Two Przewalski’s horse foals were born in a reintroduction center in the grasslands of central Kazakhstan in late August. They are reportedly the first wild horses born on Kazakh soil in more than 200 years.

The first foal, a male, was born Aug. 22 to a 7-year-old mare named Tessa. The second, also male, followed on Aug. 31, born to a mare named Umbra. They share the same father, a stallion named Zorro who has since died.

The Equus ferus przewalskii foals have not yet been named, but their births are being celebrated as a milestone of the Kazakhi reintroduction effort.

“The birth of these two foals is important because it shows that the horses are adapting to this climate, to this territory,” Alyona Krivosheyeva, conservation director of the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), told Mongabay by phone. “This is the proof of success of what we do.”

Both foals were born inside a 56-hectare (140-acre) enclosure at the Alibi Wild Ungulates Reintroduction Center, part of Kazakhstan’s 489,000-hectare (1.2-million-acre) Altyn Dala State Nature Reserve. The reserve has also been an important recovery site for saiga antelopes (Saiga tatarica) and Asiatic wild asses (Equus hemionus kulan).

Known locally as kertagy, Przewalski’s horse is the only living wild relative of the domestic horse.  It was listed as extinct-in-the-wild until one adult was found in 1996, after which it was re-listed as critically endangered. Since 2011, it has been classified as endangered by the IUCN, the global conservation authority.

The species historically lived across the steppe grasslands of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northern China, where they served as ecosystem engineers. They graze on dry vegetation to reduce wildfire risk, their hooves disturb the soil letting new plants take root, and they disperse seeds across the landscape as they roam.

The population in Kazakhstan was wiped out between the mid-18th and mid-19th century as the former Russian Empire colonized the biome for agriculture and livestock, according to an internal feasibility study shared with Mongabay by the ACBK. The horses were cut off from water and winter pastures, intensively hunted and crossbred with domestic horses — all factors that led to a “catastrophic” decline in the population of wild horses.

Captive-breeding programs in zoos sustained the remaining individuals, and some have now been returned to parts of Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan as part of efforts to restore the steppe ecosystem.

Over the last three years, 22 Przewalski’s horses were translocated to Kazakhstan from Prague Zoo and Tierpark Berlin. Conservationists aim to bring a total of 40 horses to Kazakhstan, the minimum needed to establish a self-sustaining wild population.

“Now we have a new task: to observe how the first generation of Przewalski’s horses born on Kazakh soil grows and develops,” Vera Voronova, ACBK’s executive director, wrote in a statement.

Banner image: Two Przewalski’s horse foals born in Kazakhstan in August 2026. Image courtesy of Albert Salemgareyev.

Ocean ecosystems are under extreme stress on several fronts including overfishing, ocean acidification, climate change and marine warming. While ocean conservation efforts often tend to focus on creating marine protected areas, researchers recently stressed the need to move beyond protection toward active recovery using a different approach: Marine rewilding.

In a new perspective paper, the researchers laid out eight key principles that can guide such rewilding.

The concept of “rewilding” is usually applied to terrestrial ecosystems, where the goal is to restore ecological processes and create resilient, self-sustaining ecosystems with minimal human interventions.

Gavin Stark, a post-doctoral researcher with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, and his colleagues, write that one important principle of marine rewilding is that people can’t simply be fenced out of the process.

“You cannot really separate people from the rewilding process inside the marine ecosystems,” Stark told Mongabay in a video call.

Another key principle of marine rewilding is restoring food webs, which may include reintroducing top predators such as sharks. In 2024, for example, Mongabay reported on a project where eggs of the endangered Indo-Pacific leopard shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) raised in an aquarium in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., were shipped to nurseries in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. So far, the project has released more than 60 young sharks into the protected waters of Raja Ampat with the goal of restoring balance to the region’s coral reef ecosystem. 

The authors note that along with restoring food webs, strengthening connectivity between ecosystems is also a pillar of marine rewilding. Just as fragmented terrestrial habitats make it difficult for land animals to adequately find space, mates and food, fragmented marine ecosystems are challenging for ocean wildlife.

“Protecting migration routes and ecological corridors that link coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and deep-sea habitats helps maintain gene flow, support recolonization, and secure the ecosystem services that underpin fisheries, tourism, and cultural identity,” the authors write.

Stark said improving connectivity and marine biodiversity will, “create a resilient ecosystem that will be able to adapt to the environmental changes that we have in climate change and in pollution.”

 The researchers note that other principles of marine rewilding include the need to mitigate pollution, manage invasive species and carefully monitor rewilded ecosystems so conservation efforts can be adapted as conditions change.

Ultimately, marine rewilding centers on rebuilding biodiversity and ecological function while recognizing that people and coastal communities are also an integral part of marine ecosystems, the authors add.

For Stark, the goal isn’t to recreate an ecosystem exactly as it existed in the past, but to improve the current ecosystems so they can be self-sustaining and better able to respond to future disturbances.

“These guidelines are like a blueprint to just start something that maybe will allow this ecosystem to really flourish. But we need to actually start to implement it,” he said.

Banner image: An adult zebra shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) from Western Australia. Image courtesy of Rebecca Bateman-John.

BELHAVEN, N.C. (AP) — Scientists and investors are restoring a 23-square-mile tract of peatland in North Carolina to help curb climate-warming emissions and restore native habitat. Ditches have drained water from thousands of years of accumulated peat, leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfire and unleashing huge volumes of carbon dioxide. One-third of global carbon is stored in saturated peatlands, more than all forests combined. But that reverses when peatlands are damaged. Pantheon Regeneration plans to restore the water table to curb emissions, then sell carbon credits to help fund its goal of preserving a million acres of peatland from Virginia to Florida.

By Tammy Webber and Joshua Bickel, Associated Press  

Banner image: Neal Flanagan, right, a research scientist at Duke University, uses a tool to take a soil sample from a peatland as Curt Richardson, an ecology professor at Duke, observes Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Belhaven, N.C. Image courtesy of Joshua A. Bickel, Associated Press

In the Indian Himalayas, numerous species of colorful pheasants roam the understory, pecking at seeds, roots, leaves, berries, and insects. These large, ornate birds are vital to the Himalayan ecosystem. But some species now face increasing pressures from habitat degradation and hunting, reports contributor Hirra Azmat for Mongabay India.

Among them is the white-crested kalij pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos hamiltoni). It’s a highly adaptable bird capable of living in habitats ranging from coniferous forests to scrublands and forest edges near human settlements.

“Like other pheasant species, it plays an essential role in Himalayan ecosystems by forming a major prey base for carnivores and raptors,” said Arif Nabi Lone, a researcher at the University of Kashmir’s Department of Zoology. “Besides, it also acts as a seed disperser and soil aerator.”

The white-crested kalij pheasant isn’t considered threatened on the IUCN Red List. However, in a 2025 study, Lone and his colleagues interviewed communities around two protected areas in the Indian-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir, and identified several threats to the bird, including habitat degradation, hunting, livestock grazing, and mushroom collection.

“Timber and firewood collection, resource extraction and deforestation are degrading its habitat,” Lone said. “Hunting and overgrazing are other serious threats. Mushroom collection is particularly concerning because it coincides with the breeding season, and people searching for mushrooms often disturb nesting females, reducing their breeding success.”

Human activities may also be threatening a rarer pheasant species: the western tragopan (Tragopan melanocephalus). Listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, the bird is endemic to the western Himalayas, where it depends on undisturbed oak and conifer forests with a dense understory of shrubs.

Riyaz Ahmad, former head of the Jammu and Kashmir chapter of wildlife conservation for the nonprofit Wildlife Trust of India, told Mongabay India that the western tragopan is also vital to the Himalayan ecosystem as prey, predator, and seed disperser. However, it’s an extremely shy bird that flees at the slightest disturbance, making it difficult to study.

