- 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.
- Mongabay does not vet the news sources below, nor does the inclusion of a story on this list imply an endorsement of its content.
Tropical forests
Akagera National Park in Rwanda took in five eastern black rhinos from European zoos and safari parks on June 24 (The Republic).
Indigenous advocates say that more robust land rights for the 25 percent of the Earth’s surface in traditional territories will help in the battle against climate change (CIFOR Forests News).
“Eco-fashion” helps empower Dayak communities in Indonesia (The Jakarta Post).
The former part-owner of an illegal logging company re-enters Liberian politics (FrontPageAfrica).
Kenya’s timber industry, which employs some 50,000 people, searches for new pathways to sustainability (Daily Nation).
A “lost city” in the Honduran rainforest is home to species that were presumed to have gone extinct (The Independent, Good News Network, Yahoo News, ScienceAlert, The Sun).
Drones outfitted with lidar help scientists keep an eye on deforestation in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest (DroneDJ).
The people who created Peru’s Nazca lines looked to exotic bird species for inspiration (Science News).
Some communities in Liberia say they haven’t seen the benefits from REDD+ (FrontPageAfrica).
Satellite vegetation surveys in India aren’t effective at measuring the forage that elephants need, a study has found (The Hindu).
Other news
An air policy official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has left his position amid questions over contacts with former clients (The Washington Post).
Hawaiians are working to bring back local aquaculture techniques as a way to reduce the island state’s dependence on imported seafood (Biographic).
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence goes against other government agencies, and the military, in his refusal to call climate change a threat to national security (The Guardian).
The Ocean Cleanup project is taking a second stab at gathering trash from the Pacific using an experimental floating device (Associated Press).
The last known individual of a native Hawaiian snail species has died, part of a worrying trend for the island’s snail species (The Atlantic).
Some U.S. states have introduced far-reaching plans for dealing with climate change, while others appear to be ignoring the potential crisis completely (The New York Times).
A 2012 hurricane has given the endangered piping plover a new future on Fire Island in the U.S. state of New York (The New York Times).
The well-intentioned rearing of monarch butterflies, aimed at helping a species that’s declined by 80 percent in the last 10 years, could backfire, as captive-born butterflies aren’t able to migrate well (The Atlantic).
A leak that’s been pumping oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico since 2004 is “a thousand times worse” than originally thought (The New York Times).
Four North Atlantic right whales were recently found dead in Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence (The New York Times).
Three more gray whales have died in Alaska, increasing the toll of this year’s “unusual mortality event” (NOAA).
Banner image of an invasive rosy wolf snail (Euglandina rosea) that is causing problems for Hawaii’s native snails, by Dylan Parker via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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