Researchers recently spotted the brightly colored Ghana cuckooshrike in Côte d’Ivoire’s Taï National Park. The “lost” bird hadn’t been seen in 13 years, reports Mongabay’s John Cannon.

Stephanie Bartlett, a field research fellow with the International Bird Conservation Partnership (IBCP), took a photo of the cuckooshrike while Paulo Ditzel, also an IBCP research fellow, called out its movements to her. Bartlett told Mongabay she got the identifying photo of the bird first before she even saw it.

“They’re scared of you,” Bartlett said. “You don’t get to get close to them, and so often you have to use the camera as a tool for identification.” Her photo revealed a small bird with an orange body and black and yellow wings.

The photograph was the culmination of months of fieldwork and bird surveys supported by an instrumental team of West African researchers. “To say they were vital for this project is an understatement,” Ditzel said.

The Ghana cuckooshrike (Lobotos lobatus) was last documented in 2013 in Ghana’s Atewa Forest. Ornithologists believe it’s range stretches across sections of West Africa, from Guinea to Ghana, within the Upper Guinean Rainforest. However, the bird’s likely habitat has been whittled away by logging and agriculture, leaving isolated patches of forest across its range.

Ditzel and his colleagues noted that the cuckooshrike was listed by the Search for Lost Birds (SLB), a platform that documents bird species that haven’t been scientifically documented in more than a decade. The researchers had a feeling the bird might still be around in Taï.

With no verified sightings in 13 years, researchers had little information about the bird’s population or conservation status. They could have been extinct, extremely rare or just difficult to spot in the forest canopy.

“You can’t really make an effective conservation plan for a species that nobody’s seen in 10 years,” John Mittermeier with the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and director of SLB said. “You’re not sure how it’s doing. You’re not sure where it is.”

Finding the Ghana cuckooshrike in Taï National Park underscores the importance of protecting a biodiversity hotspot that is also threatened by artisanal gold mining and illegal hunting, researchers say.

“Taï is a treasure for biodiversity conservation in Côte d’Ivoire and indeed throughout West Africa,” said Saint Guillaume Odoukpe, an ornithologist and assistant professor at Côte d’Ivoire’s Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny who organized and accompanied the IBCP expedition in the country. “I think there is plenty more to discover in this forest.”

That’s a sentiment shared by Mittermeier. “We have this sense sometimes [that] there’s nothing left to explore. But actually, there’s so many things left to explore, and in a way, these lost birds are a call to exploration,” he told Mongabay.

Read the full article here. 

Banner image: A Ghana cuckooshrike in Côte d’Ivoire. Image by Stephanie Bartlett.

A federal judge issued an emergency order on Oct. 23 to deploy federal security forces to the Apyterewa Indigenous Land in Brazil’s Pará state. The order came after new evidence emerged that hundreds of former non-Indigenous occupants planned to reinvade the territory on Oct. 25, the day of Brazil’s presidential runoff election.

The court order was in response to an urgent request by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), which documented threats of armed violence against the Parakanã Indigenous people who live in Apyterewa. Allegations suggest that the invaders expected political support following the elections.

According to the case file, on Oct. 12, an Indigenous Parakanã man received 10 WhatsApp audio messages that warned of a planned invasion. Some claimed 100 to 300 people were preparing to invade and were buying tarps and tools to rebuild settlements inside. The messages repeatedly warned Indigenous residents to leave, including references to possible gunfire.

“The governor said the people should return,” one audio message said. “The governor who has just won, and if Flávio [Bolsonaro] wins the presidency, then the land will be released to the people again, the land to white people.”

In another audio message, an individual said: “There are a hundred, two hundred, three hundred men who used to own land there. Everyone is saying they’re going back, that the government is supporting them.”

The alleged invasion was scheduled for Oct. 25, coinciding with the election which incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won in a surprise defeat of his far-right rival who had promised to remove “environmental obstacles” in the Amazon rainforest.

“Allegations of political support for the invasion reflect how the issue of Indigenous peoples is understood by supporters of the political opposition — a faction whose representatives openly oppose the demarcation of Indigenous lands,” Márcio de Figueiredo Machado Araujo, a federal prosecutor at the MPF, told Mongabay over WhatsApp messages. “It has become clear, therefore, that political stances and statements made by leaders are factors that severely compromise the safety of Indigenous peoples.”

