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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/gps/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
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	<url>https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/05/16160320/cropped-mongabay_icon-32x32.png</url>
	<title>News on GPS</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/gps/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>Artisanal fishers in Liberia question benefits of new tracking devices from government</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/artisanal-fishers-in-liberia-question-benefits-of-new-tracking-devices-from-government/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/artisanal-fishers-in-liberia-question-benefits-of-new-tracking-devices-from-government/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Dec 2025 14:24:04 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Edward Blamo]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Malavikavyawahare]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[africa]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/15135310/3435026583_4c184bf61d_o-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311370</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Liberia, and West Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Environment, Environmental Law, Fish, Fisheries, Fishing, Governance, GPS, Marine Conservation, Oceans, Overfishing, Technology, and Tracking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[MONROVIA — In Liberia, a country where small-scale fishers number in the tens of thousands, fishers go missing at sea every year. Some, like a crew of four rescued 54 nautical miles (100 kilometers) off the coast in 2020, are fortunate. The Liberia Artisanal Fishermen Association (LAFA), an advocacy group, has, over the years, petitioned [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[MONROVIA — In Liberia, a country where small-scale fishers number in the tens of thousands, fishers go missing at sea every year. Some, like a crew of four rescued 54 nautical miles (100 kilometers) off the coast in 2020, are fortunate. The Liberia Artisanal Fishermen Association (LAFA), an advocacy group, has, over the years, petitioned the government to improve the safety of these fishers, most of whom use traditional dugout canoes. Some of the boats have outboard motors. But until recently, almost none had a way to broadcast their location. Earlier this year, the campaign received a boost when the Liberian government procured 400 automatic identification system (AIS) transponders from South Africa. The solar-powered devices were distributed to artisanal fishermen in the counties of Grand Cape Mount, Grand Bassa, Margibi and Montserrado. AIS devices transmit a vessel’s position and its speed via radio signals. These can be picked up by other vessels and also by receivers located on land. The system was developed to aid navigation at sea. But in recent years, AIS has also been used to map fishing effort and activity. It’s deployed mostly by larger vessels (longer than 24 meters, or 79 feet), and less so by smaller boats used by artisanal fishers. While officials and some fishermen consider the initiative in Liberia a step in the right direction, many of the fishers whom Mongabay spoke to in Grand Cape Mount and Margibi said they’re hesitant to install the devices. Their primary complaint is that the AIS&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/artisanal-fishers-in-liberia-question-benefits-of-new-tracking-devices-from-government/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/artisanal-fishers-in-liberia-question-benefits-of-new-tracking-devices-from-government/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311370</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Northern Cameroon’s lions are reproducing, but concerns remain</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/northern-cameroons-lions-are-reproducing-but-concerns-remain/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/northern-cameroons-lions-are-reproducing-but-concerns-remain/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Sep 2025 15:29:15 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Leocadia Bongben]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/09/30060937/Photo-6-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=306792</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Cameroon, and Central Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Big Cats, Cats, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environment, GPS, Lions, Livestock, Mammals, Monitoring, National Parks, Poaching, Species, Tracking, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Real-time monitoring has captured images of lionesses with cubs in Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjida National Park, but conservationists warn human pressure makes it unlikely all the cubs will reach adulthood. There are now an estimated 60-80 lions in the 220,000-hectare (544,000-acre) park in the country’s far north. “All collared lionesses have had cubs, signaling successful reproduction,” [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Real-time monitoring has captured images of lionesses with cubs in Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjida National Park, but conservationists warn human pressure makes it unlikely all the cubs will reach adulthood. There are now an estimated 60-80 lions in the 220,000-hectare (544,000-acre) park in the country’s far north. “All collared lionesses have had cubs, signaling successful reproduction,” Matthieu Finiels, deputy director of the northern Cameroon landscape for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), told Mongabay. In August 2024, Cameroonian biologists and rangers from WCS and the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) fitted seven lions in the park with GPS collars. A year earlier, in 2023, local conservation NGO BEDD had also collared three lions, bringing the total to 10. The collars ping the lions’ locations four times a day via satellite, enabling conservationists to monitor the big cats’ movements. &#8220;We can proactively prioritize those areas for patrols, ensuring protection from poachers,&#8221; Paul Bour, WCS&#8217;s landscape director said in a press release after the collaring. Bour helps the Cameroonian government plan and prepare antipoaching patrols. Despite the birth of cubs, there are still concerns about their survival. Paul Funston, director of the NGO African Lion Conservation, who assisted in the collaring, warned of the likelihood that not all the cubs would survive to adulthood. Now known as Miss Bouba for her striking beauty, she is the fifth lion collared in Bouba Ndjida National Park. Image by Daniel Djekda/WCS. “It is difficult for lionesses to raise cubs,” he told Mongabay. “When the young lions&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/northern-cameroons-lions-are-reproducing-but-concerns-remain/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/northern-cameroons-lions-are-reproducing-but-concerns-remain/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-306792</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Snow leopards frequently cross Nepal, India, China borders, study finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/snow-leopards-frequently-cross-nepal-india-china-borders-study-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/snow-leopards-frequently-cross-nepal-india-china-borders-study-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Jun 2025 16:06:31 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Bibek Bhandari]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/06/12134736/zeborong-edited-%C2%A9-DNPWC-_-WWF-Nepal-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=300668</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Atlantic Forest, China, India, and Nepal]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Big Cats, Biodiversity, Cats, Conservation, Developing Countries, GPS, Mammals, Mountains, Other effective conservation measures (OECMs), and Snow Leopards]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — The first-ever study of GPS-collared snow leopards carried out in Nepal has shown that these hyper elusive big cats spend up to a third of their time in neighboring India and China. It also found that up to half their range lies within these other countries, highlighting the importance of cross-border collaboration to [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — The first-ever study of GPS-collared snow leopards carried out in Nepal has shown that these hyper elusive big cats spend up to a third of their time in neighboring India and China. It also found that up to half their range lies within these other countries, highlighting the importance of cross-border collaboration to conserve this threatened species. The findings, published in March, are based on data from tracking collars fitted to four snow leopards (Panthera uncia) in Kangchenjunga Conservation Area in northeastern Nepal, home to the third-highest mountain on Earth. Kangchenjunga is sandwiched to the east by Khangchendzonga National Park in India and to the northwest by Qomolangma National Nature Preserve. Researchers tracked the individual snow leopards from 20 to 659 days between 2013 and 2017, and found that they roamed across areas six to 97 times larger than previously thought. Three of the animals were also found to have crossed international borders five to seven times, spending 10-34% of their time in India and China, with 28-50% of their home ranges overlapping with India. “We now have solid proof,” study lead author Samundra Subba, a large carnivore researcher at WWF Nepal, said of long held assumptions about snow leopards’ transboundary movements. “National borders are human constructs — snow leopards don’t recognize them. As long as there are no physical and artificial barriers like fences, and the habitat conditions are similar with relative proportion of prey availability, these big cats can move freely across the landscape.” Map shows&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/snow-leopards-frequently-cross-nepal-india-china-borders-study-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/snow-leopards-frequently-cross-nepal-india-china-borders-study-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-300668</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indonesia strengthens forest monitoring with new tool to meet EU deforestation law</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/indonesia-strengthens-forest-monitoring-with-new-tool-to-meet-eu-deforestation-law/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/indonesia-strengthens-forest-monitoring-with-new-tool-to-meet-eu-deforestation-law/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Apr 2025 11:21:18 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/04/07100721/4-Illegal-logging-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=297879</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Activism, Crime, Deforestation, Deforestation Alert System, Environment, Forestry, Forests, GPS, Illegal Logging, Illegal Trade, Indigenous Peoples, Law Enforcement, Monitoring, Organized Crime, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Supply Chain, Threats To Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Indonesia’s efforts to ensure its commodity exports are free of deforestation are ramping up as the European Union Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR, nears enforcement. One of the biggest challenges in meeting EUDR standards is traceability. To meet the regulation’s strict requirements, Indonesia is stepping up efforts to provide verifiable, real-time data that prove [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Indonesia’s efforts to ensure its commodity exports are free of deforestation are ramping up as the European Union Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR, nears enforcement. One of the biggest challenges in meeting EUDR standards is traceability. To meet the regulation’s strict requirements, Indonesia is stepping up efforts to provide verifiable, real-time data that prove the legality and sustainability of commodities like palm oil, timber, and other forest-risk products. A new forest monitoring platform, Ground Truthed.id (GTID), aims to support this by documenting violations at the source — such as illegal oil palm plantations in forest zones, timber sourced from unlicensed concessions, and land conflicts — to complement satellite monitoring. This will make it easier to track where supply chain irregularities begin, especially in remote or hard-to access areas, said Denny Bhatara, a senior campaigner at Kaoem Telapak, the environmental NGO behind GTID. “Many incidents occur that we might not be aware of due to distance or a lack of reporting mechanisms,” he said. “Through GTID, we