Scientists have described a new species of mouse opossum discovered in 2018 in the cloud forests of the Peruvian Andes, 2,664 meters (8,740 feet) above sea level. The find was reported by Mongabay Latam staff writer Yvette Sierra Praeli.

The new marsupial is named Marmosa chachapoya after the ancient Chachapoya people who once lived in the region. Its body is just 10 centimeters (4 inches) long with a tail longer than its body at 15 cm (6 in). It also has a Zorro mask-like dark mark around its eyes.

“I realized immediately that this was something unusual,” biologist Silvia Pavan, the lead author of the new species description, said in a statement.

The the first and only known specimen of the species was found in the Abiseo River National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its rare biodiversity and pre-Columbian archaeological sites.

Compared with other animals in the same genus, M. Chachapoya looks physically different and it was found at a much higher altitude than is common for other mouse opossum species in its genus.

“That was our first sign that what we had captured was probably another species,” co-author Pamela Sanchez-Vendizú, a mammologist at Peru’s National University of San Marcos, told Praeli.

Genetic sequencing later showed the animal was nearly 8% genetically different from its closest relative in the Marmosa genus.

Researchers noted that Abiseo River National Park, along with other remote regions of the Andes, are still likely full of undiscovered species. The region’s canyons, dense vegetation and steep slopes make exploration physically challenging. But that same difficult terrain offers a wide variety of habitats, creating a biodiversity hotspot.

Pavan had initially set out with a team of researchers to find another species, an endemic squirrel last seen in the 1990s. They did not catch any individuals of the rare squirrel but stumbled upon the marsupial as well as several other new-to-science species during the 2018 expedition, including a semiaquatic rodent that is yet to be formally described by the team.

“It is a highly endemic area for small mammal diversity,” Pavan told Praeli. “It is an area that has been scarcely studied scientifically. So, there are likely other species there that still need to be described.”

The original story by Yvette Sierra Praeli, written in Spanish, can be read here.

Banner image: The new-to-science Marmosa chachapoya species. Photo courtesy of Silvia Pavan.

A coalition formed to align the international banking sector’s investments with global climate goals has disbanded nearly four years after it was launched.

Set up in 2021, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) was a U.N.-sponsored initiative to shift bank financing away from fossil fuels — the biggest source of climate changing greenhouse gases — and toward net-zero emissions by 2050. Members were required to set five-year targets and provide detailed reports on how they planned to meet their goals.

“The NZBA had laid out a timeline for members to develop detailed transition plans meaning the rubber was starting to meet the road and banks globally, not just in the US, were getting cold feet,” Allison Fajans-Turner, who works in climate and energy finance with the Rainforest Action Network, told Mongabay by email.

However, the alliance began hemorrhaging participants following the U.S. election of Donald Trump and his anti-environment rhetoric. All the major U.S. and Canadian banks withdrew from the group, soon followed by many European and Japanese financial institutions.

According to a 2025 report, bank financing for fossil fuels fell in 2022 and 2023 but grew more than 20% in 2024. As of 2024, the world’s 65 largest banks, many which were once part of the NZBA, had invested roughly $7.9 trillion in fossil fuels since 2016, when the Paris Agreement to limit climate change went into effect.

“Trump’s election was absolutely a catalyst, but the wheels had been set in motion before his election,” Truzaar Dordi, a climate finance researcher at the University of York, U.K., told Mongabay by email.

“The alliance’s real purpose was creating the illusion of action to stall and delay regulation,” Truzaar said, adding that banks routinely pointed to participation in the NZBA when regulators or shareholders pressed them on climate. Now that the NZBA has disbanded, “paradoxically, this might accelerate momentum for regulation as voluntary alternatives are so definitively discredited,” he said.

The collapse of the NZBA could also push fossil fuel-rich countries, including many in Africa, to invest further in fossil fuel infrastructure, “which risks becoming a stranded asset as global demand declines. This would leave African nations with significant debt and environmental damage, while missing the critical opportunity to leapfrog to renewables,” Truzaar said.

The collapse of the NZBA, experts say, presents an opportunity to replace a failed voluntary system with a stronger, mandatory framework for regulating financial investments in industries most responsible for driving the climate crisis.