The threats come amid growing political pressure on Indigenous territories in Pará. A recent Mongabay investigation uncovered how politicians, agribusiness interests and social media campaigns helped legitimize the invasion of the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory in Pará.

Apyterewa Indigenous land has been under attack for years. Between January 2019 and September 2022, 30,347 hectares (74,989 acres) of land were cleared for illegal logging and cattle ranching. It became the most deforested territory in Brazil during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency from 2019 to 2023. Following Lula’s inauguration in 2023, federal agencies carried out a successful operation to remove non-Indigenous invaders from the land, many of whom had lived there for years.

Machado said no land invasions occurred after security forces were recently deployed in Apyterewa.

Banner image: A village in the Apyterewa Indigenous territory. The region has been subjected to illegal invasions from outsiders, leaving the local Parakanã people confined to just 25% of their land. Image by Marizilda Cruppe/EVE/Greenpeace.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban officials have been invited and will attend the upcoming U.N. climate summit as observers. The summit starts next week in Antalya, Turkey. This marks their second attendance since returning to power in 2021. A Turkish and a Kabul official on Tuesday confirmed the Afghan Taliban’s observer status at the Conference of the Parties, or COP31. The Taliban are not formally recognized by U.N. member states, including because of the severe restrictions on women that they imposed. Afghanistan faces grave climate challenges, including drought and flooding. Critics argue against recognizing the Taliban government, while others emphasize the need for Afghan representation in climate discussions.

By Victoria Milko, Associated Press

Banner image: A girl carries jerrycans on a wheelbarrow after collecting water from a well at a mosque in Deh Mazang, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 2, 2026. Image courtesy of Siddiqullah Alizai via Associated Press

A new payments scheme rewards two rural communities on the edge of Botswana’s Okavango Delta for living alongside wildlife. Residents have installed cameras around their villages and earn money from photographs of elephants, lions and other wild animals that might raid vegetable gardens or kill livestock.

The scheme is part of the Harmony with Wildlife program, run by conservation nonprofit Wild Impact and safari company &Beyond in partnership with Gogomoga and Tsutsubega, two remote villages with fewer than 500 residents each and no paved roads, schools, shops or electricity.

Okavango Delta is home to elephants, hippos and large predators, as well as about 130,000 people, including the Indigenous San communities.

Wild Impact’s CEO Andrew Venter told Mongabay in a video call that wildlife commonly enters villages. Elephants, for example, eat crops and damage water boreholes, which need to be heavily fenced, but the communities are “remarkably tolerant” of wildlife, Venter said.

In April 2024, rangers from the communities in the area, started helping residents document damage caused by wild animals so they could claim compensation for their losses from Botswana’s wildlife department. This sparked the idea of setting up camera traps to reveal when and where elephants and other large mammals go.

The communities then jointly worked with Wild Impact to deploy cameras in a way that didn’t interfere with peoples’ privacy. After two years of watching footage of wild animals roaming through the villages, Wild Impact recognized the need to acknowledge the community’s role in conservation and promote coexistence, Venter said. That led to the development of an incentive model, he added.

Under the scheme, rangers check the cameras weekly and download the photographs. Different species attract different payments, with elephant sightings earning the most.

Every three months, Wild Impact pays the money into an account held in the communities’ names and managed through the local council. Villagers decide collectively how to spend it.

This year, the program has paid 57,600 Botswana pula (around $4,175) for wildlife sightings, mostly of elephants and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), although cameras have also photographed leopards (Panthera pardus pardus) and African wildcats.

Venter said the payments are deliberately modest because the organization funds them itself rather than relying on donors, whose support may not last: “We said, ‘Well, what could we realistically afford?’ Once we start this, this has to go on.”

Skipper Mareja, Wild Impact’s regional manager for Southern Africa landscapes, told Mongabay that payments for the first two quarters of 2026 have reached the communities’ accounts and the residents have met to discuss how to spend the money.

Dirk Cilliers, professor of conservation planning at South Africa’s North-West University, who isn’t involved in the project, said he welcomes the financial scheme.

“If we expect these communities to accommodate wildlife, there needs to be some tangible benefit for them which this programme offers,” he told Mongabay by email.

Banner image: Elephants spotted by one of the camera traps. Image courtesy of Harmony with Wildlife.

African countries left the United Nations biodiversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia, with an unresolved funding gap for conservation. International funding for protected and conserved areas in Africa fell significantly even as countries are working toward a global agreement to protect 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030, known as the 30×30 goal.

