More than 100 known species of lemurs live in Madagascar. These primates with large eyes, a pointed snout, and long bushy tails are found only in the island country, where they usually live in large groups on trees.

Lemurs are one of the world’s most threatened groups of primates, under pressure from the loss of their habitat and hunting. On World Lemur Day, celebrated on the last Friday of October, we highlight some recent Mongabay stories about these remarkable animals.

Restoring a connection between forests offers hope for lemurs

In eastern Madagascar, Andasibe-Mantadia National Park and the Analamazoatra Special Reserve shelter around a dozen species of lemurs, alongside an extraordinary array of other animals and plants, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

Once connected by continuous rainforest, the landscape between the two parks was fractured in the 1960s, when large stretches were cleared for agriculture and cattle pasture. What remained was a patchwork of forest fragments separated by degraded land, limiting wildlife movement and threatening biodiversity.

Mongabay’s Marina Martinez reported in April about how a coalition of researchers, conservationists and local communities is rebuilding the forest corridor.  Launched in 2023, the reforestation project aims to restore 150 hectares (370 acres) of native forest and reconnect these two critical habitats.

Lemurs like invasive guava fruits, and that could be a problem for reforestation

Restoring native forests is critical for lemurs. However, once damaged, forests in Madagascar are vulnerable to takeover by invasive guava trees, whose seeds the lemurs themselves help to spread.

When the delicious strawberry guavas (Psidium cattleyanum), native to Brazil, are in fruit, lemurs will choose them over native fruit, Mongabay contributor Ryan Truscott reported in March.

Conservationists say forest restoration projects for lemurs must account for how strawberry guavas can impact the forests. “[T]he guava lures Madagascar’s remaining frugivores to endanger the very forests on which they depend,” anthropologist Cortni Borgerson, an associate professor at Montclair State University in the U.S., told Mongabay by email.

Verreaux’s sifakas could help bring Madagascar’s dry forests needed attention

Madagascar’s dry tropical forests are declining rapidly. However, these forests often don’t get the same attention from conservation groups and funding bodies as their humid rainforest counterparts do.

Contributor Mino Rakotovao reported in September 2025 that NGOs and government representatives pushed for the inclusion of a charismatic inhabitant of Madagascar’s dry forests, the Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi), to the list of the World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates. This inclusion, they said, would hopefully help the lemur and its critical habitat get more attention needed for their protection.

Meet the Mouse Lemurs!

For younger readers, Mongabay Kids explores a group of tiny lemurs called mouse lemurs that live in all kinds of forests across Madagascar.

Banner image: A Verreaux’s sifaka dancing. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

A group of U.S. lawmakers is urging Secretary of State Marco Rubio not to support Colombia’s plans to restart aerial spraying of coca crops in the Amazon, warning of risks to human health and the environment. The Colombian government says spraying is needed to combat cocaine production and weaken armed groups, but critics argue the decades-old strategy has failed and could accelerate deforestation. The lawmakers are questioning Washington’s potential involvement and calling for alternatives that protect rural communities and the rainforest. Despite decades of U.S.-backed counternarcotics efforts, Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer. 

By Steven Grattan, Associated Press 

Banner image: A small coca crop is visible on the outskirts of Puerto Asis, Colombia, Nov. 26, 2025. Image courtesy of Ivan Valencia, Associated Press 

Rising disposable incomes, social media algorithms, and pop culture influences have led to a surge in demand for exotic pets in India, reports Mongabay India’s Arathi Menon.

A recent report by the Humane World for Animals (HWA) valued India’s exotic pet market at $42.6 million in 2024, and projected it will nearly double by 2030. Despite laws in the country to prevent illegal wildlife trade, trafficking persists due to gaps in enforcement and unmonitored online sales. Online platforms and closed messaging groups provide discreet environments for transactions, bypassing health screenings and documentation requirements.

Sumanth Bindumadhav, India director for HWA, said social media platforms normalize exotic pet ownership. “The algorithms amplify it: Videos that receive a lot of engagement and views are shown to more people, which can lead to more people wanting these animals. The interactions facilitated at petting zoos can also create demand.”

In 2020, India’s environment ministry introduced a Voluntary Disclosure Scheme allowing owners of nonnative pets to declare their animals to the government without facing prosecution. More than 40,000 people across 30 states and union territories declared their exotic pets, according to the HWA report.

India also updated its wildlife law to mandate the registration of possession, transfer, birth, and death of species listed under CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty.

