Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

Between 2015 and 2024, global authorities seized 370 metric tons of pangolin scales and 193 metric tons of elephant ivory. The latest report from the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted trafficking networks, and that the lull has, surprisingly, endured. Seizures plummeted in 2020 and remain far below pre-pandemic highs, with pangolin seizures down 84% from their 2019 peak and ivory seizures down 94%, reports Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman.

“The report was motivated by a need to present up-to-date findings,” said Olivia Swaak-Goldman, WJC’s executive director.

Supply chains fractured as crime bosses were grounded by travel bans. Intelligence-led enforcement intensified, and countries like Nigeria and China began prosecuting kingpins.

Still, fewer seizures do not necessarily mean less trafficking. Some experts believe traffickers are relying on hidden stockpiles or shifting tactics to avoid detection.

“It is possible that trafficking is down because the populations have crashed,” said Susan Lieberman of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Pangolins, consumed across West and Central Africa and prized in East Asia for their scales, remain the most trafficked mammals. All eight species are threatened with extinction. Ivory, once the commodity of choice, has lost its luster as prices collapsed after China shuttered its domestic market.

Nigeria remains a central export hub, though Angola and Mozambique are rising nodes in the network. Enforcement is improving — Mozambique convicted two major traffickers this year — but critics warn that prosecutions lag behind seizures.

Changing consumer behavior may prove most crucial.

“We need to change the buying,” Lieberman said. “That’s not just hearts and minds; it’s also laws and regulations.”

Swaak-Goldman sees reason for optimism.

“If the current trajectory continues — with strong law enforcement and international cooperation — it may be possible to not only sustain but build on these gains,” she said.

Recovery, though tentative, is within reach.

Read the full story by Spoorthy Raman here.

Banner image: Pangolins are among the most trafficked mammals, poached for their scales. Image by flowcomm via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Nigeria recently proposed a ban on importing solar panels to boost local manufacturing, but some climate and renewable energy experts worry this move may impede the country’s transition to cleaner energy sources.

In announcing the proposed ban on March 26, Nigeria’s Minister of Science and Technology Uche Nnaji said the country has sufficient capacity to meet local solar energy demands through private firms as well as the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, a Nigerian agency that’s been developing solar technologies.

However, Ogunlade Olamide Martins, an associate director at Corporate Accountability and Public Participation for Africa, a Pan-African NGO, told Mongabay in a voice message that Nigeria’s solar panel production capacity currently remains limited.

Martins said that Nigeria’s largest existing solar panel assembly factory, located in Lagos, has a 100-megawatt (MW) capacity, producing fewer than 72,000 panels annually. This is inadequate for the more than 83 million Nigerians lacking energy access, he added. “We can’t put pressure on local facilities that do not have the capacity.”

By the end of 2024, Nigeria’s total installed solar energy capacity was about 385.7 MWp; the country aims to achieve 500 MW capacity by 2025. Solar panel manufacturing factories with higher capacity are under construction.

Felicia Dairo, project manager at the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, told Mongabay in a written statement that the immediate consequence of the proposed ban will be scarcity in solar panels. “And we all know what happens when supply drops: Prices shoot up. The average household or small business looking to go solar will face higher costs, making it an unaffordable luxury for many.”

She added this could push people toward fossil fuel. “When solar becomes too expensive, people and businesses will have no choice but to fall back on fossil fuels, generators, petrol and diesel, just to keep the lights on. That means more pollution, higher energy costs and more strain on already stretched budgets,” she said.

Dairo further cautioned against a hasty ban on solar panel imports, likening it to the May 2023 announcement of fuel subsidy removal that led to a surge in petrol prices. She emphasized the need for proper planning and preparedness to ensure a smooth transition to local production.

Samuel Okeriuwa, a renewable energy expert with more than 30 years of experience in solar panel importation at Steady Energy in Lagos, agreed the proposed solar panel import ban could lead to a price increase, resulting in people reverting “to fuel generators with devastating environmental consequences.”

