With illegal logging and agricultural expansion closing in on their lands, four Indigenous Wounaan and Emberá-Wounaan villages in Panama’s Darién forest started a biodiversity monitoring project to document their forests’ conservation status, reports Mongabay contributor María Paula Rubiano A.

Their biodiversity monitoring project recorded more than 200 species across 18,000 hectares (44,500 acres) of threatened forest, including three “umbrella” species: Jaguars (Panthera onca), Baird’s tapirs (Tapirus bairdii) and crested eagles (Morphnus guianensis). At least 15 of the species they documented are classified as threatened.

The communities are now using the data as a baseline for joining the biodiversity credit market, which they hope can generate revenue in an area where there are few opportunities to earn money.

The communities are using bioacoustic monitoring and camera-trapping with the support of the Panama-based NGO FSC Indigenous Foundation and Health In Harmony, an international nonprofit. They are employing a methodology developed by Savimbo, a biodiversity credit company co-founded by Indigenous community members, that uses 15 indicator species as a proxy for forest health.

Samuel Cheucarama, who lives in an Indigenous Wounaan village, told Rubiano the efforts have already changed behavior in the communities.

“People don’t go hunting anymore. They’re saying, ‘We’re going to put up a ‘No Hunting’ sign.”

Read the full article here.

Banner image:Baird’s tapirs (Tapirus bairdii) are the largest native land mammals in Central and South America. Image by user Rhododendrites via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Researchers have found that wolves brought to Isle Royale in 2018 are likely to survive but face challenges from inbreeding and isolation. The island had only two inbred wolves in 2016, so officials introduced 19 new wolves between 2018 and 2019. A study published in Conservation Science and Practice shows the wolf population has over an 80% chance of lasting 20 years. However, inbreeding remains a significant concern. The wolf population has increased since the study ended, but the moose population, a key food source, has sharply declined, raising additional concerns for the ecosystem.

By Laura Herberg/Bridge Michigan via Associated Press

Banner image:  A 4-year-old female gray wolf emerges from her cage as she is released at Isle Royale National Park in Michigan. Image courtesy of the National Park Service. 

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

On April 9, a farmer named Rupalal heard noises in a well at his field in Dhawadi village in the state of Rajasthan in India. He looked down and saw a leopard 21 meters (70 feet) below.

A Rajasthan Forest Department team arrived at the scene and lowered a cage into the well, but the leopard would not enter. So Pratap Singh Chundawat, a ranger, descended into the shaft by rope. He tranquilized the animal with a dart gun, and the team was able to remove it safely. Before its release, the leopard was given a veterinary examination, which found that it was a healthy, one-and-a-half-year-old male.

For Chundawat, while the event was particularly dramatic, it was in line with his work.

Chundawat was well known for wildlife rescues and his work in tree nurseries, and had won awards at the district and division level. On the eve of this year’s World Environment Day, the Rajasthan Environment and Energy Conservation Centre honored Chundawat in Jaipur, the Rajasthan state capital, for “outstanding contributions to forest and wildlife conservation.”

Suresh Agrawal, deputy conservator of forest in Rajasthan’s Pratapgarh district, called Chundawat “our best officer.”

On Sept. 22, Chundawat died after he was run down by people allegedly involved in a local soil mining mafia.

According to news accounts, at roughly 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 21, forest staff were notified that an earthmover and a truck were being used to extract thick gaara soil, used for construction, from forest land. Chundawat and two forest guards went to the scene. When the truck fled, Chundawat pursued it on his motorcycle. The truck struck Chundawat and dragged him and his motorcycle. The driver was allegedly told to “run it over him.”

Chundawat was taken to a hospital and died the following day. He was 40.

Chundawat leaves behind a wife and two children. He was laid to rest in his native village in neighboring Chittorgarh district.

Banner image of Pratap Singh Chundawat via his Facebook page.

Central Tokyo has experienced 35 consecutive days of rainfall, setting the longest continuous rainy streak since records began in 1886, reported local media citing Japan’s weather agency.

Rains began on Aug. 27 and have continued daily as of Sept. 30. This spell breaks the previous record of 33 consecutive days of rainfall set in 2019, from June 27-July 29, according to Tokyo-based news site Japan Today. Tokyo typically sees its rainiest period in June-July.

The nonstop rains in September are due to a combination of a stationary autumn rain front (known locally as akisame-zensen), intensified by approaching typhoons, including Typhoon Dujuan and low-pressure troughs. Rainfall in central Tokyo in September reached 629 millimeters (24.8 inches) by Sept. 28 — nearly three times the typical monthly average and approaching the September record of 670.9 mm (26.4 in) set in 1958, according to local media. Another typhoon is expected to affect Tokyo by Oct. 1.

Meteorological officials attribute the abnormal weather pattern in part to global climate drivers, including El Niño, the warming of surface ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific. Masayuki Kyoda, an official at the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), told AFP that “the distinctive weather map during this month is in part because of El Niño.”

“Autumn rain fronts are staying longer than usual,” Kyoda said, because an associated Pacific high-pressure system has remained prolonged over the region.

While he noted that it’s difficult to attribute a single event directly to climate change, a JMA report, “Climate Change in Japan 2025,” concluded that global warming is impacting Japan’s weather in the long term through increased precipitation.

Weather officials have called on farmers to “take special care with crops” as monthly rainfall exceeded three times average levels in parts of the southern Kanto region, according to NHK World-Japan. The unrelenting rains have also left hillsides unstable and damaged river levees in neighboring Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, prompting officials to warn that even minor rain could trigger severe disasters. The hazard is further compounded by severe tropical storm Surigae moving off the coast.

