Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

In a move hailed as a long-overdue conservation victory, Sri Lanka has formally declared Nilgala — a sweeping mosaic of grasslands, forests and sacred sites — as a protected forest reserve, reports contributor Malaka Rodrigo for Mongabay.

Spanning more than 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres), Nilgala is now the largest intact savanna ecosystem in the country and one of its most ecologically diverse landscapes.

Nestled on the eastern edge of Uva province, Nilgala’s dry evergreen forests and isolated hills give rise to microhabitats that shelter flora and fauna found nowhere else on the island. Endemic reptiles, such as the Nilgala day gecko (Cnemaspis nilgala) and Cyrtodactylus vedda, thrive alongside culturally revered plants once used in royal Ayurvedic medicine.

“These features create diverse microhabitats that have allowed species typically restricted to the wet zone or cooler, mist-covered highlands to thrive here,” says ecologist Suranjan Fernando.

The region is not only biologically rich but spiritually resonant. Nilgala is the ancestral homeland of the Vedda people, Sri Lanka’s Indigenous forest dwellers.

“To the Vedda community, Nilgala is not just a forest, but a sacred living space where the spirits of our ancestors dwell,” says clan chief Suda Vanniyalaathto. At the June 2 declaration ceremony, the Veddas performed the traditional Kiri Koraha dance to honor the forest’s guardians.

Nilgala’s protection is the fruit of decades of activism. In 2014, amid fears of land conversion for agriculture, Buddhist monks and environmentalists staged a powerful protest by symbolically ordaining 1,000 trees. It worked. The trees were spared, and momentum for legal protection grew.

Yet threats linger. Land grabs and development interests continue to loom. Conservationists emphasize that community involvement will be key to Nilgala’s future. As Hemantha Withanage of the Centre for Environmental Justice puts it, “These community groups act as both guardians and first responders.”

Read the full story by Malaka Rodrigo here.

Banner image: Nilgala has the unique features of a savanna ecosystem of grasslands with scattered trees. Image courtesy of Suranjan Karunarathne.

Snow leopards are often called “ghosts of the mountains,” and for good reason: They’re notoriously difficult to spot. But researchers behind a recent study used a comprehensive set of methods — from following the cats’ tracks and droppings, to deploying camera traps over vast areas — to find that the region of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas is home to roughly two-thirds of the country’s snow leopards, reports contributor Sneha Mahale for Mongabay India.

The researchers trekked across more than 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) of Ladakh’s landscape of high-altitude plateaus, rugged mountain ranges and cold deserts, carefully recording signs of snow leopard presence such as scat, paw prints and scrape marks. They also set up 956 camera traps.

The study “wasn’t limited to known hotspots or prime habitats,” said co-author Pankaj Raina, from the wildlife protection department in the regional capital, Leh. “This makes it the largest, most systematic, and most intensive effort ever undertaken across the snow leopard range.”

Based on the nearly 9,600 snow leopard signs and 126 individual snow leopards identified from the camera images, the team estimates there are about 477 snow leopards inhabiting the trans-Himalayan Ladakh, making up around 68% of India’s total snow leopard population.

The average density of snow leopards in Ladakh is around 1 per 100 square kilometers (3 per 100 square mile). But Hemis National Park and Nubra Shyok Wildlife Sanctuary showed higher densities of about 3 cats per 100 km2 (8 per 100 mi2).

Most snow leopard sightings were, however, outside protected areas, in landscapes shared with people and livestock. That points to the potential for conflict in these areas. Snow leopards typically prey on wild goat-like herbivores such as blue sheep, ibex and urials. But they sometimes also target domestic livestock, especially during winter when food is scarce.

Yet snow leopards and the local communities mostly coexist peacefully. This is both thanks to conservation initiatives, but also the communities’ cultural and sustainable pastoral practices.

“Snow leopards are not poached here,” said study co-author Yadvendradev Jhala, a senior wildlife scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India. “The combination of the Buddhist culture and economic incentives to preserve the species has allowed their population to increase in density.”

The snow leopards of Ladakh are, however, under stress from infrastructure development, including road and dam construction, as well as tourism and climate-driven changes in vegetation, Mahale reports.

Growing populations of feral dogs, which roam freely in large packs, are also an urgent threat as they attack both snow leopards and their prey.

“Ladakh has its own ecological and cultural context. Copy-pasting development models from elsewhere will not work,” Raina said.

Read the full story by Sneha Mahale here.

Banner image of a snow leopard by Ismail Shariff/Snow Leopard Trust via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL — As Brazil ramps up offshore oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River, the CEO of COP30 urged wealthy nations to be the first to cut back on both producing and consuming fossil fuels.