“The government should call professionals, have a roundtable talk and invest in renewable energy to empower engineers before implementing an importation ban,” he said.

The government is reportedly reviewing the proposal after considerable pushback from various stakeholders, including the NGO Center for Promotion of Private Enterprise.

Banner image: Solar panels being installed on a roof of a house in Lagos, Nigeria. Image by Sunday Alamba/AP Photo.

A new study finds that regional plastic bag bans in the U.S. significantly reduce coastal plastic bag litter compared with areas without such policies.

Single-use plastic bags are one of the most ubiquitous forms of plastic litter. They are rarely recycled and degrade quickly into microplastics that are often ingested by wildlife, leading to injury, stress and death.

To tackle the problem, many municipalities have turned to regulation. As of 2023, roughly one in three U.S. residents lived in an area with some type of plastic bag policy: Ten states  enacted laws to ban plastic bags or charge a fee to discourage their use, another two states enacted such policies in 2024. More than 90% of policies are at the local town level. Meanwhile, more than 100 countries have some type of ban or fee on thin plastic bags.

Despite the widespread adoption of plastic bag policies, there have been limited data on their effectiveness, until now. To fill this gap, study authors Anna Papp, an incoming postdoc at MIT, U.S.,  and Kimberly Oremus, an associate professor at the University of Delaware’s School of Marine Science and Policy, turned to crowd-sourced beach cleanup data collected between 2016 and 2023 by the nonprofit advocacy group Ocean Conservancy. Through its app called Clean Swell, which records trash picked up by volunteers, the NGO has collected long-term, standardized data from more than 226,000 locations globally.

“The volunteers, when they gather their litter, they count and categorize the items and enter that into the app,” Oremus told Mongabay in a video call.

The researchers then cross-referenced that information with municipal-level plastic bag regulations. They compared areas with outright bans on plastic bags versus those with bag fees. They also compared the size of the areas regulated, ranging from whole states to small towns. Areas with no plastic bag legislation served as controls.

The study found that although each area still had an increase in the number of plastic bags collected, areas with plastic bag policies showed a 25-47% decline in plastic bags as a share of total items collected during the study period, relative to those with no bag policies.

“It’s definitely less bad than without the policies,” Papp said.

The researchers found areas with an outright ban on plastic bags or fees for them were more effective than partial bans allowing thicker bags. They also found that large statewide bans were more effective than smaller ones.

Meanwhile, the study didn’t find any effect of the policies on other plastic items like straws and bottles, Oremus said, meaning the decline in plastic bags specifically was likely due to the bag policy and not another factor.

“This study is further proof that single-use plastic bans are effective,” Melissa Valliant, communications director with Beyond Plastics not part of the study, told Mongabay in an email.

Banner image: of a dolphin with a plastic bag by Jedimentat44 via Flickr (CC by 2.0).

RHONE GLACIER, Switzerland (AP) — One of Switzerland’s glaciologists says his teams are noticing a strange phenomenon in the Alpine country’s glaciers. Holes are emerging inside — a bit like Swiss cheese — seemingly caused by turbulence as water passes through the bottom of the glacier or air flows through the gaps that appear inside. The glaciers of Switzerland, which has the most of any country in continental Europe, are fading because of global warming. Their fragility became starkly apparent last month as a mudslide swallowed up the village of Blatten. Matthias Huss of the GLAMOS glacier monitoring group took The Associated Press to see one major glacier this month.

Reporting by Fanny Brodersen, Matthias Schrader and Jamey Keaten,  Associated Press

Banner image: Matthias Huss, of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and glacier monitoring group GLAMOS, stands at the Rhone Glacier near Goms, Switzerland, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 13, just six months after its U.S. subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride, made a $5 million donation to Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, the single largest contribution to the event.

