The endangered Indian pangolin, already devastated by the illegal wildlife trade, is facing another crisis in Pakistan, one of the four countries where it’s found: rapid habitat loss.

Key habitats of the Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) have particularly disappeared in Pakistan’s rural, mountainous northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to new research, reports contributor Emma Smith for Mongabay.

The province is Pakistan’s third most densely populated region, where development projects such as roads, mining, and industrial sites have fractured vital habitats.

In 2021, ecologist Tariq Ahmad, with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Wildlife Department, and his colleagues revisited 102 sites in the province where pangolin signs had been detected in a survey conducted in 2000. They found signs of pangolins in only 67 of those sites. According to Ahmad, the study’s lead author, pangolin populations in the province have plummeted by 25-40% over the last 25 years.

“It was heartbreaking to return to sites where pangolins once thrived and find them replaced by roads and buildings. We are pushing this species to the edge,” Ahmad said.

Beyond physical displacement, the species remains a primary target for the illegal wildlife trade. Poachers target the pangolin for its scales, made of keratin, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine and claimed to hold special curative powers. There is no scientific evidence for these claims.

Asim Haider, a wildlife ecologist and conservationist with WWF in Pakistan, who wasn’t involved in the study, said some communities in the country also kill pangolins due to the myth that they enter graveyards to eat human remains. He added that any pangolins found in cemeteries are there to look for insects. Some people also consider pangolins to be an agricultural pest, but Haider said the animals are a “natural pest controller.”

“They eat all the termites and ants,” Haider said – around 70 million a year. According to the nonprofit The Nature Conservancy, a pangolin can protect some 16 hectares (41 acres) of forest from termite damage, an area the size of 31 football fields.

Climate change further exacerbates the threats that pangolins already face. Record-breaking heat waves and flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have destroyed pangolin burrows, forcing the animals into human-populated areas where they’re often killed out of fear or misinformation.

In response to these mounting pressures, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Wildlife Department has established four pangolin protection zones, including sites in Margalla Hills and Nizampur national parks. Haider said saving the species is vital for regional biodiversity. “This is the most important species for our ecosystems,” Haider said.

Read the full story by Emma Smith here.

Banner image: An Indian pangolin in the city of Mardan, one of the newly designated protected zones for the species in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Image courtesy of Asim Haider.

For decades, Southeast Asia was the global epicenter of mangrove deforestation, but a recent study reveals a dramatic reversal: Since 2010, the region has transitioned from a net loss to a net gain in mangroves, making it a primary contributor to a global mangrove rebound.

The study, which analyzed 40 years of satellite data, found that Southeast Asia accounted for nearly 60% of global mangrove losses between the 1980s and 2010. The region saw its highest rates of mangrove loss between 1990 and 2005. Since 2010, however, mangrove cover in the region has expanded, according to the study: Between 2010 and 2023, Southeast Asia accounted for roughly 43% of global mangrove gain.

“Southeast Asia was a hotspot for deforestation and degradation in the late 1990s and 2000s,” study co-author Zhen Zhang told Mongabay in a video call. “But after 2010, we see some very hopeful signals. It’s a good story.”

The transition in Southeast Asia is mainly due to shifts in mangrove cover in Indonesia and Myanmar, the study found.

In Indonesia, the expansion of the agricultural industry and the construction of aquaculture ponds had been the major drivers of mangrove deforestation in the country, Zhang said. Yet, the world’s most mangrove-rich nation, stopped seeing steep declines   in its mangrove forest area after 2005.

Meanwhile, Myanmar, historically the most severely deforested major mangrove country, has seen a 10% increase in area covered by mangrove since 2010, according to the study.

“While some mangroves are still being lost, this could make them a rare conservation success story and an important source of optimism for climate action,” study co-author Daniel Friess from Tulane University, U.S., said in a press release.

Mangroves are critical ecosystems for carbon storage and protection against extreme weather such as storms and cyclones.

Zhang said strengthened legal protections, increased public awareness of the importance of mangroves following disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the intrinsic resilience of the trees themselves are likely reasons for the Southeast Asia’s conservation success.

In particular, mangrove trees are good at naturally recolonizing available habitats, such as abandoned aquaculture ponds, the study’s authors write. They highlighted Indonesia’s Mahakam Delta as an example where mangroves are regenerating in areas that were historically deforested for shrimp ponds. “These abandoned ponds actually provide a very suitable place for mangroves to recover,” Zhang said.

Despite the gains, the study said that newly established mangrove forests are not yet functional equivalents to the ancient stands, groups of mangrove trees, they have replaced. Younger trees have underdeveloped root systems, making them more vulnerable to extreme weather, and they require decades to match the carbon storage capacity of mature forests.

“The most immediate and effective way to protect mangroves is to stop deforestation,” Zhang said.

Banner image: Mangroves shown sprouting in Pulau Ubin, Singapore. Image courtesy of Daniel Friess/Tulane University.  

