Zambia is investigating wildlife deaths and human exposure linked to an anthrax outbreak in the northern province of Muchinga, where several hippos have died since the outbreak was reported on Aug. 31.

 While other wildlife deaths have also been reported, hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) are the species with the clearest laboratory evidence of anthrax, according to Raymond Hamoonga, Zambia’s national One Health coordinator. So far, 46 hippo deaths have been reported in the affected riverine area, but anthrax has only been confirmed in one animal, he told Mongabay by email.

Hamoonga added that even though current mortality rates don’t indicate a threat to hippo populations, the reported deaths are still “significant enough to warrant intensified surveillance, rapid investigation of new carcasses and continued monitoring of affected populations.”

“The immediate concern is the potential for further wildlife deaths, continued contamination around carcass sites and exposure of livestock and people at the wildlife–livestock–human interface,” Hamoonga said.

He said samples from five buffalo carcasses didn’t test positive for anthrax. Samples from 10 elephants reported since June are being investigated; none have been laboratory-confirmed as containing anthrax.

“Buffalo and elephant deaths should not presently be attributed to anthrax without supporting laboratory evidence,” Hamoonga said.

Anthrax is a zoonotic infectious disease caused by the Bacillus anthracis bacteria, which mainly affects wildlife and livestock. However, humans can become infected when they eat or come into contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products.

On Sept. 10, Zambia’s National Disaster Risk Management Division (DRMD), published an advisory urging people in Muchinga province to refrain from consuming, handling, selling, slaughtering, or distributing meat from animals that could have died from anthrax.

The DRMD said suspected carcasses should be reported immediately to veterinary or wildlife authorities.

Zambia has dealt with anthrax outbreaks before, the most significant one in 2023, when four people died and more than were infected across nine of the country’s 10 provinces.

While laboratory testing and field investigations continue into the current outbreak, Zambian authorities are monitoring the human health situation.

According to Hamoonga, as of Sept. 21, 21 people were suspected of contracting the bacteria in Muchinga. Only one case was laboratory-confirmed, and no deaths were reported at the time of the update. Hamoonga said they suspect carcass-related exposure; some people likely contracted the disease after handling or consuming meat from animals found dead.

“Community cooperation is essential because early reporting allows teams to secure and sample carcasses before they are disturbed or decompose,” Hamoonga said, adding that traditional leaders, community health workers, veterinary and wildlife officers, and local radio stations are involved in the local response.

Government authorities are continuing to monitor human health, treat suspected cases, and intensify wildlife and livestock surveillance including laboratory testing and risk-based livestock vaccination. A national vaccination campaign is currently underway.

Banner image: Hippos in a river in Zambia. Image by Julie Larsen © Wildlife Conservation Society.

A public hearing this week by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will assess claims that the Peruvian state violated the rights of the Indigenous Mashco Piro, Yora, and Amahuaca peoples, who live on ancestral territory in the Amazon Rainforest.

The court will hold a hearing on Sept. 24 and 25 in Montevideo, Uruguay, about whether the state failed to adequately protect the groups from extractive industries encroaching on their land, including inside the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve.

“This case constitutes a historic milestone in Latin America; the Court’s decision will not only have an impact on Peru, but will set a legal and political precedent for all Indigenous peoples of the Amazon,” the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and Tributaries and EarthRights International, two organizations representing the communities, said in a joint statement.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a separate body from the court, investigated the claims involving the Indigenous groups and found Peru was responsible for violating their rights. In November 2024, the commission referred the case to the human rights court, which can order the state to correct its actions.

According to the commission, Peru failed to expand the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve despite evidence that Indigenous peoples living in isolation and initial contact, often referred to by the acronym PIACI, are present there. Peruvian law requires that the government protect the areas that the groups traditionally occupy. The commission also said the state didn’t recognize collective territories with legal titles or define buffer zones around protected areas.

Logging, mining, roadbuilding, oil exploration, and drug trafficking have been documented in the area, the commission said.

“Despite the adoption of regulations developed by the state to protect PIACI, the lands where they live face constant pressure on their territories from the presence of outsiders,” the commission said in its referral letter to the court.

The commission asked the court to order the state to demarcate Mashco Piro, Yora, and Amahuaca territory, and to establish buffer zones. It also wants the Peruvian government to finish categorizing the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve as an Indigenous reserve, which could confer it a greater degree of protection.

The commission report also called for stronger action against illegal logging and mining, and a review of concessions that may overlap with ancestral territory.

In the commission’s report, the state argued that it’s already taking measures to protect PIACI with laws and regulations, and ongoing adjustments to protected areas. It also said it’s improving its monitoring and early-warning system for threats against the communities.

After the hearing this week, written arguments are due by Oct. 26. The court doesn’t have a deadline for issuing a decision.

Banner image: The Mascho Piro in Monte Salvado, Peru in 2024. Image courtesy of FENAMAD.

