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

On the final day of a two-week expedition, where researchers were searching for a “lost” species along Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River, Helen Asu arrived with two small, greenish-brown fish. She had caught them while fishing for prawns with an umben, a traditional hand net, near Imbando village in East Sepik province.

They were spinach pipefish (Microphis spinachioides), a species known only from the Sepik and not recorded by scientists since 1985, reports Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman.

“It was honestly an incredible moment,” said Jerrica Agebigo, a researcher at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology and the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre, who led the expedition. “When Helen showed the fish to us, I immediately realized that we had found something very special.”

The spinach pipefish is a freshwater relative of seahorses and seadragons. It grows to about 15 centimeters (6 inches) and uses its elongated snout to catch small prey. Its coloring helps conceal it among water lilies and other plants along the banks of the Sepik, Papua New Guinea’s longest river.

Almost everything else about it remains uncertain. The specimen used to describe the species was held at Hamburg’s natural history museum, but was destroyed during the second world war. When the fish was last assessed for the IUCN Red List in 2016, it was classified as data deficient. It later became one of the 10 most sought-after species on the “Lost Fishes” list, compiled by SHOAL, Re:wild and the IUCN Freshwater Fish Specialist Group. The wider list includes more than 300 freshwater fishes missing to science.

Agebigo’s team, made up of local scientists and community members, set out in June to learn whether the pipefish still survived and, if so, what threats it faced. Along the Sepik river they showed pictures to residents and asked fishers whether they recognized it. On June 18, Asu supplied the answer.

The rediscovery will allow scientists to begin filling gaps in knowledge left by four decades without a confirmed record of the fish.

“The fact that a species could go without a confirmed record for around four decades — and then be found through the daily activities of a local fisher — is a powerful reminder of the importance of local ecological knowledge,” Agebigo said. “Without Helen’s knowledge, experience and willingness to help us, we may not have found the species.”

Read the full story by Spoorthy Raman here

Banner image of a Spinach pipefish. Image courtesy of the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre.

Two species of trees helped Japan build millions of homes after World War II. However, pollen from those same trees has also fueled a nationwide hay fever allergy.

More than 40% of Japan’s population now suffers from hay fever, locally called kafunsho. That’s nearly double the rate in the U.S., reports contributor Jonathan Vit for Mongabay.

“Right after the New Year in January, my nose starts to get a little itchy,” Mariko Aoki, who works as a secretary at the National Diet, Japan’s legislature, told Mongabay. “It peaks in March, and the sneezing, runny nose, itchy throat and itchy eyes are really bad. It lasts all the way until just before Golden Week,” which runs from April 29 to May 5.

Two tree species are largely to blame: sugi (Cryptomeria japonica) and hinoki (Chamaecyparis obtusa). Both are fast-growing trees that were widely planted for timber after bombing during the war left Japan in need of millions of homes.

Today, forests cover roughly 70% of Japan, and 41% of those forests are planted. Sugi trees account for roughly 40% of planted forests, while hinoki accounts for another 25%. That means two-thirds of the nation’s cultivated forests are planted with trees that can make people sick.

Climate change has made things worse: warming has driven sugi trees to release pollen earlier than they used to, making country’s annual pollen season longer and more severe.

To solve its hay fever crisis, the Japanese government announced a plan in 2023 to cut down 20% of sugi trees planted across 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres) of forest by 2033. Nearly all of Japan’s planted sugi trees are more than 20 years old, large enough to be used in the timber industry.

“The plan is to start cutting down the trees as they become usable — starting with those that are ready for use as lumber,” said Makoto Nakamura, the assistant director of the wood industry division at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Sugi trees cut on mountain slopes or deep inside forests will be replaced with other species of local trees. Those felled closer to the roadside or timber facilities will be replaced with new strains of sugi that produce little to no pollen.

Japanese researchers have successfully developed more than 30 such strains. Toyama prefecture, on the west coast, planted around 100,000 no-pollen saplings in a single year.

However, producing the new strains at scale and planting them in the wild, which requires a significant amount of labor, remains challenging as Japan’s forestry industry struggles with severe labor shortages.

Another challenge is that the Japanese home construction industry is in major decline. That’s left the forestry ministry looking for a new market for the timber.

Read the full story by Jonathan Vit here.

Banner image: Sugi trees at Nikkō Tōshō-gū, a Shinto shrine in Japan. Image by Miguel Vieira via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Two Przewalski’s horse foals were born in a reintroduction center in the grasslands of central Kazakhstan in late August. They are reportedly the first wild horses born on Kazakh soil in more than 200 years.

The first foal, a male, was born Aug. 22 to a 7-year-old mare named Tessa. The second, also male, followed on Aug. 31, born to a mare named Umbra. They share the same father, a stallion named Zorro who has since died.

The Equus ferus przewalskii foals have not yet been named, but their births are being celebrated as a milestone of the Kazakhi reintroduction effort.

“The birth of these two foals is important because it shows that the horses are adapting to this climate, to this territory,” Alyona Krivosheyeva, conservation director of the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), told Mongabay by phone. “This is the proof of success of what we do.”

Both foals were born inside a 56-hectare (140-acre) enclosure at the Alibi Wild Ungulates Reintroduction Center, part of Kazakhstan’s 489,000-hectare (1.2-million-acre) Altyn Dala State Nature Reserve. The reserve has also been an important recovery site for saiga antelopes (Saiga tatarica) and Asiatic wild asses (Equus hemionus kulan).

Known locally as kertagy, Przewalski’s horse is the only living wild relative of the domestic horse.  It was listed as extinct-in-the-wild until one adult was found in 1996, after which it was re-listed as critically endangered. Since 2011, it has been classified as endangered by the IUCN, the global conservation authority.

The species historically lived across the steppe grasslands of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northern China, where they served as ecosystem engineers. They graze on dry vegetation to reduce wildfire risk, their hooves disturb the soil letting new plants take root, and they disperse seeds across the landscape as they roam.

The population in Kazakhstan was wiped out between the mid-18th and mid-19th century as the former Russian Empire colonized the biome for agriculture and livestock, according to an internal feasibility study shared with Mongabay by the ACBK. The horses were cut off from water and winter pastures, intensively hunted and crossbred with domestic horses — all factors that led to a “catastrophic” decline in the population of wild horses.

Captive-breeding programs in zoos sustained the remaining individuals, and some have now been returned to parts of Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan as part of efforts to restore the steppe ecosystem.

Over the last three years, 22 Przewalski’s horses were translocated to Kazakhstan from Prague Zoo and Tierpark Berlin. Conservationists aim to bring a total of 40 horses to Kazakhstan, the minimum needed to establish a self-sustaining wild population.

“Now we have a new task: to observe how the first generation of Przewalski’s horses born on Kazakh soil grows and develops,” Vera Voronova, ACBK’s executive director, wrote in a statement.

Banner image: Two Przewalski’s horse foals born in Kazakhstan in August 2026. Image courtesy of Albert Salemgareyev.

Ocean ecosystems are under extreme stress on several fronts including overfishing, ocean acidification, climate change and marine warming. While ocean conservation efforts often tend to focus on creating marine protected areas, researchers recently stressed the need to move beyond protection toward active recovery using a different approach: Marine rewilding.

In a new perspective paper, the researchers laid out eight key principles that can guide such rewilding.

The concept of “rewilding” is usually applied to terrestrial ecosystems, where the goal is to restore ecological processes and create resilient, self-sustaining ecosystems with minimal human interventions.

Gavin Stark, a post-doctoral researcher with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, and his colleagues, write that one important principle of marine rewilding is that people can’t simply be fenced out of the process.

“You cannot really separate people from the rewilding process inside the marine ecosystems,” Stark told Mongabay in a video call.

Another key principle of marine rewilding is restoring food webs, which may include reintroducing top predators such as sharks. In 2024, for example, Mongabay reported on a project where eggs of the endangered Indo-Pacific leopard shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) raised in an aquarium in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., were shipped to nurseries in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. So far, the project has released more than 60 young sharks into the protected waters of Raja Ampat with the goal of restoring balance to the region’s coral reef ecosystem. 

The authors note that along with restoring food webs, strengthening connectivity between ecosystems is also a pillar of marine rewilding. Just as fragmented terrestrial habitats make it difficult for land animals to adequately find space, mates and food, fragmented marine ecosystems are challenging for ocean wildlife.

“Protecting migration routes and ecological corridors that link coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and deep-sea habitats helps maintain gene flow, support recolonization, and secure the ecosystem services that underpin fisheries, tourism, and cultural identity,” the authors write.

Stark said improving connectivity and marine biodiversity will, “create a resilient ecosystem that will be able to adapt to the environmental changes that we have in climate change and in pollution.”

 The researchers note that other principles of marine rewilding include the need to mitigate pollution, manage invasive species and carefully monitor rewilded ecosystems so conservation efforts can be adapted as conditions change.

Ultimately, marine rewilding centers on rebuilding biodiversity and ecological function while recognizing that people and coastal communities are also an integral part of marine ecosystems, the authors add.

For Stark, the goal isn’t to recreate an ecosystem exactly as it existed in the past, but to improve the current ecosystems so they can be self-sustaining and better able to respond to future disturbances.

“These guidelines are like a blueprint to just start something that maybe will allow this ecosystem to really flourish. But we need to actually start to implement it,” he said.

Banner image: An adult zebra shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) from Western Australia. Image courtesy of Rebecca Bateman-John.

BELHAVEN, N.C. (AP) — Scientists and investors are restoring a 23-square-mile tract of peatland in North Carolina to help curb climate-warming emissions and restore native habitat. Ditches have drained water from thousands of years of accumulated peat, leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfire and unleashing huge volumes of carbon dioxide. One-third of global carbon is stored in saturated peatlands, more than all forests combined. But that reverses when peatlands are damaged. Pantheon Regeneration plans to restore the water table to curb emissions, then sell carbon credits to help fund its goal of preserving a million acres of peatland from Virginia to Florida.

By Tammy Webber and Joshua Bickel, Associated Press  

Banner image: Neal Flanagan, right, a research scientist at Duke University, uses a tool to take a soil sample from a peatland as Curt Richardson, an ecology professor at Duke, observes Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Belhaven, N.C. Image courtesy of Joshua A. Bickel, Associated Press

In the Indian Himalayas, numerous species of colorful pheasants roam the understory, pecking at seeds, roots, leaves, berries, and insects. These large, ornate birds are vital to the Himalayan ecosystem. But some species now face increasing pressures from habitat degradation and hunting, reports contributor Hirra Azmat for Mongabay India.

Among them is the white-crested kalij pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos hamiltoni). It’s a highly adaptable bird capable of living in habitats ranging from coniferous forests to scrublands and forest edges near human settlements.

“Like other pheasant species, it plays an essential role in Himalayan ecosystems by forming a major prey base for carnivores and raptors,” said Arif Nabi Lone, a researcher at the University of Kashmir’s Department of Zoology. “Besides, it also acts as a seed disperser and soil aerator.”

The white-crested kalij pheasant isn’t considered threatened on the IUCN Red List. However, in a 2025 study, Lone and his colleagues interviewed communities around two protected areas in the Indian-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir, and identified several threats to the bird, including habitat degradation, hunting, livestock grazing, and mushroom collection.

“Timber and firewood collection, resource extraction and deforestation are degrading its habitat,” Lone said. “Hunting and overgrazing are other serious threats. Mushroom collection is particularly concerning because it coincides with the breeding season, and people searching for mushrooms often disturb nesting females, reducing their breeding success.”

Human activities may also be threatening a rarer pheasant species: the western tragopan (Tragopan melanocephalus). Listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, the bird is endemic to the western Himalayas, where it depends on undisturbed oak and conifer forests with a dense understory of shrubs.

Riyaz Ahmad, former head of the Jammu and Kashmir chapter of wildlife conservation for the nonprofit Wildlife Trust of India, told Mongabay India that the western tragopan is also vital to the Himalayan ecosystem as prey, predator, and seed disperser. However, it’s an extremely shy bird that flees at the slightest disturbance, making it difficult to study.

“The bird is usually detected during the breeding season, when males become more vocal and advertise for mates,” Ahmad said. Some estimates based on their calls suggest there may be fewer than 300 of the birds left in Jammu and Kashmir, though long-term population trends remain unknown.

What’s certain is that their forest home is increasingly being degraded and fragmented by livestock grazing, tree felling, collection of forest resources, and other human pressures, Ahmad said. Climate change could also push the species to higher elevations to find suitable habitats, a 2020 study suggested.

“The western tragopan is a barometer of pristine habitats,” Ahmad said. “If its numbers decline, it is a warning that something is going wrong in these ecosystems. Regular monitoring, especially within protected areas, can help us assess whether our conservation efforts are working.”

Read the full story by Hirra Azmat here.

Banner image: The western tragopan depends on undisturbed mountain forests for survival. Image courtesy of Jainy Maria.