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). 

Cities can become dangerously hot during extreme heat events, making it increasingly important for urban planners to find ways to reduce temperatures and protect people from heat exposure. Woodlands, grasslands, lakes and rivers can create significantly cooler microclimates, offering one potential way to reduce urban heat, a new study finds.

The study focused on Guildford, a town in southeast England with a variety of green-blue infrastructure (GBI) types. GBI are land and water-based features integrated with each other and the built environment to provide mutually beneficial services, including wildlife corridors, flood mitigation and cooling.

In Guildford, researchers collected data from six sites — a woodland, grassland, lakeside, vegetated green wall, small pocket park and riverside — and compared how effective they are in cooling the areas around them. They compared each site with a built-up location.

The team established sensors at each site and recorded temperatures at one-minute intervals, from June 2023 till the end of August 2025. These sensors recorded temperatures through both normal climatic conditions and several extreme heat events. The researchers also used satellite data over the same timeline to get a more robust picture of the conditions in each location.

The team found that all six GBI sites were cooler by 1.81-2.49° Celsius (3.26-4.48° Fahrenheit) than their built-up comparison site. The cooling was more pronounced during extreme heat events. The woodland site was upward of 6°C (almost 11°F) cooler than the built environment on the hottest days. The riverside and pocket park were cooler by 3.5°C (6.3°F) on the hottest days. Overall, the green wall had the least cooling effect while the woodland had the most.

“Those nuances are important because they reinforce something we increasingly see in urban heat research: there isn’t a single number we can attach to a tree, park, lake, or green wall and say, ‘this is how much cooling it provides,’” Vivek Shandas, professor of geography with Portland State University, U.S., who was not part of the study, told Mongabay by email. “Cooling depends on the design of the place, its scale, the surrounding buildings and pavement, weather conditions, and time of day.”

The researchers acknowledge that their observations are from just one site for every GBI type, and local conditions could play a significant role in their findings.

Still, Shandas said the study moves the research beyond the simple notion that “green is good” and “toward a much more actionable question: How do we design cities so that cooling is available where and when people actually need it?”

The United Nations recently announced that global temperatures will soon surpass the climate change target established by the 2015 Paris Agreement, underscoring the urgent need for cities to adapt to extreme heat.

Banner image: An aerial view of Guildford, England. Image by Russss via Wikimedia. (CC BY-SA 4.0).

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s Senate has approved a bill to regulate the exploration of critical minerals, including rare earths, marking a step toward exploiting its vast reserves. The bill approved Thursday now awaits President Lula’s signature. It establishes a legal framework and offers tax incentives for domestic processing. Brazil holds the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earth elements, used in products like smartphones and electric vehicles. While China dominates the global supply chain, Brazil aims to position itself as an alternative. The bill also creates a fund to support mining projects and encourages mineral processing within the country.

By Eleonore Hughes, Associated Press

Banner image: A mine operated by Serra Verde Mining digs for rare earth elements including neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium, which are essential for the production of permanent magnets, in Minacu, Goias state, Brazil, July 28, 2025. Image courtesy of Eraldo Peres, Associated Press 

Haze from wildfires in Indonesia has spread even farther this week, reaching beyond Malaysia and Brunei to Singapore and the Philippines.

On Sept. 4, Singaporean residents woke to a smoggy sky as air quality reached unhealthy levels. By late afternoon, the city had the third-worst air quality globally, according to IQAir.

Earlier this week, Philippine authorities declared air quality in parts of Luzon island, including Manila’s metropolitan areas, Visayas island group and Mindanao island as “acutely unhealthy”, blaming it on the transboundary haze from Indonesia.

In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which has been hit by transboundary haze for weeks, the capital Kuching has topped the rankings as the world’s most polluted city since early this week. Authorities declared a state of emergency in Serawak’s Serian district on Sept. 4.

Malaysia’s health ministry warned in late August that cases of asthma rose by 259% and those of upper respiratory tract infections increased by 124% in a week.

Oil-rich Brunei has also been experiencing hazy conditions since mid-August.

Wildfires across Indonesia show no signs of abating amid a “super” El Niño, which brings extremely dry conditions. As of Sept. 3, Firewatch, a satellite monitoring platform, had detected more than 444,200 fire hotspots, which indicate potential fire sites, across the archipelago. This is 4.5 times the number detected on July 27.

