Within a forested limestone landscape of Papua New Guinea lives a shy, striking bird that’s new to science. This bird is also incredibly rare and may already be endangered, according to a recent study.

Researchers have photographed fewer than 10 individuals of the newly described hooded jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa urrissia) in about 10 years of monitoring — all within a 100-hectare (250-acre) area of Iagifu Ridge, located in the Agogo mountain range of Papua New Guinea.

Extrapolating from these figures, “we estimate that Iagifu Ridge may support some 50-100 individuals,” Iain Woxvold, study co-author from the Australian Museum Research Institute, told Mongabay by email. “However, an accurate estimate will require further research, and the actual number may well be fewer.”

Jewel-babblers are ground-dwelling birds with distinctive black masks and white throats or cheeks. Four species were known until now, all from the island of New Guinea.

Woxvold and colleagues first chanced upon the hooded jewel-babbler in 2017. They had set up camera traps to survey biodiversity on Iagifu Ridge, and among the images were those of two birds on the forest floor with distinctive coloration. “We were fairly certain it was a new taxon in 2017 … However, at that stage we were still not 100% sure that it was a new species,” Woxvold said.

More of these birds turned up during subsequent camera-trapping surveys in 2019 and later. “It was strange and wonderful to see them in those early photographs!” Woxvold said. “In 2022, we also set a video camera nearby, and were extremely lucky to film a sequence of a calling male.”

The researchers compared the birds in the images and video with museum specimens and field photographs of other jewel-babbler species. The male and female hooded jewel-babblers exhibited notably different feather colors and patterns from those of the other species, confirming them as new to science.

Conventionally, taxonomic descriptions of new-to-science species require specimens — one or more killed individuals — that are deposited in museums as a reference for future comparisons. But the hooded jewel-babbler has been described solely on the basis of camera-trap images and video.

A combination of factors “make it both acceptable and important to describe the species without a specimen,” Woxvold said.

These include the difficulty of capturing the elusive bird, he said. Its only known population on Iagifu Ridge is also tiny, and the area is subject to various threats like domestic cats and dogs, climate change impacts, and habitat fragmentation from roads and infrastructure for petroleum production facilities, the authors write.

“[G]iven available data on the species’ status and distribution, we feel that taking a whole animal specimen from the only known population would be unethical on conservation grounds,” Woxvold said. “For these reasons, we felt strongly that naming the species now is both taxonomically well-founded and important to encourage appropriate research and conservation action.”

Banner image: Newly described hooded jewel-babblers (Ptilorrhoa urrissia) from Papua New Guinea. Image courtesy of I. Woxvold/B. Gamui.

In 2025, Mongabay’s team of multimedia journalists won international journalism prizes for audio, visual and digital storytelling. The content they produced range from an immersive audio series exploring bioacoustics, to a visually rich investigation into organized crime, and a video on reviving Indigenous culture.

Mongabay strives to meet people where they are and make high-quality reporting available to as many people as possible. These awards are a recognition of the type of multimedia work that Mongabay plans to expand upon over the coming year.

Digital  

Mongabay Latam won two major awards: first place in the large outlet category of the Global Shining Light Award, and first place for digital storytelling in the Future of Media award. The winning story for both awards, “Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories,” found that 67 airstrips have been carved into the Peruvian Amazon for drug flights. The team used satellite imagery and AI to identify potential sites for these airstrips, then spent a year interviewing more than 60 sources and traveling to the region to ground-truth the findings. What emerged was a data-rich picture of the deadly toll that narcotrafficking has had on Indigenous communities and the forest. The investigation found that at least three reserves set aside for Indigenous people living in voluntary isolation have been inundated with six illegal airstrips.

Written

Mongabay’s Malavika Vyawahare was one of 12 recipients of the 2025 Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership (SEAL) award. The award is given to journalists whose “work has illuminated the urgent realities of climate change and environmental justice around the world,” the SEAL website notes. Vyawahare’s 2025 work includes stories about a Qatari-backed project to build luxury accommodation near a giant tortoise habitat in Seychelles, the dangers of PFAS “forever chemicals” in breast milk in Africa, and fires that threaten rare lemurs in Madagascar. 

Podcast

A Mongabay India podcast produced by Shreya Dasgupta, Kartik Chandramouli and Abhijit Shylanath collected three awards; First place for regional audio from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), first place for best science and medical podcast from the Podcast Publisher Awards, and first place for best produced science show from the India Audio Summit Awards. The team won for their three-part series, Wild Frequencies, which explores how researchers in India are using bioacoustics to locate, monitor and better understand the country’s wildlife.

Video

Contributors Matthew Reichel and Robyn Huang won second place for best coverage of Indigenous communities at the Indigenous Media Awards. Their short film, “Youth leaders revive Indigenous seafood harvesting heritage,” follows young Indigenous people in Canada reclaiming cultural traditions by freediving for seafood that they provide to the community. “It’s food for the soul and it’s … food to actually eat,” Brycen George, coordinator of the Ucluelet Warrior Program, told Mongabay.

