For a man who spent his life studying the movements of wildlife, Roberto Zolho was most at peace when not moving at all—drifting in a kayak down the Guacheni channels, pausing to admire an egret, a kingfisher, or a sunlit curve in the reeds. In these secluded corners of Mozambique’s wetlands, he was not a former government official or a decorated scientist. He was simply a witness, content to observe the “amazing birdlife,” as he once wrote with characteristic understatement.

Zolho’s legacy lies most visibly in Gorongosa National Park, once a paradise gutted by civil war. Appointed its administrator in 1996, he inherited a landscape where over 90% of large mammals had vanished. Rather than despair, he set about recovery with meticulous care—counting what was left, building systems for what might return, and working closely with the local community. It was his 2005 proposal for species reintroduction that laid the groundwork for one of the most remarkable wildlife restorations in history. By 2025, Gorongosa’s plains were again teeming with tens of thousands of animals, its predators prowling and its forests mending.

Zolho saw conservation not as an exercise in nostalgia, nor as a fortress to be built against humanity. His career, spanning more than three decades across Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, and Australia, reflected a broader conviction: that biodiversity could only endure if local communities shared in its benefits. Whether coordinating climate resilience programs or leading cross-border conservation corridors, he insisted on integrating ecological goals with the aspirations of rural people.

He was not drawn to grandeur. Though awarded the Medal of Environmental Merit in 2022 by Mozambique’s president and honored as a “Conservation Hero” at Gorongosa’s gala, Zolho seemed more comfortable in the field than behind a desk—mentoring young professionals, writing strategy documents rooted in realities on the ground, or volunteering with Banhine National Park, where he was a proud “top fan.” He preferred working where conservation was implemented, not just discussed.

In meetings, colleagues recalled his steadiness and kindness; in the field, his pragmatism and resolve. He could speak of degraded miombo woodlands in the morning and listen with delight to a child describing a monkey she’d seen in the afternoon.

Following his passing, Mozambique’s biodiversity community is mourning the loss not just of a leader, but of a unifying presence. Zolho leaves behind a network of protected landscapes and the people trained to protect them. More enduring still is the ethic he embodied: that conservation, at its best, is not conquest or control, but care.

Zolho is survived by his wife Brit; his daughters, Hannah, Nyangala, and Adriana; and the countless animals that now thrive in the wilderness he helped restore.

Banner image: Roberto Zolho. Photo from his Facebook page.

A federal court in Brazil has blocked the start of planned explosions along a 35-kilometer (22-mile) rock formation called Pedral do Lourenço in the Tocantins River, pausing a major infrastructure project until a judge can inspect the site.

The decision suspends the federal government’s attempt to clear the way for large cargo ships to travel year-round through the Tocantins-Araguaia waterway, which runs from the Cerrado savanna in central Brazil, an agricultural stronghold, north to the Amazonian state of Pará.

“The suspension is necessary to avoid irreversible damage,” the judge wrote in his June 26 ruling, calling the rock formation in the Tocantins River an area of “high socio-environmental relevance.”

The Pedral do Lourenço rock formation is considered a “significant refuge” for turtles such as the Amazon river turtle (Podocnemis expansa), at least 10 endangered fish species, as well as the critically endangered Araguaian river dolphin (Inia araguaiaensis). One catfish identified in the region, Baryancistrus longipinnis, exists nowhere else in the world.

Establishing the Tocantins-Araguaia waterway, which includes blasting rocks and dredging the river before and after the formation, is expected to take 36 months and cost 1 billion reais ($178 million), according to Brazil’s National Department of Transport Infrastructure.

Pedral do Lourenço currently blocks the passage of large ships during the dry season, June to December, when water levels are lower than the rest of the year. The federal government says opening up the waterway would allow the equivalent of around 500,000 trucks to traverse the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers all year round, potentially reducing logistics costs by up to 30% as the river provides a more direct route to ports in the Amazon.

But prosecutors say the environmental license granted by IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, in May 2025 was approved without properly consulting the potentially impacted communities.

Federal prosecutor Rafael Martins da Silva previously told Mongabay contributor André Schröder that the agency left fishing-related problems as an afterthought, adding: “This permit should not have been granted.”

An assessment of the impact that the explosions and subsequent ship traffic may have on fishing, the main source of food and income for the communities in the region, wasn’t carried out, prosecutors added.

“This new project threatens to further worsen the destruction of the river, the forest, and the communities,” Darcilene, a resident of one of the impacted communities, said in a statement by activist group Movement of People Affected by Dams.

“The suspension is a breath of relief. It’s time to listen to the communities, to truly measure the impacts, and to stop making top-down decisions,” she added.

No date has been set yet for the judicial inspection, when the court can “observe in person the facts and circumstances relevant to the case.”

Banner image: Plans to blast the Pedral do Lourenço rock formation in the Tocantins River have been suspended by a court. Image courtesy of Antonio Cavalcante/Ascom Setran-PA.

