A new Human Rights Watch report alleges abuse and human rights violations in an Indigenous community in Malaysia’s Sarawak state. The report finds Malaysian timber company Zedtee Sdn Bhd (Zedtee) destroyed culturally valuable forests without the consent of Indigenous people, who are facing an eviction notice from their land.

The HRW report says the Sarawak government allowed Zedtee, part of timber giant Shin Yang Group, to establish a timber plantation in a part of the Sarawak rainforest that overlaps with the 60-member Rumah Jeffery group, an Indigenous Iban community.

Ruma Jeffery members have foraged from the forests and fished from the rivers of the area for generations. They also maintain their ancestral burial grounds there.

“Rumah Jeffery meets all the requirements under the Sarawak Land Code for the government to legally recognize their customary rights over their ancestral land,” the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (SADIA), an Indigenous rights organization, told HRW.

Yet, according to the HRW report, the government failed to protect the Indigenous community, and despite the lack of free, prior and informed consent, Zedtee started logging the forest in 2022. Citing data from the Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory at the University of Maryland, HRW said the logging operations in 2022 resulted in deforestation of nearly 8 hectares (20 acres) of forest.

HRW says wood coming from Sarawak, where timber exports were worth 2.3 billion Malaysian ringgit ($532 million) in 2023, is “tainted” by human rights abuses and deforestation.

Residents protested but the Sarawak Forest Department reportedly threatened to arrest the protesters, according to the report. Zedtee then filed a case accusing Rumah Jeffery of encroaching on its land lease. Later, the Sarawak Forest Department issued an eviction order against the community.

In an email to Mongabay, the Sarawak Forest Department said the eviction notice was a “regulatory enforcement procedure and not a forced eviction.”

It also said that this part of the forest is designated “with the aim of managing the area for sustainable production” and that Shin Yang and Zedtee both have legal license to work there. It said that in 2017, Rumah Jeffery “relocated and constructed a longhouse within” the forest in question “without obtaining approval from the Forest Department.”

The department said the Indigenous community needs to follow procedures to claim the forest. Land is a “sensitive matter” in Sarawak because of conflicting land claims, the department said. “Without legal documents of NCR [Native customary rights], it is challenging to obtain consent.”

However, HRW report author Luciana Téllez-Chávez said getting those legal documents is prohibitively challenging. “The current system poses nearly insurmountable obstacles for registration and then wields these administrative barriers to dispossess communities and give their land in concession to companies. It is a perverse system.”

Mongabay reached out to Zedtee and Shin Yang to respond to the report but did not receive a reply.

Banner image of an Iban woman in Sarawak, Malaysia, courtesy of Luciana Téllez-Chávez/Human Rights Watch.

Lake Malawi’s fish stocks are declining, but one community stands apart: around Mbenje Island, a traditional fisheries management plan has ensured thriving fish populations for generations, Mongabay contributor Charles Mpaka reports.

Landlocked Malawi is highly dependent on the lake, which supplies 90% of the country’s fish catch; more than 1.6 million people rely directly or indirectly on the lake for employment.

The lake is home to roughly 1,000 fish species. However, fish stocks have been decreasing with population growth, climate change and habitat degradation. One exception to the decline is near Mbenje Island in the southern part of the lake, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from shore. There are no permanent settlements on the island, which is only inhabited during the fishing season, Mpaka writes.

To help improve fish stocks in the lake as a whole, the government is looking at the local fishing community’s fisheries management plan, in place since the 1950s.

The Mbenje Island Management Committee is led by Senior Chief Makanjira, a highly respected traditional leader. His grandfather, also named Senior Chief Makanjira, led the community to establish fisheries guidelines in the 1950s, when migrant commercial fishers first requested to fish from the island.

To ensure the protection of fish stocks, the 1950s Senior Chief Makanjira instituted a four-month fishing ban from December to March, two months longer than the government-mandated close season.

