In 2017, when Vincent Deblauwe joined the Congo Basin Institute in Cameroon to study African ebony, he soon realized the fate of the tree lay with another species. Around campfires and during treks, the Indigenous Baka people told him that the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) was key to the survival of African ebony (Diospyros crassiflora).

His fieldwork confirmed their knowledge. In patches of forest where elephants had been wiped out, ebony saplings were scarce. Poaching, driven by the ivory trade in China and Southeast Asia as well as in the West, has devastated elephant populations, with numbers down by 86% in three decades. The long-term implications for forests remained obscure until now, reports Spoorthy Raman.

Deblauwe and colleagues combined Indigenous insights with spatial, genetic and experimental data, publishing their findings in Science Advances. Elephants consume ebony fruits and, by excreting the seeds in dung, shield them from rodents and herbivores. Without elephants, the fruits rot beneath the mother tree. In forests lacking the animals, ebony saplings fell by 68%.

“Our findings show that forest elephants preferentially consume ebony fruits and play a crucial role in seed dispersal,” said study co-author Thomas Smith, founder of the Congo Basin Institute.

Stephen Blake, an ecologist at Saint Louis University in the U.S., called the work a rare demonstration of how tree populations collapse with the loss of their seed dispersers.

The implications extend well beyond ebony. Up to 90% of rainforest tree species rely on animals to spread their seeds. Elephants favor slow-growing, dense-wooded species that store more carbon, making them inadvertent architects of the forest. “Their ecosystem processes are vanishing with them,” Blake warned.

Today, elephants occupy just a third of ebony’s historical range. Their decline reduces not only the genetic diversity of ebony but the resilience of forests themselves. As Smith put it, “We are really on the precipice of extinction of forest elephants and the extinction of those ecological processes that regenerate forests.”

Deblauwe notes that the true extent of the damage may only become clear a century from now, when the absence of both elephants and the trees they once carried across the landscape will be undeniable.

Banner image of a forest elephant in Gabon, by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Scientists studying the world’s largest river turtles, a South American species that grows to a length of nearly a meter, or 3 feet, have found the largest nesting aggregation ever recorded.

Using drones to conduct a population survey in the western Brazilian Amazon, researchers recorded a nesting area of the endangered giant South American river turtle (Podocnemis expansa) with roughly 41,000 adult female turtles. The nesting site is on the largest sandbank of the Guaporé River, which forms part of the border between Brazil and Bolivia.

“We knew it was an important area, but we didn’t have the full picture of the size,” Camila Ferrara, one of the study co-authors and a turtle specialist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Mongabay by phone.

Ferrara said the survey was an undercount of the full region’s turtle population since five other smaller nearby beaches were not included, nor were young or male turtles counted.

The turtle population in the area has been growing since at least 2014, a win that Ferrara attributes to the work of the Brazilian government’s 40-year-old Amazon River Turtle conservation program in collaboration with local communities.

For this study, scientists tested three different methods of counting turtles. Using only on-the-ground counting, they logged around 16,000 turtles. And using only drones, the scientists counted nearly 79,000, with some turtles likely double- or triple-counted as they moved through the sand.

The scientists say a third approach they developed produced a more accurate estimate of 41,000. They collected data using both on-the-ground tracking, marking some of the turtles to track movement, and zig-zag drone surveys. They then processed the data with mathematical models that account for the movement of turtles.

The results of the study are useful for scientists who track fluctuations in turtle populations, allowing them to understand if threats are mounting or if conservation efforts are working.

“These populations are highly threatened by illegal commerce,” Ferrara said, adding that two recent police operations in Brazil’s Amazonas state detained wildlife traffickers with more than 450 turtles in August 2025. “There is a huge difference between removing one or two turtles from the river to eat, and the illegal commerce.”

The decline of river turtle populations, she added, threatens food security for riverine communities. Turtle meat has been an important part of local diets for thousands of years. A 2015 archaeological study in the region found that turtle meat was more prominent in Amazonian diets 7,000 years ago than mammals, coming second only to fish.

“We know that if we don’t do something, these animals will disappear because in many areas their numbers are already diminishing,” Ferrara added.

Banner image: Giant South American river turtles nesting on a sandbank in the Amazon’s Guaporé River. Image courtesy of Omar Torrico/Wildlife Conservation Society.