The Brazil-founded company has sought a U.S. listing for more than a decade, and in its latest attempt faced a nearly two-year delay imposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a federal agency responsible for regulating the stock market, amid pressure from civil society groups over the company’s history of corruption and its role in Amazon deforestation.

The NYSE listing is “a catastrophe for the planet,” Alex Wijeratna, senior director at the U.S.-based environmental nonprofit Mighty Earth, one of the main signatories of letters raising concerns to the SEC, said in a statement following the listing. “Giving JBS access to billions of dollars of new funding will serve to supercharge its climate-wrecking operations and war on nature.”

Today, JBS operates more than 250 meat facilities, with many located in the United States and Brazil. It supplies beef, poultry and pork to global food giants including McDonald’s, Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour.

Within two days of Trump appointee Paul Atkins assuming the role of SEC chair on April 21, JBS’ long-stalled bid for a U.S. listing was approved amid aggressive changes in the agency described as a “reckless game of regulatory Jenga.”

In a May 19 letter, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed JBS and Pilgrim’s Pride on whether the donation was meant to accrue political favor. “Your large donations … and the Trump Administration’s series of actions that benefit your companies, raise serious concerns about a potential quid-pro-quo arrangement,” Warren wrote in a May 19 letter.

In 2017, Joesley and Wesley Batista, the brothers behind JBS, confessed to bribing nearly 1,900 politicians in Brazil resulting in a 10.3 billion real ($1.9 billion) fine. In 2020, the brothers also agreed to pay a $27 million settlement in the U.S. for related anti-corruption charges.

More recently, an Environmental Investigation Agency report found JBS had bought cattle illegally raised on Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon. Earlier this year, the company was also linked to widespread destruction of jaguar habitat in the Pantanal biome of western Brazil.

JBS replied to Mongabay’s request for comment with an emailed statement from their subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride: “As a U.S.-based food company, Pilgrim’s was pleased to support the 2025 inauguration ceremony. We have a long bipartisan history of participating in the civic process and look forward to working with the Administration to create opportunities for American farmers and provide safe, affordable food for American families.”

The White House Press Office did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.

Banner image: Workers prep poultry at the meatpacking company JBS in the Brazilian state of Paraná. Image by Eraldo Peres/Associated Press.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Hundreds of firefighters backed up by aircraft were battling a wildfire burning out of control for the third day on the eastern Aegean island of Chios Tuesday, with authorities issuing multiple evacuation orders.

Towering walls of flames tore through forest and agricultural land on the island, where authorities have declared a state of emergency and have sent firefighting reinforcements from Athens, the northern city of Thessaloniki and the nearby island of Lesbos.

By Tuesday morning, the fire department said 444 firefighters with 85 vehicles were tackling the blaze on scattered fronts. Eleven helicopters and two water-dropping planes were providing air support.

Emergency services have issued evacuation orders for villages and settlements in the area since Sunday, when fires broke out near the island’s main town. The fire department has sent an arson investigation team to Chios to examine the cause of the blaze.

“We are faced with simultaneous fires in multiple, geographically unconnected parts of the island — a pattern that cannot be considered coincidental,” Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Giannis Kefalogiannis said Monday from Chios. Authorities, he said, were “very seriously examining the possibility of an organized criminal act, in other words arson.”

The minister said police forces on the island had been reinforced, while military patrols had been doubled.

“Whoever thinks that they can play with the lives of citizens and cause chaos with premeditated actions will be led to court,” Kefalogiannis said. “Arson is a serious crime and will be dealt with as such.”

Wildfires are frequent in Greece during its hot, dry summers. In 2018, a massive fire swept through the seaside town of Mati, east of Athens, trapping people in their homes and on roads as they tried to flee. More than 100 died, including some who drowned trying to swim away from the flames.

Banner image: Firefighters battle with a large wildfire burning in Kofinas, on the eastern Aegean island of Chios, Greece, late Sunday, June 22, 2025. (Pantelis Fykaris/Politischios.gr via AP)