gather all field-based documentation and compile it into a unified system.” What sets GTID apart, Denny said, is its focus on collecting real-time, verifiable geolocation-based evidence of environmental crimes from the ground up, unlike other platforms like Global Forest Watch (GFW), which start with satellite imagery before ground verification. This bottom-up method ensures the data reflect real-world conditions rather than just remote-sensing estimates, he said. This allows authorities to confirm whether deforestation is unlawful and, crucially, to act before irreversible environmental damage occurs,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/indonesia-strengthens-forest-monitoring-with-new-tool-to-meet-eu-deforestation-law/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-297879</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In a seasonally flooded Amazon forest, jaguars take to the trees</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/in-a-seasonally-flooded-amazon-forest-jaguars-take-to-the-trees/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/in-a-seasonally-flooded-amazon-forest-jaguars-take-to-the-trees/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>04 Mar 2025 15:33:02 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Tiago da Mota e Silva]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Xavier Bartaburu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/03/04152550/Cred-Emiliano-Ramalho-Instituto-Mamiraua-2-e1739991636213-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=295282</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon and Brazil]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Animals, Endangered Species, Flooding, Forests, GPS, Jaguars, Mammals, Tropical Forests, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[“It’s amazing, it’s amazing! I have no other word to describe it.” That’s how biologist Marcos Roberto de Brito defines the thrill of seeing a jaguar up close for the first time. Brito is the lead author of a recently published study that discovered a unique trait in the jaguars of the Mamirauá Sustainable Development [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[“It’s amazing, it’s amazing! I have no other word to describe it.” That’s how biologist Marcos Roberto de Brito defines the thrill of seeing a jaguar up close for the first time. Brito is the lead author of a recently published study that discovered a unique trait in the jaguars of the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, in Brazil’s western Amazon: during floods, the big cats spend up to four months living up in the trees, where they hunt, mate and care for their young. Between 2011 and 2020, researchers from the Mamirauá Institute, including Brito, used GPS collars to track 14 jaguars (Panthera onca) in the reserve. Located between the Solimões and Japurá rivers, before they join to form the Amazon, the reserve experiences annual floods that, depending on weather conditions, can raise the water level in the rivers by an average of 10 meters (33 feet). The water inundates the floodplain forests for approximately four months. But the local jaguars have found a surprising way to adapt, says study co-author Guilherme Alvarenga, a biologist at the Mamirauá Institute. “When the river starts to flood, their prey, such as tapirs and wild pigs, simply leave the floodplain and go to dry land. One would assume that the jaguars would go after them, right?” he says. “But that’s not an option in the Mamirauá reserve, because the entire area is surrounded by two large rivers. The floodwaters are unbelievable. They reach 16 meters [52 ft] in some places.” Aerial view of&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/in-a-seasonally-flooded-amazon-forest-jaguars-take-to-the-trees/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-295282</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Jumbo collaring effort reveals key elephant movement corridors</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/jumbo-collaring-effort-reveals-key-elephant-movement-corridors/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/jumbo-collaring-effort-reveals-key-elephant-movement-corridors/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Sep 2024 12:23:49 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhishyant Kidangoor]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhishyantkidangoor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/09/25121712/elephant-herd-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=287840</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Southern Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Elephants, Environment, GPS, Research, Technology, Tracking, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The first time Robin Naidoo mapped GPS data points to track elephant movement in Southern Africa, he was in for a surprise. Across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), one of the largest conservation areas in the world, he observed movement patterns and trends never seen before. “It was like a parallel universe that had [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The first time Robin Naidoo mapped GPS data points to track elephant movement in Southern Africa, he was in for a surprise. Across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), one of the largest conservation areas in the world, he observed movement patterns and trends never seen before. “It was like a parallel universe that had opened up,” Naidoo, lead scientist of wildlife conservation at the World Wildlife Fund, told Mongabay in a video interview. Unlocking that universe took a mammoth collaboration that involved collaring 300 African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in an area that spans five countries and is home to the largest population of African elephants in the world. The final result is possibly one of the largest databases of GPS-collared elephants. It contains close to 4 million data points that depict elephant movements and identify key connectivity areas and corridors for conservation purposes. A study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology documented how teams from WWF along with nonprofit organizations such as Ecoexist and Elephant Connection, among others, collaborated on the project, which used data collected over the past 15 years to examine connectivity for elephants. Based on the elephants’ movements, the team assessed landscape connectivity at three scales: a zoomed-in micro perspective, between protected areas as well as across the wider landscape. According to the study, each of these scales represented “a movement process whose maintenance is critical to effectively conserve elephants across the entire landscape.” African elephants, the largest land animals on Earth, are an endangered&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/jumbo-collaring-effort-reveals-key-elephant-movement-corridors/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-287840</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Mini radio tags help track ‘murder hornets’ and other invasive insects</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/mini-radio-tags-help-track-murder-hornets-and-other-invasive-insects/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/mini-radio-tags-help-track-murder-hornets-and-other-invasive-insects/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>14 Mar 2024 17:30:51 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claudia Geib]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/03/13091929/hornet-and-bees-768x512-1.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=279687</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Europe, Global, South Asia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Bees, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Ecology, Ecosystems, Environment, GPS, Insects, Invasive Species, Pollinators, Research, Restoration, Science, Technology, Tracking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The yellow-legged hornet is a predator: after it sets up a nest in a new neighborhood, its workers head out in search of smaller wasps, flies and bees to feed the hive’s growing brood. One of its favorite snacks is honey bees. Lingering outside a hive, these hornets, Vespa velutina, capture flying honey bees mid-air, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The yellow-legged hornet is a predator: after it sets up a nest in a new neighborhood, its workers head out in search of smaller wasps, flies and bees to feed the hive’s growing brood. One of its favorite snacks is honey bees. Lingering outside a hive, these hornets, Vespa velutina, capture flying honey bees mid-air, stopping on their way home only to chew the bee up into pellets to feed their young. In the hornets’ native range across Southeast Asia, local bee species have evolved defenses against the yellow-legged hornet’s attacks. But in Europe and the United States, native bees and agricultural honey bees are defenseless. “As invasives, these hornets are released from any kind of control agents, whereas in southern Asia there are things that prey on them,” says Lynn S. Kimsey, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis. “The threat is that they would expand their population to take up all resources available without any effective control, except maybe us humans.” In the face of this new threat, scientists are turning to an old technology: radio tracking, which has been used to follow wildlife since the 1950s. Thanks to recent advancements, radio tracking tags can now be made small enough to attach to the hornets’ tiny bodies, and in doing so lead scientists back to their nests. These miniature tags are also being tested on other species, such as the northern giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), better known as the “murder hornet.” With global shipping allowing insects to&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/mini-radio-tags-help-track-murder-hornets-and-other-invasive-insects/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/mini-radio-tags-help-track-murder-hornets-and-other-invasive-insects/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-279687</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New trackers bring prairie dogs’ little-known underground life to light</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/new-trackers-bring-prairie-dogs-little-known-underground-life-to-light/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/new-trackers-bring-prairie-dogs-little-known-underground-life-to-light/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 Mar 2024 11:03:56 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhishyant Kidangoor]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhishyantkidangoor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/03/07104923/Prairie-dog-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=279614</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Environment, GPS, Research, Technology, Tracking, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[To say tracking prairie dogs is difficult would be an understatement. The animals spend most of their time in burrows. Since conventional GPS collars don’t function underground, the movements and interactions of prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.) have remained notoriously elusive to the researchers who study them. What do they do? How do they move within [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[To say tracking prairie dogs is difficult would be an understatement. The animals spend most of their time in burrows. Since conventional GPS collars don’t function underground, the movements and interactions of prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.) have remained notoriously elusive to the researchers who study them. What do they do? How do they move within their complex burrow systems that have designated areas for storing food and sleeping? While these questions have remained unanswered for a long time, researchers are now testing a new tracker that might shed light on how prairie dogs might be spending their time. The Daily Diary trackers, originally developed to monitor penguins, use accelerometers and magnetometers, and combine that data with GPS technology to monitor prairie dog movements underground. While accelerometers measure if and how fast the animals are moving, the magnetometers enable researchers to determine the direction of their movements. Researchers calibrate this data with GPS information obtained when the animals come out of their burrows, which then gives them an estimation for how the animals are moving. Researchers attach a new tracker to a prairie dog.Image courtesy of Brett Kuxhausen, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. “Using all that data, we are able to get a bearing on what the animal is doing, and reconstruct their trajectories at a very fine scale,” Hila Shamon, research