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	<channel>
		<title>Conservation news</title>
		<atom:link href="https://news.mongabay.com/feed/?location=mexico&#038;post_type=post" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/mexico/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 22:01:21 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<url>https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/05/16160320/cropped-mongabay_icon-32x32.png</url>
	<title>Mexico environmental news</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/mexico/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>Mexico rejects ‘Perfect Day’ waterpark on Caribbean coast, citing environmental risks</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/mexico-rejects-perfect-day-waterpark-on-caribbean-coast-citing-environmental-risks/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/mexico-rejects-perfect-day-waterpark-on-caribbean-coast-citing-environmental-risks/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 May 2026 23:04:47 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Maxwell Radwin]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Bobbybascomb]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/20230103/AP17220597899958-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=319863</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Coral Reefs, Development, Ecotourism, Infrastructure, Mangroves, Ocean, Roads, Seagrass, and Tourism]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Environmental authorities in Mexico have rejected the proposal for a large waterpark in the southern state of Quintana Roo, citing risks for coastal ecosystems and local communities. Royal Caribbean’s Perfect Day Mexico would have covered more than 80 hectares (200 acres) in the village of Mahahual with the “ultimate vacation for families,” including pools, restaurants [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Environmental authorities in Mexico have rejected the proposal for a large waterpark in the southern state of Quintana Roo, citing risks for coastal ecosystems and local communities. Royal Caribbean’s Perfect Day Mexico would have covered more than 80 hectares (200 acres) in the village of Mahahual with the “ultimate vacation for families,” including pools, restaurants and beaches. But officials this week shot down the project citing concerns about its potential impact on mangroves and coral reefs. “We are not going to do anything that puts the ecological balance of that area at risk,” President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo told the media at her daily morning press conference on Monday, May 18 Royal Caribbean told Reuters it ​respected Mexico’s decision to cancel the project and is still optimistic about investing in the country. The following day, Tuesday, May 19, Mexico’s secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, confirmed the decision at a press conference. “We, at Semarnat, will not approve it,” she said. By law, the agency reviews development projects and must approve their environmental viability before construction can begin. Mahahual, historically a fishing village, is located approximately 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the Banco Chinchorro Biosphere Reserve, which is home to coral reefs and seagrass, among other sensitive marine ecosystems. The town itself also has around 50 hectares (124 acres) of mangroves and wetlands, according to an environmental impact assessment (EIA). Since 2001, a port used by cruise ships has steadily increased tourism to the area. Royal Caribbean, a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/mexico-rejects-perfect-day-waterpark-on-caribbean-coast-citing-environmental-risks/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/mexico-rejects-perfect-day-waterpark-on-caribbean-coast-citing-environmental-risks/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>A fever of mobula rays off Mexico’s coast: Photo of the week</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/a-fever-of-mobula-rays-off-mexicos-coast-photo-of-the-week/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/a-fever-of-mobula-rays-off-mexicos-coast-photo-of-the-week/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 May 2026 11:13:08 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Shanna Hanbury]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Bobbybascomb]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/20111214/mexico_250611_151714242z-copy-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=319627</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Endangered Species, Marine Animals, Marine Biodiversity, Oceans, Rays, and Sharks And Rays]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[During the mobula ray’s migration season, which runs from late April to July, the marine animals form massive aggregations called fevers. The image above was captured by Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler in Baja California, a northwestern state of Mexico. The region is home to at least five species of mobula rays. Mobula [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[During the mobula ray’s migration season, which runs from late April to July, the marine animals form massive aggregations called fevers. The image above was captured by Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler in Baja California, a northwestern state of Mexico. The region is home to at least five species of mobula rays. Mobula munkiana, commonly known as Munk’s devil ray or Munk’s pygmy devil ray, is the most common, and is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. The other four species are much scarcer due to slow reproductive rates and population decline due to fishing bycatch. The bentfin devil ray (Mobula thurstoni), spinetail devil ray (Mobula mobular) and sicklefin devil ray (Mobula tarapacana) are all critically endangered. The oceanic manta ray (Mobula birostris) is listed as endangered. Banner image: A fever of mobula rays photographed underwater in June 2025. Images by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/a-fever-of-mobula-rays-off-mexicos-coast-photo-of-the-week/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/05/a-fever-of-mobula-rays-off-mexicos-coast-photo-of-the-week/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>Oil spill continues in Gulf of Mexico vulnerable habitats, while Pemex admits fault</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/oil-spill-continues-in-gulf-of-mexico-vulnerable-habitats-while-pemex-admits-fault/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/oil-spill-continues-in-gulf-of-mexico-vulnerable-habitats-while-pemex-admits-fault/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 Apr 2026 11:33:53 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Caitlin Cooper]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Ocean wildlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Biodiversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Coral]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fisheries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fishing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marine pollution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ocean]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oil spill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turtles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Water Pollution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wildlife Conservation]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/04/22111835/AP26085839385231-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=317934</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Coastal Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environmental Crime, Fish, Fisheries, Governance, Ocean, Oil Spills, Pollution, Sea Turtles, Waste, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[MEXICO CITY — In Nautla, a municipality on the coast of the Mexican state of Veracruz, soft folds of sand await sea turtles as their annual nesting season begins between April and June. But instead of the miniature olive-green turtles — the Kemp’s ridley turtles (Lepidochelys kempii) that show up here are the world’s smallest [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[MEXICO CITY — In Nautla, a municipality on the coast of the Mexican state of Veracruz, soft folds of sand await sea turtles as their annual nesting season begins between April and June. But instead of the miniature olive-green turtles — the Kemp’s ridley turtles (Lepidochelys kempii) that show up here are the world’s smallest species of their kind — sticky black discs the size of coins dot the coastline. Along a 1-meter (3-foot) section of beach, Nautla resident Ricardo Yepez Gerón, director-general of the Yepez Foundation, an NGO focused on sea turtle conservation, said he could count approximately 100 of these spots. “To remove the oil that has [washed up] on these beaches … let’s be honest, the coastline is too long,” Yepez Gerón told Mongabay in a video interview. “You need one person for every 10 meters [33 ft].” Similar reports of tar stains on the beaches of Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche, along the southern arc of the Gulf of Mexico, have cropped up since early March. According to a late March report from the Coral Reef Network of the Gulf of Mexico, what appeared to be an oil spill had impacted 933 kilometers (about 580 miles) of shoreline — and at least seven of nine natural protected areas, ANPs by their Spanish acronym, in the Tabasco, Veracruz and Tamaulipas states, according to Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Mexico’s secretary of environment and natural resources. For 67 days, the government denied any wrongdoing as various scenarios circulated regarding the source&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/oil-spill-continues-in-gulf-of-mexico-vulnerable-habitats-while-pemex-admits-fault/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/oil-spill-continues-in-gulf-of-mexico-vulnerable-habitats-while-pemex-admits-fault/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<title>Who controls Mexico’s Yaqui River?</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/specials/2026/03/who-controls-mexicos-yaqui-river/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/specials/2026/03/who-controls-mexicos-yaqui-river/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Mar 2026 16:05:56 +0000</pubDate>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alejandroprescottcornejo]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/07/09170628/Mario-Luna-Romero-5-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=specials&#038;p=316574</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Who controls Mexico’s Yaqui River?]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Drought, Environmental Law, Impact Of Climate Change, Indigenous Communities, Indigenous Peoples, Pollution, and Rivers]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Water has shaped the identity, livelihoods and governance of the Yaqui Indigenous people in northern Mexico for centuries. Today, the Yaqui River faces mounting pressure as drought intensifies, pollution persists and water is increasingly diverted to agriculture and cities. In this award-winning series, staff writer Aimee Gabay explores how climate change is sharpening long-standing disputes [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Water has shaped the identity, livelihoods and governance of the Yaqui Indigenous people in northern Mexico for centuries. Today, the Yaqui River faces mounting pressure as drought intensifies, pollution persists and water is increasingly diverted to agriculture and cities. In this award-winning series, staff writer Aimee Gabay explores how climate change is sharpening long-standing disputes over water allocation and why rulings recognizing Yaqui water rights haven’t been translated into meaningful change. The reporting examines how reduced river flows affect public health, food production and cultural continuity, and how gaps in scientific research, legal enforcement and water governance continue to shape the future of the Yaqui River Basin. &nbsp; &nbsp;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/specials/2026/03/who-controls-mexicos-yaqui-river/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/specials/2026/03/who-controls-mexicos-yaqui-river/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>Eastern monarch butterfly populations increase in 2025, but challenges remain</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/eastern-monarch-butterfly-populations-increase-in-2025-but-challenges-remain/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/eastern-monarch-butterfly-populations-increase-in-2025-but-challenges-remain/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>24 