The winners of the 11^th annual Mangrove Photography Awards (MPA) have been announced. The contest, hosted by the U.S.-based Mangrove Action Project, showcases powerful photographic narratives highlighting the importance of one of the planet’s most vital ecosystems.

This year, a record-breaking 3,300 entries from 78 countries entered to win in one of six categories: wildlife, people, landscapes and threats, as well as underwater and conservation stories.

The 2025 overall winner features an aerial view of a roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) flock flying above a lemon shark hunting mullet in Florida Bay’s shallow waters.

“Birds’ eye view of the hunt.” Image courtesy of Mark Ian Cook/MPA.

About the photo, contest judge Shin Arunrugstichai said in a statement: “What a scene! I love the convergence of all the elements in that exact moment. It clearly shows the diversity of life that … depends on the mangrove ecosystem.”

The “wildlife” category features images of crocodiles and crabs that one might expect, but also more elusive animals including tigers (Panthera tigris) in India’s Sundarbans, a proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) in Indonesia and fireflies in the Philippines. One of the most heart-warming photos features a mother jungle cat (Felis chaus) snuggling her cub in the Indian Sundarbans.

“Mother’s protection.” Image courtesy of Satyaki Naha/MPA.

The winning image in the “threats” category by photographer Tom Quinney shows an enormous pile of waste hovering behind a struggling mangrove forest in Bali. “In the past, a major fire burned through the rubbish here, and to this day the landfill continues to grow, pressing against the edge of this delicate mangrove system,” Quinney said in the statement.

“Paradise buried.” Image courtesy of Tom Quinney/MPA.

The “landscape” category features images of stunning sunsets and the natural beauty of mangroves. A photo from the United Arab Emirates shows the juxtaposition of mangroves and the metropolis of Abu Dhabi. “The tidal channels weave through the green forest like lifelines, feeding the city with breath and calm … it’s a message: true progress respects its roots. The mangroves here don’t just shield the shores, they preserve the spirit of balance that every thriving city needs,” photographer Salem Alsawafi said.

“Roots in water peaks in the sky.” Image courtesy of Salem Alsawafi/MPA.

The winning photograph in the “people” category shows trained otters feasting on fish after helping fishermen in Bangladesh, an ancient and fading relationship between humans and mammals of the mangroves. “There are only a handful of otter fisherman left and their unusual method of fishing has been handed down from father to son for centuries,” photographer Freddie Claire said. “The otters chase fish from the muddy banks into the awaiting nets and after each fishing session get their share of the catch.”

“Bhoben Biseash and his otters.” Image courtesy of Freddie Claire/MPA.

Banner image: “Flower of Mangrove” shows a tiger emerging from a mangrove in  India. Image courtesy of Kaushik Ghosh/ MPA.

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

The eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of Congo are no strangers to tragedy. Yet the loss of two Virunga National Park rangers in a surveillance plane crash near Ishango on July 23 underscores once again the mortal risks faced by those charged with defending one of the world’s most biologically rich landscapes.

Pilot Claude Nguo and ranger Daniel Kakule were on an aerial mission to protect ground teams during an operation near Lake Edward when their Bat Hawk reconnaissance aircraft went down. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

“The craft went down as the two men sought to ensure the safety of [ICCN] agents operating in the park,” the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN) said in a statement. Both men leave behind young families.

Their deaths add to a long and grim toll. More than 220 rangers have died in Virunga over the past two decades—an attrition rate that makes it one of the most dangerous conservation jobs on Earth. The park’s location in a conflict zone, where armed groups such as the Rwandan-backed M23 control swathes of territory, renders even routine tasks perilous.

Founded in 1925 by royal decree during Belgium’s colonial rule, Virunga—then known as Parc National Albert—was Africa’s first national park, created to protect mountain gorillas and other rare wildlife from human encroachment. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site spanning nearly 2 million acres, home to gorillas, chimpanzees, okapi, and Africa’s largest population of hippos.

In the wake of each ranger’s death, Virunga provides financial support to families, including continued salary payments, pensions, and access to medical care and education. Yet no compensation can fill the void left behind.

