In what’s being hailed as a conservation success, the wattled crane has seen its conservation status in South Africa improve from critically endangered to endangered.

Globally, the wattled crane (Bugeranus carunculatus) is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, with an estimated population of 6,000 mature individuals in the wild as of a 2018 assessment.

In South Africa, the cranes were once widespread, according to the South Africa-based nonprofit KZN Crane Foundation, but between the 1970 and 2000, their population fell to fewer than 200 birds, making the species critically endangered in the country.

“Today their population has increased to above 250 mature individuals and it is continuing to increase, so it is now listed as Endangered,” Christie Craig, conservation scientist at the International Crane Foundation (ICF), told Mongabay by email.

In a press release, the ICF said that in 2015, researchers had recorded about 267 individuals in an aerial survey mostly covering the province of KwaZulu-Natal, considered a stronghold for the species in the country. In 2024, the survey estimated 304 individuals. However, the ICF cautioned in its statement that “despite this positive trend in KwaZulu-Natal, the global population (including, but not limited to, South Africa) remains on the decline and urgent conservation attention is required to safeguard populations outside of KwaZulu-Natal.”

Of Africa’s crane species, the wattled crane is the most “wetland dependent,” relying largely on intact wetlands and floodplain habitats and grasslands for its feeding, roosting and nesting, studies show.

“The main threat they faced and the cause of their decline in the past is loss and deterioration of wetlands through intensified agriculture, afforestation, dam construction, alien plant infestation and draining,” Craig said.

The cranes also sometimes collide with power lines located in their habitats.

In 1994, several organizations, including the ICF, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife (EKZNW) and other NGOs, began efforts to protect the cranes.

These included working with national electricity utility Eskom to reduce fatalities along power lines, such as by attaching markers to the lines and making structural changes electricity poles to prevent electrocution. The organizations also work with farmers and landowners to protect cranes present on their farms, since wattled cranes’ wetland habitats often overlap with farms and the birds often end up breeding there.

Researchers are also using technologies such as transmitters to track the movement patterns of the cranes, and drones to map wetlands.

“This information will be vital to rehabilitating wetlands to expand the habitat utilized by these unique birds, enabling the species to expand outside its current range,” the ICF said in its statement.

Its stewardship program with farmers will be supported by long-term funding made possible by carbon trading in the grassland habitat of the wattled crane.

Banner image of an adult wattled crane and its chick, courtesy of Daniel Dolpire/International Crane Foundation.

As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, coral bleaching events are expected to become more frequent. So, scientists are looking for ways to help coral reefs recover more quickly, and a new study from Japan suggests that artificial structures like breakwaters may be helpful.

When oceans become excessively warm, corals can expel the symbiotic algae living within their limestone skeletons, causing them to turn a ghostly white, as if bleached. Severe or frequent bleaching events can kill coral reefs, vital ecosystems that support roughly a quarter of marine species at some point in their lives.

With time, corals can recolonize reefs after bleaching, but warming oceans are expected to cause more frequent bleaching events so corals need to recover as quickly as possible between events for the best chance at long-term survival.

To better understand how to help corals become more resilient, researchers in Japan studied how quickly corals return to artificial structures compared to natural reefs after bleaching.

Previous studies have explored the same question, typically over one to 10 years. The Japanese study used 29 years of field data.

Using government data, the researchers compared coral cover on vertical breakwaters — grooved structures built to protect the shore from waves — with coral recovery on natural reefs in Naha Port, Japan, from 1989 to 2018.

A bleaching event in 1998 affected both types of substrates, but “corals on artificial structures recovered faster from [the] mass bleaching event than the natural coral reef ecosystems,” Toko Tanaya, lead author of the study and senior researcher with the Port and Airport Research Institute in Japan, told Mongabay in a phone call.

Within six years, the breakwaters recovered to near pre-bleaching levels, while “the coral cover on natural reefs barely recovered from bleaching,” the authors write. The breakwaters were dominated by fast-growing species and less diverse than natural reefs, however.

Further research is needed, but a possible explanation is that artificial surfaces are “more robust than natural reefs,” Tanaya said. When coral polyps die, the coral skeletons of natural reefs become fragile and easily broken, making it harder for new coral to grow.

“This paper is outstanding because it looks at coral settlement on breakwaters over almost 3 decades, which is very long for a study of this kind,” Bert Hoeksema an honorary professor of tropical marine biodiversity with the University of Groningen, Netherlands, who wasn’t involved with the study, told Mongabay by email.

As oceans continue to warm and sea levels rise, many countries are looking for ways to both support stressed coral and protect coastlines. Tanaya said her research is a valuable insight into how to do both at the same time.

“Our research suggests that combining natural infrastructure such as coral reefs with artificial infrastructures could be effective to promote coral regeneration, while also demonstrating high disaster prevention,” Tanaya said.

Banner image of coral recovery, courtesy of Port and Airport Research Institute.

A pair of Galápagos tortoises in their 90s recently made headlines for successfully producing offspring for the first time. The female tortoise, aptly named Mommy, at Philadelphia Zoo is now considered the oldest recorded first-time mom for the Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoise (Chelonoidis porteri), at the age of 97.

Mommy, who has been with the zoo since 1932, was paired with Abrazzo, estimated to be 96, who was transferred to Philadelphia in December 2020 from Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in South Carolina. The transfer was part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Species Survival Plan (SSP) breeding program.

After the team prepared nesting material, Mommy started laying eggs in 2023. Although the first three clutches produced eggs that weren’t viable, the 16 eggs she laid in November 2024 have so far resulted in four hatchlings, all of them female. The sex of tortoise hatchlings is influenced by temperature, so the zoo incubated eight eggs below 28° Celsius (82.4° Fahrenheit) to produce males and the other eggs above 29.5°C (85.1°F) to produce females. The team say they hope there will be more baby tortoises since eggs can take four to eight months to hatch.

Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoises are critically endangered, with only 3,400 individuals remaining. Several Galápagos tortoise species and subspecies have gone extinct. There are 13 different species of Galápagos tortoises alive today, most of them are threatened by human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, and habitat loss.

Lauren Augustine, Philadelphia Zoo’s director of herpetology and birds, said it took a lot of hard work to study the tortoises’ behavior and ensure the right conditions for Mommy to lay eggs and for the eggs to hatch. “Until now, Mommy’s genes were not represented in the AZA population, making these offspring extremely important in the protection of this species,” she said in the zoo’s statement.

Galápagos tortoise SSP coordinator and studbook keeper Ashley Ortega, from Gladys Porter Zoo in Texas, said in a statement that the species survival plan program is “thrilled to help Philadelphia Zoo welcome Mommy’s offspring.”

“This feat is even more incredible considering that Mommy is the oldest first-time producing female of her species in any U.S. zoo,” she said, adding that before Mommy laid her eggs, there were only 44 individual Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoises in all U.S. zoos.

The last of the species to hatch in an AZA zoo was in 2019, at Riverbanks Zoo.

“So these newest additions represent a new genetic lineage and some much-needed help to the species population,” Ortega said. She said they’re keen to replicate at other AZA zoos what Philadelphia Zoo accomplished, which she described as “seemingly impossible.”

The hatchlings, which currently weigh around 70-80 grams (2.5-2.8 ounces), as much as a chicken egg, will be presented to the public on April 23, coinciding with Mommy’s 93rd anniversary at the zoo.

Banner image of Mommy, the Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoise, courtesy of Philadelphia Zoo.

Studying insect-eating bats isn’t easy: they’re tiny, fly at night, and navigate using ultrasonic frequencies far above human hearing range. But experts in India have come up with a potential solution to make long-duration bat research easier: they’ve devised an automated, solar-powered instrument called BatEchoMon that continuously listens for bat calls in the surrounding landscape, and relays the data back to researchers in near-real time, reports contributor Aisiri Amin for Mongabay India.

Bat biologist Kadambari Deshpande and technologist Vedant Barje, who developed BatEchoMon last October, have installed two of the devices on private farms in the western state of Maharashtra. Their goal is to monitor insectivorous bats and understand the role they play in agro-systems. “For instance, insectivorous bats control agricultural insect pests of several crops, and thus contribute to the protection of yields from pest-driven losses,” Deshpande told Mongabay India.

To study insectivorous bats, researchers generally rely on handheld devices called bat detectors. Whenever a bat flies by, the detector’s microphone picks up the high-frequency sounds the mammals use to navigate and find food. The device then displays the calls as graphs on the detector’s screen, with each bat species having a unique call signature. But there are a few challenges: there isn’t yet a comprehensive reference resource for Indian bats’ calls as many species remain unrecorded, and sorting out bat calls from background noise, as well as analyzing the data, can be a long-drawn-out process, Amin reports.

Answering ecological questions also requires listening for bats over long periods of time, which is challenging with detectors alone. So, Deshpande and Barje configured BatEchoMon to activate automatically at sunset, when insectivorous bats begin flying for food, and record continuously for several hours. The device includes both detectors and microcomputers to record and process nearby bat calls.

“It is a system that includes bat detectors and processes data as it is being recorded, and analyses species-wise bat activity on the fly so that scientists can directly get bat activity summaries in real time,” Barje told Mongabay India. “It also generates different statistics such as which species has been most active through the night, which species was active when, and so on, providing the total number of species present in the area throughout the recording period.”

Additionally, BatEchoMon uses solar panels to charge its batteries, and manufacturing the device costs about one-third that of advanced bat detectors available in other countries, Amin reports.

However, the lack of enough training datasets still remains a hurdle. “[Other] bat researchers can help make the system more robust by contributing training data,” Deshpande said. She added that once there’s enough training data, the devices can be made more accessible for citizen scientists to monitor bats around them.

Read the full story by Aisiri Amin on Mongabay India.