ecologist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute who is part of the research, told Mongabay in a video interview. “For example, the animal started&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/new-trackers-bring-prairie-dogs-little-known-underground-life-to-light/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/03/new-trackers-bring-prairie-dogs-little-known-underground-life-to-light/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-279614</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Conservationists look to defy gloomy outlook for Borneo’s sun bears</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/conservationists-look-to-defy-gloomy-outlook-for-borneos-sun-bears/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/conservationists-look-to-defy-gloomy-outlook-for-borneos-sun-bears/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>31 Oct 2023 13:08:51 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Carolyn Cowan]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Isabel Esterman]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/10/31114315/Banner-2-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=274826</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Borneo, Malaysia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bears, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Deforestation, Ecotourism, Education, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Forests, GPS, Green, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Mammals, Palm Oil, Pet Trade, Poaching, Rainforests, Rehabilitation, Reintroductions, Research, Snares, Sun Bears, Tracking, Traditional People, Tropical Forests, Wildlife, Wildlife Rehabilitation, Wildlife Rescues, Wildlife Trade, Wildlife Trafficking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[SABAH, Malaysia — The 3-year-old sun bear sits teddy bear-like in a secluded grassy glade in its rainforest enclosure. Its soft, densely furred belly vibrates as it sucks on one of its front paws, emitting a series of strange, guttural whimpers. Its head downturned, the young bear looks up at us shyly with deep brown [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[SABAH, Malaysia — The 3-year-old sun bear sits teddy bear-like in a secluded grassy glade in its rainforest enclosure. Its soft, densely furred belly vibrates as it sucks on one of its front paws, emitting a series of strange, guttural whimpers. Its head downturned, the young bear looks up at us shyly with deep brown eyes, penetrating our human instinct to care for the vulnerable. “This is a rather sad behavior,” Siew Te Wong, CEO and founder of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC), tells Mongabay during a visit to the pioneering rescue and education facility in the Malaysian state of Sabah. Wong says the bear, named Kipaku, was brought to the center as an orphaned cub, and what we’re witnessing is the little bear’s trauma response. “As with all infant mammals, this bear has an urge to suckle,” Wong says. “But he has no mother; his mother was brutally killed by poachers, so he’s had no opportunity to suckle … in the end, he’s developed this self-soothing behavior.” Like Kipaku, most of the 44 sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) Wong and his colleagues currently care for at the BSBCC were brought to them as orphaned cubs illegally taken from the wild and subsequently confiscated by authorities. One of the goals of the BSBCC is to return some of the rescued bears back into the wild to bolster flagging local populations. Since it was launched in 2008, the center has rewilded 12 bears into remote forest reserves in Sabah. But&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/conservationists-look-to-defy-gloomy-outlook-for-borneos-sun-bears/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/conservationists-look-to-defy-gloomy-outlook-for-borneos-sun-bears/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-274826</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Taking up the cause of red pandas: Q&#038;A with actor and activist Dayahang Rai</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/taking-up-the-cause-of-red-pandas-qa-with-actor-and-activist-dayahang-rai/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/taking-up-the-cause-of-red-pandas-qa-with-actor-and-activist-dayahang-rai/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Sep 2023 14:21:36 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/09/15141737/Dayahang-Rai-4-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=273368</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Almost Famous Animals]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Nepal, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bamboo, Biodiversity, Conservation Technology, Endangered Species, Forest Fragmentation, GPS, Habitat, Interviews, Interviews with conservation players, Mammals, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — Until recently, Nepali movies tended to have lead characters who were extraordinary people who stood out from regular folks and were largely detached from their day-to-day lives. But popular actor Dayahang Rai, who started out in theater and continues to invest time and energy there, has made a name for himself playing relatable [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — Until recently, Nepali movies tended to have lead characters who were extraordinary people who stood out from regular folks and were largely detached from their day-to-day lives. But popular actor Dayahang Rai, who started out in theater and continues to invest time and energy there, has made a name for himself playing relatable characters with the same range of emotions as the rest of us. Rai, from the eastern hill region of Nepal, also stands out from the rest of the celebrity pack in the Nepali film industry in another important way. Popularly known as Kazi, after the lovelorn character he played in the four-part Kabaddi movies set in the majestic trans-Himalayan region, Rai embraces a cause close to his heart: saving the country’s red pandas (Ailurus fulgens). He serves as the conservation ambassador for the Red Panda Network, an NGO working to save the endangered animal in the country. On the eve of the International Red Panda Day, Sept. 16, Mongabay’s Abhaya Raj Joshi caught up with Rai, who had returned from Toronto only a few hours earlier, to talk about his role as conservation ambassador and how cinema can help spread the message of conservation in Nepal. The following interview was conducted in Nepali and has been translated and edited for clarity. Red pandas are at risk of disappearing due to human activity, such as illegal hunting for their pelts, and unplanned road construction through their habitats. Image by Flickr via Pexels (Public domain). Mongabay: Let’s&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/taking-up-the-cause-of-red-pandas-qa-with-actor-and-activist-dayahang-rai/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/taking-up-the-cause-of-red-pandas-qa-with-actor-and-activist-dayahang-rai/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-273368</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Wildlife management platform EarthRanger goes mobile with new app</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/wildlife-management-platform-earthranger-goes-mobile-with-new-app/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/wildlife-management-platform-earthranger-goes-mobile-with-new-app/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Aug 2023 15:41:18 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhishyant Kidangoor]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhishyantkidangoor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/08/10153653/EarthRanger-Director-Jes-Lefcourt-testing-EarthRanger-Mobile-in-northern-Kenya_-Image-courtesy-of-Jane-Wynyard-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=272047</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, DNA, GPS, Research, Technology, Tracking, Wildlife, Wildlife Rangers, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[From getting alerts about injured elephants to tracking ones that are straying too close to villages, the Mara Elephant Project has used the EarthRanger platform since 2019 to manage the protection of wildlife and humans in the Maasai Mara region in Kenya. The web-based platform has helped wildlife managers reduce human-elephant conflict and protect elephants [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[From getting alerts about injured elephants to tracking ones that are straying too close to villages, the Mara Elephant Project has used the EarthRanger platform since 2019 to manage the protection of wildlife and humans in the Maasai Mara region in Kenya. The web-based platform has helped wildlife managers reduce human-elephant conflict and protect elephants from poaching and habitat destruction. EarthRanger is now embracing the mobile era with an app — one that not only retains all the useful features, but also adds greater capability by harnessing the network of users to provide even greater functionality. Since it was launched in 2017, the EarthRanger platform has been used by more than 350 conservation organizations in 60 countries. Developed by nonprofit Allen Institute for AI, the platform gives managers in control rooms a full picture of what’s happening in the field and enables them to respond to any perceived threats. It has also aided law enforcement agencies to track rangers using GPS-powered equipment. In a map that’s updated in real time, protected area managers can observe a wide array of data, including, for the Mara Elephant Project, the movements of collared elephants and tagged ranger vehicles, and analyze the data to inform their decision making. “We have set up virtual fence boundaries, and anytime an elephant crosses those, we get sent an alert,” Jake Wall, the director of research and conservation at the Mara Elephant Project, told Mongabay in a video interview. “Also, if an elephant slows down, we&#8217;ve got a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/wildlife-management-platform-earthranger-goes-mobile-with-new-app/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/wildlife-management-platform-earthranger-goes-mobile-with-new-app/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-272047</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Roads, human activity take a toll on red pandas: Q&#038;A with researcher Damber Bista</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/04/roads-human-activity-take-a-toll-on-red-pandas-qa-with-researcher-damber-bista/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/04/roads-human-activity-take-a-toll-on-red-pandas-qa-with-researcher-damber-bista/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Apr 2023 15:34:06 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/09/13112503/RedPanda-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=267336</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Nepal, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bamboo, Biodiversity, Conservation Technology, Endangered Species, Forest Fragmentation, GPS, Habitat, Mammals, Pandas, Roadkill, Roads, Trees, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — The spring season in the Northern Hemisphere is a critical time for red pandas, particularly in Nepal. This is the period when these furry, tree-dwelling animals spend a lot of time on the ground to look for food. It’s also the time when breeding adults of the species, Ailurus fulgens, start to reproduce, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — The spring season in the Northern Hemisphere is a critical time for red pandas, particularly in Nepal. This is the period when these furry, tree-dwelling animals spend a lot of time on the ground to look for food. It’s also the time when breeding adults of the species, Ailurus fulgens, start to reproduce, and when cubs born the previous year explore their habitat in search of a new home. These are some of the findings conservationist Damber Bista made while working on his Ph.D. at the University of Queensland, Australia. As part of the study, Bista and his team fitted 10 red pandas in eastern Nepal with GPS collars, so that they could track them to look at the effects of human disturbances on the species. Mongabay’s Abhaya Raj Joshi spoke to Bista recently over video call to learn about his work. The following interview has been translated from Nepali and lightly edited for length and clarity. Mongabay: Could you please describe the main objectives of your study? Damber Bista: My main overall objective was to look at the effects of human disturbance and habitat fragmentation on red pandas. I tried to look at these issues from different indicators such as their space use pattern, daily movement and behavior while close to a road. Also, as we didn’t have previous studies on how cubs disperse after leaving their mother, I also looked