Jose Louies, CEO of the nonprofit Wildlife Trust of India, said the amendment gave forest departments a crucial legal mechanism to act against illicit nonnative animal possession within Indian borders.

However, Shubhra Sotie, an environmental lawyer and co-author of the HWA report, highlighted a contradiction. She said that while trade in native wildlife is prohibited under the amended law, “the pet trade in exotic, non-native animals is legal but regulated.”

Sotie added that whenever CITES alters its species listings, the law needs further updates, which requires parliamentary amendments, creating statutory delays.

Despite multiple other laws governing wildlife trade, including the Customs Act and Livestock Importation Act, technical bottlenecks remain, according to the HWA report. For example, operational issues plague online registration portals, while officials struggle to identify individual registered animals.

Furthermore, non-CITES-listed species remain in legal limbo, leaving law enforcement uncertain about their legality. Pawan Sharma, advocate and wildlife conservationist at Resqink Association for Wildlife Welfare (RAWW), said multidepartmental involvement complicates coordination, with significant confusion around the fate and repatriation of animals seized during customs operations.

Louies cautioned against viewing the exotic pet trade purely as a wildlife issue. “There is a larger wildlife crime dimension, such as the wide networks, large amounts of money and potentially tax evasion and connections with other forms of illegal trade, that we should not ignore.”

Read the full story by Arathi Menon here.

Banner image: Owls, like this snowy owl in a Dutch sanctuary, are popular as pets in India, thanks in part to the popular Harry Potter movies. Owls are legally protected under Indian laws. Image by Amy Evenstad via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Bat Week, from Oct. 24-31, 2026, is a worldwide celebration of bats — a group that makes up 20% of all mammals.

Bats live on all continents except for Antarctica, and provide major ecosystem services such as mosquito control, pollination and seed dispersal. Despite their ecological importance and ubiquity, bats still remain poorly understood.

Here we highlight some stories on bats that Mongabay has reported in the last year:

India has a wealth of bats, but our knowledge of them is poor

India is home to 135 known bat species but, according to the first nationwide assessment of the country’s bats, much about the mammals remains poorly understood, reports Mongabay’s Shreya Dasgupta.

Of these 135 species, seven are listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List, while 35 species are data deficient or not listed at all, meaning their conservation status isn’t known.

“Bats are the most diverse order of mammals in [India],” Rohit Chakravarty, report co-author and India program manager of the nonprofit organization Bat Conservation International (BCI), told Mongabay by email. “[Yet] there are less than 50 dedicated bat researchers in the country so there’s an urgent need for prioritizing research topics, species, geographical areas.”

Community project targets New Zealand’s bats

The only known native land mammals still in New Zealand today are two species of bats: the New Zealand long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) and the New Zealand lesser short-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata). A third species, the New Zealand greater short-tailed bat, Mystacina robusta, not recorded since 1967 is likely extinct.

A community-led research project called Finding Franklin Bats (FFB) is now working to survey the country’s bats and spread awareness about them among rural landowners and communities. The project includes more than 180 volunteers as well as staff, including six from local Indigenous communities, reported contributor Isabel Gil in May.

At dusk in Kenya’s caves, scientists study the hidden lives of bats

As evening arrives at the Three Sisters Caves in Kenya’s Kwale County, David Wechuli’s team from Bat Conservation International (BCI) puts up near-invisible nets along the hillsides in the coastal forest. At dusk, bats start flying out of the caves, contributor Sharon Muzaki reported in March.

“Some fly straight into the nets,” Wechuli said. “We quickly remove them, carefully untangling each bat before taking morphometric measurements such as body size, weight and wing length.”

Wechuli and other researchers are working to better understand how bats live in Kenya, the role these flying mammals play in the country’s ecosystems, and how human activities are reshaping their habitats.

How can people help nurse sick bats back to health?

For younger readers, Mongabay Kids interviews Steph Stronsick, founder of Pennsylvania Bat Rescue, a bat rescue and rehabilitation center located in Pennsylvania, U.S. Stronsick educates others about bats and why they are important.

Banner image: A New Zealand long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus). Image © hrubbo via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Scientists studying indigenous crops recently completed a study to advise farmers on the best time to plant bambara groundnuts, a neglected African crop. Such underutilized native plants have the potential to diversify crop production and improve food security in Southern Africa.

Scientists used 50 years of climate and soil data to simulate 49 growing seasons. Their model found that planting in October, broadly the onset of the rainy season in the region, produced the highest yields; sowing seeds later in the year potentially exposes the crop to frost and yield reductions.