Banner image of a horseshoe bat in Maharashtra by Everestsh via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Several cities across India saw temperatures top 40° Celsius, or 104° Fahrenheit, this past week, with some areas exceeding 46°C (114.8°F).

Delhi experienced a heat wave for three consecutive days, recording its warmest April night in three years, with temperatures 5-6°C (9-10.8°F) above normal for the period.

Many areas in the country’s northwest remain on yellow alert, according to the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) April 10 heat wave warning bulletin, which means the heat is tolerable but may be of concern to vulnerable populations such as the elderly, infants and those with chronic diseases.

Parts of Gujarat state were on orange alert as of April 10, as heat wave conditions prevailed in some districts, meaning an increased likelihood of heat-related illnesses. In orange alert areas, residents are advised to avoid heat exposure and to combat dehydration.

The government of Uttar Pradesh state ordered hospitals to be prepared for heat-related illnesses, while animal shelters and veterinary teams were reminded to be on alert and have enough shelter and water for animals.

In Barmer city, Rajasthan state, the maximum temperature rose to 45.6°C (114°F) on April 6, then to 46.4°C (115.5°F) on April 8, breaking decades of previous records for April. In fact, on April 8, almost 30 weather stations across the country recorded temperatures above 43°C (109.4°F), many categorized as having severe heat waves.

While a low-pressure system brought some rain on April 11, local media cited IMD saying heat-wave-like conditions will be felt in the northwestern regions of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan over the next few days.

The BBC quoted IMD chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra saying that “from April to June, most parts of north and east India, central India, and the plains of north-west India are expected to experience two-to-four more heatwave days than normal.”

While it’s usual for northern India to experience heat waves by the end of April, climate change has resulted in extreme temperatures for longer periods, the BBC reported. In 2024, after Rajasthan recorded a high of 50.5°C (123°F), more than 40,000 suspected cases of heatstroke were recorded, the BBC said.

In the same BBC report, weather forecasting company Skymet’s Mahesh Palawat was quoted as saying India is going “straight from winter to summer,” with spring getting shorter.

Despite the prolonged heat waves, Science recently reported that India is warming slower than the global average. Just why remains a mystery to scientists, who are looking into air pollution, expansion of irrigation, wind shifts and other possible “cooling” factors for the country.

With people turning to air-conditioning to cool off, India’s energy demand is projected to peak by 2035 with around 130 million to 150 million new ACs, a report said, adding that renewable energy generation is also increasing.

Banner image of a mother and a child protecting themselves from the heat during the 2024 heatwave in New Delhi. Image by Sanshey Biswas/In Old News via Flickr (CCBY2.0).

Most of what’s known about the deep-sea painted swellshark, was learned when researchers found specimens in the fish markets of Bali and Lombok, Indonesia back in the early 2000s. However, a recent survey in Timor-Leste used low-cost deep-sea cameras to observe the painted swellshark in the wild for the first time. Researchers recorded footage of the shark and recently published an article on their observations.

“Nothing is known about the behaviour of this species,” marine biologist Louw Claassens told Mongabay by email. Claassens was part of the team that deployed the National Geographic Exploration Technology Lab’s deep sea camera system off the coast of Dili, Timor-Leste and is the lead author of the article about the recent sighting.

She said the fish market sampling that led to the discovery of the painted swellshark (Cephaloscyllium pictum) offered “very little ecological information,” which is why their recent observations were informative.

“Here, we could observe this species in the wild…we can now say it does occur to depths of up to 570 meters [1870 feet],” she said. And because they found the sharks off the coast of Dili, Timor-Leste, the discovery extends the painted swellshark’s range by roughly 1,100 kilometers (3,600 miles).

The genus of swellsharks are so named for their ability to expand to twice their size by swallowing water when facing a threat. In a 2008 paper, the painted swellshark was described as having  pale, dark and greyish spots and blotches and was given its name for its “somewhat painted appearance.”

The deep-sea cameras captured footage of the species in steep rocky slopes on November 17 and 18, 2024 at depths of 570 and 536 m (1870 to 1758 ft).

“At each site, the shark returned to the camera several times, and in the second instance the female shark interacted with the bait and made several passes in front of the camera,” the researchers note.

Claassens told Mongabay that “it is difficult and expensive to study these types of deepwater sharks.” Oftentimes, research depends on fish markets or they must embark on deep-sea research that “entails big boats, large research funds and big exploration surveys.”

“Having access to these low-cost camera systems is really a game changer,” she said.

Kasie Coccaro, senior director of the National Geographic Exploration Technology Lab (NGETL), told Mongabay that NGETL supported a portion of this research with grant funding and access to specialized equipment including a deep-sea camera system made up of “low-cost, light-weight baited remote lander platforms,” allowing researchers to collect environmental data and 4K high-resolution video to depths of 6,000 m (19,685 ft).

Banner image of a painted swellshark courtesy of the National Geographic Exploration Technology Lab.