The Daasanach people in the Turkana Basin of northern Kenya experienced the worst drought in 40 years between November 2020 and March 2023. The Daasanach are pastoralists who have lived semi-nomadically for roughly 6,000 years, supported by herds of livestock including cows, camels, donkeys, and goats.

A group of researchers worked with the Daasanach to study the effects of the drought on their culture and access to food. They examined water and food access as well as coping and dietary strategies for 515 adults and 384 children in communities around Lake Turkana in Kenya.

During the drought, livestock herds dropped precipitously, with little recovery by 2024. Prior to the drought in 2019, each household had an average of 24 sheep and goats; by 2022 and 2023, they had just eight on average. Similarly, before the drought, the average family had six cows, and during the drought, just two. Such livestock are central to the economy and food security of the Daasanach pastoralists. With fewer animals to feed themselves, many Daasanach families moved to the town of Illeret during the drought to be closer to food aid.

As the drought progressed, nutrition worsened for the Daasanach amid a drop in milk and meat consumption. Researchers found that children who had access to milk had significantly better nutrition over time compared to children without access to milk.

The study also found an increase in water insecurity during the drought, compounding food insecurity challenges.

“The lived experience of Daasanach is important to understand and can tell us more than just how much rain has fallen, but how people are experiencing the drought so that the particular issues can be addressed,” Asher Rosinger, lead researcher of the study, told Mongabay in an email.

The Turkana Basin historically experiences frequent droughts, Rosinger said. “Pastoralism as a livelihood has developed primarily in what we call patchy, or ecologically marginal environments,” and pastoralists typically migrate to find better pasture conditions during drought, he added.

“With an increasing number of droughts, Daasanach adapt by finding ways to diversify,” Rosinger said. They began fishing for both food and income when livestock failed. “But the interesting thing is that as conditions have improved since the end of the drought, many are still fishing and using the fishing income to replenish their livestock. This diversification has increased resilience and is another source of income.”

Rosinger said he hopes conditions will improve so people can sustain the ancient practice of keeping livestock in this region of northern Kenya. “Pastoralism in this region has been going for more than 6000 years strong, and I hope it will continue for another 6000 years.”

Banner image of Daasanach warriors, by Rod Waddington via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) — Prominent climate change activist Greta Thunberg arrived Tuesday at the U.N. climate meeting, where she emphasized the need to protect people and the planet over profits and power.

This year’s meeting — called the Conference of the Parties, or COP31 — comes after a year of climate-induced heat waves and other disasters.

As she arrived at the meeting venue in Antalya, Turkey, Thunberg said climate change is “threatening everything” and that “everything and everyone we love is at stake.”

“We should act to protect and benefit people rather than constantly sacrificing the global majority and the very planet we are all living on, for a fortunate few to keep making unimaginable profits and maintaining geopolitical power,” she told reporters.

Thunberg is attending her first U.N. climate summit since she participated in the 2021 COP in Glasgow, Scotland, where she dismissed promises made by global leaders as “blah, blah, blah.”

In 2024, Thunberg participated in a protest rally in Georgia against Azerbaijan hosting that year’s climate talks. Thunberg accused Azerbaijan of using that summit to “greenwash their crimes and human rights abuses.”

Thunberg is expected to join this year’s talks for a few days. She said structural changes are needed across the world to deal with the climate crisis because current political and economic systems “have become incompatible with human nature.”

By Khalil Hamra and Sibi Arasu, Associated Press

Banner image: Activist Greta Thunberg speaks to members of the media at the COP31 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, in Antalya, Turkey. Image courtesy of Khalil Hamra via Associated Press. 

Four decades ago, Wayan Wardika says, clouds of fireflies would illuminate the night sky above the rice fields of his native village in Bali, Indonesia. Today, the insects have virtually disappeared from here due to rapid land development, light pollution, habitat degradation, and heavy use of agricultural pesticides, reports contributor Rizky Maulana Yanuar and Mongabay’s Sam Lee in a video.

Across Southeast Asia, at least four firefly species are nearing extinction. Beyond their cultural importance, fireflies serve as critical bioindicators of environmental health, act as plant pollinators, and control agricultural pests by preying on crop-destroying snails.

To reverse the fireflies’ decline, Wardika founded Bring Back the Light in 2020 on his family farm in Taro, Bali, establishing Indonesia’s only firefly conservation program. Lead scientist Cindy Chayani works alongside a specialized research team to oversee a captive-breeding program designed to rewild native populations.