Mar 2026 17:13:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[David Brown]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Bobbybascomb]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/03/24171136/Monarch_butterfly_rush_2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=316210</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Butterflies, Endangered, Endangered Species, Insects, and Migration]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Monarch butterfly populations in North America have been in dramatic decline for several decades. But in a glimmer of hope for the iconic orange-and-black species, the 2025 population estimate was roughly 64% higher compared to the previous year. Scientists split migratory monarchs (Danaus plexippus) into two populations — western and eastern — depending on which [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Monarch butterfly populations in North America have been in dramatic decline for several decades. But in a glimmer of hope for the iconic orange-and-black species, the 2025 population estimate was roughly 64% higher compared to the previous year. Scientists split migratory monarchs (Danaus plexippus) into two populations — western and eastern — depending on which side of the Rocky Mountains they fall on. Both are considered endangered on the IUCN Red List but neither have been formally listed on the U.S. endangered species list. Eastern monarchs have declined by 80% since the 1980s, and the western population by more than 95%, edging them toward extinction. Nonmigratory populations, found throughout the neotropics, aren’t considered endangered. The entire population of eastern monarchs overwinter in the oyamel fir (Abies religiosa) forests of central Mexico. Researchers estimate their population based on how much forest the butterflies occupy. Over the winter of 2024-2025, monarchs covered just 1.79 hectares (4.42 acres); a year later, it was 2.93 hectares (7.24 acres). That works out to more than 61 million monarchs, says Wendy Caldwell, executive director of the monarch butterfly conservation nonprofit Monarch Joint Venture. “It is variable; however, 21 million monarchs per hectare is a generally accepted estimate in the current literature,” she told Mongabay by email. It can take four generations of monarchs to complete the migration journey from Mexico to Canada or the northern United States and back. Much work has gone into protecting the monarch’s winter habitat in Mexico. “One of the greatest achievements&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/eastern-monarch-butterfly-populations-increase-in-2025-but-challenges-remain/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/eastern-monarch-butterfly-populations-increase-in-2025-but-challenges-remain/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>On Manatee Appreciation Day, remember these gentle giants who protect aquatic ecosystems (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/on-manatee-appreciation-day-remember-these-gentle-giants-who-protect-aquatic-ecosystems-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/on-manatee-appreciation-day-remember-these-gentle-giants-who-protect-aquatic-ecosystems-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>24 Mar 2026 14:22:59 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Omar Vidal]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/03/23225005/Photograpg-by-Jorge-Zamora-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=316172</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Activism, Animals, Commentary, Conservation, Endangered Species, Mammals, Marine Animals, Marine Ecosystems, Marine Mammals, and Seagrass]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Along the warm waters of Mexico’s Caribbean coast lives a creature so gentle that sailors once mistook it for a mermaid. Slow-moving, peaceful and curious, manatees have glided through rivers and coastal lagoons for millions of years, long before humans ever set foot on these shores. On Manatee Appreciation Day, it’s worth remembering not only [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Along the warm waters of Mexico’s Caribbean coast lives a creature so gentle that sailors once mistook it for a mermaid. Slow-moving, peaceful and curious, manatees have glided through rivers and coastal lagoons for millions of years, long before humans ever set foot on these shores. On Manatee Appreciation Day, it’s worth remembering not only why these animals matter, but also the people who have dedicated their lives to protecting these gentle giants. One such story begins in Chetumal, a coastal city in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula whose name in the Maya language means “the place where the rains come down.” It is here that a scientist named Dr. Benjamín Morales devoted decades of his life to studying and protecting manatees. In 2003, a newborn manatee calf washed ashore in Laguna Guerrero near Chetumal. He had just been born and had already lost his mother. The calf was weak, alone and unlikely to survive. Dr. Morales stepped in without hesitation, and he named the calf Daniel. Daniel was taken to a small research facility where Morales and a group of students and volunteers nursed him back to health, feeding him from bottles day and night. What began as a rescue soon became something deeper: a bond between human and animal built on patience, trust and care. An Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis) comes up for air. Image courtesy of André Dib. Over the years, Daniel grew into a full-sized manatee with an unmistakable personality. Like many of his species, he had an&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/on-manatee-appreciation-day-remember-these-gentle-giants-who-protect-aquatic-ecosystems-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/on-manatee-appreciation-day-remember-these-gentle-giants-who-protect-aquatic-ecosystems-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>From endangered to invasive: Rare ocelot spotted on Mexico’s Cozumel Island</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/from-endangered-to-invasive-rare-ocelot-spotted-on-mexicos-cozumel-island/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/from-endangered-to-invasive-rare-ocelot-spotted-on-mexicos-cozumel-island/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>18 Mar 2026 22:08:32 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[David Brown]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Bobbybascomb]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/03/18191426/co08-1475-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=315927</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Endangered Species, Invasive Species, Islands, Wildilfe, and Wildlife Conservation]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In 2016, when biologists in Mexico reviewed their photo traps from Cozumel, a Mexican island in the Caribbean, they were surprised to see an ocelot, a wildcat considered endangered in the country. But curiosity soon turned to alarm: ocelots are effective predators of endemic species on the island, which have no experience or natural defense [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In 2016, when biologists in Mexico reviewed their photo traps from Cozumel, a Mexican island in the Caribbean, they were surprised to see an ocelot, a wildcat considered endangered in the country. But curiosity soon turned to alarm: ocelots are effective predators of endemic species on the island, which have no experience or natural defense against the medium-sized wildcat. Luis-Bernardo Vázquez heads a research team at the Urban Ecology Lab, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur-SLCL. He’s been studying the wildlife of Cozumel for years using tools ranging from camera traps to transects and road surveys. “Before 2016 we never detected any ocelot in the island,” he said. “Because we had many years of sampling before that with no records, we think the species was not present on the island before that time.” Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) are declining across much of their range, from the U.S. state of Texas all the way to Uruguay. They’re listed as an endangered species in the United States but, ironically, as an unwanted threat on Cozumel. The presence of an ocelot as an invasive predator on Cozumel Island could be a threat to endemic wildlife like the Cozumel white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus cozumelae), Cozumel harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys spectabilis), Cozumel rice rat (Oryzomys couesi cozumelae), dwarf peccary (Dicotyles tajacu nanus) and Cozumel curassow (Crax rubra griscomi). “A species can be endangered in one place and ecologically damaging in another, and that requires communities to decide what future they want for their island,” David Will of&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/from-endangered-to-invasive-rare-ocelot-spotted-on-mexicos-cozumel-island/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/from-endangered-to-invasive-rare-ocelot-spotted-on-mexicos-cozumel-island/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>Big biodiversity goals run up against small funding realities</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/big-biodiversity-goals-run-up-against-small-funding-realities/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/big-biodiversity-goals-run-up-against-small-funding-realities/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Feb 2026 19:23:35 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/25184549/m.-Hyacinth-Macaw-Anodorhynchus-hyacinthinus-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314817</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global, Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change And Biodiversity, Climate Change Policy, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Law, Environmental Policy, Funding, Habitat Loss, Indigenous Peoples, Wildlife, and Wildlife Conservation]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Mexico’s sundry landscapes have few parallels. Straddling the northern boundary of the Tropic of Cancer, the country boasts low-lying deserts and humid rainforests, scrubby chaparral and tangled mangroves, with long spines of the Sierra Madre stitching the country’s starkly different biomes together. Mexico is home to the third-most mammal species of any country and supports [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Mexico’s sundry landscapes have few parallels. Straddling the northern boundary of the Tropic of Cancer, the country boasts low-lying deserts and humid rainforests, scrubby chaparral and tangled mangroves, with long spines of the Sierra Madre stitching the country’s starkly different biomes together. Mexico is home to the third-most mammal species of any country and supports a whopping 864 species of reptiles, nearly half of which occur only within Mexico’s borders. What’s more, human culture is deeply intertwined with the natural world here, with known traditional uses for almost a quarter — some 5,000 species — of its plants. “Mexico is a ‘megadiverse’ country,” Daniela Carrión, senior director of project design and oversight at the NGO Conservation International, tells Mongabay. The “megadiverse“ moniker is ascribed to 17 countries holding most of the world’s biodiversity. They typically have high levels of endemic species, plants in particular, that occur nowhere else on Earth. Still, Carrión adds, Mexico “faces a lot of challenges that are similar to all countries in terms of land use options and climate change.” Deforestation for agriculture, as well as logging, water scarcity and sea level rise, all threaten to strain the country’s resilience. The Mexican government has a long history of conservation, Carrión says, with recent moves to boost protected areas to 95 million hectares (235 million acres), covering 14% of the country’s land and a quarter of its seas and oceans by the end of 2024. But maintaining such large areas, which the country hopes to expand on&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/big-biodiversity-goals-run-up-against-small-funding-realities/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/big-biodiversity-goals-run-up-against-small-funding-realities/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>Indigenous Ikoots community prepares to relocate as the Pacific floods their town</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/indigenous-ikoots-community-prepares-to-relocate-as-the-pacific-floods-their-town/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/indigenous-ikoots-community-prepares-to-relocate-as-the-pacific-floods-their-town/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Feb 