“NZBA’s legacy is that voluntary approaches don’t work. Banks have proven they won’t sacrifice profitable fossil fuel relationships no matter what they promise publicly,” Truzaar said.

Mongabay reached out to the International Banking Federation, which represents more than 18,000 banks internationally, and the U.S.-based Bank Policy Institute, but did not receive a response by deadline.

Banner image: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline system required bank investments. Image by Luca Galuzzi via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.5)

The U.S. has blocked a global fee on shipping emissions as an international maritime meeting ended Friday without adopting new regulations. The world’s largest maritime nations had been discussing ways to move the shipping industry away from fossil fuels. On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged countries to vote against the regulations. The International Maritime Organization adjourned its meeting Friday. The proposed regulations would have set a marine fuel standard and imposed fees for emissions above allowable limits. Shipping emissions have grown to about 3% of the global total, prompting calls for action.

By: Sibi Arasu and Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press

Banner image:  Tokyo Tower is visible amid tall buildings as a container ship leaves a cargo terminal in Tokyo, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File)

There are only about 350 mature leopards left in West Africa, according to the latest regional assessment by the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.

Leopards (Panthera pardus) in West Africa are thought to be genetically isolated from those in Central Africa, with little or no interbreeding between populations. They’re found in 11 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Once widespread across West Africa, the leopard population there has declined by 50% over the past two decades, leading to their moving to a higher threat category of endangered on the IUCN Red List.

“In Africa, the leopard is not doing too badly, but in West Africa it’s a different story,” said Robin Horion, a field technician with U.S.-based NGO Panthera who was part of the team assessing the West African leopard’s conservation status for the IUCN Red List. “West Africa has far less funding, fewer researchers, and much less of a conservation culture compared to East and Southern Africa. There is also much less tourism. All of this means that species are disappearing in almost complete silence.”

Horion and other researchers from Panthera spent five years surveying leopards in West Africa’s national parks. Following their report, the IUCN reclassified the feline from vulnerable to endangered on the Red List on Oct. 9.

The IUCN assessment notes that most leopards in West Africa live in protected areas within increasingly fragmented landscapes that are under pressure from expanding agriculture, infrastructure development and other human activities. Loss of large mammals to hunting is also likely driving the decline of leopards. 

“The fact that the leopard population is shrinking shows that ecosystems are being heavily affected by human activities,” Horion said. “As a carnivore, it is at the top of the food chain, so if it disappears, it probably means its prey has also disappeared. That, and poaching.”

According to Horion, West Africa’s leopards are victims of poaching for two reasons. First, people kill them to reduce competition, since leopards hunt the same bushmeat as they do. Leopards are also hunted for their skin and other body parts because of beliefs about their purported spiritual and medicinal powers, making them valuable as grigris (talismans) in Ghana and Senegal, he added.

Although the West African leopard’s endangered status is bad news, Horion said he prefers to remain optimistic.

“Now that we’ve raised the alarm, we hope that governments will become aware of the situation. We can implement concrete solutions to stop the disappearance of the leopard,” he said.

“We need a regional strategy, to bring together the countries concerned so that we can strengthen park patrols and improve conservation,” Horion added. “Awareness campaigns are also needed to stop poaching. But above all, on the cultural side, if we want this to work, we need to find alternative grigris.”

Banner image: A young female leopard photographed at night in Niokolo Koba National Park, Senegal. Panthera/Senegal DPN.

The green turtle, found across the world’s oceans, is recovering after decades of decline, according to the latest IUCN Red List assessment. The species has been reclassified from endangered to least concern.

“I am delighted,” Brendan Godley, a turtle expert from the University of Exeter, U.K., told Mongabay. “It underlines that marine conservation can work, there is hope, and we should rightly celebrate it, sharing some ocean optimism.”

Historically, humans hunted green turtles (Chelonia mydas) for their meat and eggs, decimating their populations. Even after hunting declined, the species continued to suffer: from entanglement in fishing nets, degradation of nesting beaches and ocean habitats, pollution, diseases, and climate change.

However, the global population has increased by roughly 28% since the 1970s, following decades of conservation efforts. This is largely thanks to legal protections against international trade and direct hunting, and conservation measures including those that protect nesting beaches and the use of turtle excluder devices to keep them from getting entangled in fishing gear.