A zoo in the U.S. state of Kansas has welcomed the birth of a healthy baby pygmy hippopotamus, raising hope for a species that’s becoming rare in the wild.

The yet-to-be-named male pygmy hippo calf, born June 26, is the fifth offspring of parents Pluto and Posie since their arrival at Tanganyika Wildlife Park in the city of Goddard from different zoos in 2014. “Posie is an attentive mother, nursing well and keeping the baby close — a true professional,” Sierra Smith, a keeper at Tanganyika, said in a statement.

The zoo had previously announced the birth of another male calf to the same couple in December last year.

Pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis) are the lesser known — and more threatened — cousins of the common hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius). While the latter is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, pygmy hippos, named because of their much smaller size, are categorized as endangered.

In the wild, pygmy hippos are only found deep inside the forests of four West African countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. While the latest IUCN assessment, from 2015, puts the species’ population at roughly  2,500 individuals, “we don’t really know” the true numbers, Neus Estela, a technical specialist with Fauna & Flora in Liberia previously told Mongabay’s Jeremy Hance.

Moreover, the forests where the small hippos live have experienced deforestation and are all fragmented, isolating the hippos and preventing gene flow, Hance reported.

In Taï National Park in Côte d’Ivoire, for example, gold mining is a big threat, said Elie Bogui, a coordinator for the Taï Hippo Project.

One major challenge for pygmy hippo conservation, Hance reported, is the lack of financial and logistical support for the species’ conservation. This is despite a recent spike in online popularity of pygmy hippos, thanks to Moo Deng, a calf born at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Bang Phra, Thailand, in July 2024, which soon became an internet sensation for its cute, playful attitude.

Estela said that unlike elephants, chimpanzees and pangolins in Africa, pygmy hippos don’t receive targeted funding for conservation; rather, they “benefit more from general conservation efforts.”

As wild populations decrease, captive breeding of pygmy hippos could play a role in the conservation and survival of the species.

“Every pygmy hippo birth, whether in human care or in their native habitat, is critical for their ongoing survival,” said Samantha Russak, curator of research and welfare at Tanganyika Wildlife Park. “This is Posie and Pluto’s fifth calf since their arrival at the park in 2014. With only three pygmy hippo births recorded in the U.S. last year, this calf holds particular significance for cooperative conservation programs aimed at preserving genetic diversity within the species.”

Images: A male pygmy hippo calf was born at Tanganyika Wildlife Park, in the U.S. state of Kansas, on June 26, 2025. Both images courtesy of Tanganyika Wildlife Park.

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

In the dense, humid expanse of the Darién Gap — a forbidding swath of rainforest bridging Panama and Colombia — a tentative transformation is underway. Once synonymous with lawlessness and unchecked migration, this biologically rich frontier is now the focus of an ambitious conservation push by Panama’s government, reports Mongabay’s Maxwell Radwin.

Since President José Mulino took office last July, Panama has poured resources into the region. The Ministry of Environment, in partnership with NGOs like Global Conservation, has trained and deployed 30 new guards to Darién National Park, increasing the total to 52. Equipped with Starlink satellite communications, smartphones and GPS mapping tools, the rangers now cover more terrain than ever before.

“We now have more equipment, more personnel, and we can cover more area,” said Segundo Sugasti, director of the park.

These steps are part of a broader campaign to regain control over a region long shaped by external pressures: migration, illegal logging, gold mining, and land grabbing for agriculture. This year alone, two major raids by SENAFRONT, a militarized police unit, dismantled illegal gold mining camps that had generated millions in profits while polluting waterways with mercury and phosphorus.

Meanwhile, efforts to regulate logging are showing signs of traction. A moratorium on new timber permits, extended through 2029, has silenced many sawmills in the province. Dozens of forest technicians, many of them recent graduates, have been dispatched to remote Indigenous communities to revise management plans, boost oversight, and help locals seek Forest Stewardship Council certification.

“The management plan is supposed to serve both environmental and social goals,” said Elsy Ortiz, a forest technician working with the Emberá-Wounaan people.

Infrastructure projects, such as new bridges and roads, are a double-edged sword. They promise life-changing access to hospitals and schools, but also draw settlers and industry. The Pan-American Highway, long interrupted by the Darién Gap, still ends at Yaviza. But smaller road extensions and a $70 million investment could bring the frontier closer to fragile forest boundaries.

The threats remain potent. Timber traffickers exploit knowledge gaps in Indigenous communities. Farmers and ranchers clear forest illegally on private land. And nearly 300,000 metric tons of waste left behind by migrants pollute ecosystems and watersheds. Yet officials remain cautiously optimistic.

“They told us about this in our training,” said park guard Edwin Cerrud. “We’re prepared to face the situation that’s coming our way.”

Read the full story by Maxwell Radwin here.

Banner image: The Geoffroy’s Tamarin can be found in the Darién rainforest. Image by Concep Arroyo via Pexels.

Peruvian scientists have identified three new-to-science frog species in the Andes, highlighting the mountains’ wealth of biodiversity, according to a recent study.