Much of Southern Africa still depends on rain-fed maize, wheat and rice as staple crops but water-stress and climate change are making production difficult, adding to growing food security challenges. However, indigenous crops are often more drought-tolerant and can do well in low-fertility soils, according to the study.

In addition, many indigenous crops, including bambara groundnuts (Vigna subterranea), are also rich in nutrients and minerals vital to humans such as fiber, protein and zinc, iron and calcium, the researchers say.

“You cannot build climate resilience by planting and relying on only a few crops,” Richard Kunz, one of the researchers, told Mongabay in an email. But to encourage smallholder farmers to grow these neglected crops, they need to know where and when to plant them, he said.

Using the Food and Agriculture Organization AquaCrop model, the scientists simulated growing conditions across 5,838 altitude zones in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, accounting for daily rainfall, air temperature, water retention, planting dates and plant density. The model analyzed growing seasons from 1950 to 1999.

The research also considered frost, which can reduce productivity of the legume, and excluded land uses not suitable for its cultivation including mining areas, commercial forestry, urban areas, plantations and orchards. Accounting for these factors allowed the researchers to produce more accurate suitability maps and prevent over-estimation of areas suitable for bambara production, the researchers said.

“Our research stops smallholders from gambling their livelihoods on land suitability maps based on long-term climate averages, giving them and extension officers practical advice to ensure reliable crop production,” Kunz said.

He said their model approach can be applied to other underutilized crops including amaranth, cowpea, groundnut, pearl millet, sorghum, spider flower, Swiss chard and taro.

“The maps can also be used to locate community seed banks. These seed banks safeguard agricultural biodiversity, food sovereignty and climate resilience across Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in countries like Malawi,” Kunz said.

Leonard Manda, a researcher studying neglected and underutilized crops at Mzuzu University in Malawi, said most conventional crops are likely to fail in future climatic conditions, highlighting the potential value of indigenous crops that contribute to both environmental and human health.

“This study provides an important tool for planning to have maximum yield from bambara groundnut production,” said Manda, who was not involved in the study.

Banner image: Of bambara groundnuts. Image courtesy of Ton Rulkens via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In a rural area of Zambia, where eating insects has long been a part of local food culture, reviving the practice could help households improve food security — though its potential would depend on how widely insect-eating is embraced by the mainstream, a new study suggests.

Researchers John Nyawali and Jasper Knight, from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, surveyed 139 rural households in Zambia’s Central province to understand the types and quantities of insects eaten by people. They found that edible insects contribute to household food security and nutrition, but that the tradition of entomophagy, or the eating of insects as food, has declined in recent years, especially among younger people.

The study notes that while insects have the potential to contribute to sustainable food systems, they aren’t well-integrated into mainstream economic and dietary practices, thus “limiting their potential to contribute to sustainable livelihoods, food security and wellbeing.”

In some cultures, entomophagy is sometimes stigmatized as primitive or associated with poverty, the study notes. But in Zambia, the researchers found that households with higher levels of education consumed more insects compared to those with less education, suggesting that educated community leaders may be able to help communicate the economic and nutritional importance of entomophagy.

In an email interview with Mongabay, co-author Knight said another great way for entomophagy to gain traction in communities is to link it more closely with existing community-based public health initiatives, such as AIDS awareness, mother and baby health care, and primary school education. “All of these outreach activities in public health already exist, and the role of insects as part of a nutritious diet can be part of this,” he said.

“Insects are healthy, nutritious and free! Alongside other food items, insects can make food systems more secure and can supplement household incomes.”

The researchers emphasized that a push toward insect farming should stay small in scale to create sustainable incomes and improve food security in Africa. “If insect farming is just taken over by agribusinesses like all other types of farming has, then this just reinforces the status quo and does not help rural communities develop,” Knight said.

But commercialization is precisely what insect farming needs to catch on more widely, said Arnold van Huis, an expert on entomophagy in Africa with Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, who wasn’t involved with the study.

“Unless insect consumption is supported by commercialization, including the development of insect farming, this practice may gradually disappear,” he said. “However, insect farming does present some challenges. While farming methods have been developed for certain species, such as crickets, considerably more research may be needed to develop viable farming systems for caterpillars. Termites are particularly difficult to farm.”

Banner image: Flying ats are eaten in Southern Africa. Image courtesy of Tim Cowley via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)