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

The European wildcat is not one conservation story, but several.

In the Czech Republic’s Lusatian Mountains, the signs are encouraging. Conservationists have found a male and female wildcat, which they named Jonáš and Tonka, the first recorded in the region in nearly a century. Tonka has since given birth to at least three kittens. For a species once pushed out by habitat loss, persecution, and the spread of domestic cats, that is a meaningful foothold, reports contributor Sean Mowbray for Mongabay.

The animal itself is easy to overlook. The European wildcat (Felis silvestris) is roughly the size of a large housecat and lives mostly out of sight in forests. The species, found across Europe, is listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List. That label can make the picture look simpler than it is. Yet its fortunes vary sharply from place to place.

In parts of Central Europe, wildcats are moving back into former habitat as forests recover and hunting pressure has fallen. Germany and France show what can happen when habitat protection, legal safeguards, and time line up. Italy, too, has seen enough progress for the species to be downlisted nationally.

Elsewhere, the picture is much more fragile. In Scotland, the wildcat was declared functionally extinct in the wild in 2018. A breeding and release program in Cairngorms National Park, in the Scottish Highlands, is now trying to rebuild a population from scratch. Portugal may be heading in the same direction, with perhaps only about 100 animals left and numbers still declining. In southern Spain, fragmented populations face pressure from roads, disease, prey scarcity, and limited official recognition of their status.

Hybridization with domestic cats adds another complication. In some landscapes, it remains limited. In others, it threatens to erase the genetic distinction between wildcat and housecat.

Roads are a more immediate danger: one European study found collisions were the leading cause of recorded wildcat deaths.

The point is a practical one. A species can look secure at the continental level while disappearing locally. For the European wildcat, that means connected habitat, better monitoring, feral-cat management, and action before reintroduction become the only options. Jonáš and Tonka show that recovery is still possible. Scotland shows what happens when attention comes late.

Read the full story by Sean Mowbray here.

Banner image: A European wildcat in Scotland, where 46 captive-bred wildcats have been released as part of an ongoing reintroduction project. Image courtesy of Saving Wildcats.

In the remote, over-the-water village of Muara Enggelam in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, the introduction of reliable solar energy has become a catalyst for female entrepreneurship and economic stability.

Historically cut off from basic services and reliant on expensive, noisy diesel generators that ran only from dusk to dawn, the village underwent a transformation starting in 2015 following a solar power allocation from Indonesia’s energy ministry, reports Mongabay Indonesia contributor Yuda Almerio.

For women like Asniah, a mother of three, 24-hour electricity thanks to a solar array meant the ability to scale a home business. She began using electric blenders to produce amplang (fish crackers), a task that was previously difficult due to the high cost and unreliability of diesel fuel. “Using a blender was a bit of a worry, because the fuel would run out quickly,” Asniah told Mongabay Indonesia. “A liter [of diesel] wouldn’t last an hour — now it’s much more convenient.”

Asniah has since expanded her ventures to include a food stall and a digital boutique, utilizing social media for marketing.

Muara Enggelam’s solar infrastructure is managed by a village-owned enterprise, BUMDes, led by Jam’ah, a mother of one. This makes it a rare example of female leadership in the energy sector; the United Nations Development Program estimates that women make up less than 5% of energy managers in Indonesia. “Using a generator was expensive, that’s why so few people started businesses,” Jam’ah said. “The solar energy has been a relief for people.”

While Muara Enggelam serves as a successful pilot, rural energy inequality remains a significant hurdle across Indonesia. A 2026 report by NGOs Celios and Greenpeace revealed that the energy transition in rural areas has largely stalled, with the number of villages and subdistricts using at least some household solar power declining by 26.4% between 2021 and 2024. This decline is attributed to structural challenges, including a lack of local technicians, limited power capacity, and government fossil fuel subsidies that favor traditional energy sources.

Despite national electrification rates reaching 99%, at least hundreds of thousands of households in remote Indonesian islands remain without electricity. While Muara Enggelam has successfully expanded its capacity to 80 Kilowatt Peak through community fees and government support, many other rural and eastern regions continue to lag significantly behind urban centers.

Read the full story in Indonesian by Yuda Almerio here.

Read the full story in English by Yuda Almerio here.

Banner image: Rows of solar panels installed in Muara Enggelam. The energy from this has now become the primary source sustaining the residents’ lives and economic activities. Image by Yuda Almerio/Mongabay Indonesia.

Wildlife monitoring in Australia could get a boost from a new platform that uses AI and computer vision to speed up the processing of millions of camera trap images being collected across the country.

The national initiative named the Wildlife Observatory of Australia (WildObs) is a way to collect, store and share camera trap data at scale, while improving collaboration between scientists, governments and environmental groups, according to the WildObs website.

The platform is being developed by researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ), with backing from the Australian Research Data Commons, Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network.

