Following a deadly yellow fever outbreak in 2016, brown howler monkeys are slowly making a recovery through targeted vaccination and reintroduction efforts in one of the world’s largest urban forests. The recovery is detailed in a Mongabay video by Kashfi Halford and a report by Bernardo Araujo.

Brown howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba) are endemic to the Atlantic Forest in Brazil and Argentina and were considered the primate species most affected by yellow fever, a deadly viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus.

Scientists adapted a yellow fever vaccine originally developed for humans to successfully vaccinate howler monkeys. Now, all howlers slated for translocation must be vaccinated, including those reintroduced later to the 4,000-hectare (10,000-acre) Tijuca National Park, an urban forest at the heart of Rio de Janeiro.

Located in the Atlantic Forest, Tijuca was deforested heavily to make way for housing and coffee plantations. However, after the area experienced water shortages, a reforestation program was introduced in the 19th century.

Even with reforestation, it was considered an “empty forest,” ecologist Fernando Fernandez, from the NGO Refauna, told Mongabay. Refauna was founded to rebuild the native animal life “and make this forest work again as a healthy ecosystem,” Fernandez said.

As Mongabay has previously reported, the national park has become a living laboratory for reintroductions of locally extinct species. Howler monkeys were first reintroduced in 2015, becoming the second reintroduced species to make the park their home after the agouti (Dasyprocta leporina). Both animals are excellent seed dispersers that could help regrow the damaged forest.

The initial howler population in Tijuca was a couple named Juvenal and Kala, who had a baby in 2016, Araujo reports. When the yellow fever outbreak hit, Refauna had to pause the release of howler groups into the forest. The outbreak did not affect Tijuca, and Juvenal and Kala’s family grew to six.

By 2023, more howler monkeys were brought to the park, all of them vaccinated against yellow fever. The reintroduction was challenging: An infant died from pneumonia during the group’s acclimation period and another individual was shunned by the group — she had to be returned to the Rio de Janeiro Primatology Center (CPRJ), Araujo reports.

Despite an initial cold welcome from Juvenal’s family, the new group eventually came to an understanding with the original inhabitants. Conservationists told Araujo how a newcomer howler monkey named Hope reached out to Juvenal, who accepted the touch after weeks of threatening howls between the two groups.

Less than 20% of the original Atlantic Forest remains, fragmented across much of the Atlantic coast of South America. Atlantic Forest rewilding programs like Tijuca park “have become increasingly important,” CPRJ veterinarian Silvia Bahadian Moreira told Mongabay.

Watch the documentary here. Read the report by Bernardo Araujo here.

Banner image of Max, a brown howler monkey, courtesy of Marcelo Rheingantz.

Nonrecyclable food and beverage packaging dominates the trash littering the Indian Himalayas, according to a recent report.

Since 2018, regional alliances Zero Waste Himalaya  and Integrated Mountain Initiative have organized an annual campaign during the last week of May called The Himalayan Cleanup. Volunteers from schools and civil society organizations clean up sites across the Himalayas, followed by an audit identifying waste types and associated brands.

In 2024, more than 15,000 volunteers across nine Indian Himalayan states collected 121,739 pieces of waste. Of this, 106,856, or nearly 90%, was some sort of plastic.

Food and beverage packaging made up 84.2% of all plastic waste, of which 77% was nonrecyclable multilayered plastics, including food wrappers, beverage bottles, juice boxes, bottle caps, sachets, cutlery, bags, straws and lollipop sticks.

Being nonrecyclable, these plastics hold no value for waste pickers and scrap dealers, so they are “strewn across the Himalayas and piling up in the landfills,” Kapil Chhetri, from Zero Waste Himalaya, told Mongabay by email. “The logic of being able to recycle ourselves of this mess is clearly not possible as the product design is single use and nonrecyclable.”

The 2024 cleanup’s brand audit revealed PepsiCo — owner of brands like Lays, Uncle Chips, Bingo and Kurkure — was the top polluting brand for the third straight year.

A “dramatic increase” in bottles of PepsiCo-owned Sting, a sugar-rich energy drink, has been a particularly “alarming finding,” Chhetri said, adding that 20% of all beverage bottles collected during the cleanup were Sting bottles, up from 11% in 2022.

Although energy drinks like Sting are often packaged in PET bottles, which is recyclable, Chhetri said in the Himalayas even PET adds to the trash because of waste management challenges there.

Chhetri added the rising popularity of sugary beverages in the Himalayas, as suggested by the annual cleanups, “throws additional challenges to the well-being of communities and children besides the waste issue.”

“It is particularly frightening given the warning label on Sting is ‘not recommended for children, pregnant or lactating mothers,’” Chhetri said. “Most often it is children who are drinking Sting as it is sold to them despite the label. There is also no way to restrict the number of bottles consumed.”

PepsiCo and PepsiCo India didn’t respond to Mongabay’s emailed questions by the time of publishing.

The 2024 cleanup found that while tourists contribute to plastic waste at tourist spots, particularly along waterbodies and rivers, local communities also add to Himalayan plastic waste.