2026 13:47:55 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Euan Wallace]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rebecca Kessler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/24173349/15-birds-take-flight-as-the-sun-sets-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314706</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Conservation, Disasters, Environment, Fish, Flooding, Impact Of Climate Change, Indigenous Communities, Indigenous Peoples, Marine, Marine Conservation, Oceans, and Sea Levels]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[CUAUHTÉMOC, Mexico — On a wind-battered beach in San Mateo del Mar, Mexico, four figures haul a net into shore. Frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens) mark the fishers’ position in a high, twisting column that follows their progress from the water onto the beach. One of the men tosses a small fish onto the sand. It barely [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[CUAUHTÉMOC, Mexico — On a wind-battered beach in San Mateo del Mar, Mexico, four figures haul a net into shore. Frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens) mark the fishers’ position in a high, twisting column that follows their progress from the water onto the beach. One of the men tosses a small fish onto the sand. It barely comes to rest before a dark bird wheels down from the sky to claim it. The man is José Rangel Edison, 57, a fisher from the community of Cuauhtémoc, an Indigenous Ikoots community of 900 people in the municipality of San Mateo del Mar, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. “In the past, the sea used to be over there,” Edison says, pointing to the horizon across the cresting waves. “But since I was 18, when I started fishing, it’s been coming in little by little. Now it has almost wiped out Cuauhtémoc.” Edison’s community is perched on a slim stretch of land between the ocean and a large lagoon system. Now, rapid se level advance is displacing residents and disrupting daily life. According to a report from the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, the Pacific Ocean consumed 8.4 meters (27.5 feet) of Cuauhtémoc’s land per year between 1967 and 2014, while locals describe a larger encroachment of around 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) since the first half of the 20th century. Two Cuauhtémoc residents walk past a dead tree as they make their way toward the ocean. Image by Euan Wallace for Mongabay. The effect on&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/indigenous-ikoots-community-prepares-to-relocate-as-the-pacific-floods-their-town/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/indigenous-ikoots-community-prepares-to-relocate-as-the-pacific-floods-their-town/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<title>Mexico considers shrinking protected areas for endangered vaquita porpoise</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mexico-considers-shrinking-protected-areas-for-endangered-vaquita-porpoise/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mexico-considers-shrinking-protected-areas-for-endangered-vaquita-porpoise/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Feb 2026 20:57:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Maxwell Radwin]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rebecca Kessler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Biodiversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fishing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Fishing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Law Enforcement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mammals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oceans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protected Areas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wildlife Conservation]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/10192935/Screenshot-2026-02-10-132642-768x450.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314049</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Baja California, Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Law, Environmental Politics, Fishing, Illegal Fishing, Oceans, Protected Areas, Vaquita, Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation, and Wildlife Trade]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials have proposed scaling back fishing regulations meant to protect a narrow stretch of ocean home to the last 10 remaining vaquitas, the world’s smallest species of porpoise. If implemented, the changes could shrink protected areas and open up vessel traffic in the northern Gulf of California, the stretch of water [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials have proposed scaling back fishing regulations meant to protect a narrow stretch of ocean home to the last 10 remaining vaquitas, the world’s smallest species of porpoise. If implemented, the changes could shrink protected areas and open up vessel traffic in the northern Gulf of California, the stretch of water between Baja California and mainland Mexico where the vaquita (Phocoena sinus) is endemic. The proposal cites scientific research and aims to satisfy local fishing communities, but conservation groups say the changes in it could lead to the porpoise’s extinction. “I don’t think we can forget that this is the most endangered marine mammal in the world,” Sarah Doleman, senior ocean campaigner for the U.K.-based NGO the Environmental Investigation Agency, told Mongabay. “With such a small population of 10 individuals, any effort to reduce the measures that are in place at the moment, and to enforce those measures fully, would be a real threat to the future of this species.” The proposal, not yet public but reviewed by Mongabay, is being developed by several government agencies, including the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT). Input on it came from fishing industry representatives and an “interinstitutional group” assembled by the government that the proposal does not identify. The vaquita measures just 1.5 meters (5 feet) in length, weighs 54 kilograms (120 pounds) and features dark circles around its eyes. Its numbers have been steadily declining from under 600 when scientists first surveyed the species in 1997, with&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mexico-considers-shrinking-protected-areas-for-endangered-vaquita-porpoise/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/mexico-considers-shrinking-protected-areas-for-endangered-vaquita-porpoise/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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						<item>
					<title>How intermediaries are reshaping mangrove restoration</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/california-ngo-uses-science-storytelling-to-boost-global-mangrove-restoration/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/california-ngo-uses-science-storytelling-to-boost-global-mangrove-restoration/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>06 Feb 2026 16:25:43 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Marina Martinez]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/06094551/1-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=313853</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Asia, East Africa, Florida, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, North America, Southeast Asia, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Coastal Ecosystems, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Illegal Logging, Mangroves, Restoration, and Trees]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Mangrove forests, located along tropical and subtropical coastlines, are increasingly recognized for their role in buffering climate disasters, storing carbon, supporting wildlife and livelihoods. Yet even as interest in mangrove conservation and restoration has surged in recent years, many projects fail — seedlings die, sites degrade further or communities disengage. One reason, according to Catherine [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Mangrove forests, located along tropical and subtropical coastlines, are increasingly recognized for their role in buffering climate disasters, storing carbon, supporting wildlife and livelihoods. Yet even as interest in mangrove conservation and restoration has surged in recent years, many projects fail — seedlings die, sites degrade further or communities disengage. One reason, according to Catherine Lovelock, professor in the School of the Environment at the University of Queensland in Australia and expert in mangrove ecology, is that restoration efforts are often led by small community groups with limited resources and expertise. In fact, studies have shown that around 70% of mangrove restoration projects in some regions, particularly Southeast Asia and Latin America, have low rates of success. To bridge this gap, a growing number of environmental nonprofits are tapping into their experience with fundraising and resource mobilization to help local communities more effectively conduct restoration. Seatrees, a California-based NGO (formerly known as Sustainable Surf), is one such organization. Rather than running projects itself, the organization partners with local community groups and other NGOs, providing funding, scientific expertise and media support to boost coastal and marine restoration efforts worldwide, including mangroves. Over the past five years, Seatrees has supported mangrove restoration projects in Kenya, Mexico, the U.S. and Indonesia “by providing much needed funds to scale up tree planting, produce storytelling materials and build capacity in science, monitoring and impact measurement,” Leah Hays, the program director, told Mongabay. Seatrees is one of nearly 130 organizations worldwide identified by researchers at the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/california-ngo-uses-science-storytelling-to-boost-global-mangrove-restoration/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/california-ngo-uses-science-storytelling-to-boost-global-mangrove-restoration/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>Biologist kidnapped in Mexico</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/01/biologist-kidnapped-in-mexico/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/01/biologist-kidnapped-in-mexico/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>04 Jan 2026 15:57:57 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/04155413/loranca-01-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=312583</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Founder's briefs]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mesoamerica, and Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Conservation, Endangered Environmentalists, Environment, Green, Herps, and Violence]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the mountains of central Veracruz, scientific work is rarely abstract. It means walking narrow paths through cloud forest, speaking patiently with communities, and learning to read landscapes that yield information slowly. It also means accepting risk as a condition of knowledge. Field research unfolds in places where the state is often distant and authority [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In the mountains of central Veracruz, scientific work is rarely abstract. It means walking narrow paths through cloud forest, speaking patiently with communities, and learning to read landscapes that yield information slowly. It also means accepting risk as a condition of knowledge. Field research unfolds in places where the state is often distant and authority is uneven. That context matters for understanding the disappearance of Miguel Ángel de la Torre Loranca, a Mexican biologist who was kidnapped on November 21, 2025, after leaving his home in the Sierra de Zongolica. He had gone out in response to what was described as a request for dialogue. Hours later, his family received a ransom demand. After an initial payment, communication stopped. Since then, there has been no verified information about his whereabouts. De la Torre Loranca was not a public figure in the conventional sense. He was known locally for his work rather than his profile: a herpetologist who documented reptiles most people avoided, an educator who helped build institutions in regions rarely centered in national debates, and a guide who believed that conservation depended on familiarity rather than fear. Over decades of fieldwork, he contributed to the description of multiple species and trained students who learned to treat data collection as work with real