“It was also because the chief cared about fishers’ safety,” committee member Rabson Chipangula tells Mpaka. “As rainy season starts in December, these islands experience fierce lightning and thunderstorms.”

Since then, annual fisheries surveys have shown abundant fish stocks around the island compared to other parts of Lake Malawi.

Fisheries scientist Elias Chirwa said the community-implemented extended fishing ban and strict enforcement of net mesh size allows the fish to grow larger and populations to increase, as large female fish are more fertile than smaller ones.

“A larger female fish has a larger body cavity that allows the development of larger ovaries with more eggs in them,” Chirwa tells Mpaka.

The success of Mbenje Island lies in the community’s ability to combine fisheries management with Indigenous beliefs and traditional values, including reverence for ancestral spirits and taboos against drinking and smoking on the island.

“The commitment that this community has shown and provided over time gave the department an impetus to adopt a community-based fisheries management,” Maxon Ngochera, senior deputy director of the fisheries department, tells Mpaka.

David Wilson, a researcher who led the “Lessons from Lake Malawi” project to study the community-driven initiative, says it’s important to not just replicate the specific rules of Mbenje, “as this would really be a technical fix and would ignore diverse and distinctive cultural, environmental, political, and social contexts throughout lake fishing communities.”

“This long-term success has only been possible through strong leadership, strict and sustained enforcement and effective communication,” he says.

Read the full story here.

Banner image of Mbenje Island by Charles Mpaka for Mongabay.

The European Parliament has voted in favor of the European Commission’s proposal to weaken wolf protection, citing increased conflicts with people and livestock in some regions. The draft law, which requires approval by the EU Council, will make it easier to hunt wolves.

While hunting and landowners’ associations applauded the decision, environmental groups expressed dismay.

“Wolves are vital to healthy ecosystems, but today’s vote treats them as a political problem, not an ecological asset,” Ilaria Di Silvestre, director of policy and advocacy for Europe at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said in a statement.

The first step in the wolf’s drop in legal protection came last December, when the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention, an international treaty for the conservation of European wildlife, voted to downgrade the wolf from “strictly protected” to “protected.” The proposal was initiated by the European Commission, the EU’s executive body. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reportedly began advocating for the downgrade after the death of her pony, Dolly, in 2022, due to a wolf attack.

Subsequently, in March 2025, the Commission proposed the same protection downgrade in the EU Habitats Directive, an important EU legislation. The European Parliament, the EU’s legislative body, has now accepted amending the legislation to change the wolf’s status from “strictly protected” to “protected.”

Laurens Hoedemaker, president of the European Federation for Hunting and Conservation (FACE), said in a statement: “FACE welcomes this vote, which will reduce some heavy bureaucratic and legal conflicts associated with ‘strict protection’. Moreover, it shows that EU legislation can adapt where needed.”

However, a coalition of environmental NGOs including WWF EU, BirdLife Europe, ClientEarth, and the European Environmental Bureau said in a statement that downgrading wolf protection “is a political move disguised as policy — it ignores science, fuels division, and jeopardises one of Europe’s greatest conservation successes.”

Gray wolves (Canis lupus) were eradicated from much of Europe by the 19^th century, largely from hunting. But conservation efforts since the 1960s turned their fate around. A recent study called Europe’s wolf recovery a “notable conservation success,” estimating there were at least 19,000 wolves in the EU by 2022.

Previous attempts to downgrade wolf protection fell short. In 2022, the Bern Convention’s Standing Committee rejected such a proposal from Switzerland following a report compiled by the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe (LCIE), a working group of the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.

The LCIE said in a statement in November 2024 that the European Commission’s latest proposal “appears to be premature and faulty,” and “the LCIE does not recommend its adoption.”

The latest vote by the European Parliament sets “a dangerous precedent for EU policymaking,” the NGO coalition said.

“At a time when we must boost Europe’s nature — our best ally against the climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises — some decision makers are wasting time and energy to wage wars against our fragile species and ecosystems.”

