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Open burning of plastic in a community in Guiyu, China. This practice is fast becoming a common way to dispose of plastic and other waste.

Plastic household waste burned as fuel on rise in Global South, risking health

Sean Mowbray 5 Feb 2026
Soil microbes. Invisible to the naked eye, microbial communities play a huge role in planetary processes, such as nutrient cycling, and are vital to ecosystem and human health.

IUCN launches group to conserve at-risk microbes vital to life on Earth

Sean Mowbray 21 Jan 2026
Misty morning in Borneo. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Rethinking how we talk about conservation—and why it matters

Rhett Ayers Butler 19 Dec 2025
A sewage outlet in Bangkok.

Marine heat waves and raw sewage combine to put human health at risk

Sean Mowbray 18 Dec 2025
Smoke rises from a coal-burning power plant. Refuse-derived fuel (RDF), which includes large amounts of plastics, is replacing fossil fuels in some energy and industrial furnaces. But critics say this practice is merely replacing one dirty fuel for another.

Boom in burning waste for fuel could put human health and environment at risk

Sean Mowbray 10 Dec 2025
Bamboo lemur in Madagascar. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

Lemurs are at risk. So are the people protecting them.

Rhett Ayers Butler 7 Dec 2025
Spraying pesticides on a field. Chemical pesticides have become ubiquitous in industrial agriculture, and have contributed to a rapid rise in chronic diseases, researchers say.

‘Silent epidemic of chemical pollution’ demands radical regulatory redo, say scientists

Mike Gaworecki 3 Dec 2025
Collage: Elise Paietta, postdoctoral research scholar during fieldwork, with tropical forest

How do we stop the next pandemic?

Abhishyant Kidangoor 26 Nov 2025
A forest fire in Acre, the westernmost state of the Brazilian Amazon. Image courtesy of Victor Moriyama/Clean Air Fund.

Soot: The super-pollutant choking a burning Earth, in photos

Shanna Hanbury 20 Nov 2025
American Avocet. Image by Michael Barry via Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

Bird-watching for nature connection & social justice

Mike DiGirolamo 7 Oct 2025
Palm civet in a wildlife farm in Dong Nai Province, Viet Nam. Image courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

New global guidelines needed to rein in the wildlife pet trade (commentary)

Elizabeth Bennett 7 Oct 2025
Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo with elders and community leaders.

Protecting Indigenous Amazon lands may also protect public health, study says

Constance Malleret 19 Sep 2025
An Indigenous Tikuna man in the Amazon Rainforest in Colombia. Some researchers oppose the idea that human cultures would have been limited and determined by the environment, and that supports the notion that human cultures have modified the environment as desired. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Forests on Indigenous lands help protect health in the Amazon

Rhett Ayers Butler 12 Sep 2025
Waste burning in the Maldives. Open burning of plastic is a cheap way of reducing waste volume, but the practice is rife with health and environmental risks.

Global South bears growing burden of health threats from plastic burning

Mongabay.com 25 Aug 2025
The waters along the Baliara coast, home to the Bajo people, have been contaminated by mining waste. Image courtesy of Satya Bumi.

Indonesia’s Bajau fishers lament nickel mining’s marine pollution

Mongabay.com 21 Aug 2025

Argentina’s elephant seals face 100-year recovery after avian flu devastation: Study

Astrid Arellano 20 Aug 2025

As climate change burdens grow, community mental health alarm bells ring

Petro Kotzé 14 Aug 2025
Banner image of smoggy air in Dakar, Senegal, by Issiaga via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Study links long-term exposure to air pollution with increased dementia risk

Kristine Sabillo 5 Aug 2025
A waste site near Mombasa, Kenya. Separating plastic waste from growing mountains of domestic trash is a huge hurdle facing the world’s communities.

Open burning of plastic is an escalating public health threat, say experts

Sean Mowbray 17 Jul 2025
Banner image of buildings in New York, U.S., by Dietmar Rabich via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

104 companies linked to 20% of global environmental conflicts, study finds

Kristine Sabillo 30 Jun 2025

Signs of hope as elephant seals rebound from avian flu in remote Chilean fjord

Barinia Montoya 4 Jun 2025
Banner image of Max, a brown howler monkey, courtesy of Marcelo Rheingantz.

Brazil rewilds urban forest with vaccinated brown howler monkeys

Mongabay.com 20 May 2025
Blackwater oxbow lake in the Amazon. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay.

Why WHO’s pandemic prevention draft agreement takes a nature-centric, One Health approach (commentary)

Chris Walzer, Susan Lieberman, Christine Franklin 13 May 2025

Traditional bug oil finds modern value through new research in the Amazon

Sarah Brown 13 May 2025

Nature protection is part of fundamental law in Amazon countries

Timothy J. Killeen 11 Apr 2025
Fire in an area newly deforested in Brazil.

Brazil is speeding-up forest fire prevention to avoid dangerous tipping points in the Amazon (commentary)

Robert Muggah and Ilona Szabo 6 Apr 2025
Banner image of a yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) by James Gathany, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Dry season predictability and temperature drive dengue cases: Study

Kristine Sabillo 10 Mar 2025
Banner image of a rainforest in Borneo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Science aside, we need art & philosophy for global change: Epidemiologist

Mongabay.com 14 Feb 2025
A black flying fox (Pteropus alecto) feeding on a palm tree in Brisbane, Australia.

Declining biodiversity and emerging diseases are entwined, more study needed

Ruth Kamnitzer 12 Feb 2025

LA wildfires release toxic chemicals that threaten wildlife, experts say

Bobby Bascomb 28 Jan 2025

U.S. reports first human death from H5N1 bird flu

Mongabay.com 7 Jan 2025
Banner image of civil society groups protesting at the INC-5 meeting in Busan, South Korea. Image courtesy of Seunghyeok Choi/Break Free From Plastic.

No deal to curb plastic production as latest negotiations fizzle

Kristine Sabillo 2 Dec 2024

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