in the press release. “That’s part of why describing the species that live there is important.

Banner image of the new species of snake, L. slashi. Image courtesy of Chris Austin.

Guided by its national philosophy of Gross National Happiness, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan aims to achieve food self-sufficiency by 2029 under its 13^th five-year plan. However, the rugged, landlocked nation faces challenges in the form of steep terrain and logistical bottlenecks, chef and restaurateur Bleu Tshering Dorji told host Mike DiGirolamo on a recent episode of the Mongabay Newscast.

“We are a mountainous landlocked country, and only a small percentage of our land is, I think, actually suitable for agriculture,” Dorji said.

Bhutan’s five-year plan seeks to dramatically boost domestic production of key commodities while supporting smallholder farmers.

Agriculture employs more than 40% of Bhutan’s 800,000 citizens, but arable land is extremely limited, and remote farms struggle with unpaved roads and a lack of cold storage.

Dorji said the biggest challenge for farmers is getting their produce from farm to market due to the rugged terrain. “Every extra hour in transit affects quality and freshness.”

Labor is also increasingly scarce as young people leave agriculture. “We need our young Bhutanese people to be able to see farming as not a last resort, but as a profession that you could be proud of,” Dorji said.

To counter these issues, the government is investing approximately $180 million under the plan, with $139 million targeting smallholder farmers, the majority of whom in Bhutan are women, according to the five-year plan.

Sonam Wangchuk, an executive specialist at Bhutan’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, told DiGirolamo on the newscast that under the current five-year plan, the government is prioritizing youths and women.

“Just to take an example, in farm machinery, previously, we had this huge power tillers where those power tillers are used on the farms, and it could be operated only by the men,” Wangchuk said. “But now the government has taken the initiative to introduce a smaller-capacity power tillers where it can be operated by women.”

Farmers also deal with human-wildlife conflict, Wangchuk said, partly due to strict conservation laws that protect wildlife. To protect crops, the government is building 3,400 kilometers (2,100 miles) of fencing — a strategy that’s been criticized by Wangchuk. “We need to have different strategies for different kinds of wildlife,” he said.

For restaurateur Dorji, the path forward requires embracing the relationship between people and nature. She said farming isn’t just an industry, but a pillar rooted in coexisting with nature.

“Our food system isn’t just about producing food,” Dorji said. “It’s about sustaining our landscapes, our communities, and our culture.”

Listen to the full conversation with Bleu Tshering Dorji and Sonam Wangchuk here.

Banner image: A village in Wangdue Phodrang. Almost 60% of Bhutan’s people live in rural areas, some of them in protected areas. Livestock roam freely, making them easy prey for tigers. Image by Baron Reznik via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).