Podcast: New whale calls and dolphin behaviors discovered with bioacoustics
Today we’re looking at two stories that show how bioacoustics research is helping us better understand the lives of marine mammals — and we take a listen to some of…
What’s popping? Humpbacks off South Africa, new acoustic study finds
In 2019, researchers sailed to a sprawling seamount off the coast of South Africa, and lowered hydrophones to the seafloor. They picked up all kinds of noises: waves, the crackling of…
Podcast: Hippos, manatees, and how the sounds of African wildlife aid their conservation
Today we look at two new studies of African wildlife using bioacoustics and take a listen to some of the recordings informing that research. Listen here: Bioacoustics combines biology and…
Bioacoustics researcher wins top award for positive impact toward solving global challenges
Bioacoustics researcher Zuzana Burivalova is the 2021 recipient of the Driving Global Impact award, recognizing her work on conservation of tropical forests. The award, given annually by the publishers of…
Podcast: Indigenous bioacoustics listens to the land for conservation and tradition
Today we listen to some bioacoustic recordings informing Indigenous-led conservation initiatives. Listen here: The world is increasingly coming to recognize just how important Indigenous-led conservation and Indigenous land rights are…
Betting big on bioacoustics: Q&A with philanthropist Lisa Yang
Last month, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced the receipt of a $24 million donation to catalyze the field of conservation bioacoustics, which uses sound data to to understand and…
Podcast: It’s an ‘incredibly exciting’ time for the field of bioacoustics
Today we take a look at the growing world of bioacoustics research and listen to a number of recordings of wildlife, from owls, lemurs, and elephants to seals, right whales,…
When a tree falls in the forest, it’s the birds that don’t make a sound, study finds
A recorder is fastened to a tree, its microphone pointed downward. It captures a fusion of sound: the high-pitched buzz of cicadas, bird calls, and also the rumbling of a…
Male superb lyrebirds found to trick females into mating via masterful mimicry
The superb lyrebird has garnered worldwide recognition as nature's greatest voice impersonator. Researchers have found that besides imitating other species’ songs and artificial sounds from the environment, it is capable…
Electronic ears listen to poachers in a key Central American jaguar habitat
A gunshot explodes through the rainforest, followed by what sounds like branches falling from a tree. A dog barks. "Tito, did I hit it?” a man asks his companion in…
Podcast: Lemur love and award-winning plant passion in Madagascar
Madagascar is known for its lemurs, and we’ve got some recordings of Madagascar’s most famous fauna to listen to on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast. But today we’re looking…
The rhino in the room: 3D scan brings near-extinct Sumatran species to virtual life
Lured with watermelon, Harapan, a 13-year-old captive Sumatran rhino moseyed into a metal-framed enclosure rigged with 24 cameras. When he stepped in front of the lenses, all of the cameras…
Don’t cross this tiger mom: Close encounter in Russia’s Far East
On Sept. 15, Aleksandr Rybin was checking a camera trap in Russia’s Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve when something red and long-tailed darted in the bushes in front of him. “A thought…
Podcast: Singing and whistling cetaceans of southern Africa revealed by bioacoustics
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we’re taking a look at two examples of how bioacoustics studies have allowed us to discover things we never knew before about marine…
Podcast: From parks to payments, which conservation strategies work best?
