Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

On April 20, on the south coast of Timor-Leste, Jafet Potenzo Lopes saw three green pigeons. He had not seen the species for years. The birds were Timor green pigeons, and the site, in Manatuto municipality, had no previous record of them. With the species nearing extinction, finding three birds in a new place was encouraging.

The latest estimates suggest how few remain. A study published this year in Oryx, drawing on more than 1,400 days of field surveys between 2002 and 2025, estimates the global population at 100-500 birds across eight sites. The true number may be near the lower end of that range. Only Nino Konis Santana National Park in eastern Timor-Leste is thought to hold more than 50 birds. The researchers recommend changing the status of the Timor green pigeon (Treron psittaceus) on the IUCN Red List from endangered to critically endangered, reports contributor Timothy Mihocik for Mongabay.

In Indonesia, where many older records came from West Timor and nearby islands, the pigeon may already be functionally extinct. Most of the remaining birds are in Timor-Leste, where hunting continues even in protected areas.

Timor green pigeons gather at fruiting trees and are unusually vulnerable: After one bird is shot, others may stay in the canopy. Forest conversion has also reduced their habitat. More than 80% of known records come from protected areas, yet researchers say those areas lack the funding and staff needed to control hunting effectively. 

The danger has been recognized for years. The species has been classed as endangered since 2000, while dedicated recovery work, regular monitoring and sustained investment have remained limited. The Timor green pigeon was not among the initial 100 species selected by the Phoenix Species Project, a $200 million initiative by Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund to support recovery of some of the world’s most threatened species.

Researchers say the pigeon can still be saved. They recommend more surveys, monitoring of its main population every three to five years, a national action plan and work with hunters and local communities to reduce hunting. Timor-Leste already protects the species under national law and customary systems protect some of the forests where it survives. Researchers have also suggested involving former hunters in surveys and conservation work.

The three birds found in Manatuto do little to change the species’ overall position. They do show that some birds remain in places where they had not previously been recorded. With perhaps only a few hundred Timor green pigeons left, the margin is narrow. The steps needed to improve their chances are already known.

Read the full story by Timothy Mihocik here.

Banner image: A Timor green pigeon is seen on Apr. 20, 2026, during a Conservation International wetland survey on the south coast of Timor-Leste. Image courtesy of Jafet Potenzo Lopes.

As Bengal tiger numbers rebound in India and increasingly disperse into human-dominated areas, conservationists are urging the government to prioritize protecting ecological corridors that connect vital habitats and tiger populations. But they also warn that corridors shouldn’t become sticking plasters for compromised core habitats, reports contributor Nirmal Ghosh for Mongabay.

India is home to roughly 75% of the world’s wild tigers. The national population has more than doubled from an estimated 1,827 in 1972 to an estimated 3,682 in the 2022 census. However, this conservation success has created new challenges.

Experts estimate that 35% of India’s wild tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) now live outside protected areas. Young tigers leave their mothers to establish large home ranges, which for males can cover up to 200 square kilometers (77 square miles).

In doing so, tigers frequently navigate a highly fragmented matrix of roads, railways and urban sprawl. Without safe pathways, isolated tiger populations risk inbreeding and local extinction.

In response to rapid infrastructure development, India has constructed more wildlife underpasses and overpasses than any other Asian country, according to Bilal Habib, a scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), a government-run research center. This includes the world’s 10 largest wildlife mitigation structures built since 2017, such as a 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) underpass beneath a newly opened expressway connecting New Delhi to the city of Dehradun.

“I don’t think anywhere in the world, any developing country has spent as much money as we have on mitigation, exclusively for wildlife conservation,” Habib told Mongabay.

At the same time, linear infrastructure and projects like mining continue to divert forests. Prakriti Srivastava, a former principal chief conservator of forests in the southern state of Kerala, and Prerna Bindra, a researcher and author, have documented how the National Board for Wildlife, which reviews projects in critical wildlife habitats, has essentially become a rubber-stamp body: It approved 97% of project proposals brought before it over a 12-year period. Bindra was a former member of the board’s Standing Committee.

Ullas Karanth, a tiger expert and emeritus director of the Bengaluru-based Centre for Wildlife Studies, told Mongabay that tigers will only use corridors if there is a motivation to cross, which requires healthy habitats on both sides. “To me the context is first to secure the core habitat,” Karanth said. “India could, in fact, accommodate up to 10,000-20,000 tigers if habitats are adequately protected.”

While there’s a common belief that animals restrict themselves to wildlife corridors, that’s not how it works in reality, according to wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam. “Elegantly and clearly demarcating narrow wildlife habitats on a map and calling them corridors is not the solution,” he said. “Animals don’t limit their movements to corridors. They use a matrix of habitats available in the landscape.”

Read the full story by Nirmal Ghosh here.

Banner image: Tigress negotiating an underpass beneath National Highway 44, India’s longest highway. Image courtesy of Wildlife Institute of India.

