On March 13, U.S federal Judge James Bredar issued an order requiring the Trump administration reinstate thousands of probationary federal employees recently fired as part of government downsizing.

The reinstatement order applies across 18 agencies including the Department of Commerce, which administers the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA, which had already fired roughly 800 workers, was also directed to terminate an additional 1,029 employees.

It’s “an oddly specific number,” Richard Spinrad, the previous NOAA administrator, told Mongabay in a call.

The original firings claimed without evidence that many workers were let go due to poor performance. Federal Judge William Alsup described those terminations in other agencies as “a sham in order to try to avoid statutory requirements.”

The Trump Administration then announced a second round of terminations, called a reduction in force (RIF), which would be carried out by agency managers. As part of his order, Judge Bredar has also temporarily restrained the government from enforcing any RIFs across 18 agencies.

Typically, before a RIF, managers are given guidance about a shift in policy that necessitates a change in staff. However, with this RIF, “there was really no guidance. They were given a number and told, ‘Bring back a list that has 1,029 positions on it,’” Spinrad said.

NOAA typically employs roughly 12,000 people who collect and analyze data from the depths of the oceans to outer space and everywhere in between. They provide extreme weather data for people in the path of a hurricane and monitor fisheries to ensure healthy fish stocks.

Spinrad speculated that if the RIFs proceed, “whole programs or capabilities are apt to be removed.”

The Trump administration also recently released, and quickly removed, a list of federal properties they said should be sold or their leases terminated. Neither federal judge mentioned the properties in their rulings.

NOAA runs roughly 620 facilities, which are spread across the country and provide jobs to many communities, which may help some survive the chopping block.

Spinrad, who saw the list before it was removed, said, “I do know that in the case of at least one facility, the Radar Operations Center in Norman, Oklahoma, that it was Congressman [Tom] Cole [of Oklahoma] who weighed in and said, no, you can’t touch that. And so, it was taken off the list.”

Still at risk is a huge facility in College Park, Maryland, that houses NOAA’s ocean prediction center, climate prediction center and weather prediction center, which all process critical, life-saving data provided to the public, free of charge.

Without federal support for services that NOAA provides the public for free, “we could be going down the road where weather forecasts will be treated the same way as streaming videos: only those who can afford it will get weather forecasts in the future. And that’s not a good thing,” Spinrad said.

Banner image: Crowds gather to protest NOAA firings. Image courtesy of Elvert Barnes via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Conservation authorities and groups, along with Māori people, recently established a new population of the critically endangered kākāriki karaka, or orange-fronted parakeet, on a New Zealand island.

Thirty-four kākāriki karaka (Cyanoramphus malherbi), raised in captivity, were released on the predator-free Pukenui, or Anchor Island, in the Fiordland National Park.

The parakeet was once common across New Zealand but is now considered the rarest mainland forest bird in the country, with only 450 wild individuals remaining.

According to the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC), the kākāriki karaka nest and roost in holes in trees, making them vulnerable to predators such as rats, stoats and cats as well as habitat loss. Declared extinct twice before being “rediscovered” in the 1980s, wild populations today survive in a few forests around New Zealand.

The translocated kākāriki karaka were raised in the Isaac Conservation and Wildlife Trust (ICWT) and Orana Wildlife Park, said Leigh Percasky, ICWT’s assistant wildlife manager. She told Mongabay that the captive breeding program consisted of 12 breeding pairs, many that had been collected either as eggs or young chicks from wild sites.

“They are easily stressed and quite fussy, so it’s been [a] continual learning process since the beginning of this programme to develop husbandry techniques and provide the right environment to encourage breeding in captivity,” Percasky said by email. “We try and mimic a wild environment as much as we can.”

In a statement, members of the local Māori council Ōraka-Aparima Rūnaka, which represents the Ngāi Tahu, accompanied the 34 birds as they were flown by helicopter to Pukenui.

The Ngāi Tahu consider kākāriki karaka as a taonga, or treasure, and their cultural and spiritual connection with the bird is recognized in their legislation, Yvette Couch-Lewis, representative of the organization Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Kākāriki Karaka, told Mongabay.

“For me it is a very emotional process seeing these manu [birds], which have been born and raised in captivity, being released into the wild,” Couch-Lewis said in a statement, adding that translocations like these are important so “one day we can engage with kakariki karaka again.”

Wayne Beggs, DOC Kākāriki Karaka operations manager, told Mongabay by email that all the released birds have colored bands for identification. Nine female birds have also been fitted with radio transmitters, so rangers can record observations and monitor breeding.

Beggs said the birds won’t be at risk since the island is predator-free and has limited access. Traps and monitoring devices are also in place to check for new predators.

“Kākāriki karaka were once abundant and their decline is a message that we need to apply a holistic approach to restoring the health of te taiao [natural world] so that kākāriki karaka can thrive in the wild once again,” Couch-Lewis told Mongabay.

