“Initially we were all excited because we had intercepted a record-breaking ivory shipment,” says veterinarian Charlene Fernandez of Singapore’s new Centre for Wildlife Forensics. “But when we started carrying the…
A new book by Wake Smith, “Pandora’s Toolbox,” explores controversial ideas for artificially cooling the planet. Smith discusses the hopes and hazards of geoengineering in an exclusive Mongabay interview.
How do you keep an eye on the expansive ocean? You could hop on a boat and get really close to the water. You could do it from tens of…
Agriculture, fossil fuels, deforestation, rising temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions, forest fires, floods, droughts. These are just some of the factors and consequences involved in the complex cause-and-effect dynamics of the…
Human transgressions of the biodiversity, land-use, pollution and climate planetary boundaries are altering gut microbiomes across species, impacting human health and ecosystems. But there’s hope.
Caribou are proudly displayed on Canada's 25-cent coin, but in the wild, their populations are on the verge of annihilation. Carmen Richter from the Saulteau First Nations is working to change that. She's…
While at university studying chemical ecology and aquaculture, Andy Rhyne picked up a job at an aquarium shop to raise money for a cross-country bike trip. Though he didn’t know…
Slice through a tree trunk, and you’ll find a series of rings that tell a story of how that tree grew over the course of its life. These rings are…
In the past, ocean carbon data was sparse, mostly gathered by ships. But the future of monitoring belongs to robot floats that deliver real-time data across vast oceans — even in the remote Antarctic Southern Ocean.
JAKARTA — Indonesia, a top greenhouse gas emitter, will need far more than the international funding it has already been promised if it’s to achieve its carbon reduction goals, a…
Mongabay looked into three inspiring landscape restoration efforts in three different countries. In Lebanon, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, residents have taken things into their own hands and…
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…
At low tide, on many a craggy corner of Aotearoa New Zealand’s coastline, you can find clusters of large, oval, emerald-and-gold bivalves, encrusted with barnacles and sucked tightly onto the…
Shark meat from vulnerable species is being processed into cat food for major brands, according to a new study. Researchers from the National University of Singapore used DNA barcoding technology…
What’s in a name? The curious case of a nameless grasshopper will tell you that there is more to a name than meets the eye. To declare a species as…
Of the nine critical planetary boundaries that humanity is transgressing, climate change is the best known and understood, while atmospheric aerosol pollution may be the least, but aerosols are already having climate impacts and polluting Earth’s skies, killing millions.
COLCHESTER COUNTY, Canada — Standing on the snow-covered banks of the Shubenacadie River in Canada’s eastern province, Nova Scotia, Alanna Sylbiloy tosses a wire trap into the icy water flowing…
At the start of each year, southern elephant seals living on Kerguelen Island above Antarctica shed the thick mat of their winter fur, while growing in a fresh layer of…
Humanity’s response to pandemics to date is similar to our climate change response: mitigation rather than prevention. A new study says preemption could save trillions of dollars and millions of lives; but preparation is grossly underfunded.
Initiatives to inject billions of aerosol particles into the stratosphere to deflect solar rays and cool Earth are too risky to go forward; governments must act fast to rein in potentially disastrous planetary-scale solar geoengineering, say critics.
In 2008, a team of researchers boarded an expedition vessel and set sail for the anchovy-rich waters off the coast of Peru. They were searching for a place to extract…
Humanity has developed incredible technologies and processes to produce enough food on the planet to feed the entire population. From the Green Revolution to the digitalization of agriculture, the technologies…
1. The ocean-climate nexus The presence of the ocean was felt more strongly than ever at this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 26), held Oct. 31 to Nov. 12…
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…
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…
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…
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…
This is the first article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. The notion seemed straightforward: A massive swamp in the Congo Basin…
Defeat for Japan’s opposition party in last month’s national elections has dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the contentious relocation of a U.S. military base on the island of…
MARSEILLE, France — Pascal Hagmann lowered a manta trawl — a ray-shaped, metal device with a wide mouth and a fine-meshed net — off the side of his sailboat and…