Experimental climate interventions in the world’s oceans are moving ahead in a regulatory vacuum, raising concerns among scientists about potential risks, Mongabay staff writer Edward Carver reported.

The projects, known as marine-climate interventions, aim to tackle global warming or help people and ocean life adapt to climate change. But a group of 24 researchers warned in a recent paper that these interventions risk causing unintended ecological harm and social conflict unless stronger rules are introduced at all levels of governance.

Raking in millions of dollars in investments, such interventions include farming large amounts of seaweed to sequester carbon; engineering corals with human-assisted evolution; fertilizing seawater with iron to stimulate plankton growth; and modifying clouds to reflect away more sunlight.

“As a group of interdisciplinary marine and climate scientists, we all started thinking, ‘hang on, what’s going on here?’” lead author Tiffany Morrison, a professor of geography at the University of Melbourne, Australia, told Carver. “This is actually problematic. The field is moving so fast.”

Demand for fast, large-scale climate solutions is rising, but many companies are skipping key steps such as consulting local communities and weighing long-term impacts, the paper’s authors say.

For example, a U.K. company that sells carbon credits added a magnesium-hydroxide slurry to treated wastewater flowing into St. Ives Bay in Cornwall. The intervention was expected to draw more carbon out of the atmosphere. The company, Planetary Tech, had regulatory approval, but it only consulted with the public after carrying out the intervention.

“In effect the company was gaining the benefits, through selling the carbon, while any unforeseen risks were borne by the locals — a new form of extractivism,” Neil Adger, one of the study co-authors and a geographer at the University of Exeter, U.K., told Mongabay in an email

The company later decided not to pursue the project “due to commercial infeasibility,” it said in a statement shared with Mongabay.

The study authors write that such projects are often narrow in focus and may solve one problem while causing other, larger consequences.

“What sort of harm are you willing to accept to the marine environment to have some temporary influence on climate change?” Kristina Gjerde, a senior high seas adviser to the Global Ocean Team at the IUCN, the global nature conservation authority, told Mongabay. She wasn’t involved with the study.

“This is exactly the type of debate that is too big for any commercial interest or even a scientific research interest,” Gjerde added, advocating for a global solution to a planetary problem.

Read the full story by Edward Carver here.

Banner image: Growing seaweed or kelp at scale is one of the proposed marine-climate interventions. Image courtesy of Nuno Vasco Rodrigues/Climate Visuals Countdown (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

In 2019, researchers surveying the seafloor off the coast of California came upon three unusual species of small fishes with large heads: one with bumpy pink skin, and the other two both black in color.

The team collected the fish using underwater research vehicles and later analyzed their DNA and bodies. Their analysis showed that all three are new-to-science species of snailfishes, a group known for their big heads, gelatinous bodies covered in loose skin, and narrow tails.

Snailfishes belong to the family Liparidae and are named for the ability of some shallow-water species to attach to rocks using suction cups on their bellies and curl up like snails. Many snailfishes also inhabit the deep ocean, where they might use their suction discs to grip the seafloor or other animals like deep-sea crabs.

The three newly described species were all found at the dark depths of 3,268-4,119 meters (10,722-13,514 feet) of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

One of these species is the bumpy snailfish (Careproctus colliculi), with a pinkish skin, rounded head, big eyes and an “unusual bumpy skin texture.” It was found close to the seafloor less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) offshore from Monterey Bay, California.

The other two species, both black, were collected on the same dive by a research submersible, nearly 300 km (190 mi) off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. One is the dark snailfish (Careproctus yanceyi), which has a rounded head and horizontal mouth. The authors write they named it to honor marine biologist Paul Yancey’s “contributions to the field of deep-sea biology and fish physiology.”

The other is the sleek snailfish (Paraliparis em), with a long, laterally compressed dark body and a slightly oblique mouth. It lacks a suction disk otherwise typical of snailfishes. This species was named for the place where it was collected: Station M, a long-term deep-sea observatory operated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Scientists have regularly used the underwater station to study deep-sea communities and ocean conditions.

