In 2021, the New England Aquarium in the U.S. state of Massachusetts began surgically implanting acoustic tags in rescued loggerhead sea turtles before returning them to the ocean. Four years on, these tags are providing a rare peek into where rehabilitated turtles travel.

“Surgically implanted acoustic transmitters have been used for many years in many other species, especially fish. But to our knowledge, we are the first to surgically implant them in turtles,” Dr. Charles Innis, a veterinarian and senior scientist at the New England Aquarium, told Mongabay by email.

The Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital has been rescuing injured sea turtles that wash ashore in New England for more than 30 years.

Some sea turtles get injured in boats collisions or entanglements with fishing gear, Innis said. Many individuals also suffer from “cold stunning, a hypothermia-like condition that causes turtles to become very weak,” he added, which results in them not being able to swim and washing up on the beach. “Many are already dead when they are found. The ones that are still alive often have pneumonia or other serious infections,” Innis said.

Conservationists have been rescuing and releasing sea turtles for decades. Yet “there remain outstanding questions on the outcomes of rehabilitated turtles, including immediate and long-term post-release survivorship and integration into wild populations,” Kara Dodge, research scientist at the New England Aquarium, told Mongabay by email. “To objectively evaluate the contribution of rehabilitation programs, we require post-release monitoring data to answer these questions.”

Dodge said loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) can live up to 80 years. While external tags fall off or get damaged more easily, capturing only a few years of data, surgically implanted acoustic transmitters “can provide data for up to a decade,” Dodge added.

After receiving a federal permit in 2021, the researchers implanted acoustic transmitters inside 14 rehabilitated loggerheads at the Sea Turtle Hospital.

The transmitters give off unique ultrasonic pings in water. “The turtles need to swim within range of a receiver to be detected, and then the receiver owner must be willing to share that detection data,” Innis told Mongabay. “But we are involved with a large network of collaborators that collectively have many receivers, so we are aware of thousands of detections of our turtles so far.”

The team has received nearly 6,000 turtle detections along the U.S. East Coast, from Massachusetts to Florida, most of them in continental shelf waters.

The data show that all the turtles have survived beyond the first year since their release. Some are even returning to New England waters in the summer and fall. This “was surprising and tells us this area may be more important for loggerheads than we previously thought,” Dodge said.

The team expects to continue receiving data from most tags through 2025, and a few through 2032.

Banner image of a loggerhead sea turtle released in 2021, courtesy of Vanessa Kahn/New England Aquarium.

Extreme heat is putting people in Australia at serious risk of heart problems and premature deaths, according to new research. As the climate warms, rising temperatures could more than double Australia’s burden of cardiovascular diseases by 2050, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, and people take measures to adapt to the heat, researchers found.

Cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes are a leading cause of death globally, including in Australia. Several factors including age, chronic conditions like diabetes, and exposure to air pollution increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Exposure to extreme heat can be an additional risk factor, said study co-author Peng Bi, professor of public health and environmental medicine at the University of Adelaide, Australia. “When you have very hot environment, our hearts have to work harder to pump more blood to [cool] the body,” Bi told Mongabay in a video call.

Bi and his colleagues wanted to know how much hot weather is directly responsible for heart-related problems and premature deaths in Australia. So they used statistical modeling to quantify the relationship between temperature changes from 2003-2018 and the country’s cardiovascular disease burden during that 15-year period. They measured cardiovascular burden using “disability-adjusted life years,” or DALYs , which represents the total years of healthy life lost to illness and premature death due to heart problems.

The study found that 7.3% of the annual cardiovascular burden in Australia was directly attributable to high temperatures — i.e., hot weather contributed to 49,483 healthy years of life lost due to heart problems in Australia annually.

The researchers also looked at Australia’s cardiovascular disease burden under two future climate change scenarios: one in which greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040 then decline, and one where emissions continue to rise. The models also included scenarios of population growth and aging, as well as human adaptation to heat.

The analysis showed that under both warming scenarios, the number of healthy years lost to heart diseases would more than double by 2050. If emissions keep rising, the number of healthy years lost would reach 95,353 in 2030 and 161,095 in 2050. If emissions stabilize, the increase is less drastic, at 90,779 by 2030 and 139,829 by 2050. When the models consider people adapting to hotter weather, the numbers are lower still.

“Good adaptation means that the most vulnerable populations are looked after well,” Bi said. Such adaptations include encouraging the elderly and those with chronic illnesses to stay indoors during extreme heat. People who work outside, including construction, mining and utility workers, can rearrange their shifts, or use cooling vests or hats, he added.

Bi acknowledged the climate models inherently have uncertainties. However, the projections offer “a big picture of what might happen in the next 20-30 years, which is evidence needed by the government, the health service providers for their decision-making,” he said.