Header image: Claude Nguo (left). Photo by Brent Stirton. Daniel Kakule (right). Photo by Virunga National Park.

Mangroves are an important lifeline for biodiversity, climate and coastal communities. Yet they are disappearing 3-5 times faster than total global forest losses, according to UNESCO.

On July 26, celebrated as the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem, we present recent stories by Mongabay’s journalists on emerging threats to these critical ecosystems and the women who are leading mangrove restoration efforts across the world.

Risks from tropical cyclones

A recent study found that mangrove forests globally could face severe risk from climate change-intensified tropical cyclones and rising sea levels, Mongabay contributor Elizabeth Fitt reported in June.

Mangroves, which typically grow in the tropics and subtropics, have evolved to be resilient against tropical cyclones. They even serve as buffers for coastlines against the resulting storm surges and strong winds. In the process, they may suffer damage, but they tend to bounce back when the storms don’t occur frequently. The study estimates that with climate change, tropical cyclones are likely to occur so frequently that mangroves won’t have enough time to recover.

Mangroves are already being cleared or degraded due to pollution, agriculture and infrastructure. The added risk from climate change is a problem because the ecosystem is responsible for an estimated $65 billion worth of annual flood protection across the world while 775 million people are considered “highly dependent” on such coastal ecosystems, the study says.

“The mangrove ecosystems providing the highest levels of benefits to people … are also at the highest levels of risk,” study lead researcher Sarah Hülsen, from ETH Zürich’s Institute for Environmental Decisions, told Mongabay.

Women as protectors

In coastal communities around the world, women’s organizations are proving to be an effective ally in restoring mangroves and empowering women through education and livelihood.

The women in the fishing community of Chelem, on the northern coast of the Mexican state of Yucatán, have helped restore hundreds of hectares of mangroves over 15 years, Mongabay contributor Astrid Arellano reported in April.

“Despite being from the coast, we didn’t know why the mangroves were important,” Keila Vázquez, coordinator of the local group Las Chelemeras, told Mongabay. “For example, they protect against cyclones and act as nurseries for commercial marine species such as prawns. Now we understand how much they benefit us.”

In Colombia, women who harvest mollusks have taken on the work of monitoring the health of local mangroves, setting up signs and reminders not to disturb the salt-tolerant trees to help them bounce back, Mongabay contributor Catherine Ellis also reported in April.

In Nigeria, too, women-led efforts are restoring mangroves in the severely degraded Niger Delta. Local Ogoni women have planted 2.6 million mangrove trees since 2018 in a region that has experienced oil spills, logging and invasive nipa palm plantations, Mongabay’s Aimee Gabay reported in January.

Banner image of mangroves in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, courtesy of The Ocean Agency/Ocean Image Bank.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Peruvian customs officials have seized a record-breaking shipment of illegal mercury, exposing a cross-border smuggling network fueling illicit gold mining in the Amazon. The 4-ton haul, discovered in June at the port of Callao, was hidden in gravel bags and bound for Bolivia, officials said on Thursday. Experts say it could have produced over $170 million in illicit gold. The seizure highlights the growing role of mercury trafficking in environmental crime across Latin America and comes amid calls for tighter international controls and the closure of mercury mines in Mexico.

Scientists have measured the amount of nanoplastics in the open ocean for the first time and found they make up the vast majority of marine plastic pollution.

Plastic debris in the ocean can be of varying sizes. Nanoplastics are the tiniest, about 1,000 times smaller than the smallest microplastics — small enough to go through cell membranes, including the barriers of the human brain.

The new study estimates that the North Atlantic Ocean holds approximately 27 million metric tons of nanoplastics, around nine times the amount of larger plastic debris in all of the world’s oceans.

“The pollution is quite advanced,” co-author Dušan Materić, a researcher at the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, told Mongabay in a video interview. “Just 10 years ago, there was speculation about whether nanoplastics existed, and that brought concern because if they existed in the environment, they would be much more toxicologically potent than their microplastics counterpart.”