Officials are advising residents to stay on “high alert for high waves, strong winds, and landslides.”

Banner image of pedestrians crossing an intersection in Shibuya, Tokyo, taken from Hachikō Square. The central part of the world’s second-largest city has experienced record-breaking rainfall. Image courtesy of Benh LIEU SONG via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

From the seafloor to turtle stomachs, scientists are finding plastic everywhere they look for it. Now, researchers in Japan have found plastic thermally adhered to coral rubble, an amalgamation they’ve termed “plasticoral,” according to a new study. The finding is raising concerns about potential ocean chemical leaching, habitat degradation and a new way for microplastics to enter the marine environment, they say.

Ifenna Ilechukwu, first author of the study with the University of Ryukyus in Japan, and his colleagues found five pieces of “plasticoral” on three different beaches during a routine marine litter survey on Japan’s Okinawa Island in August 2024.

“We did not set out to discover plasticoral,” Ilechukwu told Mongabay in an email. 

Researchers have previously described plastiglomerates, melted plastic debris fused with rocks, wood or other natural materials.

However, when the team found coral rubble with plastic not just stuck on the surface but permanently adhered to it, they knew they’d found something unusual.

Plasticoral is a subset of plastiglomerates, however, “plasticorals represent something different,” Ilechukwu said. “The melted polymers literally liquidized and conformed to the intricate, porous skeleton of the coral rubble.”

Researchers suspect the plastic was burned into the rubble by a beach fire, though further research is needed to confirm that, Ilechukwu said.

Laboratory analysis found that four of the plastic samples were polyethylene, commonly used for single-use bottles. One sample was polypropylene, a more rigid plastic used in food containers and bottle caps. Both are among the most common types of plastic found in oceans and can soften and deform when heated, the study notes.

Burning plastic can release a cocktail of chemicals including cancer-causing dioxins and fine particulates, which pose serious health risks for both people and wildlife. Burning can also cause plastic to quickly break down into microplastic, which can more easily enter the environment and food chain.

The team found the plasticoral on coral rubble on the beach, not living coral in the sea. However, rubble can provide habitat for tiny invertebrates that live in its nook and crannies, while algae and sponges can colonize coral surfaces, creating microhabitats used by fish and other larger organisms. When plastic is melted into the surface of rubble it “may not function effectively as natural substrates,” Ilechukwu said.

Estimates suggest upwards of 199 million tons of plastic are currently in the world’s oceans. Microplastics can be found nearly everywhere on the planet, leading scientists to suggest the Earth is in a new geological era referred to as the “Plasticene.”

Ilechukwu said plasticoral could “potentially represent an early stage in the transition from transient plastic litter to a more persistent, lithified sedimentary record of the Plasticene in tropical reef environments.”

The research team hopes to work with other researchers and the public to document litter of all kinds, including plasticoral.

“Let us keep protecting our environment, it is all we have,” Ilechukwu said.

Banner image: Plasticoral collected from Okinawa beaches. Image courtesy of Ilechukwu et al., 2026.

A case has been brought to the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) over the Kenyan government’s plan to build a 2,000-5,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bondo, near the eastern shore of Victoria Lake, Africa’s largest freshwater lake. The project has been the source of numerous protests from residents since it was announced.

A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) report produced in 2023 by Kenya’s nuclear power program noted that nuclear power should be avoided in the Victoria Lake region, citing volcanic hazards that could impair nuclear safety. However, the nuclear plant project is proceeding, despite the SEA finding.

“I filed a reference at the East African Court of Justice on two grounds,” Dickens Ochieng, told Mongabay in a phone call. Ochieng is a resident of Siaya County, where the facility is located, and a human rights lawyer with J. Henry and Company Advocates, the law firm that filed the case on Sept. 23.

“First, I want the court to determine if we should even have that nuclear power plant in Victoria Lake given the ecological and environmental risk that may be associated with it,” Ochieng said. “Then, I am asking for the project to have a transboundary environmental impact assessment, as Victoria Lake is not only a Kenyan matter.”

Victoria Lake is shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Roughly 40 million people across the three countries depend on the lake for their livelihoods, food security and drinking water. Millions more depend on the river that drains from Lake Victoria and meanders north to empty into Egypt’s Nile Delta and the Mediterranean Sea. If the lake and river were to become polluted, the 11 countries of the Nile Basin could be affected.

“I want to know if these countries have been consulted and, if so, if they agree with the project. If not, maybe they should be consulted first,” Ochieng said.

He said it’s also an issue of national security. “We have seen nuclear power plants being targeted in Ukraine, in Iran. Here, we have issues with Al-Shabaab; they are attacking facilities in Kenya. I want the court to determine if putting up a nuclear power plant in Victoria Lake is a regional security issue.”

According to the official petition reviewed by Mongabay, the law firm also accuses the Kenyan government of failing to properly consult local communities in Kenya and failing to propose mitigation measures for the Lake Victoria basin. The Kenyan government has 45 days to respond.

Mongabay contacted the Lake Victoria Basin Commission, which coordinates sustainable development for the basin, and Kenya’s attorney general, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Also referred to as “Darwin’s Dreampond,” Victoria Lake is home to hundreds of endemic species. However, roughly 76% of them are threatened with extinction.

Banner image: Of Lake Victoria. Image courtesy of valerossi via Pixabay (CCO 1.0)