In the urban landscape of Hong Kong, artificial nest boxes are providing shelter and research opportunities for one of the world’s most threatened parrot species.

The yellow-crested cockatoo (Cacatua sulphurea) is critically endangered, with fewer than 2,000 individuals remaining across its native range in eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste. However, Hong Kong hosts roughly 200 wild cockatoos, a tenth of that number, believed to be descendants of escaped or released pets, reports Mongabay’s Yenni Kwok. Although the city’s cockatoo population remains stable due to strict legal protection and a lack of natural predators, severe storm damage and tree pruning have eliminated more than 60% of natural tree hollows where the footlong birds make their nests.

“In the city, they do not have that luxurious choice available,” said Astrid Andersson, a biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hong Kong, who described the tree hollow shortage as “a housing crisis for these birds.”

To tackle the issue, Andersson teamed up with arborist and conservationist Harry Wong to launch HK Cockatoo Watch. Adapting Australian prototypes for Hong Kong’s humid climate, the pair build artificial nest boxes fitted with internal cameras to monitor breeding behavior remotely.

“What I am doing is to find a way: How can we coexist with them?” said Wong, who previously spent six to seven years in bee conservation.

Since March 2025, the team has installed 15 nest boxes across public parks and school campuses, including St. Louis School and ISF Academy. The project has actively engaged local students in urban wildlife observation. Students now draw the birds for orientation booklets and photograph them during recess.

At St. Louis School, visual arts teacher Winster Wong reached out to the conservationists after noticing a pair of cockatoos attempting to excavate a nesting hole on campus.

“I believe they wanted to make a home for themselves,” Wong said.

Four out of the 15 boxes are currently occupied by cockatoo pairs. In May, one of them became the home of a chick that was found inside an apartment air-conditioning vent. The chick was placed in an artificial nest nearby where the parents reunited with it.

“The parents were able to feed him and bring him from a tiny little baby to a fully fledged bird,” Andersson said.

Harry Wong is now working to modify the PVC boxes to reduce internal temperatures and improve nesting conditions. Because recent genetic testing shows Hong Kong’s cockatoos retain high genetic diversity, researchers emphasize that protecting these urban birds could serve as a vital genetic lifeline for restoring wild populations back in Southeast Asia.

Read the full story by Yenni Kwok here.

Banner image: A pair of cockatoos try to make a hole in a tree at St. Louis School on Oct. 10, 2025. Image courtesy of Winster Wong/St. Louis School.

At a government wildlife rescue center in Thailand, dozens of lost and injured baby leopard cats are receiving a second chance at life in the wild.

Annual admission of leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis) at the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation rescue center in Khon Kaen, in northeastern Thailand, have surged from an average of about 10 cats per year before to 2023 to as many as 65 now. The cats are being displaced by worsening habitat fragmentation, agricultural burning in sugarcane fields, and increased public use of a government wildlife hotline, reports contributor Ana Norman Bermudez for Mongabay.

Between January and August this year, the facility admitted more than 60 kittens, more than half of them recovered from charred fields with burn injuries.

Staff focus on stabilizing new arrivals by treating burns, infections, and nutritional deficiencies before moving them into specialized 24-square-meter (258-square-foot) rehabilitation enclosures. Mortality rates at the facility dropped to around 33% in 2026, from 60% in previous years, according to center officials.

“Many of the cubs that didn’t survive were brought by people who tried to take care of them at home,” said Warisara Thomas, a researcher and veterinarian at the center, adding that keeping the wild cats at home is illegal. Being in homes also deprives the cubs of specialized care while exposing them to domestic animals that can transmit diseases.

Before putting the cubs into behavioral rehabilitation, veterinarians conduct comprehensive health checks, testing the cats for feline immunodeficiency virus, parvovirus, and canine distemper virus. “We are being very careful as we really want to avoid introducing new diseases into the wild population,” Warisara said. The cats also receive a microchip so they can be identified.

During their two-month rehabilitation, the young cats practice climbing and hunting live prey like mice and chicks to build muscle and survival instincts while learning to distrust humans. “At the beginning, some are really good at hunting, but there’s a few that are afraid of the chicks,” Warisara said.

This gradual training functions as a soft release: the cats know where to find food but are also free to hunt, said Jim Sanderson, founder and director of the Small Wild Cat Conservation Foundation and member of the Cat Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. He said a soft release is “absolutely vital” for rehabilitated small cats, warning that without it, “their chances of survival are slim.”

Once cleared, the cats are released into nearby Phu Pha Man National Park. However, local protected forests are nearing capacity. “This area can hold just a few more releases,” said Nuntita Ruksachat, head veterinarian at the center. “We are studying the suitability of other areas.”

Read the full story by Ana Norman Bermudez here.

Banner image: A wildlife officer feeds formula milk to a leopard cat cub rescued just days earlier in August 2026. Image by Ana Norman Bermúdez for Mongabay.

New mapping by Amazon Underworld finds that criminal networks or armed groups operate in nearly three-fifths of Amazon municipalities across the six countries surveyed, which include Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

Of the 1,310 municipalities examined, researchers found illicit actors in 768 of them, or 59%. Colombia had the highest proportion of affected municipalities (98%), followed by Venezuela (82%), Brazil and Ecuador (59% each), Peru (34%) and Bolivia (31%). The report also identifies increasingly interconnected criminal operations crossing international boundaries, such as Brazil’s Comando Vermelho, which is now present in almost 500 municipalities, including in Bolivia and Peru.

Eight armed groups are present in 99 municipalities in the Colombian Amazon. About 78% of the country’s rural population, nearly 10 million people, “live under the influence of at least” one non-state armed group, according to Humanitarian Action.

“One of our main concerns is how organized crime instrumentalizes local communities,” report author Bram Ebus, founder of Amazon Underworld and International Crisis Group consultant, told Mongabay over WhatsApp messages. “Groups extort them. They also use them, often under coercion, as human shields to protect illicit economies and obstruct state interventions. This leaves communities exposed to violent repression by state forces as well.”

According to the report, gold has overtaken cocaine as the Amazon’s most lucrative criminal industry.

“This shift has accelerated environmental destruction through deforestation and mercury contamination,” Ebus said.

As rival groups battle for territorial control, local populations, especially Indigenous communities, bear the brunt of escalating violence. Ebus said such territorial conflicts have “driven up violence, as groups compete for access to mining areas and kill those who oppose them, including Indigenous community defenders.”

Locals who work in illicit economies such as gold mining, coca leaf picking and recruitment into armed groups can make far more money than they can from traditional legal economies, the report notes.

While gold and cocaine are the dominant illegal industries in the Amazon, the report found there is also growing criminal involvement in critical minerals, including tin, tungsten and coltan, particularly in Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.

According to the report, a regional shift toward right-wing governments has brought a wave of militarized crackdowns on the cartels but that approach fails to address the systemic economic and political roots of organized crime in the Amazon. “Unless the social drivers of crime are addressed, that approach offers no guarantee of success,” Bram said. “People already feel abandoned by the state, and bombing the criminal groups that provide their livelihoods will only deepen that sense.”

The report warns that these interventions can push criminal groups into new territories, undermine community trust and leave corruption and illicit financial networks intact.

According to Bram, “smarter responses would target the financial flows behind illicit economies, invest in a more permanent state presence and pair law enforcement with investment in development and education.”

Banner image: Marcovich Gonzalez loads ore into a crushing machine at a processing mill in El Callao, Venezuela. Image by AP Photo/Matias Delacroix.

Negotiations are set to begin on the world’s first international protocol to fight environmental crime, including wildlife trafficking, illegal deforestation, and illicit waste smuggling. The protocol, to be drafted over the next two years, aims to make it easier to investigate, prosecute, and adjudicate these crimes.

The negotiations will take place under the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), a global treaty established in 2003 to combat international criminal networks, money laundering, and corruption. The resolution to begin drafting the protocol was approved Oct. 23 at the treaty’s 13th biennial gathering.

“This is a landmark moment in the global fight against environmental crime,” Alice Pasqualato, global policy specialist for environmental crime at U.S.-based NGO Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a press release.

The proposal was put forward by 12 countries — eight from Latin America and four from Africa — led by Brazil. It secured more than the required two-thirds majority: Of the 112 parties physically or electronically present and cast a vote, 83 voted in favor and 12 against. The latter included the U.S. and Japan. Another 27 countries abstained.

The decision “sends a powerful message that governments recognize the scale, seriousness and interconnected nature of environmental crime,” Mark Jones, head of policy at U.K-based NGO Born Free, said in a press release. “We commend the States that developed, tabled and supported this resolution and look forward to engaging constructively in the negotiations ahead.”