Indonesian officials said the fires were deliberately caused, either by individuals or corporations. A Kompas newspaper report found that wildfires are detected on the same sites year after year, with 50% occurring in oil palm concessions.

Environmental NGO WALHI made a similar observation, saying that around half of hotspots in West and Central Kalimantan provinces this year occurred in oil palm and timber concessions. The NGO also pointed to 33 “high-confidence” fire hotspots detected in August in a concession belonging to the pulp company PT Bumi Mekar Hijau in Sumatra. Ten years ago, the firm was found liable by an appellate court for a fire that destroyed 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres) of land.

“Thousands of hotspots continue to be detected in peatland areas, plantations, and timber concessions, indicating that the government maintains a land-use model that increases ecological vulnerability and heightens the risk of wildfires,” said WALHI spokesperson Dana Prima Tarigan.

Residents and wildlife who live near the wildfires bear the brunt. Indonesia’s health ministry said it recorded 50,891 acute respiratory infection cases caused by haze in July and August.

Two volunteers who helped fight wildfires in Central Kalimantan died this week after complaining of breathing difficulties.

Firefighters have found snake and pangolin carcasses in burned areas. Farmers in West Kalimantan rescued a Borneo orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) on Sunday after he was found at an oil palm plantation. Days later, forestry authorities said the ape had died due to suspected smoke inhalation. 

Banner image: The riverside in Kuching city center, Sarawak state, Malaysia, is shrouded in thick haze, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. Image by AP Photo/Xpin Voon.

Scientists have sequenced the first-ever draft genome of the Philippines’ highly threatened Visayan spotted deer. The genome could guide efforts to save it from extinction, reports contributor Pippo Carmona for Mongabay.

The Visayan spotted deer (Rusa alfredi) was once found across six islands in the central Philippines. But deforestation and hunting decimated its population, prompting the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, to list it as endangered in 1988. By 2019, Philippine authorities had classified the species as nationally critically endangered. The last count from 2016 recorded only about 700 mature individuals, now only found on the islands of Negros and Panay.

To understand the genetic health of the species, researchers from Silliman University and the Philippine Genome Center Visayas collaborated to map its DNA.

They used a tissue sample from Abraham, a captive Visayan spotted deer that was raised and died at Silliman University’s Center for Tropical Conservation Studies (CENTROP). The sequenced genome contains 2.5 billion DNA letters and 24,531 genes. It’s the first genome that’s been sequenced for any of the Philippines’ endangered mammals.

The researchers found Abraham’s heterozygosity score, a measure of genetic differences, was just 0.17, far below the 0.3 score typical of healthy, genetically diverse wild populations. The low score indicates his parents were genetically closely related.

“Since Abraham is from a captive population, we expected to get a low heterozygosity result,” said Albert Noblezada, who runs the bioinformatics pipeline at the Philippine Genome Center Visayas. Noblezada added that decades of isolation have allowed inbreeding to quietly take hold in the captive colony.

Despite this, biologist Persie Mark Sienes at Silliman University said he wanted to see just how much genetic diversity remained in the population and whether there are individuals that carry genetic variations that could improve breeding outcomes. So he scanned the genome and identified a genetic marker that could help restore the colony’s genetic health. “We have identified a rare allele found only in one individual here, and luckily this individual is still sexually active,” he said.

Silliman University biologist Robert Guino-o said this finding was the proof they needed to revamp CENTROP’s captive breeding. “We are pursuing a genome-based breeding protocol,” Guino-o said, adding this will replace the old method based entirely on pedigree tracing.

The researchers agree that to boost overall genetic diversity, deer exchanges between CENTROP and two other captive facilities — Mari-it Wildlife and Conservation Park and Negros Forest Park — should resume. The last exchange, between CENTROP and Negros Forest Park, was in 2007.

The researchers said they hope to test mixing of individuals from captive and wild populations to close the genetic gap between the two. They plan on testing this at the 300-hectare (741-acre) Bayawan Nature Reserve on Negros, which hosts 70 deer.

Read the full story by Pippo Carmona here.

Banner image: A Visayan spotted deer at Silliman University’s Center for Tropical Conservation Studies. Image by Pippo Carmona for Mongabay.