Camera traps are commonly used to monitor wildlife globally: they’re easy to set up and can be left at locations for long periods, providing an invaluable window into the natural world. Across Australia, thousands of projects collect millions of images, Matthew Luskin, associate professor at the UQ School of the Environment and director of WildObs, said in a statement.

However, processing the images and identifying species takes time, money and computing power. WildOBS plans to speed it up.

“In conservation, timing matters and detecting problems early can mean the difference between recovery and extinction,” Luskin said.

WildObs requires users of the platform to upload images, which get stored and processed in the cloud. The platform’s models have been trained specifically to identify species found in Australia and can help track biodiversity trends, monitor invasive species and identify conservation priorities, according to the UQ statement.

“In one collaborative space, the WildObs platform now hosts all of Australia’s AI computer vision models. These have been trained specifically for Australian animals and environments — they can identify hundreds of species in camera trap images, 10 times faster than people,” Luskin said.

Meredith Palmer, an expert in camera trapping and conservation tech at Yale University, U.S., who was not involved in the project, told Mongabay by email: “The fields of ecology and conservation science have suffered in the era of big data due to silos between organizations and institutions, so an infrastructure that helps break down these barriers, standardize information, and encourage data sharing is an impressive step forward in this space.”

Luskin said in the statement, “Better data use can directly improve conservation outcomes — more effective protection of threatened species, smarter investment in conservation, and stronger environmental reporting.”

The value of data on WildObs could extend beyond its direct research and conservation use in Australia. Roland Kays, a research professor at North Carolina State University, U.S., who was not involved in the project, told Mongabay by email that it’s “great to get Australian camera trappers ‘on the map’ since much of their data has been unavailable for global comparisons, leaving a blank space in those papers.”

Banner image: A purebred dingo caught on camera trap on K’gari, the world’s largest sand island. Image by Zachary Amir/University of Queensland.

Peatlands are boggy wet ecosystems found from boreal forests in the Russian Arctic to the tropics of central Africa.

Typically, when vegetation decomposes it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, when that same organic matter falls in a bog and is covered with water, carbon gets trapped and becomes sequestered there, sometimes for millennia.

This makes peatlands essential for the world’s carbon balance. Even though they cover just 3% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, they store nearly a third of the world’s carbon.

On this World Peatland Day, June 2, here’s a look at some of Mongabay’s recent peatland reporting:

‘Ancient’ carbon leaking from Congo Basin lakes

The largest tropical peatland in the world, located in Africa’s Congo Basin, was only mapped about a decade ago. Scientists believe the Cuvette Centrale peatlands are roughly the size of England and hold some 30 billion metric tons of carbon.

Researchers recently found some lakes in the Cuvette Centrale are slowly releasing ancient carbon. Using statistical modeling they estimated that much of the carbon being emitted locally is between 2,000 and 3,500 years old. “[I]t surprised us that almost half was coming from ancient peat carbon,” lead author of the study Travis Drake told Mongabay’s John Cannon.

Scientists don’t yet know if the released carbon is a natural phenomenon or a result of something altering the system.

Preserving Arctic peatlands with Indigenous knowledge

In the frigid Arctic, melting permafrost from climate change is a big driver of carbon emissions from peatlands.

Now, local and Indigenous communities in Europe, Canada and the U.S. are working together to create the world’s first coordinated restoration hub for Arctic and boreal peatlands. Building on previous restoration work in Finland, the initiative has helped restore more than 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of Arctic peatlands.

The projects prioritize critical Indigenous knowledge of the ecosystems to help in their conservation. Indigenous Gwich’in communities in the Northwest Territories of Canada, for example, are removing invasive plants to allow tribal members to access their traditional lands.

“The access allows for on-the-ground observation and care of Gwich’in lands through traditional land use practices such as hunting, fishing and berry picking,” Kristi Benson, who leads the initiative’s efforts for the Gwich’in Tribal Council, told Mongabay’s Sonam Lama Hyolmo.

Changing traditions, preserving culture in Peru

A peatland forest near Peru’s Pastaza River is dominated by aguajes (Mauritia flexuosa), palm trees that provide communities with a red fruit, also called aguajes. For years locals cut down the trees for the fruits, but once those trees started becoming scarce, they changed how they harvested.

The community members now climb the trees and shake the fruit free. It’s a more sustainable harvest method, which also helps preserve the local biodiversity, livelihoods and critical peatland carbon, Leslie Moreno Custodio reported for Mongabay.

Banner image: Aerial view of a peatland forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Image by Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace.

“I think the international community really does need to put more pressure on Australia to do better,” says Euan Ritchie, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at Deakin University in Australia, in a recent episode of Mongabay’s Newscast.

From animals like kangaroos, koalas and platypuses, to plants like waratah, kangaroo paw and climbing heath, Australia has exceptionally high biodiversity, with a unique assemblage of wildlife found nowhere else on the planet.