“The bird is usually detected during the breeding season, when males become more vocal and advertise for mates,” Ahmad said. Some estimates based on their calls suggest there may be fewer than 300 of the birds left in Jammu and Kashmir, though long-term population trends remain unknown.

What’s certain is that their forest home is increasingly being degraded and fragmented by livestock grazing, tree felling, collection of forest resources, and other human pressures, Ahmad said. Climate change could also push the species to higher elevations to find suitable habitats, a 2020 study suggested.

“The western tragopan is a barometer of pristine habitats,” Ahmad said. “If its numbers decline, it is a warning that something is going wrong in these ecosystems. Regular monitoring, especially within protected areas, can help us assess whether our conservation efforts are working.”

Read the full story by Hirra Azmat here.

Banner image: The western tragopan depends on undisturbed mountain forests for survival. Image courtesy of Jainy Maria.

A new study has found that in Ecuador’s Amazon, Indigenous territories without formal conservation contracts maintained forest conditions just as well as formal protected areas.

Ecuador has three different approaches to forest governance: Forests protected by government institutions, forests managed by local communities under formal conservation agreements and Indigenous territories without formal conservation agreements.

To find out the state of forests under these different policies, researchers used satellite data to examine three metrics: Long-term changes in vegetation greenness as an indication of degradation or improvement in forest cover; abrupt changes in forest condition due to more acute disturbances like human settlements, roads and agricultural fields; and how forest productivity responded to the 2015-2016 El Niño drought — a climate phenomenon that causes extreme changes in rainfall and temperature patterns.

They found that community-protected forests performed best overall in some measures, particularly resilience after drought. These forests were under formal contracts such as a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program, which provides communities with financial incentives to refrain from any commercial activity that disturbs the natural forest. However, Indigenous territories without similar formal conservation agreements and who can use natural resources for subsistence and cultural preservation also had forest condition patterns comparable to the other governance regimes. In fact, they had the greatest proportion of areas showing positive long-term trends in vegetation greenness.

“From a practical perspective, our results suggest that conservation is not only about drawing lines on a map,” lead author Fernando Troya, currently based in Ecuador, who conducted this study as part of his doctoral studies at the KU Leuven University in Belgium, told Mongabay in an email. “It is also about governance, local participation, and creating systems that help people manage forests sustainably over the long term.”

The researchers found the largest proportion of negative long-term vegetation trends, suggesting long-term degradation, within forests protected by government institutions, where extractive activities are prohibited, but communities living in the area are allowed to use the land sustainably. Such government-protected forests in northern Ecuador showed substantially more degradation than in the south, with 78.6% of analyzed pixels showing declining greenness compared with 57.1% in the south.

The researchers say this could partly be because much of the forest of this category lies in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, where roads, population pressure and oil development are greater than in the rest of the country.

“These activities have been shaping the landscape for decades and create continuous pressure on forests, even when those forests remain standing,” Troya explained. “For people outside science, the message is simple: if we want forests to continue providing clean water, climate regulation, biodiversity, and economic opportunities for future generations, we need to understand which management approaches are actually working on the ground.”

Banner image: Toa Alvarado, a Kichwa leader, listens as activists explain the environmental damage caused by oil extraction while visiting the contaminated areas in Sucumbíos, Ecuador. Image by Dolores Ochoa, Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Carbon credit financing is helping to drive Africa’s clean cooking transition by making cleaner stoves affordable for millions of low-income households. As governments introduce new policies, securing $900 million in fresh financing commitments, companies such as Kenya’s BURN are using carbon credits to subsidize electric and efficient biomass cookstoves across the continent. As such devices replace charcoal stoves and open fires, supporters say the approach could accelerate access to clean cooking, help to reduce deforestation and cut hazardous household air pollution. Still, its long-term success depends on sustained demand for high-integrity carbon credits.

By Allan Olingo, Associated Press

Banner image: Mary Kavutha prepares breakfast using a fuel-efficient cookstove made by BURN in Kiambu, Kenya, on July 31, 2026.  Image courtesy of Allan Olingo, Associated Press.