In custom terrariums engineered to replicate natural jungle and wetland habitats, scientists nurture firefly larvae for up to two years. Then they release roughly 90% of the adult insects into the wild. “We designed their mating terrariums to mimic their natural habitat,” Chayani says in the video. “This is so they hopefully feel comfortable and produce more eggs.”

The program has released nearly 20,000 larvae and adults, resulting in a gradual recovery of local firefly counts.

But Wardika acknowledges that breeding fireflies alone won’t ensure long-term survival without healthy habitats. “If we don’t see fireflies, there is something wrong with the ecosystem,” he says, adding that his goal has expanded to not only protect and save the fireflies, but also regenerate the ecosystem.

To eliminate toxic agricultural runoff, Wardika began collecting manure from a local facility that hosts white cows, revered as sacred in Balinese Hinduism, and processing it into organic compost. He also developed an organic pesticide concoction, known as an eco-enzyme, crafted from market food waste.

To build a pesticide-free sanctuary across the region, Wardika is working to transition 35 neighboring farmers to chemical-free agriculture. To lower adoption barriers, his initiative provides organic fertilizers and eco-enzymes for free, while reimbursing farmers for any financial losses during the transition. He funds these efforts through firefly ecotourism visits and sales of organic farm produce.

Four local farmers have adopted the system so far, including Pak Nyoman. “In the past, who took care of the fireflies? No one! But now they are considered important,” Nyoman says in the video.

For Wardika, restoring fireflies represents a broader commitment. “We maintain the sustainability of nature, not just for our generation, bur for our future generation.”

Watch the video by Sam Lee and Rizky Maulana Yanuar here.

Banner image: Conservationist Wayan Wardika in the farm. Image courtesy of Bring Back the Light.

An emergency effort to rescue tens of thousands of orchids from being razed for a road-building projects in southern India has been hailed a success in a recent study.

Many species of orchids are classified as epiphytes, which means they grow on trees, using them as physical support frames. When these host trees are killed, the orchids can die along with them. Researchers in the state of Kerala collected more than 27,000 such orchids from trees that had either been felled or were scheduled to be cut down for road development. The rescued orchids were then planted on trees in two public wetlands and a beach. About two years later, nearly three-quarters of those orchids were still alive, researchers found.

Among the rescues were 12 orchid species endemic to the region. Eleven of those 12 aren’t even listed on the IUCN Red List, meaning their conservation status isn’t known.

“There is a kind of silent extinction going on with some of these orchids,” Viswambharan Sarasan, study co-author and an expert in orchid conservation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the U.K., told Mongabay in a video call.  “We don’t know how many of these orchids are being lost to road-building program over the last 15-20 years.”

Kerala is an orchid hotspot, with 271 known species. Many grow on trees in forests, roadsides, and tea and coffee plantations in the biodiverse Western Ghats mountain range.

Sarasan and his colleagues planted the 27,324 rescued orchids in three public areas: Kappad Beach; Sarovaram Bio Park, an urban mangrove wetland; and Malabar Botanical Garden, also an urban wetland. After 12-24 months, more than 19,500 orchids, nearly 71%, had survived. Of the 6,126 endemic orchids, nearly 55% survived.

Sarasan said many of the endemic orchid species grow in cold, hilly areas, so translocating them to warmer areas, near sea level, was risky. But they not only survived, many also flowered and produced seed capsules. “That was a really big surprise,” he said.

The researchers also used the opportunity to generate public awareness about orchids. At Sarovaram, they tagged 10 orchid species with a QR code that visitors could scan to learn more about the plants and how they ended up there. The park receives nearly 511,000 fee-paying visitors annually, the authors say, and the 10 species generated more than 126,000 QR-code scans over two years. Sarasan said that to his surprise, the QR code traffic was equally good for orchids with very tiny non-showy flowers, as for those with visually striking ones.

The study shows that “rescue translocation can transform orchids facing otherwise inevitable destruction during infrastructure development into living conservation assets,” the study authors write. However, they caution that rescue translocation should be “a last resort when orchid-bearing trees cannot be retained.”

Banner image: Aerides crispa, an orchid species endemic to the Western Ghats, was among those rescued. Image © tspkumar via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Two months ago, more than 500 people invaded Brazil’s Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory in Pará, northern Brazil, where the isolated Igarapé Ipiaçava Indigenous people live. In response, Brazil has deployed the National Public Security Force for a period of 180 days to support the country’s Indigenous Affairs Agency (Funai) as it works to protect the Indigenous territory.

