Ecology News

“It still rains here,” says Emeterio Hernández Cano, the San Francisco communal land commissioner, at the start of a tour of La Fabriquita, a pine and oak forest of just…

Traditional and Indigenous peoples in the Arctic are joining with scientists to successfully rewild mining-degraded peatlands and other sites.

SHOUF BIOSPHERE RESERVE, Lebanon — Late afternoon light falls across Talal Riman’s weathered face as he stands under the ancient cedars he’s tended for almost three decades in Lebanon’s Shouf…

Electrical engineer Cristiano de Mello Gallep was working in a biophotonics laboratory in the city of Limeira, in Brazil’s São Paulo state, trying to measure self-luminescence in organisms — the…

The rate at which carbon escaped from the deforestation of tropical forests more than doubled in the first two decades of the 21st century, according to new research. Earlier assessments…

“Since I was a kid, I have always been fascinated by the diversity of living beings on our planet and I dreamed to work to explore Earth's unexplored places and…

In Brazil, calling someone a tapir is usually an insult. But there’s plenty of reason it should be seen as a compliment. Few animals are as essential, underestimated and persecuted…

We set out from the town of Extrema, in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, in a four-wheel-drive vehicle at 9 a.m. on a Monday. Driving beneath a mountainous vista and blue…

Tropical rainforests are more resilient than previously thought, a new study shows, with a high capacity for natural regeneration in areas that are only slightly degraded adjacent to patches of…

Midway through a recent documentary called Last of the Right Whales, we get a drone’s-eye view of half a dozen jet-black right whales cuddling and caressing while lolling in an…

The article has been significantly amended in light of challenges to both the research itself and Mongabay's coverage of the journal article. If you get yourself a map of Peninsular…

They may be labeled “degraded,” but forests that have been logged, or are otherwise no longer pristine due to human activity, can still provide immense value. According to new research…

The earliest reports of nutcracking behavior in chimpanzees by Western scientists came in the 1840s. In the time since, evidence of animals modifying something in their environment and then using…

Escalating ocean temperatures stemming from climate change are devastating the world’s tropical coral reefs. In response to the stress, corals, which are animals, sometimes unceremoniously jettison the algae that live…

PUTUMAYO, Colombia — When Jonh Jairo Mueses-Cisneros was approached by leadership at Corpoamazonia about turning Colombia’s southwestern department of Putumayo into a bird-watching hotspot more than 10 years ago, he…

U.S. timber companies imported nearly 1,600 metric tons of teak from Myanmar last year, circumventing sanctions and channeling millions of dollars in revenue to the country’s junta, according to a…

The impacts of burning fossil fuels are not only being felt in the environment, but are also affecting human health. The most known and studied trends to date have been…

Scientists analyzed levels of chemical pollutants in native jataí bees across eight landscapes in Brazil’s São Paulo state. They found that in landscapes with more vegetation, the bees had fewer pollutants, at lower levels, indicating that the plants act as a filter and protective barrier

Over the past decade, the European Union entered into collaborative agreements with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime and verify the legality of wood imported into the EU. Within…

As deforestation and subsequent human expansion into natural areas continue, separating people from wildlife is unrealistic. Even in “pristine” landscapes, like national parks, humans and wildlife are always sharing the…

An initiative in the northern Brazilian Amazon is helping a group of rural women reclaim their riverine culture and traditions while also empowering them economically. The Sementes do Araguari Association,…

Myanmar’s rainforests, home to the endangered Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), critically endangered Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and endangered lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), are some of the most biodiverse in the…

The story of the American bison is both tragic and uplifting. Once dappling the prairies of North America in the tens of millions, hunting winnowed the number to perhaps a…

This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay…

Severe droughts over the past two decades have affected the resilience of the Amazon Rainforest, a new study shows, with stretches of affected forest taking between one and three years…

This is the fourth article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. The muddy cores that Ian Lawson and his colleagues…

Confining conservation efforts to only 30% of Earth's land may render a fifth of mammals and a third of birds at high risk of extinction by 2030, according to a…

This is the third article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Four. The logging concession moratorium signed in 2002 was supposed to shore…

Ambitious targets by Asian countries to restore tens of millions of hectares of degraded land by 2030 could be foiled by one fundamental problem: a lack of good-quality and genetically…

This is the second article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Three and Part Four. The announcement came in mid-2019: A pool of oil lay deep…