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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/bioacoustics/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2026 09:16:15 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<title>News on Bioacoustics</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/bioacoustics/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>Why I sent my archive of nature’s sounds to France (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/why-i-sent-my-archive-of-natures-sounds-to-france-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/why-i-sent-my-archive-of-natures-sounds-to-france-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>28 Oct 2026 16:55:07 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Bernie Krause]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/10/28164909/1-Krause-%40-St.-Vincent-Is-FL-2003-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=334255</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Commentary, Ecology, Research, and Science]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It is a peculiar irony: as technology reaches ever deeper into Earth’s living systems, the primal sonic expressions of the natural world—wind, water, leaf, and creature—have never been more imperiled. Soundscape ecology rests on a simple conviction: the collective voices of the nonhuman world are not only eloquent, but essential. Recorded and preserved over time, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It is a peculiar irony: as technology reaches ever deeper into Earth’s living systems, the primal sonic expressions of the natural world—wind, water, leaf, and creature—have never been more imperiled. Soundscape ecology rests on a simple conviction: the collective voices of the nonhuman world are not only eloquent, but essential. Recorded and preserved over time, these biophonies become enduring ledgers of planetary health, as valuable as genetic databases or satellite images. Over more than half a century, I have gathered more than 5,000 hours of marine and terrestrial recordings. Across those decades, I have heard both the vivid symphony of life and its alarming decline. When science came under siege In recent years, the value of these scientific records—and the ethics of preserving them—has been thrown into sharp relief by forces not of nature, but of governance. In 2017, only weeks after a new U.S. administration took office, a chill settled over the scientific community. Colleagues described research suddenly treated as suspect, funding cut, and datasets removed from public view. It became alarmingly clear that science itself was under siege. Archiving natural soundscapes was no longer solely an act of devotion and curiosity. It had become an urgent responsibility. The danger was not only the destruction of habitat or the extinction of a particular songbird; it was also the erasure of a coherent body of knowledge. Beyond political reach I felt compelled to act. With a sense of defiance and duty, I copied my entire field collection—thousands of hours documenting&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/why-i-sent-my-archive-of-natures-sounds-to-france-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/why-i-sent-my-archive-of-natures-sounds-to-france-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-334255</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In Nepal, AI builds on local knowledge to help prevent tiger attacks</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/in-nepal-ai-builds-on-local-knowledge-to-help-prevent-tiger-attacks/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/in-nepal-ai-builds-on-local-knowledge-to-help-prevent-tiger-attacks/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 Oct 2026 08:00:28 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Praveen Kumar Yadav]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Abhaya Raj Joshi]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/10/20073636/AP21090541435051-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=333197</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Nepal, and South Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence, Big Cats, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Community Forests, Conflict, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Culture, Education, Environment, Human-wildlife Conflict, Indigenous Peoples, Monitoring, Software, Technology, Tigers, Top Predators, Traditional Knowledge, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — Bhadai Tharu says he still remembers the day a tiger attacked him. It was around 1 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2004. The encounter left him blind in his left eye. More than two decades later, the 59-year-old doesn’t speak ill of the animal that attacked him. “When incidents, like the one I was [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KATHMANDU — Bhadai Tharu says he still remembers the day a tiger attacked him. It was around 1 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2004. The encounter left him blind in his left eye. More than two decades later, the 59-year-old doesn’t speak ill of the animal that attacked him. “When incidents, like the one I was involved in, happen, people get angry,” says Tharu, who is now chair of the Gauri Community Forest on the fringes of Bardiya National Park, a global hotspot for the endangered big cats. “Tigers have their role in the ecosystem, and both people and tigers should coexist,” Tharu says. His perspective comes as Nepal&#8217;s tiger population reaches a record 429 individuals, with Bardiya alone hosting 112. To avoid human-tiger encounters such as the one Tharu experienced, researchers turned to a survival skill long practiced by local people: listening to the forest. And for a while, at least, it seemed to have worked. The pilot project, documented in a recently published study, tested an artificial intelligence-powered system that “listens” to alarm calls from chital deer (Axis axis) and maps areas where tigers (Panthera tigris) or leopards (Panthera pardus) may be present and that humans should avoid. A chital deer in Bardiya National Park. The pilot project tested an AI-powered system that “listens” to alarm calls from chital deer. Image by Sunuwargr via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). A forest that speaks Long before researchers arrived with sensors and machine-learning models, Indigenous communities in Bardiya had already been&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/in-nepal-ai-builds-on-local-knowledge-to-help-prevent-tiger-attacks/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/in-nepal-ai-builds-on-local-knowledge-to-help-prevent-tiger-attacks/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-333197</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Eavesdropping on Malaysia’s dolphins: Interview with marine bioacoustician Saliza Bono</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/eavesdropping-on-malaysias-dolphins-interview-with-marine-bioacoustician-saliza-bono/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/eavesdropping-on-malaysias-dolphins-interview-with-marine-bioacoustician-saliza-bono/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>14 Oct 2026 12:28:35 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Ashley Yeong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Yenni Kwok]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/10/14115427/Saliza4-IndoPacificHumpback-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=332551</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Malaysia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Dolphins, Ecosystems, Environment, Fellows, Interviews, Interviews with conservation players, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Mammals, Monitoring, Oceans, Research, Whales, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia’s coastal waters are home to 27 species of marine mammals. These include protected species like the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis), Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris), Indo-Pacific finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides), dugongs (Dugong dugon) and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus). But few Malaysians know about these sea animals, and even fewer are [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia’s coastal waters are home to 27 species of marine mammals. These include protected species like the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis), Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris), Indo-Pacific finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides), dugongs (Dugong dugon) and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus). But few Malaysians know about these sea animals, and even fewer are aware that there is a scientist who studies the vocal communications of these aquatic mammals. Meet Saliza Bono, the bioacoustics officer at MareCet, the country’s only NGO dedicated to research and conservation of marine mammals. Saliza, 32, who also leads the NGO’s Langkawi Dolphin Research Project, studies marine mammal sounds, as she believes learning about these animals is the first step toward saving them. Her research focuses on the impacts of underwater noise, particularly on Indo-Pacific humpback and Irrawaddy dolphins in Malaysia. Saliza Bono is a bioacoustician at Malaysia’s only marine mammal conservation organization, MareCet. Image courtesy of MareCet. In an interview with Mongabay via video call, the marine biologist discusses her journey into bioacoustics, how underwater noise pollution impacts dolphin behavior and the challenges of her research. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Mongabay: How did you get interested in becoming a bioacoustician? Saliza Bono: I think I saw my very first dolphin when I was in Australia. As a 10-year-old, I was amazed at how these are mammals. They have lungs like us but live underwater. I was so curious, and I wanted to know more. Then I heard the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/eavesdropping-on-malaysias-dolphins-interview-with-marine-bioacoustician-saliza-bono/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/eavesdropping-on-malaysias-dolphins-interview-with-marine-bioacoustician-saliza-bono/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-332551</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indigenous knowledge x tech in the search for a tiny Amazon monkey</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/indigenous-knowledge-x-tech-in-the-search-for-a-tiny-amazon-monkey/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/indigenous-knowledge-x-tech-in-the-search-for-a-tiny-amazon-monkey/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>11 Sep 2026 10:40:18 +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/20/2026/09/11083700/Pygmy_marmoset_Peter_Kerrawn_B-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=329438</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Amazon, Ecuador, Global, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Acoustic, Animals, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Business, Camera Trapping, Charismatic Animals, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Culture, Deforestation, Ecosystems, Education, Environment, forest degradation, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Indigenous Peoples, Mammals, Monitoring, Monkeys, Pet Trade, Pets, Primates, Technology, Trade, Traditional Knowledge, Wildlife, and Wildlife Trade]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[How do you search for the world&#8217;s smallest monkey? Earlier this year, Nicolás Schuldt Durán took on this task after he was approached by members of an Indigenous community in Ecuador. Ever since, he’s been tapping into the knowledge of the Siekopai people and combining it with passive acoustic monitoring technology to look for pygmy [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[How do you search for the world&#8217;s smallest monkey? Earlier this year, Nicolás Schuldt Durán took on this task after he was approached by members of an Indigenous community in Ecuador. Ever since, he’s been tapping into the knowledge of the Siekopai people and combining it with passive acoustic monitoring technology to look for pygmy marmosets. Spoiler alert: They’re still looking for this elusive species. Working in the Siekoya Remolino community in Ecuador, Durán is collaborating with Indigenous community members to track pygmy marmosets (Cebuella pygmaea), locally called leoncillo, and gather data on where they live and how they’re faring. “The community has already been setting up camera traps and running a territorial monitoring program to catch hunters and loggers,” Durán, founder of conservation technology organization Neblina Labs, told Mongabay in a video interview. Non-profit Equitable Origin&#8217;s CEFO program was working in the community along with the Keñao women association and the Kënapu&#8217;tiyo climbers. As part of their work, they were using technology and territorial monitoring to protect the forests. Durán joined the program to incorporate bioacoustics to their toolkit. “This is just