The latest assessment, however, cautions that while populations have increased as a whole worldwide, regional assessments show that several subpopulations are still threatened or declining. For example, subpopulations in the North Indian Ocean are classified as vulnerable, while those in Central South Pacific are listed as endangered. Subpopulations in the North Atlantic are listed as least concern, but are showing signs of decline.

“In the North Atlantic, although nesting numbers are still higher than when scientific monitoring and active conservation began, the overall decline is principally because the largest breeding site in Costa Rica, after decades of increase, has exhibited lowered nesting numbers in recent years — a trend that is worthy of further investigation,” Godley said.

He added that an overall listing of least concern doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about green turtles, but that we can currently be less concerned for this species than for others at greater risk of extinction in the near future.

“Many sea turtle conservation scientists have suggested that [green turtles] might best be considered as part of a group of ‘Conservation Dependent’ species in that, if they were not subject to any conservation, they might quickly decline,” Godley said. “This is, in part, evidenced by the fact that they have not increased uniformly across the global ocean.”

The IUCN Red List assessment, too, emphasizes the need for continued conservation support.

“Sea turtles cannot survive without healthy oceans and coasts,” Roderic Mast, co-chair of the IUCN’s Marine Turtle Specialist Group, said in a statement. “Sustained conservation efforts are key to assuring that this recovery lasts.”

For now, the green turtle’s status change is seen as a major conservation victory. “To undertake a Red List Assessment of such a globally distributed species is an immense and challenging job,” Godley said. “We should applaud the teams from across the globe for their commitment to turtles and marine conservation.”

Banner image of a green turtle by Bernard DUPONT via Wikimedia Commons (CCBY-SA2.0).

Scientists recently discovered vast freshwater reservoirs beneath the Atlantic seafloor, stretching off the U.S. East Coast from the states of New Jersey to Maine.

The find was “a beautiful scientific accident,” Brandon Dugan, a professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines, U.S., and co-chief scientist on the expedition, told Mongabay in a video call.

Dugan said his curiosity about freshwater beneath the ocean floor was piqued in the 1990s while doing a literature review for his Ph.D. research. “I found these interesting papers that said, ‘Hey, when we’re out looking for oil and gas, we didn’t find oil and gas, but we found water where water shouldn’t be.’”

Around the same time, other researchers found freshwater at unexpected depths on the East Coast island of Nantucket. So, Dugan and colleagues used computer models to simulate how far freshwater might extend beneath the ocean floor.

Earlier this year, Dugan joined more than 40 researchers from a dozen countries for a two-and-a-half-month expedition off the U.S. East Coast. Drilling at three distances from the shore, they found freshwater at each site. Seawater has a salinity close to 35 parts per thousand (ppt), or 35 grams per liter of water, but freshwater at the site nearest the shore at 30 kilometers (20 miles) had salinity of less than 1 ppt. Salinity increased with distance from the shore but remained much lower than that of seawater.

The team is analyzing the chemistry of the water samples to determine their origin and age, but preliminary results suggest it’s the result of a glacier from some 20,000 years ago.

At that time, massive glaciers extended from the mainland to islands including Nantucket, Dugan said. The enormous weight of the ice could have forced freshwater into the ground and then pushed it offshore beneath the ocean, where it’s been trapped ever since, he added.

However, researchers have also found freshwater off the coasts of South Africa and Florida where there’s not been relatively recent glacial activity. In such places, the local landscape and soil type likely allow freshwater to more easily move from land to seabed, Dugan said.

“There’s anecdotal evidence of fresh and groundwater existing off the coast of every continent. Some are very big, like New England. Some are small, like Florida,” he added.

However, tapping that water would be expensive and logistically challenging, Dugan said, adding the capability to do that is at least a decade away.

Dugan also cautioned that offshore freshwater is a finite resource that won’t recharge like groundwater, and that drawing it poses concerns for sensitive seafloor ecosystems and the potential to trigger small earthquakes if water is pumped out too quickly.

The question, he said, is “how can I have this backup supply of water in a time of need? Not, how do I expand in a time when water stresses are already growing?”

Banner image: Residual fluid gushes from the core drilling rig. Image by AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.