BWINDI, Uganda (AP) — In the tangled greenery of a Ugandan national park, mountain gorillas sit among the leaves, calmly carrying on as tourists trek into their forest home.

Many gorilla families are used to people, but while their population grows, the forest available to them does not.

Communities have planted trees for medicine, firewood and crafts along the edge of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in a bid to reduce pressure on gorilla habitats.

The idea is simple: If residents can find the trees they need outside the park, they will have less reason to cut them inside the forest.

Bwindi’s forest is home to about 450 mountain gorillas, close to half the world’s remaining population. A 2018 survey put the global population above 1,000, a significant recovery for a subspecies that once faced possible extinction.

“Being a neighbor to the park, I understand that the number of gorillas is increasing, but the forest habitat is not increasing,” said Christina Katushabe, founder of Change a Life Bwindi.

Her organization supplies useful trees, restores degraded land while improving biodiversity. Katushabe said members of the Batwa, an Indigenous community that has helped guide the project, select species used for medicine, timber and firewood.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority distributes seedlings, including medicinal trees that people might otherwise seek inside the park.

Joseph Muhindo, an assistant tourism and hospitality officer with the authority, said residents can harvest what they need in their communities “without tampering with the habitat for the gorillas.”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies mountain gorillas as endangered, an improvement from their earlier designation as critically endangered.

Tourism has helped support that recovery. Visitors trek through the forest to observe habituated gorilla families, generating jobs and revenue for nearby communities. Residents also sell locally made crafts.

Eunice Owembabazi, a member of a women’s crafts group, said the tree planting near the park means “we people and the gorillas do not inconvenience each other.”

The campaign has reached nearby schools, where students plant trees their families will be able to use.

“Now we are going to protect the forest, so that our gorillas can stay well,” said Davis Musinguzi, a student at Ruhijja Seed Secondary School.

The tree planting was among community conservation activities organized to mark World Gorilla Day, observed each year on Sept. 24.

By Patrick Onen, Associated Press 

Banner image: A mountain gorilla encountered during a gorilla tourism trek in Uganda. Image by Hjalmar Gislason via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Gorillas are among humans’ closest relatives, with a common ancestor dating back around 8 to 10 million years.

Both species of gorilla alive today are on the edge of extinction: The eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei) is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, while the western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) is critically endangered.

In its latest assessment of the eastern gorilla, the IUCN found a mixed picture of gorilla conservation. Some of the gorilla populations remained stable, while others faced declines — of roughly 60% for the subspecies Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) — in the last 20 years.

“Conservation has made the difference between survival and extinction in some regions,” Jessi Junker, a researcher at Germany’s Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz, said in a press release.

World Gorilla Day has been celebrated every Sept. 24 since 2017. For 2026, we bring you the highs and lows of gorilla conservation as published in Mongabay this year.

Ebola outbreak puts gorilla conservationists on high alert

The Democratic Republic of Congo declared a new Ebola outbreak in May 2026. As of Sept. 22, 7,773 confirmed human cases had been registered and 3,759 deaths.

While there haven’t been any suspected or confirmed cases of Ebola in eastern gorillas, which are mostly endemic to the DRC, conservationists are on high alert, Mongabay’s Kayleigh Long reported in June.

A previous Ebola outbreak from 2002-2003, caused widespread infection among western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in the Republic of Congo, killing around 5,000 of the animals. 

“[W]e observed that Ebola spreads rapidly within gorilla groups, likely due to the physical contacts gorillas have during nap time, play or grooming sessions.” Damien Caillaud, a behavioral ecologist who witnessed the 2000s outbreak, told Long.

When one animal is affected, he said, “Almost all the gorillas from the group disappear within a few weeks.”

Two sets of mountain gorilla twins born in the same year

Twins are rare among mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei), occurring in less than 1% of births. However, park authorities of DRC’s Virunga National Park recorded births of two sets of gorilla twins in 2026, David Akana, Mongabay’s program manager for the Africa bureau, reported in March.

Jacques Katutu, the park’s head of gorilla monitoring, called the two twin births within three months “an extraordinary event”.

Women patrol the outskirts of key Cross River gorilla sanctuary

Women’s collectives in southeastern Nigeria are carrying out patrols and investigating environmental crimes plaguing communities around the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, — home to critically endangered Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli) and endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti).

Women from two villages have even halted illegal timber deals, according to Francis Akie, head of the Traditional Rulers Council of Ulom, reported contributor Orji Sunday in July.

“Our men have failed to stop the threats,” Ofre Mary, founder of the Ulom Women’s Conservation Collective, told Sunday. “That’s why women decided to take a stand.”

Banner image: A western lowland gorilla (gorilla gorilla gorilla) in Gabon. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

A mass of floating weeds at Chia Lagoon, Malawi’s largest, is choking out waterways and livelihoods as farmers and fishers struggle to access fields and fishing areas.