“The deep sea is home to an incredible diversity of organisms and a truly beautiful array of adaptations,” Mackenzie Gerringer, study lead author and a marine biologist at the State University of New York at Geneseo, said in a statement. “Our discovery of not one, but three, new species of snailfishes is a reminder of how much we have yet to learn about life on Earth and of the power of curiosity and exploration.”

Johanna Weston, a deep ocean researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who wasn’t involved in the study, told The New York Times that while the deep sea might seem scary, there are “gregarious” animals living down there — snailfishes, which come in “beautiful colors” and “have a lovely little smile on their faces,” are a case in point.

Banner image: The newly described pink bumpy snailfish. Image courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).

WUHAN, China (AP) — A dozen sleek grey Yangtze finless porpoises glide inside a vast pool at the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan as scientists find ways to protect and breed the rare mammals in China’s longest river.

The Yangtze River is one of the busiest inland waterways in the world with 16 major ports. Cargo shipping volume along the river topped 4 billion metric tons (4.4 billion U.S. tons) in 2024, according to state media.

The finless porpoise has become a barometer of the river’s health. The population of the critically endangered species plunged from over 2,500 in the 1990s to just 1,012 in 2017 due to pollution, boat traffic and illegal fishing that depleted food supplies, researchers said.

The change alarmed the scientific community, including veteran researcher Wang Ding. He led an international team on a 2006 search for Baiji dolphins, another species that was nearing extinction. Despite a nine-day search, not a single dolphin was found and the Baiji was declared functionally extinct. The last captive Baiji dolphin hangs at a museum along with other rare aquatic species.

“We feared that if this animal cannot survive in the Yangtze, the other species will, like dominoes, disappear one by one from the river,” Wang said.

Conservation efforts sprung into place. The Yangtze River Protection Law was enacted in 2021, banning fishing for 10 years, relocating factories and prohibiting sewage and chemical runoffs into the river. Today, the population of Yangtze finless porpoises is edging upward at around 1,300.

To protect the Chinese sturgeon, also a critically endangered species, scientists began artificially breeding and releasing thousands of the fish into the Yangtze with the hope of restoring the wild population.

Scientists have called for additional measures to regulate shipping and for an extension of the 10-year fishing ban.

He taught mathematics in a small state school on Flores and organized the parish youth group on weekends. Numbers ordered his days; community gave them purpose. In recent years, he also helped mobilize opposition to plans to tap the island’s restless geology for power.

On Sept. 5, 2025, Vian Ruma was found dead, hanging from a rafter inside a bamboo hut off the road to Maunori, reports Hans Nicholas Jong. He was 30.

Little about those final hours is settled. His family says the cord at his neck was a shoelace and that his feet touched the floor, details they believe are inconsistent with death by hanging. Photos and reports from the scene described blood on the hut’s boards, his motorcycle parked outside, his phone nearby. Police in Nagekeo say they are investigating and have not determined a cause. Friends and colleagues, shocked, have asked for speed and transparency.

The dispute that drew him into public life is larger than one project. In 2017, the government designated Flores a “geothermal island,” citing nearly 1,000 megawatts of potential along its chain of active volcanoes. For many in Nagekeo, Ngada, and Manggarai, the promise of clean energy comes entangled with risk. A failed effort in Ngada produced mud eruptions that ruined farmland. Survey crews and drilling plans in Poco Leok deepened social rifts. Church leaders, including the Archdiocese of Ende, have taken a critical line. Vian, a local organizer with Catholic Youth and a member of a climate-focused youth coalition, became one of the villagers who asked for a different path.

He preferred steady work to slogans. Colleagues remembered a patient teacher who helped students prepare for exams, then rode his Honda home to Wio before church meetings. The week he died, he had taken leave to serve as master of ceremonies at a Catholic youth gathering.

“This week we had planned another action to continue voicing opposition to the geothermal project. Vian was one of the driving forces,” said his friend Eda Tukan. “Sadly, he is no longer with us.”

His death comes in a harsher season for Indonesian environmental defenders, with threats and criminal cases rising, and street protests met by force. Lawmakers have urged restraint.

“There must be no intimidation, violence, or criminalization of critical voices from communities regarding strategic projects,” said lawmaker Daniel Johan.

For those who knew him, the demand is simpler. Find out what happened, and let the facts, properly gathered and made public, do their work.

Death of activist critical of geothermal project raises alarm in Indonesia