In 2024, scientists found a tiny new-to-science translucent microsnail in a cave of Banan Hill, a limestone hill that is part of the karst ecosystem of Battambang province in western Cambodia.

The snail is less than 2 millimeters (0.1 inches) wide and long including its shell, about the size of a pinhead.

The scientists behind its discovery named it Clostophis udayaditinus, its species name referring to the 11^th-century Angkor-era King Udayadityavarman II. The king ordered the building of Banan temple, which became the name of the only hill where the species is currently known.

The team collected 28 individuals at the site by hand between July and August 2024.

The snails have a colorless body except for dark eye spots at the tip of their upper tentacles. The shell is described as “pale whiteish” to which the snails add soil and dirt.

“The snails tend to decorate their shells with soil and dirt in star-shaped patterns,” the authors wrote in the description of the species published in February 2025. “This encrustation presumably serves as a humidity reservoir or camouflage.”

C. udayaditinus was discovered during a three-year biodiversity research mission in northern Cambodia’s karst hills, an underexplored limestone landscape teeming with endemic life. The surveys uncovered another 10 species new to science, including another microsnail, a pit viper and several gecko species.

“Each one of these isolated karst areas act as their own little laboratory,” Lee Grismer, a biology professor at La Sierra University, U.S., said in a statement. “The results are species that exist nowhere else — not just nowhere else in the world, or that country — but in no other cave.”

The conservation status of C. udayaditinus has not yet been determined, but the authors warn that “habitat modification caused by development for tourism around the temple is a potentially significant threat to the species.” However, Banan Hill, where it is currently known to live, is protected thanks to its association with the temple, they add.

Banner image: New-to-science microsnail, Clostophis udayaditinus. All images courtesy of Somsak Panha, the lead author of the species description.

In 2025, birders and scientists found five “lost” bird species that had gone undocumented for a decade or more. As Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman reports, these findings have helped reduce the total number on the global “Lost Birds List” from 163 in 2022 to 120 today.

To be classified as “lost,” a species must not have been recorded through photographs or audio or documented genetically in the wild for at least 10 years, as defined by a 2022 study. The list is maintained by the Search for Lost Birds project, a partnership between the NGOs American Bird Conservancy, Re:wild and BirdLife International. Project director John Mittermeier describes the list as an “early warning system” to identify at-risk species before they vanish forever.

The five birds confirmed alive through photographs in 2025 are all endemic to islands in Southeast Asia and Oceania. These include the Bismarck kingfisher (Ceyx websteri) found in Papua New Guinea after 13 years, Biak myzomela (Myzomela rubrobrunnea) documented in Indonesian Papua for the first time in 20 years, Broad-billed fairywren (Chenorhamphus grayi) recorded in Indonesian Papua after 11 years, and the Sulu cuckooshrike (Coracina guillemardi) and rufous-breasted blue flycatcher (Cyornis camarinensis) found in the Philippines after 18 and 17 years, respectively.

While these “rediscoveries” spark hope, six new species will join the Lost Birds list in 2026, including the Mindoro bleeding-heart (Gallicolumba platenae) and Mindoro imperial pigeon (Ducula mindorensis). And some birds on the list are never seen or heard again, reflecting the extinction crisis. In 2025, the slender-billed curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) was officially declared extinct.

Mittermeier noted that the high concentration of lost birds on islands is concerning, as these species often have nowhere else to go when faced with habitat loss or invasive species. However, he remains optimistic about the role of the global birding community. By scouring platforms like eBird, iNaturalist and Xeno-Canto, citizen scientists have helped shorten the list by 25% in just five years.

“I’m really hopeful that we can get this list down to zero,” Mittermeier said. “I think that’s feasible … given the power and the interest of this global community.”

Read the full story by Spoorthy Raman here.

Banner image: The vulnerable Rufous-breasted blue flycatcher (Cyornis camarinensis) was photographed in the Philippines in March 2025. It was last documented in 2008. Image by kenny_well via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights is expected to soon issue an advisory opinion on states’ obligations toward internally displaced persons affected by climate change.

“Internally displaced people exist on every inhabited continent,” Erica Bower, a researcher on climate displacement with Human Rights Watch, said in a phone interview with Mongabay. “The advisory opinion could make it very clear that states have obligations to provide durable solutions for people displaced by disasters.”

In Africa, according to the Platform on Disaster Displacement data, in 2024 millions of people were displaced from roughly 20 African countries as a result of climate-related disasters including floods and coastal erosion.

Senegal offers a prime example. Roughly a decade ago, a community along the Langue de Barbarie, in Saint-Louis, was forced to move following severe coastal erosion.

“The sea destroyed our homes. There was no space left for us to live,” Khady Gueye, a former resident, told Mongabay in a phone call. “So, we left, and they settled us on a football field. We stayed there for nine months before moving here to Khar Yalla.”

She has lived in Khar Yalla for 10 years, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the land where she, her mother and her grandmother were born. She said Khar Yalla has no infrastructure for a long-term community.

“There is nothing here. No health center, no school, no market, no sanitation, nothing,” she said. “We are 13 people living in a house with only two rooms, without electricity … and we are not allowed to expand it to make it livable. This is not normal. We cannot continue living like this. We are Senegalese, we are citizens!” she added.

Gueye had to stop her studies because it is too difficult to get to school. Similarly, many fishers and fish sellers have had to reduce or stop their activities due to transportation costs since being displaced.

Human Rights Watch has published several reports on the situation in Khar Yalla. Following an August 2025 report, roughly a dozen out of 68 households received electricity.

But the community is still waiting for a long-term solution, Bower told Mongabay. She said the upcoming advisory opinion from the African Court is an important step toward addressing a growing problem across the continent.