Banner image of a kākāriki karaka at Pukenui/Anchor Island, courtesy of RealNZ.

After more than a decade studying California ground squirrels, Jennifer Smith felt she had a solid understanding of their behavior. Then, in the summer of 2024, her students spotted something she never expected: one of the squirrels chased, killed and ate a vole, a small rodent common across the western coast of North America.

Until now, the California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi) had been described as an animal that ate mostly acorns and grass seeds. They’ve been observed eating bark, flowers, leaves and the very occasional insect or bird egg.

At first, Smith, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, U.S., couldn’t believe it. “I was shocked and very skeptical,” she told Mongabay by email. “In twelve years of studying these ground squirrels, we have never seen anything like this before!”

Over the next seven weeks at Briones Regional Park in California’s Contra Costa county, Smith’s team documented 74 cases of squirrels hunting voles (Microtus californicus). The findings have now been published in a study. From a population of 125 squirrels, they recorded at least 27 individuals taking part: male and female, young and old.

The carnivorous behavior wasn’t passive; the squirrels stalked, chased and pounced on their prey. And for an animal that had never before been recorded hunting, they were surprisingly proficient at it. Out of the 31 documented hunting attempts, 17 resulted in a kill, a success rate of 55%.

“The sounds on the videos were quite shocking as the squirrels crunched on the skulls of the vole prey!” Smith said. It’s still not known whether the squirrels learned hunting behavior from each other or if individual squirrels learned how to hunt on their own through trial and error.

In 2024, California saw an unprecedented vole population boom, with sightings seven times higher than the decade’s average. Scientists are still trying to understand the reasons behind the explosion in vole numbers but suspect the squirrels seized the opportunity for easy prey.

The discovery fundamentally changes existing understandings of the species, which will now be reclassified as opportunistic omnivores instead of a granivore, or seed eater, the authors said in the study.

Scientists also want to know whether the protein-rich diet will give the squirrels an edge. “Next year we will assess the consequences of this novel behavior for the California ground squirrels,” Smith said. “We will see the effects of carnivory on the reproductive output and overwinter survival — two major components of fitness.”

If the species is truly more flexible in its diet than previously thought, it may also prove to be more resilient and adaptable in the face of rapid environmental changes caused by climate change and other human-induced environmental impacts, the authors said.

Banner image: A California ground squirrel, which usually eats seeds and acorns, hunts a vole. Image courtesy of Sonja Wild/UC Davis.

Unusually heavy rainfall struck southern Botswana and eastern South Africa from Feb. 16-20, flooding cities and killing at least 31 people. In Botswana, the government said nearly 5,500 people were affected, and more than 2,000 people evacuated.

A new rapid study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a team of international climate scientists analyzing extreme weather events, has found that such heavy rainfall events are becoming more likely due to human-induced climate change.

By looking at historical weather observations from the region between southern Botswana and South Africa, the researchers found an increasing trend in very wet five-day rainfall events over the last few decades. The team also estimated that similar five-day rainfall events are about 60% more intense in today’s world, which has warmed by 1.3° Celsius (2.3° Fahrenheit) on average since preindustrial times, before the widespread use of fossil fuels.

The researchers were, however, unable to quantify how much human-induced climate change contributed to the latest February deluge, because the climate models they used produced inconsistent results. “We haven’t been able to quantify the effect, but as the world is warming, we are seeing more extreme rainfall events like this one,” report co-author Ben Clarke, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, U.K., told Mongabay in an online briefing.

“Indeed, as our climate continues to warm, it’s understood that this climate is likely to hold more water, and so it’s likely to cause intense rainfall,” said Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist at Imperial College. This “is likely to overwhelm many systems,” she added, especially drainage infrastructure that hasn’t kept pace with growing populations and rapid urbanization.

For cities like Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, there’s an urgent need to make the infrastructure flood-resilient, said report co-author Piet Kenabatho, an environmental science professor at the University of Botswana.

Simple nature-based solutions can be effective, such as those focusing on absorbing more water into the ground during high flow periods, Kenabatho told Mongabay by email. This can be done by greening bare areas that have lost vegetation due to urbanization, he said, adding that nearly all green spaces in Gaborone have been converted to built-up areas.

But these solutions alone aren’t enough, Kenabatho said. What the city urgently needs is to expand and upgrade its aging stormwater drainage system to quickly channel water out of the city during floods, he added. “Decisions will have to be made as to where some of these waters could be stored.”

Kenabatho said some other African countries use managed aquifer recharge schemes, that channel stormwater into underground aquifers using various methods.

“These concerted efforts will go a long way to improving flood management in Gaborone and similar environments,” he said.

In the rainforests of West Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, the Indigenous Dayak Iban listen to what they call “omen birds,” or birds they say sing messages from spirits, Mongabay’s Sonam Lama Hyolmo reported in November 2024.

These omen birds include species such as the white-rumped shama (Copsychus malabarincus), scarlet-rumped trogon (Harpactes duvaucelii) and Diard’s trogon (Harpactes diardii), which play an important part in the tribe’s daily life. However, their populations have declined due to deforestation and the songbird trade.

“The culture of listening to omen birds is getting rare now, but we still view the birds as messengers in Sungai Utik,” Hermanus Husin, a Dayak elder from the Sungai Utik community, told Hyolmo.

The Dayak Iban of Sungai Utik have served as stewards of the land for generations, protecting a swath of rainforest the size of the city of Paris. They were awarded the U.N.’s Equator Prize in 2019 for their important work in defending Borneo’s rainforest from illegal loggers, oil palm plantations and other corporate interests.

But omen songbirds such as the white-rumped shama have become popular due to their striking plumage and voice. They’re often caught and caged, and entered into singing competitions for cash prizes, Hyolmo writes.

A report estimates 70 million birds can be found in 12 million homes in Java alone.

Ornithologist Panji Gusti Akbar told Mongabay this means there might be more caged birds than those in the wild.

For the Dayak Iban, a healthy, intact forest is key for the birds to thrive. Based on their customary laws, the tribe limits the number of trees that can be cut in the protected area annually, Hyolmo reports.

It’s also against customary law for the Dayak Iban to trade omen birds.

Dayak Iban elders pass on their traditional knowledge about medicinal plants and omen birds to the next generation through their Indigenous school.

However, this is becoming challenging as younger members leave the community to study elsewhere, 18-year-old filmmaker Kynan Tegar told Mongabay.

“There was a sense of shame in my father’s generation for being Indigenous. They had to cover up their tattoos or they would lose their jobs,” Kynan said, adding that discrimination had prevented them from being proud of their identity.

To reconnect with their roots and reclaim their identity, Kynan made a documentary called Indai Apai Darah (“Mother Father Blood”) that captured their elders’ work in protecting their homes and heritage. Kynan said his hope is that the film will engage fellow young members of the tribe.

Panji said the Dayak Iban are key to protecting songbirds from the illegal wildlife trade. “We have to acknowledge that local wisdom and knowledge are important to make sure conservation projects effectively work,” he said.

This is a summary of “Borneo’s ‘omen birds’ find a staunch guardian in Indigenous Dayak Iban elders” by Sonam Lama Hyolmo.

Banner image of a scarlet-rumped trogon (Harpactes duvaucelii) in Sumatra, courtesy of Panji Gusti Akbar.

A study in the United States found a dramatic 22% decline in butterfly populations between 2000 and 2020.

Previous research has focused on a specific butterfly species or regions of the country. For this study, researchers wanted to understand overall butterfly population trends across the U.S.

They gathered records of 12.6 million individual butterflies across 554 species, from more than 76,000 surveys, many conducted by citizen science groups in nearly 2,500 locations.

The researchers found that total butterfly numbers were down by 22% over the first two decades of this century. It’s a concerning trend, said Collin Edwards, lead author of the study and an ecological modeler with the state of Washington Fish and Wildlife Department.

To put it in context, “for someone who was born in 2000, one out of every five butterflies had disappeared by the time they became an adult,” Edwards told Mongabay by phone.

The 22% decline is an average. Of the 554 species examined, 107 declined by at least 50% and 22 species declined by more than 90%.

At the same time, nine species saw population increases. The eastern population of the monarch (Danaus plexippus) doubled in 2025, though its overall population is still down roughly 80%, prompting the iconic butterfly to be proposed for the U.S. endangered species list.

Several of the nine species that increased in population are predominantly found in Mexico; the U.S. is the northern edge of their range. Edwards said with a warming climate, many butterfly species are shifting their habitats north.

“If the southern edge of their limit is just barely cold enough for them, as the climate warms, that’ll get worse. But the northern edge where it used to be a little bit too cold will start to get warm enough,” Edwards said.

This study adds to a growing body of research showing a global decline in insect populations, raising concerns about a depleting food source for many animals including birds and frogs, which are facing population crashes in their own right.

Furthermore, while bees get most of the glory, butterflies are also critical pollinators. A 2021 study in Texas found butterflies provide about $120 million per year in pollination services for cotton.

Tierra Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, told Mongabay by email that “this is a landmark study” that “shows that we need to take urgent action to safeguard butterflies. Every action we take to help pollinators also helps us because our fate is directly tied to their health.” Curry wasn’t involved with this research.

Edwards said this study focused on butterflies because that’s the order of insects they had data for, but he added there’s “every reason to think that if butterflies are declining there are probably similar declines in other groups of insects,” especially since the drivers of decline — habitat loss, climate change and pesticides — affect most insects.   

Banner photo of a monarch butterfly by Sean Ewing via Pexels.