While Nepal’s efforts to revive its rhinoceros population is hailed as a conservation success, habitat degradation is forcing translocated rhinos to wander far beyond their designated release zones, according to a new study, reports contributor Bibek Bhandari for Mongabay.

The population of the vulnerable greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) in Nepal grew by 16.6% between 2015 and 2021, reaching a total of 752 individuals. To expand the range of rhinos, authorities also established new rhino populations in Bardiya and Shuklaphanta national parks. Bardiya, which had no surviving rhinos until the early 1980s, now has about 38 rhinos, according to the last census in 2021.

To see how the reintroduced rhinos use habitat in Bardiya, researchers attached GPS collars on five rhinos moved from Chitwan National Park to Bardiya in 2016-17. Their tracking showed that the rhinos maintain unusually large home ranges in the park’s Babai Valley. The study authors said that the behavior is likely due to fragmented riverine forests, limited grassland and seasonal water scarcity.

Study co-author Babu Ram Lamichhane, currently associated with the nonprofit Wild Care Nepal, said that massive floods in 2015 and 2017 inundated the Babai Valley, reducing the grassland patches and wallowing sites rhinos require for thermoregulation and skin maintenance.

Lamichhane said during the dry season, a lack of water in the Babai River forces rhinos to travel long distances, sometimes even crossing into India.

“The rhino habitat is not at an optimal level in Babai Valley,” Lamichhane said.

As rhinos seek resources outside the core park area, they are increasingly being sighted in community forests and farmlands, where locals said the animals are involved in sporadic incidents of human-wildlife conflict and destruction of crops.

Manju Mahatara, a wildlife guide with eight years of experience, said that rhinos were once easy to spot in the park’s core.

“Before, we used to spot six to seven rhinos within the core park area, but these days we hardly sight one,” she said. “Many rhinos were released in the Babai Valley, but it’s difficult to spot them these days.”

With new evidence of habitat degradation in Babai, Lamichanne recommended that authorities prioritize other areas such as the Karnali floodplain, adjacent to Baridya National Park, that may be a better alternative for establishing a viable population of more than 50 rhinos.

Rhino researcher Balram Awasthi said that while rhino reintroduction through relocation can be successful, continued habitat restoration and management will be critical to support a truly self-sustaining rhino population.

“Conservation success should not be measured only by population numbers, but also by the health and resilience of the habitats that support them,” Awasthi said.

Read the full story by Bibek Bhandari here.

Banner image: A greater one-horned rhino in Chitwan, Nepal. Image by Aditya Pal via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

When roads cut through forests, they can become a death trap for wildlife. Canopy bridges, structures that connect trees on either side of roads, are considered a crucial lifeline for tree-dwelling animals, but few researchers have examined their long-term effectiveness.

A recently published study did just that, by analyzing three years of videos from camera traps installed on bridges in Costa Rica. Researchers found that wildlife use of the bridges increased steadily with time, and animals showed preferences for certain bridge designs and length.

Previously, most arboreal bridges had only been monitored for about a year at most, according to study lead author Marion Fischer, a Ph.D. student with the University of French Guiana. Without long-term data, it’s hard to know how useful bridges really are or what type works best, she told Mongabay in a video call.

So, Fischer worked with the Costa Rican NGO Osa Conservation to analyze thousands of videos recorded by camera traps that the organization installed on either side of 17 bridges across the Osa Peninsula, a biodiversity hotspot.

The team documented 2,231 animal crossings from December 2020 to June 2023. These included at least 13 species of arboreal mammals, including two species that are highly vulnerable to collisions with cars: The common opossum (Didelphis marsupialis) and the Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine (Coendou mexicanus).

White faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri oerstedii) frequented the bridges as well. However, larger-bodied howler (Alouatta spp.) and spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) were not documented using them. Lizards, small rodents and one snake were also seen in the camera traps. Birds used the bridges for perching.

The team looked at five different bridge designs, three made of rope and two plastic mesh ones, and found wildlife preferred the rope bridges.

The animals also seemed to prefer longer bridges over short ones, likely because many animals, including monkeys, could simply jump across the space connected by a short bridge, Fischer told Mongabay.

The study found that bridge use steadily increased over the three-year study period. Some of the bridges have been in place for a total of six years now, and just last year Fisher saw the first spider monkey using one of them.

“We always saw them [spider monkeys] around the bridges, we had some videos of them touching the ropes and interacting with the bridge, but never crossing,” she said. “And now, finally, after some time they use them. So, I think they needed time to trust the new structure.”

Costa Rica is advancing new legislation that will require wildlife crossings in ecologically sensitive areas. Fischer said it’s important that such wildlife infrastructure also come with long-term monitoring, “because then you can really see the long-term impact on the connectivity.”