“With this advisory opinion, the African Court has a major opportunity to become a global leader and clearly define what obligations states have toward populations like those in Khar Yalla,” she added, noting that advisory opinions are authoritative interpretations, not binding court rulings.

Banner image:  Khar Yalla site in Senegal, which is poorly sheltering flood survivors according to Human Right Watch. Image by Momar Niang for Mongabay. 

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) — Wildlife is thriving again four decades after the nuclear disaster at Ukraine’s Chernobyl power plant in what became the exclusion zone created by the forced mass evacuations of the population. Wolves, bears and lynx have rebounded in the radioactive landscape, along with a rare breed of horses native to Mongolia. Scientists say it shows nature’s ability to recover when human activity is removed. Hidden cameras have revealed the animal population adapting by using abandoned buildings for shelter. Chernobyl remains too dangerous for people but has become an unexpected refuge — and research site — for resilient ecosystems shaped by disaster and war.

By Derek Gatopoulos and Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press 

Banner image: Wild Przewalski horses graze in a forest inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the city. Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press

In Brazil’s eastern Amazon, a bright red flower found nowhere else on Earth is threatened with extinction from expanding iron ore mining, scientists warn.

The flowering plant, Ipomoea cavalcantei, known locally as flor-de-Carajás, only grows in cangas, an island-like ecosystem of metal-rich rocky soils and shallow vegetation in the middle of dense rainforest. There are only five patches of this unique habitat in the world, all of them in Brazil.

“You’re walking through a forest, and suddenly you step into this environment where the ground is basically iron, and you’re quite literally stepping on iron,” Rita Portela, a biologist who studies the biodiversity of the Carajás region of southern Pará state, told Mongabay by phone. “It’s a very beautiful flower … it really stands out, because there aren’t many flowers with such an intense color in the cangas.”

The canga soils where the plant grows sit atop some of the highest-grade iron ore deposits in the world. The ore extracted here is so rich in iron that it’s blended with lower-grade ore from other parts of Brazil to meet industrial standards.

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Two of the five patches are protected as part of Carajás National Forest. Another two are mining sites for Brazilian mining giant Vale. In September 2025, Vale obtained the license to begin mining on the fifth patch of canga. The company, the world’s biggest iron ore producer, plans to begin operations in the second half of 2026, which means three of the world’s five cangas will be mining sites.

The first mine has already been in operation for 40 years, before any biodiversity surveys could be carried out.

Portela said an estimated 25% of the cangas have been destroyed by mining so far, not including the upcoming third location.

The flor-de-Carajás has become a symbol of the Carajás region for its vivid red color. Another 37 plants are also endemic to the habitat, four of which — including flor-de-Carajás — are classified as endangered by the National Center for Flora Conservation.

The other three endangered species are Paspalum carajasense, a grassy plant with small white or purple flowers at its tip; Carajasia cangae; and Parapiqueria cavalcantei.

Most other canga plants are small and delicate, relying on wind pollination. But flor-de-Carajás is largely pollinated by bees and hummingbirds, an interaction still being studied by researchers.

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Vale has funded conservation research in the region as a part of its legal obligations, and also carefully removes any endemic vegetation from the mining site. The company also funds restoration research, but Portela said the loss of natural range is largely irreversible.

“It’s a species that only occurs in this environment, there is no other natural environment where it grows,” she said. “If they mined all five areas, the species would become extinct in the wild.”

Banner image: Flor-de-Carajás in Pará state, Brazil. All images courtesy of Flávia Zagury.

Brazil has opened its first rehabilitation center for golden-headed lion tamarins, an endangered monkey species threatened by urban expansion and the loss of agroforestry farms to monocrop plantations.

The tamarins, Leontopithecus chrysomelas, have been filmed in and around Ilhéus, a coastal city in Bahia state, eating fruit inside a supermarket or running across high-voltage electricity lines; many have been electrocuted this way. Road strikes have also injured or killed several individuals, as have attacks by domestic dogs.

Until now, there wasn’t any specialized place to take the monkeys and prepare them for reintegration into the wild, according to Leonardo Oliveira, a biologist who has studied the species for more than 20 years.

“Often, for the general public seeing these monkeys in their backyard or at the market gives them the false impression that everything is fine: ‘Wow, there are so many of them, they’re even coming into the city.’ No. The city is the one moving into their space,” Oliveira, who will work with the new rehabilitation center, told Mongabay by phone.

Golden-headed lion tamarins are found only in Brazil. From 1992 to 2024, their range shrank by 42%, from an estimated 22,500 square kilometers (8,700 square miles) to 13,000 km2 (5,000 mi2). This resulted in a nearly 60% population decline, from an estimated 50,000 individuals 30 years ago, to fewer than 24,401 individuals today, according to a 2024 population reassessment.

A large part of the tamarins’ existing range is cacao farms, where the crop is grown underneath a canopy of native trees. Cacao is also one of their favorite fruits. In recent years, however, some agroforestry cacao farms have been lost to soy monocultures and livestock pasture, according to the Tamarin Trust, a U.K.-based charity funding the new rehab center.

In 2024, the city of Ilhéus adopted the species as its official mascot and dedicated a day to it, March 26, which coincides with Brazil’s national cacao day, to highlight the symbiosis between the two.

The rehab center was inaugurated at the State University of Santa Cruz on March 26, the second anniversary of the species’ local day. It has the capacity to accommodate up to three groups of tamarins, with plans to expand to hold up to eight groups at once.

According to Oliveira, the center will receive injured and displaced tamarins for veterinary care and rehabilitation, with the goal of relocating them away from urban centers, where they face fewer threats.

Banner image: A golden-headed lion tamarin. Image courtesy of Leonardo Oliveira.