Banner image of a Eurasian wolf courtesy of Staffan Widstrand/Swedensbigfive.org.

In early 2024, African Parks, the South Africa-based NGO managing Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo, commissioned U.K.-based law firm Omnia Strategy LLP to investigate allegations of human rights abuses committed by the park’s rangers against local Indigenous people. The investigation is now complete, and AP has acknowledged that human rights abuses occurred, but it hasn’t released the full Omnia report.

The allegations were first published in January 2024 by U.K. tabloid Daily Mail. It documented claims of beatings, torture and rape of Indigenous Baka people when they enter Odzala-Kokoua’s forests to hunt, fish and forage. The park was created on land ancestrally used by the Baka community.

“Now there is only torture in the forest. Today if a Baka enters the forest and comes across Ecoguards they will torture him to death,” Eyaya, a local Baka man said in a video posted by Survival International, an advocacy group that reportedly raised the allegations to AP in a letter in mid-2023.

In a statement, Omnia said it relied in part on Survival International’s reports from Baka people detailing their forced eviction from ancestral lands and subsequent mistreatment.

Omnia’s investigation reviewed events from 2010, when AP took over management of Odzala-Kokoua, through 2024. The law firm sent investigators to the Republic of Congo on four trips over 16 months, interviewing roughly 180 stakeholders, including potential victims, witnesses, ecoguards, park staff, and government officials.

Although the Omnia report is complete, AP hasn’t made it publicly available. Mongabay made repeated requests for the report, but was redirected to a statement saying, “African Parks acknowledges that, in some incidents, human rights abuses have occurred, and we deeply regret the pain and suffering that these have caused to the victims.”

The statement outlines steps AP will take to “ensure a fully integrated, rights-based approach in everything we do.” AP adds that it’s committed to holding staff accountable for abuse, strengthening safeguard protocols, and working with human rights organizations, while enhancing community engagement through efforts like the Odzala Indigenous Peoples Plan.

Critics say AP’s response doesn’t go far enough. “The root of the problem — which the investigation did not address — is that African Parks continues to cling to a racist and colonial model of conservation which kicks out the Indigenous people whose land it is, while outsiders take control,” said Caroline Pearce, Survival International’s director. “As long as this is the case, the Baka will continue to face abuses and the destruction of their livelihoods.”

Trésor Nzila, executive director of the Development Action Centre, a human rights NGO in the Republic of Congo, told Mongabay in a text message: “Recognition is the first step. Now we need to right the wrongs and strengthen prevention and sanction mechanisms.”

Additional reporting by Latoya Abulu.

Banner image: The Baka community of Makouagonda, whose ancestral land was taken for Odzala-Kokoua National Park, now live beside the road. Image © Survival International.

In 2005, the Brazilian government created PDS Brasília, a sustainable settlement in the state of Pará. The settlement was designed to encourage 500 families to practice small-scale family farming, while also collectively using a standing forest to harvest its fruits and nuts, Mongabay’s Fernanda Wenzel reported in March.

The 19,800-hectare (49,000-acre) settlement was created following the killing of Bartolomeu Moraes, a peasant leader and trade unionist better known as Brasília, who had for years opposed a handful of powerful local ranchers from monopolizing land.

But two decades later, only 200 of the 500 families remain in the settlement, largely due to a lack of government and financial support, Wenzel reported.

Many families chose to sell their land to large ranchers, who in turn converted the forest settlement into pasture for cattle ranching, both done illegally.

Raimunda “Mariana” Rodrigues, who remains steadfast in maintaining her family farm, produces cacao on her 2.5 hectares (6 acres). Her family gets additional income from selling chickens, eggs, bananas and cassava.

With ranchers eyeing the area for cattle pasture, Rodrigues told Wenzel she wants to encourage fellow settlers to continue with sustainable family farming. She has created a women’s association with 33 settlers to produce fruit, but finding money to buy equipment to process and freeze the fruit pulp has been challenging, she said. The association is seeking funding from NGOs and private companies like mining firms that can pay for such initiatives to offset their environmental impacts.

Another challenge is the lack of support from banks.

Wenzel reported that the concept of the bioeconomy, which refers to sustainable economic activities that also protect standing forests, has become increasingly popular because of its potential to create income for traditional communities while addressing deforestation and climate change. One study found that the Amazon’s bioeconomy could generate $8 billion each year. However, private and public banks haven’t supported the PDS women adequately, Wenzel found.

Miguel Mernitzki, who inherited his father’s land in Pará’s Altamira municipality, followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a beekeeper because it was a more affordable option than agribusiness or mining. He also lamented the lack of support from the government and the private sector for projects like his.

“To start a soybean plantation, you must have millions of reais. To work in gold mining, you must also have a lot of money to buy machinery. To be a logger, you have to have a truck, a tractor and an area to harvest wood,” he told Wenzel. “The bee, on the other hand, is something you grow slowly, and it pays for its work.”

Some larger businesses, such as Gustavo Grotto’s açaí business, have been able to secure bank loans. However, even for farmers like Grotto, fire outbreaks and drought have been challenging, increasing production and logistics costs.

Read the full story by Fernanda Wenzel here.

Banner image of Raimunda “Mariana” Rodrigues in her family farm. Image courtesy of Fernando Martinho.

In a recently published study, researchers offer a new tool to compare how different crops affect the environment in different regions.

Named PLANTdex, the tool assesses the environmental impact of a crop by considering five key indicators — greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater biodiversity loss, marine biodiversity loss, land biodiversity loss, and water resource depletion — study co-author Mark Jwaideh, nature data and risk analytics lead at the University of Oxford, told Mongabay by email.

For each crop, PLANTdex combines these five indicators into one score at a high resolution of 9 by 9 kilometers (5.6 by 5.6 miles).

“This granularity enables the identification of specific regions where crop production is more or less environmentally impactful, facilitating targeted interventions and policy decisions,” Jwaideh said. “This approach enables stakeholders to pinpoint environmental hotspots to make informed decisions on crop commodity sourcing or where better management is required.”

To build PLANTdex, Jwaideh and colleague Carole Dalin, an associate professor at University College London, used crop production and environment impact data from 2000 to assess 16 crops globally. While old, the year 2000 provided the most consistent data for building the tool’s models, Jwaideh said.

Based on this data, the study found high PLANTdex scores, indicating high environmental impacts, for crops planted in Central America, Southern Europe, the region between the Black and Caspian seas, Southern Africa, and South, East and Southeast Asia. PLANTdex scores were lower for midwestern North America, certain areas of Central Europe and Russia, western South Asia and parts of Central Africa and South America.

When looking at subnational data, PLANTdex identified higher environmental impacts in two distinct areas. First were areas along rivers, which the researchers attributed to “high aquatic impacts of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer application such as in South Asia along the Ganges River.” Next were higher-elevation areas and slopes, possibly due to “increased nutrient run-off, which adversely affects aquatic biodiversity,” the authors write.

“Environmental impacts of crop production vary significantly at sub-national levels, emphasising the need for localised assessments,” Jwaideh said.

Crop type also mattered. Globally, crops like rapeseed, rice, cotton and oil palm were identified by PLANTdex “as the most environmentally impactful crops to produce per dry tonne,” while wheat, maize, sugar beet and sugarcane showed smaller impacts.

The researchers write it’s desirable to find crops that have low environment impacts and higher production levels. While their tool did not find such significant relationships when looking at entire countries, some trends emerged when zooming into smaller areas. For example, for crops like barley, cotton, maize, potato, rice, soybean, sugarcane and wheat, high production areas seemed to have lower environmental impacts. Meanwhile, oil palm and rapeseed showed higher environmental impacts in high production areas.

While the tool was originally built with data from 2000, “more recent iterations of PLANTdex now include timeseries data with updates to all five underlying indicators,” Jwaideh said.

Banner image of oil palm plantation in Malaysia by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.