Banner image: Screenshot of a capuchin monkey using an arboreal bridge in the Osa Peninsula. Image courtesy of Marion Fischer.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Authorities in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh used loudspeakers and a network of volunteers and community leaders to relocate people from risky areas to safety Thursday after landslides killed at least 13 refugees in the past few days.

At least five children died Wednesday when a landslide caused by monsoon rains swept through an Islamic school at a camp in Cox’s Bazar, where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar live.

A teacher at the Islamic school described the scene from the landslide as chaotic, saying girls at the school were preparing for lessons when part of the building collapsed. “Those of us who were on the western side managed to get out, but everyone on the eastern side was buried under the debris,” said Begum Jahan, who teaches the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

“Some suffered broken arms, and some of the girls lost their lives,” she said.

People in the refugee camp started rescue operations before emergency services reached the scene, Dollar Tripura, head of the local fire service and civil defense, said Thursday. He added that emergency personnel later rescued the injured and recovered the bodies. The rescue operation was called off Wednesday evening.

Jamal Hossain, a Rohingya volunteer who helped in the rescue effort, said people rescued at the scene were sent to hospital and those that died were all women.

“However, we do not know whether there are any more bodies buried underneath,” he said.

Authorities in Cox’s Bazar said they were relocating refugees from at-risk hilly areas and that more than 1,000 people were already evacuated. They said the refugees are often reluctant to leave their makeshift homes despite warnings.

The Bangladesh weather office is forecasting more rain in the coming days.

Sunday night into Monday, landslides killed at least eight people at Rohingya camps in the area.

Local media reported at least 22 people died in the delta nation of 170 million people in landslides and wall collapses over the last three days. The death toll included the casualties at Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, the country’s leading Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily reported.

Bangladesh has urged the international community for years to help the country begin repatriation of the refugees to Myanmar, but the process is stalled.

By Associated Press

Banner image: Rescuers work at the site of a landslide at a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Image by Shamimul Islam Faisal via Associated Press. 

The Walia ibex, a rare species of wild goat found only in northern Ethiopia, is once again considered critically endangered, after recent population estimates showed a sustained decline below a key threshold.

The iconic species, largely confined to the remote, steep cliffs of Simien Mountains National Park, was previous listed as vulnerable on the Red List of the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.

The conservation status of the Walia ibex (Capra walie) has oscillated over the years. In 1986, it was listed as endangered, then reclassified as critically endangered in 1996, before being moved back to endangered in 2008.

Between 2009 and 2012, surveys found the Walia ibex population had increased from 680 individuals to 850. Based on this trend, researchers estimated that by 2020 there would be more than 975 individuals. Concluding that the species was doing better, they reclassified the ibex as vulnerable.

The 2020 assessment noted that in 2019, only 619 ibex had been counted, but concluded that this single record didn’t change the overall increasing trend.

“With today’s knowledge this conclusion was not justified,” Paul Scholte, senior adviser to the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority and lead assessor of the IUCN Walia Ibex Assessment, told Mongabay by email.

A study published last year by Scholte and his colleagues found that Walia ibex numbers have been steadily declining from a high of 865 individuals in 2015 to just 306 by May 2024.

Most importantly, there were fewer than 250 mature individuals (those that can reproduce) in 2023 and 2024, thereby falling under the IUCN criterion for listing the species as critically endangered, Scholte said.

An additional count in November 2024, not included in the 2025 study, found just 289 ibex, including 228 mature individuals, Scholte added. Another count in December 2025, found only 271 individuals. “In other words another 18 individuals lost within a year,” he said.

For their study, Scholte and his colleagues also interviewed nearly 200 people, including park personnel, local authorities and village residents, to understand why ibex populations have been declining. The interviewees identified poaching as a major threat to the ibex, possibly for food and traditional medicine, followed by human encroachment and habitat degradation. The situation was made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic in combination with the 2021-2022 war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

According to the interviewees, the instability from the war opened the door for poaching, while COVID-19 “obstructed tourist flows, decreased revenues and halted patrolling activities and awareness,” the authors wrote in the paper.

Scholte said poaching continues to be a threat. “In April 2025, four poachers were apprehended, with the remains of two Walia ibexes that were confiscated, showing the continuing pressure on this species during a period of prolonged insecurity reigning in this part of Ethiopia,” he said.

Banner image of a male Walia ibex in Ethiopia, courtesy of Paul Scholte.

Worldwide, roads act as both death traps and barriers for wildlife, fragmenting the landscapes animals need to survive. However, ecologists and engineers are working to “reconnect the wild” through the strategic construction of wildlife crossings.

As Mongabay contributor Ben Goldfarb reports, structures, including underpasses and massive overpasses paired with roadside fencing, have proved highly effective at protecting both animals and people.

The U.S. state of Colorado, for example, recently completed a 61-meter-wide (200-foot) overpass — one of the largest in the world — near the town of Greenland. It’s expected to help reduce roadkill by 90% along a critical stretch of I-25, one of the busiest highways in the western U.S. Similarly, the upcoming Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in California will soon allow pumas to safely traverse the 10-lane U.S. 101 freeway.

“At this point, there’s really no more question that these things can help populations,” Mike Sawaya, a researcher studying grizzly bears and wildlife crossings in Canada’s Banff National Park, told Mongabay.

The motivation for these projects is not only conservation but also public safety and economics. Collisions with white-tailed deer kill about 440 motorists each year across the U.S. Large animal collisions cost the U.S. economy more than $10 billion annually.

Other countries have also implemented these crossings. A mountain highway in Croatia is one of the most permeable roads on Earth, while India is pioneering “red roads” to reduce vehicle speeds in wildlife zones without abrupt braking, vehicle damage, or driver discomfort. In Sri Lanka, inexpensive rope bridges made of steel cables connected by nylon netting have allowed purple-faced langurs to safely cross between fragmented habitats without descending to the forest floor.

“Canopy crossings” like these have reconnected treetops for samango monkeys in South Africa and sloths in Costa Rica. Unlike many conventional wildlife crossings, rope bridges and ladders are portable and inexpensive: some designs cost only a few hundred dollars to construct and install.

Despite this progress, ecologist William Laurance warns that crossings alone can’t stop the “infrastructure tsunami” of new development that can increase poaching, industrial logging, farming, mining, and introduce and disperse invasive species.

Renee Callahan, executive director of ARC Solutions, a group that studies and advocates for wildlife crossings, told Mongabay that “we could solve this problem in a generation,” given sufficient investment.

The United States is debating just such investment for the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program, established in 2021 with $350 million in funding. Many worthy projects were turned down due to a lack of funds, so legislators are working to expand and formalize support. A bipartisan transportation bill in the U.S. House of Representatives proposes $80 million annually for crossings over the next five years, while a U.S. Senate bill seeks $1 billion over the same period.

Read the full story by Ben Goldfarb here.

Banner image of one of the dozens of wildlife overpasses that allow safe passage for animals in Canada’s Banff National Park. Image by Ben Goldfarb.

Four Ugandan farmers have filed a lawsuit before the High Court in London, U.K., against a contentious oil pipeline under construction in Uganda and Tanzania, human rights group Avaaz announced at a press conference on July 7.

The 1,443-kilometer (897-mile) East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) will stretch from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields in landlocked Uganda to the Tanzanian port of Tanga for export. The pipeline is being built by French energy giant TotalEnergies.

“We are incredibly excited to bring this claim,” said Matthew Renshaw, a partner at law firm Leigh Day, which is representing the claimants. “It is against EACOP Limited, which is a U.K.-registered company that has the potential to cause devastation in Uganda and in the wider world.”

Joanna Setzer, an associate professor at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute, said at the press conference that U.K. courts are looking at similar cases of U.K.-registered companies allegedly causing harm in other countries. “But the timing is critical in this case because it’s before the damage, before the harm occurs,” she said.

The Tilenga and Kingfisher fields lie near Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s largest protected area and home to endangered Rothschild’s giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi) and African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana). The pipeline will also cross 16 protected areas and the Lake Victoria Basin that’s vital for more than 40 million people. Environmental groups have warned that the ecosystem could suffer severe damage in the event of an oil spill.

“Tomorrow, after their pipes get old, there will be oil spills that will be poured into our waters and the little we are harvesting today, I don’t think we will be able to harvest it tomorrow,” Racheal Tugume, one of the claimants, said at the press conference.

Beyond its environmental impacts, EACOP has also raised concerns over human rights violations. More than 100,000 people, most of them farmers, have been displaced to make way for the project. Some of those affected, including one of the claimants, said they have still not received adequate financial compensation.

“I lost 42% of my land and I was inadequately compensated,” said Samuel Abidimba, one of the claimants. “I was not able to find another piece of land with the money they gave me to cultivate and grow enough food to support my family.”

Uganda has adopted climate legislation that offers legal protection against environmental harm, but EACOP has so far not faced legal action inside the country. Setzer said this may be linked to the country’s political climate: Many opponents of the project, including some of the claimants, say they’ve faced intimidation and pressure. Environmental activists have also been repeatedly arrested after protesting against the pipeline.

EACOP is expected to begin operations in 2027, with production from the oil fields projected to last around 20 years.

Banner image: Rothschild’s giraffes at Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. The Tilenga and Kingfisher fields lie close to the park. Image by Daryona via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).