The animal emblem of Western Australia, the numbat, is recovering after decades of conservation efforts, according to the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.

For decades, the numbat or banded anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus) was listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. It has now been moved to the lower threat category of near threatened.

“The ‘downlisting’ of the numbat on the IUCN Red List from Endangered to Near Threatened is what we have been working for over the last 40 years!” Tony Friend, research associate at the Western Australian department of biodiversity, conservation and attractions (DBCA), told Mongabay via email. “Consequently, I feel very elated that the more secure status we’ve been able to achieve with the numbat has been recognised by IUCN.”

The striped, ant-and-termite-eating marsupial with reddish-brown fur was once on the verge of extinction. By the late 1970s, around just 300 individuals remained. Their decline was primarily driven by the introduction of predators, such as the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and domestic cats (Felis catus), alongside threats including habitat destruction and changes in the intensity and frequency of fires.

In 2026, numbat numbers have grown to about 2,000-3,000 individuals thanks to more than 40 years of conservation actions taken by wildlife scientists, the DBCA, Perth Zoo, conservation organizations and community volunteers.

Conservationists have, for example, baited and removed foxes and cats from certain areas. This has “caused spectacular increases in numbat numbers in the two original populations, both located in Western Australia: one of these has been shown to number up to 2000 now,” said Friend, who is a member of the IUCN SSC Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group.

Conservation teams also created fenced areas to keep non-native predators out and established new populations using translocated wild and zoo-bred numbats.

The additional populations have now persisted for at least 10 years, with the oldest established more than 30 years ago, Friend said, “The new populations vary in size, between 20-30 up to 150-200 and are spread across southern Australia, with three in Western Australia, one in South Australia and one in New South Wales.”

Friend added that for the species’ security, it’s important that both overall numbers and the geographic spread of the populations increase. This will help protect the species from pressures such as drought, disease or an increase in predation, he said.

Despite the numbat’s promising recovery, Friend urged caution. Its overall numbers, at around 3,000 “are still very low for an entire species,” he said, “[T]his success has only been achieved by a huge sustained effort in controlling introduced predators (fox and feral cat), the effort must continue or the numbat will quickly fall back to low levels or into extinction.”

Banner image: A numbat in Western Australia. Image by © Kym Nicolson via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0).

The survival of a unique frog species that lives in the coastal sand dunes of South Africa and Namibia is under threat from diamond mining, the proposed Boegoebaai Green Hydrogen Project and climate change.

The desert rain frog (Breviceps macrops) has been moved to a higher threat category, from near threatened to vulnerable, on the IUCN’s Red List.

The change in the frog’s conservation status is based on assessments carried out by scientists from various Southern African universities and organizations.

“[The species] has already experienced loss of its habitat from strip mining and these projected impacts don’t bode well for the species and the other unique biodiversity that occurs only in these coastal dune systems,” Jeanne Tarrant, executive director of Anura Africa, which supports amphibian conservation, and regional co-chair of the IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group for Southern Africa, told Mongabay via email.

The desert rain frog grows to just 4 to 6 centimeters (1.6 to 2.4 inches) in length. It’s range is also very small, limited to the white coastal sand dunes of northern South Africa and southern Namibia within 10 to 12 kilometers (6 to 7 miles) of the coast. It survives without a permanent source of freshwater by absorbing moisture from coastal fog and spends most of its life buried beneath moist sand, emerging when conditions are just right.

Scientists identified six distinct habitat locations of the frog within the Succulent Karoo biome, a recognized hotspot for biodiversity, all threatened with mining, energy and infrastructure development.

“The proposed green hydrogen development and its associated infrastructure are most worrying as these will directly impact the desert rain frog’s habitat – it spends most of its life burrowed underground,” Tarrant said.

Opencast diamond mining, which extracts minerals from an open pit in the ground, in the South African part of the frog’s range has already reduced large areas of suitable habitat by removing sand dunes and vegetation that the frogs depend on. Mining companies replace the sand after extraction, but research suggests the vegetation doesn’t naturally recover well enough for the frogs to recolonize the areas.

In the future, climate change and rising temperatures will likely put more pressure on the species by drying out their habitat, Tarrant said.

The IUCN assessors project that over the next 20 years, up to one-third of the frog’s habitat in South Africa and about two-thirds of its habitat in Namibia could be compromised, resulting in a projected population decline of around 20% over the next decade.

Currently, there are no coordinated conservation efforts in place.

“There really needs to be a consolidated effort now, based on this change in status to more threatened, to drive conservation and research action for this species,” Tarrant said.

Researchers have initiated a Green Status assessment of the frog for the IUCN, which evaluates a species’ recovery potential and identifies priority research and conservation actions, she added.