adding one more tool to their toolkit to monitor biodiversity,” he said. Pygmy marmosets are threatened by the illegal pet trade as well as deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Image by David Reece via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0). Pygmy marmosets, native to the western Amazon Basin, are so small that an adult weighs only 140-150 grams (about 5 ounces), or the weight of a small apple. They&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/indigenous-knowledge-x-tech-in-the-search-for-a-tiny-amazon-monkey/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/indigenous-knowledge-x-tech-in-the-search-for-a-tiny-amazon-monkey/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-329438</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>How AI helps gather remote biodiversity data: Interview with Microsoft’s Juan Lavista Ferres</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/08/how-ai-helps-gather-remote-biodiversity-data-interview-with-microsofts-juan-lavista-ferres/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/08/how-ai-helps-gather-remote-biodiversity-data-interview-with-microsofts-juan-lavista-ferres/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>14 Aug 2026 13:06:01 +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/20/2026/08/14125321/pierre-perraut-vfK_PwXZO6w-unsplash-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=326232</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Camera Trapping, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Environment, Interviews, Media, Monitoring, Software, Technology, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[At a meeting with conservationists a couple of years back, Juan Lavista Ferres had a eureka moment. As the director of Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, Lavista Ferres has extensively worked on projects that use artificial intelligence technology to process and analyze biodiversity data. At that particular meeting, however, he realized that a glaring gap [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[At a meeting with conservationists a couple of years back, Juan Lavista Ferres had a eureka moment. As the director of Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, Lavista Ferres has extensively worked on projects that use artificial intelligence technology to process and analyze biodiversity data. At that particular meeting, however, he realized that a glaring gap persisted. “It takes a huge amount of effort to collect data,” Lavista Ferres, who is also Microsoft&#8217;s chief data scientist, told Mongabay in a video interview. “We never realized how bad it was until we worked closely with them [the conservationists] to see the whole workflow.” On returning to his lab, Lavista Ferres put together a team to find a solution. The result was Project SPARROW. Short for solar-powered acoustic and remote recording observation watch, SPARROW combines edge computing and AI to monitor biodiversity in real time and continuously. Powered by solar energy, the tool has been developed to function autonomously in remote forests to gather and process visual and audio data. “The whole idea of SPARROW is to make it trivial for conservationists to be able to collect data,” Lavista Ferres said. SPARROW has been deployed in 11 countries across five continents and has demonstrated that it can function continuously without human intervention for more than a year. Deployments in remote forests come with their own set of challenges, however, as devices are difficult to access. Conservación Amazónica’s Los Amigos biological station. Courtesy of ACCA.  “Our most important challenge is to make sure that&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/08/how-ai-helps-gather-remote-biodiversity-data-interview-with-microsofts-juan-lavista-ferres/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-326232</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Why conservation urgently needs acoustic baselines</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-sound-can-reveal-what-satellite-images-miss/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-sound-can-reveal-what-satellite-images-miss/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Jun 2026 00:32:45 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/29222541/SBP-photos-header-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=320333</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Founder's briefs]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Conservation Technology, Ecology, Environment, Green, Monitoring, Remote Sensing, Solutions, Technology, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[From above, an intact forest can look reassuringly complete. A satellite image may show an unbroken canopy, a block of green still standing amid plantations, roads or logged land. For many conservation programs, that view has become the starting point for measurement. If the canopy remains, the forest is often treated as if much of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[From above, an intact forest can look reassuringly complete. A satellite image may show an unbroken canopy, a block of green still standing amid plantations, roads or logged land. For many conservation programs, that view has become the starting point for measurement. If the canopy remains, the forest is often treated as if much of its ecological value remains as well. The forest itself may tell a more complicated story. Birds, insects, frogs and primates divide the day among them. Some call at dawn, others at night. Some occupy narrow frequency bands; others fill the background with a steady rasp. A forest that looks intact can still lose part of this living structure. The canopy may close after logging. Carbon may remain on a balance sheet. The animal community may not return in the same form. Garnet Pitta. Photo by Hanyrol Hanyzan Ahmad Sah A new paper in Global Change Biology, by Zuzana Buřivalová and colleagues, examines that problem through sound. The study describes the Soundscape Baselines Project, an effort to record the acoustic signatures of some of the world’s remaining intact forests before those reference points become harder to find. The idea is straightforward. To know whether a forest has changed, one needs to know what it sounded like before the change. That baseline is not only a technical convenience. It is a guard against a familiar problem in conservation: each generation tends to accept the nature it first encountered as normal. Daniel Pauly called this shifting baseline syndrome&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-sound-can-reveal-what-satellite-images-miss/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320333</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>How small actions can become planetary forces</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-small-actions-can-become-planetary-forces/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-small-actions-can-become-planetary-forces/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>04 Jun 2026 00:16:28 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/30183504/lombok_260514183849_0066z-16x9-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=320350</guid>

					
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Books, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Ecology, Ecosystems, Forests, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Rainforests, Reforestation, Restoration, Solutions, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Thomas Crowther begins his book with a snakebite that was not, in any conventional sense, dangerous. The danger came from interpretation. A misidentified species, a surge of fear, and a body that responded as if the threat were real: numbness spread, panic intensified, and the situation escalated until a second opinion dissolved it almost instantly. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Thomas Crowther begins his book with a snakebite that was not, in any conventional sense, dangerous. The danger came from interpretation. A misidentified species, a surge of fear, and a body that responded as if the threat were real: numbness spread, panic intensified, and the situation escalated until a second opinion dissolved it almost instantly. The episode is more than an anecdote. It sets the terms of Nature’s Echo, a book that treats cause and effect not as linear sequences so much as loops that can amplify themselves in either direction. Thomas Crowther That idea—feedback loops as the underlying architecture of the natural world—is the organizing principle of the book. Crowther traces it from cosmology to ecology to human psychology, moving across scales with considerable ambition. The early chapters move outward from the origin of matter, suggesting that the same reinforcing processes that allowed stars to form also underpin biological evolution and social behavior. It is an ambitious framing. At its best, it brings a sense of coherence to subjects that are often treated separately. At times, the scope of the framework requires readers to travel across very different domains and scales of thought. The structure reflects that expansiveness. The table of contents alone signals the range: from “Cause and Effect” and “Feedback Loops” through “Resilience and Tipping Points” and into “The Story We Tell Ourselves.” The progression is deliberate. Crowther starts with physical systems, moves into ecological stability, and then into the social and psychological domains where perception begins&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-small-actions-can-become-planetary-forces/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/how-small-actions-can-become-planetary-forces/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320350</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Nature’s feedback loops can drive collapse. Thomas Crowther thinks they can also drive recovery</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/natures-feedback-loops-can-drive-collapse-thomas-crowther-thinks-they-can-also-drive-recovery/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/natures-feedback-loops-can-drive-collapse-thomas-crowther-thinks-they-can-also-drive-recovery/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>01 Jun 2026 00:55:10 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/12020804/thomas-crowther-13-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=319071</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Nature conservation Influencers]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Environment, Forests, Interviews, Interviews with conservation players, Rainforests, Remote Sensing, Technology, Tropical Forests, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Thomas Crowther’s career has been shaped by large claims about small things. A seed, a patch of soil, a soundscape, a moment of fear, a local restoration project: each, in his telling, can become part of a larger system of cause and effect. His new book, Nature’s Echo, is built around that idea. Feedback loops, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Thomas Crowther’s career has been shaped by large claims about small things. A seed, a patch of soil, a soundscape, a moment of fear, a local restoration project: each, in his telling, can become part of a larger system of cause and effect. His new book, Nature’s Echo, is built around that idea. Feedback loops, he argues, are not just a feature of ecology. They are among the forces that formed stars, spread life across Earth, drive climate change, and may yet help repair damaged ecosystems. Crowther, a British ecologist, became one of the best-known figures in global ecology while at ETH Zurich, where he founded the Crowther Lab and built a large interdisciplinary research group. His work helped popularize the idea that ecosystem restoration could play a major role in addressing climate change, especially after a 2019 Science paper on the potential for additional tree cover drew worldwide attention, as well as criticism from scientists who warned against simplistic tree-planting narratives. His work also helped give rise to the World Economic Forum’s Trillion Trees initiative, and he has served as co-chair of the advisory board to the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. He is also the founder of Restor, an open-data platform that connects conservation and restoration initiatives around the world. Screenshot of the Restor interface. That public profile has made Crowther both influential and contested. In 2024 he was also at the center of a dispute over his departure from ETH Zurich. The university said its decision followed&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/natures-feedback-loops-can-drive-collapse-thomas-crowther-thinks-they-can-also-drive-recovery/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/natures-feedback-loops-can-drive-collapse-thomas-crowther-thinks-they-can-also-drive-recovery/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-319071</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A ‘symphony’ of wildlife suggests carbon financing is working in Sierra