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Environmental science and conservation news
By Victoria Schneider [April 25, 2024, 10:14 am]
The World Bank has suspended funding for a $150 million tourism project in southern Tanzania in response to allegations of forced evictions, killings and other violations of people’s rights in Ruaha National Park. “We have recently received information that suggests breaches of our policies in the implementation of the Regrow project,” a World Bank spokesperson […]
Liberia puts a wartime logger in charge of its forests
By Ashoka Mukpo [April 25, 2024, 9:15 am]
The appointment of a logging executive with ties to former president and war criminal Charles Taylor has drawn fierce criticism by local environmental groups.
Indigenous community fights to save its lands on Indonesia’s historic tin island
By Moh. Tamimi [April 25, 2024, 4:40 am]
BELITUNG ISLAND, Indonesia — Nasidi paddled gently past a row of the eponymous rasau trees that line the riverbanks here in Tebet Rasau village, where a decade ago people would wade into the Lenggang River to catch silverfish. But life along the river here in the hills of Belitung Island, he said, is not as […]
U.S. East Coast adopts ‘living shorelines’ approach to keep rising seas at bay
By Erik Hoffner [April 24, 2024, 4:32 pm]
BLUE HILL, Maine — January brought a pair of rough storms to the northeastern U.S. They hit when the tides were high and pushed higher than normal by rising sea levels, setting numerous high-water records and prompting Maine Governor Janet Mills to request a federal disaster declaration. These events, just three days apart, built on […]
Deforestation haunts top Peruvian reserve and its Indigenous communities
By Aimee Gabay [April 24, 2024, 4:01 pm]
A recent report has revealed a spike in deforestation in the buffer zone of one of the world’s best-protected areas, Peru’s Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. Between 2001 and 2023, 19,978 hectares (49,367 acres) of forest were lost in the buffer zone of the reserve, which is home to the ancestral lands of the Indigenous Harakbut, Yine […]
Global study maps most detailed tree of life yet for flowering plants
By Liz Kimbrough [April 24, 2024, 3:34 pm]
After the first flower bloomed on the Earth, flowering plants evolved a staggering diversity and now make up about 90% of all plant life. Charles Darwin called this rapid domination an “abominable mystery.” A study published today, April 24, in the journal Nature and led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, unveiled the most comprehensive […]
Tribes turn to the U.N. as major wind project plans to cut through their lands in the U.S.
By Taylar Dawn Stagner [April 24, 2024, 3:26 pm]
Last week, a United States federal judge rejected a request from Indigenous nations to stop SunZia, a $10 billion dollar wind transmission project that would cut through traditional tribal lands in southwestern Arizona. Amy Juan is a member of the Tohono O’odham nation at the Arizona-Mexico border and brought the news of the federal court’s […]
All aboard Tren Maya: Here’s what we found riding Mexico’s controversial railway
By Maxwell Radwin [April 24, 2024, 2:00 pm]
CANCÚN, Mexico — The Mexican government finally opened its huge, controversial train project last December, connecting Cancún and Tulum with the rest of the Yucatán Peninsula. And yet, despite all the anticipation leading up to that moment, no one seems to know what’s going on with the train right now. Like, is it really open? […]
Forest officer’s killing highlights Bangladesh authorities’ waning power
By Rafiqul Islam [April 24, 2024, 9:01 am]
DHAKA — Police in Bangladesh have arrested one person and are looking for nine others suspected of killing a forest officer after he caught them illegally excavating soil in a protected area of the country’s southern Cox’s Bazar district. The incident highlights what experts say is a worrying trend of law enforcement failing to keep […]
Afro-Brazilian communities fight a rain of pesticides & the company behind it
By Vitor Prado dos Anjos [April 24, 2024, 12:16 am]
CONCEIÇÃO DA BARRA, Espírito Santo — Beatriz Cassiano was working in her vegetable garden when she suddenly heard her grandson yelling, “Grandma, get out of there, get out, come in the house! The plane!” In an interview with Mongabay, Cassiano recalls being caught off guard by an airplane dropping pesticides as it flew over the […]