into it. The other objective was related to their recursive behavior under which they spend a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/04/roads-human-activity-take-a-toll-on-red-pandas-qa-with-researcher-damber-bista/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/04/roads-human-activity-take-a-toll-on-red-pandas-qa-with-researcher-damber-bista/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-267336</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Fishy business of squid vessels needs stronger regulation, study says</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/fishy-business-of-squid-vessels-needs-stronger-regulation-study-says/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/fishy-business-of-squid-vessels-needs-stronger-regulation-study-says/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Mar 2023 16:11:12 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/03/15155315/GFW-squid-fishery-Peru_3-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=266502</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, data, Ecosystems, Fish, Fisheries, Fishing, GPS, Illegal Fishing, Marine, Marine Animals, Oceans, Overfishing, Remote Sensing, Saltwater Fish, Squid, and Tracking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Squid fishing could be getting out of control due to the industry’s lack of regulations, scientists say, prompting calls for greater oversight. Thousands of squid fishing vessels operate across the world, using light to lure the eight-armed cephalopods to the surface and catching them with nets or jigging equipment. While some research suggests that squid [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Squid fishing could be getting out of control due to the industry’s lack of regulations, scientists say, prompting calls for greater oversight. Thousands of squid fishing vessels operate across the world, using light to lure the eight-armed cephalopods to the surface and catching them with nets or jigging equipment. While some research suggests that squid are globally abundant, other evidence suggests that overfishing is driving some populations to decline, including the jumbo flying squid (Dosidicus gigas) in the Southeast Pacific and the Argentine shortfin (Illex argentinus) in the Southwest Atlantic. Experts also say that most squid fishing takes place in unregulated areas in international waters, which has allowed the industry to operate without scrutiny. In a new study published in Science Advances, researchers from Global Fishing Watch, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security at the University of Wollongong, and the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency used satellite and vessel tracking data to study the movements of the squid fishing vessels. It found that squid fishing across the global oceans increased by 68% over three years (2017-2020), accounting for about 4.4 million total hours of fishing time. The study also indicated that 86% of this fishing occurred in unregulated areas, and that many of the vessels traveled long distances to operate in different regions. “A major challenge with unregulated fisheries is that we don’t know what we don’t know — and the data to deeply understand questions about stock status and&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/fishy-business-of-squid-vessels-needs-stronger-regulation-study-says/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-266502</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>For tigers in Nepal, highways are a giant roadblock best avoided</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/for-tigers-in-nepal-highways-are-a-giant-roadblock-best-avoided/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/for-tigers-in-nepal-highways-are-a-giant-roadblock-best-avoided/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Feb 2023 13:28:46 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/02/27133137/tiger-crosses-road-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=265950</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Nepal, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Big Cats, Carnivores, COVID-19, Endangered Species, GPS, Infrastructure, Predators, Roadkill, Roads, Tigers, Top Predators, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — It starts off like the premise for a joke: “Why did the tigers cross the road?” But for researchers and conservationists in Nepal, the spread of roads throughout the big cats’ habitat is no laughing matter. A new study underscores just how serious the problem is, showing that road traffic impedes tiger movements [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — It starts off like the premise for a joke: “Why did the tigers cross the road?” But for researchers and conservationists in Nepal, the spread of roads throughout the big cats’ habitat is no laughing matter. A new study underscores just how serious the problem is, showing that road traffic impedes tiger movements within their habitat. But it also shows that the animals can adapt quickly when traffic volume eases, pointing to measures that can be taken to mitigate road impacts not just on tigers, but on wildlife in general. For their study, the researchers focused on Nepal’s East-West Highway, which runs through both Bardiya National Park and Parsa National Park, each of which is home to growing tiger populations (125 in Bardiya as of 2022, and 41 in Parsa). They fitted a female tiger in Bardiya with a GPS collar, and did the same with a male tiger in Parsa, then observed how the highway and its traffic affected the animals’ movements, space use and habitat selection. Study co-author Babu Ram Lamichhane, from the National Trust for Nature Conservation, a semi-governmental body, said the study was especially important as the government prepares to expand the two-lane East-West Highway to four lanes. The researchers began their observations in early 2021, before a second COVID-19 lockdown was imposed in Nepal. The lockdown, and its conclusion, ultimately allowed the researchers to compare any differences in the tigers’ movements in the periods before, during, and after the associated traffic restrictions. “We&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/02/for-tigers-in-nepal-highways-are-a-giant-roadblock-best-avoided/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-265950</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Studying a ghost’: In Cape Town, urban caracals give researchers lots to ponder</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/studying-a-ghost-in-cape-town-urban-caracals-give-researchers-lots-to-ponder/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/studying-a-ghost-in-cape-town-urban-caracals-give-researchers-lots-to-ponder/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Mar 2022 12:48:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Grace Hansen]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/03/21103710/Photo2.08-04-20-3_1449-DSCN0907_smitwinkel_caracal_anya_adendorff-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=253943</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa and South Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Animals, Cats, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Fellows, GPS, Mammals, Research, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Even in the isolated, scrubby plains of the savanna, spotting the black ear tufts of a caracal prowling nearby remains a rare opportunity. The wild cat, sometimes known as the lynx of the desert, prefers elusive solitude. But lately, residents of Cape Town, South Africa, have noticed the predators somewhere new: in their own neighborhoods. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Even in the isolated, scrubby plains of the savanna, spotting the black ear tufts of a caracal prowling nearby remains a rare opportunity. The wild cat, sometimes known as the lynx of the desert, prefers elusive solitude. But lately, residents of Cape Town, South Africa, have noticed the predators somewhere new: in their own neighborhoods. A caracal sits at an intersection in Cape Point. Image courtesy of Luke Nelson/Urban Caracal Project. To better understand this phenomenon, Laurel Serieys, a biologist at the University of Cape Town, launched the Urban Caracal Project in 2014. “Nothing was known about the caracals in Table Mountain/Cape Town, and one of my key research interests is how urbanization impacts wild cat populations,” Serieys says. “So, Cape Town caracals provided a unique opportunity to investigate something I&#8217;m very passionate about. Additionally, at the time, very little was known about caracals generally.” To that end, Serieys and Gabriella R. M. Leighton, also of UCT, along with other researchers based in Africa and Europe, began a multiyear study examining how Cape Town’s ever-swelling urban edge impacts the carnivores. A caracal descends stairs. Image courtesy of Anya Adendorff/Urban Caracal Project. Globally, caracals (Caracal caracal) roam across a massive range, from India and the Middle East to Central and Southern Africa, according to global conservation authority the IUCN. However, their populations in urban areas face unique threats. For Serieys and her team, resolving or mitigating those threats has become a driving force behind their research project, the findings of which&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/studying-a-ghost-in-cape-town-urban-caracals-give-researchers-lots-to-ponder/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-253943</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Tech revolution holds world of promise for conservation, but challenges persist</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/02/tech-revolution-holds-world-of-promise-for-conservation-but-challenges-persist/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/02/tech-revolution-holds-world-of-promise-for-conservation-but-challenges-persist/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Feb 2022 10:42:44 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Caitlin Looby]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hayat Indriyatno]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/02/02103401/Photo-4.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=252250</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri WildTech Reporting Fellowship]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence, Camera Trapping, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Fellows, GPS, Remote Sensing, Sensors, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[As a biology undergraduate, Talia Speaker spent a grueling summer hiking around the mountains near Santa Cruz, California, interning with a team that monitored puma behavior. In one hand she carried a clunky, outdated VHF tracker, trying to get close enough to download data from the cats’ radio collars. In her back pocket was a [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[As a biology undergraduate, Talia Speaker spent a grueling summer hiking around the mountains near Santa Cruz, California, interning with a team that monitored puma behavior. In one hand she carried a clunky, outdated VHF tracker, trying to get close enough to download data from the cats’ radio collars. In her back pocket was a sleek, shiny iPhone. The disparity between the two technologies wasn’t lost on her as she was also tasked with spending countless hours searching for insights by clicking through millions of camera images. She couldn’t help but think that there had to be a better way. “Ecologists were stuck with such terrible tools while technology was doing so much to power the rest of the world,” Speaker tells Mongabay in a video interview. For her senior thesis, Speaker wanted to use machine-learning models to process camera data, and managed to find people working in that space. Today, she’s the program officer at WWF for WILDLABS, an online platform that connects conservation technology experts. Talia Speaker, the program officer for WWF at WILDLABS, conducts field testing of a new drone in Colorado. The drone will be used for ecological monitoring. Image courtesy of Vasco Chavez-Molina. Over the past few decades, technology quickly changed the face of conservation. Camera traps, acoustic sensors, drones, satellites, and now genomic and machine-learning tools empower conservationists to better understand the ecosystems they work in. But conservation technology is now at a turning point. Despite the progress made in the field, there are&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/02/tech-revolution-holds-world-of-promise-for-conservation-but-challenges-persist/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/02/tech-revolution-holds-world-of-promise-for-conservation-but-challenges-persist/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-252250</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Collaboration is key to scaling conservation technologies (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/collaboration-is-key-to-scaling-conservation-technologies-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/collaboration-is-key-to-scaling-conservation-technologies-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 Dec 2021 19:02:20 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jonathan Palmer]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/07/22040709/IMG_9113_eddie-game-tnc-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=250332</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence, Commentary, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Conservation Technology, Drones, GPS, Green, Solutions, Technology, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Threats to wildlife and wild places abound. Waters warming due to climate change threaten coral reefs more frequently and with greater intensity than ever before; the expansion of agriculture, infrastructure, and mining cut off eons-old elephant migration routes in Africa, while roads increase the threat of poaching; forest habitat degradation is so profound that of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Threats to wildlife and wild places abound. Waters warming due to climate change threaten coral reefs more frequently and with greater intensity than ever before; the expansion of agriculture, infrastructure, and mining cut off eons-old elephant migration routes in Africa, while roads increase the threat of poaching; forest habitat degradation is so profound that of the forests that remain, only 40% have high ecological integrity. To tackle these and other growing challenges, the conservation sector has embraced numerous technological advances such as GPS collars, radio telemetry, satellite imagery, camera traps, and software to process and analyze data. These tools have helped to dramatically increase the volume and quality of data and information for improved conservation impact and effectiveness. Due to financial and capacity constraints facing conservation, ongoing technological innovations are essential. However, as we continue to invest and experiment in this space, it is an imperative we learn from what has, and has not, worked. Three challenges continue to repeat themselves. Jacob Osang, a Wildlife Conservation Society eco-guard, replaces and cleans a camera trap at Natural Bridge in Mbe Mountains. Image by Gianluca Cerullo. First, project-based financing has led to a proliferations of pilot projects that have built costly boutique solutions that do not scale. Secondly, stories of overnight billionaires and an extremely simplified view of how technology is created and adopted has led many to believe in “build-it-and-they-will-come” solutions that fail to incorporate the specific needs of front-line conservationists, like poor internet connectivity, staff turnover, or the need for&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/collaboration-is-key-to-scaling-conservation-technologies-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/collaboration-is-key-to-scaling-conservation-technologies-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-250332</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Tracking white-bellied pangolins in Nigeria, the new global trafficking hub</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/tracking-white-bellied-pangolins-in-nigeria-the-new-global-trafficking-hub/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/tracking-white-bellied-pangolins-in-nigeria-the-new-global-trafficking-hub/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 Oct 2021 16:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Gianluca Cerullo]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[africa]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/10/07101053/1-a-white-bellied-pangolin-captured-tagged-and-released-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=247932</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Nigeria, and West Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Conservation, Crime, data, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Law, GPS, Hunting, Illegal Trade, International Trade, Mammals, Pangolins, Poaching, Tracking, Wildlife, Wildlife consumption, Wildlife Trade, Wildlife Trafficking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[CROSS RIVER NATIONAL PARK, Nigeria — It wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and become fodder for army ants beneath torrential skies — all to no avail. Now, here we are: only a 30-minute amble from camp along a [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[CROSS RIVER NATIONAL PARK, Nigeria — It wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and become fodder for army ants beneath torrential skies — all to no avail. Now, here we are: only a 30-minute amble from camp along a well-trodden jungle trail, and less than three hours’ drive from one of Nigeria’s major metropolises. And yet we’re staring up at an eyeshine that Nigerian scientist Charles Emogor thinks “looks very promising.” Park ranger Cyril Ogar swivels his flashlight. Like a series of camera flashes, the arc of his torch beam momentarily illuminates a few snapshots of darkness-shrouded rainforest. The firework-shaped leaves of African corkwoods. The metallic glint of the rangers’ ever-present shotguns. And then, all at once, the white, spiderwebbing branches of an emergent tree that might just harbor the very reason for our visit. It’s little more than a hard-to-resolve silhouette and eyeshine, for now. But already, I’m praying it’s a pangolin. “Its eyes are close together, like it’s got a pointy snout. That rules out pottos,” Emogor says with a grin. The words have barely left his lips before he runs off the trail and into the dark undergrowth. I stay transfixed to the spot and raise my binoculars toward the mystery silhouette. We’re in the Oban Division of Cross River National Park, the 2,800-square-kilometer (1,100-square-mile) chunk of rainforest on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, which flows into the latter country’s Korup National&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/tracking-white-bellied-pangolins-in-nigeria-the-new-global-trafficking-hub/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-247932</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>For Atlantic sea turtles, Sargasso Sea is home during the ‘lost years’</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/for-atlantic-sea-turtles-sargasso-sea-is-home-during-the-lost-years/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/for-atlantic-sea-turtles-sargasso-sea-is-home-during-the-lost-years/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 May 2021 13:21:10 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/19124403/4_Kate_Mansfield_Green_turtle_with_Tag_pre-release_NMFSPermit_19508-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=242829</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Ecosystems, GPS, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Oceans, Plastic, Pollution, Sea Turtles, Technology, Tracking, Turtles, Turtles And Tortoises, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[After spending two months incubating in eggs, it’s time for green sea turtles to break out of their shells. The newly hatched reptiles scale the steep sides of their nests by clambering up the discarded eggshells of their siblings, and together they scuttle across the sand and paddle into the ocean. Then they disappear — [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[After spending two months incubating in eggs, it’s time for green sea turtles to break out of their shells. The newly hatched reptiles scale the steep sides of their nests by clambering up the discarded eggshells of their siblings, and together they scuttle across the sand and paddle into the ocean. Then they disappear — not only from sight, but from scientific knowledge. No one has definitely known where green turtle hatchlings go and what they do for the next two or three years of their lives. But that’s changing now.  A new paper in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B has provided insight into the so-called “lost years” of endangered green turtles (Chelonia mydas) by tracking the movements of 21 juveniles released off the southeast Florida coast. Over the course of about 150 days, most of the turtles made their way to the Sargasso Sea, an area of open ocean in the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, rather than allowing the currents to push them northward toward the Azores.  An oceanic green turtle in Sargassum. Image by Chris Long. “One of the long-held ideas was that these [green turtles] are passive little drifters,” lead author Katherine Mansfield, a marine turtle expert at the University of Central Florida, told Mongabay in an interview. “Historically the turtles were just assumed to swim offshore, get into these gyre currents, and then drift for several years in a big circle around the Atlantic. But what we found [was that] they had very directed&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/for-atlantic-sea-turtles-sargasso-sea-is-home-during-the-lost-years/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-242829</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Whale zone ahead: A cetacean speed trap tags ships going over the limit</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/whale-zone-ahead-a-cetacean-speed-trap-tags-ships-going-over-the-limit/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/whale-zone-ahead-a-cetacean-speed-trap-tags-ships-going-over-the-limit/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Nov 2020 16:23:28 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/11/10160114/8718387270_3a89fdd1f7_o-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=236704</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Canada and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Charismatic Animals, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Fishing, GPS, Green, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Mammals, Oceans, Shipping, Technology, Whales, Wildlife, Wildlife Rescues, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The CMA CGM Brazil, a huge cargo freighter carrying more than 15,000 containers, powered through the Atlantic Ocean, headed for New York City. North of Nantucket, it entered what’s known as a dynamic management area (DMA), a region established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries to protect a population of North Atlantic [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The CMA CGM Brazil, a huge cargo freighter carrying more than 15,000 containers, powered through the Atlantic Ocean, headed for New York City. North of Nantucket, it entered what’s known as a dynamic management area (DMA), a region established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries to protect a population of North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis). There’s a 10-knot (18.5-kilometer-per-hour) voluntary speed limit in the DMA. But the ship, the length of the Empire State Building, didn’t obey it. Instead, it barreled through the DMA at 13.4 knots (25 km/h), according to GPS tracking data collected by analysts in September. “They [the ship’s company] were doing all sorts of PR about the environmentally-friendly megaship that is saving all of this carbon and doing this amazing stuff coming into all of these ports,” Gib Brogan, senior campaigns managers at Oceana, a Washington, D.C.-based NGO, told Mongabay. “We thought, you know, that isn&#8217;t really the whole story. This enormous ship is going right through whale habitat and not cooperating with the advisories that are coming out from the government.” While the freighter doesn’t appear to have hit any whales on this particular journey, conservationists say that ship traffic, in general, poses a substantial risk to North Atlantic right whales, particularly when vessels disobey mandatory or voluntary speed limits in places where whales are present. To help monitor this issue, Oceana launched a publicly available online tool called Ship Speed Watch this past June, which collects data on vessel speeds&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/whale-zone-ahead-a-cetacean-speed-trap-tags-ships-going-over-the-limit/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-236704</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The turtle egg that pinged back: Tracing a poaching pathway in Costa Rica</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/the-turtle-egg-that-pinged-back-tracing-a-poaching-pathway-in-costa-rica/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/the-turtle-egg-that-pinged-back-tracing-a-poaching-pathway-in-costa-rica/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 Oct 2020 15:03:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claudia Geib]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Maria Angeles Salazar]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/10/22150003/oliveridleybaby-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=236042</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri WildTech Reporting Fellowship]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America, Costa Rica, Latin America, and Mesoamerica]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Conservation Technology, Fellows, GPS, Poaching, Sea Turtles, Solutions, Technology, Turtles, Turtles And Tortoises, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Early on the morning of Sept. 16, 2018, an olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) hauled herself out of the ocean along a beach on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. Moving slowly, methodically, she started a task she had likely done dozens of times before: excavating a nest in which to lay her eggs. But then [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Early on the morning of Sept. 16, 2018, an olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) hauled herself out of the ocean along a beach on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. Moving slowly, methodically, she started a task she had likely done dozens of times before: excavating a nest in which to lay her eggs. But then something new happened. Just before 5 a.m., a team of scientists walking the beach crouched beside her, as the nest filled with eggs, and added something to it: a fake egg, fitted with a GPS tracking device that would follow the decoy if a poacher removed it from the nest. A little over 24 hours later, that’s exactly what happened. The clever egg decoy unearthed that day is a project of a team led by Helen Pheasey, a Ph.D. student at the University of Kent, U.K., studying the sea turtle egg trade in Costa Rica. With the help of Pheasey’s team, Mongabay traced the hour-by-hour trip of the furthest-traveled of five decoys taken by poachers, in an effort to understand why sea turtle egg poaching still happens — and what experts think can be done to stop it. A 3-D printed sea turtle egg decoy, which looks and feels like the real thing thanks to a substance called Ninja Flex. The eggs&#8217; creators have since developed newer prototypes with even more realistic exteriors, and more reliable GPS trackers. Image courtesy of Helen Pheasey. Monday, Sept. 17, 2018 Time: 7:27 a.m. Corozalito, Costa Rica The decoy&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/the-turtle-egg-that-pinged-back-tracing-a-poaching-pathway-in-costa-rica/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/the-turtle-egg-that-pinged-back-tracing-a-poaching-pathway-in-costa-rica/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-236042</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New evidence suggests China’s ‘dark’ vessels poached in Galápagos waters</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/new-evidence-suggests-chinas-dark-vessels-poached-in-galapagos-waters/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/new-evidence-suggests-chinas-dark-vessels-poached-in-galapagos-waters/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Oct 2020 15:23:31 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/10/09151948/180921-OM-SA-Chinese-squid-vessel-being-refuelled-by-Peruvian-tanker-Alorca-_66A9512-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=235696</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Galapagos and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation Technology, data, Ecosystems, Environment, Fishing, Global Environmental Crisis, GPS, Green, Illegal Fishing, Law, Law Enforcement, Marine, Marine Animals, Oceans, Overfishing, Remote Sensing, Satellite Imagery, Squid, Tracking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In late June, a fleet of about 300 Chinese fishing vessels swarmed around the rich, biodiverse waters of the Galápagos Islands, armed with overhead lights and industrial jigging machines to attract and catch squid. For the next few months, the vessels remained around the edge of the Ecuadoran islands’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), raising concerns [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In late June, a fleet of about 300 Chinese fishing vessels swarmed around the rich, biodiverse waters of the Galápagos Islands, armed with overhead lights and industrial jigging machines to attract and catch squid. For the next few months, the vessels remained around the edge of the Ecuadoran islands’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), raising concerns among conservationists that the fleet would overexploit the squid and capture endangered species such as rays and sharks. Another worry was also hovering: would the vessels enter the EEZ and illegally fish, putting even more pressure on the delicate marine region and violating Ecuador’s sovereignty? A composite data image showing all AIS vessel traces, and the intensity of RF activity as the fleet swarmed along the southern edge of the EEZ boundary of the Galapagos Islands. Image by HawkEye 360. China’s ambassador to Ecuador said the fleet followed international fishing regulations and did not partake in any illegal activity, and Ecuadoran authorities said the fleet did not enter its waters. However, new information released last week by HawkEye 360, a Virginia-based data analytics company, shows that unidentified vessels were indeed present inside the Ecuadoran EEZ at the same time as many Chinese-owned fishing ships were undetectable via their automatic identification system (AIS), a GPS-based system that publicly transmits a vessel’s identity, speed and location. There’s a strong correlation between these events, but they don’t necessarily confirm that illegal fishing took place, experts say. However, this new layer of information paints a fuller picture of what&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/new-evidence-suggests-chinas-dark-vessels-poached-in-galapagos-waters/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/new-evidence-suggests-chinas-dark-vessels-poached-in-galapagos-waters/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-235696</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sea turtles often lose their way, but always reach their destination</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/sea-turtles-often-lose-their-way-but-always-reach-their-destination/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/sea-turtles-often-lose-their-way-but-always-reach-their-destination/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Jul 2020 15:40:35 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Claire Alberts]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Elizabethalberts]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/07/21150937/ImageBank_Turtles_Amanda-Cotton_02-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=232736</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Indian Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Animals, Biodiversity, Charismatic Animals, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, GPS, Herps, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Oceans, Sea Turtles, Tracking, Turtles, Turtles And Tortoises, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[When baby sea turtles hatch from their eggs, they skitter across the sand to the shoreline before disappearing into the open ocean. Many years later, by some remarkable feat, female turtles find their way back, sometimes traveling thousands of kilometers, to arrive at the exact beach where they were born. This time, it’s to lay [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[When baby sea turtles hatch from their eggs, they skitter across the sand to the shoreline before disappearing into the open ocean. Many years later, by some remarkable feat, female turtles find their way back, sometimes traveling thousands of kilometers, to arrive at the exact beach where they were born. This time, it’s to lay their own eggs. It’s believed that turtles use the Earth’s geomagnetic field to find their way, but there is still a lot that’s unknown about this process. A team of scientists, who published a new paper in Current Biology this month, used satellite tracking to study the navigation skills of female green turtles (Chelonia mydas). They found that while green turtles eventually arrived at their preferred destination, they didn’t always get there with pinpoint accuracy, but followed a kind of “crude map.” A green turtle in Martinque. Image by Michelle Roux / Coral Reef Image Bank. “I think we had this idea that turtles were running on rails, and that they had some sort of fine scale navigational ability,” Alex Rattray, co-author of the paper and research fellow at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University in Australia, told Mongabay. “But what we found out is that they make mistakes, they miss their targets, they overshoot the targets, and they do a lot of searching.” Nesting grounds aren’t the only locations sea turtles habitually return to — they also return to the same foraging grounds. In fact, another study found that migrating&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/sea-turtles-often-lose-their-way-but-always-reach-their-destination/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/sea-turtles-often-lose-their-way-but-always-reach-their-destination/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-232736</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>For tiger moms, the work-life balance struggle is real, study finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/for-tiger-moms-the-work-life-balance-struggle-is-real-study-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/for-tiger-moms-the-work-life-balance-struggle-is-real-study-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Feb 2020 11:42:16 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Liz Kimbrough]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/02/13093520/Siberian_tiger_CC-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=227113</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global and Russia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Animals, Big Cats, Cats, Conservation, Endangered Species, GPS, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Poaching, Tigers, Tracking, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Traditional Medicine, Wildlife, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Being a single mom is tough, even for a strong and formidable tigress. Hunting, protecting the territory, spending time with the cubs, resting — how does she do it all? For the first time ever, scientists were able to document the behavior of a GPS-collared Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) in the wild for the four months [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Being a single mom is tough, even for a strong and formidable tigress. Hunting, protecting the territory, spending time with the cubs, resting — how does she do it all? For the first time ever, scientists were able to document the behavior of a GPS-collared Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) in the wild for the four months before and four months after the birth of her cubs. The study, published in journal Mammal Research, reveals the sacrifices and changes the new mother, called Vavarra, made to care for her young. Vavarra, a female Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) in her home range in 2014. Image courtesy of WCS and Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve. “This study shows that even tigers struggle balancing ‘work’ and ‘family time.’ It’s a constant balancing act to keep their cubs safe while trying to keep themselves fed,” Dale Miquelle, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Russia program and tiger program coordinator, said in a statement. Tiger cubs are vulnerable to predation from wolves, bears, lynxes and leopards, so Vavarra’s strategy was to spend as much time with her cubs as possible to keep them protected. To achieve this balance, she abandoned defending her territory, moved around less, traveled more rapidly, made fewer but larger kills, and spent a lot less time resting. “The results simply provide a more graphic understanding of what we already intuitively know — that raising kids is hard, and for single moms, it is especially hard. Tigresses need to make sacrifices, and balance protection and&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/for-tiger-moms-the-work-life-balance-struggle-is-real-study-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/for-tiger-moms-the-work-life-balance-struggle-is-real-study-finds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-227113</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Protected areas best conserve mammalian diversity when connected with corridors, biologged weasels show</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/protected-areas-best-conserve-mammalian-diversity-when-connected-with-corridors-biologged-weasels-show/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/protected-areas-best-conserve-mammalian-diversity-when-connected-with-corridors-biologged-weasels-show/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>04 Sep 2019 19:12:31 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Emi Kusayanagi]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/09/04185555/Fisher-cropped-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=222166</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Alberta and Canada]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Conservation, Forests, GPS, Mammals, Mapping, Monitoring, Protected Areas, Research, Technology, Temperate Forests, Tracking, Wildlife Corridors, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In a recently published  study, Canadian researchers monitored the fine-scale movements of GPS-tagged fishers (Pekania pennanti), a member of the weasel family, across a terrain of over 700 protected areas (PAs) in Alberta, Canada. They found that corridors of natural structurally intact habitat may be just as critical as the protected areas themselves for conserving [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In a recently published  study, Canadian researchers monitored the fine-scale movements of GPS-tagged fishers (Pekania pennanti), a member of the weasel family, across a terrain of over 700 protected areas (PAs) in Alberta, Canada. They found that corridors of natural structurally intact habitat may be just as critical as the protected areas themselves for conserving forest-dwelling mammals. Connectivity over quantity In the face of climate change and loss of natural vegetation, increasing public awareness over the accelerated rate of global species extinction has compelled governments in more than 240 countries to dramatically increase the number of protected areas over the last 20 years. According to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), there are over 200,000 terrestrial protected areas around the world being governed on a national level as of 2016. But a majority of those PAs exist in increasingly patchy, fragmented networks within an ever-expanding human-dominated landscape. This is bad news for the animals these reserves are meant to protect. Examples of two wildlife movement theories: (above) The stepping stone theory predicts that patches of disconnected habitats best facilitate the movement of species within a network of protected areas. Image by José Luiz Viana do Couto, Rede Agronomia. (below) The corridor theory suggests that habitat “bridges” that are structurally intact best facilitate species movement between protected areas. Image by Laury Cullen Jr,  CC BY-SA 4.0. Research has shown that individual animals across more than 50 species move shorter distances in fragmented habitats; such changes in movement behavior may negatively&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/protected-areas-best-conserve-mammalian-diversity-when-connected-with-corridors-biologged-weasels-show/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/protected-areas-best-conserve-mammalian-diversity-when-connected-with-corridors-biologged-weasels-show/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-222166</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>On Peru’s border, the Tikuna tribe takes on illegal coca growers</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/on-perus-border-the-tikuna-tribe-takes-on-illegal-coca-growers/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/on-perus-border-the-tikuna-tribe-takes-on-illegal-coca-growers/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 Aug 2019 11:19:35 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Alexa VélezVanessa Romo]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Maria Angeles Salazar]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/08/20063905/featured-768x462.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=221490</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Endangered Environmentalists]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Latin America, Peru, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Deforestation, Endangered Environmentalists, Forests, GPS, Indigenous Peoples, Logging, Rainforests, Traditional People, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
											<grant>
							<![CDATA[GLO-4060 QZA-16/0047.4, 4-18-182]]>
						</grant>
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The last time the Peruvian government swooped in to eradicate coca crops in its northern Amazonian border region near Colombia and Brazil was in 2015. For the indigenous people of this area, who made a living harvesting the leaves, there was a sense of despair at the prospect of having to start all over again. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The last time the Peruvian government swooped in to eradicate coca crops in its northern Amazonian border region near Colombia and Brazil was in 2015. For the indigenous people of this area, who made a living harvesting the leaves, there was a sense of despair at the prospect of having to start all over again. The affected areas included the indigenous Tikuna communities of Buen Jardín de Callarú, Nueva Galilea and Cushillococha, among others, here in Mariscal Ramón Castilla province, in Peru’s Loreto department. But for Pablo García, a community leader in Buen Jardín, that 2015 raid presented an opportunity to turn a new leaf: to abandon an illicit livelihood and, along with three of his friends, to become a forest monitor. Since then, equipped with a GPS-enabled cellphone and a satellite map, he follows deforestation alerts whenever they appear on his screen. Yet since that 2015 raid, illegal coca cultivation has resumed, sprouting up in Buen Jardín and the other Tikuna communities. The problem Pablo now faces is that he has to confront the loggers and drug traffickers who invade his territory from the other side of the river. He knows that it’s not just his livelihood that’s at stake, but his very life itself. For Pablo and the others like him, the question they face is, what’s at stake when you want to take care of the forest? Deforestation patch detected by environmental monitors with the use of a drone. Image by: Buen Jardín monitors. ‘He said he&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/on-perus-border-the-tikuna-tribe-takes-on-illegal-coca-growers/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/on-perus-border-the-tikuna-tribe-takes-on-illegal-coca-growers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-221490</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>‘Landscape of fearlessness’: bushbuck emboldened following top-predator decline in Mozambique</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/landscape-of-fearlessness-bushbuck-emboldened-following-top-predator-decline-in-mozambique/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/landscape-of-fearlessness-bushbuck-emboldened-following-top-predator-decline-in-mozambique/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>06 May 2019 12:21:43 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sophie Manson]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/05/06120922/Africa-Botswana-Abu-bushbuck-female-IMG_4849_feature-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=218366</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, East Africa, and Mozambique]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Carnivores, data, Ecosystems, GPS, Habitat, Hunting, Monitoring, Over-hunting, Poaching, Remote Sensing, Research, Restoration, Surveying, Technology, Tracking, War, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The ‘landscape of fear’ is not a new term among biologists. From the now-iconic study of how elk and bison gradually adjusted their vigilance levels after wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park, to the evaluation of grasshopper foraging habits in the presence of predatory spiders, the concept that prey species move and forage, in [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The ‘landscape of fear’ is not a new term among biologists. From the now-iconic study of how elk and bison gradually adjusted their vigilance levels after wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park, to the evaluation of grasshopper foraging habits in the presence of predatory spiders, the concept that prey species move and forage, in part, to avoid predators has been modeled, remodeled, and modeled again. However, seldom has there been an opportunity to observe the contrary, a ‘landscape of fearlessness’, following a dramatic decline in predator populations. In May 1977, civil war broke out in Mozambique, prompting a 15-year conflict which ended in October 1992. Gorongosa National Park, known for its sprawling plains and diversity of wildlife, became one of the key battlefields in this conflict, with Mount Gorongosa itself being used as the base for Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) fighters. While the park’s vegetation and soil emerged from the war relatively unscathed, it was a different story for its megafauna, populations of which had previously been lauded as the densest in Africa. Mount Gorongosa rising above the plains of Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. Renamo resistance fighters used the mountain as their base during the Mozambican Civil War. Image by Judy Gallagher via Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.0. “Large carnivore populations suffered severe declines,” said Justine Atkins, a researcher from Princeton University studying animal movement behavior, “likely from a combination of by-catch in snares set for herbivores, loss of prey species/starvation, and human activity causing them to leave the area&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/landscape-of-fearlessness-bushbuck-emboldened-following-top-predator-decline-in-mozambique/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/landscape-of-fearlessness-bushbuck-emboldened-following-top-predator-decline-in-mozambique/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-218366</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Machine learning tool helps prioritize plants for conservation</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/machine-learning-tool-helps-prioritize-plants-for-conservation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/machine-learning-tool-helps-prioritize-plants-for-conservation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Jan 2019 19:13:59 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri (1965-2019)]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/01/03184656/Aus_Kalbarri-small-everlastings-on-rocks_smaller-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=214357</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, data, GPS, Mapping, Open-source, Plants, Research, Solutions, Technology, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[If you know the animals in your neighborhood but not the plants, you’re not alone. Scientists have documented nearly 400,000 plant species and expect to identify many more. But unlike well-known endangered animals, such as elephants, tigers, and parrots, we don’t currently understand the conservation status of more than 90 percent of the world’s plant [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[If you know the animals in your neighborhood but not the plants, you’re not alone. Scientists have documented nearly 400,000 plant species and expect to identify many more. But unlike well-known endangered animals, such as elephants, tigers, and parrots, we don’t currently understand the conservation status of more than 90 percent of the world’s plant species. Plant growth and communities drive the ecosystems, food chains, and agriculture on every continent, yet we don’t know the conditions that what causes them to thrive or disappear. Unique desert plants, as well as giant redwood trees, help make California a region of globally high plant diversity. Image by Sue Palminteri/Mongabay. Understanding how threatened a specific plant species is requires broad information on where it lives and what it looks like. But finding plants in the wild to determine where they are and where they aren’t requires time, money, and expertise. A multi-institutional research team used the power of open-access databases and machine learning to predict the conservation status of more than 150,000 plants. In their study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team tested whether their machine learning algorithm could track patterns in plant locations, climatic patterns, habitat features, and morphologies – their form and structure – and use that information to identify species that were likely at risk of extinction. “There is an urgent need for more efficient methods of identifying at-risk species,” the authors said in their paper. “To meet this need, we developed and evaluated