During the Oct. 19-30 summit, roughly $1.8 billion in new funds for global biodiversity conservation was announced. Negotiators agreed to expand the pool of countries that contribute to international biodiversity finance, inviting developing countries like China and Persian Gulf states to contribute.

“The first element remains the lack of funding,” Nadège Nzoyem, WWF’s regional director for the Congo Basin, had told Mongabay’s David Akana in response to a question about the biggest challenges in the run-up to the conference. “To improve wildlife monitoring, you need funds. To ensure that the forest is conserved, you also need funds.”

With just over four years to go before the 2030 conservation deadline, African nations are closer to reaching the 30×30 goal than the global average, but still off track. On average, African nations protect 19.9% of their land and 17.2% of their seas, compared with the global average of 18.7% of land and 10% of marine landscapes protected. That’s according to a tracker run by SkyTruth, a U.S.-based environmental watchdog.

At the Yerevan summit, the African Group, representing 54 nations, had pushed for more financial support to meet global biodiversity targets.

A report released during the summit found that recent funding for African conservation declined in 2025. African nations received about $389 million in international funding, 32% less than the 2022-2024 annual average. Between 2023 and 2024, the continent received 48% of all tracked funding; this fell to roughly 39% in 2025.

“Africa has seen the largest absolute decline in recent years,” the report notes.

The decline reflects a larger global trend as international funding for protected and conserved areas worldwide fell from around $1.2 billion in 2023 to about $1 billion in 2025.

“Rich countries spend over 10 times as much money on chewing gum each year as they spend on advancing 30×30 in developing countries,” Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, said in a statement accompanying the report.

The Forest Declaration Assessment 2026, published Oct. 13, found that while deforestation around the world declined by around 15% in 2025, led largely by Brazil, in tropical Africa deforestation and degradation actually increased over the same period.

“We know what needs to change,” Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “We cannot protect nature while continuing to finance its destruction. Resources must reach the countries and communities that need them. And biodiversity must become part of everyday economic decisions.”

Banner image: Outdoor banner at the COP17 summit in Yerevan, Armenia. Image courtesy of Mike Muzurakis/IISD/ENB.

A federal court in the U.S. has sentenced two residents of the state of California for their roles as financial facilitators in a scheme trafficking wildlife body parts between the U.S. and Vietnam.

Linh Luu and Kevin Le, a married couple from Anaheim, were sentenced on Oct. 23 to three years of probation and fined $10,000 each after pleading guilty to violating the Lacey Act, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Between September 2019 and May 2021, the couple processed $51,100 in payments for a Vietnam-based individual importing American black bear gall bladders and puma bones, while exporting to the U.S. lion teeth, black and white rhino horn pieces, and even a tiger pelt. Trade in all the species involved is restricted under CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty. Rhinos, tigers, and lions are also listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Federal authorities uncovered the operation through an undercover sting. According to the Justice Department, Luu and Le met an undercover agent in a parking lot in December 2020 and accepted a $12,000 down payment in cash for a piece of rhino horn while discussing ways to evade U.S. banking regulations. The horn was later shipped to the state of Oregon disguised as a household decoration to thwart customs inspectors.

Law enforcement officials said dismantling financial facilitators is essential to curbing wildlife crime.

“Wildlife trafficking threatens some of the world’s most vulnerable species and fuels criminal networks that profit from their destruction,” Scott Bradford, U.S. attorney for the district of Oregon, said in a statement. “This case demonstrates that our office will hold accountable not only the poachers, but also the financial facilitators who keep these markets alive.”

The investigation was led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement, alongside Homeland Security Investigations and Oregon State Police.

“This investigation clearly illustrates that wildlife trafficking isn’t a victimless, white-collar crime. It’s the financial engine behind the slaughter of species like rhinos, tigers, and black bears,” Dougles Ault, assistant director of the USFWS Office of Law Enforcement, said in a news release. “Poachers take the wildlife, but organizers and financial facilitators make the killing profitable.”

Mongabay previously reported that states along the U.S. West Coast face escalating challenges from trafficking networks as understaffed enforcement agencies struggle to police millions of tons of cargo moving through high-traffic land border crossings, busy international airports, and seaports, allowing criminal syndicates to hide illicit shipments and launder payments for domestic and global markets.

Banner image: A piece of rhino horn, left, and the same part disguised as a house good to thwart customs, right. Image courtesy of the U.S. Office of Public Affairs.