CROSS RIVER NATIONAL PARK, Nigeria — It wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and…
In early July, the ephemeral promise of a new life blinked into existence. Not in the usual way, but on a clear microscope slide in a sterile lab in Cremona,…
The Democratic Republic of Congo's Sankuru province saw record-breaking fires in 2020 — 9500 square kilometers (3,700 square miles) of land burned. More than 1,500 km2 (580 mi2) of this…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting a large antelope native to sub-Saharan Africa:…
Soaring demand for charcoal, especially in urban areas, is putting intense pressure on Ugandan forests as well as on local fruit trees, which are being cut to make fuel for cooking and small-scale enterprises.
Aina Randriarisoa found a perch for Labramia ambondrombeensis on the taxonomical tree of life. She helped identify the tree from its genetic signature, the arrangement of its leaves, the shape…
There’s a tree-planting frenzy everywhere you look. In August 2019, the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India announced that more than a million Indians had planted 220 million trees…
From Tripoli to Phoenix, the world’s thirst in great desert cities is deepening, even as agribusiness guzzles more water to feed them. Humanity’s arid urban places are colliding with a key Planetary Boundary, scientists warn.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Madagascar's protected area network has failed to improve the lives of people, the country's environment minister observed at a recent meeting, setting the stage for an overhaul of how…
When searching for mouse lemurs in Madagascar's forests, scientists seek out their gleaming eyes in the dark. Their eyes are large for an animal about the size of a fist…
If COVID-19 has taught us one thing, it is that we need a green life support plan that enables the private and public sectors to finance conservation of the natural…
When Hans Peter Lankes, a top official at the International Finance Corporation, visited Madagascar in February, he made it a point to tour the IFC-backed BoViMa facility near the southern…
Human actions have pushed 13 more lemur species, the iconic primates native to Madagascar, to the brink of extinction, according to an update to the list of the world’s threatened…
The World Bank’s private investment arm has channeled more than $1.8 billion into major livestock and factory farming operations across the world over the past decade, despite calls for the…
With just over 1,200 cases and ten deaths, it may appear that Madagascar has been spared the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the deep south of the country,…
Fish are an indispensable source of food and protein for communities in many African countries. But the growth in industrial-scale fishing fleets around the continent has put that resource and…
In the fourth and final story of this exclusive Mongabay series, entomologists around the world offer far ranging solutions to curb and reverse the great insect die-off.
Tropical timber has earned a bad reputation. When we think of timber from lush, tropical forests, it conjures up images of valuable old-growth trees pillaged by logging companies and illegal…
How do you solve a conservation problem? Do you protect a wild leopard that has entered a village by removing it and releasing it into a forest far, far away?…
Every year on August 12, the world celebrates elephants, but recent years have not been great for these iconic animals. According to research published last year, the African elephant population…
The first DNA analysis of ancient straight-tusked elephant fossils may be changing what we know about elephant evolution. Scientists have presumed that a species of giant elephant called Palaeoloxodon antiquus,…
“Across Africa, illegal killing and trade in wildlife, especially of iconic species such as elephants and rhinos, has now reached crisis proportions. Illicit wildlife trafficking now comprises the fourth largest…
frica is similar to other developing regions of the world in that agriculture is central to the continent’s economy, composing almost one quarter of its GNP and employing nearly two-thirds…
Google.org, Google Corp's philanthropic arm, earlier this month pledged $5 million toward efforts combat wildlife poaching. The grant is going to the World Wildlife Fund to help the conservation giant…