consequences. One snake from Oaxaca, Geophis lorancai, bears his name, an honor usually conferred after a career has run its course. Photo by Loranca. There was also administrative work, less visible but equally durable. As the first&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/01/biologist-kidnapped-in-mexico/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>Up close with Mexico’s fish-eating bats: Interview with researcher José Juan Flores Martínez</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/up-close-with-mexicos-fish-eating-bats-interview-with-researcher-jose-juan-flores-martinez/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/up-close-with-mexicos-fish-eating-bats-interview-with-researcher-jose-juan-flores-martinez/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>31 Dec 2025 17:54:07 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Astrid Arellano]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/30230254/murcielago-pescador-cover3-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=312388</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bats, Coastal Ecosystems, Deserts, Ecology, Endangered, Endangered Species, Environment, Evolution, Fishing, Green, Interviews, Invasive Species, Islands, Mammals, Marine Ecosystems, Ocean, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the early 2000s, José Juan Flores Martínez was studying for a bachelor’s degree in biology and working as a volunteer in a program designed to control invasive rodents on islands in the Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico, which are home to several seabird colonies. On one of those expeditions, his group traveled to [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In the early 2000s, José Juan Flores Martínez was studying for a bachelor’s degree in biology and working as a volunteer in a program designed to control invasive rodents on islands in the Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico, which are home to several seabird colonies. On one of those expeditions, his group traveled to Isla Partida Norte near the city of La Paz, where something surprised them: they heard bats. Accustomed to seeing them in caves, Flores Martínez was intrigued when he saw them coming out from between the rocks and making clicking sounds under his feet. “It surprised me to find out that they were on an island, in the middle of the desert, under extreme conditions: They can resist sub[-freezing] temperatures and heat above 50 degrees [Celsius, or about 122° Fahrenheit],” said Flores Martínez, now an academic technician at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Institute of Biology. “But it was much more surprising to me that, when I began to ask questions, I was told that they feed on fish.” They were fish-eating bats (Myotis vivesi), and they fascinated Flores Martínez. This fascination led him, along with researcher Gerardo Herrera Montalvo, to embark on a scientific journey that has lasted a quarter of a century and counting. The fish-eating bat is the largest bat in its genus, reaching up to 16 centimeters (about 6 inches) in length. Its long, shiny fur is waterproof, which comes in handy as it maneuvers above the surface of the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/up-close-with-mexicos-fish-eating-bats-interview-with-researcher-jose-juan-flores-martinez/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>Joann Andrews, a patient force behind Yucatán’s protected landscapes</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/joann-andrews-a-patient-force-behind-yucatans-protected-landscapes/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/joann-andrews-a-patient-force-behind-yucatans-protected-landscapes/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Dec 2025 21:36:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/27214052/Joann_Andrews-bw-16x9-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=312072</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mesoamerica, and Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Conservation, Environment, Forests, Obituary, and Protected Areas]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Conservation has a habit of being treated as either romance or emergency. In practice it is closer to logistics: permits, budgets, awkward meetings, long drives, and the slow work of persuading people who would rather be left alone. In places where the state is under-resourced and land is already spoken for, success often depends less [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Conservation has a habit of being treated as either romance or emergency. In practice it is closer to logistics: permits, budgets, awkward meetings, long drives, and the slow work of persuading people who would rather be left alone. In places where the state is under-resourced and land is already spoken for, success often depends less on grand theory than on an ability to make institutions behave decently. That was the terrain in which Joann Andrews operated for more than four decades on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. She helped turn a region better known to outsiders for ruins and resorts into a proving ground for modern Mexican conservation, one that tried to protect wildlife without pretending that communities could be edited out of the landscape. She died on December 22nd 2025 in Mérida, aged 96. She arrived in Yucatán in 1964 after marrying the archaeologist E. Wyllys Andrews IV. When he died of cancer in 1971, she faced the choice that confronts many expatriates after tragedy: return to the familiar, or stay with the life already built. She stayed. The decision kept her in Mexico with six children and anchored her to a peninsula whose natural systems she would come to know with the intimate specificity of a field notebook. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, on January 10th 1929, she studied political science at Columbia University, graduating in 1951, and later took a master’s degree in international economics at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. Before Mexico, she spent a decade&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/joann-andrews-a-patient-force-behind-yucatans-protected-landscapes/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>Mexico is inflating its climate spending by billions of dollars. Here’s how.</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/mexico-is-inflating-its-climate-spending-by-billions-of-dollars-heres-how/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/mexico-is-inflating-its-climate-spending-by-billions-of-dollars-heres-how/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Dec 2025 14:38:43 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Maxwell Radwin]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservation Finance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deforestation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Forest Destruction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Forests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[greenhouse gas emissions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indigenous Peoples]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Infrastructure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oil Drilling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protected Areas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tropical Forests]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/10061235/AP22215709274247-768x450.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310973</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Carbon Finance, Climate Change, Conservation, Conservation Finance, Environment, Environmental Law, Environmental Politics, Finance, Forests, Indigenous Peoples, Oil, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Sustainable Development, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[MEXICO CITY — In its fiscal budget for 2026, passed in November, the Mexican government promised funds for renewable energy, protected areas and other environmental concerns. But much of what’s labeled as climate spending actually has nothing to do with the environment, and may even exaggerate how much is being spent, a review of the [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[MEXICO CITY — In its fiscal budget for 2026, passed in November, the Mexican government promised funds for renewable energy, protected areas and other environmental concerns. But much of what’s labeled as climate spending actually has nothing to do with the environment, and may even exaggerate how much is being spent, a review of the budget shows. Line items in the government budget reveal that funds earmarked for the clean energy transition and combatting climate change are instead going to infrastructure, oil and gas, and other projects largely unrelated to the environment. “Climate action hasn’t been prioritized in the budget,” said Anaid Velasco Ramírez, public policy and legal research manager at the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA). “In fact, much of the public budget is allocated to projects that generate large emissions, starting with the energy sector.” President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last year touting her climate science background, said she wanted to address energy demands with renewable sources. But her government is also worried about the country’s dwindling proven oil reserves, leading it to invest in new oil exploration at the same time that it’s promising an ambitious clean energy transition. The government is spending 17.9 billion pesos ($983 million) next year on its Energy Transition National Strategy, up nearly 55% from the previous year. It’s also spending 212.6 billion pesos ($11.7 billion) on “resources for the adaptation and mitigation of the effects of climate change.” But those figures don’t come close to what’s allocated for the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/mexico-is-inflating-its-climate-spending-by-billions-of-dollars-heres-how/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<title>The last of the Vaquita Porpoise (cartoon)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/custom-story/2025/12/the-last-of-the-vaquita-porpoise-cartoon/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/custom-story/2025/12/the-last-of-the-vaquita-porpoise-cartoon/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Dec 2025 19:16:25 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rohan Chakravarty]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Nandithachandraprakash]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/09185913/thumbs_23-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=custom-story&#038;p=310941</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Environment, Marine Animals, Marine Biodiversity, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Oceans, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[With an estimated less than 10 individuals alive, the vaquita porpoise of the Gulf of California is on the brink of extinction. Entanglement in gill nets used for fishing totoaba fish in the Sea of Cortez has been the prime threat to vaquitas, and while bans are already in place, the lack of enforcement leaves [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[With an estimated less than 10 individuals alive, the vaquita porpoise of the Gulf of California is on the brink of extinction. Entanglement in gill nets used for fishing totoaba fish in the Sea of Cortez has been the prime threat to vaquitas, and while bans are already in place, the lack of enforcement leaves little hope for the critically endangered porpoises.This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/custom-story/2025/12/the-last-of-the-vaquita-porpoise-cartoon/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<title>The Indigenous women changing the course of their communities</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-indigenous-women-changing-the-course-of-their-communities/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-indigenous-women-changing-the-course-of-their-communities/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>04 Dec 2025 12:27:47 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Astrid Arellano]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/04122109/Captura-de-pantalla-2025-09-03-a-las-4.43.50-p.m-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310599</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Colombia, Latin America, Mexico, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Environment, Indigenous Groups, Indigenous Peoples, and Women in conservation]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Indigenous women leaders don’t only sustain life in their territories; they are also active defenders of water, seeds, ancestral knowledge and biodiversity. Together, they lead environmental restoration processes and care for the health of their communities. They also pave the way for political participation, claiming spaces where decision-making affects their communities. “Our fight is collective [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Indigenous women leaders don’t only sustain life in their territories; they are also active defenders of water, seeds, ancestral knowledge and biodiversity. Together, they lead environmental restoration processes and care for the health of their communities. They also pave the way for political participation, claiming spaces where decision-making affects their communities. “Our fight is collective and our resistance is ancestral. Let’s continue sowing resistance, sowing identity,” says Ketty Marcelo, president of the National Organization of Indigenous Andean and Amazonian Women of Peru (ONAMIAP). Marcelo says the legacy of their female ancestors is an inspiration and also a guide for Indigenous women to face down historical challenges, resist structural racism and violence, promote economic justice, and strengthen identity in the next generation. In this article first published by Mongabay Latam for the International Day of Indigenous Women on Sept. 5, we share the initiatives of three women leaders from Peru, Mexico and Colombia, whose actions are paving the way toward a better future for Indigenous people. International Day of Indigenous Women has been celebrated every Sept. 5 since 1983 to give visibility to Indigenous women’s achievements and the challenges they face. Image courtesy of ONAMIAP. Peru: Naming water to protect it In Indigenous territories in Peru, each water spring has a name, and each of them is a symbol of resistance. Women are the guardians of the water, and each source is enshrined with a ceremony. In a healing ritual, the elders speak to the water, while the rest of the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/the-indigenous-women-changing-the-course-of-their-communities/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>Saving critical winter habitat for monarch butterflies may depend on buy-in from their human neighbors</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/saving-critical-winter-habitat-for-monarch-butterflies-may-depend-on-buy-in-from-their-human-neighbors/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/saving-critical-winter-habitat-for-monarch-butterflies-may-depend-on-buy-in-from-their-human-neighbors/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Dec 2025 13:39:14 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claudia Steiner]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/03133322/Photo4_Monarch-butterfly-resting-on-a-plant-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310462</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America, Latin America, Mesoamerica, and Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Butterflies, Community Forestry, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, Forests, Green, Insects, Invertebrates, UCSC, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) population has plummeted by 80% to 95% since the 1990s, depending on the region and monitoring method. A major cause of the species’ decline is deforestation in central Mexico, where eastern monarchs spend the colder winter months of their annual migration from Canada and the northern United States. Since 1980, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) population has plummeted by 80% to 95% since the 1990s, depending on the region and monitoring method. A major cause of the species’ decline is deforestation in central Mexico, where eastern monarchs spend the colder winter months of their annual migration from Canada and the northern United States. Since 1980, the Mexican government has worked to conserve critical winter monarch habitat by cracking down on logging, one of the leading causes of habitat degradation. They ultimately designated 563 square kilometers (217 square miles) of forest as the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, banning logging, hunting, and foraging in certain locations and restricting it in others. Mountains in central/southern Mexico. Photo by José López-García The project has yielded mixed results for the habitat, however, with logging continuing in some areas despite the prohibition. To understand why, a team of researchers studied the protection of the forest with a focus on how the involvement of the local communities affected conservation outcomes in the Reserve over a 50-year period. The study, published in Environmental Conservation, demonstrates that community buy-in can make or break a conservation project. “People must be consulted in order for the conservation strategy to be successful,” said study co-author Gustavo Cruz-Bello, an ecologist and social scientist at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. Oyamel fir trees. Photo by José López-García The Reserve represents a complex web of human and natural interdependence. Monarchs rely on the oyamel fir forest in the mountains of the Michoacán and&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/saving-critical-winter-habitat-for-monarch-butterflies-may-depend-on-buy-in-from-their-human-neighbors/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>Solar-lights protect sea turtles from fishing nets, Mexico trials show</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/solar-lit-fishing-nets-cut-sea-turtle-bycatch-by-63-mexico-trials-show/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/solar-lit-fishing-nets-cut-sea-turtle-bycatch-by-63-mexico-trials-show/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Nov 2025 22:04:16 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Lizkimbrough]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Biodiversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oceans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pacific Ocean]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turtles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wildlife Conservation]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/28215521/Low-Res_ASUResearcherJesseSenko_03.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310353</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Baja California, Latin America, and Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the waters off Isla el Pardito, where rocky reefs meet mangrove swamps in Mexico&#8217;s Gulf of California, marine biologists and veteran fishers are using the power of the sun to protect endangered sea turtles. This region has some of the highest reported rates of turtles being accidentally caught in fishing nets, a problem known [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In the waters off Isla el Pardito, where rocky reefs meet mangrove swamps in Mexico&#8217;s Gulf of California, marine biologists and veteran fishers are using the power of the sun to protect endangered sea turtles. This region has some of the highest reported rates of turtles being accidentally caught in fishing nets, a problem known as bycatch that poses one of the biggest threats to marine turtle populations worldwide. So researchers from the U.S. worked with local fishers to attach solar-powered lights, designed as floating buoys, onto gill nets to alert turtles to the presence of the nets. They found that this reduced sea turtle bycatch by 63% during controlled experiments, according to a study published in Conservation Letters. All 67 green turtles (Chelonia mydas) captured during the study were released alive. The idea for the solar-powered lights came from three workshops starting in 2018, where scientists and fishers worked together to find alternatives to existing lights that use disposable batteries or chemical sticks. Traditional LED lights require regular battery replacements, and chemical light sticks only last 24 hours, leading to greater costs and waste. &#8220;They took us into account and gave us the freedom to give our opinions and make modifications,” said Juan Pablo Cuevas Amador, a fisher from the community of El Pardito who participated in developing and testing the devices and is listed as a co-author of the study. “For us, it&#8217;s important that it be done in collaboration because with what they know and what we&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/solar-lit-fishing-nets-cut-sea-turtle-bycatch-by-63-mexico-trials-show/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<title>It’s ‘whack-a-mole’: Alarming rise in pet trade fuels wildlife trafficking into California</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/its-whack-a-mole-alarming-rise-in-pet-trade-fuels-wildlife-trafficking-into-california/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/its-whack-a-mole-alarming-rise-in-pet-trade-fuels-wildlife-trafficking-into-california/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Nov 2025 13:38:58 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Spoorthy Raman]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/20104758/orange-fronted-parakeet-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=309886</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[California, Latin America, Mexico, North America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Birds, Conservation, Crime, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Crime, Environmental Law, Illegal Trade, Law, Law Enforcement, Pet Trade, Pets, Trade, Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation, Wildlife Crime, and Wildlife Trade]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In October, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at California&#8217;s Otay Mesa border crossing noticed an odd bulge inside a man&#8217;s pants. Jesse Agus Martinez, a U.S. citizen who lives in Tijuana, repeatedly claimed the bump was “pirrin,” a Spanish word for penis. His history of smuggling birds into the U.S. prompted further examination, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In October, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at California&#8217;s Otay Mesa border crossing noticed an odd bulge inside a man&#8217;s pants. Jesse Agus Martinez, a U.S. citizen who lives in Tijuana, repeatedly claimed the bump was “pirrin,” a Spanish word for penis. His history of smuggling birds into the U.S. prompted further examination, and the officer found two brown sacks hidden in his underwear. Each contained an unconscious, heavily sedated orange-fronted parakeet (Eupsittula canicularis). He was indicted by a grand jury on November 14 for illegally importing the birds — a protected species native to Mexico and Costa Rica. Earlier that month, investigators with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) uncovered an alleged illegal trafficking operation dealing in rare animal parts that was linked to an unnamed Los Angeles-based business. Officials seized thousands of elephant ivory pieces, nine rhino horns, several carved tusks and a sea turtle shell, which will be analyzed at the department’s Wildlife Forensics Lab. As of publication, no arrests have been made. These incidents offer a glimpse into the range of wildlife flowing illegally into the state: birds, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates. “The recent trends in illegal wildlife trafficking into California show a marked rise in the smuggling of live, high-value species protected under CITES and the Endangered Species Act,” said Denise Larison, acting regional supervisor for wildlife inspection at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). “The top three right now that we&#8217;re seeing in California [are] live reptiles, live corals …&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/its-whack-a-mole-alarming-rise-in-pet-trade-fuels-wildlife-trafficking-into-california/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<title>Scientists &#038; nuns unite to save Mexico’s rare achoque salamanders</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/scientists-nuns-unite-to-save-mexicos-rare-achoque-salamanders/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/scientists-nuns-unite-to-save-mexicos-rare-achoque-salamanders/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>18 Nov 2025 12:14:40 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/27191851/Chester-zoo-science-project-brings-high-tech-hopes-for-critically-endangered-salamanders-Achoque-at-Chester-Zoo-20-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=309741</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Amphibian Crisis, Amphibians, Animals, Biodiversity, Captive Breeding, Conservation, Conservation and Religion, Critically