Leone</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/a-symphony-of-wildlife-suggests-carbon-financing-is-working-in-sierra-leone/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/a-symphony-of-wildlife-suggests-carbon-financing-is-working-in-sierra-leone/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>27 May 2026 20:36:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Claudia Geib]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Morgan Erickson-Davis]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/27093342/White-necked_rockfowl_Picathartes_gymnocephalus_Nyamebe_Bepo_-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=320170</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Sierra Leone, and West Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Birds, carbon, Carbon Sequestration, Conservation, Environment, Forest Carbon, Forests, Rainforests, Research, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[One of the first things H.S. Sathya Chandra Sagar noticed in Gola Rainforest National Park was its profusion of sound. Standing amid the tallest trees he’d ever seen, Sagar could hear the calls of countless birds, the hoot of primates, and in the distance, drumming: chimpanzees, beating fists and sticks on tree roots to check [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[One of the first things H.S. Sathya Chandra Sagar noticed in Gola Rainforest National Park was its profusion of sound. Standing amid the tallest trees he’d ever seen, Sagar could hear the calls of countless birds, the hoot of primates, and in the distance, drumming: chimpanzees, beating fists and sticks on tree roots to check in with faraway friends. The din was a chorus of good news. Sagar, a conservation biologist, had traveled to the Sierra Leone national park as part of his Ph.D. research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S. to try and figure out if economic measures aimed at conserving carbon in the Gola Rainforest also helped protect its animal biodiversity. In a study published in Conservation Science and Practice, Sagar and his co-authors find that its noisy soundscape suggests that it does. “We see that if it’s done well, carbon financing initiatives do have the capability to protect both biodiversity, beyond just habitat, and carbon markets,” Sagar says. Gola Rainforest National Park is one of the largest remaining portions of the Upper Guinean Tropical Rainforest, which once covered some 700,000 square kilometers (about 270,000 square miles) of West Africa. After a century of mining and logging, and a devastating civil war in the 1990s, Sierra Leone protected 700 km2 (270 mi2) of this forest that remained within its borders in 2010. In 2012, Sierra Leone established the Gola REDD+ project, a framework created through the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+)&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/a-symphony-of-wildlife-suggests-carbon-financing-is-working-in-sierra-leone/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/a-symphony-of-wildlife-suggests-carbon-financing-is-working-in-sierra-leone/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320170</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In Guatemala, new AI technology will be ‘listening’ for illegal deforestation</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/in-guatemala-new-ai-technology-will-be-listening-for-illegal-deforestation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/in-guatemala-new-ai-technology-will-be-listening-for-illegal-deforestation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Apr 2026 21:05:18 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Maxwell Radwin]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/04/29202354/f.-BANNER-2000px-2-Rony-Scarlet-Macaw-High-res-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=318295</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America, Guatemala, and Latin America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Deforestation, Environment, Environmental Law, Forest Destruction, Forest Loss, Forests, Logging, Monitoring, Politics, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Technology, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[FLORES, Guatemala — This March, rangers on patrol in the Maya Forest came across the feathers of hunted birds and paths that had been cleared through the trees. These led them to a 2-hectare (5-acre) opening in the forest where squatters likely planned to settle and then expand. The people who’d cleared the forest were [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[FLORES, Guatemala — This March, rangers on patrol in the Maya Forest came across the feathers of hunted birds and paths that had been cleared through the trees. These led them to a 2-hectare (5-acre) opening in the forest where squatters likely planned to settle and then expand. The people who’d cleared the forest were nowhere to be found. The deforestation had occurred around eight days before, the rangers guessed. Even with camera traps and other technology, there’d been almost no way to detect it in real time. Rapid response has long been a challenge for conservationists in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, which spans 2.2 million hectares (5.3 million acres) across northern Guatemala. The reserve is a patchwork of national parks, logging concessions and biological corridors, some of them under pressure from cattle ranching and illegal logging. “If we’re going out regularly to a site every two or three months, and something happens a day after the last visit, then two or three months will go by with no information,” said Rony García Anleu, director of biological research at the Guatemala office of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). A new project in the reserve aims to decrease ranger response times with bioacoustics devices that can “listen” for illegal activity, using AI models trained to identify sounds associated with logging, hunting and other crimes. It’s part of the $100 million AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge, run by the Bezos Earth Fund for innovative uses of artificial intelligence for tackling&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/in-guatemala-new-ai-technology-will-be-listening-for-illegal-deforestation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/in-guatemala-new-ai-technology-will-be-listening-for-illegal-deforestation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-318295</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>AI tool listens for endangered orcas in real time to reduce human disturbance</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/ai-tool-listens-for-endangered-orcas-in-real-time-to-reduce-human-disturbance/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/ai-tool-listens-for-endangered-orcas-in-real-time-to-reduce-human-disturbance/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 Apr 2026 08:27:16 +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/20/2026/04/22081854/orcas-swim-in-blue-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=317912</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[North America, Pacific Ocean, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Cetaceans, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Endangered Species, Environment, Marine, Marine Animals, Marine Conservation, Marine Mammals, Oceans, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Where are the orcas at? And at what times are they making the most calls? Answering those questions with pinpoint accuracy is crucial to protecting the famed “southern resident” orcas off North America’s northern Pacific coast. An AI-driven initiative is now helping parse through large amounts of ocean sounds to identify and detect the orcas [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Where are the orcas at? And at what times are they making the most calls? Answering those questions with pinpoint accuracy is crucial to protecting the famed “southern resident” orcas off North America’s northern Pacific coast. An AI-driven initiative is now helping parse through large amounts of ocean sounds to identify and detect the orcas in real time. OrcaHello is working with scientists and government agencies to detect the presence of this specific group of orcas and minimize the impact that coastal activities may have on them. Southern resident orcas (Orcinus orca ater) are considered an endangered subspecies made up of three distinct pods. According to the Center for Whale Research, a U.S.-based nonprofit that studies this group exclusively, there are only 76 remaining individuals of these orcas as of December 2025. A decline in the populations of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), their primary source of food, along with noise pollution and vessel traffic are major threats to their survival. “Inbreeding is also starting to be a problem, which is what you’d expect for a small population,” David Bain, chief scientist at Orca Conservancy, another nonprofit focused on the southern resident orcas, told Mongabay in a video interview. “That means the decline is going to resume unless we make conditions better.” OrcaHello was developed to look specifically into the issue of noise pollution and vessel traffic. “It’s a real-time AI alert system that’s listening 24/7 for orca calls,” Akash Mahajan, who co-developed the tool, told Mongabay in a video interview.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/ai-tool-listens-for-endangered-orcas-in-real-time-to-reduce-human-disturbance/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/ai-tool-listens-for-endangered-orcas-in-real-time-to-reduce-human-disturbance/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-317912</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Studying the world’s largest gathering of forest elephants with sound and field observation</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/studying-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-forest-elephants-with-sound-and-field-observation/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/studying-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-forest-elephants-with-sound-and-field-observation/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Apr 2026 14:46:29 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[David AkanaRhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/04/19152433/ivonne-kienast-2026-16x9-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=316782</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa, Central Africa, Central African Republic, Congo Basin, and Democratic Republic Of Congo]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Apes, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Education, Elephants, Endangered Species, Environment, Forests, Gorillas, Great Apes, Indigenous Peoples, Interviews, Primates, Rainforests, Research, Traditional People, Tropical Forests, Wildlife, Wildtech, and Women In Science]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In the far southwest of the Central African Republic, where dense forest gives way to a broad clearing, elephants gather in numbers rarely seen elsewhere. The place is known as Dzanga Bai. Forest elephants are among the least visible large mammals in Africa. In closed-canopy rainforest, they move in small groups, often at night, communicating [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In the far southwest of the Central African Republic, where dense forest gives way to a broad clearing, elephants gather in numbers rarely seen elsewhere. The place is known as Dzanga Bai. Forest elephants are among the least visible large mammals in Africa. In closed-canopy rainforest, they move in small groups, often at night, communicating over long distances through low-frequency calls that travel beyond human hearing. Much of their social life unfolds out of sight. Dzanga Bai is one of the few places where that pattern breaks. Here, elephants emerge from the forest to feed on minerals in the soil. They linger. Families converge, separate, and return. Individuals can be recognized over years. Behaviors that are otherwise inferred—through tracks, fragments of sound, or brief encounters—can be followed more directly. Dzanga Bai in Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve, Central African Republic. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler For decades, the clearing has drawn researchers trying to understand a species that resists easy study. Long-term work here, including that of researchers such as Andrea Turkalo, has shaped much of what is known about forest elephants. Ivonne Kienast is part of that effort. She leads the Dzanga Forest Elephant Project, part of the Elephant Listening Project at Cornell University. Her work combines long-term behavioral observation with passive acoustic monitoring. The objective is to understand how forest elephants live and to detect early signs of change. In practice, this means continuous field presence, physically demanding work, and coordination across a network of relationships that extend well beyond&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/studying-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-forest-elephants-with-sound-and-field-observation/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-316782</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Listening to forests reveals signs of recovery beyond tree cover</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/listening-to-forests-reveals-signs-of-recovery-beyond-tree-cover/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/listening-to-forests-reveals-signs-of-recovery-beyond-tree-cover/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>16 Apr 2026 14:12:52 +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/20/2026/04/16140215/Banner-Image-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=317628</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Central America, Costa Rica, and North America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, data, Ecosystem Services, Ecosystems, Environment, Forests, Payments For Ecosystem Services, Research, Technology, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Can listening to forests help us understand if the life inside them is thriving? Apparently, yes. Giacomo Delgado likens it to a doctor examining heart health. “A doctor has listened to many people&#8217;s hearts, and knows what healthy hearts sound like,” Delgado, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zürich, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Can listening to forests help us understand if the life inside them is thriving? Apparently, yes. Giacomo Delgado likens it to a doctor examining heart health. “A doctor has listened to many people&#8217;s hearts, and knows what healthy hearts sound like,” Delgado, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zürich, told Mongabay in a video interview. “She then starts to compare your heart to other heart sounds to see if you have a healthy heart.” A team of researchers, led by Delgado, has used the same logic to assess the success of a forest protection and restoration mechanism in Costa Rica. Using more than 16,000 hours of audio recordings of the forest, they found that biodiversity was restored in naturally regenerated forests. These forests were also found to sound similar to forests that have been protected for years. In 1950, half of Costa Rica was forested; by 1995, forest cover had been reduced to 25%, driven in part by cattle ranching and agriculture expansion in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, however, Costa Rica became something of a pioneer in the payment for ecosystem services (PES) system, a mechanism where landowners and local communities are financially compensated for protecting and preserving forests. The country’s PES initiative, launched in 1997, is one of the first national-level programs of its kind in the world, and to date has covered more than 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres). “Costa Rica’s PES program is notable not only for its&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/listening-to-forests-reveals-signs-of-recovery-beyond-tree-cover/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-317628</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Methane chasers: Hunting a climate-changing gas seeping from Earth&#8217;s seafloor</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/methane-chasers-hunting-a-climate-changing-gas-seeping-from-earths-seafloor/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/methane-chasers-hunting-a-climate-changing-gas-seeping-from-earths-seafloor/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Jan 2026 15:46:05 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Elizabeth Devitt]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Glenn Scherer]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/01/08115645/1.-BANNER-seep-bubbles-NOAA-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=312714</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Planetary Boundaries]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Arctic Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Global, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and Southern Ocean]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Acoustic, Climate, Climate Change, Climate Science, Conservation, Ecosystems, Environment, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Marine, Methane, Oceans, Research, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[They’ve been called “bubble chasers,” and “seep seekers,” though they sometimes call themselves “flare hunters.” They’re a small group of scientific specialists searching the world’s oceans for tiny streams of methane gas-filled globules rising from seafloor sediments. On expeditions ranging from the Arctic to Antarctica, carried out in shallow waters to thousands of meters below [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[They’ve been called “bubble chasers,” and “seep seekers,” though they sometimes call themselves “flare hunters.” They’re a small group of scientific specialists searching the world’s oceans for tiny streams of methane gas-filled globules rising from seafloor sediments. On expeditions ranging from the Arctic to Antarctica, carried out in shallow waters to thousands of meters below the sea’s surface, their studies reveal how these tiny globules can potentially add to global warming while also creating unique ecosystems. But even when deploying advanced modern technology, finding these cold-ocean methane seeps isn’t easy. And it may be even harder to determine exactly how seafloor methane releases could factor into the future of humanity and the planet. Map showing the known global occurrences of methane-derived carbonates used to compile a study of seafloor methane seepage across the last 150 million years. Image courtesy of Oppo et al. (2020). Bubbles flowing from a methane seep at El Quisco, off the coast of Chile. Researchers found the seeps using sonar-based bubble mapping, bathymetric mapping, tracking in situ methane concentration measurements, and visual surveys with the ROV SuBastian. Image by ROV SuBastian/Schmidt Ocean Institute (CC BY-NC-SA). Hunting telltale bubbles “These seeps are fascinating and extreme environments,” said Claudio Argentino, a sediment biogeochemist at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, whose fieldwork started at ancient methane seep sites in Italy’s Apennine Mountains in 2015, during his doctoral studies, and now takes him to the Arctic Ocean. “We want to know how much gas is escaping the seafloor sediment&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/methane-chasers-hunting-a-climate-changing-gas-seeping-from-earths-seafloor/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/methane-chasers-hunting-a-climate-changing-gas-seeping-from-earths-seafloor/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-312714</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Photos: Top new species from 2025</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/photos-top-new-species-from-2025/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/photos-top-new-species-from-2025/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>29 Dec 2025 14:22:20 +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/20/2025/12/29141103/Screenshot-2025-12-28-at-5.12.22-PM-1-768x512.png" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=312133</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Andes, Angola, Atlantic Ocean, Brazil, Cerrado, Global, Himalayas, India, Peru, and Tanzania]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Acoustic, Amphibians, Animals, Biodiversity, Captive Breeding, Climate Change, Cloud Forests, Conservation, Deep Sea, Deforestation, DNA, Ecosystem Services, Endangered Species, Environment, Extinction, Farming, Forests, Fungi, Habitat Loss, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Indigenous Peoples, Invasive Species, Marine, Mining, Oceans, Old Growth Forests, Pollution, Protected Areas, Ranching, Research, Science, Snakes, Species, Species Discovery, Swamps, Threatened species, Traditional Knowledge, Traditional People, Trees, Tropical Forests, and Water]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The world still holds its secrets. Hidden under wet rocks, in the ocean&#8217;s twilight crevices, and in the minutiae of the genetic code are creatures unknown and unnamed by the human species. Every year, scientists find hundreds of new animals, insects, plants and fungi. This year, researchers described a tiny new marsupial, a new Himalayan [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The world still holds its secrets. Hidden under wet rocks, in the ocean&#8217;s twilight crevices, and in the minutiae of the genetic code are creatures unknown and unnamed by the human species. Every year, scientists find hundreds of new animals, insects, plants and fungi. This year, researchers described a tiny new marsupial, a new Himalayan bat, an ancient tree, a bright blue butterfly, a parrot snake, and a fairy lantern plant, among others. &#8220;I think most people believe that we know most species on Earth,&#8221; Mario Moura, a professor at the Federal University of Paraíba in Brazil, told Mongabay, &#8220;but in the best-case scenario, we know 20% of Earth&#8217;s species.&#8221; Some estimate that only 10% of all the species on the planet have been described. Unfortunately, many species may be threatened with extinction before they’re even formally named — victims of human activities like development and climate change. Some of these species could be food or medicine for humans, but each plays a unique role in Earth’s interconnected web of life. “We’re understanding more and more that every species on the planet has a role, and in one way or another, is linked to our well-being through the part they play in ecosystems,&#8221; said Boris Worm, a marine conservation biologist who co-authored a study that quantifies the number of undescribed species on land and in the ocean. “We can’t protect them … if we don’t know them.&#8221; Atlantic manta ray (Mobula yarae) with a diver off the coast of Mexico. Originally&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/photos-top-new-species-from-2025/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/photos-top-new-species-from-2025/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-312133</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>New underwater acoustic camera identifies individual fish sounds, helping track threatened species</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/new-underwater-acoustic-camera-identifies-individual-fish-sounds-helping-track-threatened-species/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/new-underwater-acoustic-camera-identifies-individual-fish-sounds-helping-track-threatened-species/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Dec 2025 01:54:37 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Kaia Glickman]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/09014858/Atlantic_blue_tang_surgeonfish_Acanthurus_coeruleus-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=310820</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Caribbean and Curaçao]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Coral Reefs, Environment, Fish, Green, Oceans, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Fish were discovered to make sounds more than 2,000 years ago, but they have gone largely unheard by humans. While a typical, bustling coral reef may be home to dozens of fish species, until recently, identifying specific species’ sounds was practically impossible. Previous methods of studying fish sounds often involved divers interfering in the fishes’ [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Fish were discovered to make sounds more than 2,000 years ago, but they have gone largely unheard by humans. While a typical, bustling coral reef may be home to dozens of fish species, until recently, identifying specific species’ sounds was practically impossible. Previous methods of studying fish sounds often involved divers interfering in the fishes’ habitats, or researchers recording fish in captivity, which frequently meant forcing them to make sounds under stress by handling them or giving them electric shocks. Now, scientists have used a new combination of underwater audio and visual recording to identify the sounds of 46 fish species in their natural environment, the largest collection of wild fish sounds ever recorded. The new device, described recently in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, can extract individual fish noises from cluttered underwater audio recordings and identify which fish made each sound. The UPAC-360° underwater audio-visual camera isolates individual fish sounds from a sea of different noises. Image adapted from Dantzker et. al, Methods in Ecology and Evolution “We were shocked about how many fish we could record and identify in a relatively short amount of time,” said study coauthor Aaron Rice, an ecologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. There are more than 4,000 fish species listed by the IUCN as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered. By tracking their sounds, scientists hope to better understand where the fish live, how their numbers are changing, when they are most active, and which behaviors make them vulnerable to&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/new-underwater-acoustic-camera-identifies-individual-fish-sounds-helping-track-threatened-species/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/new-underwater-acoustic-camera-identifies-individual-fish-sounds-helping-track-threatened-species/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-310820</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Primatology goes high tech — from bioacoustics to drones &#038; AI</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/primatology-goes-high-tech-from-bioacoustics-to-drones-ai/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/primatology-goes-high-tech-from-bioacoustics-to-drones-ai/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 Oct 2025 17:30:57 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Manuel Fonseca]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Karen Coates]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/21084909/6-Ekspedisi-Murung-Raya_Joan-Prahara_BNF_IMG-3391-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=307996</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Apes, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, cameras, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Drones, Endangered Species, Environment, Fellows, Forests, Monkeys, Primates, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Riding in a helicopter, Fabiano Melo, with the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil, searched for the elusive northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus), a large monkey in the northern Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Flying over evergreen canopies with trees as tall as buildings, the researchers tried to spot light brown monkeys moving between branches. Finally, after almost [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Riding in a helicopter, Fabiano Melo, with the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil, searched for the elusive northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus), a large monkey in the northern Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Flying over evergreen canopies with trees as tall as buildings, the researchers tried to spot light brown monkeys moving between branches. Finally, after almost one hour, they found one. Seeing the helicopter, the monkey started shaking the branches fiercely. It then tried to move out of sight, jumping from branch to branch as if doing parkour. At the same time, Melo took video of the monkey’s agile movements as it disappeared into the canopy. Even though the animal got away easily, the researchers now had an idea of where to look for them. “The problem is that they have very low densities &#8230; and if you go inside the forest and try to track animals [by] walking, it&#8217;s almost impossible to find them,” Melo told Mongabay. Primatologists — scientists who study nonhuman primates such as apes, monkeys and lemurs — once considered the northern muriqui among the world’s 25 most endangered primates. Habitat loss, isolated populations and hunting have made this elusive species critically endangered. If Melo wanted to find the muriquis to understand their distribution, he needed to improve his tactics fast. New technologies gave Melo a possible solution: fewer helicopters, more drones. In 2017, Melo started to build the “dronequi,” a customized drone with high-definition and thermal cameras, allowing him to find and follow the monkeys more&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/primatology-goes-high-tech-from-bioacoustics-to-drones-ai/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/primatology-goes-high-tech-from-bioacoustics-to-drones-ai/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-307996</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Regenerative fashion initiative in Indonesia wins 2025 Pritzker Environmental Genius Award</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/regenerative-fashion-initiative-in-indonesia-wins-2025-pritzker-environmental-genius-award/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/regenerative-fashion-initiative-in-indonesia-wins-2025-pritzker-environmental-genius-award/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Oct 2025 15:14:40 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/09151209/denica-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=307322</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, California, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Amphibians, Bioacoustics, Environment, Global Environmental Crisis, Green Design, Hope and optimism, Regenerative production landscapes, and Sustainability]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[In a world defined by extraction, Denica Riadini-Flesch is proving that creation can heal instead. The Indonesian economist-turned-entrepreneur has won UCLA’s 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award for building a “farm-to-closet” supply chain—a system that regenerates land, restores heritage craft, and empowers rural women. Riadini-Flesch founded SukkhaCitta after an encounter that reshaped her view of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[In a world defined by extraction, Denica Riadini-Flesch is proving that creation can heal instead. The Indonesian economist-turned-entrepreneur has won UCLA’s 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award for building a “farm-to-closet” supply chain—a system that regenerates land, restores heritage craft, and empowers rural women. Riadini-Flesch founded SukkhaCitta after an encounter that reshaped her view of progress. As a young economist from Jakarta, she once equated development with growth—an upward line without end. That illusion unraveled when she visited a village where women labored for weeks over textiles only to earn a few dollars, their skin and lungs scarred by synthetic dyes. “It burns my hands, my eyes, my lungs,” one woman told her. The remark revealed what Riadini-Flesch calls “the true cost of convenience.” SukkhaCitta set out to invert that logic. Instead of sprawling factories, production takes place in courtyards and small farms across Java, Bali, Flores, and West Timor. Cotton is grown on mixed plots that regenerate the soil; dyes come from indigo and mahogany leaves; fabrics are woven on handlooms. The enterprise has restored more than 120 acres of degraded land, kept five million liters of toxic dye wastewater out of rivers, and raised women’s incomes by 60 percent on average. The environmental benefits are measurable, but the social ones may matter more. Through decentralized Rumah SukkhaCitta schools, women learn ecological literacy, entrepreneurship, and heritage techniques side by side. Younger generations—once drawn to city sweatshops—are returning home to earn dignified incomes. “Artisans and farmers are the missing link&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/regenerative-fashion-initiative-in-indonesia-wins-2025-pritzker-environmental-genius-award/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/regenerative-fashion-initiative-in-indonesia-wins-2025-pritzker-environmental-genius-award/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-307322</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In Panama, poison dart frog move brings hope amid amphibians’ fight with fungus</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-panama-poison-dart-frog-move-brings-hope-amid-amphibians-fight-with-fungus/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-panama-poison-dart-frog-move-brings-hope-amid-amphibians-fight-with-fungus/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Oct 2025 22:14:23 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Sam Meadows]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Alexandra Popescu]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/10/08220528/Pratts-poison-dart-frog-Colostethus-pratti-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=307262</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Forest, Central America, Latin America, and Panama]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Amphibians, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Conservation Technology, Diseases, Endangered Species, Global Environmental Crisis, Habitat Loss, Protected Areas, Research, Solutions, Threatened species, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Measuring a bit more than 20 millimeters (0.8 inches), Pratt’s poison frog (Colostethus pratti) is not the kind of frog that would get attention. Although part of the Dendrobatidae family, known for its bright colors and high toxicity that keep predators away, it can only boast a brown, stripy skin and low poison levels. It’s not [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Measuring a bit more than 20 millimeters (0.8 inches), Pratt’s poison frog (Colostethus pratti) is not the kind of frog that would get attention. Although part of the Dendrobatidae family, known for its bright colors and high toxicity that keep predators away, it can only boast a brown, stripy skin and low poison levels. It’s not even endangered. But in Panama, a recent move of a dozen pairs of these tiny frogs may offer researchers new insights into how to help amphibians worldwide in a decades-long fight against a deadly disease. Pratt’s poison frog has been one of at least 500 amphibian species affected by the chytrid fungal disease, a pathogen that over the last 50 years, is estimated to have wiped out 90 species of amphibians and caused a 90% decline in population abundance in other 124, according to a 2019 study. The disease, caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, was only discovered in 1998 but is known to have peaked in mortality in the 1980s and early 2000s. Pratt’s poison frogs have been hit by chytrid too. Although their populations are not at risk, they have been declining, as the fungus, urban development and agriculture have been encroaching on them. The species can be found in several locations within its range in Panama, but it is believed to have been wiped by chytrid from Altos de Campana National Park, the country’s oldest national park, at least 19 years ago, according to Brian Gratwicke, a conservation biologist at the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-panama-poison-dart-frog-move-brings-hope-amid-amphibians-fight-with-fungus/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-panama-poison-dart-frog-move-brings-hope-amid-amphibians-fight-with-fungus/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-307262</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Funding is needed to save Samoa’s ‘little dodo’ from extinction (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/funding-is-needed-save-samoas-little-dodo-from-extinction-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/funding-is-needed-save-samoas-little-dodo-from-extinction-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>18 Sep 2025 16:27:00 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Gianluca Serra]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/09/18152124/manumea-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=306169</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Pacific Islands and Samoa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Birding, Birds, Commentary, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Ecotourism, Endangered Species, Environment, Ethics, Extinction, Funding, Habitat, Habitat Degradation, Habitat Loss, Islands, philanthropy, Rainforests, Saving Species From Extinction, Solutions, Sustainable Development, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It’s early August 2025. Deep in the rainforests of Upolu, on the island of Samoa, Moeumu “Moe” Uili and I have paused our hike, counting the seconds between coo calls from an unseen pigeon hidden in the dense canopy. Moe mutters, “Nah, the intervals between the calls are too irregular. That’s got to be a [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It’s early August 2025. Deep in the rainforests of Upolu, on the island of Samoa, Moeumu “Moe” Uili and I have paused our hike, counting the seconds between coo calls from an unseen pigeon hidden in the dense canopy. Moe mutters, “Nah, the intervals between the calls are too irregular. That’s got to be a lupe,” referring to the much more common Pacific imperial pigeon (Ducula pacifica). “Are you still using the number of coo calls per sequence to distinguish lupe from manumea?” I ask per the latter bird and the object of our search: the tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris), also called “the little dodo.” “Not anymore,” she replies. “Turns out lupe can have sequences of up to 40 calls &#8230;” “Damn,” I sigh. A bird &#8216;hide&#8217; or &#8216;blind&#8217; built in Uafato in hopes of facilitating an extremely rare sighting of an adult manumea, Samoa&#8217;s critically endangered &#8216;little dodo.