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Northern gannet (Morus bassanus) nest made largely of plastic debris. Image courtesy of Martin Brogger.

Seabird nests built with plastic waste off the coast of Germany: Photo of the week

Shanna Hanbury 25 Mar 2026
Occupation of Funai’s Altamira branch. Image courtesy of the Medio Xingu Indigenous Women’s Movement.

Indigenous groups demand halt to Belo Sun Amazon gold mine

Shanna Hanbury 23 Mar 2026
Trash bags full of discarded plastic. Image by Adil Edin via Unsplash (Public domain).

Huge amounts of nanoplastics discovered in tap and bottled water

Shanna Hanbury 23 Mar 2026
Lake Victoria in Kenya. Image by Jozef020 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

World Water Day: Earth’s freshwater reveals new species & faces mounting threats

Mongabay.com 22 Mar 2026
The construction site of Bridge Data Centre's 0.2 GW QHI01 data center in Khlong Tamru subdistrict, Chonburi province, Thailand. Photo by Andy Ball/Mongabay.

Thai data center boom sparks fears of water shortage, air pollution

Gerald Flynn 11 Mar 2026

Beyond the Potomac River, sewage spills threaten cities with old infrastructure and little funds

Associated Press 10 Mar 2026
Ibama (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) conducting an operation to combat illegal gold mining in Indigenous territory in the state of Pará, Brazil.

Mining rush for critical minerals threatens Amazon land reform settlements

Sam Cowie, Cícero Pedrosa Neto, Isabel Harari 9 Mar 2026

New study assesses geoengineering marine ecosystem risks, knowledge gaps

Ruth Kamnitzer 19 Feb 2026
A caddisfly in the Oligotricha genus.

Insects are moving pharmaceutical pollutants from rivers to land; risks unknown

Sean Mowbray 13 Feb 2026
Loggerhead turtle swimming around fish aggregation device (FAD) belonging to the Ecuadorean purse seiner 'Ingalapagos', which was documented by Greenpeace in the vicinity of the northern Galapagos Islands.

Abandoned tuna-fishing devices pollute the Galápagos Marine Reserve

Marlowe Starling 9 Feb 2026
Coral reef, Tioman Island

Malaysia lost 20% of its coral reefs in three years

Rhett Ayers Butler 5 Feb 2026
Sirsiya river in Nepal. image by Suresh Bidar

‘Holy river’ carries industrial waste & sewage from Nepal to India

Suresh Bidari 21 Jan 2026
Loading a barge with iron ore from Simandou. Image by Paul Kagame via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Hopes and fears as Guinea exports iron ore from Simandou mines

Ashoka Mukpo 16 Jan 2026
After burning off the mercury, a relatively pure piece of gold remains. Image by Thomas Graham for Mongabay.

Turning the Amazon’s toxic gold mine waste liability into economic opportunity (analysis)

Timothy J. Killeen 13 Jan 2026
Foothills of the Atewa forest range, one of several ecologically sensitive areas where mining permits have been issued. Image by Ahtziri Gonzalez/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Ghana repeals legislation that opened forest reserves to mining

Awudu Salami Sulemana Yoda 8 Jan 2026
Rescuers search for victims at the site of a landslide in Suwawa on Sulawesi Island in July 2024.

Indonesia’s illegal gold boom leaves a toxic legacy of mercury pollution

Sarjan Lahay, Junaidi Hanafiah, Teguh Suprayitno 7 Jan 2026
The Indigenous Macaquiño community on the banks of the Vaupés River in Colombia’s Vaupés region. Image by Aimee Gabay/Mongabay.

Urban sprawl and illegal mining reshape a fragile Amazon frontier

Aimee Gabay 6 Jan 2026
The mining dredges installed along the Nanay River have begun to consume sections of forest. Image courtesy of FCDS Peru.

Mercury, dredges and crime: Illegal mining ravages Peru’s Nanay River

Enrique Vera 31 Dec 2025
Ningsih is about to add chlorine to the "Gentong Mas Santun" septic tank, which functions to inhibit the growth of and eliminate bacteria and microbes in feces.

On Indonesia’s longest river, a Borneo community passes crucial public health milestone

Anggita Raissa 29 Dec 2025
Scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini), photographed in Yonaguni, Japan.

Top ocean news stories of 2025 (commentary)

Alfredo Giron, Ana Spalding, Erin Skoczylas, Vanessa Constant 24 Dec 2025
asian small clawed otter

In Nepal, the world’s smallest otter continues to elude researchers

Abhaya Raj Joshi 22 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
Ecuador's President Rafael Correa uses a stick to measure how deep the area is, in the Aguarico 4 oil field where a sign reads in Spanish "Danger. Contaminated area" in Ecuador, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013. Correa visited the site to call attention to oil contamination in Ecuador's Amazon region. Earlier this year, Ecuador awarded a $19 billion judgment to the residents of this area for Texaco's contamination of this rainforest between 1972 and 1990. But Chevron Corp., which bought Texaco in 2001, said it won't pay because it says Texaco dealt with the problem before it was bought. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)

‘Neither appropriate nor fair’: Ecuador ordered to pay oil giant Chevron $220m

Shanna Hanbury 18 Dec 2025
A woman gathers plants along the banks of the Mekong River while a child plays in the background. Water levels of the mighty Mekong River have dropped drastically due to drought-like conditions and damming upstream. The drop disrupts the region’s water supply, transport routes, and the livelihood of communities in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that more than one billion people will face water shortages due to climate change. Credit: © Greenpeace / Vinai Dithajohn

New mapping reveals hidden mining boom in Laos that threatens the Mekong

Andy Ball, Gerald Flynn, Konlaphat Siri 10 Dec 2025

In Chocó, river defenders say race for energy transition threatens lifelines

Euan Wallace 8 Dec 2025
The resulting piles of plastic after beach clean-up volunteers sifted microplastics from water and sand in Kailua Bay, a few miles south Kāneʻohe Bay, Oʻahu. Image courtesy of: Ken G Kosada/Lethal Lens Photography.

Another threat to reefs: Microplastic chemicals may harm coral reproduction

Kari Goodbar 5 Dec 2025
A child at work collecting e-waste in the Agbogbloshie dump in Ghana.

Can two Amazons survive? Invisible e-waste is poisoning the world

Gerry McGovern, Sue Branford 3 Dec 2025
Tourists Bharat Lake Nepal

New riverside lake in Nepal wins hearts, but faces government opposition

Suresh Bidari 28 Nov 2025
Satellite imagery from February 2025 shows the transformation of the landscape at Global Green's gold mine, which is believed to be contaminating the O'Ta Bouk River. Image provided by Google Earth, Maxar Technologies.

Toxic runoff from politically linked gold mine poisons Cambodian rivers, communities

Andy Ball, Gerald Flynn, Phoung Vantha 24 Nov 2025
Pastoralists in Lesotho.

Lesotho communities allege greenwashing by project transferring water to South Africa

Malavika Vyawahare 21 Nov 2025

IDB financed meat & poultry company that polluted Indigenous Ecuador lands: Report

Ana Cristina Alvarado 21 Nov 2025
A turtle consumes a plastic bag.

Lethal dose of plastic for seabirds and marine animals ‘much smaller than expected’

Elizabeth Claire Alberts 19 Nov 2025

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