Banner image: The desert rain frog. Image courtesy of Bob Steele via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

While Nepal’s efforts to revive its rhinoceros population is hailed as a conservation success, habitat degradation is forcing translocated rhinos to wander far beyond their designated release zones, according to a new study, reports contributor Bibek Bhandari for Mongabay.

The population of the vulnerable greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) in Nepal grew by 16.6% between 2015 and 2021, reaching a total of 752 individuals. To expand the range of rhinos, authorities also established new rhino populations in Bardiya and Shuklaphanta national parks. Bardiya, which had no surviving rhinos until the early 1980s, now has about 38 rhinos, according to the last census in 2021.

To see how the reintroduced rhinos use habitat in Bardiya, researchers attached GPS collars on five rhinos moved from Chitwan National Park to Bardiya in 2016-17. Their tracking showed that the rhinos maintain unusually large home ranges in the park’s Babai Valley. The study authors said that the behavior is likely due to fragmented riverine forests, limited grassland and seasonal water scarcity.

Study co-author Babu Ram Lamichhane, currently associated with the nonprofit Wild Care Nepal, said that massive floods in 2015 and 2017 inundated the Babai Valley, reducing the grassland patches and wallowing sites rhinos require for thermoregulation and skin maintenance.

Lamichhane said during the dry season, a lack of water in the Babai River forces rhinos to travel long distances, sometimes even crossing into India.

“The rhino habitat is not at an optimal level in Babai Valley,” Lamichhane said.

As rhinos seek resources outside the core park area, they are increasingly being sighted in community forests and farmlands, where locals said the animals are involved in sporadic incidents of human-wildlife conflict and destruction of crops.

Manju Mahatara, a wildlife guide with eight years of experience, said that rhinos were once easy to spot in the park’s core.

“Before, we used to spot six to seven rhinos within the core park area, but these days we hardly sight one,” she said. “Many rhinos were released in the Babai Valley, but it’s difficult to spot them these days.”

With new evidence of habitat degradation in Babai, Lamichanne recommended that authorities prioritize other areas such as the Karnali floodplain, adjacent to Baridya National Park, that may be a better alternative for establishing a viable population of more than 50 rhinos.

Rhino researcher Balram Awasthi said that while rhino reintroduction through relocation can be successful, continued habitat restoration and management will be critical to support a truly self-sustaining rhino population.

“Conservation success should not be measured only by population numbers, but also by the health and resilience of the habitats that support them,” Awasthi said.

Read the full story by Bibek Bhandari here.

Banner image: A greater one-horned rhino in Chitwan, Nepal. Image by Aditya Pal via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

When roads cut through forests, they can become a death trap for wildlife. Canopy bridges, structures that connect trees on either side of roads, are considered a crucial lifeline for tree-dwelling animals, but few researchers have examined their long-term effectiveness.

A recently published study did just that, by analyzing three years of videos from camera traps installed on bridges in Costa Rica. Researchers found that wildlife use of the bridges increased steadily with time, and animals showed preferences for certain bridge designs and length.

Previously, most arboreal bridges had only been monitored for about a year at most, according to study lead author Marion Fischer, a Ph.D. student with the University of French Guiana. Without long-term data, it’s hard to know how useful bridges really are or what type works best, she told Mongabay in a video call.

So, Fischer worked with the Costa Rican NGO Osa Conservation to analyze thousands of videos recorded by camera traps that the organization installed on either side of 17 bridges across the Osa Peninsula, a biodiversity hotspot.

The team documented 2,231 animal crossings from December 2020 to June 2023. These included at least 13 species of arboreal mammals, including two species that are highly vulnerable to collisions with cars: The common opossum (Didelphis marsupialis) and the Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine (Coendou mexicanus).

White faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri oerstedii) frequented the bridges as well. However, larger-bodied howler (Alouatta spp.) and spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) were not documented using them. Lizards, small rodents and one snake were also seen in the camera traps. Birds used the bridges for perching.

The team looked at five different bridge designs, three made of rope and two plastic mesh ones, and found wildlife preferred the rope bridges.

The animals also seemed to prefer longer bridges over short ones, likely because many animals, including monkeys, could simply jump across the space connected by a short bridge, Fischer told Mongabay.

The study found that bridge use steadily increased over the three-year study period. Some of the bridges have been in place for a total of six years now, and just last year Fisher saw the first spider monkey using one of them.

“We always saw them [spider monkeys] around the bridges, we had some videos of them touching the ropes and interacting with the bridge, but never crossing,” she said. “And now, finally, after some time they use them. So, I think they needed time to trust the new structure.”

Costa Rica is advancing new legislation that will require wildlife crossings in ecologically sensitive areas. Fischer said it’s important that such wildlife infrastructure also come with long-term monitoring, “because then you can really see the long-term impact on the connectivity.”

Banner image: Screenshot of a capuchin monkey using an arboreal bridge in the Osa Peninsula. Image courtesy of Marion Fischer.