The Australian government claims the country is on track to meet many of its targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the landmark agreement that aims to halt and reverse the decline of biodiversity, and ensure the sustainable use of biodiversity equitable sharing of benefits, among other goals, by 2050.

However, Ritchie, who’s also the president of the Australian Mammal Society and a councilor for the country’s Biodiversity Council, argues that “Australia is failing miserably” on all those measures. This is despite Australia being one of the wealthiest nations on Earth in terms of GDP per capita, with a “huge number of really knowledgeable scientists,” he tells Newscast host Mike DiGirolamo.

“If we look at the number of threatened species in Australia, it’s more than 2,200 now, and that list continues to increase,” Ritchie says. “We have ecosystems that are collapsing, 17 in total within Australia and two more further south into sub-Antarctic and Antarctic regions that are collapsing.”

The iconic koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is also now endangered in the states of Queensland and New South Wales, and in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), he adds.

Ritchie and other researchers argue that just 1% of Australia’s annual federal budget, or about A$7 billion ($5 billion), would help save the country’s threatened species and protect ecosystems. However, Australia’s latest annual budget allocates only 0.06% to nature conservation — and this is expected to decline in the future.

At the same time, the government is estimated to spend more than A$26 billion ($19 billion) annually to support or subsidize harmful industries like fossil fuels, DiGirolamo says.

One of the government’s strategies to finance nature protection is to create a “nature repair market,” a voluntary biodiversity market, where industry and private players can earn biodiversity certificates.

A biodiversity market would be very complex to navigate and get right, Ritchie says. Instead, he says Australia should just pony up the money for conservation, which he says it can “afford to [at] a much larger degree today.”

Surveys by the Biodiversity Council also show that 95% of Australians polled support the increased government spending on the environment.

“Australia is a sovereign nation. It’s really rich. If we want to fund something that we think is really important, the government could literally do that today,” Ritchie says. “It’s just a case of whether they have the political appetite to do that.”

Listen to the full conversation with Euan Ritchie here.

Banner image of a koala by Bernard Spragg. NZ via Flickr (CC0).

Nepal is preparing to relocate 18 blackbucks from the country’s west to its south central region, near the popular Chitwan National Park.

Officials say the translocation will help establish a population of the antelope in a new habitat and safeguard the species against localized disasters or disease, but conservationists question the choice of habitat and considerations of predation risk, reports Mongabay contributor Bibek Bhandari.

According to the translocation plan, six male and 12 female blackbucks (Antilope cervicapra) will be moved from Shuklaphanta National Park and Blackbuck Conservation Area in Bardiya to an enclosure in Tikauli, a corridor forest near Chitwan.

While blackbucks are not listed as globally threatened on the IUCN Red List, they are considered to be critically endangered within Nepal. Conservation efforts have helped revive the blackbuck population in Nepal from just nine known individuals in 1975 in Bardiya to more than 500 today.

At Tikauli, the blackbucks will be housed in a roughly 20-hectare (50-acre) enclosed area within a protected forest. However, ecologists are concerned about the suitability of Tikauli.

Amar Kunwar, a community ecologist who has researched blackbuck conservation, told Mongabay that the mammals prefer hot, arid regions with short grasslands. Chitwan’s monsoonal climate is humid and prone to flooding, and its grasses can reach heights of 4.5 meters (15 feet), which limits food availability and hinders the animals’ ability to detect predators.

Chitwan also supports high tiger and leopard densities.

“As blackbucks roam the area once translocated, they are likely to attract leopards,” said Bishnu Prasad Acharya, chief of the Division Forest Office in Chitwan, which will monitor the enclosure once the animals are relocated. He said that leopards, often pushed to the forest fringes where the relocation site sits, may use surrounding trees to leap over the enclosure’s fences. This vulnerability was highlighted in 2018 when more than 50 blackbucks were killed by predators in Bardiya in a single year.

The enclosure is also near a highway, a municipal waste dump that attracts feral dogs, and a ground used for an annual carnival. Quantitative ecologist Rohit Raj Jha noted these factors create “multiple layers of chronic disturbance” for a species that relies heavily on vigilance.

Kunwar added that high densities of existing deer species in Chitwan, such as chital, are expected to intensify competition for resources.

Officials said they hope the project will enhance local tourism — the local municipality has invested approximately $163,000 on infrastructure.

However, Kunwar argued that tourism should not motivate translocations. “True success would be when the population is released from the enclosure to the wild and the population survives, breeds and maintains its healthy population in the wild,” Kunwar said.

Acharya acknowledged the risks but said such trials were necessary “to save these critically endangered species.”

Read the full story by Bibek Bhandari here.

Banner image: A herd of blackbucks graze in Blackbuck Conservation Area, Bardiya. Image by Shadow Ayush via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).