The three species have been named Pristimantis chinguelas, P. nunezcortezi and P. yonke.

“They’re small and unassuming, but these frogs are powerful reminders of how much we still don’t know about the Andes,” study lead author Germán Chávez, from the Peruvian Institute of Herpetology (IPH), said in a statement.

Between 2021 and 2024, Chávez and his colleagues embarked on several challenging expeditions around the remote Cordillera de Huancabamba, a rugged range of the Andes in northwestern Peru. During each nightly hike of five to six hours, the researchers would scan the ground, vegetation and water edges with headlamps for amphibians. This ultimately led them to find the three previously unknown frog species. The mountain range serves as a natural corridor for wildlife and is home to “many unique amphibian species,” the authors write.

“Many of these mountain ridges are isolated, with no roads and extreme terrain,” Ivan Wong, study co-author from IPH, said in the statement. “The weather shifts within minutes, and the steep cliffs make every step a challenge. It’s no wonder so few scientists have worked here before. But that’s exactly why there’s still so much to find.”

P. chinguelas was found on a cliffside of Cerro Chinguelas, the mountain it’s named after. The frog has distinctive, prominent wart-like bumps and makes a high-pitched “peep.” The male frogs the team analyzed were around 3.5 centimeters (1.4 inches) long from snout to vent — around the length of a paperclip.

P. nunezcortezi was spotted near a mountain stream on the eastern slope of Cerro Chinguelas. The frog has large black blotches where its legs meet its body. The researchers named it after ornithologist Elio Nuñez-Cortez, “a conservation trailblazer in the region,” the authors write. The analyzed male frogs were roughly 3.8 cm (1.5 in) long.

P. yonke, the smallest at 1.93 cm (0.76 in) long, or about the size of the average person’s thumbnail, was found in a bromeliad plant. The team named it after the traditional sugarcane spirit called yonke or yonque, which locals in the northwestern Andes drink to keep warm during their travels.

The authors recommend that all three species be listed as data deficient under the IUCN Red List because of the current lack of data to assess their conservation status. But they say that habitat loss was evident in the area where they found the frogs. The researchers added that degradation from fire damage, agriculture and cattle ranching can be seen on satellite images of the region from Global Forest Watch.

“The Cordillera de Huancabamba is not just a remote range — it’s a living archive of biodiversity and cultural legacy,” Wilmar Aznaran, study co-author from IPH, told Earth.com. “And we’ve barely scratched the surface.”

Banner image of Pristimantis chinguelas, P. nunezcortezi and P. yonke (clockwise from left) courtesy of Germán Chávez.

A study conducted in the Brazilian Amazon has found that community-based volunteer patrolling efforts in two protected areas were associated with an 80% reduction in recorded environmental crimes from 2003-13. During the same period, there was no clear decline in environmental violations detected by government-led operations outside those protected areas, suggesting that community-based patrols were more effective.

For the study, researchers analyzed data collected between 2003 and 2013 by community patrol officers in 12 territorial units in two protected areas: Mamirauá and Amanã sustainable development reserves in Amazonas state.

The data were recorded as part of the Voluntary Environmental Agents (VEA) program that began in 1995 and engaged local people to voluntarily patrol their territory to complement the federal surveillance and monitoring system.

During the years analyzed, locals carried out 19,957 patrols, recording crimes in 1,188 of them. Overall, VEA program members recorded 1,260 environmental crimes, the majority related to fishing and hunting infractions.

For comparison, researchers also analyzed government inspections of environmental crimes recorded by government-led enforcement operations between 2002 and 2012 in areas outside the reserves. During this period, authorities carried out 69 operations, detecting 917 crimes across all inspections.

The decade of community patrols coincided with an 80% decline in recorded environmental crimes in 11 of 12 areas analyzed, the study found. By contrast, the government-led inspections were not associated with clear reductions in detected crimes over time.

This difference between the two “underscores the importance of advocating for community-driven interventions” even beyond protected areas, the authors wrote.

“We need to place communities at the center of this conservation process and understand that it is through their empowerment … that they become protagonists in the conservation and development of the Amazon, because in fact they already are,” Caetano Franco, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, told Mongabay in a video call.

Felipe Nunes of the Center for Remote Sensing at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, who has researched environmental law enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon but wasn’t involved in the study, cautioned that community and federal actions cannot be directly compared because they occurred on different land use types. But the study is still valid and sheds light on the importance of joint initiatives, he said.

Franco highlighted the importance of financial support for community initiatives and the need for public security policies for communities involved in patrols. But he cautioned that increased community responsibility in conservation initiatives and surveillance could lead governments to assume the communities can manage by themselves and reduce official support.

“The first step is to understand that communities are not responsible for this kind of activity, nor should they be. They should be seen as partners in a responsibility that mainly falls on the state and federal governments,” Franco said.

Banner image: Mamirauá and Amanã sustainable development reserves. Image by Daniel Marques via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).