In India, the exotic pet trade is increasing the risk of zoonotic disease spillovers, as close contact with imported wild animals creates repeated opportunities for dangerous pathogens to jump to humans and vice versa, reports Mongabay India’s Arathi Menon.

Dr. Rina Dev, an avian and exotic animal veterinarian in Mumbai who treats imported and seized wildlife, experienced the potential danger firsthand when she was hospitalized with a lung infection. “I hope it’s not something from the parrots I was treating,” Dev told Mongabay India after she was released from the hospital. Her concerns are warranted: diseases like avian chlamydiosis (psittacosis) are commonly contracted by people who handle birds, earning it the nickname “bird handler’s disease.”

Dev noted that traded animals can carry a wide array of infections, including salmonellosis from reptiles, tuberculosis from primates, and avian influenza from birds. “Tuberculosis is increasingly being detected among primates, which is a big zoonotic concern,” she said.

Uttara Mendiratta, a conservation researcher working on illegal wildlife hunting and trade, said disease transfer between humans and other primates is especially easy because we’re so closely related. Ebola and HIV can both pass from nonhuman primates to people, for example.

Human diseases can also be deadly for wildlife. A global analysis revealed that traded mammals are 1.5 times more likely to share pathogens with humans than nontraded mammals. On average a traded species shares one additional pathogen with humans for every decade it’s traded. Additionally, a 2026 report by Humane World for Animals, a global nonprofit working to protect animals, estimates that 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic and roughly 850,000 unknown viruses in birds and mammals have the potential to infect people.

Zoonotic risks are further heightened by animals in public places such as pet cafes, petting zoos, and interactive public events. “It is very risky, particularly from a public health perspective,” said Sumanth Bindumadhav, director of Humane World for Animals India and co-author of the 2026 report.

Mendiratta said first responders like customs officials often lack disease-prevention equipment during wildlife seizures, and illegally trafficked animals bypass mandatory quarantine procedures entirely.

“We have tried to raise this issue with people working on One Health because we believe exotic pets represent an important potential disease pathway,” she said, referring to the One Health framework that advocates for a holistic approach to health recognizing the interconnectedness of human, wildlife, and environmental health. “So far, we have not seen the level of response of investment we had hoped for,” Mendiratta added.

Read the full story by Arathi Menon here.

Banner image: A red-lored amazon, a parrot native to Central and South America. Those who handle exotic birds are often at risk of contracting avian chlamydiosis or psittacosis, an infection so common within the profession that it’s earned the nickname “bird handler’s disease.” Image courtesy of Humane World for Animals India.

Wild grass now grows around the abandoned wooden houses of Tengjhih, a high-mountain hamlet in southern Taiwan, once a key settlement of the Bunun Indigenous people. Now, little remains except for the memories it holds.

Around 150 Bunun Indigenous residents of Tengjhih were permanently resettled in lowland areas after the deadly Typhoon Morakot in 2009 destroyed the only access road to their village, contributor Aylin Ho reports for Mongabay.

Typhoon Morakot killed 755 people across Taiwan, triggering catastrophic floods and landslides. While Indigenous peoples represented just 2.1% of Taiwan’s population at the time, approximately 70% of the land declared unsafe by authorities was located within Indigenous territories.

Efforts to rebuild the road to Tengjhih in 2012, 2021 and 2023 faced setbacks due to climate change-amplified rainfall and landslides. More recently, a typhoon in 2025 also devastated one section of the mountain, Ho reports. The indefinite closure of the surrounding Tengjhih National Forest Recreation Area has wiped out the local ecotourism and agricultural economy.

“When a major typhoon hits us, I have no income for the entire year,” said Bi’ Ismahasan, 70, a tea and coffee farmer who now relies on government assistance. “In 2026, I lost my entire harvest. Every year is worse than the previous one.”

Displacement has severed connections to ancestral land, threatening the transmission of cultural practices and language to younger generations.

“Today, when [young people] come back, there is no village and no work,” said Saminat Maliklan, 55, a Bunun cultural guide and one of five residents remaining in Tengjhih. “They have to adapt to an unfamiliar environment, and their ties with elders gradually fade. Our rituals and ceremonies are disappearing.”

The Taiwanese government’s resettlement program has drawn sharp criticism. Under the program, displaced families received ownership of lowland apartments but not the land beneath them, preventing residents from selling, expanding, or rebuilding their homes, according to news reports.

Tunkan Tansikian, a Bunun Indigenous rights and policy scholar at National Dong Hwa University, highlighted that relocation occurred without prior consultation, violating Taiwan’s 2005 Indigenous Peoples Basic Law.

“The purpose of the resettlement program was to persuade residents to abandon their mountain villages, which were considered dangerous, to reduce safety risks,” Tunkan said. “For Indigenous peoples, however, land is a core part of their culture, rather than being treated as a tradable and easily relinquished commodity.”

While local officials at the Taoyuan District Office have ruled out permanent resettlement due to landslide risks, an alternative access road is scheduled to open in January 2027 thanks to years of campaigning by Dahu Ismahasan, president of the Bunun tribal council.

“We still have hope … One day, the road will be better, and the lives of the people here will be better too,” Dahu said.

Read the full story by Aylin Ho here.

Banner image: Abandoned houses in Tengjhih, a settlement of the Bunun Indigenous people, in Taiwan, on Aug. 6, 2026. Image by Aylin Ho for Mongabay.

Bolivia recently began overhauling one of its principal mining laws, with the goal of modernizing the industry and improving oversight. Civil society and Indigenous groups have raised concerns about the process, but officials say the new mining code will promote economic development and include environmental protections.

“We want a mining code that responds to the current needs of the sector, generates legal certainty, and establishes clear rules to support the development of Bolivian mining,” Marco Antonio Calderón de la Barca Quintanilla, the minister of mining and metallurgy, said in a statement.

The ministry says it’s held weekly meetings with key mining stakeholders about their concerns and proposals for the new mining code. This month, their ideas were given to a technical committee to consider while drafting a preliminary bill, which will be delivered to the national legislature for approval. The government hasn’t announced when the bill will be completed.

The current code was passed in 2014 and establishes the mechanisms for mining development, environmental oversight, and the participation of local and Indigenous communities, among other things. Updates will focus on strengthening mining rights, promoting investment, formalizing mining activity, and improving transparency, a ministry statement said. Updates will also involve “consolidating responsible environmental management.”

The details of potential changes haven’t been finalized or released. But local reports said some ideas have included new tax and royalty structures, removing the 30-year limit on mining contracts to extend them indefinitely, and restructuring the ministry and other mining institutions.

Other ideas include protections for people reporting illegal mining, and removing prior consultation of local and Indigenous communities as a restriction for accessing mining contracts.

For years, local and Indigenous communities have spoken out against foreign-backed mining projects that use too much freshwater and don’t provide adequate royalites to local communities. Others have denounced the illegal mining, mercury pollution, and deforestation that can result.

In the early stages of reviewing the mining code, civil society groups and Indigenous communities accused the government of excluding them from the process. They said their absence could ultimately weaken environmental reforms that the law needs.

They also expressed concern that the government’s priority is to increase the profitably of the mining sector, not to impose proper regulations.

“The environmental focus is just talk, because they are seeking to discuss a new mining code only with mining actors and not with actors who can contribute from the perspective of the serious environmental and public health impacts for which gold mining is responsible,” Ruth Alipaz, a representative for the National Coordinator for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Territories and Protected Areas, said in a July statement.

The Unified Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia has been included on the technical committee, the government announced. Other representatives on the committee are from the government, mining cooperatives, and private companies.

Banner image: Bolivian miners during a march against illegal mining. Image by AP Photo/Juan Karita.

BRUSSELS (AP) — A scorching summer that dried up rivers and killed tens of thousands across the European Union from Portugal to Hungary has shown that the bloc needs to develop new tools to meet a worsening climate, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday.

She said that this instability led her to propose a new European Heatwave Plan as well as a future European firefighting fleet of airplanes. Currently, the EU operates a small fleet itself but coordinates a network of aircraft, water trucks and volunteers that move across the 27-nation bloc as fires ignite.

“This summer was the summer of truth. Almost no part of our continent was spared,” said the EU executive during her annual State of the European Union address in Strasbourg.

“Key rivers like the Danube, the Rhine or La Garonne are disappearing before our eyes. More than 35,000 additional deaths during the heat waves. Care homes and hospitals dangerously overheated.”

The extreme heat, which hit Europe exceptionally hard and early this year appears to have led to a much higher spike in deaths than expected. Where Von der Leyen’s figure of 35,000 comes from is unclear, but it is triple the estimates of “excessive deaths” by monitoring groups in July.

Fires in France and Spain drove hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, shut down nuclear reactors in Hungary and France, ignited century-old munitions on Belgium’s border with Germany and revealed previously lost ships sunk on riverbeds like a tugboat in Serbia.

The heat and humidity that broke many records during the summer would not have been possible without climate change, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution group.

“All of this is a mere preview. These were the hottest summer months ever, but probably the coolest of the years to come,” von der Leyen said. “Science is clear: Europe is warming at double the global rate.”

While commending those who battled blazes this summer, von der Leyen said that she’s asked emergency responders and senior firefighters to “think bigger and learn faster” to design “new capabilities” for the EU to tackle climate instability.

When she praised a Danish helicopter pilot named Rune Kyndal, who died in August while fighting fires in Greece, the assembly erupted in applause.

“Rune gave his life to save others and today, all of Europe owes him,” von der Leyen said.

By Sam McNeil, Associated Press

Banner image: Firefighters battle a forest fire near Blagon during wildfires in southwestern France, July 29, 2026. Image courtesy of Emma Da Silva, Associated Press. 

Once upon a time, flocks of passenger pigeons were so dense they blocked the sun like great gray thunderclouds flying overhead. Composer Stephanie Ann Boyd imagines this with music.

“You will feel this movement before you hear it: a deep rumble in the low voices of the orchestra suddenly crescendo and explode into a grand, flying murmuration of sound and flurry,” Boyd writes.

The passenger pigeon movement is part of Carnival of the Nearly Extinct Animals, a work honoring species facing extinction and a few that have already crossed the threshold. This staged production pairing music with puppetry, dance, and spoken word opens at the historic Hawaii Theatre in Honolulu on Sept. 18 and 19, produced by Ocean Music Action in partnership with the Hawaii Theatre Center.

Carnival of the Nearly Extinct Animals has 14 movements covering 13 species: tigers, bees and butterflies, polar bears, hawksbill turtles, elephants, black rhinos, coral, blue whales, ivory-billed woodpeckers, passenger pigeons, gray wolves, American buffalo and kāhuli, snails native to Hawai‘i, with a finale.

Boyd designed the orchestral piece as a sister work to an older, famous piece of music called Carnival of the Animals, written by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns in the 1880s. The two pieces share the same number of movements and are roughly the same length.

Musicians from the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra play the score in Honolulu, with dancers from Ballet Hawaii and guest artists from New York. Obie Award-winning puppeteer Greg Corbino built dozens of the animals by hand. Hawaiian actor Moses Goods narrates, reading poems written by local students.

First up is the tiger, a movement that begins with a roar of cellos, basses and trombones, and ends with a chuff, the sound tigers make instead of purring, played on the harp. The bees and butterflies are floating violins. The hawksbill turtle movement is led by bassoons to convey a turtle enjoying a swim.

“Separately-muted trumpets sing the song of one of the last Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers to ever be recorded on tape, while cellos and basses tap out their wood-pecking rhythms on the bodies of their instruments,” Boyd writes.

Gray wolves and American buffalo both came back from near-total destruction, turning their howling and booming songs into a celebration.

Just one of the animals, the kāhuli snail, is native to Hawai‘i. “Their ornate shells once covering the trees of Hawai‘i … so abundantly that you could hear an eerie, magical song arising from the forests — possibly made by wind swirling through their shells or the shells bumping against each other,” Boyd writes.

Hawai‘i once held roughly 750 species of land snails, but state biologists estimate up to 90% of that diversity is gone. Every surviving kāhuli in the genus Achatinella is federally listed as endangered.

Cellos carry the snails’ song now, over a bed of harp and string harmonics.

Banner Image: Elephant puppet created by Greg Corbino created for Carnival of the Nearly Extinct Animals by Stephanie Ann Boyd. Photo courtesy of Ocean Music Action.

For the first time in the modern history of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a Congolese nongovernmental organization will co-manage a protected area in the country.

“It is an honor,” Dominique Bikaba, founder of the NGO Strong Roots, told Mongabay by phone.

Strong Roots has been entrusted with the management of Itombwe Nature Reserve (RNI), located in South Kivu province in the northeast DRC. Under a public-private partnership Strong Roots will manage the reserve for the next 10 years. The Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN), the national authority responsible for natural parks, will retain oversight of the park.

“I think the government chose us, because they have observed the work we have done in the biodiversity corridor and the way we have put local communities at the center of conservation,” Bikaba said.

Strong Roots has spent about a decade securing land for communities and wildlife to create a 1-million-hectare (2.5-million-acre) corridor through community forestry concessions. This corridor spans the area between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve.

To date, Strong Roots has secured 23 community forest concessions in the area, covering nearly 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of land.

“Itombwe is made up of seven chiefdoms, and we are already working with four of them in the corridor,” Bikaba said. “So we have a very good knowledge of the reserve; we know its problems and its needs.”

Bikaba is a member of an Indigenous community in the area that was evicted to make way for another protected area. So, putting local populations at the center of conservation is particularly close to his heart, he said.

Most protected areas in the DRC were created by evicting Indigenous populations, resulting in conflicts between park personnel and the local communities. In addition to conflicts with park managers, the area is also the site of clashes involving the M23, Wazalendo and Mai-Mai armed groups. Bikaba said Strong Roots will bring together aspects of traditional and modern conservation to help reduce the decline of species as well as the conflicts that exist.

For example, Strong Roots plans to recruit people from the communities to be patrol members. “By working hand in hand, we aim to make the population less likely to turn to armed groups for their survival,” Bikaba said.

He added his organization also hopes to strengthen enforcement of laws against poaching and mining, but also demilitarize conservation and move away from armed, military-like law enforcement.

The Itombwe Nature Reserve was created in 2006 and covers around 760,000 hectares (1.9 million acres). It is home to nearly 600 bird species and is a sanctuary for the critically endangered eastern lowland or Grauer’s gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri).

Banner image: Critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas live in Itombwe Nature Reserve. Image courtesy of Strong Roots Congo.