In a landmark judgment on Aug. 14, South Africa’s Constitutional Court set aside exploration rights held by oil giant Shell and Impact Africa, a South African oil and gas company. The ruling prevents the companies from exploring for fossil fuels off South Africa’s Wild Coast.

The case was brought by Wild Coast communities and environmental organizations after Shell announced plans in 2021 to conduct a 3D seismic survey off the country’s Eastern Cape province coastline. They argued that authorities had failed to meaningfully consult affected communities or consider harms to their spiritual and cultural rights and livelihoods. Authorities also failed to consider the potential harm to marine life and climate change, the plaintiffs argued.

In the judgement, Justice Jody Kollapen wrote the majority opinion and said consulting communities isn’t just a procedural requirement, but “a process which affirms human dignity by affording a seat at the table to those whose lives are impacted by decisions.”

Acknowledging the “cornerstone role that dispossession played in the apartheid regime,” the court noted that South Africa’s natural resources are highly contested and that the case is embedded in “well-documented struggles by coastal communities to protect their land, marine resources and ways of life in the face of extractive activities.”

The judges also considered last year’s International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on countries’ obligations in the context of climate change: “Decisions must be taken within a framework of heightened diligence, informed by scientific knowledge, international commitments and the foreseeable impacts of emissions on present and future generations,” Kollapen wrote.

The question of oil exploration rights in the area began in 2014, when the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy granted Impact Africa Limited the right to undertake a seismic survey to look for oil and gas reserves on the Wild Coast. Impact Africa Limited is a subsidiary of Impact Oil & Gas Limited, which in 2021 transferred a 50% stake of its exploration rights in the area to Shell.

The case has appeared before several South African courts over the past decade before reaching the Constitutional Court, the highest in the country.

Carmen Mannarino from the South African nonprofit Masifundise Development Trust, which works with communities in the area, told Mongabay that the court’s decision is a victory for fishing communities. “The court recognized that exploring for resources in light of potential future financial benefits does not compare to the constitutionally recognized rights of fishing communities,” Mannarino said.

“This is the apex court and the first time that it has dealt with issues relating to the community and environmental rights in relation to oil and gas exploitation,” Melissa Groenink, an attorney with one of the applicants, civil society organization Natural Justice, told Mongabay, adding that the ruling might influence similar cases currently in process.

Shell did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Banner image: Fisherpeople in Port St. Johns, Eastern Cape. Image courtesy of Aletta Harrison CC BY 4.0.

For wildlife moving between Lake Manyara and Tarangire, a line on a map was never enough. Elephants, wildebeest, and other animals crossed land used by pastoralists and farmers, where roads, cultivation, and settlements were expanding. Keeping such routes open meant persuading people who lived there that wildlife had a place in their future. It meant dealing with livestock killed by predators, arguments over revenue, and the tedious business of local institutions.

John Gospel Yonazi Salehe, who died on June 19th aged 71, spent much of his working life on such problems. A Tanzanian forester by training, he worked for the government, FAO, UNDP, WWF, and, eventually, the African Wildlife Foundation, where he became Tanzania country director. His career stretched for more than four decades and across forests, wildlife areas, and development projects in East Africa.

Salehe’s conservation was practical and strongly social. In the Maasai Steppe he worked to protect wildlife corridors and strengthen community-run Wildlife Management Areas. He wanted the benefits from conservation to reach households, and supported measures such as predator-proof livestock enclosures and compensation for losses to wildlife. Communities were not an audience for conservation after the important decisions had been made. They were part of how it was supposed to work.

The same thinking shaped his work on forests. In central Tanzania, where charcoal production and farming put pressure on woodland, he argued that restrictions had to be accompanied by viable livelihoods. Higher agricultural productivity, land-use planning, and secure tenure could reduce pressure on forests, he believed. Researchers who later examined one REDD project in Kondoa challenged some of its claims of success. Salehe’s underlying proposition was clear enough: conservation would endure only if it made economic and institutional sense to the people living with it.

This required patience. Wildlife Management Areas brought disagreements over money, investors, expectations, and authority. The work was administrative as much as ecological, and progress could depend on arrangements few outsiders ever saw. Salehe seems to have been unusually comfortable in that territory. His approach rested on partnerships among communities, government, businesses, NGOs, and donors. A filmmaker who interviewed him in 2014 found him “incredibly accommodating” and “quite the character.” Colleagues later recalled his integrity, humor, humility, and willingness to mentor younger conservationists.

He had begun working in conservation in the 1970s. Long after formal employment ended, he kept chairing organizations and advising others. He had joined the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group in 1994 and chaired it from 2012. He also chaired the Tanzania Association of Foresters and the Community Wildlife Management Area Consortium, and helped found Nature Tanzania. There, birds became another route into the same larger question: how to protect habitats while giving Tanzanians a reason and a means to protect them themselves.

Salehe believed, Nature Tanzania recalled, that conservation belonged to the people. The phrase could sound grander than the man’s working methods. Those were meetings, land-use plans, budgets, negotiations, and years spent keeping alliances together. In the landscapes where he worked, that was often what conservation required.

