STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — A long-dormant plan to build a mega dam on the mainstream of the Mekong River in Cambodia’s northeastern Stung Treng province appears to have been revived…
ROKA KOANG, Cambodia — Some 45 kilometers, or 28 miles, up the Mekong River from Phnom Penh, Voi Thy sat and watched as 12 boats pumped sand from the riverbed.…
The world’s largest bank of the partially decomposed plant matter known as peat in the tropics is even more extensive than initially thought, according to a new study. The peatlands…
BANYUMAS/JAKARTA, Indonesia — A muddy flood polluting a river on the Indonesian island of Java earlier this year depleted its fish stock, raising calls for restoration and restocking efforts in…
Freshwater’s life-giving benefits are being gravely threatened by humanity’s manipulations of the hydrological cycle, impacting the climate and biodiversity, and undermining Earth’s operating system.
The largest freshwater fish ever recorded was captured in the Mekong River last week by a fisher collaborating with researchers to document the river’s biodiversity in northern Cambodia. The 4-meter…
An underwater expedition has confirmed the presence of some of the world’s largest and most threatened freshwater fish in a remote and barely studied stretch of the Mekong River in…
Dams fragment rivers, endanger aquatic species, emit large amounts of carbon and methane, cause deforestation, and hurt traditional communities, but we still need their benefits. Scientific management may be the answer.
Known only by his identity code, ID#35 was the last individual of a doomed subpopulation of freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris). He was the sole occupant of a deep pool…
One of Brazil’s most threatened biomes, the Atlantic Forest, now faces a new hazard: genetically modified zebrafish that glow in the dark. Despite these so-called GloFish being officially banned in…
Brazil’s Amazon dam plans have been slowed down over the past decade due to realization by the country’s electrical authorities that obtaining environmental licenses would be difficult when Indigenous peoples…
At a young age, Mekong giant catfish look the same as striped river catfish, their regular-size, widely consumed relatives. But as they mature, the giant catfish quickly eclipse their smaller…
Amazon Basin urban centers are contaminating the Amazon, Negro, Tapajós and Tocantins rivers with pharmaceuticals and wastewater, with still largely unknown impacts on aquatic ecosystems.
Serendipity underlies some of the greatest scientific discoveries. And it was certainly at play in 2015 when a team of biologists stopped off to relax at a popular waterfall on…
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…
Nestled amid the mountains of northern Laos, the picturesque ancient capital of Luang Prabang is under siege from a dam-building fever along the Mekong River, with a Thai developer now…
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…
A new study shows that two-fifths of coral reefs globally are seriously threatened by sediment runoff — the transportation of accumulated material from land to sea, often with harmful pollutants…
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…
Scientists have long identified a link between livestock production and deforestation, with reams of research showing the detrimental effect of agricultural activities on natural resources. Little is known, however, about…
JAKARTA — Conservationists in Indonesia are pushing for the establishment of a protected area along a stretch of Borneo’s Mahakam River to save the remaining population of the nearly extinct…
The last 80 Irrawaddy dolphins that inhabit the Mahakam River in Indonesian Borneo lead precarious lives. Their forays to find fish are frequently thwarted, sometimes fatally so, by a series…
The Kinabatangan River rises in the beating heart of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, where ancient primary forest cloaks the slopes of steep-sided mountains. As it meanders east toward the Sulu Sea,…
They say you should never smile at a crocodile. But that’s exactly what happened on Sept. 9 when a team of researchers discovered a group of eight Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus…
Humans have created so much plastic that it now exists from the slopes of Mount Everest to the extreme depths of the oceans. When we consider the effects of plastic…
This story is the result of a reporting collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. In 2000, in the midst of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest, two elder members from…
Every evening, along the banks of the Rembau River in Malaysia, fireflies put on a spectacular display. Against the dark silhouette of the berembang mangroves (Sonneratia caseolaris) they dance, synchronizing…
Record floods are battering the western and central Amazon, inundating Manaus and other communities and wrecking crops. To prevent future extreme weather events, deforestation and carbon emissions must be controlled.