“With dramatic changes in consumption patterns and higher tourist inflows due to excessive warming in the plains, the existing management systems are unable to cope with the rapid increase and changes in type of waste,” Chhetri said.

The report calls for better implementation of the extended producer responsibility, a key component of India’s plastic waste law, which makes producers and brand owners responsible for managing their plastic waste.

Banner image: Student volunteers with trash collected during the 2024 Himalayan Cleanup campaign. Image courtesy of The Himalayan Cleanup.

Researchers have confirmed the presence of a rare gecko species atop an isolated South African mountain, accessible only by helicopter, more than 30 years after it was last seen.

The Blyde rondawels flat gecko (Afroedura rondavelica), with its distinct golden eyes and dark-banded tail with a purplish sheen, was previously known only from two male specimens collected in 1991 by South African herpetologist Niels Jacobsen on the same mountaintop.

In April this year, Darren Pietersen and John Davies of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, a South Africa-based conservation NGO, were dropped off by helicopter on the summit of the mountain, one of three distinct, conical peaks in Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve.

No one knew for certain whether the geckos still survived. But just after midnight on the first night of their three-day survey, Pietersen and Davies spotted the first individual.

“We were absolutely ecstatic,” Pietersen told Mongabay.

The duo eventually saw about 20 individuals during their survey. While they couldn’t estimate the gecko’s population size, its numbers appear to be “fairly sizable,” Pietersen said, adding there could be several hundred present on the mountain. “It’s certainly not at risk of going extinct in the immediate future.”

Planning the trip, including securing permits from provincial authorities to access the mountaintop, took Pietersen two years. The permits allowed Pieterson and Davies to collect five individual geckos as museum specimens and a tiny tail tip from a sixth for genetic analysis. The geckos’ tails regenerate within about a month, and the DNA samples will help confirm whether they represent a distinct species, Pietersen said.

Since the collection of the first two males in 1991, there had been speculation the individuals were juveniles of the closely related Mariepskop flat gecko (Afroedura maripi), which inhabits the slopes of the nearby Mariepskop mountain.

But Pietersen said Mariepskop flat geckos are more robust with a purple sheen across their entire bodies, while the geckos he examined were smaller, slimmer, and only had purple skin on their tails. “I am absolutely 100% convinced that these are a distinct species.”

Werner Conradie, a herpetologist at Port Elizabeth Museum, who wasn’t part of Pietersen’s team, told Mongabay that “habitat specialist species” like those restricted to isolated mountain peaks or forest patches tend to occupy very narrow environmental niches and are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Compounding this vulnerability is the difficulty of locating such species.

“It is hard for us to find them, and it takes years, if not decades, before we get the opportunity to do so — and in that time they might have gone extinct,” Conradie said.

Conradie also praised the efforts of a new generation of South African herpetologists working to document the country’s reptiles, including rare and long-unseen species. Among them is the Leolo flat gecko (Afroedura leoloensis), recorded in 2022 by Gary Kyle Nicolau and Ruan Stander after 37 years.

Banner image of a Blyde rondawels flat gecko, courtesy of the Endangered Wildlife Trust.

Researchers have developed a noninvasive DNA tool to help monitor hard-to-trace African carnivores, including caracals and leopards, making it potentially useful in the conservation of elusive and increasingly threatened species.

“Carnivores are really difficult to study/observe in the wild, and even if a fecal sample is found, it is often difficult to determine which species it comes from,” Anne Schmidt-Küntzel, a co-author of a new study detailing the tool, and director of animal health and research at the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), told Mongabay in an email.

Researchers analyzed DNA material in fecal samples from wild carnivores in Southern Africa to identify a specific genetic marker, called a “mini-barcode,” that can be used to determine the species it came from.

“Using the marker allows us to find out which species was present in the study area,” Schmidt-Küntzel added.

The researchers collected 157 samples to analyze, and compared their results with known data collected in Namibia 13 years earlier. They were able to successfully identify the carnivores nearly 95% of the time, finding six different species, including leopards (Panthera pardus) and caracals (Caracal caracal). The researchers suggest the marker could also be a useful monitoring tool for lions (Panthera leo), cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus), servals (Leptailurus serval) and African golden cats (Caracal aurata).

“We have created a guide that allows researchers to predict how well the marker will perform in their study area and with their species of interest, and thus improve their chance of success in carnivore monitoring,”  Schmidt-Küntzel said.

The researchers also used the tool to obtain mitochondrial DNA sequencing data for the Congo clawless otter (Aonyx congicus), which they uploaded to GenBank, a U.S.-funded research database. That means other researchers can now access genetic information about the large, rare species of otter for the first time.

Philip Muruthi, vice president of species conservation and science at the Kenya-based African Wildlife Foundation, who wasn’t involved with the study, said this type of DNA analysis is an important tool for monitoring presence of species, especially elusive ones.

“The DNA can be obtained directly from the animal or from the environment (hair, scat, etc.) which means you get to know the animal’s presence even if you did not see the actual individual,” Murithi told Mongabay.

He added it could potentially help “prioritize interventions to secure the species, their habitat and to manage their interactions with people.”

