The Turtle Survival Center, run by the Turtle Survival Alliance, exists to buy time for species that no longer have much of it.

Founded in 2013 in South Carolina, the center functions as a high-security refuge and breeding facility for some of the world’s rarest freshwater turtles and tortoises. It houses hundreds of animals representing species pushed to the edge by habitat loss, wildlife trafficking, and slow reproductive biology that leaves little margin for error. In a recent story, Liz Kimbrough describes not a museum of extinction, but a working institution focused on continuity.

That focus reflects the broader predicament turtles face. More than half of all turtle and tortoise species are now threatened with extinction, according to recent global assessments. The crisis is most acute in Asia, where demand for turtles as food, pets, and ingredients in traditional medicine has collided with deforestation and infrastructure expansion. Many species are harvested faster than they can reproduce. A female turtle removed from the wild represents not just a single loss, but decades of future offspring that will never exist.

The Turtle Survival Center operates as a response to that arithmetic. It maintains genetically valuable “founder” animals, breeds species that have disappeared from their native landscapes, and trains specialists who may be called on when authorities seize trafficked turtles in large numbers. In those moments, survival depends on practical knowledge: water chemistry, temperature control, disease management, and quarantine protocols refined through experience.

The center also hosts an intensive training program known as Turtle School, which draws participants from zoos, veterinary clinics, and volunteer rescue networks. When turtles are confiscated in Madagascar, Mexico, California, or Cambodia, there must be people ready to keep them alive. The informal global network that has emerged around turtle conservation is one of the field’s strengths.

None of this is a substitute for protecting turtles in the wild. Captive assurance colonies exist because natural systems have failed to shield species from human pressure. Reintroductions remain the goal, but they depend on intact habitat and local enforcement that is often missing.

Turtles are poorly equipped for rapid change. Most take decades to reach sexual maturity and produce relatively few young each year. That strategy worked when threats were slow and episodic. It falters in an era of fast roads, global markets, and climate extremes.

The work underway at the Turtle Survival Center offers a narrower kind of optimism. It does not promise that turtles will be saved everywhere. It works to ensure that they are not lost everywhere either.

For species that have survived ice ages and continental drift, the present moment is an unusually difficult test. Whether turtles endure it will depend less on their resilience than on the systems humans build around them. In South Carolina, one such system is already in place, holding the future steady while the rest of the world catches up.

Header image: Dave Collins holds a Yellow-bellied Slider. Photo by Liz Kimbrough.[/caption]

Nighttime light is a well-known hazard for migrating birds and sea turtles. New research suggests it may also pose risks for human health.

The study finds that plants exposed to artificial light at night (ALAN) produce pollen for an extended period of time, which is “a major public health issue,” Andrew Richardson, an ecologist with Northern Arizona University, not involved with the study, told Mongabay in an email.  “Seasonal allergies cost billions of dollars in healthcare costs as well as making life miserable for those who are highly sensitive. If you’re one of those people, then this research is clearly nothing to sneeze at!”

Two primary factors affect when plants begin flowering and producing pollen: temperature and light. Artificial light can’t replace sunlight for plants, but it does “kind of disturb their circadian rhythm and confuses plants,” Lin Meng, with Vanderbilt University and corresponding author of the study, told Mongabay in a video call.

To isolate the effects of nighttime lighting, researchers used modeling to control for variables including temperature and precipitation. They analyzed pollen count data along with satellite observations of nighttime and daily temperature and precipitation records. The study, from 2012 to 2023, focused on the northeastern United States, which includes urban areas like New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

The researchers found that higher ALAN exposure was associated with higher overall pollen levels in the air and a longer pollen season, roughly a week or two longer. Climate change, and warming temperatures are already known to extend pollen season. Meng said the study found that the impact of artificial light at night is comparable in magnitude to that of climate change. Together, warmer temperatures and nighttime lighting act as compounding factors, producing effects greater than either driver alone.

“This study is an important first step,” Brian Enquist an ecologist with the University of Arizona, not involved with the study, wrote to Mongabay in an email. However, Enquist pointed out that urban plants are often ornamentals, they have more access to water and less competition — all factors that could influence pollen production. “Future work will need to disentangle light effects from urban species composition, water availability, and tree structure more explicitly,” he said. Adding that urban ecosystems impact biological timing in many ways and that “artificial light may well be part of that broader suite of drivers.”

Meng said the public health impact of light pollution is a “blind spot” for urban planners.  She plans to share this study with planners and urban stakeholders so they can “take this light pollution impact from pollen into consideration when they build our cities.”

Banner image: Aerial view of New York’s Central Park. Image by Wil540 Art via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Mexican long-nosed bats have a taste for agave, their tongues designed to lap up the famous desert plant’s nectar during nightly flights. It’s not just a means of satisfying taste buds. It’s a matter of fueling up for an arduous journey.

The endangered species migrates each summer from Mexico into the southernmost reaches of the United States. Big Bend National Park in Texas is a destination, as is Hidalgo County in New Mexico’s Bootheel. It wasn’t until last year that DNA evidence helped to add Arizona to the list.

Bat Conservation International announced on Tuesday that swabbing agave plants and hummingbird feeders on the fringes of New Mexico’s Gila National Forest also turned up proof that the bats are farther north than ever before.

The research shows they’re traveling about 100 miles (160 kilometers) beyond their known roosts in New Mexico.

The state’s Bootheel region has been hit hard by drought, and agaves there don’t seem to flower as much as they used to, said Kristen Lear, director of the Agave Restoration Initiative at Bat Conservation International.

“We think these bats are trying to look for healthy agave food sources elsewhere,” she said. “So that’s kind of driving them farther north, where the agaves are a little bit less hit by drought.”

Traveling another 30 miles (48 kilometers) can add another night to a bat’s journey. To keep the sweet nectar flowing along the route, researchers on both sides of the international border say restoration of desert grasslands on the fringes of where the bats have been found in the past will be key to ensuring the future of the winged mammals and the genetic diversity of agaves.

The Mexican long-nosed bat was added to the endangered species list in 1988. It’s estimated that fewer than 10,000 remain.

Complicating matters is that both Mexican long-nosed bats and agaves are slow breeders. The bats have only one baby — or pup — per year. Agaves, which rely on the bats for pollination, can take a decade or more to flower and produce seeds.

“So you’re not going to get huge population rebounds quickly. You have to really work to maintain those levels,” Lear said.

Researchers and volunteers in Mexico and the United States have planted about 185,000 agaves since 2018 in what they call the nectar corridor. Seeds are collected so more plants can propagate. It can take a couple of years of rearing in a nursery before agaves are transplanted into high-priority areas.

Rachel Burke, BCI’s agave restoration coordinator for the U.S., said the discovery in New Mexico underscores the importance of ongoing work to learn more about the bats. According to Burke and the other researchers, detecting the presence of the bats helps to target planting and restoration efforts.

From private ranchers and local communities to government agencies, more than 100 partners have teamed up with Bat Conservation International to continue sampling for DNA and surveying agave patches.

By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press 

Banner image: a Mexican long-tongued bat. Photo by Dolovis via Wikipedia (CC BY 2.0)

For the first time, “hyper-carnivorous” African wild dogs have been recorded eating fruit, a behavior so far documented only in a small part of Botswana’s wildlife-rich Okavango Delta.  

The wild dogs were seen picking up jackalberries, the fruit of the African ebony tree (Diospyros mespiliformis), with their teeth and swallowing them almost whole. Jackalberries are commonly eaten by jackals (Lupulella spp.), hence the name, but this is the first record of wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) consuming them.

Wild dogs have teeth adapted to quickly devour flesh and bone, and were previously thought to eschew anything but meat.

However, from July to August 2022, researchers observed all 11 adult members of a wild dog pack eat jackalberries daily.  These observations are published in the journal Canid Biology & Conservation.

The study was led by Megan Claase, then a researcher with local NGO Wild Entrust’s Botswana Predator Conservation program. She later learned that Duncan Rowles, a safari guide, had seen a neighboring pack eating jackalberries a year earlier.

Much of the fruit-eating Claase observed occurred near the pack’s den, just before the adults headed off to hunt. She hypothesized they may have been fueling up for the hunt.

Older subdominant dogs were observed eating fruit throughout the day, likely to supplement their nutrition since they were lower in the pack hierarchy and had less access to meat, Claase said.

Wild dogs raise pups cooperatively and regurgitate food for them in the den, so pups would likely be introduced to this novel food source, Claase said. Consequently, the taste for fruit could spread beyond one pack.

“It’s not impossible to think that a dog who learned [frugivory] in one pack disperses to form a new pack in a new area and takes that [habit] with them,” she told Mongabay. Shortly after studying the “jackalberry pack,” as Claase dubbed the dogs, she recorded three of its female members dispersing much farther south, near Moremi Game Reserve.

Now a conservation manager with the NGO African Parks in South Sudan, Claase said she wondered whether those females took their fruit-eating habits with them.

Botilo Tshimologo, an ecologist in eastern Botswana, not involved with this study, carried out wild dog fieldwork in the same area of the Okavango more than a decade ago. He told Mongabay this first published record of wild dog frugivory was “intriguing.”

“I personally have never observed it,” said Tshimologo, who has also studied wild dogs in the Mabuasehube sector of Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the southwest of the country.

Claase said the jackalberry pack’s dietary revelation is encouraging, given that African wild dogs are endangered, with a total population of around 6,600 adults, facing an uncertain future amid habitat loss and climate change.

“Some things are not very adaptable, and then they go extinct,” Claase said, “but maybe for the dogs, they have that certain level of adaptability in them.”

Banner image: Wild dog pups in Zimbabwe. Image courtesy of ZSL/Rosemary Groom.

Tree planting has become a favored response to environmental loss. Governments, companies, and philanthropies announce large targets with reassuring round numbers. Forests, after all, store carbon, shelter wildlife, and support livelihoods. Yet the details matter. Planting the wrong species, or planting trees where forests did not exist, can undermine both biodiversity and climate goals.

That problem has become clearer as restoration pledges have multiplied. A 2019 commentary in Nature found that nearly half of the area pledged under the Bonn Challenge consisted of plantation-style monocultures. A 2024 study in Science showed that much land promised for reforestation in Africa was actually savanna, an ecosystem poorly suited to trees. Ambition, in other words, has often run ahead of ecological sense.

Paul Smith, secretary-general of Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), says this pattern raised concerns as pledges grew larger. “It started to occur to us that there was potentially a problem here, particularly given the size of the pledges that were being made.” What was missing was a way to distinguish restoration that improved biodiversity from restoration that merely looked good on paper.

The Global Biodiversity Standard (TGBS) was created to fill that gap, reports Ruth Kamnitzer. Officially launched in 2024, it certifies forest and landscape restoration projects that can demonstrate measurable gains for biodiversity. Unlike many existing certification schemes, it focuses first on ecological outcomes and is designed to be affordable for small projects.

Certification under TGBS begins with evidence. Projects are assessed using satellite imagery and on-the-ground surveys, which examine plants, animals, and local governance. Sites are scored against eight criteria, including ecosystem integrity, protection, and stakeholder engagement. Results are reviewed by the TGBS secretariat, hosted by BGCI, and audited by an independent third party. Depending on performance, projects receive standard, advanced, or premium certification.

A defining feature of the system is its reliance on regional hubs, often botanic gardens or local biodiversity organizations. These hubs conduct field assessments and provide mentoring. David Bartholomew, TGBS’s project manager, says this avoids a consultant-heavy model and keeps costs down. “We didn’t want to use a top-down model where we were flying in international consultants.” Local experts, he adds, understand both species and social context.

That approach was tested in western Uganda, where the Jane Goodall Institute has been restoring a wildlife corridor linking the Budongo and Bugoma forests. The project, supported by the search engine Ecosia, became the first to achieve advanced certification. Surveys found increasing numbers of native plants and forest-dependent birds. They also highlighted how restoration and livelihoods were linked.“The same people who were degrading the forest were the same people used to establish the restoration,” says Said Mutegeki, an ecologist involved in the assessment.

For funders, the appeal lies less in the label than in the process. Antonia Burchard-Levine of Ecosia says certification offers assurance, but mentoring delivers the real value. Projects that fall short receive guidance rather than rejection.

As interest in restoration continues to grow, TGBS aims to expand cautiously. Its premise is straightforward: forests should be judged not by how many trees they contain, but by whether they support life, people included.

Header photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Young Kenyan environmentalist Truphena Muthoni has set a Guinness World Record (GWR), for the second time, after embracing a tree for 72 hours. She hugged the tree for three days, Dec. 8-11, 2025, to raise awareness about climate change and protest the destruction of Indigenous forests. In doing so, she caught the attention of the country and inspired others to embrace trees for their own causes.

Muthoni told GWR that she took on the challenge to “elevate and advocate for the protection of indigenous trees and to honor the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples, whose knowledge systems remain central to global climate solutions.”

Muthoni’s 72-hour feat surpassed the previous record, also held by her, of 48 hours, set in February 2025. For the duration of the challenge, Muthoni didn’t eat, sleep or let go of the tree’s trunk. She did have medical care available and was surrounded by supporters.

For Muthoni, these were more than just records. She said in a video that she aimed to respond to the cries of Indigenous people and make people to fall in love with nature. “We are cutting down indigenous forests, indigenous trees, replacing them with saplings and calling that mitigation. … I’m encouraging people to first protect what we have.”

Days before GWR announced her achievement on Jan. 26, Muthoni was named to the top 20 most impactful women in Kenya list by Timely Kenya. She was recognized along with female leaders in governance, health, politics and the environment.

Following Muthoni’s achievements activists across Kenya began hugging trees for other causes and for even longer, though they didn’t officially register with GWR.

In Nanyuki, in the center of Kenya, a 43-year-old named Paul Kago hugged a cedar tree for 96 hours to promote peace ahead of Kenya’s 2027 elections.

Farther south in Murang’a, James Irungu collapsed just 20 minutes short of achieving his goal to hug a tree for 80 hours to raise awareness about cancer.

A 14-year-old named Stephen Gachanja from Nairobi hugged a tree for 50 hours to raise funds for a crucial surgery for his brother.

Muthoni sparked a tree-hugging movement in Kenya that thrust environmental issues into everyday conversation. To keep that momentum going, Muthoni champions tree planting by Kenyan youth and collaborates with the Kenya Forest Service to help revive a forest reserve. She also serves as an ambassador for the Kenyan government’s goal to plant 15 billion trees by 2032.

In a Facebook post, Muthoni said she has dedicated her life to such work. “Thank You, God, for trusting me with this sacred responsibility. I yield my life and my work to You. Before the people of Kenya and before the nations of the earth, I commit myself to be an instrument of healing for the world.”

Banner image: Truphena Muthoni hugging a tree for 72 consecutive hours. Image courtesy of Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga via X.