Banner image of people on a Sydney beach on a hot summer day. Image by Neerav Bhatt via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

“Bobcats are disease defenders,” Zara McDonald, founder of the U.S.-based conservation nonprofit Felidae Conservation Fund, tells host Mike DiGirolamo on Mongabay’s weekly podcast Newscast in February.

Today, bobcats (Lynx rufus) are North America’s most common small wildcat. But this wasn’t always the case: At the start of the 20th century, the bobcat population was close to zero in North America, DiGirolamo says, but by 2011, there were around 3.5 million bobcats in the U.S. alone.

McDonald calls bobcats “silent public health guardians” that provide an “invaluable ecological service” as they regulate the population of rodents, raccoons and rabbits that are reservoirs for disease through parasites, bacteria or viruses. For example, she says, bobcats help curb Lyme disease by preying on white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus), which are considered the primary animal reservoir of the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that causes Lyme disease, transmitted through tick bites.

“By eating the rodents, they directly reduce the tick population,” McDonald says. “Bobcats are dead-end hosts, so they don’t serve as efficient hosts for certain pathogens.”

While the population of bobcats has grown in the U.S., McDonald says she would consider the population “healthy” but not really to have “rebounded tremendously.”

In the state of California, regulation prohibiting bobcat hunting has helped, but McDonald says she’s concerned about officials considering reinstating hunting in the state.

“There’s so many benefits that bobcats bring to an ecosystem that I think it’s important for people to … understand that,” McDonald says.

She explains that bobcats are “very benign mesocarnivores” that do not attack humans, especially since they are not comfortable around people, even in urban landscapes. “I think you do have this misinformation that circulates around any kind of predator and … bobcats get roped into that,” McDonald says.

At the same time, human expansion into territories that bobcats are present in has impacted the species’ health. While bobcats help curb diseases, they are also seeing an increased risk of diseases from domestic pets like cats.

“So, toxoplasmosis is one that we’re looking closely at,” McDonald says, referring to her organization Felidae Conservation Fund. “Toxoplasmosis is quite interesting and important because it raises dopamine levels and changes behavior of those infected. So, in the case of a bobcat or a mountain lion, it will make them take riskier behaviors. So that means more likely to potentially take a pet or get into trouble in human urban environments.”

The Felidae Conservation Fund has started a pilot study called the “Wild Cat Health Project,” which uses noninvasive methods such as camera traps, fecal surveys and hair surveys to establish baseline health data of wildcats like bobcats.

To learn more, listen to the episode “Bobcats benefit both human and ecological health, but their growing populations are often misunderstood.”

Banner image of a bobcat by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.com

Indigenous entrepreneurs in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand are popularizing traditional tribal foods with urban restaurants, reports Mongabay India’s Kundan Pandey.

One such restaurant is Ajam Emba in Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi. The name means “delicious taste” in Kurukh, the language spoken by the Indigenous Oraon community. Founded by Aruna Tirkey, a member of the Oraon tribe, Ajam Emba serves dishes made from local leafy vegetables and flowers, including the kudrum flower or roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa), beng (Centella asiatica), jirhul (Indigofera cassioides), mahua (Madhuca longifolia), and red rice, Pandey writes.

“The food we crave isn’t available anywhere else,” Gaurav Marandi, a frequent customer at the restaurant, told Mongabay India. His mother, Rut Kachhap, added: “It reminds us of home.”

Another Ranchi-based restaurant, Mandi Eddpa, serves Indigenous food alongside Korean fare, Pandey reports. “Young people come for Korean food, but those above 40 are more interested in local food,” Kapil Vinod Toppo, who runs Mandi Eddpa, told Mongabay India.

Toppo said it was while working for a private company in South Korea that he saw how connected people were with their country’s food culture. “Ramen bowls are popular there, and I realized they are quite similar to maad-bhaat from my region,” he said.

A third restaurant, The Open Field run by Manisha Oraon, serves Indigenous dishes like jirhul phool chokha (mashed potatoes blended with jirhul flowers), a fermented rice drink, and mahua kheer (a sweet dish made from mahua flowers). Oraon’s team has also been documenting Jharkhand’s tribal cuisines and how they’re prepared, Pandey reports.

Both Oraon and Tirkey said sourcing ingredients from local farmers and markets is integral to their work. “The goal is not just to promote local food but also to establish a value chain,” Oraon said.

Tirkey travels to remote villages to expand her network and menu. “Today, we offer 50 seasonal items, including 20 types of green leafy vegetables and 10 varieties of flowers, including mahua,” she said.

According to Soumik Banerjee, an independent researcher who has studied tribal food and health in Jharkhand for 19 years, these restaurants are helping revive Indigenous cuisine.

“People in cities were unaware of these foods, and even rural communities were beginning to forget these healthy and environmentally friendly options. These restaurants are helping bring them back,” he said.

Tirkey added that these restaurants are helping bring a sense of pride around traditional foods. “Earlier, the misconception was that the food habits in my culture were related to a crisis or poverty,” she said. “But now, it is changing, and many families are taking pride in their traditional diets and cooking them at home, too.”