This is the 100th episode of the Mongabay Newscast! We revisit Mongabay’s groundbreaking Conservation Effectiveness reporting project in order to see what developments there have been since we did the…
Podcast: Animals have culture, too, and for some it’s crucial to their survival and conservation
On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast we explore animal culture and social learning with author Carl Safina and whale researcher Hal Whitehead. Listen here: It was once widely…
Podcast: Listening to elephants to protect Central Africa’s tropical forests
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at a project that aims to preserve the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Central Africa and the biodiversity…
Spiny lobsters raise an undersea racket that can be heard miles away
European spiny lobsters create quite the rumble. By rubbing an antenna across its face, a spiny lobster can create a sound that might, under the right underwater conditions, be detectable…
Listening to marine mammals is helping scientists understand Arctic impacts of climate change
A 4-year bioacoustic study of marine mammals in the northern Bering Sea will help scientists track the impacts of global climate change on Arctic ecosystems. Researchers with WCS (Wildlife Conservation…
Audio: The sounds of tropical katydids and how they can benefit conservation
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we speak with Laurel Symes, a biologist who is using bioacoustics to study tropical katydids in Central America. Listen here: Laurel Symes…
Audio: The best animal calls featured on the Mongabay Newscast in 2019
This is our last episode of 2019, so we took a look back at the bioacoustic recordings we featured here on the Mongabay Newscast over the past year and today…
Canaries in the coal mine? North Atlantic right whale use of key habitat changing rapidly
Scientists say that behavioral changes observed in North Atlantic right whales should be considered a “canary in the coal mine” scenario. A team of researchers with the Center for Conservation…
Audio: How listening to individual gibbons can benefit conservation
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we speak with Dena Clink, a scientist studying individuality and variation within Bornean gibbon calls. She’s here to play us some of the…
Audio: Humpback whales across the Pacific Ocean are singing the same song
Today we speak with Jim Darling, a marine biologist who is here to play us some recordings of remarkably similar humpback whale songs from around the world. Listen here: …
Audio: What underwater sounds can tell us about Indian Ocean humpback dolphins
On today’s episode, we speak with marine biologist Isha Bopardikar, an independent researcher who is using bioacoustics to study humpback dolphins off the west coast of India. Listen here: …
Audio: The sounds of a rare New Zealand bird reintroduced to its native habitat
On today’s episode, we speak with Oliver Metcalf, lead author of a recent study that used bioacoustic recordings and machine learning to track birds in New Zealand after they’d been…
Audio: Rhett Butler on how sound can save forests and top rainforest storylines to watch in 2019
On today’s episode, we welcome Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler to discuss the biggest rainforest news stories of 2018 and what storylines to watch in 2019. He also discusses…
Audio: The best wildlife calls featured on the Mongabay Newscast in 2018
The Mongabay Newscast featured a lot of big names in conservation and environmental science in 2018, from E.O. Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy to David Suzuki and Sylvia Earle. We even…
Decoding the language of bats key to their conservation
South American bats speak dialects different from those of their North American counterparts. In response, a group of scientists has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for acoustic identification…
Audio: The superb mimicry skills of an Australian songbird
Today we take a listen to field recordings of the superb lyrebird, an Australian songbird known for its elaborate vocal displays and mimicry of other species’ songs. Listen here: …
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Indigenous communities in Peru ‘living in fear’ due to deforestation, drug trafficking
- Indigenous community in Peru losing forests to timber, drug, land trafficking
- Bolivian protected areas hit hard by forest fires
- The protected area that isn’t: Bolivia’s Ñembi Guasu beset by fires, farms, roads
Oceans
- Peat on land and kelp at sea as Argentina protects tip of Tierra del Fuego
- Shark-fishing gear banned across much of Pacific in conservation ‘win’
- Indonesian authorities nip island auction in marine reserve in the bud
- ‘It was a shark operation’: Q&A with Indonesian crew abused on Chinese shark-finning boat
Amazon Conservation
- Historic EU law against deforestation-linked imports ignores Brazil’s Cerrado
- To be effective, zero-deforestation pledges need a critical mass, study shows
- Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland
- U.N. report calls for the ban of mercury trade and its use in gold mining
Land rights and extractives
- To replace Western food imports, Cameroon gives community lands to ‘no-name’ agro-industry
- Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland
- About 72% of gold miners poisoned with mercury at artisanal mining sites in Cameroon
- ‘We go in and take Indigenous lands back from cattle ranchers’: Q&A with activist Pablo Sibar
Endangered Environmentalists
- Worries and whispers in Vietnam’s NGO community after activist’s sentencing
- Scientists call for end to violence against Amazon communities, environmental defenders
- Indigenous advocates sense a legal landmark as a guardian’s killing heads to trial
- In Brazil, an Indigenous land defender’s unsolved killing is the deadly norm
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’
Conservation Effectiveness
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows
- ‘South Asia needs its own tiger plan’: Q&A with Nepal’s Maheshwar Dhakal
- Nepal was supposed to double its tiger population since 2010. It tripled it
- In prioritizing conservation, animal culture should be a factor, study says
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
- Java communities rally as clock ticks on cleanup of ‘world’s dirtiest river’
