In a review article published in Nature, researchers have introduced a new term to describe the importance of seabirds across land and marine ecosystems: the circular seabird economy.

Although seabirds spend most of their lives at sea, they return to land to breed, often forming colonies of thousands of individuals. This influx of birds, bringing their guano, or droppings, feathers and eggshells to land constitutes a transfer of ocean-derived nutrients, including phosphorous, carbon, nitrogen and calcium.

“By eating at sea, and then pooping at breeding colonies, seabirds are estimated to transfer as much nitrogen and phosphorus from sea to land as all commercial fisheries combined,” Nick Holmes, study co-author and associate director for oceans at the NGO The Nature Conservancy, told Mongabay by email.

This surge in nutrients on land feeds soil and helps “shape plant communities, which in turn support diverse insect, bird, and reptile populations,” David Will, study co-author and senior director of impact and innovation at U.S.-based nonprofit Island Conservation, told Mongabay by email.

“In Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, seabirds contribute over 80% of available nutrients to land and sea ecosystems, making them the primary drivers of productivity in some of the planet’s harshest environments,” Will added. “When new islands emerge from the sea, they are empty until seabirds show up with seeds and nutrients and jump start life and keep it going.”

The flow of nutrients doesn’t just go from ocean to land. Studies show that a significant amount washes back the other way, fueling marine food webs as well.

Compared to islands without seabirds, marine environments near islands with seabirds have “coral reefs recovering faster after bleaching events, fish growing faster, higher fish biomass, and increased macroalgae,” Holly Jones, lead author of the study and an ecologist at Northern Illinois University, U.S., told Mongabay in an email.

Healthier marine life also means greater climate resilience, Jones added. For example, “coral reefs grow faster and calcify quicker, both of which will be important in the face of increasing extreme weather events and sea level rise,” she said.

Despite their importance, nearly a third of seabird species are at risk of extinction, the researchers note. Their main threats include invasive rats and cats on islands that eat the birds’ eggs and chicks. At sea, they often get caught as fisheries bycatch. Other threats to seabirds include plastic pollution, overfishing of their prey species, and climate change, the researchers note.

Because seabirds are crucial to so many ecosystems, Jones said, protecting them “is one of the most effective strategies we have to make a huge impact on land, at sea, and in our own communities.”

“This paper shows how restoring seabirds doesn’t just help the birds — it helps entire ecosystems recover and thrive,” Will added in a press release.

Banner image: Puffins near their breeding burrows near Dunfermline, Scotland. Image by Steve Garvie via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — World leaders gathering in a coastal city in the Brazilian Amazon for the U.N.‘s annual climate summit hope it’s a rare opportunity to turn previous commitments into practical steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, preserve rainforests and make good on pledges to finance clean energy. But the heads of the world’s three biggest polluters — China, the United States and India — are notably absent from the preliminary leaders’ gathering that kicked off Thursday. Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva warned in a speech that the window to act is rapidly closing. Some Latin American leaders and activists called out Trump for failing to act on climate change.

By Isabel Debre and Mauricio Savarese, Associated Press

Banner image: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses a plenary session of the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit in Belem, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Kenya’s Environment and Land Court has upheld a 2019 ruling that revoked the environmental license for the proposed 1,050-megawatt Lamu coal-fired power plant, effectively halting the controversial project.

Justice Francis Njoroge dismissed an appeal from the Amu Power Company, finding the project’s environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) was inadequate and public participation deficient. The decision caps years of litigation and local resistance to the plant slated for Kenya’s Lamu archipelago.  The group of islands are home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site with mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs that underpin fisheries and tourism.

Kenya’s National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) issued Amu Power the original license for the plant in 2016. It immediately met opposition from Save Lamu, a coalition of some 40 civil society groups, and the deCOALonize campaign, a regional movement opposed to coal development. They argued that the ESIA overlooked risks to health and biodiversity and failed to adequately consult the public.

In 2019, the National Environmental Tribunal (NET) voided the license, citing poor disclosure and inadequate outreach to potentially impacted communities. NET declared that, “public participation is the oxygen that gives life to an ESIA report.”

Amu Power quickly appealed the NET decision.

Omar Elmawi, a deCOALonize campaign lawyer and board member, told Mongabay the recent court decision to uphold the NET ruling “marks the end of an almost decade-long struggle. The people of Lamu stood firm against the coal giant Amu Power, and NEMA, who sought to impose a coal plant on this ecologically sensitive and culturally rich archipelago.”

“This victory is a powerful reminder that when communities speak with one voice, they can move mountains,” Elmawi added.

In a joint statement, advocates with deCOALonize termed the judgement a historic victory for Lamu communities and environmental justice.

Elizabeth Kariuki, the hub director with Natural Justice, a law group and member of Save Lamu, hailed the judgment for reinforcing Kenya’s constitutional commitment to environmental justice. “Development must never come at the expense of people’s health, culture or environment,” she said.

The court’s decision also seems to reinforce a broader market shift away from coal in East Africa. After the 2019 NET ruling, the African Development Bank (AfDB) said it wouldn’t finance the project. And in 2022, the AfDB announced it had completely halted investments in all new coal projects.

To revive the project, Amu would need a new ESIA that fully addresses cumulative impacts including on air quality and coastal ecosystems, and how it would dispose of ash. It must also propose a credible mitigation plan for potential damages, and demonstrate inclusive participation, particularly for fishing communities and small businesses whose livelihoods depend on Lamu’s marine and cultural assets. Regulators will also be expected to publish decisions and methodologies, enabling independent scrutiny.

For now, the court’s decision effectively freezes the coal plant development.

Banner image: against the Lamu coal-fired power plant in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2019. Image courtesy of DeCOALonize. 

Governments and investors are seeking minerals, timber and oil in the Congo Basin to fuel the global economy and the green transition. However, communities that have lived in the world’s second-largest rainforest for generations are paying the highest price for extraction, according to a new report published ahead of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil. COP30 is expected to address, among other issues, the management and financing of tropical rainforests, which are vital for climate stability.

The new report, released by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) and Earth Insight, details how extractive industries are converging on Indigenous and local community lands across the world’s major tropical forests. In the Congo Basin, the planet’s largest forest carbon sink, 38% of community forests are threatened by oil and gas blocks, 42% by mining and 6% with logging, according to the report.

These overlapping pressures are degrading fragile ecosystems and threatening Indigenous livelihoods. In the TRIDOM landscape spanning Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of Congo, more than half of community forests overlap with logging concessions, the report notes. Across western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), oil licenses threaten to encroach on 99% of community forests, including the Cuvette Centrale peatlands, home to 30 billion tons of stored carbon, vital to global climate stability.

Industrial exploitation tells only part of the story; livelihoods are also impacted. “Our peoples have protected these forests for generations … yet our rights remain fragile,” Joseph Itongwa of the Network of Indigenous and Local Populations for the Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa, a member organization with the GATC, states in the report. “If the world is truly committed to climate justice, it must support and finance the protection of the Congo Region through the leadership of its original custodians. We are not the beneficiaries—we are the architects of a different future.”

The report also highlights the growing economic complexity surrounding resource extraction. Governments often see mining and hydrocarbons as engines of growth and fiscal stability, while companies promise jobs and development. But corruption and weak governance often prevent communities from seeing significant benefits. A 2020 Mongabay report established that poor governance and corruption are considered the biggest obstacles to protecting DRC forests.

The report also offers signs of progress. The DRC’s 2022 Pygmy Law was designed for the “Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Indigenous Pygmy Peoples,” recognizing their civic and land rights. In Cameroon, the NGO Ajemalibu Self Help works with local councils and communities to map forest lands, blending traditional knowledge with modern conservation tools — bridging the gap between authorities and forest communities.

To build on such progress, the GATC urges climate finance to flow directly to communities, circumventing multilateral development banks. It also calls for the enforcement of free, prior and informed consent in all projects to support local biodiversity and social peace.

Banner image: of a mandrill in Gabon by Rhett Ayers Butler.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Interpol and partners launched a global law enforcement effort Wednesday aimed at dismantling criminal networks behind illegal logging, timber trafficking and gold mining, which drive large-scale deforestation and generate billions in illicit profits each year.

