A cocoa boom in southeast Liberia is wiping out native forests and encroaching into a proposed national park. The would-be Kwa National Park, a dense tropical rainforest, is home to chimpanzees, forest elephants, pygmy hippos and pangolins.

Kwa is partly located in Grand Gedeh county, one of the most densely forested regions in southeast Liberia. Commercial agriculture is banned across the 1,720 square-kilometer (664 square-mile) area set aside for the national park, reports Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo.

Yet, during patrols, forest rangers from Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority (FDA) and community eco-guards, such as George Bowey with the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation, have discovered illegal cocoa plantations inside the park’s boundaries. Much of the forest around Kwa has already been cleared for cacao by people who live nearby.

“At the end of 2023, we started seeing cocoa going closer to the park, but to enter the park it was last year,” Bowey said.

Mukpo accompanied Bowey through the dense canopy of Kwa to reach a massive 100-hectare (250-acre) cacao plantation full of leafless, rotting trees and waist-high cacao saplings. On their way back to a ranger camp, Mukpo and Bowey passed other cacao plantations within Kwa, all showing signs of burns on trees.

Cacao can be grown in one of two ways: Saplings can be intercropped with other tree species to form a diverse ecosystem; or gasoline can be poured at the base of trees and their roots set on fire, effectively killing trees to make way for cacao. It’s the second method that migrant cacao workers from neighboring Côte d’Ivoire have brought to Kwa.

Since these plantations have appeared in Kwa, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) seem to have fled deeper into the park, Bowey said.

Grand Gedeh county borders Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s biggest exporter of cacao beans. As recently as 2020, 99% of the county was covered by natural forests. Since then, forest cover has been in decline as Liberian landowners have cashed in on the cocoa fever, offering their forest land to migrant workers from Côte d’Ivoire in exchange for a share in the earnings.

Forests in southeastern Liberia are communally owned, and laws regulate how they can be leased for commercial agriculture.

Yei Neagor, in-charge of the FDA’s regional headquarters in Zwedru, Grand Gedeh’s capital, told Mongabay the enforcement mandate of the agency is limited. FDA rangers can mostly operate within forests where commercial cacao farming is banned under the terms of co-management agreements between the FDA and local communities. In those forests, they arrest the migrant workers, but not the Liberians who hired them. Neagor added she’s been instructed not to destroy any mature cacao trees, even those planted illegally in protected areas like Kwa.

“We sit and fold our hands and watch the forest going,” she said. “Generations will judge us tomorrow.”

Read the full story by Ashoka Mukpo here.

Banner image: Community eco-guard George Bowey in an illegal cacao farm in the proposed Kwa National Park. Image by Ashoka Mukpo for Mongabay.

August 12 is World Elephant Day. To celebrate, Mongabay looks back at recent stories about how the future success of these mammals depends on healthy, connected habitats.

Asian elephants adjust what they eat

A recent study from Malaysia showed that Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are adapting to rapidly changing landscapes by diversifying their diets — a sign of resilience, but also a warning about the pressures reshaping their habitats. 

In a heavily logged forested landscape, elephants ate a wide variety of available plants. These findings suggest that beyond formal reserve boundaries, when disturbances make it hard for the mammals to find their preferred plants, they can meet their nutritional requirements by including a broader selection of plants, the researchers say. 

Meanwhile, elephants within a landscape dominated by oil palm plantations mostly ate the cultivated oil palm crops. This could expose them to conflict.

“Our findings highlight that elephants are highly adaptable feeders, but this flexibility often brings them into human-dominated landscapes, increasing the risk of conflict,” Mohammad Saiful Mansor, study lead author from the National University of Malaysia, told Mongabay’s David Brown.

A unique clearing in Central Africa draws elephants from the dense forests

Throughout most of Central Africa, it’s difficult to spot herds of forest elephants all at once. They move through dense rainforest, remaining elusive, their lives obscured by thick vegetation and distance. For tourists and even researchers, direct encounters are largely a matter of chance.

But Dzanga Bai is different, Mongabay’s David Akana reported. Often called the “village of elephants,” this mineral-rich clearing in Dzanga-Sangha National Park in southwestern Central African Republic draws dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of critically endangered forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) out of the dense forest. In the open, they feed and interact, returning again and again, highlighting the importance of such habitats.