&#8217; Image courtesy of Samoa Conservation Society. It’s been a few years since I last joined a manumea search, and I’m glad to be here again. The rainforest of Samoa still enchants me — its timeless atmosphere, stifling humidity, slippery trails, and chorus of bizarre bird calls. Towering tree ferns, giant leaves, dangling lichens, parasitic orchids and humongous strangling ficus (“the kings of the forest,” or aoa in Samoan) all surrounded by a cacophony of pigeons, doves and honey-eaters. Among them, the high-pitched whistles of the ma‘oma‘o (Gymnomyza samoensis), an endangered and endemic giant honey-eater, pierces the stillness. It’s one of the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/funding-is-needed-save-samoas-little-dodo-from-extinction-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/funding-is-needed-save-samoas-little-dodo-from-extinction-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-306169</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Meet the DJs of nature, inspired by biodiversity</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/meet-the-djs-of-nature-inspired-by-biodiversity/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/meet-the-djs-of-nature-inspired-by-biodiversity/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Sep 2025 21:15:54 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Manuel Fonseca]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Karen Coates]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/09/15155703/Tayta-Bird.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=306008</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Arts, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Environment, Fellows, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Rainforests, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Nature is taking the stage. The sunset starts to fade on a cloudy summer day next to the Main River in an industrial neighborhood of Frankfurt, Germany. The main artist of the festival is an ecologist by day and DJ by night, Dominik Eulberg. Calm snare sounds mixed with a decaying beat like a ball [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Nature is taking the stage. The sunset starts to fade on a cloudy summer day next to the Main River in an industrial neighborhood of Frankfurt, Germany. The main artist of the festival is an ecologist by day and DJ by night, Dominik Eulberg. Calm snare sounds mixed with a decaying beat like a ball bouncing freely against the floor fill in the atmosphere. Some people in the crowd recognize the pattern and start to cheer, raising their arms up to the sky as if a Mass is just about to begin. A man with sunglasses says to the person next to him: “Dude! It’s finally Dominik.” A tall man in a black shirt appears behind the music box. Behind his blond hair that looks like golden thin vines falling over his face, he smiles and raises both arms while the crowd cheers. He looks down at the console with lightning lanes and knobs that control the volume, tempo and sound effects. Listening through his headphones, he starts to turn knobs as if trying to unlock a safe; the tempo starts to speed up, ratcheting the intensity of the music until the safe opens up wide, releasing a beat drop. The energy is in the air while people dance and nod as if talking in a language that does not need words to be understood. Music and nature have had a happy, everlasting marriage. Whether as part of the creativity process or eventually by adding sounds that make up parts&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/meet-the-djs-of-nature-inspired-by-biodiversity/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/meet-the-djs-of-nature-inspired-by-biodiversity/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-306008</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>AI uncovers how birds remix their songs over time</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ai-uncovers-how-birds-remix-their-songs-over-time/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ai-uncovers-how-birds-remix-their-songs-over-time/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Apr 2025 11:05:27 +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/20/2025/04/17063106/bird-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=297747</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Europe and United Kingdom]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Birds, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Research, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[If you thought only humans had unique musical tastes that differed drastically across geographies and generations, think again. Researchers have long suspected that migration and population dynamics shape the musical repertoire of songbirds. Now, they have empirical evidence to back up this hypothesis. A new study published in the journal Current Biology provides insights into [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[If you thought only humans had unique musical tastes that differed drastically across geographies and generations, think again. Researchers have long suspected that migration and population dynamics shape the musical repertoire of songbirds. Now, they have empirical evidence to back up this hypothesis. A new study published in the journal Current Biology provides insights into how age, population dynamics and migration are key factors that determine how birdsong evolves over time. With the help of artificial intelligence models, the team behind the research found that “demographic variation affects vocal cultures” for great tits (Parus major) in Oxfordshire in the U.K. “The process of song acquisition relies on who they&#8217;re exposed to, the movement of individuals and the age of those individuals within populations,” study lead author Nilo Merino Recalde, a postdoctoral biology researcher at the University of Oxford, told Mongabay in a video interview. “This leads to all sorts of really cool dynamics that are quite similar to what happens with human languages and music.” Listening in on birdsongs and figuring out how they’re evolving could potentially help researchers understand how bird populations are faring. For instance, scientists might be able to correlate song patterns to a reduction or fragmentation of populations. The song types could also help them get a sense of how much the birds are moving around. “This is still speculative in a practical sense but all of the different processes that we care about when it comes to conservation are reflected in the songs,” Recalde said.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ai-uncovers-how-birds-remix-their-songs-over-time/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/ai-uncovers-how-birds-remix-their-songs-over-time/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-297747</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Counting whales by eavesdropping on their chatter, with help from machine learning</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/counting-whales-by-eavesdropping-on-their-chatter-with-help-from-machine-learning/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/counting-whales-by-eavesdropping-on-their-chatter-with-help-from-machine-learning/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>18 Mar 2025 13:16:01 +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/20/2025/03/18103347/Anim1751_-_Flickr_-_NOAA_Photo_Library-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=295982</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Ocean, North America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Animals, Bioacoustics, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Endangered Species, Mammals, Marine, Marine Animals, Research, Technology, Whales, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[What better way to track whales than listening in on them? Passive acoustic monitoring, in which microphones are placed underwater to pick up any sounds, has long helped scientists detect the presence, or absence, of whales in oceans. More often than not, however, the method isn’t that great at estimating the population of whales. To [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[What better way to track whales than listening in on them? Passive acoustic monitoring, in which microphones are placed underwater to pick up any sounds, has long helped scientists detect the presence, or absence, of whales in oceans. More often than not, however, the method isn’t that great at estimating the population of whales. To fill that gap, scientists have combined audio data with aerial surveys and machine-learning tools to count whale populations. A new study published in the journal Endangered Species Research describes how researchers at Cornell University in the U.S. used a combination of these technologies to estimate the abundance of North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) in Cape Cod Bay in the U.S. northeast. While underwater microphones and machine-learning tools were deployed to estimate population, aerial surveys were used to calibrate and verify the data. “It has been challenging to make the leap of faith for using whale calls to signify information beyond presence or absence in an area,” Marissa Garcia, lead author of the study and researcher at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told Mongabay in a video interview. “With this research, we are seeking to advance passive acoustic monitoring to address questions beyond just whale presence.” North Atlantic right whales are one of the most threatened whale species in the world, with only 356 individuals estimated to be left. Image courtesy of Center for Coastal Studies; photo taken under the NMFS ESA/MMPA permit No. 19315. North&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/counting-whales-by-eavesdropping-on-their-chatter-with-help-from-machine-learning/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/counting-whales-by-eavesdropping-on-their-chatter-with-help-from-machine-learning/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-295982</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>How to tell if mangrove restoration is working? Listen to the birds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/02/how-to-tell-if-mangrove-restoration-is-working-listen-to-the-birds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/02/how-to-tell-if-mangrove-restoration-is-working-listen-to-the-birds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Feb 2025 09:36:35 +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/20/2025/02/03091910/Banner-e1738574417432-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=293779</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Malaysia, and Southeast Asia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Birds, Coastal Ecosystems, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Ecosystems, Environment, Forests, Green, Mangroves, Protected Areas, Reforestation, Research, Restoration, Technology, Trees, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The soundscape in mangrove forests can be wonderfully complex. If you prime your ears, you might chance to hear mudskippers sloshing their bellies across silky mud, or fiddler crabs pattering between their burrows. If you’re lucky, a rustling overhead might indicate monkeys creeping along branches, intently curious, or it could be a Brahminy kite taking [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The soundscape in mangrove forests can be wonderfully complex. If you prime your ears, you might chance to hear mudskippers sloshing their bellies across silky mud, or fiddler crabs pattering between their burrows. If you’re lucky, a rustling overhead might indicate monkeys creeping along branches, intently curious, or it could be a Brahminy kite taking off, soaring back out to hunt at sea. But a sound you’re sure to hear is birdsong. Researchers in Peninsular Malaysia recently used this coastal avian chorus to study how bird species richness varies according to several mangrove habitat characteristics. They found that mangrove forests with older, larger and taller trees, and with greater canopy cover and understory complexity, supported a wider variety of species. Mangrove specialist birds are particularly more likely to be found in these larger, more mature sites, according to the findings, published in the journal Biotropica. “When the habitat itself is structurally very complex, we expect more species to be able to fit into it by occupying what we call ecological niches,” study co-author Chong Leong Puan, a forestry scientist at the University of Putra Malaysia (UPM), told Mongabay. “So conserving large and old areas of mangrove is absolutely critical.” Survey teams collect habitat data in a mangrove in Selangor state. Image courtesy of Al-Kautsar Hidayanto Abdul Rahim. Puan and his colleagues used bioacoustics — the use of audio recording devices to listen to animals in their natural habitats — to study the bird communities at four mangrove forest reserves in&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/02/how-to-tell-if-mangrove-restoration-is-working-listen-to-the-birds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/02/how-to-tell-if-mangrove-restoration-is-working-listen-to-the-birds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-293779</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Leopards’ unique ‘sawing’ sounds could aid conservation efforts</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/01/leopards-unique-sawing-sounds-could-aid-conservation-efforts/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/01/leopards-unique-sawing-sounds-could-aid-conservation-efforts/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Jan 2025 11:42:48 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Dann Okoth]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Ochieng' Ogodo]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/01/30103611/birger-strahl-bb-nc0y1Rio-unsplash-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=293633</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Africa and East Africa]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Endangered Species, Leopards, Science, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[NAIROBI, Kenya — Leopards often produce a unique, deep, guttural roar commonly described as “sawing” due to its resemblance to the sound of a person sawing wood by hand. Researchers in a study published in the journal of Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation have found that studying these sounds, using a technique known as [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[NAIROBI, Kenya — Leopards often produce a unique, deep, guttural roar commonly described as “sawing” due to its resemblance to the sound of a person sawing wood by hand. Researchers in a study published in the journal of Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation have found that studying these sounds, using a technique known as bioacoustics, allows monitoring of much larger areas. Bioacoustics explores how living organisms produce, transmit, and receive sounds in their environment. By monitoring larger areas, researchers can capture details from a large number of animals, thereby building a more compelling database than if just a handful of animals were studied, according to the report. One of the study authors, Jonathan Growcott, a Ph.D. student at the University of Exeter, U.K., says the findings are “an important first step towards using bioacoustics in the conservation of leopards.” Leopards are listed as “vulnerable” to extinction, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, mainly from habitat loss due to agricultural land expansion or grazing areas and human-wildlife conflict. Leopard in a tree in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, Africa. Image by David Berkowitz via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0). But because leopards are solitary, nocturnal creatures living across huge expanses of terrain, scientists struggle to gather reliable data that would help them reverse population declines. “There is little scientific research about the ‘sawing roar’ of a leopard — a repeated low-frequency pattern of strokes, often audible from at least a kilometer away, used primarily to attract mates and&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/01/leopards-unique-sawing-sounds-could-aid-conservation-efforts/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-293633</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Colliding icebergs and chirping seals: Polar ocean sounds are reimagined in art-science collaboration</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/colliding-icebergs-and-chirping-seals-polar-ocean-sounds-are-reimagined-in-art-science-collaboration/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/colliding-icebergs-and-chirping-seals-polar-ocean-sounds-are-reimagined-in-art-science-collaboration/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>06 Dec 2024 02:16:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jasmin Galvan]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/11/30232723/Galvan_3-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=290893</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Antarctica, Arctic, Arctic Ocean, and Greenland]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Cetaceans, Environment, Green, Marine Mammals, Oceans, and Whales]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The frigid depths of the polar oceans exist only in the imagination for most people. Images of stark white ice fields and vast expanses of water might lead us to believe that the Arctic and Antarctic oceans are silent, empty settings. However, if you listen below the surface, they come alive with the chirps and [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The frigid depths of the polar oceans exist only in the imagination for most people. Images of stark white ice fields and vast expanses of water might lead us to believe that the Arctic and Antarctic oceans are silent, empty settings. However, if you listen below the surface, they come alive with the chirps and trills of Weddell seals and the clicks of toothed whales chattering to each other. To engage the public with these remote realms, artist-researcher Geraint Rhys Whittaker of the University of Oldenburg in Germany and his colleagues created the Polar Sounds project. The team provided more than 100 artists with sound recordings from the Ocean Acoustics Group at the Alfred Wegener Institute&#8217;s Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. The artists treated these recordings as instruments to build upon or transform completely, creating lyrical songs, sonic narratives, and experimental works. “When you put a hydrophone [into the ocean], it opens a whole new world,” said Whittaker. “When I first heard these various sounds from the archive, I was just amazed at the diversity of different sounds.” The frigid waters of Antarctica are full of ice, but under the surface is a dynamic sonic environment. Image credit: bhart9070 from Pixabay The German team created Polar Sounds in collaboration with Cities and Memory to engage the public with ocean research as part of the United Nation’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). They described the project in a paper published recently in Marine Policy. Growing up in the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/colliding-icebergs-and-chirping-seals-polar-ocean-sounds-are-reimagined-in-art-science-collaboration/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/colliding-icebergs-and-chirping-seals-polar-ocean-sounds-are-reimagined-in-art-science-collaboration/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
					<enclosure url="https://mongabay-images.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Galvan_Sound_1.mp3" length="9656111" type="audio/mpeg" />
<enclosure url="https://mongabay-images.s3.amazonaws.com/audio/Galvan_Sound_2.mp3" length="7305116" type="audio/mpeg" />
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					<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-290893</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>An inventory for acoustic monitoring: Interview with Kevin Darras</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/10/an-inventory-for-acoustic-monitoring-interview-with-kevin-darras/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/10/an-inventory-for-acoustic-monitoring-interview-with-kevin-darras/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>05 Oct 2024 02:47:02 +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/20/2024/10/04141706/The-Worldwide-Soundscapes-project-is-a-global-database-that-documents-when-and-where-passive-acoustic-monitoring-has-been-deployed_Image-courtesy-of-Kevin-Darras-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=288217</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Bioacoustics, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Environment, Interviews, Technology, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[It started as a simple spreadsheet that documented locations where researchers were recording sound to monitor biodiversity. Three years on, the Worldwide Soundscapes project is a global database on when, how and where passive acoustic monitoring is being deployed around the world to study terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. “This is a project that [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[It started as a simple spreadsheet that documented locations where researchers were recording sound to monitor biodiversity. Three years on, the Worldwide Soundscapes project is a global database on when, how and where passive acoustic monitoring is being deployed around the world to study terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. “This is a project that is now becoming too big to be handled by only one person,” Kevin Darras, currently senior researcher at France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), who conceived the project, told Mongabay in a video interview. Darras started the project when he was a postdoctoral researcher at Westlake University in China. The idea struck when he was waiting for updates on another project he was working on at the time. With the project, Darras said he was attempting to fill a void that often led to duplication of efforts in the research community that uses passive acoustic monitoring — audio recorders left out in the wild — to study biodiversity around the world. “There was a scientific gap in the sense that we didn&#8217;t know where and when we were sampling sound for monitoring biodiversity,” he said. Passive acoustic monitoring has long been used to listen in on insects, birds and other animals in ecosystems around the world. It’s aided scientists to detect elusive species in a noninvasive manner. For example, a team in Australia used acoustic recorders and artificial intelligence to track down the breeding hollows of pink cockatoos (Lophochroa leadbeateri leadbeateri)&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/10/an-inventory-for-acoustic-monitoring-interview-with-kevin-darras/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/10/an-inventory-for-acoustic-monitoring-interview-with-kevin-darras/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-288217</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Reimagining insect research: Interview with Roel van Klink and Leandro Nascimento</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/reimagining-insect-research-interview-with-roel-van-klink-and-leandro-nascimento/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/reimagining-insect-research-interview-with-roel-van-klink-and-leandro-nascimento/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>24 Jun 2024 14:29:57 +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/20/2024/06/24140407/pexels-andre-mouton-1275684-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=283562</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Bioacoustics, Camera Trapping, Conservation, Conservation Technology, data, DNA, Insects, Interviews, Interviews with conservation players, Research, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[They might comprise close to 75% of all known animal species. But when it comes to the monitoring and protection of insects, global efforts have been inadequate. The numbers tell a harrowing story. A global review of insect populations published in 2019 in the journal Biological Conservation found that 40% of insect species are threatened [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[They might comprise close to 75% of all known animal species. But when it comes to the monitoring and protection of insects, global efforts have been inadequate. The numbers tell a harrowing story. A global review of insect populations published in 2019 in the journal Biological Conservation found that 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction, which could lead to “a catastrophic collapse” of ecosystems worldwide. “Most insects are relatively uninteresting for humans,” Roel van Klink, senior researcher at the Biodiversity Synthesis Research Group at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, told Mongabay in a video interview. “It&#8217;s very laborious work, and society has not been willing to pay for the time that it actually needs to do this well.” Even as technology is being increasingly deployed to study and monitor insects globally, van Klink said he realized that groups developing these tools were often unaware of developments in other spheres. “It seemed that they were not talking to each other,” he said. “There were parallel developments in different countries.” As a first step toward addressing this concern and to get people to collaborate, van Klink brought together a group of scientists, researchers and technologists working on insect biodiversity. Working with them, he and a team collected, compiled and edited a special issue of studies titled “Towards a toolkit for global insect biodiversity monitoring” that was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The issue comprises research from 142 authors in 27 countries with a&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/reimagining-insect-research-interview-with-roel-van-klink-and-leandro-nascimento/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/reimagining-insect-research-interview-with-roel-van-klink-and-leandro-nascimento/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-283562</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Bioacoustics and AI help scientists listen in on elusive Australian cockatoos</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/bioacoustics-and-ai-help-scientists-listen-in-on-elusive-australian-cockatoos/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/bioacoustics-and-ai-help-scientists-listen-in-on-elusive-australian-cockatoos/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>29 Apr 2024 09:17:23 +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/20/2024/04/29085659/Scientists-are-hoping-to-understand-more-about-where-the-birds-live-and-how-they-react-to-changes-in-rainfall-and-temperature_Photo-by-Ceclie-Espigole-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=281489</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Australia]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Behavior, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Birds, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Endangered Species, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Barely a year after the Australian government classified the eastern pink cockatoo as an endangered subspecies, scientists have deployed technology to help study and protect the birds. With the help of passive acoustic monitoring and artificial intelligence, researchers at the Queensland University of Technology found their way to a previously unknown breeding hollow of eastern [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[Barely a year after the Australian government classified the eastern pink cockatoo as an endangered subspecies, scientists have deployed technology to help study and protect the birds. With the help of passive acoustic monitoring and artificial intelligence, researchers at the Queensland University of Technology found their way to a previously unknown breeding hollow of eastern pink cockatoos (Lophochroa leadbeateri leadbeateri) at the Bowra Wildlife Sanctuary in Queensland state, northeastern Australia. “We had known that they were foraging there, but we didn’t know that they were breeding in that area,” Lola Lange, who was involved in the research and is pursuing her master’s degree in biology and environmental science at QUT, told Mongabay in a video interview. “We now know that it is even more important to protect the sanctuary.” Pink cockatoos, with eastern and western subspecies, are endemic to Australia. However, the birds are hard to monitor and study because they live in remote arid and semiarid ecosystems. Despite their declining population, the difficulty and high costs associated with monitoring the birds have meant that there’s been very little research and academic literature that maps their habitats and studies their behavior. “In Queensland, we really don’t know why their populations are declining, what trees they like, what food they like and where they nest,” Lange said. While figuring out how to track eastern pink cockatoos, passive acoustic monitoring was the most obvious choice to Lange and her teammates. The method of leaving audio recorders that can gather vast amounts of&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/bioacoustics-and-ai-help-scientists-listen-in-on-elusive-australian-cockatoos/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/bioacoustics-and-ai-help-scientists-listen-in-on-elusive-australian-cockatoos/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-281489</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>The potential for tracking wildlife health &#038; disease via bioacoustics is great (commentary)</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/tracking-wildlife-health-disease-via-bioacoustics-is-effective-more-research-is-needed-commentary/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/tracking-wildlife-health-disease-via-bioacoustics-is-effective-more-research-is-needed-commentary/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Apr 2024 14:14:15 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jesse Turner]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/04/10134847/BighornSheep-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=280787</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Atlantic Forest and Global]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animal Welfare, Animals, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Commentary, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Diseases, Research, Technology, Wildlife, Wildtech, and Zoonotic Diseases]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Vocalizations have the capacity to illuminate valuable information about an animal’s health and wellbeing, if we are willing to put in the effort to listen. The first time I appreciated this potential was in 2018, on the waters of the San Juan Islands in Washington State. An orca named Talequah had recently lost her calf [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[Vocalizations have the capacity to illuminate valuable information about an animal’s health and wellbeing, if we are willing to put in the effort to listen. The first time I appreciated this potential was in 2018, on the waters of the San Juan Islands in Washington State. An orca named Talequah had recently lost her calf and was keeping it afloat by nudging the corpse towards the surface, a journey that ended up lasting 17 days and 1,000 miles. As part of a small team researching underwater noise in the area, I collected recordings of the grieving mother to study if orca calls could indicate mourning behavior. That moment transformed my understanding of how animal vocalizations, or bioacoustics, can encode information. To better understand and predict wildlife health, we should focus research on understanding how welfare metrics can be measured through vocalizations. The use of bioacoustic signatures associated with illness to monitor human health is blossoming, leading to the term ‘acoustic epidemiology.’ Machine learning has enabled the development of automated methods using vocal recordings to detect tuberculosis, Covid-19, and Parkinson’s disease, demonstrating the ability to monitor certain health indices passively. Over the past two decades, the livestock industry has used acoustics to monitor the health of poultry, swine, and cattle due to vocalizations’ proven correlation with welfare and disease states. Figure 1. Key epidemiological variables are listed (dark grey boxes), below which metrics are given which could be informative to the specific variable and that can be derived from acoustic data.&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/tracking-wildlife-health-disease-via-bioacoustics-is-effective-more-research-is-needed-commentary/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/tracking-wildlife-health-disease-via-bioacoustics-is-effective-more-research-is-needed-commentary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-280787</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sound recordings and AI tell us if forests are recovering, new study from Ecuador shows</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/sound-recordings-and-ai-tell-us-if-forests-are-recovering-new-study-from-ecuador-shows/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/sound-recordings-and-ai-tell-us-if-forests-are-recovering-new-study-from-ecuador-shows/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>23 Oct 2023 19:05:18 +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/20/2019/08/28142158/manu_0231_1920X1280-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=274548</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Andes, Choco Forest, Ecuador, Latin America, and South America]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Biodiversity, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Critically Endangered Species, Deforestation, Endangered Species, Environment, Forests, Green, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Protected Areas, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Reforestation, Remote Sensing, Technology, Trees, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Does planting trees bring back the animals? Around the world, people are working to restore forests, either by planting trees or allowing the flora to return naturally. But as the trees grow, it can be difficult to determine if communities of birds, bugs, frogs, and other life forms are also rebounding. In the Chocó of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Does planting trees bring back the animals? Around the world, people are working to restore forests, either by planting trees or allowing the flora to return naturally. But as the trees grow, it can be difficult to determine if communities of birds, bugs, frogs, and other life forms are also rebounding. In the Chocó of northwestern Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse rainforests in the world, a group of German and Ecuadorian scientists measured biodiversity recovery across different land types, including active pastures and farms, abandoned farms regrowing into young secondary forests, and mature old-growth forests. Using a combination of acoustic monitoring and DNA-based surveys, the team found that species were returning to the regenerating forests after just a couple of decades. Old-growth Chocó forest on Jocotoco&#8217;s Canandé reserve. Photo by Javier Aznar. “We can see how the Chocó rainforest reestablishes itself over time. Within 25 years, you get a lot of species back,” Martin Schaefer, one of the study’s co-authors and the director of the Ecuadorian NGO Jocotoco Foundation, told Mongabay. “It’s a positive message that we need to bring to the public&#8230; Over just three decades, forests are regrowing.” The researchers also found that analyzing animal and insect sounds yields information about the overall biodiversity of the forest, including the silent creatures that don’t sing, call, chirp, or squawk. Sound-based monitoring using artificial intelligence tools is a powerful and cost-effective technique for monitoring biodiversity recovery in tropical forests and, the authors say, these tools are needed &#8220;to support&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/sound-recordings-and-ai-tell-us-if-forests-are-recovering-new-study-from-ecuador-shows/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-274548</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>With fewer birds seen on farms, scientists try listening for them</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/with-fewer-birds-seen-on-farms-scientists-try-listening-for-them/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/with-fewer-birds-seen-on-farms-scientists-try-listening-for-them/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>08 Sep 2023 09:02:03 +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/20/2023/09/08084427/Eastern-Bluebird-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=273043</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Global, North America, and United States]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Agroecology, Artificial Intelligence, Bioacoustics, Birds, Conservation, Conservation Technology, Farming, Fellows, Research, Technology, Wildlife, and Wildtech]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Growing up, Adam Dixon couldn&#8217;t swim or fish in the Arkansas River which flowed through his town of Derby in Kansas. Agricultural runoff, along with industrial activities, heavily impacted the river, often prompting authorities to warn residents to not eat fish from the water body. Growing up witnessing this issue informed Dixon’s career choices. “I [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
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							<![CDATA[Growing up, Adam Dixon couldn&#8217;t swim or fish in the Arkansas River which flowed through his town of Derby in Kansas. Agricultural runoff, along with industrial activities, heavily impacted the river, often prompting authorities to warn residents to not eat fish from the water body. Growing up witnessing this issue informed Dixon’s career choices. “I realized that agriculture impacts environmental quality, the quality of my life and the people in my community, as well as the biodiversity around us,” Dixon, now a conservation scientist at WWF, told Mongabay in a video interview. That interest followed him to school. In 2015, as part of his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Dixon started research into how to monitor birds in agricultural landscapes. He wanted to see how birds were faring on working lands, and how to gather data to help better manage vegetation to increase biodiversity. The initial stages of his research coincided with what he called “an explosion of technology” being used for conservation purposes. Encouraged, Dixon started thinking of tech solutions for his research. “All the technology was converging and it seemed like a pertinent thing to try out,” he said. “I put together a low-cost experiment with the goal of increasing the total number of observations of birds and their habitats in croplands.” In a study he co-authored and published earlier this year in the journal Ecological Applications, Dixon described how he used high-resolution satellite images to map croplands and then combined that with audio data&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/with-fewer-birds-seen-on-farms-scientists-try-listening-for-them/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-273043</doi>				</item>
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