A new report by the International Crisis Group finds that organized crime has become a “major obstacle” to protecting the Amazon. Criminal groups often operate across borders and are expanding control over huge swathes of land, which undermines state efforts to combat environmental crimes such as drug trafficking, deforestation and illegal mining.

“In Colombia, park rangers have been blocked from entering their own protected areas by non-state armed groups, leaving vast stretches of forest unmonitored and effectively undefended,” report author Bram Ebus, an International Crisis Group consultant and founder of Amazon Underworld, an investigative journalism project, told Mongabay via WhatsApp messages. “NGOs [non-governmental organizations], U.N. agencies and bodies belonging to the environment ministry have similarly been denied access to Amazon territories with troubling regularity, meaning that local development programs, reforestation initiatives and conservation efforts simply cannot be carried out.”

 Ebus said this is not incidental and that armed groups deliberately keep communities at a distance from the state to maintain a governance vacuum that serves their economic and territorial interests.

 The spread of organized crime has fueled rising violence and environmental damage across the Amazon including in Colombia’s Putumayo, Caquetá and Amazonas departments. The Comandos de la Frontera, a FARC dissident group that controls coca plantations and illegal mines, exerts control in those areas. Other criminal organizations operating across the Amazon, including in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru are also driving instability and environmental harm.    

While criminals continue to expand their reach and coordinate with one another, the report says national governments are struggling to work together and pool sufficient resources and information to crack down on criminal activity. The report also identified a lack of coordination between state authorities and Indigenous communities, stemming from a history of mutual distrust, fear of criminal collusion, a lack of resources and logistical challenges.

 Latin America has the highest homicide rate in the world, and the number of deaths across the Amazon is even higher, according to the report. Globally, two-thirds of environmental defenders killed are Indigenous, Afro-descendant and small-scale farmers. 

 “Indigenous guard groups are under enormous strain from organized crime,” Ebus said. “Members are typically volunteers, protecting natural assets that the state itself cannot or will not defend, often leaving their families without a primary provider during guard rounds that can last days or weeks at a time. Compounding this is the problem of corruption and complicity within local security forces.”

 The report recommends that law enforcement agencies and Indigenous communities work together and combine local knowledge to confront illicit activity. It also advocates for improvements to cross-border collaboration and harmonized environmental laws.

 In addition, international gold and commodity buyers have a responsibility to ensure that their supply chains are free from illegitimate products, the report notes. 

 Banner image: Dredge on the Purité River between Brazil and Colombia, bordering Amacayacu National Park. Credit: Amazon Regional Alliance for the Reduction of the Impacts of Gold Mining.

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

Five months after Jane Goodall’s death, her grandson Merlin Van Lawick appeared at the ChangeNOW environmental forum in Paris carrying something both public and personal. He was there not as a substitute for his grandmother, but as someone shaped by her work and now helping to carry it forward, reports Mongabay’s Juliette Chapalain.

The easiest way to misunderstand Goodall’s message is to treat hope as a feeling. For Goodall, as Van Lawick describes it, hope was closer to discipline. She used the image of a dark tunnel with a light at the end. The light did not come to you. You had to crawl toward it, over obstacles and under them. “Hope is rooted in action,” he said.

That phrase can sound almost too easy until one considers the work behind it. Goodall’s career began with field research at Gombe in Tanzania, where she helped change how science understood chimpanzees. It became something larger: a life spent asking people to see animals as individuals, ecosystems as living communities, and young people as participants rather than spectators.

In Van Lawick’s telling, Goodall’s influence came through example. She did not push people into service. She made them aware of the consequences of their choices, then left the decision to them. Even with her grandchildren, the pressure was light. Van Lawick once wanted to be a footballer. She told him she thought he would become a conservationist. She did not insist. The seed did its own work.

That may be the more useful lesson for conservation now. The movement does not lack warnings. It has plenty. What it often lacks is a way to keep people engaged without overwhelming them or making the future feel already settled. Goodall’s answer was not optimism in the sentimental sense. It was agency, practiced in small acts and carried by many people.

This is why Roots & Shoots, the youth program she founded, is such a central part to carrying on her legacy. Its premise is simple and demanding: young people should identify problems in their own communities and act on them. The scale can grow, but the starting point is local. A child plants a tree, protects an animal, cleans a stream, speaks to neighbors. None of this is enough by itself. That is not the point.

The point is that despair asks nothing of us. Hope, as Goodall taught it, begins when people act.

Read the full interview with Merlin Van Lawick here.

Banner image: Merlin Van Lawick speaking at Jane Goodall’s celebration of life in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 12, 2025. Image courtesy of Washington National Cathedral.

The Asiatic cheetah, the world’s most endangered big cat, faces an increasingly precarious future as ongoing conflict in Iran disrupts critical conservation efforts, reports Mongabay contributor Kayleigh Long.

Once ranging from the Arabian Peninsula to India, the cheetah subspecies (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) is now confined to just 16% of its former territory, with fewer than 30 individuals estimated to remain in the wild in Iran.

Before the war began in February 2026, conservationists observed a rare sign of hope: a female cheetah named Helia was filmed in North Khorasan province with five cubs, the largest litter ever recorded for the subspecies. Bagher Nezami, national director of the Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Project, told Iranian media that these were “ID-carded” individuals being monitored by researchers.

However,  access to protected areas for nongovernmental groups has now “slowed down considerably,” interrupting long-term monitoring and camera trapping, a local conservationist told Mongabay, speaking on condition of anonymity. There are also fears that conservation vehicles could be misidentified as military targets in the remote desert landscapes where the cheetahs live.

Sarah Durant, a research scientist at the Zoological Society of London, emphasized the protection of field scientists, park rangers, and Indigenous peoples during armed conflict is “a matter of urgent international concern.”

Beyond the direct impact of combat, Western sanctions on Iran have also taken a toll. “Critical activities such as monitoring, law enforcement and the development of wildlife-friendly infrastructure have declined,” the authors of a 2025 study wrote. “These limitations have contributed to a decrease in prey availability and an increase in direct cheetah mortality, particularly from road accidents.”

Road accidents account for more than half of recorded cheetah deaths in Iran, including the devastating 2023 death of a pregnant female that was hit and killed on a road in Semnan province. Reduced patrolling due to the war may further increase risks from poaching and habitat disturbance.

Import restrictions have also limited or prevented access to high-quality conservation tech and satellite or SIM-enabled devices that can help track and identify individual cats. The use of camera traps brought controversy in 2018, when nine conservationists from the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation were arrested and accused of espionage.

The current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran will likely mean a reduction in resources dedicated to conservation, said Jamshid Parchizadeh from Michigan State University, U.S., who has worked as a wildlife biologist in Iran. He said he’s doubtful the Iranian government would have funds for wildlife once post-war reconstruction on infrastructure becomes the primary focus.

“Before the war, cheetah conservation received limited funding from the government,” Parchizadeh said. “But after the war, I doubt that the government has any money left for the conservation of the cheetah.”

Read the full story by Kayleigh Long here.

Banner image: The Asiatic cheetah is the world’s most endangered big cat, with about 27 remaining in the wild in Iran. Image by Ehsan Kamali / Tasnim News Agency via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Hong Kong and Singapore imported more than 1 million live wild birds between 2006 and 2020, according to a new analysis of customs data published in Conservation Biology. Nearly two-thirds of the birds were from Africa.

The study highlights a massive, often under-regulated trade that threatens wild populations and poses significant risks for the spread of invasive species and deadly diseases, Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman reports.

Rowan Martin, director of bird trade at the World Parrot Trust, and his colleagues used U.N. Comtrade data to track the trade of wild birds. They found that Singapore accounted for nearly three-quarters of the imports, and Hong Kong was a second hub. Canaries (Crithagra spp.) topped the list of birds entering Hong Kong, with the yellow-fronted canary (C. mozambica) and white-rumped seedeater (C. leucopygia) making up 84% of African imports between 2015 and 2020.

Martin’s team found that about 65% of the birds came from Africa. Mali, Guinea, Tanzania, and Mozambique were the primary exporters.

“African birds are prominent because there’s been very little regulation of the exports,” Martin told Mongabay. “There are relatively few large-scale exporters operating in West Africa, and often these family businesses have big holding facilities where they aggregate birds prior to export.”

Martin and his colleagues found bird imports to Hong Kong and Singapore increased after 2006. He credits this to rising middle-class wealth in Asia, more flight connectivity, and social media, which facilitates connections between exporters and buyers.

Simon Bruslund, a bird trade researcher from the Copenhagen Zoo who was not involved with the study, noted that “exporters quickly adapt to opportunities.”

In 2007, Ghana removed 114 bird species from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Appendix III, which regulates and monitors the legal trade. A 2025 study by Bruslund and his colleagues found some U.S. imports of those bird species surged fourteenfold after the CITES change.

Transporting birds tightly packed together creates ideal conditions for the spread of pathogens that cause avian influenza, circovirus, and psittacosis, which can transmit to humans. Furthermore, escaped pets can become invasive. For example, the pin-tailed whydah (Vidua macroura) in parts of the U.S. and the Caribbean is outcompeting native birds.

Birds collected from across Africa are often brought together in open air markets which create, “perfect conditions for the horizontal transfer of pathogens between different species,” Martin said. “The biosecurity risks are pretty terrifying.”

To mitigate these risks, Bruslund suggests adopting a registration and documentation system for all wild animals kept in captivity. South Korea, Singapore, and some EU countries are adopting “positive lists” of animals that are sustainably-sourced and aren’t potentially invasive or a health threat.

Read the full story by Spoorthy Raman here.

Banner image of a cut-throat finch (Amadina fasciata) for sale in Hong Kong. Image courtesy of Sam Inglis.

Measures proposed by organizers of the upcoming FIFA World Cup won’t be sufficient to protect players and fans from the significantly higher risk of extreme heat and humidity expected at this year’s tournament, a medical expert warns.

In December 2025, FIFA announced there would be three-minute hydration breaks for players in each half of every game “to ensure the best possible conditions for players”. However, a recent analysis says conditions at the 2026 World Cup, co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, will be much warmer than during the USA ’94 tournament. Scientists from World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international initiative studying the role of climate change in extreme events, warn that human-induced climate change has nearly doubled the likelihood of dangerously hot match conditions since then.

That makes it much more difficult for the body to dissipate heat, said Chris Mullington, a consultant anesthetist and clinical senior lecturer at Imperial College London.

“That matters because footballers generate large amounts of metabolic heat during repeated sprints, accelerations, and high-intensity play,” he said at a press briefing. “As WGBT rises, the body’s usual cooling mechanisms become less effective.”

WGBT is the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WGBT) index, a combined measure of humidity, wind, air temperature and direct sunlight, which gives the “real feel” of heat on the human body.

Mullington said high WBGT can compel players to “reduce high intensity running, sprint less often, pace themselves more conservatively, and experience impaired decision making as thermal strain accumulates.”

The WWA analysis identified Miami, Kansas City and New York/New Jersey as among the host cities at risk of peak heat and humidity. Twenty-six games are likely to be played at WBGT of 26° Celsius (79° Fahrenheit) or higher, when heat strain becomes a real risk, the authors say. There’s also a 1-in-3 chance of WBGT above 28°C (82°F) — conditions deemed unsafe for play, the authors add.

Mullington said physiological research suggests extended halftime breaks, and spray misting stations to fully mitigate heat strain.

He also called attention to fan well-being. “If you have a longer halftime, a longer match, fans are outside in those conditions for a longer period of time,” Mullington said. “So in reducing the risk for players, you might actually increase the risk for fans.”

To reduce risks for spectators, Mullington recommended organizers not charge for water. “I think your average football fan would not pay 8 pounds [nearly $11] for a bottle of water,” he told Mongabay at the briefing. “But if they were given it for free, they would take it gladly.”

Ultimately, Mullington said, it’s about raising awareness of the risks for the fans. “I don’t think that the majority of fans are aware that they might be putting themselves at risk in this situation, so just being transparent about that [so they can] make their own decisions at that point,” he said.

Banner image of the chances of each World Cup 2026 game facing temperatures the study authors consider unsafe for play. Image of World Weather Attribution.

Civil society groups have denounced the “arbitrary” arrests of 11 community leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo following a peaceful protest over the impacts of mining operations on local communities.

Authorities made the arrests on May 1 in the country’s southeastern Lualaba province, prompting calls by local and international NGOs for the “immediate and unconditional release of all detainees.”

The case centers around Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM), one of the world’s largest copper and cobalt miners and a subsidiary of CMOC (China Molybdenum) Group, which in 2020 built a lime processing plant near the village of Kabombwa in Lualaba.

Two years later, following an investigation, the NGO African Natural Resources Watch (AFREWATCH) alleged that TFM’s plant was releasing acidic water into a nearby river, causing 11 deaths between 2020 and 2022. The company denied AFREWATCH’s findings, yet in 2023 relocated several Kabombwa residents through a provincial government commission, and paid out compensation ranging from $3,000 to $5,000.

Three years after the relocation, many residents remain deeply dissatisfied.

“They realized the amount they received was far from sufficient and does not allow them to live decently,” Leonard Zama, activist and director of the Initiative for the Protection of Human Rights and Social Reintegration (IPDHOR ASBL), told Mongabay by phone. During the relocation, TFM also promised support for housing and health care for three years, but the agreement was only verbal “and nothing was done,” Zama added.

Frustrated by what they describe as inadequate responses to their demands by the end of the three-year period, several community leaders decided to return and resettle in Kabombwa as a form of protest. According to an official letter seen by Mongabay, the leaders on April 7 had written to the mayor of Fungurume municipality, where TFM’s operations are located, about returning to their ancestral land on April 20.

“This created tensions with the mining company, which filed a complaint, and prosecutors then arrested members of the community,” said Jean-Pierre Okenda, executive president of DRC-based NGO Sentinelle des Ressources Naturelles.

The community leaders were charged with “illegal occupation,” according to Zama.

“No project should come at the expense of local populations, yet that is exactly what is happening here,” Okenda said. “In my opinion, if the authorities and the mining company truly wanted to find a compromise, there would be one. Resorting to prosecutors will not calm the situation.”

As of May 15, three community leaders have been released, and one person has appeared in court. According to Zama, detainees were asked to pay 400,000 Congolese francs (about $175) in exchange for provisional release, a significant amount in a country where 85% of the population lives below the poverty line.

At the time of publication, eight people remained in detention, according to civil society groups.

Banner image: Adéarld Mkonga, a resident of Kabombwa who demanded a “legal relocation” process and better compensation. Mkonga passed away in 2024. Image courtesy of Eric Cibamba.