Sean Mowbray

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Sean Mowbray is a freelance writer from Scotland. He often covers lesser-known species that fly under the conservation radar. His reporting also appears in New Scientist, Hakai, Earth Island Journal, Discover magazine, and others.

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193 stories

View over a wind farm operated by Vattenfall, an energy company based in Sweden. Circular economy designs have focused largely on creating recyclable turbine blades. Experts say extending these principles across the supply chain could cut costs by increasing wind farms’ longevity and reducing material usage. Image courtesy of Vattenfall.

Scaling up offshore wind requires overcoming global and local challenges

Sean Mowbray 27 Jul 2026

Pallas’s cat, also known as the manul, roam widely across Central Asia and are present in 16 countries. Image by Richard Gillin via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Meme-face Pallas’s cat traverses a complex conservation landscape

Sean Mowbray 10 Jul 2026

Yellow-billed kites are found across Africa and play an important role in keeping ecosystems healthy as one of the most common scavengers.

Belief-based use increasing threat to yellow-billed kite, an important African scavenger

Sean Mowbray 7 Jul 2026

A leafy sea dragon among seagrass in South Australia. Image by Jayne Jenkins / Ocean Image Bank

Australia’s seagrass meadows under pressure as climate change turns up the heat

Sean Mowbray 3 Jul 2026

Telling one guiña from another: It’s all about the angle

Sean Mowbray 29 Jun 2026

Conservation groups have launched a plan to save the critically endangered Javan green magpie. As few as 50 may remain in the wild. Image courtesy of Andrew Owen/Chester Zoo.

On the brink of extinction, the Javan green magpie gets a conservation lifeline

Sean Mowbray 25 Jun 2026

A hooded vulture. Image by Mibby23 via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Hope for vultures in Nigeria as some belief-based users adopt plant alternatives

Sean Mowbray 24 Jun 2026

While caracals are classified as species of least concern overall, some populations are seriously declining, with some local extinctions; rodenticides join habitat loss, hunting, conflict with humans and other threats to their survival.

Rodent-killing baits threaten small wild cats and other wildlife

Sean Mowbray 23 Jun 2026

: A pair of hooded vultures. Image by Nico Arcilla.

Demand for vultures in West Africa threatens Central African populations

Sean Mowbray 19 Jun 2026

A desert pampas cat (Leopardus garleppi). A genetic study caused researchers to raise an alarm over a small, unique, dry mangrove-adapted population being genetically unhealthy, putting it at risk for local extinction. Image courtesy of the Peruvian Desert Cat Project.

Genetic study reveals extinction risk for unique mangrove-adapted pampas cat

Sean Mowbray 5 Jun 2026

A European wildcat in Scotland, where 46 captive-bred wildcats have been released as part of an ongoing reintroduction project. The cats are repopulating former habitat in the Cairngorms mountain range in the eastern highlands.

The European wildcat hovers between recovery and local extinction

Sean Mowbray 11 May 2026

Burned-over forest in the Brazilian state of Acre, one of the epicenters of deforestation in the Amazon.

Deforestation and warming could push Amazon to tipping point by 2040s: Study

Sean Mowbray 7 May 2026

Inside the fight to save the little-known Galápagos petrel

Sean Mowbray 30 Apr 2026

Wind farm off Pingtan Island in Pingtan county, Fuzhou, China. Image by Kilian Murphy via Unsplash.

Offshore wind’s clean energy potential remains largely untapped, say experts

Sean Mowbray 27 Apr 2026

An Atlantic Forest frog, Dendrophryniscus haddadi. Amphibians are susceptible to habitat split due to its negative impact on their life cycles, but the researchers note that such impacts (including microbiome changes) likely apply to numerous other species in wide-ranging ecosystems.

Linking habitats strengthens wildlife microbiomes, helps fight disease: Study

Sean Mowbray 23 Apr 2026

Lack of prey in Atlantic Forest protected areas could drive local extinctions of jaguars, a recent study warns.

Loss of prey could drive Atlantic Forest jaguars to extinction

Sean Mowbray 8 Apr 2026

Research shows that a koala’s gut microbiome directly influences its diet limitations, determining the species of eucalyptus it can eat. Translocations and reintroductions should take this relationship into account, says Michaela Blyton. Image by Mathias Appel via Flickr (CC0 1.0).

Poop pills and gut microbes: Wildlife microbiome studies aid conservation

Sean Mowbray 26 Mar 2026

The endangered Sumatran laughingthrush is another masterbird species threatened by trade. Image by Simon Bruslund

Songbird trade threatens lesser-known ‘master birds’ with secondary extinctions: Study

Sean Mowbray 23 Mar 2026

Seagrass meadows are also important foraging grounds for many marine species, including green turtles (Chelonia mydas). Image courtesy of Michele Roux/Ocean Image Bank.

Why saving seagrass meadows could help save the world’s coastlines

Sean Mowbray 12 Mar 2026

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station.

Rush to put AI data centers in space poses poorly understood dangers

Sean Mowbray 11 Mar 2026

A captive sand cat in Nushi, Pakistan. Illegal trade is occurring amid a paucity of information about population sizes of small cat populations, says Sheikh. “It's going under the radar to a big extent, and hardly anything is being done to actively stop it or to mitigate this threat.”

Big cats get the press, but small wildcats are being poached and trafficked in silence

Sean Mowbray 25 Feb 2026

Aerial view as a ship sails through the sea ice in the winter.

Petrostates stymie effort to rein in Arctic shipping carbon emissions

Sean Mowbray 23 Feb 2026

A white-backed vulture in Zimbabwe. Image by Chris Collyer/ Birdlife Zimbabwe.

Africa’s vulture safe zones face tough test across vast landscapes

Sean Mowbray 19 Feb 2026

A caddisfly in the Oligotricha genus.

Insects are moving pharmaceutical pollutants from rivers to land; risks unknown

Sean Mowbray 13 Feb 2026

Open burning of plastic in a community in Guiyu, China. This practice is fast becoming a common way to dispose of plastic and other waste.

Plastic household waste burned as fuel on rise in Global South, risking health

Sean Mowbray 5 Feb 2026

Wildlife attacks and strange animal behavior — fake images spark conservation concerns

Sean Mowbray 28 Jan 2026

Soil microbes. Invisible to the naked eye, microbial communities play a huge role in planetary processes, such as nutrient cycling, and are vital to ecosystem and human health.

IUCN launches group to conserve at-risk microbes vital to life on Earth

Sean Mowbray 21 Jan 2026

Year-end ‘good news’ as flat-headed cats reappear in Thailand after 29-year absence

Sean Mowbray 26 Dec 2025

A fungi in the family Hygrophoraceae. This fungi, which may represent a new genus, is rare and restricted to California’s coastal regions, says Singer.

Statewide survey aims to put California’s fungi on the conservation map

Sean Mowbray 20 Dec 2025

A sewage outlet in Bangkok.

Marine heat waves and raw sewage combine to put human health at risk

Sean Mowbray 18 Dec 2025

The African golden cat (Caracal aurata) is a medium-sized felid (though it’s classified as one of the world’s 33 small cat species). In Echuya Forest, it’s the largest predator remaining due to the extirpation of leopards from that forest.

Small cat conservationists hail Uganda’s new Echuya Forest National Park

Sean Mowbray 11 Dec 2025

Smoke rises from a coal-burning power plant. Refuse-derived fuel (RDF), which includes large amounts of plastics, is replacing fossil fuels in some energy and industrial furnaces. But critics say this practice is merely replacing one dirty fuel for another.

Boom in burning waste for fuel could put human health and environment at risk

Sean Mowbray 10 Dec 2025

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