The researchers found nanoplastics at all three depths they sampled — right from the sea surface to the ocean floor — across 12 stations located across the North Atlantic, indicating widespread contamination. Previously, nanoplastics were missing from calculations of how much total plastic is in the ocean. The millions of tons of nanoplastics found in the recent study, Materić said, fills that gap.

“To me, [the amount of nanoplastics we found] is a bit more than I expected,” Materić said. “We are closing that budget with nanoplastics. So, in a sense, we discovered the missing pollutant.”

A previous study estimated 3.2 million metric tons of larger plastics and microplastics across all oceans.

Much to the researchers’ surprise, they found much lower concentration of nanoplastics in ocean gyres where microplastics usually accumulate, like the North Atlantic garbage patch. Instead, nanoplastics appeared in larger quantities deep in the ocean and were more scattered across the ocean surface.

The amount of nanoplastics estimated in the study suggests the tiny particles may not only be coming from microplastics breaking down further, but may also be entering the ocean directly from larger plastic objects and the atmosphere.

Polyethylene, the plastic that makes up most plastic bags and is one of the most common types of microplastic pollution, was also completely missing from the nanoplastics samples. This absence of the widely used plastic suggests there are unknown chemical or physical processes at play that prevent it from forming or persisting as nanoplastics in ocean water, the researchers say.

Materić said the science of nanoplastics is still in its early stages. “We need to start printing new pages of scientific discoveries. How do [nanoplastics] affect life? How could this backfire towards the atmospheric system? How could this effect cloud formation? All systems are now linked, and we need to understand the physical functioning of the plastic cycle.”

Banner image: A barrier collects plastic waste at Kingston Harbor in Jamaica. Image courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup.

The government of Chad has signed a 10-year deal with the U.S.-based NGO Sahara Conservation to manage the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve (OROAFR), the group announced July 11. The OROAFR is the largest protected area in Chad, at nearly 80,000 square kilometers (almost 31,000 square miles), around three times the size of Rwanda. 

“It’s obviously very big, and its value is not only in its biological value, but in its cultural value as well with the human dimensions of the reserve,” Tim Woodfine, CEO of Sahara Conservation, told Mongabay by phone. 

The deal adds to a growing list of public-private partnerships managing protected areas in Africa. The South Africa-based NGO African Parks has agreements to run nearby Ennedi Natural and Cultural Reserve in northeastern Chad and Zakouma National Park in the southern part of the country.

The OROAFR is a mix of grasslands and desert ecosystems and hosts several endangered species, including the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) and scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah). Drought and settlement expansion are some challenges it’s faced in recent years.

Founded in 2004, Sahara Conservation largely focuses on Chad and neighboring Niger. The group was the driving force behind the reintroduction of scimitar-horned oryx into the OROAFR, which had previously been poached to local extinction. Starting in 2016, the NGO worked with zoos and private owners in the United Arab Emirates to bring 300 oryx into the reserve, a population that’s since grown to 600. In 2023, the IUCN, the global conservation authority, changed the species’ listing from extinct in the wild to endangered.

“We could not do things without widespread international and local collaboration,” Woodfine said.

The UAE’s Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi is one of Sahara Conservation’s primary funders.

The NGO has a management plan for the OROAFR and is finalizing a land zoning agreement with local herding and agro-pastoralist communities.

“There are a lot of nomadic pastoralists, so we have these traditional transhumance routes that go through the reserve, and I think it’s important that those routes are maintained because they are part of the cultural heritage of the area and extremely important for people’s livelihoods,” Woodfine said.

Balancing conservation priorities with pastoralist grazing rights will be a key challenge for Sahara Conservation during its initial 10-year management period.

“Herders are the ruling communities in Chad, which is not the case in a lot of other countries where they’re marginalized,” Charles Bouëssel, analyst with the International Crisis Group, told Mongabay in an interview.

Woodfine said Sahara Conservation will hire and train an initial force of 40 rangers, but he added that the group wants to avoid a “militarized” approach in the reserve.

“We feel by taking a step-by-step approach we can try and get things right in a core area, and then with everybody’s agreement, spread that influence further out.” 

Banner image: Scimitar-horned oryx in Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve in Chad. Image by Inyathi via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).