Endangered Species, Forest Recovery, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Hope and optimism, Religions, Salamanders, and Technology]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[For the last 20 years, Dominican nuns in a Mexican monastery have cared for the largest known captive population of the critically endangered achoque salamander. Now scientists from Chester Zoo in the U.K. are collaborating with the sisters and Mexican conservationists to test a microchipping method that they hope will help them monitor the species’ [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[For the last 20 years, Dominican nuns in a Mexican monastery have cared for the largest known captive population of the critically endangered achoque salamander. Now scientists from Chester Zoo in the U.K. are collaborating with the sisters and Mexican conservationists to test a microchipping method that they hope will help them monitor the species’ dwindling wild population, reports Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough. Fewer than 150 adult achoque salamanders (Ambystoma dumerilii) are thought to remain in the wild, all of them in Lake Pátzcuaro in Mexico’s central Michoacán state. Adding urgency to the situation, the lake is shrinking in size and growing increasingly polluted with sewage, fertilizer runoff and sediment from deforestation, Kimbrough reports. In the 1980s, when Lake Pátzcuaro’s wild salamander population declined drastically, the Dominican sisters at the Monastery of Our Lady of Health began raising achoques in captivity at their monastery. They traditionally used achoques to produce a cough syrup, which became the convent’s main source of income. Over the years, the nuns worked out how to get the salamanders to breed successfully in captivity, and how to raise their babies. Today, the breeding facility includes two rooms filled with tanks housing hundreds of salamanders at a time. The Chester Zoo scientists wanted to use captive achoques to test a new tagging method — small, rice grain-sized microchips — before deploying them on wild individuals. If the microchipping was successful, the team planned to use the technique to tag wild achoques to ID and monitor them via a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/scientists-nuns-unite-to-save-mexicos-rare-achoque-salamanders/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
														</item>
						<item>
					<title>In Mexico, world’s smallest turtle faces big threats from trafficking, habitat loss</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/in-mexico-worlds-smallest-turtle-faces-big-threats-from-trafficking-habitat-loss/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/in-mexico-worlds-smallest-turtle-faces-big-threats-from-trafficking-habitat-loss/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>18 Nov 2025 11:00:37 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sandra Weiss]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Biodiversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Community-based Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Critically Endangered Species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Habitat Destruction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Habitat Loss]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poaching]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reptiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Species]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[species identification]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turtles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wildlife Conservation]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/14104409/1-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=309409</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Rediscovered Species, Reptiles, Turtles, Wildlife Conservation, Wildlife Crime, Wildlife Rehabilitation, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It sounds like a scene out of the Ocean&#8217;s series of heist movies. Only this one didn’t happen in Las Vegas, but at a Mexican university campus surrounded by lush tropical vegetation. And it wasn’t about taking on a casino, but stealing valuable turtles. Armando Escobedo Galván, a biologist at Centro Universitario de la Costa [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It sounds like a scene out of the Ocean&#8217;s series of heist movies. Only this one didn’t happen in Las Vegas, but at a Mexican university campus surrounded by lush tropical vegetation. And it wasn’t about taking on a casino, but stealing valuable turtles. Armando Escobedo Galván, a biologist at Centro Universitario de la Costa (CUC) in Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, says he’s still startled about how the thieves tricked him last December. “Two people arrived at my office,” he recounts, “wearing uniforms of the environmental prosecutor&#8217;s office,” a federal agency known as PROFEPA. They said they were there for an inspection of his turtle program, asked for his permits, and cited corresponding laws. Everything during the two-hour procedure seemed completely normal. Then they asked to see the laboratory where the turtles were kept for scientific research: a climate-controlled container, secured with a padlock. That&#8217;s when the problems began. The officials criticized the way the turtles were being kept and complained about missing permits. Escobedo Galván says he started feeling stressed. They threatened to punish him, he says, so he was relieved when they offered instead to take 40 of the 100 turtles into their “protection” while he sorted out the necessary paperwork. “We&#8217;ll bring them back when everything is in order,” Escobedo Galván recalls them telling him. “That was a psychological masterpiece,” he says. “They put me under pressure and then offered a solution.” Measuring only 10 centimeters (4 inches) in length, the Vallarta mud turtle is&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/in-mexico-worlds-smallest-turtle-faces-big-threats-from-trafficking-habitat-loss/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<title>Massive turtle bust in Mexico reveals ‘Wild West’ of wildlife trafficking</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/massive-turtle-bust-in-mexico-reveals-wild-west-of-wildlife-trafficking/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/massive-turtle-bust-in-mexico-reveals-wild-west-of-wildlife-trafficking/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>14 Nov 2025 17:25:18 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Spoorthy Raman]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sharon Guynup]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/13181725/IMG_3677-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=309502</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Crime, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Crime, Environmental Law, Freshwater Animals, freshwater turtles, Illegal Trade, Law, Turtles, Turtles And Tortoises, Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation, Wildlife Crime, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In undercover raids carried out in late September, Mexican authorities discovered 2,339 wild-caught turtles crammed into bins in five locations in Jalisco and Baja California states. Along with the live reptiles, they found a massive stash of other illegal wildlife products that are coveted as delicacies in East Asia: 1,569 kilograms (3,459 pounds) of sea [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In undercover raids carried out in late September, Mexican authorities discovered 2,339 wild-caught turtles crammed into bins in five locations in Jalisco and Baja California states. Along with the live reptiles, they found a massive stash of other illegal wildlife products that are coveted as delicacies in East Asia: 1,569 kilograms (3,459 pounds) of sea cucumbers, 1,188 kg (2,619 lbs) of shark fins, and 39 kg (86 lbs) of totoaba swim bladders. The seized goods were valued at 134 million pesos ($7.3 million). They were destined for the U.S. and East Asia, according to Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office. Authorities arrested three people and charged them with running an organized wildlife trafficking network through an unnamed Guadalajara-based company. The seizure — the largest since 2020, when authorities nabbed 15,000 turtles in Mexico City, also destined for China — highlights the scale of this illicit activity. It was the result of a 10-month-long operation, launched after 55 critically endangered Vallarta mud turtles (Kinosternon vogti) were stolen from a university lab in the city of Puerto Vallarta in January 2025. But this operation had a notable difference, said Taggert Butterfield, the scientific director at the turtle conservation nonprofit Estudiantes Conservando la Naturaleza (Students Conserving Nature) in Mexico. “This is the first major bust where the government used intelligence [gathering] and collaboration with other agencies to make a significant confiscation.” One of the more than 900 Tabasco mud turtle (Kinosternon acutum) seized by authorities. These turtles are a local delicacy in Mexico, despite being&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/11/massive-turtle-bust-in-mexico-reveals-wild-west-of-wildlife-trafficking/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<title>Iguanas on Mexico’s Clarion Island likely native, not introduced by people: Study</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/iguanas-on-mexicos-clarion-island-likely-native-not-introduced-by-people-study/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/iguanas-on-mexicos-clarion-island-likely-native-not-introduced-by-people-study/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Nov 2025 12:48:52 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay.com]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/11/12124445/DSCN2131_DGMcc-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=309379</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Evolution, Green, Invasive Species, Islands, Research, Wildlife, and Wildlife Conservation]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Researchers have long speculated that humans introduced spiny-tailed iguanas to Mexico’s remote Clarion Island about 50 years ago. However, a recent study suggests the Clarion iguanas are likely native to the island, arriving long before human colonization of the Americas. Clarion Island is the westernmost and oldest of a small group of islands in Mexico’s [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Researchers have long speculated that humans introduced spiny-tailed iguanas to Mexico’s remote Clarion Island about 50 years ago. However, a recent study suggests the Clarion iguanas are likely native to the island, arriving long before human colonization of the Americas. Clarion Island is the westernmost and oldest of a small group of islands in Mexico’s Revillagigedo Archipelago. Despite its remoteness, the island is home to endemic wildlife, including two snake species and a lizard species, and at least three species or subspecies of birds. In the 1970s, the Mexican military brought some nonnative animals to Clarion, including pigs, sheep and rabbits, which transformed the island’s native flora. Along with the domestic animals, biologists speculated the military also introduced a population of spiny-tailed iguanas (Ctenosaura pectinata) sometime between the 1970s and 1990s. Wildlife records from earlier expeditions to Clarion hadn’t mentioned the lizards. When Daniel Mulcahy from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin and first author of the new study visited the island in 2013 and 2023 to study snakes, he began to suspect the Clarion iguanas were different from those on the mainland. Genetic analysis confirmed his suspicion. The team found the island iguanas diverged from their mainland relatives roughly 425,000 years ago. According to some recent estimates, humans arrived in North America much later, roughly 23,000 years ago. The researchers hypothesize that spiny-tailed iguanas likely arrived on Clarion from the Mexican mainland, a distance of about 1,100 kilometers (700 miles), by floating on vegetation mats across the Pacific. Once&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/iguanas-on-mexicos-clarion-island-likely-native-not-introduced-by-people-study/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<title>Mexico adopts protections for Atlantic sharks</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/mexico-adopts-protections-for-atlantic-sharks/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/mexico-adopts-protections-for-atlantic-sharks/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Oct 