Ana Toni is Brazil’s national secretary for climate change at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change and the executive director of the U.N. climate summit set to take place in the Amazonian city of Belém in November. She acknowledged Brazil’s own contradictions as the country pursues new oil projects but said countries such as France, the United States, Norway and Canada should bear the greater burden for phasing out fossil fuels.

“We [in Brazil] have our contradictions; that’s not an excuse and we must face them,” Toni said in a video interview at the conference of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism in São Paulo on July 11. “But if we are transitioning away from fossil fuels, which countries should start first? Should it be Brazil, Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria? Or Canada, the United States and Norway?”

Toni’s comments came amid expansion of Brazilian infrastructure projects and new fossil fuel exploration in the run-up to hosting COP30.

The new oil projects include approval for oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River, an area that partly overlaps the 9,500-square-kilometer (3,700-square-mile) Amazon Reef. The government also approved an auction for an oil block surrounding an Indigenous community near Brazil’s north coast.

According to Oil Change International, just four countries — the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway — account for 70% of planned fossil fuel expansion over the next decade. “Brazil is probably sixth or seventh. It’s important, and let’s talk about Brazil, but let’s also contextualize,” Toni said.

Toni added that burden is often disproportionately on oil producing countries, rather than on the oil consuming countries, which should also be held responsible. Despite not producing any oil, for example, 75% of Germany’s energy matrix came from fossil fuels in 2023. “Should it only be the producers at the table, or do consumers join too?” she questioned. “What is the cost of excluding them?”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has defended fossil fuel exploration, saying he would not unilaterally halt exploring Brazil’s riches to the detriment of the nation’s development.

In June, Brazil’s oil regulator agency ANP auctioned off 34 blocks for exploration, largely to multinational corporations, including Chevron, ExxonMobil and China’s CNPC. More than half the blocks are in the Amazon Delta.

Banner image: Ana Toni, CEO of COP30, photographed in June. Image courtesy of Paulo Pinto/Agência Brasil.

LILONGWE — Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera has granted a presidential pardon to Lin Yunhua, a Chinese national sentenced to 14 years in prison for wildlife trafficking. Lin was among 37 inmates who received a presidential pardon as part of Malawi’s 61st independence anniversary celebrations on July 6. Conservationists have since expressed their disappointment, warning that Lin’s pardon might demotivate frontline officers working to protect Malawi’s wildlife.

“The news came as a shock to some of us,” Brighton Kumchedwa, director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, told Mongabay by phone. “For us in the conservation sector, we didn’t expect a high-profile wildlife criminal of his caliber to be set free like that.”

While authorities have not published the pardon list, news of Lin’s impending pardon started spreading as early as April this year. Authorities at the time described the possibility as speculation, but more recently British newspaper The Telegraph reported that prison officials familiar with the pardon list confirmed that both Lin and his wife, Qin Hua Zhang, were included.

Malawian authorities arrested Lin, Zhang and 12 other members of a notorious wildlife crime syndicate that operated across Southern Africa, in 2019. At the time, Lin and Zhang were found in possession of elephant tusks, hippopotamus teeth, pangolin scales and rhino horns, and their arrest was welcomed by local and international civil society, some describing it as “the destruction of the Lin-Zhang gang.” Zhang was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2020; Lin received a 14-year sentence in 2021.

Wildlife and environmental campaigners say pardoning the pair sets a bad precedent for the country’s efforts to combat wildlife crimes, undermining public trust in the justice system.

“We are alarmed by the release of a major wildlife trafficker,” Patricio Ndadzela, country director for Malawi and Zambia at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said in a statement. “This sends the wrong signal to criminal networks and could seriously impact morale among those on the frontlines of conservation.”

While Zhang has reportedly left the country, Lin remains remanded on charges of bribing a prison official and a judge, offenses he allegedly committed while incarcerated.

Officials said the presidential pardons were awarded in accordance with Malawian laws. In a statement, secretary for homeland security, Steve Kayuni, said the pardons were limited to prisoners who had demonstrated good conduct and met the prescribed guidelines, and that the president’s decision was a “selective exercise” of clemency.

Moses Chabuka, executive director of the NGO Neno Active Youth in Development (NAYODE), told Mongabay by phone that Lin and Zhang’s pardons may have been a diplomatic concession to China.

“From an international relations perspective, the move may reflect Malawi’s desire to strengthen its diplomatic ties with China, which has been a significant investor in various sectors within the country,” Chabuka said.

