- There are many important conservation and environmental stories Mongabay isn’t able to cover.
- Here’s a digest of some of the significant developments from the week.
- If you think we’ve missed something, feel free to add it in the comments.
Tropical forests
Scientists are taking advantage of Colombia’s peace deal to investigate areas that used to be off-limits (Science Magazine).
Protecting Africa’s forest elephants will encourage plant diversity, a new study finds (Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/EurekAlert).
Urbanization could mean relief for the world’s threatened wildlife species if we can ferry them through the next century (The New York Times).
Six conservationists are new Whitley Award winners (The Guardian).
CIFOR offers a roundup of the news from the 2018 Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit (CIFOR Forests News).
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg will give $4.5 million to compensate for the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord (BBC News).
A Chinese-funded dam in Indonesia could split the dwindling population of a new orangutan species in two (The Guardian).
Pakistan plants more than 1 million mangrove trees in 24 hours and breaks its own record (The Express Tribune).
Hosting August’s Asian Games spurs Indonesia to limit forest fires (Reuters).
Young activists in Colombia win a court victory to hold their government responsible for addressing climate change (Pacific Standard).
Colombia is becoming the hottest destination to see the Amazon rainforest (Conde Nast Traveler).
The Kenyan government now has a rapid response team to protect the country’s forests (Hivisasa).
West Africa’s cocoa farmers don’t see the benefits of big companies’ efforts at more ethical sourcing (Times of Oman).
The Indian government says the country’s forest cover is up more than 6,700 square kilometers (2,600 square miles) thanks to conservation (Business Standard, LiveMint).
Forests anchor life on Earth (Treehugger).
Selective logging may not be enough to save the diversity of plants and animals in the forest (European Scientist).
Other news
A park established in 2012 helped to nearly triple the number of critically endangered Amur leopards (The Revelator).
A 27-year-old polar bear living in Singapore Zoo, the first born in the tropics, has died (The Hindu).
Warmer water in the Gulf of California could lead to declines in seabird numbers (American Ornithological Society Publications Office/EurekAlert).
A study from University College London reveals that climate change hasn’t played a central role in human conflict in East Africa over the past 50 years (EurekAlert).
Biologists are concerned that orcas off the West Coast of the United States may be inbreeding, after recent genetic analysis (NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region/EurekAlert).
Scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute measured a whale shark’s migration, and it’s the longest ever recorded (EurekAlert).
Coral reefs that have adapted to deal with temperature fluctuations are the most likely to survive in the face of climate change (Bangor University/Phys.Org).
How to tackle the massive problem of plastic pollution (Mother Jones).
Thousands of islands are likely to be swamped by sea level rise as a result of climate change, a new study finds (Mother Jones).
Citizen science in Kenya helps to check water quality (CIFOR Forests News).
French president tells U.S. Congress, “There is no Planet B” (BBC News).
Scientists warn that a warmer Arctic will translate into rougher weather (Vox/Pulitzer Center).
Kelp forests could be key to minimizing ocean acidification (News Deeply).
Banner image of forest elephants. Image by Richard Ruggiero/USFWS via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) or Public Domain.
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