Banner image: Seema Lokhandwala records elephant calls at Kaziranga National Park. Image courtesy of Vijay Bedi.

Rarely do species presumed extinct reappear with renewed hope for a better future. But researchers in Australia not only discovered a wild population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail on Australia’s Norfolk Island in 2020 — they’ve now bred the snail in captivity and recently released more than 300 individuals back into the wild, where they’re multiplying.

This translocation, according to the Australian Museum, is the first large-scale reintroduction of a snail species in Australia.

Officially, Campbell’s keeled glass-snail (Advena campbelli) is still listed as extinct on the IUCN Red List, based on a 1996 assessment. In Australia, it’s considered critically endangered.

In 2020, Isabel Hyman and colleagues from the Australian Museum, with the help of a Norfolk Island resident, confirmed there was still a small population of the snail living in a sheltered rainforest valley in Norfolk Island National Park.

To boost its survival prospects, organizations including Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, Norfolk Island National Park, Western Sydney University and the Australian Museum started collaborated on a snail-breeding program at Taronga Zoo in 2021.

The teams knew very little about the snail’s life history, diet, behavior, or what negatively impacts it, Hyman told Mongabay by email. But with “a lot of careful, painstaking work and record keeping from the husbandry team,” they began seeing progress, she said.

The zoo-bred population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail has now grown to more than 800 individuals. In June, the teams flew about 600 snails to Norfolk Island, which sits in the South Pacific, closer to New Zealand than to the Australian mainland. A month later, they released 340 of the snails, each marked with an ID label, into a part of the national park where the species was once found.

The conditions of the release area closely resemble the ones where the wild population lives, Hyman said. “None of our chosen release sites overlap with the wild population. This was intentional; in order to mitigate the risk of extinction for the species, we felt it better to establish our second population in a different area of the National Park.”

The team prepared the release area by installing rodent traps and cameras to monitor predator levels. It also has a sprinkler system, Hyman said, for use when conditions become dangerously dry for the snails.

Since the release, the team has observed several newborn snails. “We realize that it is still early days and that the population needs more time to become fully established,” Hyman said. “However, the fact that we are seeing live snails including some neonates at the site is promising. We have not seen many signs of rodent predation, which is also promising.”

Hyman added they’re planning another reintroduction in June 2026 at the same site, “to bolster the new population and give it the best possible chance of becoming established.”

Banner image: A Campbell’s keeled glass-snail with a number tag. Image courtesy of Junn Kitt Foon.

The guiding star at Mongabay isn’t pageviews or clicks; it’s meaningful impact. As 2025 draws to a close, we look back at some of the ways Mongabay’s journalism made a difference this year.

Empowering Indigenous and local communities

• A Mongabay Latam investigation found 67 illegal airstrips were cut into the Peruvian Amazon to transport drugs, resulting in deforestation and a surge in violence against local Indigenous groups. The report was republished by national news outlets, bringing broader attention to the threats against an often marginalized group.
• National media also picked up a Mongabay story about an Indigenous community protecting a biodiversity corridor in Colombia and a report about an Indigenous group in Mexico protecting mangroves from an ammonia facility.

From newsroom to classroom

• Mongabay Kids was named a media partner by the U.S.-based nonprofit Lemur Conservation Network “to create and share content about lemurs and Madagascar” every October during the World Lemur Festival.
• A French article about a great ape census in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now being used as educational material for conservation stakeholders.

Serving as evidence

• An analysis, made at the request of Mongabay, found two carbon credit projects in the Brazilian Amazon are linked to illegal timber laundering. The Brazilian federal police have since indicted the people identified in Mongabay’s reporting.
• Following an investigation into the Brazilian government’s practice of purchasing shark meat for public institutions including schools and hospitals, members of Brazil’s Congress said they would call for a parliamentary hearing and Brazil’s National Environmental Council recommended a government ban on shark fin exports. The report was also cited as part of a class-action civil suit to ban federal public institutions from issuing tenders to purchase shark meat.
• Brazilian authorities used Mongabay’s award-winning coverage of illegal cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon to launch an operation to remove invaders from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory. The reporting will also be used in a court case against loggers accused of killing a local Indigenous leader.
• A recent Mongabay investigation in collaboration with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) found a rise in tourist shops in Laos illegally selling wildlife products including rhino horn, elephant ivory and pangolin scales. Since the report, WWF notified GI-TOC it had begun warning visitors about the consequences of purchasing illegal wildlife products.

Community engagement

Of the more than 870 impacts that Mongabay logged in 2025, many spurred community engagement and support.

• For example, Mongabay’s podcast interviews with authors of environment books inspired some people to start community book clubs.
• Another story resulted in additional funding for marine protected areas in Ghana.

These positive outcomes are what motivate our journalism. As Mongabay CEO and founder Rhett Butler puts it, “When credible information circulates freely, it holds powerful interests accountable, equips decision-makers with evidence, and gives frontline communities the tools to defend their rights and ecosystems.”

Banner image of a rainbow over a forest in Sabah, Malaysia, by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are projected to reach a record 38.1 billion metric tons in 2025, an increase of 1.1% from 2024, according to the 2025 Global Carbon Budget.

The report, now in its 20th edition, was released Nov. 13 as a preprint. It compiles national energy and emissions data from 21 countries, with contributions from more than 100 researchers. The projections for 2025 are based on preliminary data and modeling.

Researchers predict that emissions rose in several of the world’s largest economies. U.S. emissions were expected to have increased by 1.9%, India’s by 1.4% and China’s by 0.4%. Emissions from international aviation were a standout, with a projected rise of 6.8%.

“With CO2 emissions still increasing, keeping global warming below 1.5°C [2.7°F] is no longer plausible,” Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute who led the study, said in a statement.

The global atmospheric CO₂ concentration increased from 317 parts per million (ppm) in 1960 to a projected 425.7 ppm in 2025. About 8% of this increase is linked to climate change weakening the ability of land and ocean ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide.

Renewable energy made huge strides in 2025, but not enough to keep pace with the increase in overall emissions, according to data by Ember Energy.

Solar and wind supplied more than 17% of global electricity in 2025, largely thanks to China’s solar power industry, which now provides more than half of the world’s solar panels. African countries are a large and growing market for Chinese solar panels, according to Ember’s end-of-year synthesis.

Renewable energy continues to expand rapidly, but not fast enough for a total reduction in fossil fuels. Emissions from burning oil are projected to rise by 1% in 2025, while gas emissions are set to increase by 1.3%, and coal by 0.8%.

Fossil fuel-related financing slowed down in 2022 and 2023. But in 2024, banks embraced fossil fuel projects once again, increasing funding by more than 20% to a total of $162.5 billion, Mongabay’s John Cannon reported.

In the decade before the 2015 Paris Agreement, global CO2 emissions were up roughly 18.4%, while in the decade since they’ve increased by 1.2%, according to the U.K.-based Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). Before the Paris agreement, the world was heading for 4°C (7.2°F) of warming above the pre-industrial average by the year 2100; today, the projection is 2.6°C (4.68 °F).

“This shift reflects an extraordinary surge in clean energy deployment, stronger policy frameworks and the mainstreaming of net zero as a common global goal to tackle climate change,” ECIU wrote in its report, published in October. “More progress is still needed, but progress there has been.”

Banner image: An oil refinery in Slovakia. Image by Mariano Mantel via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Some species officially bid us farewell this year.

They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the global authority on species’ conservation status.

We may never see another individual of these species ever again. Or will we?

Slender-billed curlew

This grayish-brown migratory waterbird, known to breed in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe, and migrate to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, long evaded detection.

The last known photo of the slender-billed curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) was taken in February 1995 on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. Since then, researchers suspected it had gone extinct, but only recently did assessments confirm this.

“We arguably spent too much time watching the bird’s decline and not enough actually trying to fix things,” Geoff Hilton, conservation scientist at U.K.-based charity Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, previously told Mongabay. 

Christmas Island shrew

The Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura) was once widespread on Australia’s Christmas Island.

But in the 20^th century, there were just four confirmed records of this tiny mammal: two in 1958, one in 1984, and the last in 1985. The species’ latest conservation assessment concludes it has gone extinct.

Researchers say a blood-borne parasite transmitted by accidentally introduced black rats, which wiped out two of the island’s endemic rat species, may have also helped decimate populations of the Christmas Island shrew.

Australian mammals

Three Australian species of bandicoots — the marl (Perameles myosuros), southeastern striped bandicoot (Perameles notina) and Nullarbor barred bandicoot (Perameles papillon) — were also declared extinct on the IUCN Red List this year. All three species were last assessed in 2022.

Bandicoots are small, mostly nocturnal, insect-eating mammals found in Australia, New Guinea and nearby islands.

All three now-extinct species were likely wiped out by the loss of habitat and the spread of feral cats, researchers say.

The last known marl specimen was collected in 1907, and researchers suspect the species was likely extinct by 1910. The southeastern striped bandicoot likely went extinct by the late 1800s, while the last known record of the Nullarbor barred bandicoot was from the 1920s.

Plants

Diospyros angulata, a large tree native to the island country of Mauritius, is only known from two herbarium collections made in 1839 and 1851. Subsequent surveys didn’t reveal any individuals either in the wild or in cultivation. Researchers say it likely went extinct by 1981.

Delissea sinuata, a plant known only from the Waianae Mountains on the island of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, was last observed in 1937, researchers say.

Mollusks

A species of cone snail, Conus lugubris, was once abundant in a small part of the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa. But by the turn of the 20^th century, it likely went extinct as much of its habitat was degraded by coastal development, researchers say. It was last observed in 1987.

Banner image: Illustration of a slender-billed curlew by Elizabeth Gould & Edward Lear via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).