Brazil is set to approve a controversial expansion of 2,000 kilometers, or more than 1,200 miles, of new shipping channels in the Amazon. With a price tag in the billions of reais, the expansion is needed to ensure cheaper, more efficient transportation of agricultural commodities out of the Amazon, the government says. But an investigation by Mongabay contributor Tiffany Higgins found minimal economic benefits compared to the high socioenvironmental costs the project will likely bring.

The Tocantins-Araguaia waterway project began under the previous president, Jair Bolsonaro, but in August 2024, federal prosecutors sued to stop the process, claiming the environmental review was incomplete. Indeed, 27 required studies were missing from the process.

Parts of the channel project were approved with hydrology data from 2017, when river levels were much higher than in the last two years when a crippling drought caused record-low water levels. The Tocantins River, for example, is normally 3-3.5 meters (9.8-11.5 feet) high in the dry season, but in October 2024 it was just 2 m (6.6 ft) high. Many barges need at least 2.5 m (8.2 ft) of water to safely navigate rivers. So, a large area may need to be dredged, significantly adding to the cost of the project. Ships can lighten their load to sit higher in the water, an option that will also make shipping more expensive and each bargeload of grain more carbon intensive.

“Every foot of reduced water depth or draft is the equivalent of loading 7,000 fewer bushels of soybeans per barge,” Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the U.S. Soy Transportation Coalition, told Mongabay.

Climate scientists say the Amazon Basin will become drier with climate change; the Tocantins River is expected to shrink by half in the next 25 years.

Higgins also reports that the channel project didn’t receive the free, prior and informed consent of local stakeholders, as required by Brazilian law. Local fishers report being harassed and coerced to leave their traditional territories as real estate speculation has driven up the value of nearby land.

Under Brazilian law, the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT) must compensate local people for any losses incurred as a result of an infrastructure project. But the department says it’s only responsible for damages from dredging and blasting and won’t pay for damages from operations. That will leave many communities without compensation. Local fisherman Nilton Lopes de Melo told Mongabay that the compensation DNIT plans to give, $230 per month for 30 months, is inadequate.

“Poisoned drinking water, and fish poisoned by dynamite, which no one will want to eat,” will last long after the detonations end, he said. He accused the DNIT of “violating our rights as traditional river peoples.”

This is a summary of “Brazil’s shipping channel plans in Amazonian rivers will worsen climate change, experts warn” by Tiffany Higgins.

 Banner image of a traditional fisherperson near Tauiry Village. Photo by Tiffany Higgins for Mongabay.

What’s new: Some bats, like birds, migrate long distances. But these long-distance bat migrations have been somewhat of a mystery to researchers, especially since only a few species embark on them. Now, in a new study, researchers have mapped the odyssey of common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) using innovative tiny trackers. And the results have surprised them: the trackers reveal that the noctule travels far across Europe by “surfing” warm winds that precede storms.

What the study says:

• For long, bat migration has been “poorly understood” because researchers lacked the tools to follow multiple bats over long periods of time, Edward Hurme, the study’s lead author from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) in Germany, said in a video statement. To address this, Hurme and his colleagues designed specialized tags that weigh just over a gram each that can be attached to bats. The tags use what’s called the Internet of Things technology, relying on a large wireless network of devices connected to the internet that communicate with each other.
• The team tracked the movements of 71 female common noctules they tagged in Switzerland over the course of three years. The common noctule is a widespread insectivorous and migratory bat species in Europe. The researchers chose to tag female bats as they were more migratory than males.
• The study revealed that the bats traveled up to 1,116 kilometers (693 miles) across Central Europe, moving hundreds of kilometers in a single night. But the bats didn’t follow a main migration corridor like migrating birds do; rather, they moved in many different directions. “We had assumed that bats were following a unified path, but we now see they are moving all over the landscape in a general northeast direction,” study co-author Dina Dechmann, a staff scientist at MPI-AB, said in a statement.
• The study also found that the bats migrated during specific weather conditions. They usually left just before storms came, taking advantage of incoming warm fronts that pushed the bats forward, allowing them to save energy. The bats’ movements also showed a “hopping pattern,” suggesting the bats were frequently stopping to refuel throughout their journey.

What this means:

Charlotte Roemer, a conservation biologist at the National Museum of Natural History in France, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Science that the new technology “revolutionizes the tracking of bat movements and will surely help researchers answer many questions about migration.”

Hurme added that greater understanding of bat migration can help prevent collisions with wind turbines, which is a major problem.

“More studies like this will pave the way for a system to forecast bat migration. We can be stewards of bats, helping wind farms to turn off their turbines on nights when bats are streaming through,” Hurme said in the video statement.

Banner image of a common noctule courtesy of Kamran Safi/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

The most extensive global assessment of freshwater animals to date has revealed that a quarter of all freshwater animal species on the IUCN Red List are threatened with extinction.

The largest number of these threatened species are found in East Africa’s Lake Victoria, South America’s Lake Titicaca, Sri Lanka’s Wet Zone, and India’s Western Ghats mountain range, the new study found.

Researchers evaluated 23,496 species of freshwater fish, dragonfly, damselfly, crab, crayfish and shrimp, and found that 24%, are threatened with extinction. This means one in four freshwater specie are categorized as either extinct in the wild, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, or near threatened. These include the daisy burrowing crayfish (Fallicambarus jeanae) in Arkansas and the European eel (Anguilla anguilla).

“Freshwater landscapes are home to 10% of all known species on Earth and key for billions of people’s safe drinking water, livelihoods, flood control and climate change mitigation, and must be protected for nature and people alike,” study lead author Catherine Sayer, the IUCN’s freshwater biodiversity lead, said in a statement.

The study found that among the freshwater animals they studied, 30% of decapods, which include crabs, crayfishes and shrimps, are at the highest risk of extinction, followed by 26% of freshwater fish and 16% of dragonflies and damselflies.

Additionally, 89 of the assessed species have gone extinct since 1500 C.E. Of these, 22 were found in the U.S., and 15 each in Mexico and the Philippines. All 15 from the Philippines were from Lake Lanao, one of the world’s most ancient lakes. One of them was the bitungu (Barbodes truncatulus), known for its peculiar overbite and for being a local food delicacy.

“The true number of extinctions of freshwater species will probably be higher given the overall lack of research on and long-term monitoring of freshwater biodiversity,” the study notes.

The loss of freshwater habitats to agriculture and urban development, overharvesting, invasive species, pollution, dam construction and water extraction emerged as major threats to freshwater species.

In the Western Ghats, for example, the critically endangered humpbacked mahseer (Tor remadevii) “is threatened by habitat loss due to river engineering projects and sand and boulder mining, poaching and invasive alien species,” study co-author Rajeev Raghavan, South Asia chair of the IUCN’s Freshwater Fish Specialist Group, said in the statement.

Iwan Jones, a freshwater ecologist from Queen Mary University of London, who wasn’t involved in the study, wrote in The Conversation that “many of the freshwater species considered in this study are socially and economically important.”

“The widespread decline in these species reflects increasing pollution and other pressures, which does not bode well for our society in the face of climate change and diminishing water availability,” Jones added.

The study’s authors urge increased investment in research to address data deficiency, particularly in groups like freshwater mollusks.

Banner image of discus fish by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

The ongoing fires ravaging Los Angeles, U.S., have killed at least 25 people and burned more than 12,000 buildings. Many of the structures destroyed were homes, mansions of the rich and famous and middle-class homes alike. Irrespective of the wealth of their owners, most homes destroyed likely had one thing in common: plastic.

As Mongabay contributor Alden Wicker reports, modern homes that survive fires often remain uninhabitable due to the toxic chemicals released by synthetic furnishings and building materials.

By 2022, more than $16 billion in plastic building materials were sold globally each year, a 50% increase in a decade. Materials like insulation, vinyl siding and laminate flooring are leading the demand. Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, is one of the most commonly used construction materials and considered by many experts to be one of the most toxic types of plastic.

In addition to building materials, most homes are full of plastic furnishings and household items, including clothing, carpets, curtains and furniture.

Nearly all plastic is made from fossil fuels, which, when burned, can release soot and fumes that are toxic to human health. Researchers have identified more than 16,000 chemicals in plastic products, Wicker reports, of which roughly 25% are known to be associated with serious environmental or human health concerns. Most of the remaining 75% of chemicals have not had adequate safety testing.

When modern homes, like those in L.A., burn or reach very high temperatures without actually burning down, they can release a toxic stew of chemicals including lead, arsenic, asbestos and cyanates.

Rob Wilson, a homeowner in Flagstaff, Arizona, whose house survived a fire in 2022, told Wicker: “We thought we were the lucky ones.” But even after cleaning the surfaces of his house of soot and residue, it continued to smell weird, and their blood tests revealed abnormally low white blood cell counts. Professional testing showed toxic levels of chemicals including acrolein, formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, hydrogen chloride and nitrogen dioxide. It also found that the polyurethane insulation in the walls likely started breaking down at high temperatures and was a possible source of contamination.

“The foam I think saved Rob’s house [from incineration] but his house is still totaled,” Dawn Bolstad-Johnson, a hazardous chemicals expert who took the samples from Wilson’s home, told Mongabay.

Wilson and his family had to leave their home and start over.

Modern homes full of plastic also burn hotter and faster, Wicker reports. In a 2020 experiment, researchers set fire to two experimental living rooms: one filled with natural furnishings and the other with modern synthetic materials. The more natural room took 30 minutes to burn and produced white smoke. The more synthetic room went up in flames within five minutes, producing an oily black toxic smoke.