Consent and costs are key questions on extraction of ‘energy transition’ minerals
By Mike DiGirolamo [April 23, 2024, 10:41 pm]
Minerals and metals used in technologies enabling much of the global energy transition and their applications are relatively new and require thought and reporting that probes questions related to their need, the growing social, human and environmental impacts mining for these minerals have, and the geopolitical tensions they may exacerbate. To learn more, Mongabay speaks […]
Warming seas push India’s fishers into distant, and more dangerous, waters
By Imran Muzaffar and Aliya Bashir [April 23, 2024, 4:55 pm]
KANNIYAKUMARI, India — Anthoni Dhasan, 47, sits on the deck of his fishing boat at the harbor of Thengapattanam in Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state, peering out at the stormy Indian Ocean. It’s been a year since his last fishing expedition — the one that almost took his life. On Feb. 19, 2023, Dhasan and […]
Ecuador’s first Indigenous guard led by Kichwa women: Interview with María José Andrade Cerda
By Astrid Arellano [April 23, 2024, 4:03 pm]
Yuturi ants are peaceful until their territory is threatened. This species, also known as the ‘conga ant,’ is considered a warrior in Amazonian Kichwa Indigenous culture, as these bugs don’t allow anyone to enter their home without permission — just like the women of Serena, an Indigenous community located on the banks of the Jatunyacu […]
Nepal’s tigers & prey need better grassland management: Interview with Shyam Thapa
By Abhaya Raj Joshi [April 23, 2024, 1:09 pm]
As winter bids adieu to the Northern Hemisphere and the mercury peaks and humidity plummets, most of Nepal’s plains and hills become tinderboxes awaiting a spark. As officials face a gargantuan task of controlling wildfires, some authorities from Nepal’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation are themselves involved in starting fires in the name […]
Amid record-high fires across the Amazon, Brazil loses primary forests
By Sarah Brown [April 23, 2024, 7:00 am]
The number of fires shows no signs of easing as Brazil’s Roraima faces unprecedented blazes, and several Amazonian countries, including Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela, registered record-high outbreaks in the first quarter this year.
Activists file last-gasp suit as Indonesia fails again to pass Indigenous bill
By Richaldo Hariandja [April 23, 2024, 6:08 am]
JAKARTA — Civil society advocates representing more than 2,000 customary communities in Indonesia have initiated last-ditch legal challenges over parliament’s failure to pass an Indigenous rights bill during the 10-year administration of President Joko Widodo. “It is very important that there is the guarantee of legal certainty concerning the recognition and protection of Indigenous peoples […]
Bioplastics as toxic as regular plastics; both need regulation, say researchers
By Alden Wicker [April 22, 2024, 7:57 pm]
As negotiators meet this week for the fourth round of global plastics treaty talks, scientists warn that both plant-based and petroleum-based plastics are toxic, with both needing tough regulation to protect public health.
No protection from bottom trawling for seamount chain in northern Pacific
By Edward Carver [April 22, 2024, 6:56 pm]
The Emperor Seamount Chain is a massive and richly biodiverse set of underwater mountains stretching about 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) south from the Aleutian Islands in the northwest Pacific. From the 1960s until the 1980s, bottom trawlers plied the area aggressively, decimating deep-sea coral communities and fish stocks, and removing biomass to a degree not […]
Uttarakhand limits agricultural land sales amid protests & tourism development
By Swati Thapa [April 22, 2024, 6:14 pm]
For months, residents in the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand have been fighting for the introduction of land laws that would prevent agricultural land from being sold to people from outside the state. These protests come at a time of transition in Uttarakhand. As infrastructure and business development for tourism increase, the region has seen an […]
A web of front people conceals environmental offenders in the Amazon
By Fernanda Wenzel [April 22, 2024, 3:00 pm]
A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon.