In the early 1990s, the logging roads running through Sarawak’s Upper Baram became the site of a bitter confrontation. Penan families built wooden barricades and faced off bulldozers, timber trucks, and state security forces. As the protests drew international attention, the government of Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud restricted media access and portrayed the Penan as backward people manipulated by foreign activists. International NGOs presented them as forest dwellers engaged in a timeless struggle to protect an untouched Eden. 

Pete Brosius, an anthropologist who conducted research with the Penan for four decades, spent much of his career complicating both versions. Brosius died on July 29th at 72.

He had already spent years in Sarawak by the time the logging conflict attracted international attention. His research showed that Penan responses to logging varied substantially between communities. Some resisted through blockades. Others negotiated or sought compensation and employment.

For Brosius, those differences reflected distinct histories and relationships. Penan people were making their own decisions under difficult circumstances, rather than simply following the direction of foreign activists.

That argument put him at odds not only with the Sarawak government and timber interests, but also at times with environmental campaigners.

In a series of papers, Brosius examined how international campaigns changed the way Penan culture and environmental knowledge were described. Complex local disputes over land and political power could become simpler stories designed for audiences in Europe and North America.

Brosius argued that this could come at a cost. If Indigenous people were presented as living outside markets or modern politics, their claims could become easier to dismiss.

His work in Sarawak eventually carried consequences far outside academia. For decades, the legal recognition of customary land in Sarawak favored communities that could point to land cleared for agriculture. That framework presented a fundamental obstacle for nomadic and semi-nomadic Penan, whose customary use left the forest standing.

Since the early 1980s, Brosius had been assembling detailed records of that use, compiling genealogies, maps, linguistic notes, photographs, and family migration histories. Central to this was the practice of molong—roughly meaning to preserve or foster. Penan families managed specific stands of wild sago, fruit trees, and boat timber across generations, harvesting mature trunks while leaving younger shoots to grow. 

When Brosius testified as an expert witness in a 2012 Native Customary Rights case involving the community of Long Jaik, he used those decades of documentation to refute the claim that Penan simply wandered through unmanaged wilderness. The court accepted that molong represented an active, structured system of historical stewardship, establishing a legal precedent for Penan customary land claims.

Yet by then most primary dipterocarp forests were degraded by logging, cleared for oil palm and timber plantations, or inundated by dams. Even with legal breakthroughs, customary land claims across the interior remained contested.

In the summer before he died, Brosius returned to Sarawak, spending several weeks mapping ancestral areas alongside Penan families, just as he had forty years earlier.

Header image: Pete Brosius. From his Facebook

Art and science can work together to raise public awareness and propel conservation efforts needed to safeguard coral reef ecosystems, a group of coral scientists argues in a new research article published in Science Advances.

Coral reefs are among Earth’s most threatened ecosystems amid climate change, coral bleaching and threats from mining. However, most people rarely see or think about corals. The study argues that artists can help shine a light on coral fragility and the resilience of nature.

“Artistic interventions can render the largely unseen underwater world into something visible and accessible,” the authors note. “When paired with scientific data, interactive design, and clear calls to action, coral-inspired art installations in cities worldwide can amplify public understanding and galvanize support.”

They argue music, dance, film and visual art can help corals get noticed. However, many initiatives to address the coral reef crisis are often local or disconnected from one another. “While these projects successfully blend ecological restoration with public engagement, their impact is usually limited to specific regions,” the article notes.

However, article co-author Monica Medina, a biology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the U.S. told Mongabay in an email that local art can also take the global stage. She offered the example of Jalimer, a young Champeta musician in Colombia. Champeta is a local genre of music from the Colombian Caribbean, similar to reggaeton.

“I spoke with him [Jalimer] near one of my field sites, about how Champeta could play a role in changing local people’s perceptions about the environment if there were more songs with relevant lyrics,” Medina told Mongabay. “He surprised me months later with a song that he asked me to fact-check for the environmental impact statements.”

Medina’s team helped him make a music video for the song. “I know that his community in the fishing village he grew up in was very proud of his initiative and people received the song well locally, including the mayor of Cartagena at the time,” Medina said.

The Colombian ministry of environment invited Jalimer to perform at the COP16, a U.N. biodiversity conference, in 2024.

“The song had limited but great local impact. If the music movement around this topic was bigger, the education and conservation impact could be remarkable,” Medina said.  

Leanne Hepburn is a coral biologist and environmental literacy expert not affiliated with the article. She said the recent paper “recognizes, perhaps finally, that communicating the coral reef crisis needs more than scientific evidence and papers. Art can make an ecosystem that is distant and invisible for many people feel tangible.”

“Where I think we need to be more cautious is in assuming a progression from awareness to inspiration and then to action,” she said. “An important next step for this work is understanding how art–science collaborations can translate into greater ocean literacy and participation, for whom, and under what circumstances.”

 Banner image: Coral reef in Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

GOTHIC, Colo. (AP) — Fat Marmot Week is coming soon. Last winter was tough for the groundhog-like rodents living in the Colorado mountains. Researchers say there wasn’t enough snow to keep marmots’ burrows warm while they hibernated, causing many of the animals to freeze to death. The marmots that survived are doing well. They’ve fattened up, gaining the critical weight they need to make it through next winter. To drum up interest in their work, marmot researchers are launching an online contest for the public to vote for their favorite critter — Fat Marmot Week. It begins Monday.

By Brittany Peterson and Mead Gruver,  Associated Press

Banner image: A marmot named 9 sits outside of her den Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Gothic, Colo. Image courtesy of Brittany Peterson via Associated Press. 

Researchers have described a new-to-science species of horned lizard from the high-elevation, evergreen forests of western Thailand.

The lizard, named the Syrax mountain horned dragon, or Acanthosaura syrax, in a recent study, was discovered in Mae Wong National Park. The species name syrax refers to the yellow dragon ridden by Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen in the fantasy series House of the Dragon. The researchers write they chose the name due to the lizard’s distinctive yellow-hued coloration and its diminutive size.

They add they found the lizard only in the upper mountain range of the park, at elevations above 1,300 meters (about 4,300 feet).

Study co-author Krittiya Trivalairat, a lecturer at the Department of Microbiology at Mahidol University in Bangkok, told Mongabay by email that the discovery highlights the remarkable biodiversity and ecological richness of Thailand’s forests. “To me, this discovery is not simply about adding another species to the scientific record; it also demonstrates how much biodiversity may still be hidden within these ecosystems,” Trivalairat said.

Mountain horned dragons are a group of lizards that live in trees and have a spiny crest running down their necks and backs.

To describe the Syrax mountain horned dragon, the researchers surveyed the park’s rugged highlands. They were able to capture specimens by hand since the lizards move slowly. They then took photographs of the live lizards to document their coloration patterns, before euthanizing them. The specimens were subsequently stored for taxonomic review at Thailand’s Natural History Museum.

The researchers write that the lizard is remarkably small, with females measuring just 10 centimeters (4 inches) long, and males less than 7 cm (2.7 in). Despite their small body size, females lay large clutches of eggs.

“One aspect that particularly stood out to me was the relatively high number of eggs produced by the species,” Trivalairat said. “We recorded 6-16 eggs per clutch, which is quite a substantial number considering the animal’s relatively small body size. This reproductive output was particularly interesting and somewhat surprising to us.”

The new mountain dragon stands out because it has the smallest crest scales on its neck and back compared to other dragons in the genus, the researchers write.

They add the mountain habitat that the lizard appears to be restricted to is increasingly vulnerable. While there are multiple populations of the lizard in parts of Mae Wong National Park, those populations “are naturally fragmented by the rugged topography of the mountain range,” the researchers write.

This isolation limits gene exchange and risks inbreeding among these high-altitude species, which can’t migrate to lower, warmer elevations, they add.

Trivalairat said she hopes the discovery of the newly described mountain horned dragon serves as a wake-up call. “We hope that this discovery can help communicate the importance of protecting Thailand’s remaining forests,” she said.

Banner image: Adult female paratypes of Acanthosaura syrax. Image by Trivalairat et al., 2026 (CC BY 4.0).

In the humid, coastal forests of Japan’s Ishigaki Island, near Okinawa, a parasitic plant relies on some unusual allies to spread its seeds: land hermit crabs and cockroaches, according to a recent study.

The plant, fungus root (Balanophora fungosa), is non-photosynthetic, meaning it lacks chlorophyll and can’t make its own food. Instead, it grows as a parasite on the roots of trees in island forests across Asia, Australia and the Pacific. The mushroom-like plant has fleshy, dull-colored fruits with millions of seeds inside.

Previously, scientists have suggested that gravity might be helping disperse those seeds. But in the latest study, researchers found that on Ishigaki, the seeds are primarily dispersed by the land hermit crab (Coenobita brevimanus) and the Australian cockroach (Periplaneta australasiae).