African elephant genomes reveal human impacts

A continent-wide genomic study of both savanna and forest elephants in Africa found that as humans decimated elephant populations for their ivory and fragmented their habitats with farms and urban development, the effects of these disturbances appeared in the genomic patterns of both elephant species. 

Researchers sequenced 232 genomes of the endangered savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and forest elephants across 17 African countries. Their analysis found signals of human impacts, reported Mongabay’s David Brown.

For example, they found that savanna elephants in Southern Africa are genetically diverse because their populations are connected, enabling the exchange of genes. However, elephants in Eritrea and Ethiopia now live in small, isolated habitats hundreds of kilometers away from other elephant populations, due to past hunting. The study found that in both countries, elephants have a high degree of inbreeding and low genetic variation.  

What are elephants really scared of?

For younger readers, Mongabay Kids reveals how elephants are scared not of mice, but of … bees!

Banner image of forest elephants in Gabon. Image © Lucy Keith-Diagne via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0).

In India’s Western Ghats, sacred groves – small, community-protected forest patches dedicated to local deities – are far more effective at regenerating native tree species than surrounding village lands, according to a recent study, reports Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough.

For the study, a research team from the Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF) mapped and measured 82 giant, old-growth trees across 20 species in the village of Vanzole in the northern Western Ghats, the mountain chain that runs alongside India’s west coast. The researchers defined giant trees as those that measure more than 1 meter (3.3 feet).

The researchers found that sacred groves held nearly twice the giant-tree species of nearby village areas, with 12 of the measured species growing exclusively within the groves. For example, while fruit trees including mango (Mangifera indica) and jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) were dominant in the villages, trees such as baheda (Terminalia bellirica), a medicinal plant, were common in the groves.

“Settlements are curated orchards, while sacred groves are ecological time capsules,”  study co-author Kevin Matteson, associate director of Project Dragonfly at Miami University, told Mongabay.

Giant trees act as “ecological catcher’s mitts,” providing the massive branches and hollows needed by large, fruit-eating birds such as hornbills, Matteson said. As these birds feed, they disperse large seeds across the landscape.

Seeds dropped in the less-disturbed ground of the sacred groves are more likely to grow into trees themselves compared to those dropped in village grounds, the study found.

For instance, saplings of the strychnine tree (Strychnos nux-vomica), the seeds of which are heavily dispersed by hornbills, grew beneath 77% of grove trees but beneath just 5% of village trees.

The studied groves averaged only 6,587 square meters (70,902 square feet) in size, but still function as critical baseline “reference forests” that show what the original biodiversity of that specific region looked like before human modification, according to the study’s first author Omkar Pai from AERF.

The groves also serve as ecological stepping stones across fragmented landscapes. AERF recorded a Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) and a black leopard (Panthera pardus) in a private forest that the foundation helps to protect near a tiger reserve.

The groves are changing, however, with some shrines being cleared to make way for concrete temples. “From an ecological perspective, pouring concrete over root zones and clearing underbrush physically removes the nursery habitat,” Pai said.

AERF director Archana Godbole said conserving these forests requires preserving the traditional cultures that guard them.

Ditro Wibisono Wardi Parikesit, an ecologist who has studied forests in Indonesian Borneo protected by spiritual beliefs and was not part of the India study, told Mongabay: “Fear is often viewed negatively, but in this context it can function as a protective force.” 

Read the full story by Liz Kimbrough here.

Banner image: Malabar pied hornbills (Anthracoceros coronatus) are important seed dispersers in India’s Western Ghats. Image © Narendra Phadke via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s Supreme Court is set to decide cases that could reshape protections for the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous communities. These cases involve Indigenous land rights, environmental safeguards, and infrastructure projects. Congress approved measures that environmentalists say violate constitutional rights, but President Lula vetoed some. Lawmakers overrode these objections, sending disputes to the Supreme Court. Environmental advocates see the court as a defense against weakening protections. Despite reducing deforestation, Lula’s administration struggles against a conservative Congress aligned with agribusiness. The Supreme Court’s decisions could significantly impact Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous policies.

