A new report by the NGO Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) reviewed national laws and regulations across 35 countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. It found that since RRI’s 2017 assessment, there’s been little progress in securing women’s rights to forests in Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities.

“We’re looking at a community’s rights of access to use resources from the forest, to exclude third parties from their community forest areas, their right to due process and compensation and their rights of management,” Chloe Ginsberg, the associate director of the tenure-track program at RRI, told Mongabay in a phone call.

The researchers also looked at the rights of women for voting in their communities, their rights to dispute resolution and rights to community-level inheritance.

The report builds on a study that was conducted by RRI in 2017 that looked at the rights of women in 30 countries across the Global South. To update the findings, RRI collaborated with consultants to review 800 different laws, more than a quarter of which were either enacted or reformed since the original study.

Despite new laws, Ginsberg said her group found that most laws follow a “gender-blind” approach that fails to explicitly protect women. They also observed backsliding, where newer laws provide fewer protections for women than previous ones.

Of the 35 countries analyzed in the new report, 34 constitutionally recognize women’s equality and property rights. However, only 11 countries guarantee women the right to inherit property when someone dies without a will.

The report found that just 2% of legal frameworks they analyzed provide adequate protection for voting rights, 5% for community leadership structures and 13% for the right to inheritance, figures that have remained virtually unchanged between 2016 and 2024.

There are just five years left before the 2030 target date for the United Nations sustainable development goals. Yet the report found that not a single goal around gender equality is on track to be met, including the goal to ensure equal rights for land ownership.

Ginsberg said codifying the rights of women does far more than help any individual woman — it strengthens food security and improves livelihoods for entire families and communities.

“Oftentimes, Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local community women are the holders of intergenerational knowledge and transmit this intergenerational knowledge within their communities. And as such, they’re really vital stewards of their community resources,” Ginsberg said. “So, when community women have secure rights to their lands and resources, they’re much better positioned to advance the sustainability and conservation objectives of their communities.”

Banner image: Members of the Talang Mamak community collect forest products in Indonesia. Photo courtesy of Jacob Maentz/Rights and Resources Initiative.

A community conservation team saw not one but two baby Cao-vit gibbons, one of the world’s rarest apes, in the remote forests of northern Vietnam in 2024, the NGO Fauna & Flora announced this month.

The first infant sighting was in February 2024 and the second in November, in two separate troops.

“It is very rare that we observe baby gibbons,” Tho Duc Nguyen, Fauna & Flora Vietnam program project manager, told Mongabay by email.

Nguyen added that female gibbons give birth to only one baby every four years or so. Across the four gibbon troops that the NGO has been continuously monitoring from 2020-2025 in Vietnam, it has only recorded one to three infants per year.

The addition of the baby spotted in November brings the total number of gibbons in that particular group to nine. “This is a sign that the number of gibbons can increase in the troop and expand the living area. Bringing a better future for the Cao Vit gibbon,” Nguyen said.

The Cao-vit or eastern black-crested gibbon (Nomascus nasutus) was believed to be possibly extinct until researchers observed a few groups in Vietnam and China in the 2000s. It’s now considered critically endangered, surviving only in a fragmented forest bordering the two countries.

Nguyen said the latest sighting of the baby was made by a Dinh Ha Duong, a member of the Cao Vit Gibbon Community Conservation Team, which includes local government staff and people from local communities who regularly monitor the gibbons. On Nov. 20, at around 7 a.m., the monitoring team heard a male gibbon start singing and moving. It was while following the troop that Duong “observed a female with an unusual way of moving and after careful observation, he discovered that this female was carrying a baby,” Nguyen said.

Tracking the gibbons is challenging, so the community conservation team uses both direct observations and new technologies such as thermal drones, thermal binoculars and an acoustic recording device called AudioMoth. After each monitoring trip, the team uploads data to the cloud so researchers can receive the information and work with the government in implementing conservation actions.

Many gibbon species are threatened with extinction due to hunting, either for the pet trade or for traditional medicine.

But since the Cao-vit gibbon’s rediscovery in Vietnam in 2002, and the setting up of the community conservation team, Fauna & Flora has not recorded any cases of the species being hunted, Nguyen said. “However, the risk of gibbon hunting is still latent, so maintaining patrols and forest protection is very important.”

The species “is protected at the highest level” of Vietnamese law, he said, adding that violations are punishable by up to 15 years in jail and 2 billion dong (about $78,000) in fines.

Banner image of a Cao-vit gibbon with an infant by Nguyen Duc Tho / Fauna & Flora

What’s new: Your recently imported ornamental tree might have a stowaway spider or lizard hidden in its branches, a recent study warns. What’s more, these accidentally transported wildlife can turn into invasive pests in their new environment, researchers say.

What the study says:

• The increasing popularity of imported ornamental plants has resulted in a multibillion-dollar global market. But as the trade grows and expands geographically, so does the risk of biodiversity loss in source countries and the introduction of animals that could become potential agricultural pests in their new environments, the study’s authors write.

• By looking at a 2017-2018 database of 8,000 animals found in ornamental plants at customs in the Netherlands and public reports of intercepted pests in the U.K. between 2021 and 2023, the researchers found that more than 80% of the “hitchhiking” animals are insects, followed by spiders.

• Some incidents of exotic amphibians and reptiles have also been reported by people working with ornamental plants in shops and airports. For example, potted olive trees from Italy are likely responsible for the introduction of the Italian wall lizard (Podarcis siculus) and the Moorish gecko (Tarentola mauritanica) to Spain and other areas outside their native range, according to studies cited in the paper.

• The study found a small number of reported illegal ornamental plant seizures over the last decade. But this is likely to be underreported, the authors write in The Conversation. “It’s hard for the layperson to tell a legal cactus from an endangered one, whereas it’s pretty obvious a rather colourful lizard found on a pot plant in Britain should not be there,” they add.

• The illegal trade of ornamental plants has already likely caused local extinctions of slipper orchids (Paphiopedilum spp.) in Southeast Asia, Sprenger’s tulip (Tulipa sprengeri) in Turkey, and the Chilean blue crocus (Tecophilaea cyanocrocus), the authors write, based on a review of previously published research.

What this means:

Given the high trade volume in ornamental plants — the export value of cut flowers alone reached $10 billion and live plants $13 billion in 2022 — there’s a high chance that contaminants are transported, the researchers write.

They call for “a proactive approach to better understand the potential risks associated with changing supply chains and emerging markets,” adding there’s a need for standardized data collection to inform policy.

In a media statement, the authors cautioned the trade is also important for economies worldwide since it employs many people, especially in rural areas.

“We need to push to make the industry more sustainable through things like certifications and better regulation, and to work with those involved in the trade to better understand the risks and how to mitigate them,” said study co-author Silviu Petrovan from the University of Cambridge, U.K.

Banner image of a flower warehouse in Netherlands by Naaldwijk Rijksoverheid via University of Cambridge.

More than 2 billion people around the world live without access to safe drinkable water, as rivers, groundwater, lakes and glaciers face continued threats of pollution and overexploitation due to urbanization, environmental destruction, and climate change.

This World Water Day, Mongabay looks back at some of its coverage from 2024 on how local communities are trying to protect the world’s dwindling water resources.

Protecting the Amazon’s headwaters

Mongabay’s short documentary The Time of Water, directed by Pablo Albarenga, follows Indigenous leaders Uyunkar Domingo Peas Nampichkai of the Achuar people from Ecuador and Wrays Pérez Ramírez of the Wampís Nation from Peru as they travel along the tributaries of the Marañón, the main source of the Amazon River. During their journey, they stop at villages to talk to communities, especially the younger generation, about protecting the Amazon Basin from threats posed by mining, logging, and the fossil fuel industry.

“We don’t live without water. That’s why we have to make a great alliance to recover the rivers, the jungle,” Pérez Ramírez says. “Not to extract gold, as the non-Indigenous man wants. Gold is not eaten … Time is now, and we must act fast, because time is not gold. Time is water.”

Restoring a Kenyan riverbank

In Kenya, decades of intense agriculture have stripped the trees in Tana River’s catchment area, resulting in soil washing into the river. This has led to a decline in both water quality and farmland productivity, Mongabay’s Ochieng’ Ogodo reported in October.

Ogodo tells the story of the Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Fund (UTNWF), launched by U.S.-based NGO The Nature Conservancy in 2015 with support from the private sector, civil society and the government. The fund has helped farmers and local authorities in parts of the Upper Tana River create buffer zones along riverbanks to reduce erosion and to reforest degraded areas.

“It is really important to have ecological systems be the foundation of water security. That is why we see the protection and restoration of nature as being critical [to] ensuring our water security,” said Naabia Ofosu-Amaah, a senior adviser on water and climate resilience issues at TNC.

Wetland restored in Zimbabwe

In Harare, Zimbabwe, destruction of the city’s wetlands for new housing developments and poor waste management have resulted in depleted wells and water shortage. The government and residents of Harare have now come together to restore a 34-hectare (84-acre) wetland known as Monavale Vlei, which lies in a catchment area that serves as a primary source of water for the city, Mongabay staff writer Aimee Gabay and contributor Tatenda Chitagu reported.

To do this, full-time staff and community volunteers have been removing invasive plants and identifying and responding to threats such as development proposals.

Recent surveys show that the wetland’s streams are cleaner than nearby wetlands that have been used for cultivation, Gabay and Chitagu write.

Conservation NGOs and commercial sardine and anchovy fisheries in South Africa have reached an out-of-court settlement agreeing to extents of fishing closures around six key African penguin breeding colonies. The agreement, endorsed by the environment minister, was made a court order on March 18.

The boundaries of the new fishing closures achieve “the sweet spot between benefits to penguins and costs to [fishing] industry,” Kate Handley, executive director of Cape Town-based nonprofit Biodiversity Law Centre, representing the conservation groups, told Mongabay by phone.

Populations of the critically endangered African penguin (Spheniscus demersus), which primarily live on small islands off Namibia and South Africa, have plummeted by 93% over the last 70 years.

In 2022, South Africa’s environment ministry imposed interim fishing closures around six key islands where penguins breed, to run until 2033. However, the NGOs BirdLife South Africa and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) filed a lawsuit against the ministry in March 2024, saying the closures were “biologically meaningless” and didn’t protect the birds’ food supply from competition with commercial sardine and anchovy purse-seine fisheries.

In February 2025, the South African Pelagic Fishing Industry Association (SAPFIA) and the Eastern and Southern Cape Pelagic Association (ESCPA), both co-respondents in the case, called for a meeting with the NGOs to discuss a settlement, which was followed by “really difficult and very intense negotiations,” Handley said.

The agreement, now made a court order, overturns the previous interim closures. The new closures will be in effect for 10 years, with a scientific review after six years.

“A middle of the road compromise position was agreed to in which the extent of closures are about halfway between the Interim Closures that are currently in place and the area closures that the Applicants were seeking in their court action,” SAPFIA and ESCPA told Mongabay in a joint emailed statement. “It is hoped this will end the intense dialogue that has raged since 2008 about the closures in relation to the extremely concerning decline in the African Penguin population.”

The NGOs made concessions on certain closures to accommodate the fisheries’ interests, but also secured key victories, Handley said.

For example, on the west coast, the closure around Robben Island was extended beyond what the NGOs had sought, while in the Southern Cape, the closure around Stony Point covers nearly the entire core foraging range for the African penguin. In the Eastern Cape, a 20-kilometer (12-mile) closure was established around Bird Island, although minimal fishing happens there, Handley said. Overall, the NGOs have achieved a “good regional representation of protection for African penguins,” she added.

The out-of-court settlement means there’s no judgment that sets a judicial precedent, but Handley said she hopes “the case will inspire other conservation organizations to take up the mantle and use the law as a tool to fight for the protection of threatened species.”

Banner image of African penguins by Olga Ernst via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A U.S. federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service to complete assessments on the impacts of six pesticides and the steps needed to protect endangered species from them.

This isn’t the first time pesticide safety has come before the Trump administration. In 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) conducted an analysis revealing that two pesticides — malathion and chlorpyrifos — were so toxic they posed an existential threat to more than 1,200 endangered animal and plant species, according to an investigation by The New York Times.

However, just before the report’s release, political appointees in the Department of the Interior, which oversees the FWS, blocked its publication and initiated a new process designed to apply a much narrower standard that could downplay the hazards of the pesticides, the Times investigation noted.

Assessments by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2017 and 2021 found each of the six pesticides in question pose significant harm to many of the roughly 1,800 plant and animal species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). According to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, an NGO, chlorpyrifos is likely to harm 97% of endangered species, diazinon 78%, carbaryl 91%, atrazine 56% and simazine 55% and methomyl 61%.

The ESA requires that the FWS review the EPA’s assessment and propose a strategy to prevent species from going extinct. The agency hadn’t issued its final biological opinion by 2022, so the Center for Biological Diversity sued the FWS that year. On March 13 this year, a federal judge ruled that the FWS must issue a final biological opinion and assess next steps to prevent extinctions.

Insects and amphibians are particularly vulnerable to pesticides, says Jonathan Evans, the environmental health legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Even some mammal species, including the red wolf (Canis rufus), are at risk as pesticides bioaccumulate in the bodies of their prey.

To reduce exposure and mitigate harm to wildlife, Evans says the government can require larger buffer areas between where pesticides are applied and endangered species habitat, especially waterways.

The first biological opinion from the FWS is due by March 31, and all of them must be completed by September 2028. However, the Trump administration has demonstrated a lack of compliance with other court orders, and roughly 400 FWS employees were fired as part of the recent government downsizing, potentially making compliance challenging.

“We are all certainly concerned about the state of our government to run efficiently and effectively but we need to continue pursuing actions to uphold our laws and protect the environment and the wildlife that we hold dear,” Evans says.

Mongabay reached out to pesticide industry trade groups the American Chemistry Council, which declined to comment, and CropLife, which didn’t reply by the time of publication.

Banner image of a red wolf by LaggedOnUser via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).