Initially, study author Kenji Suetsugu, a professor of biodiversity and ecology at Kobe University, Japan, told Mongabay by email that he expected ants to be the primary dispersers, due to the plant’s detachable fruit layer. To test this, he conducted “exclusion experiments” by covering some plants with mesh nets that allowed tiny ants inside but kept larger animals out. However, the fruits inside these ant-only nets went completely untouched. So Suetsugu set up a waterproof digital camera about 20 centimeters (8 inches) from the plants.

Programmed to snap photos every 50 seconds, the camera compiled 6,427 images over nearly 89 hours of monitoring. This time-lapse photography captured land hermit crabs and cockroaches aggregating under the cover of night to devour the fruits. “The biggest surprise was the identity of the main seed disperser,” Suetsugu said.

While feeding, hermit crabs carried an average of 86 fruits externally on their claws. They also ingested and defecated numerous intact seeds, some of which remained viable after passing through their digestive tracts.

“To our knowledge, this is the first empirical evidence that land hermit crabs can function as both external and internal seed dispersers,” Suetsugu said. “This expands the range of ecological roles known for these animals and, more broadly, adds to growing evidence that small-bodied invertebrates can make meaningful contributions to seed dispersal.”

The Australian cockroach also defecated seeds of fungus root, but they excreted fewer intact seeds than the hermit crabs. Both creatures are likely drawn to the fungus root by its smell, as mature fruits release a fermented odor that attracts the foraging animals.

“Seed-dispersal research has traditionally focused heavily on birds and mammals,” Suetsugu said. “Our findings suggest that this can leave important interactions unnoticed, particularly on shaded forest floors and on islands, where abundant ground-dwelling invertebrates may provide dispersal services that are easy to miss.”

He added that for him, “the broader lesson is that familiar animals can have ecological roles that remain hidden simply because nobody has watched them closely enough.”

Banner image: Seeds of Balanophora fungosa are dispersed by land hermit crabs and cockroaches, a recent study found. Image © SUETSUGU Kenji (CC BY).

Authorities in the U.S. state of Florida have cleared a controversial startup of criminal neglect after dozens of wild-caught sloths that it imported from South America for tourism purposes died.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) opened an investigation following the closure of the Sloth World facility in April this year. On Aug. 19, it released its findings, with OCSO detective Aaron Bennet concluding the 57 deaths “appear to be consistent with a multifactorial animal health incident rather than the result of criminal activity or improper care.”

As part of the investigation, Bennet interviewed 20 witnesses, including Sloth World administrators, former workers, and veterinarians with the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Garden, where the surviving sloths now live.

In April, Ben Agresta, the owner of Sloth World, told local media, “we lost sloths that had a virus of which showed barely any symptoms and was undetectable even after necropsy.”

However, according to the OCSO report, multiple veterinarians stated the sloths were in extremely poor condition: dehydrated, malnourished, and emaciated. Adam Stern, a veterinarian forensic pathologist, said that “the pathology findings reveal a consistent pattern of disease affecting multiple organ systems.”

Pathology reports found multiple viruses present, which wasn’t surprising; 70-80% of sloths in the wild carry several viruses. But autopsies revealed lesions across respiratory, gastrointestinal, immune and neurological systems. Common findings also included pneumonia, bone marrow depletion, and degeneration of the brain and spinal cords, among other health concerns.

Stern said chronic stress likely contributed to the animals’ rapid health decline. These two- and three-toed sloths were captured from the wild and shipped from Guyana and Peru, exposed to different noises, light, food and overcrowded housing — all stressors “which are recognized as factors capable of suppressing immune function and increasing susceptibility to infectious disease,” the OCSO report notes.

Peter Bandre, who oversaw the sloths’ import and care at Sloth World, said two sloths had died by the time they arrived in Florida.

Pathologist John Roberts said, “Sloths have a specialized diet and the minute they go off that diet they’re going to get mineral deficiencies,” particularly copper deficiencies. Roberts said the animals “came in sick” and that “the food was killing them.”

Former Sloth World caretaker Rebecca Lynn Restrepo described concerns about the care and feeding the sloths received and said she believed the Sloth World owners “lacked the necessary knowledge and experience to properly manage the number of animals,” but hadn’t “intentionally neglected or abused the sloths.”

Rebecca Cliffe, the founder and director of the Costa Rica-based Sloth Conservation Foundation, told Mongabay that if this wasn’t a criminal act then the laws protecting animals aren’t strict enough, “because it shouldn’t be possible for that number of sloths to die.”

Sloth World paid to remove the sloths from the wild, which led to the death of at least 57 of them, she noted.

Banner image: courtesy of Suzi Eszterhas.