2025 11:14:07 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Shreya Dasgupta]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Bobbybascomb]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/28111022/Oceanic_Whitetip_Shark_cropped-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=308429</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Ocean, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Law, Governance, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Biodiversity, Oceans, Sharks, and Sharks And Rays]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Mexico recently adopted national regulations protecting several threatened shark species in the Atlantic from being caught or retained as bycatch. Shark conservationists welcome the protections but say they are long overdue, coming years after the country’s commitments to a multilateral fishery regulator. Mexican fisheries catch a significant number of various shark species in the Atlantic [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Mexico recently adopted national regulations protecting several threatened shark species in the Atlantic from being caught or retained as bycatch. Shark conservationists welcome the protections but say they are long overdue, coming years after the country’s commitments to a multilateral fishery regulator. Mexican fisheries catch a significant number of various shark species in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The new rules are meant for longline fisheries operating within all the waters managed under the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. These fisheries are now prohibited from retaining on board, storing, transshipping, disembarking or offering for sale five types of sharks, either whole or in part. These are the vulnerable bigeye thresher (Alopias superciliosus) and silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis), the critically endangered oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus), the endangered shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus), and hammerhead sharks (genus Sphyrna) — with the exception of the endangered bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo). The new regulations are based on ICCAT recommendations, the government said in a press release. ICCAT is responsible for the management of tuna and similar species in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas. While ICCAT’s recommendations are legally binding for member states, including Mexico, each country must adopt them into its national laws to become locally enforceable. The recent Mexican regulations enshrine ICCAT recommendations that were made between 2009 and 2021. “With this measure, Mexico complies with international commitments  and promotes  responsible, sustainable fishing practices that respect protected species,” Mexico’s National&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/mexico-adopts-protections-for-atlantic-sharks/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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						<item>
					<title>Nuns, scientists &#038; microchips: An alliance to save Mexico&#8217;s achoque salamanders</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/nuns-scientists-microchips-an-alliance-to-save-mexicos-achoque-salamanders/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/nuns-scientists-microchips-an-alliance-to-save-mexicos-achoque-salamanders/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Oct 2025 19:30:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Lizkimbrough]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Biodiversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Happy-upbeat Environmental]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Herps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[salamaders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildlife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wildlife Conservation]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/27185429/achoque-eating-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=308377</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America, Latin America, and Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In a monastery beside a 16th-century basilica in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, Dominican nuns move between rows of aquarium tanks, checking water quality and feeding earthworms to hundreds of brown salamanders with flowing gills. Sister Ofelia Morales Francisco has cared for the critically endangered achoque salamander (Ambystoma dumerilii) for nearly 20 years. She and her team have [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In a monastery beside a 16th-century basilica in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, Dominican nuns move between rows of aquarium tanks, checking water quality and feeding earthworms to hundreds of brown salamanders with flowing gills. Sister Ofelia Morales Francisco has cared for the critically endangered achoque salamander (Ambystoma dumerilii) for nearly 20 years. She and her team have mastered the amphibians’ complex reproductive biology, raising generation after generation in tanks that have become an unexpected ark. This species, the achoque (pronounced ah-choke-eh), is known from only one lake on the planet, Lake Pátzcuaro in Mexico&#8217;s central Michoacán state. Scientists estimate that fewer than 150 adults remain in the wild. However, the monastery boasts a colony of around 300 salamanders, representing the largest known captive population in the world. Scientists from Chester Zoo in the United Kingdom recognized that the monastery&#8217;s thriving colony offered an opportunity. They collaborated with Mexican conservationists to determine whether small, rice-sized identification chips could be implanted in captive achoques without harming the animals. Dominican sisters at the Monastery of Our Lady of Health watch as researchers place microchips in critically endangered salamander. The nuns maintain the largest captive colony of this species of salamander. Photo courtesy of Chester Zoo, UK. The microchips could enable conservationists to identify individual wild salamanders during catch-and-release health checks. With a quick scan, researchers can access information including sex, health status and approximate age for each animal. According to their results, published in the Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research, the microchips stayed in&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/nuns-scientists-microchips-an-alliance-to-save-mexicos-achoque-salamanders/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<title>A week after floods, swathes of central Mexico reel from devastation</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/a-week-after-floods-swathes-of-central-mexico-reel-from-devastation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/a-week-after-floods-swathes-of-central-mexico-reel-from-devastation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>16 Oct 2025 18:46:37 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Associated Press]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/16184212/AP25289059864672-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=307832</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change And Extreme Weather, Extreme Weather, and Flooding]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[POZA RICA, Mexico (AP) — The stench of decay spread for several miles around Poza Rica on Wednesday, one of the areas hardest hit by last week’s torrential rains that flooded central and eastern Mexico. In the center of this oil-producing city near the Gulf of Mexico, a lingering cloud of dust hovered over the main avenue [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[POZA RICA, Mexico (AP) — The stench of decay spread for several miles around Poza Rica on Wednesday, one of the areas hardest hit by last week’s torrential rains that flooded central and eastern Mexico. In the center of this oil-producing city near the Gulf of Mexico, a lingering cloud of dust hovered over the main avenue where soldiers worked nonstop. Farther east, near the Cazones River — which overflowed on Friday — several streets still lay under 3 feet (1 meter) of water and mud, topped by another 6 feet (2 meters) of piled-up trash, furniture, and debris. “A week later, this looks horrible — worse. You can’t even cross the street,” lamented Ana Luz Saucedo, who fled with her children when the water came rushing in “like the sea.” Now she fears infection because, in addition to the garbage and mud, there’s a corpse near her house that still hasn’t been collected, she said. “The dead body has already started to rot, and no one has come for him.&#8221; The toll of last week’s devastating rains, floods and landslides continues to become more clear as Mexico&#8217;s government chugs along on rescue and recovery efforts. As of Wednesday, the government recorded 66 deaths, while the number of missing people climbed to 75. Nearly 200 communities remain cut off — most of them in the central mountainous region of Hidalgo, where helicopters have struggled to reach them because of constant cloud cover. Authorities have attributed the disaster to the convergence of several weather systems&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/a-week-after-floods-swathes-of-central-mexico-reel-from-devastation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<title>‘We can have abundant rivers and wildlife’: Director of ‘The American Southwest’ on new film</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/we-can-have-abundant-rivers-and-wildlife-director-of-the-american-southwest-on-new-film/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/we-can-have-abundant-rivers-and-wildlife-director-of-the-american-southwest-on-new-film/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Oct 2025 13:51:06 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[John Cannon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Latoya Abulu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/14153239/ASW-ELK-1.5-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=307592</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indigenous Peoples and Conservation]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico and Southwest United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Conservation, Drinking Water, Environment, Film, Green, History, Indigenous Communities, Indigenous Groups, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Industrial Agriculture, Interviews, Land Rights, Rivers, Water, Water Crisis, Water Scarcity, Wildlife, and Wildlife Conservation]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[At its roots, The American Southwest, from Fin and Fur Films, is a natural history documentary. &#8220;I&#8217;m a wildlife guy,&#8221; says director Ben Masters, who founded Fin and Fur in 2012. His infatuation with nature comes through in the film&#8217;s exploration of the southwestern United States, traced along the path of the Colorado River from [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[At its roots, The American Southwest, from Fin and Fur Films, is a natural history documentary. &#8220;I&#8217;m a wildlife guy,&#8221; says director Ben Masters, who founded Fin and Fur in 2012. His infatuation with nature comes through in the film&#8217;s exploration of the southwestern United States, traced along the path of the Colorado River from its headwaters in the Never Summer range of the Rocky Mountains to its delta in the Gulf of California. Along the way, we find a watershed teeming with life. In three years of filming, his team captured visually astounding sequences of bull elk (Cervus canadensis) clashing in battle, of beavers (Castor canadensis) toppling trees to tailor their habitat to their needs, and of a nail-biting struggle of a young California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) on a cliff at Navajo Bridge. The filmmakers manage to engage the audience in the stories of each species they spend time with, whether the deadly Mojave rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus) in California&#8217;s largest desert, Arizona&#8217;s life-supporting saguaro cacti (Carnegiea gigantea), or the humble salmonfly (Pteronarcys spp.) linking the aquatic environment with the terrestrial. Beavers build dams on snowmelt streams in the Colorado River Basin. Image courtesy of Fin and Fur Films. This biological vibrancy is a stark contrast to the images the filmmakers have also included of a river that&#8217;s worn down by the time it reaches its terminus. As the Colorado flows through Arizona, California and Nevada — three of the seven states it touches, in addition to