Header image: Courtesy of AWF

Widespread flooding in northeastern India that affected more than 500,000 people and claimed at least 99 lives between June and August 2026 was primarily driven by human factors like rapid urbanization, deforestation, and destruction of wetlands, new research says. It also points to structural failures rather than climate change.

The findings were published by World Weather Attribution (WWA), a global network of researchers who analyze the influence of climate change in extreme weather events.

Floods hit India’s Assam state nearly every monsoon as the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries overflow, often submerging the surrounding landscapes.

“We decided to focus on the upper Assam, both because of the significant socio-economic and environmental damage reported in the region, and the sheer collective damage of catastrophic floods in the region year on year,” research co-author Arpita Mondal, from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), said at a press briefing.

The scientists analyzed historical weather records and climate models to determine the likelihood of the extreme rainfall that occurred over a three-day period (June 26-29), as well over a 30-day period (June 20 to July 19).

They found the heavy rainfall observed in 2026 wasn’t exceptional, recurring every one to two years.

The team also found no clear link to human-induced rise in global temperatures.

“When we combine the observational results with the climate models, we again found no detectable climate change signal in either type of events,” co-author Mariam Zachariah, from Imperial College London, said at the briefing.

Instead, the study found the main drivers of this year’s catastrophic floods were land-use changes, sedimentation, and structural vulnerability.

The Brahmaputra River itself carries large amounts of sediments every monsoon that raises its riverbed, reducing channel capacity, meaning water flows out. This season’s flooding was, however, worsened by unplanned urbanization and deforestation that has degraded wetlands and disrupted natural drainage.

Sneha Ganguly, study co-author from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said at the briefing that evidence from a review of 35 studies suggested “unplanned urbanization, deforestation, poor drainage, inadequate structural flood management measures, and other anthropogenic changes now outweigh natural rainfall variability in explaining flood frequency.”

The report also highlights historical roots of vulnerability: Colonial land appropriation for tea plantations forced Indigenous communities onto marginal, highly flood-prone riverbanks and sandbars (char areas), creating systemic patterns of exposure that persist today.

While Assam has built extensive concrete embankments, the report warns that heavy reliance on rigid infrastructure can actually worsen flooding by trapping silt and increasing the risk of breaches.

“Future adaptation will therefore need to focus less on controlling rivers and maybe more on working with them to combine targeted engineering with floodplain restoration, wetland conservation, reducing development in floodplains, improved drainage, and community preparedness,” Ganguly said.

Banner image: A villager rows a makeshift banana raft to cross floodwaters near his submerged house in Alengmora village in Jorhat, India, on Aug. 10. Image by AP Photo/Parikhit Saikia.

Recovery projects for 100 critically endangered and extinct-in-the-wild species across the world are set to receive new funding under a conservation initiative announced Aug. 4.

Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund, both U.S.-based environmental organizations, created the Phoenix Species Project and committed $100 million each, for a total of $200 million, to the project.

The project’s steering committee said each species will likely receive between $500,000 and $1 million for the duration of the five-year project.

Among the 100 species are Mexico’s Charco Azul pupfish (Cyprinodon veronicae), which went extinct in the wild in 1997 after its habitat dried up completely due to a devastating drought. Another is Madagascar’s golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli), a critically endangered lemur whose population has declined by roughly 80% amid rampant deforestation. With new funding, local NGOs will work to reconnect the fragmented forests that the lemurs need to survive.

“We’ve protected the golden-crowned sifaka for years on a budget that would never match what this species deserves, but letting it go extinct was never an option,” Tiana Andriamanana, executive director of Association Fanamby, the Malagasy NGO leading conservation efforts for the lemur, said in a statement.

All 100 species, located across 30 countries, have already been chosen, but funding amounts for each have not yet been finalized. They will be determined on a rolling basis as proposals are submitted, the Phoenix Species Project’s steering committee told Mongabay by email.

The sifaka and the pupfish are two of seven species that have already received funds. The other five are the bowmouth guitarfish; a South African plant called the fuzzy belly button; the Galápagos petrel; the Australian night parrot; and the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander.

Every species plays an important role in its wider ecological community, Leah Gerber, a conservation scientist at Arizona State University in the U.S., told Mongabay by email.

“Recovering a species can have benefits that extend well beyond that species,” Gerber wrote. “But those benefits are highly context dependent; recovering one species does not always lead to ecosystem restoration.”

The IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, has evaluated the extinction risk for fewer than 5% of all species known to science. Of the 176,000 species that have been assessed so far, more than 31,000 are considered extinct in the wild, critically endangered, or endangered.

“The Phoenix Species Project represents an extraordinary investment in preventing extinction, and I’m especially encouraged to see attention across a broad range of species rather than only the most charismatic ones,” Gerber said.

Banner image: A golden-crowned sifaka in Madagascar. Image courtesy of Association Fanamby.