Schmidt-Küntzel said the research can serve as a “guide that other researchers in Africa can use to see how well the marker will work for them in their jurisdiction, as well as provided new reference sequences for understudied African carnivore species.”

Banner image of a leopard in South Africa’s Kruger National Park by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

A new study finds that scientists have likely underestimated heat stress on coral reefs in the South Atlantic Ocean, further raising concerns for coral bleaching amid climate change.

The study notes that while the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific have well-established long-term ocean temperature and coral monitoring programs, the South Atlantic Ocean has lagged behind, causing gaps in understanding. Many Brazilian reefs, for example, lie in deep, murky waters. Previous studies suggest these cool low-light conditions could make the reefs a refuge for coral as oceans warm.

However, “It’s tricky to say that it is a refuge because we don’t know our history. So, we cannot say that with certainty,” Giovanna Destri, a Ph.D. student with the University of São Paulo in Brazil and study lead author, told Mongabay in a video call.

To better understand that history, Destri and her team looked at 40 years of data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for 33 reef sites across the southern Atlantic Ocean, mostly off the coasts of Africa and Brazil.

They assessed the intensity, duration and frequency of each heating event over the last four decades to create a complete picture of warming trends in the region.

The study found a sharp increase in heat stress episodes over time. From 1985-89, there were 10 significant episodes, two per year on average. From 1990-99, there were 31 episodes, a figure that held steady from 2000-09. However, from 2010-19 there were 81 events. In just the last five years, 2020-24, there have been 75 episodes, roughly 15 per year.

“We had a lot of events that we didn’t even notice,” Destri said.

Many of those heat stress events coincide with global bleaching episodes that happen when ocean waters become too warm and reefs expel their symbiotic algae, becoming brittle and susceptible to disease. Given time, many reefs can recover. But stressful heat events are increasingly frequent, and many corals don’t have enough time to recover before another marine heat wave strikes. Some reefs in the southern part of the study area, near Queimada Grande Island, for instance, faced more than 20 heat stress events in the last 40 years, every two years on average, the study notes.

The researchers found a few bright spots: One site near Rio De Janeiro showed no recorded heat stress at all, perhaps due to upwelling of cool water. Furthermore, at Africa’s São Tomé Island and Libreville, the longest interval between stress events was nearly 29 years.

“The frequency of thermal stress episodes increased over time … across all regions except for Africa,” the researchers note.

Destri said she hopes this study can be used to prioritize protecting the most vulnerable reefs from pollution and physical damage to help make them more resilient to the much harder to control effects of climate change.

Banner photo: a coral reef in Brazil’s Abrolhos Marine National Park by Roberto Costa Pinto via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Most countries that pledged to reduce the number of birds being illegally killed along an important migratory route in Europe and the Mediterranean region are failing to do so, a new report shows.

For the report, conservation organizations BirdLife International and EuroNatur tracked the progress of 46 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, which have committed to the Rome Strategic Plan (RSP), a 10-year goal to halve the illegal killing, taking and trade of wild birds by 2030 compared to 2020. RSP was jointly developed by members of the Bern Convention, an international treaty for wildlife conservation in Europe and parts of Africa, and an intergovernmental task force of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS MIKT).

Five years into the plan, the report found that 38 of the 46 countries are not on track to meet the 2030 commitments. The 10 countries responsible for about 90% of the illegal killings are seeing little to no progress; four even showed worsening trends compared to 2015-2019.

“The number of birds killed illegally each year remains unacceptably high. For many migratory birds, it spells death before they can even reach their breeding grounds,” EuroNatur project manager Justine Vansynghel said in a press release.

Around 2 billion birds from more than 500 species migrate across the African-Eurasian flyway each year, flying between their breeding grounds in Europe and their wintering grounds in Africa or parts of Asia. But the birds are often indiscriminately shot, especially as they cross the Mediterranean.

An estimated 375 bird species, according to a 2016 study, or an average of 25 million birds, are illegally killed or removed from the wild annually in the Mediterranean alone. Species including the vulnerable European turtledove (Streptopelia turtur), the critically endangered sociable lapwing (Vanellus gregarius), and the endangered Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) “have suffered severe population declines,” partly due to the “ immense scale” of the illegal killings, the new report said.

Some countries that showed significant decreases in killings from 2020-2024 compared to 2015-2019 were Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus and Spain.

Of the 10 countries with the highest levels of bird killings, Croatia and Greece showed slight improvement since 2020, but the progress was considered not enough. Azerbaijan, Italy, France and Lebanon showed no significant change. In Egypt, Syria and Libya, illegal bird killings rose starting 2020. Cyprus showed major improvement since 2015 but also showed a slight increase since 2020. Mongabay reported earlier this year that Maltese hunters often head to Egypt for mass bird-hunting trips.

“High levels of illegal killing in one country can wipe out conservation successes in another. We urgently need stronger, coordinated, cross-border action across the full flyway,” Barend van Gemerden, global flyways program coordinator at BirdLife International, said in the statement. “Reaching the 2030 goal is a tough challenge, but not an impossible one.”

Banner image of an Egyptian vulture by Mildeep via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).