Jharkhand is home to 32 recognized tribes.

This is a summary of “Tribal entrepreneurs bring indigenous cuisine to the urban mainstream” by Kundan Pandey for Mongabay India.

Banner image: A painting at the Azam Emba restaurant in Ranchi depicting tribal life. Image by Kundan Pandey for Mongabay India.

A new report by the NGO Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) reviewed national laws and regulations across 35 countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. It found that since RRI’s 2017 assessment, there’s been little progress in securing women’s rights to forests in Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities.

“We’re looking at a community’s rights of access to use resources from the forest, to exclude third parties from their community forest areas, their right to due process and compensation and their rights of management,” Chloe Ginsburg, the associate director of the tenure-track program at RRI, told Mongabay in a phone call.

The researchers also looked at the rights of women for voting in their communities, their rights to dispute resolution and rights to community-level inheritance.

The report builds on a study that was conducted by RRI in 2017 that looked at the rights of women in 30 countries across the Global South. To update the findings, RRI collaborated with consultants to review 800 different laws, more than a quarter of which were either enacted or reformed since the original study.

Despite new laws, Ginsburg said her group found that most laws follow a “gender-blind” approach that fails to explicitly protect women. They also observed backsliding, where newer laws provide fewer protections for women than previous ones.

Of the 35 countries analyzed in the new report, 34 constitutionally recognize women’s equality and property rights. However, only 11 countries guarantee women the right to inherit property when someone dies without a will.

The report found that just 2% of legal frameworks they analyzed provide adequate protection for voting rights, 5% for community leadership structures and 13% for the right to inheritance, figures that have remained virtually unchanged between 2016 and 2024.

There are just five years left before the 2030 target date for the United Nations sustainable development goals. Yet the report found that not a single goal around gender equality is on track to be met, including the goal to ensure equal rights for land ownership.

Ginsburg said codifying the rights of women does far more than help any individual woman — it strengthens food security and improves livelihoods for entire families and communities.

“Oftentimes, Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local community women are the holders of intergenerational knowledge and transmit this intergenerational knowledge within their communities. And as such, they’re really vital stewards of their community resources,” Ginsburg said. “So, when community women have secure rights to their lands and resources, they’re much better positioned to advance the sustainability and conservation objectives of their communities.”

Banner image: Members of the Talang Mamak community collect forest products in Indonesia. Photo courtesy of Jacob Maentz/Rights and Resources Initiative.

A community conservation team saw not one but two baby Cao-vit gibbons, one of the world’s rarest apes, in the remote forests of northern Vietnam in 2024, the NGO Fauna & Flora announced this month.

The first infant sighting was in February 2024 and the second in November, in two separate troops.

“It is very rare that we observe baby gibbons,” Tho Duc Nguyen, Fauna & Flora Vietnam program project manager, told Mongabay by email.

Nguyen added that female gibbons give birth to only one baby every four years or so. Across the four gibbon troops that the NGO has been continuously monitoring from 2020-2025 in Vietnam, it has only recorded one to three infants per year.

The addition of the baby spotted in November brings the total number of gibbons in that particular group to nine. “This is a sign that the number of gibbons can increase in the troop and expand the living area. Bringing a better future for the Cao Vit gibbon,” Nguyen said.

The Cao-vit or eastern black-crested gibbon (Nomascus nasutus) was believed to be possibly extinct until researchers observed a few groups in Vietnam and China in the 2000s. It’s now considered critically endangered, surviving only in a fragmented forest bordering the two countries.

Nguyen said the latest sighting of the baby was made by a Dinh Ha Duong, a member of the Cao Vit Gibbon Community Conservation Team, which includes local government staff and people from local communities who regularly monitor the gibbons. On Nov. 20, at around 7 a.m., the monitoring team heard a male gibbon start singing and moving. It was while following the troop that Duong “observed a female with an unusual way of moving and after careful observation, he discovered that this female was carrying a baby,” Nguyen said.

Tracking the gibbons is challenging, so the community conservation team uses both direct observations and new technologies such as thermal drones, thermal binoculars and an acoustic recording device called AudioMoth. After each monitoring trip, the team uploads data to the cloud so researchers can receive the information and work with the government in implementing conservation actions.

Many gibbon species are threatened with extinction due to hunting, either for the pet trade or for traditional medicine.

But since the Cao-vit gibbon’s rediscovery in Vietnam in 2002, and the setting up of the community conservation team, Fauna & Flora has not recorded any cases of the species being hunted, Nguyen said. “However, the risk of gibbon hunting is still latent, so maintaining patrols and forest protection is very important.”

The species “is protected at the highest level” of Vietnamese law, he said, adding that violations are punishable by up to 15 years in jail and 2 billion dong (about $78,000) in fines.

Banner image of a Cao-vit gibbon with an infant by Nguyen Duc Tho / Fauna & Flora