a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/machine-learning-tool-helps-prioritize-plants-for-conservation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-214357</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>10 ways conservation tech shifted into auto in 2018</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/10-ways-conservation-tech-shifted-into-auto-in-2018/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/10-ways-conservation-tech-shifted-into-auto-in-2018/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Dec 2018 17:45:02 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri (1965-2019)]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/12/28150255/Shorebirds_01-godwits-dowitchers-willets_IngridTaylar_CC2.0_small-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=214177</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Australia, Brazil, East Africa, Global, India, Maldives, Namibia, South America, Tanzania, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Acoustic, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Camera Trapping, cameras, Citizen Science, data, Deforestation, Drones, Forests, GPS, Law Enforcement, Mapping, Monitoring, Oceans, Remote Sensing, Research, Satellite Imagery, Sea Turtles, Sensors, Sharks, Software, Surveillance, Surveying, Technology, Tracking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of artificial intelligence automate tasks that used to require experts and numerous hours to complete. Our 2018 review of tech stories highlights how automation is transforming [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of artificial intelligence automate tasks that used to require experts and numerous hours to complete. Our 2018 review of tech stories highlights how automation is transforming how we study and monitor nature, aggregating and analyzing multiple data sources, and communicating the results as management and conservation recommendations. Artificial intelligence (AI), including various types of pattern recognition algorithms and neural networks, is changing how the research and conservation communities do their work. We highlight just some examples below. 1) Image pattern recognition for detecting species Pattern recognition includes the automated detection of target objects in photos – taken by people, drones, satellites, or cameras traps – as well as in sound files collected with acoustic monitoring devices. As image datasets grow, the availability of pattern recognition algorithms becomes more critical. For example, one study showed that deep neural networks, a type of machine learning that recognizes numerical patterns in stages, can review and categorize image data far faster than humans can, and nearly as accurately.  These networks automatically counted, identified, and described the behaviors of 48 animal species in the 3.2-million image Snapshot Serengeti camera trap dataset, which would translate to saving more than 17,000 hours, or nearly 8.5 years of human labeling effort. A large leopard crosses between a pair of camera traps at sunset. The Karnataka study surveyed leopards in&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/10-ways-conservation-tech-shifted-into-auto-in-2018/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/10-ways-conservation-tech-shifted-into-auto-in-2018/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-214177</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Satellite trackers help fight vultures’ extinction in southern Africa</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/satellite-trackers-help-fight-vultures-extinction-in-southern-africa/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/satellite-trackers-help-fight-vultures-extinction-in-southern-africa/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Dec 2018 15:01:39 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Munyaradzi Makoni]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/12/13141710/Bearded-Vulture-Adult-at-feeding-site_Shane-Elliott-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=213497</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Lesotho, South Africa, and Southern Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Birds, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, data, GPS, Human-wildlife Conflict, Monitoring, Renewable Energy, Solutions, Technology, Tracking, Vultures, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Every other hour, Sonja Krüger logs onto her website and checks the birds’ status. Pharoah is taking a mud bath in the mountains, Jeremia is on a roost site viewing the Maloti mountain range, and Mollie is scouring the grasslands for a fresh carcass. “A GPS location of the birds is [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Every other hour, Sonja Krüger logs onto her website and checks the birds’ status. Pharoah is taking a mud bath in the mountains, Jeremia is on a roost site viewing the Maloti mountain range, and Mollie is scouring the grasslands for a fresh carcass. “A GPS location of the birds is taken very hour, and it shows where the vultures are flying to, at what speed, their favorite cliff roost sites, and where they feed,” Krüger, an ecologist with the NGO Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, told Mongabay. Data have told us a lot about these birds’ movement and population trends, she added. Ezemvelo runs Maloti-Drakensberg Park, a World Heritage Site within the mountain range of the same name. The range is home to vultures in Lesotho and the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Free State in South Africa. An immature bearded vulture posing. Image by Sonja Krueger. The isolated southern African population of bearded vultures (Gypaetus barbatus meridionalis) has declined by more than 30 percent over the past few decades, with fewer than 350 individual birds and 109 breeding pairs remaining in the region. Cape vultures (Gyps coprotheres), found only in southern Africa, are endangered, with 2,900 breeding pairs. Approximately 1,450 individuals, roughly 20 percent of the population, live in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains. The roll call In 2006, Krüger started the Maloti-Drakensberg Vulture Project to address the decline in vulture populations within the mountains. She said the vultures feasted on carcasses and thus kept the environment clean,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/satellite-trackers-help-fight-vultures-extinction-in-southern-africa/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-213497</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>For the birds: Innovations enable tracking of even small flying animals</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/for-the-birds-innovations-enable-tracking-of-even-small-flying-animals/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/for-the-birds-innovations-enable-tracking-of-even-small-flying-animals/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Dec 2018 11:44:17 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri (1965-2019)]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/12/03113930/flock-of-birds-canada-geese-geese-wing-55832-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=213017</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Birds, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, data, GPS, Marine, Marine Animals, Migration, Monitoring, Oceans, Remote Sensing, Research, Sensors, Solutions, Technology, Tracking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Animal tracking has revolutionized our study of animal movements and behavior. Radio transmitter tags, followed by GPS and other satellite-based tags, placed on animals via a collar, harness, glue, or suction, use radio signals to transmit data from a transmitter in one place to receiving equipment somewhere else. They differ in how the signals are [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Animal tracking has revolutionized our study of animal movements and behavior. Radio transmitter tags, followed by GPS and other satellite-based tags, placed on animals via a collar, harness, glue, or suction, use radio signals to transmit data from a transmitter in one place to receiving equipment somewhere else. They differ in how the signals are sent or received, the information obtained from the signals, and the energy needed to make the signals. Ultra-high frequency (UHF) and  very-high frequency (VHF) radio tags are cheap, but researchers must physically tune receivers in to the various frequencies and manually determine each location’s coordinates. These processes take time and  money, thereby limiting the number of point locations that can be obtained for a given animal. Standard GPS tracking collars like the one on this male jaguar in Brazil, are have been limited to larger, terrestrial species that can easily carry the weight of batteries needed to power the device. Recent developments in programmable tags, solar panels, and communications are enabling smaller tags for smaller animals. Image by Charles J. Sharp via Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0. Advances in communication systems, specifically transmission to and from satellites, have revolutionized wildlife tracking. GPS and other satellite-based tags have weighed more, costed more, and demanded more power than radio tags. Nevertheless, their automated collection of animals’ location coordinates has helped researchers more precisely determine home ranges, migration routes, and the relationships of these patterns to landscape features. A virtual meetup hosted by the WILDLABS platform on November 20th&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/for-the-birds-innovations-enable-tracking-of-even-small-flying-animals/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-213017</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In pursuit of the rare bird that vanishes for half the year</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/in-pursuit-of-the-rare-bird-that-vanishes-for-half-the-year/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/in-pursuit-of-the-rare-bird-that-vanishes-for-half-the-year/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 Nov 2018 14:21:14 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Sue Palminteri]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/11/27131815/B.Florican_Bird-released-after-taggingPilibhitUPIndia_DhritimanMukherjeeBNHS-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=212714</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Cambodia, India, Nepal, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Birds, GPS, Grasslands, Habitat, Mapping, Migration, Monitoring, Remote Sensing, Research, Surveying, Technology, Tracking, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU, Nepal — As dawn peeks through the morning mist on an early spring day in Nepal&#8217;s Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, a duck-sized bird flaps its wings and throws itself into the air as if it were jumping on a trampoline. The critically endangered Bengal florican, known for the signature display of its males during [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU, Nepal — As dawn peeks through the morning mist on an early spring day in Nepal&#8217;s Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, a duck-sized bird flaps its wings and throws itself into the air as if it were jumping on a trampoline. The critically endangered Bengal florican, known for the signature display of its males during the breeding season, can be spotted inside protected grasslands in Nepal and India from early spring until the monsoon sets in around June or July. After that, they vanish. A male Bengal florican appears out of the grass in Assam, India. These critically endangered birds prefer short grasses in areas with few people. Image by Nejib Ahmed via Wikiedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Until recently, the habits and habitat of the Bengal florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis) here in the Indian subcontinent remained a mystery, even for those who knew the bird.&#8221;I roamed the national parks for decades, but even I did not know where the Bengal floricans went after June/July,&#8221; said Narendra Man Babu Pradhan, former warden of Chitwan National Park in Nepal and co-author of a recent study of the birds in India and Nepal. When it’s not resbreeding season, he says, the birds “effectively disappear.” The Bengal florican, a type of bustard, is a mysterious species in several ways. It occurs in two separate regions: one subspecies (H.b. blandini) lives in Cambodia’s seasonally flooded Tonle Sap region, and the other (H.b. bengalensis) lives in the alluvial grasslands of southern Nepal and northern India, called&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/in-pursuit-of-the-rare-bird-that-vanishes-for-half-the-year/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-212714</doi>				</item>
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