This is a summary of “As global fire risk rises, modern homes become toxic plastic traps” by Alden Wicker.

Banner image by Cheshire Fire and Rescue via Creative Commons (CCO 1.0).

The year 2024 was the hottest on record, with an average temperature of 1.55° Celsius (2.79° Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial levels, surpassing the previous record set in 2023, according to six international data sets.

Scientists caution that the data represent the average for the Earth’s year-round weather and don’t mean that the climate has exceeded the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5°C (2.7°F). For the latter, a longer data set spanning decades is needed.

Still, 2024 was the first year in recorded history when the average global temperature surpassed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, raising alarms about the persistent increase in Earth’s warming. Every month from January to June last year was the warmest on record for those months.

The average global temperature reached 15.1°C (59.2°F), exceeding the 2023 average by 0.12°C (0.22°F), data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts showed.

“We are facing a very new climate and new challenges, challenges that our society is not prepared for,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus weather institute told The New York Times.

Climate change, largely attributed to human activities, fueled some of the worst extreme weather events on record in 2024, claiming at least 11,500 lives and impacting more than 148 million people globally.

Following the disastrous floods in Spain in October, researchers found that climate change had increased the amount of rain that the clouds over Spain can carry by 7% for every 1°C (1.8°F) of warming.

Meanwhile, the extreme drought conditions in the Amazon Rainforest spanning 2023 and 2024 were made 30 times more likely due to climate change.

“Nearly every event we studied in 2024, was made more intense and more frequent because of our continued burning of fossil fuels,” researchers wrote in a recent World Weather Attribution (WWA)

As temperatures rose, greenhouse gas concentrations also climbed for another consecutive year. Carbon dioxide hit a new record average of 422.1 parts per million (ppm), far above the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.

Scientists warn that the Paris Agreement’s goal to keep global warming below 1.5°C over the long term, a critical threshold to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, is likely to be exceeded

“All of the internationally produced global temperature datasets show that 2024 was the hottest year since records began in 1850,” Buentempo said in a statement. “The future is in our hands — swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate.”

Banner image: In 2024, the average global temperature reached its highest level since records began in 1850. Image courtesy of C3S/ECMWF.

At least three people were killed in Madagascar over the weekend as Tropical Cyclone Dikeledi brought heavy rainfall and flooding to the island on its way to the African mainland, news reports said.

The French island territory of Mayotte, the archipelagic country of Comoros, and Mozambique were also affected by the storm. It came less than a month after Mayotte was battered by the deadly Cyclone Chido.

Dikeledi formed in the Southern Indian Ocean, between Indonesia and Australia, earlier this month, then intensified as it made landfall in northern Madagascar on Jan. 11.

More than 15,000 people have been displaced across northern Madagascar, according to a European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations flash report (ECHO Flash) posted on Jan. 13. The report also cited information from the Interdepartmental Crisis Management Operational Centre (COGIC) saying around 20,000 people in Mayotte had to evacuate their homes.

Although Dikeledi had weakened slightly by the time it reached Mayotte, the archipelago saw strong winds, flash floods and landslides on Jan. 12, resulting in infrastructure damage. A local TV station reported that Mbouini, a village that was one of the few to survive Cyclone Chido, ended up being flooded by rains brought by Dikeledi.

A Mbouini resident, Massa, told Agence France-Presse they were “traumatized” by both Chido and Dikeledi. “We’re only in the middle of the rainy season, so we don’t know what’s going to happen between now and February or March,” the resident said.

“Mayotte faced an intense tropical storm. The impact was violent,” Manuel Valls, the French minister for overseas territories, said as quoted by France24. There were no reported casualties in the archipelago.

Francois-Xavier Bieuville, the Mayotte prefect, said the territory “is very fragile.”

“We still have extremely strong winds and rainfall that is just as strong,” Bieuville was quoted saying on television.

The ECHO Flash report said Cyclone Dikeledi is expected to further intensify as it moves southward through the Mozambique Channel from Jan. 14 to 15. Very heavy rainfall, strong winds and storm surges are expected in Madagascar, Mayotte, Comoros and Mozambique in the next two days.

During the onslaught of Cyclone Chido, the strongest tropical cyclone to hit Mayotte in more than 90 years, at least 36 people were killed in the French territory. Residents there mostly live in shantytowns, in houses made from weak materials. More than 120 people died in Mozambique from Chido.

A United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) flash update released on Jan. 11 said response efforts are already ongoing in Madagascar. Some emergency stocks and cash assistance have already been provided to a select number of households.

Banner image of Cyclone Dikeledi passing by northern Madagascar. Satellite image by NASA via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).