Beaches in San Vicente municipality in the Philippines’ Palawan province are crucial nesting grounds for olive ridley sea turtles. But the turtles and their babies face perilous journeys on those beaches — from dogs, tourism, and increasingly severe storms and high tides.

To counter these threats, the NGO Large Marine Vertebrates Research Institute Philippines (LAMAVE) has partnered with residents to patrol the beaches and rescue turtle eggs, reports contributor Rachel Duckett for Mongabay.

In Santo Niño village, volunteers and patrollers conduct intensive night patrols covering more than 8 kilometers (5 mile) of the beach in five shifts.

When the patrollers find a nesting turtle, they protect her from dogs. When she’s done nesting, they measure her and take photographs of her before she reenters the water. These help them identify her in the future.

Then they relocate the eggs to protected hatcheries, a move researchers say is vital because nests left on the beach are almost always lost to stray dogs or flooding. Sometimes, they encounter dead nesting mothers or turtles mortally wounded by dogs. They remove eggs from those nests as well.

“In the end, even though she’s dead, at least her babies survive,” said researcher Klara Simon at LAMAVE.

In the hatcheries, the eggs are placed in nests in the sand, which the researchers check on every few hours. Baby olive ridleys (Lepidochelys olivacea) start emerging two months after the eggs are laid.

According to LAMAVE data from last season and preliminary data from this season, their hatcheries achieve a hatching success rate of approximately 75%. For comparison, on beaches untouched by predators, hatching success rates of 80% or higher are common for olive ridley nests.

Local patrollers like Jerald Mahusay, who once viewed turtle eggs as toys during his childhood, now serve as research assistants and patrol leaders. LAMAVE also engages directly with residents to manage free-roaming dogs, such as building enclosures for pets that might otherwise attack turtles and eat the eggs.

Despite the current reliance on hatcheries, project leader Kalei Suza said relocation is a temporary measure necessitated by human-induced pressures. “We still want the turtles to nest in their regular, natural place where they want to nest, because mama knows best,” Suza said, noting that the ultimate goal is for the community to take full ownership of turtle protection.

San Vicente has seen a rise in tourism over the last few years. Luxury developer Century Properties purchased 56 hectares (138 acres) of land in the municipality with plans to build a beachfront resort. Another major developer, Megaworld Corporation, has begun construction of a resort expected to cover 462 hectares (1,142 acres).

Read the full story by Rachel Duckett here.

Banner image: LAMAVE patrollers find a predated nest in Santo Niño, San Vicente, Palawan, April 2026. Image by Rachel Duckett for Mongabay.

A mountainous reserve near Manila, the Philippine capital, is a critical ecological refuge, harboring high levels of plant diversity despite its proximity to the highly urbanized city, according to a recent study.

The findings come from surveys done 10 years earlier, however, and mounting pressures on the area’s forests since then may have had an impact, the authors say.

As the last remaining natural lowland forest in Cavite province, on the southern shores of Manila Bay, Mounts Palay-palay-Mataas-na-Gulod Protected Landscape serves as a vital stronghold for Philippine biodiversity, researchers say.

In July 2016, they surveyed plants within the landscape, known as MPPMGPL. At the time, they documented 294 species of plants across the landscape’s varied habitats, from grasslands and secondary forests to old-growth stands. They found that 42 species, or 16%, are found only in the Philippines, while 31 species are classified as threatened on national or international red lists.

“The most remarkable finding is that this landscape … harbors an incredibly high concentration of biodiversity despite being so close to highly urbanized zones,” study lead author Enrico Replan, an assistant professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM) at the University of the Philippines Diliman, told Mongabay by email.

The study also identified 43 species that likely represent new records for Cavite province, “filling major geographic knowledge gaps,” Replan said. Among the most significant findings was the dominance of guijo (Shorea guiso), a critically endangered tree species, in the forest’s interior core. This highlights the role of MPPMGPL as a key conservation refuge, the authors write.

While the study was only published recently, Replan told Mongabay the 2016 findings offer a baseline for this landscape; there haven’t been similar surveys since.

In the past 10 years, however, urbanization and land conversion have led to a decrease in forested areas and breached strict protection zones in the landscape. A study that used satellite imagery to examine changes in forest area from 2015 to 2021, found a 13.8% decrease in MPPMGPL due to urbanization.

The 2016 survey “showed promising resurgence of Shorea guiso” in the interior core parts of MPPMGPL, Replan said. But because dipterocarp species such as guijo are highly sensitive to local climatic changes and canopy gaps, he added that any encroachment that disturbed the forest over the last decade could easily have stalled this progress.

“This 10-year gap highlights exactly why we are calling for continuous, long-term monitoring rather than relying solely on spatial snapshots,” Replan said.

He added that stricter local policy interventions and aggressive conservation programs are urgently needed to safeguard the endemic and threatened plants in the landscape “before they are permanently fragmented or lost.”