The effort announced ahead of the U.N. COP30 climate summit in Brazil will focus mainly on tropical forests in Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Peru.

“Criminals are making billions by looting the planet’s forests,” Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said in a statement. “The only way to stop them is through determined law enforcement action and strong international cooperation.”

This latest phase of the Law Enforcement Assistance Program to Reduce Tropical Deforestation was announced in Rio de Janeiro during the United for Wildlife Global Summit. It is led by Interpol, the international police organization that helps national authorities coordinate and share intelligence, together with the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. It is funded by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative.

The announcement follows a major crackdown in the Amazon Basin last week, when Brazilian police, supported by Interpol, destroyed more than 270 illegal mining dredges operating on the Madeira River. Authorities said the raids dealt a significant blow to criminal groups linked to gold-smuggling networks that span Brazil, Bolivia and Peru.

UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly said illegal deforestation “weakens the rule of law and finances organized crime,” adding that the joint initiative seeks to ensure offenders are held accountable while supporting justice systems and local communities.

Launched in 2018, LEAP has evolved from mapping timber-trafficking routes to coordinating cross-border investigations and seizing millions of dollars in illicit wood and minerals. Interpol-led operations in Latin America have uncovered hundreds of environmental crimes, including the destruction of hundreds of illegal gold-mining dredges in the Brazilian Amazon and dozens of arrests across nine countries for logging and wildlife trafficking.

Its new phase expands that work to target illegal mining in the Amazon Basin, now a leading cause of deforestation and mercury pollution, and to enhance intelligence-sharing among enforcement agencies.

By: Steven Grattan, Associated Press

Banner image: Deforestation is visible near the areas of several wood pellet production companies in Pohuwato, Gorontalo province, Indonesia, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Yegar Sahaduta Mangiri, File)

A conservation alliance in the U.K. has raised nearly one-third of the 30 million pounds ($39 million) it needs to buy land in northeastern England to turn into a refuge for wildlife and local communities.

The land, known as the Rothbury Estate, is roughly the size of the Greek capital of Athens, at 3,839 hectares (9,486 acres), and is located next to a national park.

Wildlife Trusts, a network of U.K. conservation charities, says the land’s management would help protect local species such as red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris), pine martens (Martes martes), curlews (Numenius arquata) and skylarks (Alauda arvensis). The group says it will reintroduce European bison (Bison bonasus) and beavers (Castor fiber).

The area could also serve has a habitat for golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), recently spotted in northern England for the first time in several decades.

“The Wildlife Trusts have launched an appeal to buy this very special place,” renowned naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough said in a video shared by the charity. “They will work with local farmers to care for the area and breathe new life into it with the communities who live and work at Rothbury.”

Rothbury Estate was put up for sale in 2023 by a 35-year-old English aristocrat, Max Percy, who grew up in the castle used as Hogwarts for the Harry Potter movies.

In October 2024, Wildlife Trusts, in partnership with Northumberland Wildlife Trust, purchased the first part of the estate, known as Simonside Hills, made up of open expanses of moorland and forest, and home to Neolithic and Bronze Age rock carvings.

Percy agreed to give the charity a two-year window to raise the funds to purchase the remaining areas, largely agricultural land. Local media reported that some residents have argued the land should be returned to the community and its fate shouldn’t be decided by one person.

“There were several interested parties in the Rothbury Estate, and Max selected the purchaser he believed would be most suitable for the long-term interests of the Estate,” Northumberland Estates, which manages the family’s assets, told Mongabay by email.

The Estate was marketed at £35 million [$46 million], but the agreed sale price remains confidential.

A Wildlife Trusts spokesperson told Mongabay by email that they’re now one year away from their deadline and have raised nearly 10 million pounds ($13 million) of their 30-million-pound goal. “Along with local support, we’ve received donations from £5 [$6.5] to £5m from people all over the country and abroad.”

If they don’t reach their goal amount, Wildlife Trusts warns the land may be broken up into smaller parts and sold off to different buyers, threatening to disrupt one of the nation’s few remaining natural strongholds and raising concerns for the region’s farmers and residents.

Banner image: People walking through Rothbury Estate. Image courtesy of John Millard.