“The deployment of the National Force is already underway,” a Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) spokesperson told Mongabay over email. “Troops are already in the region.”

In August 2026, a new state law in Pará created the Bacajaí Environmental Protection Area (APA Bacajaí), which allows private landowners to build homes and raise livestock in the area. However, the federal government maintains that the state law is invalid since the APA Bacajaí completely overlaps with the federally protected Indigenous land in Pará state. In the weeks after the law was approved, hundreds of people invaded the Indigenous land, smashing through security gates, tearing down warning signs and setting up camps inside.

A Mongabay investigation published in October reveals how the fast-tracked law helped legitimize and encourage hundreds of people to invade the territory. A coordinated social media campaign involving politicians and influential agribusiness figures also helped push the invasion, Mongabay found.

The investigation also found a sharp increase in forest fires, jumping from zero alerts in August to 23 signs of fires inside Ituna/Itatá by Oct. 13.

On Aug. 26, a federal court ordered the government to deploy a security team within 48 hours to respond to the invasion. However, action couldn’t be taken until the federal government signed the authorization two months later, on Oct. 29, and published it in Brazil’s official gazette on Nov. 3.

The National Force had previously operated in the territory, but its authorization expired in July 2026 without renewal. In a judicial case file, the government argues that to redeploy the security forces, it needed authorization from Pará’s government, which hadn’t cooperated.

“The continuation or resumption of the National Force’s deployment depends on the issuance of a new administrative act, which also requires authorization from the requesting State Governments,” the MJSP spokesperson said.

Funai maintains permanent monitoring and protection activities in Ituna/Itatá to combat invasions and illegal activities. The agency told Mongabay in an email that it will play a central role in the operation and is responsible for providing the necessary logistical infrastructure. The National Force’s role is to provide security support for Funai’s operations, rather than independently determine territorial protection priorities.

Funai said it could not disclose deployment schedules and field tactics for strategic and safety reasons.

Banner image: Images of fires taken during flyovers over the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory in 2019. Image by Fábio Nascimento/Greenpeace.

Peruvian customs agents and authorities from the National Forest and Wildlife Service (SERFOR) announced on Nov. 4, 2026, that they seized more than 3,000 tarantulas at the Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima. The spiders were hidden inside socks put in luggage destined for Germany.

The alleged traffickers, two German citizens and a Polish national, include a “renowned tarantula researcher” who was not publicly identified, authorities said in a press release. They were reportedly detained by the Peruvian National Police’s environmental crimes unit and face criminal proceedings.

“Concealed in socks inside three suitcases, we found the tarantulas in different stages of life, from eggs and hatchlings to adults,” said Cora Suárez, a forest and wildlife control technician at SERFOR in a press release. “The traffickers made a meticulous selection to include different species, some of which have not yet been described by science.”

These arachnids, some vividly colored, were collected from the wild allegedly to be sold as exotic pets to collectors and for research. They came from across Peru, including Junín, Loreto, Cajamarca, Cusco and La Libertad, authorities said.

The seized spiders include members of the genus Pamphobeteus which includes some of the largest spiders in the world and are sold online for as much as 60 pounds ($80) each. Blue bird eaters (Thrixopelma lagunas), which can fetch 40 pounds ($53) online, were also confiscated along with several new-to-science spiders. Antikuna sp. was only described in 2021, and some species of Avicularia have not yet been scientifically described, according to Peruvian authorities.

The Bolivian blue leg bird eater (Pamphobeteus antinous), which was also seized, is listed as vulnerable to extinction on the list of threatened wildlife in Peru and is protected nationally. However, none of the seized species are internationally protected under CITES, the global wildlife treaty.

Authorities are still identifying the crawlies, and once that is complete, they will be housed in an “authorized breeding center,” the release said.

The seizure highlights a growing global trend in smuggling invertebrates from the wild for the exotic pet trade — from rare and protected ants to invasive cockroaches and venomous scorpions.

Current regulations in most countries, including the EU, allow for a smuggled species to be legally sold even if removing it from the wild broke national regulations in the native country — a loophole experts say must be closed.

“This is just another example of smuggling a non-CITES protected species, but caught in violation of national law in the country of origin,” Sandra Altherr told Mongabay. Altherr is from the German NGO Pro Wildlife, which documents such cases of “stolen wildlife” to Europe violating national regulations. “This is a pattern that we have observed again and again: If they were not seized they could have been legally imported to the EU, due to a legal gap. This means a lower legal risk for the smugglers but with high profit.”

Banner image: One of the seized tarantulas. Image courtesy of SERFOR.