By Gabriela Sá Pessoa, Associated Press

Banner image: A section of the Amazon rainforest stands next to soy fields in Belterra, Para state, Brazil, on Nov. 30, 2019. Image courtesy of Leo Correa, via Associated Press

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

For more than three decades, Willie Tucker has helped care for Sierra Leone’s western chimpanzees and watched the pressures on them change, reports contributor Patricia Sia Ngevao for Mongabay.

Tucker, widely known as “Pa Willie,” helped establish Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in 1995. Since then, the sanctuary has rescued and cared for hundreds of chimpanzees, many confiscated from the illegal pet trade. It now houses more than 120 critically endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus), indicating that trafficking remains a serious problem.

Tacugama’s work also shows why wildlife protection cannot be separated from local livelihoods.

The sanctuary supports nearby communities through livestock, seed, and other livelihood programs intended to reduce dependence on hunting and forest resources. Families with more dependable sources of food and income may have less need to exploit wildlife habitat. Such programs can also give communities a direct stake in conservation and make restrictions on forest use more workable.

Public recognition has helped as well. In 2019, Sierra Leone designated the western chimpanzee as its national animal. Tucker says the decision increased awareness of the species and encouraged greater respect for it. National symbols do not protect habitat by themselves, but they can support education, enforcement, and political attention.

Tacugama’s experience offers several practical lessons for conservation organizations. Rescue centers can do more than rehabilitate individual animals. They can train local staff, document wildlife crime, assist law enforcement, educate visitors, and maintain long-term relationships with surrounding communities.

These functions are especially valuable in places where government agencies have limited staff and funding. They also require continuity. Community trust, professional expertise, and public support generally develop through repeated work over many years.

Tacugama’s record suggests that a sanctuary’s impact should therefore be assessed across a wider set of measures: animal welfare, trafficking cases, local employment, community participation, public awareness, and the condition of nearby habitat. That broader view gives conservation groups a clearer basis for deciding where their resources are working.

Read the full interview with Tacugama’s Willie Tucker here.

Banner image: Chimpanzees at Tacugama. Image courtesy of Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary.

A massive wildfire within a national park in Indonesia has forced a total closure of one of the country’s best-known tourist destinations.

Some 899 hectares (2,222 acres) of savanna and forest within Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park (TNBTS) in East Java province have been destroyed by fire as of the morning of Aug. 11, the provincial disaster management agency told Mongabay.

The fire, which broke out on Aug. 3 in the park’s eastern entrance, is suspected to be human-caused, TNBTS chief Rudijanta Tjahja Nugraha told local media.

TNBTS spokesperson Endrip Wahyutama confirmed the blaze originated along a path used as a shortcut by local residents that bypasses the park’s official tourist roads. “The source is … not a tourist location, and not a public road either,” Endrip said as quoted by Detik.com.

The Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park Agency, which manages the protected area, has ordered it closed until further notice.

Daryono Perwira Sakti, a disaster mitigation educator who previously oversaw the earthquake and tsunami directorate at the BMKG, Indonesia’s weather agency, posted on social media that it’s crucial the park be closed because vegetation on loose volcanic soil there is highly vulnerable to severe fires, which could trigger more disaster.

“The extreme heat from this fire not only destroys vegetation cover and natural seed reserves (seed bank), but also triggers the formation of a water-repellent soil layer,” Daryono wrote.

He said this water-repellent soil layer eliminates water absorption into the soil, elevating risks of massive gully erosion and landslides during the upcoming rainy season, while heavy smoke from the fire impairs visual monitoring of the active volcanoes — Bromo, Tengger and Semeru — that sit at the heart of the park.

“Steep terrain, whipping winds, and the fire’s location in forested areas have made it difficult for firefighters to reach the blaze by foot,” Abdul Muhari, spokesperson for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), said as quoted by Al Jazeera. Local media reported that firefighters are using tree branches and water hoses to tackle the flames from the ground, and a fleet of three water-bombing helicopters and water-spraying drones from the air.

The BMKG has said the 2026 dry season will be more intense and prolonged than usual, with a higher risk of wildfires and drought, in part due to El Niño.

Banner image: Firefighters battle a fire at Mount Bromo, in Indonesia’s East Java province, on Aug. 8, 2026. Image courtesy of the East Java Disaster Management Agency.