Seven months after the rainy season ended in Malawi, fields that once absorbed seasonal water at the lagoon are submerged, frustrating irrigated maize and rice production, according to farmers. Fishers also said it’s now hard to access fishing grounds as the weeds are blocking boat routes.

“We have never seen anything like this,” said Ali Maulidi, who leads an association of more than 1,000 fishers in Nkhotakota district in central Malawi where the lagoon is located. “Due to waterlogged soils, matured cassava has rotted in some fields,” Maulidi told Mongabay in a phone interview.

The lagoon, on the western shoreline of Lake Malawi, drains into the lake through a narrow channel. Communities said weeds and debris started collecting where the outlet begins in February, pushing the water back into the lagoon and flooding agricultural fields.

Chia Lagoon covers 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) and directly supports more than 7,800 households through rice, cassava and maize farming as well as fishing and bird hunting. The larger river network supports more than 55,000 agriculturalists.  In December 2025, the lagoon was recognized as a Key Biodiversity Area because of its abundant bird, fish, plant, reptile and amphibian species.

“We don’t understand what is happening here; but we’re worried because it’s greatly affecting us,” Maulidi said.

Scientists too don’t fully understand why the weeds are accumulating now, but they have also suffered its impact. Early in the year, a team of researchers, including Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa, an ecologist at Malawi University of Science and Technology, struggled to access parts of the lagoon for their study on land use in the watershed.

The study hasn’t been published yet and it wasn’t focused on the weeds, but it could still help explain what’s going on. Mzumara-Gawa said the surrounding landscape is facing severe deforestation, farmland expansion and settlement growth. And farmers have encroached on the boundaries of the lagoon.

“It’s like this place should be wetland and nobody should be cultivating here. But people are cultivating there and … contributing to all of this silt that’s coming into the marsh. So that is my greater theory,” she told Mongabay in a phone interview.

Mzumara-Gawa said the catchment has been degraded enough that floodwater from two waves of flooding — in December 2025 and January 2026 — might have traveled faster through the area, uprooting plants in the lagoon as it went.

“So, maybe this rainwater coming from the high lands came in with a lot of force,” she said. “Because when I saw the size of it [the weeds], I was like, oh this is huge. How could this break away just like that?”

Banner image:  Farmers have been opening fields beyond the boundaries of the lagoon, which may be adding to the accumulation of debris blocking it. Image courtesy of Innocent Chunga.

Brazilian tin-producing company, White Solder, has been accused of acquiring a mineral  illegally mined in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon. White Solder has supplied hundreds of metric tons of tin to companies with U.S. Department of Defense contracts, according to an investigation by Repórter Brasil.

White Solder, which describes itself as one of the world’s largest tin producers, supplied at least 525 metric tons of tin to U.S.-based Indium Corporation between May 2023 and August 2025, according to records analyzed by Repórter Brasil. Indium Corporation in turn supplied solder to Raytheon, a major U.S. defense contractor that manufactures military technologies including radar and precision-guided missiles.

White Solder also reportedly supplied at least 2,400 metric tons of tin to Nathan Trotter, a U.S. manufacturer of tin and solder alloys between 2021 and 2025. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded Nathan Trotter a $19 million contract to build a tin smelting, refining and recycling facility in Pennsylvania, Repórter Brasil reported.

According to a release from the Department of Defense, the investment was intended to counter, “Chinese efforts to monopolize the global supply, as well as mitigate smelting supply chain vulnerabilities.”

“The US’s expanding need for raw materials to underpin its military will lead to further harms associated with mining, both illegal and legal unless safeguards and due diligence are put in place and followed,” Emily Iona Stewart, head of policy and advocacy with the U.K.-based NGO Global Witness, told Repórter Brasil.

In August 2026, a Brazilian federal court accepted charges of money laundering and illegal mining against White Solder filed by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The prosecutors allege that White Solder paid 166 million Brazilian reais ($32.5 million) to Coopertin, a tin producer cooperative, which was accused of disguising the origin of more than 525 tons of cassiterite illegally extracted from Yanomami territory between 2021 and 2022. Cassiterite is the raw material used to make tin, which functions as a solder for some technologies.

Repórter Brasil published a separate report alleging that while White Solder claimed to have purchased more than 2,300 metric tons of cassiterite from two authorized areas in the Brazilian state of Rondônia between 2020 and 2025. However, satellite imagery, aerial surveys and field investigations found no evidence of such mining activity. Greenpeace Brasil, which collaborated on the investigation, described the sites as “ghost mines,” that could potentially be used to disguise the origin of minerals illegally extracted elsewhere.

Indium Corporation told Repórter Brasil that White Solder met the criteria of the Responsible Minerals Initiative when it supplied the company with the metal. Indium did not say if White Solder is still a supplier.  

White Solder, Nathan Trotter, Coopertin, Raytheon and the U.S. Department of Defense did not respond to Repórter Brasil’s questions.

Read the full Repórter Brasil here. 

Banner image: Aerial view of a mining operation in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory. Image courtesy of Valentina Ricardo/Greenpeace.