Mexico — cities,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/we-can-have-abundant-rivers-and-wildlife-director-of-the-american-southwest-on-new-film/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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					<title>Death toll from torrential rains in Mexico rises to 64 as search operations expand</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/death-toll-from-torrential-rains-in-mexico-rises-to-64-as-search-operations-expand/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/death-toll-from-torrential-rains-in-mexico-rises-to-64-as-search-operations-expand/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Oct 2025 20:58:04 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Associated Press]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/13205515/AP25285847460090-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=307547</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Mexico and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Disaster, Extreme Weather, and Flooding]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[POZA RICA, Mexico (AP) — The death toll from last week’s torrential rains in Mexico jumped to 64 on Monday, as searches expanded to communities previously cut off by landslides. Another 65 people were missing following the heavy rainfall in central and southeastern Mexico that caused rivers to top their banks, Civil Defense Coordinator Laura Velázquez Alzúa said [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[POZA RICA, Mexico (AP) — The death toll from last week’s torrential rains in Mexico jumped to 64 on Monday, as searches expanded to communities previously cut off by landslides. Another 65 people were missing following the heavy rainfall in central and southeastern Mexico that caused rivers to top their banks, Civil Defense Coordinator Laura Velázquez Alzúa said during President Claudia Sheinbaum&#8217;s daily press briefing. “There are sufficient resources, this won&#8217;t be skimped on &#8230; because we&#8217;re still in the emergency period,” Sheinbaum said. Thousands of military personnel have been deployed across the region. In northern Veracruz, 80 communities remained inaccessible by road. Sheinbaum acknowledged it could still be days before access is established to some places. “A lot of flights are required to take sufficient food and water” to those places, she said. Early official estimates note 100,000 affected homes, and in some cases, houses near rivers “practically disappeared,” Sheinbaum said. The scale of the destruction across five states was coming into clearer focus a day after Sheinbaum visited affected communities in Puebla and Veracruz, promising a rapidly scaled-up government response. Mexico’s Civil Protection agency said the heavy rains had killed 29 people in Veracruz state on the Gulf Coast as of Monday morning, and 21 people in Hidalgo state, north of Mexico City. At least 13 were killed in Puebla, east of Mexico City. Earlier, in the central state of Querétaro, a child died in a landslide. By Associated Press Banner image: A Marine helps a woman cross a flooded street in Poza&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/10/death-toll-from-torrential-rains-in-mexico-rises-to-64-as-search-operations-expand/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<title>Saving Mexico City’s ancient floating farms</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/video/2025/10/saving-mexico-citys-ancient-floating-farms/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/video/2025/10/saving-mexico-citys-ancient-floating-farms/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Oct 2025 13:04:55 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Associated PressLucia Torres]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sam Lee]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/08123151/AP25280506133332_Featured-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=videos&#038;p=307122</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America, Latin America, Mesoamerica, and Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Agroecology, Culture, Environment, Farming, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Indigenous Culture, Pollution, Traditional Knowledge, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Mongabay. MEXICO CITY, Mexico — After years of working abroad in marine conservation, Cassandra Garduño returned home to find the chinampas of her childhood, Mexico City’s ancient floating farms, choked with pollution and abandoned. Instead of walking away, she bought a piece of land and [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Mongabay. MEXICO CITY, Mexico — After years of working abroad in marine conservation, Cassandra Garduño returned home to find the chinampas of her childhood, Mexico City’s ancient floating farms, choked with pollution and abandoned. Instead of walking away, she bought a piece of land and began the hard work of cleaning, restoring and planting. Now, Cassandra is part of a small but determined group of farmers reviving these Aztec farming systems, where rich volcanic soil and canal water can produce harvests all year-round. A chinampa is an ingenious farming system developed in Mexico more than 1,000 years ago. Often called floating gardens, chinampas are small, rectangular plots of fertile land built on shallow lake beds. Farmers created them by layering mud, sediment and vegetation to form islands, which were reinforced with willow trees planted along the edges. Even today, the chinampas of Xochimilco in Mexico City are recognized by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization as one of the most sustainable and productive agricultural systems in the world. Cassandra&#8217;s mission goes beyond food. Teaming up with researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Cassandra is helping to clean the water, protect the endangered axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) and share traditional knowledge with a new generation of chinampa farmers. Through farming, she’s reconnecting people with their land, their water and with each other — proving that ancient wisdom may hold the key to a sustainable future. Hands On &#8211; Stories&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/video/2025/10/saving-mexico-citys-ancient-floating-farms/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<title>Women in Mexico step up to protect the island farms traditionally inherited by men</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/women-in-mexico-step-up-to-protect-the-island-farms-traditionally-inherited-by-men/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/women-in-mexico-step-up-to-protect-the-island-farms-traditionally-inherited-by-men/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Oct 2025 13:04:27 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Associated PressTeresa de Miguel]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Lucia Torres]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/08100347/Cassandra-Garduno-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=307201</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mexico, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Agroecology, Conservation, Environment, Environmental Law, Farming, Food, food security, Freshwater Ecosystems, Gender, Green, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Indigenous Peoples, Sustainability, Traditional Knowledge, Traditional People, Water, Water Pollution, and Women in conservation]]>
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											<description>
							<![CDATA[This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Mongabay. MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Jasmín Ordóñez looks out at the water as the wooden boat she is in crosses a narrow channel that connects a labyrinth of chinampas, island farms that were built by the Aztecs thousands of years ago. “Let’s close our eyes [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Mongabay. MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Jasmín Ordóñez looks out at the water as the wooden boat she is in crosses a narrow channel that connects a labyrinth of chinampas, island farms that were built by the Aztecs thousands of years ago. “Let’s close our eyes and ask our Mother Water for permission to sail in peace,” she says as the boat moves slowly, in contrast to the frenetic traffic of Mexico City just a few miles away. Ordóñez owns one of these island farms, first created with mud from the bottom of the lakes that once covered this area. When the boat arrives at her island, she proudly shows the corn and leafy greens she grows. Her ancestors owned chinampas, but she had to buy this one because women traditionally haven’t inherited them. “My grandmother didn’t get any land. Back then, most was left in the hands of men,” she said. At her side, Cassandra Garduño listens attentively. She also didn’t inherit the family chinampa. Today both are part of a small but growing group of women who have bought chinampas to cultivate sustainably in an effort to preserve an ecosystem that is increasingly threatened by urban development, mass tourism and water pollution. Jasmín Ordóñez, left, and Cassandra Garduño, right, cross an improvised bridge in Garduño&#8217;s chinampa, an island farm built by the Aztecs thousands of years ago, in San Gregorio Atlapulco, a borough of Mexico City, Sept. 20, 2025.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/women-in-mexico-step-up-to-protect-the-island-farms-traditionally-inherited-by-men/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<title>Arturo Gómez-Pompa, biologist who revealed the human history in “virgin” forests, has died, aged 90</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/09/arturo-gomez-pompa-biologist-who-revealed-the-human-history-in-virgin-forests-has-died-aged-90/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/09/arturo-gomez-pompa-biologist-who-revealed-the-human-history-in-virgin-forests-has-died-aged-90/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>26 Sep 2025 22:12:23 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/09/26221122/Arturo-Gomez-Pompa-256x90-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?post_type=short-article&#038;p=306696</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Mesoamerica, and Mexico]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agroecology, Biodiversity, Conservation, Environment, Forests, Green, Obituary, Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the steaming lowlands of Veracruz and the Yucatán, where strangler figs knot the canopy and howler monkeys bellow at dawn, a man with a field notebook kept noticing what others overlooked. Arturo Gómez-Pompa believed tropical forests were not untouched wilderness but “landscapes of memory,” shaped for millennia by Indigenous hands. Long before “biodiversity” became [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[In the steaming lowlands of Veracruz and the Yucatán, where strangler figs knot the canopy and howler monkeys bellow at dawn, a man with a field notebook kept noticing what others overlooked. Arturo Gómez-Pompa believed tropical forests were not untouched wilderness but “landscapes of memory,” shaped for millennia by Indigenous hands. Long before “biodiversity” became a rallying cry, he documented how local communities enriched and tended the jungle, and argued that conservation should do the same. Few scientists did more to upend the idea of the rainforest as a pristine museum and recast it as a living archive of stewardship. He had not meant to be a botanist. Born in Mexico City in 1934, he dutifully enrolled in medicine, his parents’ wish, until a teenage visit to a cousin’s ranch in Tamaulipas altered his course. Coyotes, rattlesnakes and hawks proved more compelling than anatomy texts. He switched to biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he completed his doctorate in 1966. By then he was already a familiar figure in the selvas, cataloguing barbasco yams for a state pharmaceutical firm and learning from local guides whose names he later insisted on including in his papers. From those muddy trails grew a career devoted to bridging science and society. In 1975 he founded Mexico’s National Institute for Research on Biotic Resources (INIREB) in Xalapa, one of the first efforts to decentralize biological research from the capital. There he helped establish agroecology as a discipline, showing that traditional farming&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/09/arturo-gomez-pompa-biologist-who-revealed-the-human-history-in-virgin-forests-has-died-aged-90/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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