The research team writes that establishing permanent monitoring plots would better track the functional dynamics of this ecosystem amidst climate change.

 Banner image: Enrico Replan from the, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM), University of the Philippines Diliman doing fieldwork in Mounts Palay-Palay-Mataas-na-Gulod Protected Landscape. Image courtesy of Enrico Replan.

On the morning of June 27, a 7.6-meter (25-foot) blue whale calf washed ashore on a busy beach in Mumbai, India’s financial capital and the capital of Maharashtra state. Whale strandings are rare along the Maharashtra coast, so Mongabay spoke with experts to find out what happened next.

“Each stranding incident is a totally unexpected event,” N. Vasudevan, former head of Maharashtra government’s Mangrove Cell, an administrative unit that manages coastal ecosystems, told Mongabay. “You can prepare for years, but then it may not happen for years. And one fine morning, it is there on the beach.”

According to the Mangrove Foundation, a registered society established by the Maharashtra government, only six of the 109 recorded stranding incidents in 2020-21 involved whales.

Under national guidelines, the first step in any stranding involving a protected species, such as the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), is alerting the local stranding network, whose coordinator notifies the forest department, according to Shaunak Modi, director of the Coastal Conservation Foundation, which is also part of the Mumbai Stranding Response Network.

Modi said that on June 27, a lifeguard notified him about the whale calf around 9 a.m. By the time he reached the site in the Bandra coastline 30 minutes later, the young cetacean had suffered severe injuries from crashing against exposed rocks. Ultimately, police and fire department authorities at the site confirmed it had died.

Fishers and local people told Modi they had first spotted the stranded whale around 6 a.m. First responders, primarily local fishers and lifeguards, receive specialized training to inform the network immediately of these emergencies, he said.

But what happens to the dead whale? Modi said legal and practical realities clash under national law.

The blue whale is a Schedule 1 species, meaning authorities give it the highest-level protection in India. “As per the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, if any Schedule 1 species dies, it needs to be cremated,” Modi said. But the law was made with terrestrial animals in mind, he added.

“If you try to burn a whale, I can assure you it will keep burning for days, if not weeks, because it has that much oil in it. So then instead of cremating a marine mammal, they’re buried.”

The calf was buried in a Mumbai beach.

Beforehand, veterinarians collected tissue samples and conducted a necropsy under forest department supervision.

“The necropsy report is still not ready, but what we know is that it was a calf,” Modi said. “Blue whale calves stay with their mother for up to seven or eight years and are entirely dependent on her for food during the first few years. We assume it may have been separated from its mother, which caused its condition.”

Vasudevan said there are systematic hurdles in knowing the cause of death. “The experts who conduct necropsy are nonexistent in our country.”

Banner image: Stranded whale calf in Mumbai. Image courtesy of Shaunak Modi.

Photos of a striking, iridescent wasp posted on social media by wasp enthusiasts in Japan have led to an unexpected discovery: The images are the first record of the species in Japan. The footage also helped scientists describe a male of the species for the first time.

The images and a video of the wasps were posted by two citizen scientists on Twitter (now X) in 2018 and 2021. The video showed a female wasp depositing her eggs onto a hard egg case of a praying mantis.

Taisuke Kawano, a wasp expert at the Kyushu University Museum, Japan, noticed the footage and contacted the wasp enthusiasts who then sent him a few specimens of the wasp. The citizen scientists are also co-authors of a study, published in June, that details the scientists’ findings.

Kawano and his colleagues identified the wasp as Eupelmus curvator. It’s a parasitoid wasp that lays its eggs in the egg cases of mantises. The larvae of the wasps feed on the mantis eggs as they develop.

The researchers said the photos posted on social media are the first known record of Eupelmus curvator in Japan. The species was previously known only from China.

The researchers were also able to scientifically describe the E. curvator male for the first time. Only the female of the species was previously described.

The wasp was, for the first time, recorded targeting the eggs of the narrow-winged mantis (Tenodera angustipennis). In one mantis egg case, the scientists found 77 wasps and just a few uneaten mantis babies.

In an email to Mongabay, Kawano said only five known species of Eupelmus wasps parasitize mantis egg cases.

Entomologists have estimated that there could be up to a million parasitoid wasp species, many of them not yet described or detected.

Social media can become an increasingly important tool for biodiversity research, said Kawano. “Social media can be particularly useful for detecting unusual behavior, host associations, or records from previously undocumented regions,” he said. “In our case, the discovery began with a social media post reporting an unfamiliar wasp emerging from a mantis ootheca.”

But social media is not a replacement for field surveys, Kawano added: “Photographs and videos provide only limited information, and specimens are often essential for accurate identification, especially in very small insects. I therefore see social media not as a replacement for field surveys and taxonomic research, but as a way of greatly expanding the range of clues and starting points available to researchers.”

Michael Ohl, a wasp expert at the Natural History Museum of Berlin who was not affiliated with the study, said digital observations like the E. curvator social media posts cannot replace collecting specimens required for formal species descriptions.

“Digital collecting should therefore complement, rather than replace, museum collections. One of its greatest strength lies in helping taxonomists identify promising material for further study,” he said in an email to Mongabay.

Banner image of a female Eupelmus curvator, courtesy of Taisuke Kawano.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

Roads through Brazil’s forests divide primate habitat and sometimes force animals that normally remain in the canopy onto the ground. Researchers in the Amazon are testing rope bridges that allow them to cross above traffic.

Eight bridges were installed in 2024 in Alta Floresta, in northern Mato Grosso state, reports contributor Suzana Camargo for Mongabay. Camera traps recorded 15,000 crossings by arboreal animals over the next 15 months. No roadkill was reported at the monitored sites. Six primate species used the structures, among them black-faced black spider monkeys (Ateles chamek), Schneider’s marmosets (Mico schneideri), and the critically endangered Alta Floresta titi monkey (Plecturocebus grovesi).

The bridges contain several layers of rope for species with different forms of movement. Some walk across them, while others swing by their arms or use their prehensile tails. Cameras record successful crossings as well as animals that approach and retreat. The footage suggests that some species need time to become accustomed to the structures. Tufted capuchins took seven months to use one of the bridges.

The work follows a project started in 2021 along the BR-174 highway, which passes through the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous Territory. Members of the Waimiri-Atroari community helped select sites for 32 bridges. Cameras have recorded about 1,250 primate crossings there over the past five years, giving researchers information on which designs work best.

Roads can also separate wildlife populations and reduce gene flow. This is a particular concern for species already confined to small areas. Fewer fruit-eating primates may also mean less seed dispersal in nearby forests.

Researchers estimate that nearly 9 million mammals die on Brazilian roads each year. A bill awaiting a Senate vote would establish a national wildlife road-safety plan covering aerial bridges, underpasses, warning signs, and speed controls. Brazil’s transport infrastructure department has adopted the Reconecta bridge design as its recommended highway standard.

More bridges are planned in Alta Floresta, other parts of Brazil, and Suriname, although their value will depend on regular maintenance and continued monitoring.

Read the full story by Suzana Camargo here.

Banner image: The Alta Floresta titi monkey is the symbol of the Alta Floresta bridges program. Image courtesy of Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and Projeto Reconecta.

In April 2026, Malaysia enacted an absolute ban on the import of electronic waste, moving to end its role as a primary destination for the world’s hazardous electrical and electronic scrap.

The regulation aims to shutter a black market of illegal recycling yards that use falsified paperwork to smuggle toxic materials into the country, reports contributor Ashley Yeong for Mongabay.

Investigators and NGOs have long raised concerns about containers with falsely declared documents frequently slipping into Malaysia’s illegal recycling sites. To get through customs, smugglers often declare electronic waste, or e-waste, as legitimate raw materials.

The large volume of shipping containers that pass through Malaysian ports makes the detection of the illegal waste challenging, Nik Ezanee Mohd Faisal, the commander of the Malaysian Border Control and Protection Agency (AKPS) in Port Klang, told reporters in February. In the first five months of 2026 alone, Port Klang, located in the west coast of Malaysia, processed approximately 3.2 million standard shipping containers.

Despite the challenge, a specialized joint task force known as Op Green Shield has started to see results. Between January and July 2026, the task force inspected 685 containers and successfully repatriated more than 3,000 metric tons of e-waste to their countries of origin.

Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network (BAN), told Mongabay that a major hurdle is the U.S., a top e-waste exporter that is not a party to the Basel Convention on hazardous waste, which regulates the movement and trade of hazardous waste.

“The US is therefore, shamefully, under no obligation to do anything about the e-waste trafficking from the US to Malaysia,” Puckett said by email. “This places the Malaysian government in a very unfortunate situation”.

Illegal operators of recycling yards often burn plastic components of e-waste to extract precious metals, releasing mercury, cadmium and lead into the air. Residents near Port Klang reported to Mongabay a biting stench from these operations that makes breathing difficult.

Mohamed Tarek El-Fatatry, founder of the local recycling facility ERTH (Electronic Recycling Through Heroes), said he welcomes the ban, adding that it levels the playing field for legal recyclers who previously struggled to compete with illegal shops that cherry-pick high-value components from imported waste.

“There’s so much waste in the country, so this ban is a good thing because it means we get to focus on domestic recycling efforts instead of importing the other stuff,” Mohamed Tarek told Mongabay.

Read the full story by Ashley Yeong here.

Banner image: Bundles of electrical wire scrap sit inside a container intercepted at Port Klang, Malaysia. Image courtesy of the Malaysian Border Control and Protection Agency (AKPS).