Banner image: Yunhua Lin, left, at the court in Malawi in 2021. Image courtesy of Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

The coffee industry faces many problems, from being the sixth-largest driver of deforestation worldwide to being rife with human rights abuses, including slavery and child labor. But coffee can be made sustainable and ethical, Etelle Higonnet, founder of the NGO Coffee Watch, said in an episode of Mongabay Newscast in June.

“To the best of my knowledge, there are literally millions of kids working in coffee, and if you have been drinking coffee your whole life, like me, you have been drinking child labor, slavery, and deforestation. You have been putting it into your body. So, we have got to change this,” Higonnet told host Mike DiGirolamo.

“[T]he good news is the solutions are here. They are simple. They’re already being executed by some of the world’s best coffee companies who have not gone bankrupt. In fact, they’re doing super well,” she added.

Higonnet said child labor is so prevalent that studies show 91% of Ethiopian, 74% of Colombian and 64% of Honduran coffee farming families use child workers.

More than 100 million people rely on the coffee industry for income, but most coffee farmers earn less than $2.15 a day. “Most of those farm workers are extraordinarily poor and mistreated,” she said.

While coffee farmers and workers get pennies, the commodity itself is currently seeing sky-high prices, which Higonnet said is linked to deforestation. “And when you have really high prices it prompts people to want to plant more coffee and then you have more deforestation. So actually it’s like a downward spiral of evil,” she said.

Higonnet said she believes the key to sustainable coffee is regenerative agroforestry, where coffee plants are grown in the shade of trees, which is how coffee was cultivated before commercialization.

Policies like the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) are also important, she said, calling it a “beautiful law.” Once implemented, EUDR would prohibit the entry of illegal or deforestation-tainted coffee imports into the EU.

“[T]he EUDR would be amazing if it came into force, it would transform global coffee. Because 26% of coffee goes to the EU,” Higonnet said, adding the law currently faces opposition and lobbying that has spread disinformation.

Complying with the EUDR isn’t as difficult as companies claim, Higonnet added.

“Satellite maps, that’s how you check your deforestation. There are so many service providers just dying to help companies figure out how to go deforestation-free,” she said.

Higonnet encouraged coffee drinkers to support brands that are “great for forests, great for farmers” and to tell their favorite shops to source organic and ethical coffee. She added people can also visit the Coffee Watch website to sign petitions that call for changes in the industry.

Listen to the full podcast episode here.

Banner image of a cup of coffee by shixugang via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

A major new report released July 15^th warns that wetlands, among the world’s most valuable yet most threatened ecosystems, are vanishing faster than any other natural system. However, it also offers a clear and hopeful road map for reversing the trend.

The “Global Wetland Outlook 2025,” published by the Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands (better known as the Ramsar Convention), reveals that 22% of the world’s wetlands have been lost since 1970 and an additional one-fifth of the world’s remaining wetlands could be at risk by mid-century without urgent action.

Despite covering just 6% of Earth’s surface, wetlands deliver ecosystem services valued at more than 7.5% of global GDP — up to $39 trillion annually — including water purification, carbon storage, coastal protection, and support for food systems and livelihoods.

“Wetlands are fundamental to the water cycle, to our global response to climate change, and to the wellbeing of billions,” said Hugh Robertson, chair of the Ramsar Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel.  

The report highlights the urgent need to shift from damage control to forward-thinking investments. It lays out four transformative pathways: integrating wetlands into national planning; embedding them in climate and biodiversity finance; recognizing their central role in the global hydrological cycle; and mobilizing blended public-private finance to scale up protection and restoration.

Despite their ecological value, wetlands receive less than 9% of all climate finance earmarked for nature-based solutions. “Wetlands remain overlooked in budgets, underrepresented in plans, and underfunded in action,” Musonda Mumba, secretary-general of the Ramsar Convention, said in a press release.

Progress is possible

Despite the bleak trends, the report showcases examples of what’s possible. In Zambia’s Kafue Flats, an initial $300,000 restoration initiative has grown into a $1 million annual investment that sustains biodiversity and the ecosystem services that support roughly 1.3 million people. Meanwhile, the Regional Flyway Initiative, a $3 billion partnership across Asia, is restoring more than 140 wetlands critical to migratory birds and nearly 200 million people.

The report estimates that effective conservation and restoration of 5.5 million square kilometers (2.1 million square miles) of wetlands — an area half the size of Canada — is needed to meet global biodiversity and climate targets. That effort requires a massive increase in funding — far beyond current commitments, which remain at just 0.25% of global GDP.

The release of the report in Nairobi comes ahead of the Ramsar Convention’s COP15 summit, set for July 23-31 in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

Banner image: Aerial view of the Monboyo River and peatland forest of Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Image courtesy of Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace.