KoBold Metals, a U.S.-based mining exploration company, has announced a deal to buy Australian AVZ Minerals Ltd.’s stake in a contested lithium project in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Extensive deposits of key minerals mean the DRC is likely a key player in the transition to green energy. Roughly three years ago, a lithium deposit was confirmed at Manono, in the southeast of the country, possibly one of the largest in the world.

However, despite growing demand for lithium — crucial for making batteries and electric vehicles — mining in Manono has been delayed by controversy surrounding which company will develop the mine.

In 2024, Mongabay reported that the Congolese government was potentially abandoning its partnership with AVZ, granting exploration rights to Manono Lithium SAS, a joint venture between Chinese mining giant Zijin and the Congolese state-owned company, Cominière.

The government had accused AVZ of concealing data about mineral exploration, charges AVZ denied. And Zijin reportedly committed $70 million in aid to the region, but $30 million apparently disappeared.

“There has been a huge number of corruption red flags,” a consultant who works in the area and asked not to be named, told Mongabay in an email.

The announcement that an American company acquired a significant stake in the Manono project comes on the heels of a U.S.- brokered declaration of principles for peace in eastern DRC in April. It will establish a “fundamental understanding of regional governance, security, economic frameworks … to end the fighting and allow the region to reach its full potential,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

Long-standing conflict recently flared up with the resurgence of the Rwanda-backed armed group M23. Control of mineral mines in the east has fueled conflict between the DRC and neighboring Rwanda and ongoing domestic conflict between armed groups and militias.

In a statement on its website, KoBold said the agreement with AVZ  “will enable KoBold to rapidly deploy more than US$1B to bring the Manono lithium to Western markets.” The statement pledges to develop local talent and “create thousands of high paying Congolese jobs for decades.”

KoBold, backed by investment from billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, uses artificial intelligence to explore for transition minerals. Last year the company found one of the world’s biggest high-grade copper deposits in Zambia, according to KoBold president Josh Goldman.

The promise of jobs and development in exchange for resources has a history of falling short of expectations in much of the developing world. The so-called “resource curse” has often meant that local people bear the brunt of environmental degradation while promised development fails to appear.

As Mongabay has reported from Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and  Zimbabwe lithium mining has a history of human health concerns and compromising water supplies.

An environmental impact assessment for the Manono mine was expected in May 2024 but it has not yet been made public.

Banner image: of Manono concession area. Image courtesy of AVZ (Fair Use).

Ranches in Costa Rica occasionally overlap with jaguar and puma hunting areas, creating conflict that can sometimes be unavoidable. But with the help of conservationists, ranchers are now able to prevent both cattle and predator deaths, Mongabay contributor Darío Chinchilla reported for Mongabay Latam.

In communities like Lomas Azules, when a jaguar (Panthera onca) or puma (Puma concolor) killed a cow it would be at least a $1,000 loss for a rancher. Previously, there was nothing that environmental authorities could do, and frustrated farmers wanted to kill the wildcats to prevent further losses, rancher Wagner Durán tells Chinchilla.

But a Latin American initiative called the Unit for the Attention for Conflicts with Felines (UACFel) has helped create practical solutions for local ranchers. UACFel was created, in part, by Daniel Corrales, a biologist who grew up in a local ranching family. It’s a collaboration between the wildcat conservation NGO Panthera and the Costa Rican environmental authorities.

UACFel collaborates with farmers to install electric fences, which help keep the big cats out of ranch areas; at least 160 ranches now have the fences.

Additional water troughs on ranches also keep the herds from venturing in search of water into forested areas, where the big cats are.

The initiative also introduced the use of water buffalos (Bubalus bubalis) mixed in with cattle to help ward off predators. Chinchilla writes that the buffalos, native to Asia, where they evolved alongside tigers, are more instinctually defensive of predators and able to alert the herd to impending threats. They’re also low-maintenance, hardy animals that are resistant to heat and eat weeds that cattle won’t.

UACFel ranchers use an app to monitor predation data, recording of the type of predator and photo evidence of the attacks. The more than 500 predation reports between 2013 and July 2024 have been used to create a predation hotspot map, which showed most jaguar activity in the north, with most pumas further south, Chinchilla reports.

There were 201 puma attacks and 156 by jaguars. Corrales, who works with both Panthera Costa Rica and Project for Cat-Cattle Coexistence, said puma attacks are more scattered across a larger area, meaning they actually attack less frequently but in more locations.

He said the map shows that Costa Rica’s national network of biological corridors is working well. The information also informs UACFel in its work among farms near Tortuguero National Park, Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge and Mixto Maquenque Wildlife Refuge.

In addition to preventing economic losses among ranchers, the initiative has also led to a decline in hunting of the wildcats. “When we started, we identified 27 hunters,” Durán told Mongabay, “and now there are only four left who are still causing trouble.”

Read Darío Chinchilla’s full report here.

Banner image of a jaguar with a fish, courtesy of Andrea Reyes/Jaguares en la Selva.

Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes has been featured as one of 36 global climate leaders in a new book launched in the U.S. on May 27.

What Will Your Legacy Be?: Conversations With Global Game Changers About the Climate Crisis by author Sangeeta Waldron includes a chapter on Mendes’s investigative work and career trajectory. The chapter on Mendes highlights her use of in-depth investigative reporting to bring justice to communities that are usually not heard.

“I feel honored to have my work featured in such an important book, alongside powerful global change makers,” Mendes wrote on LinkedIn. The book features interviews with activists, scientists and journalists shaping environmental action around the world. Also included are NASA climate scientist Kimberley Miner and Ecuadorian Indigenous Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo.

In the chapter on Mendes, she recounts how the devastation of a mining disaster in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais was the catalyst for her pivot from business journalism to the frontlines of environmental reporting.

Since then, Mendes’s investigative reporting has helped correct judicial impunity in cases of violence against Indigenous people in Brazil, and exposed palm oil exporters involved in land grabbing in the Amazon, among many others.

“In environmental reporting, it’s a fight against money,” Mendes says in the book. “All of the destruction of nature is to do with money in terms of supply chains.” And uncovering the schemes that funnel millions into private pockets at the expense of communities and nature is no easy feat.

“We think of nefarious actors as drug barons or human trafficking,” Waldron told Mongabay by phone. “But there are other stories going on which are against Mother Nature. And Karla is one of those guardians who is investigating and exposing these bad actors.”

Today, Mendes shared, she travels with a satellite communicator and checks in three times a day from the field in the Brazilian Amazon, where nine reporters were killed on the job between 2014 and 2024. “Things have changed and it’s riskier, but we won’t stop doing our job,” she added.

Waldron says her book aims to inspire readers to take steps toward making positive change.

“Everyone always asks me: ‘What can one person do?’ And one person can do a lot,” Waldron said. “Journalists like Karla are showing us what one person can do.”

Banner image: Author Sangeeta Waldron at a book launch event. Image courtesy of Sangeeta Waldron.

A young tour guide and his group of student mentees are helping monitor bird species in Rwanda with the help of a mobile app, Mongabay contributor Mariam Kone reported.

Joseph Desiré Dufitumukiza, who enjoys bird-watching, felt moved to take action after he read about the decline of native bird species in Rwanda, including the Maccoa duck (Oxyura maccoa).

“If I do not act, any conservation activity will be lost. My kids will not be able to see birds,” Dufitumukiza tells Mongabay.

At just 19 years old in 2022, after graduating with a degree in tourism from the University of Tourism, Technology and Business Studies in Rubavu, Dufitumukiza founded the Rugezi Ornithology Center to share his love for wildlife and contribute to conservation efforts.

He leads students in bird-watching excursions twice a week in support of the center’s goal to raise community awareness about the need to protect birds and their habitat.

In the Mongabay video, Dufitumukiza leads the students on a 30-minute walk to Nyakinama valley in northern Rwanda, where he teaches them about bird families and how to use binoculars and a field guide for the birds in East Africa.

They use a parabola, a dish attached to a phone, to record and listen to birds from a distance, and then a free mobile app called Planet Birdsong, which uses artificial intelligence to identify the species.

Patrick Bigirimane, one of the tourism students who joins Dufitumukiza, tells the Mongabay team that listening to the sounds makes him feel closer to the birds. “It makes me have strong feelings for conserving them as well as trying to convince and encourage my local community people to conserve those bird species,” he says.

Dufitumukiza tells Mongabay that he also tries to promote citizen science in the countryside with the local people he encounters, including Esperance, a resident of Kiguhu, a wetland area known among bird-watchers. Esperance tells Dufitumukiza that she has observed a decline in animals locally.

During the excursion, the students were able to spot the pied crow (Corvus albus), the yellow-billed duck (Anas undulata) and the grey-headed sparrow (Passer griseus).

Bird-watching clubs such as the Rugezi Ornithology Center contribute to a database of birds maintained by the Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management (CoEB) at the University of Rwanda.

“These data are useful for policy decision-making here in Rwanda,” biodiversity data manager Thacien Hagenimana tells the Mongabay team.

Since the CoEB project started in 2019, more than 120,000 recordings have been logged.

Watch the Mongabay video here.

Banner image of Joseph Dufitumukiza. Image © Mariam Kone.

The Airbus Foundation and the Connected Conservation Foundation (CCF) recently announced the winners of their “Satellites for Biodiversity” grant, which now uses higher-resolution satellite imagery to aid conservation efforts. They also launched an Ecosystem Insight Hub, which comprehensively documents the processes and findings of their grantees.

The latest batch of six “Satellites for Biodiversity” awardees are granted access to Airbus’s Pléiades Neo and Pléiades satellite imagery at very high resolutions of 15, 30 and 50 centimeters (6, 12 and 20 inches). This time around, Airbus has developed AI and machine learning algorithms that can help enhance images taken with the base 30-cm resolution to be “sharper, more detailed,” Sophie Maxwell, CCF executive director, told Mongabay by email.

Maxwell called the upgrade “an exciting development … effectively increasing the pixel count and improving image clarity.” She added this would allow “field teams to extract finer insights than ever before.”

Similar to previous awardees, the projects will be integrating the satellite imagery with AI, machine-learning models and community-led conservation.

Previously, only species-level monitoring proposals were accepted, but the new round of awardees were also allowed to explore “ecosystem-scale conservation.”

“This shift recognises the interconnected nature of biodiversity, people and climate. By expanding the use of cutting-edge tools to assess entire ecosystems, we can better understand complex ecological dynamics and support more holistic, effective conservation strategies that benefit all inhabitants,” Maxwell said.

This year’s six winning projects are:

• Mapping seagrass meadows in the Andaman coast in Thailand to monitor the habitats of dugongs (Dugong dugon);
• Monitoring southern royal albatross (Diomedea epomophora) nesting sites in New Zealand;
• Developing predictive models for data-informed antipoaching strategies in Uganda’s largest national park, Murchison Falls;
• Identifying and safeguarding critical habitats of endangered crocodilians and river turtles in the Gangetic Basin in India;
• Pioneering an early-warning system to detect infestations of bark beetles among giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum);
• Mitigating the disruption of chimpanzee habitats due to infrastructure projects in Guinea.

Maxwell said the projects for royal albatross, giant sequoias and crocodilians were only made possible because of the new very high-resolution satellite imagery, which is part of the reason they were chosen, in addition to a strong community engagement element.

“These projects focus on critical ecosystems and habitats that play a vital role in supporting endangered species, preserving indigenous cultures and livelihoods, and addressing climate resilience,” Maxwell said.

She said the Ecosystem Insight Hub is the first time that CCF is sharing the results of their grantees as round 1 projects are completed or nearing completion.

“By documenting the full story — methodologies, model performance, and field data collection techniques — teams can learn from each other,” Maxwell said.

Banner image: The Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa captured by the Pléiades Neo satellite. Image courtesy of the Airbus Foundation and Connected Conservation Foundation.

Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, approved a key step that could soon allow Petrobras, the nation’s state oil company, to begin offshore oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.

In a May 19 decision, the agency greenlit a concept for an emergency response plan by Petrobras (PBR) to protect marine animals in case of an oil spill. It was one of the final requirements before the company could receive an environmental license to drill an oil well on block FZA-M-59, located 160 kilometers (99 miles) off the coast of Amapá, Brazil’s northeastern-most state bordering French Guiana.

The block overlaps with the Amazon Reef, a 9,500-square-kilometer (3,700-square-mile) system of corals, sponges and algae discovered in 2016.

Environmentalists say the approval contradicts the agency’s own technical evaluation recommending the response plan be denied, citing a lack of solutions for environmental impacts that could irreparably harm local biodiversity.

“There will be no possibility of rescuing numerous groups and species, including those that are endangered, which could lead to a massive loss of biodiversity in the event of an oil spill, resulting in the death of these animals,” the February 2025 document signed by 29 IBAMA analysts states.

According to Philip Fearnside, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Amazonian Research, IBAMA has been under significant political pressure to push through environment licensing.

“The mounting pressure … to approve the disastrous project to extract oil from the mouth of the Amazon River … should be interpreted as evidence that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as “Lula”) fails to comprehend both the climate crisis and the consequences of the oil project,” he wrote in a commentary published by Mongabay in February 2025.

“I want [oil at the mouth of the Amazon River] to be explored,” President Lula said during a February 2025 interview with national media outlet UOL. “We need to see if there is oil and how much oil there is. Often, you drill a hole that is 2,000 meters [6,560 feet] deep and you don’t find what you had imagined.”

Petrobras said it is now preparing the NS-42 drilling rig to carry out a simulation for their oil spill response plan, before the end of June. The company, along with government authorities in the energy ministry, are in a rush to open the well quickly since Petrobas has leased the exploratory rig from another company and the 1 billion reais ($177 million) lease ends in October 2025.

Magda Chambriard, the president of Petrobras, defended the company’s actions: “Petrobras has been diligently meeting all the requirements and procedures set by regulatory, licensing, and oversight agencies,” she said in a written statement. “We have full respect for the rigor of the environmental licensing that this process demands.”

Banner image: Cape Orange National Park on the Amazonian coast of the state of Amapá. Offshore oil block 59 is located 160 kilometers (99 miles) away. Image © Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace.