
Articles by Megan Stannard
Megan Stannard grew up collecting snails and sitting on the roof to watch the fox cubs in next door’s garden. Somewhat inevitably, she studied Psychology and Zoology at the University of Bristol, dissecting cockroach rectums to assess their parasite load and sitting in the rain to count ants. For her dissertation, she sat in the snow and assessed whether squirrels take predator attention into account when evaluating threat levels (they don’t).
These days she mostly sits in offices; after graduating she went to work for the Zoological Society of London’s Conservation Programme creating and administering a database of their conservation projects, running Hackathons, and occasionally getting away from the desk to wade in the Thames looking for eels. She currently works for the NGO Elephant Family, fighting threats to the Asian elephant through projects focusing on a broad spectrum of conservation issues, from human-wildlife conflict to the illegal wildlife trade. She believes in the transformative power of the written word and in Mongabay’s mission to raise awareness, provide insight into complex issues, and willingness to question the foundational assumptions of the field.
In her free time, she writes fiction, ice skates, and swordfights.


Microplastics may be a macro problem for the U.S. Great Plains, too, study finds

China’s wénwan drives a deadly mix-and-match of endangered wildlife

Bouncing back: The recovery of the tenkile tree kangaroo

‘A green desert’: Mammals take a hit in Colombia’s oil palm plantations

Jumping the Shark: The Decline of the North Atlantic’s Shortfin Mako
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Mennonite colonies linked to deforestation of Indigenous territories and protected areas in Paraguay
- Deforestation on the rise in Quintana Roo, Mexico, as Mennonite communities move in
- Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation
- Bolivian national park hit hard by forest fires in 2022, satellite data show

Oceans
- ‘Manta grid’ provides a ray of hope against industrial bycatch threat
- As oceans warm, temperate reef species edge closer to extinction, study shows
- Can we control marine invaders by eating them?
- Sea level rise looms, even for the best-prepared country on Earth

Amazon Conservation
- RSPO suspension of Brazil palm oil exporter tied to Mongabay land-grabbing report
- Tropical forest regeneration offsets 26% of carbon emissions from deforestation
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections

Land rights and extractives
- Will clean-energy minerals provoke a shift in how mining is done in Africa?
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase

Endangered Environmentalists
- ‘You don’t kill people to protect forests’: New Thai parks chief raises alarm
- Vietnam’s environmental NGOs face uncertain status, shrinking civic space
- ‘We lost the biggest ally’: Nelly Marubo on her friend Bruno Pereira’s legacy
- Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office

Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’

Conservation Effectiveness
- For key Bangladesh wetland, bid for Ramsar status is no guarantee of protection
- Biodiversity, human rights safeguards crucial to nature-based solutions: Critics
- Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows

Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Robust river governance key to restoring Mekong River vitality in face of dams
- As hydropower dams quell the Mekong’s life force, what are the costs?
- As Indonesia’s new capital takes shape, risks to wider Borneo come into focus
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