The draft protocol will be discussed at the next UNTOC gathering in two years.

UNTOC already has protocols addressing human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and illegal weapons production and trade. The new resolution describes these protocols as “the principal worldwide legal instruments to prevent and combat the scourge of transnational organized crime.” It adds that they provide a framework for international cooperation, including the extradition and prosecution of suspects.

Many countries lack the needed tools to fight environmental crime, valued at up to $281 billion per year and often run by international syndicates. The UNTOC resolution detailed the consequences: “crimes that affect the environment may also have a negative impact on the rule of law, economies, sustainable development, public health, human safety, food security, livelihoods and habitats.”

Meanwhile, there are gaps in the legal definitions of environmental offenses and differences in penalties worldwide.

“Different jurisdictions end up speaking different legal languages, with some environmental offences being criminalized in one country but not the other,” Pasqualato said. “A dedicated international agreement offers a historic opportunity to close that gap, strengthen international cooperation and give governments better tools to disrupt the criminal networks profiting from the exploitation of wildlife and natural resources.”

Banner image: Tigers in Cambodia were declared functionally extinct in 2007. Image ©Vinod Udhwani via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The discovery of five baby orangutans abandoned on a plantation in eastern India is highlighting the country’s growing role as a destination for trafficked apes. Experts say wealthy collectors, expanding air links with Southeast Asia and loopholes in wildlife laws are to blame. India also legally imported 41 orangutans between 2021 and 2024 and experts have raised questions about their origins. At the same time, efforts to return rescued orangutans to Indonesia have stalled. Scrutiny over ownership of apes intensified after one orangutan was transferred to a private wildlife facility run by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s family.

By Aniruddha Ghosal and Victoria Milko, Associated Press

Banner image: Six baby orangutans playing on the ground at Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation in Nyaru Menteng, Central Kalimantan. Image courtesy of Bjorn Vaugn / BOSF / Greenpeace

Roy Sesana, a 97-year-old Indigenous rights campaigner who opposed the Botswana government over the removal of San communities from their traditional lands in Central Kalahari, has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Botswana.

The university awarded Sesana an honorary Doctor of Letters on Oct. 23, recognizing his decades of advocacy for Indigenous rights, cultural identity and dignity. In an official statement, the university said the honor recognized “a lifetime of service that goes beyond individual achievement.”

The recognition comes nearly 20 years after Botswana’s High Court ruled in favor of Sesana and other San people who challenged their removal from traditional lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Communities were moved in the 1990s and early 2000s. The government justified the action saying it was necessary for conservation and because providing public services was difficult.

Nearly two decades later, one of the lawyers who represented San communities is now Botswana’s president. Since taking office in November 2024, Duma Boko has prioritized Indigenous land rights, established an interministerial committee to address longstanding grievances and advanced plans to restore community rights across the 52,000-square-kilometer (20,000-square-mile) reserve. He attended the recent ceremony and paid tribute to Sesana’s struggle.

Sesana helped establish First People of the Kalahari in 1991 and received the Right Livelihood Award in 2005 for his work defending his people’s right to live on their traditional land.

According to Botswana’s government news agency, Sesana dedicated his honorary doctorate to the Basarwa and the people of Botswana. After the ceremony, he said he was happy to receive the recognition and encouraged younger generations to keep their cultural identity alive.

Members of civil society have praised the selection of Sesana for the honorary degree. Collen Matema with the African Wildlife Foundation wrote on LinkedIn that, “This is historical, congratulations to Dr. Sesana and his community. This is the Africa we want!” Maria Elena Castro said that “the recognition [went] to somebody who deserves it.”

Michael Taylor, executive director of Anthropos Africa, has been working closely with an interministerial committee established by Boko’s government to examine Indigenous rights and develop a roadmap for land restitution.

During the court battle, Sesana “was often seen by many people as public enemy number one,” Taylor told Mongabay in an interview. “He was the one who was taking his own government to court.”

Taylor said the government approved a plan in September 2026 to return legally protected land rights to Indigenous communities. Under the plan, the reserve would stay protected, while  communities would gain land rights and play a key role in its care.

For Sesana, however, the recognition does not end his fight. In an interview with The Botswana Gazette before the ceremony, he welcomed the honor but said that “the struggle for ancestral land, self-determination and livelihoods remains far from over.”

Banner image: Roy Sesana, second from right, and Botswana President Duma Boko, third from right. Image courtesy of the Government of Botswana.