When a 5.2-magnitude earthquake shook the U.S. city of San Diego on April 14, a video showing five African elephants huddling together in the middle of their enclosure at San Diego Zoo Safari Park made headlines.

It showed three older female elephants, Ndlula, Umngani and Khosi, moving quickly to protect 7-year-old calves Zuli and Mkhaya.

“When an elephant senses danger, the herds’ instinct is to protect their youngest and the herd as a whole, so adult elephants join together and circle the calves, facing outward to confront any potential predators,” Mindy Albright, curator of mammals at San Diego Zoo Safari Park, told Mongabay by email.

Albright said that, interestingly, male calf Zuli joined the adults in the outer circle while female calf Mkhaya remained inside the circle. “Khosi, who is 18, can be seen reaching her trunk over to touch Zuli — as if, from a human perspective, to check on him. Zuli’s role in the herd will change over time as he grows into an adult bull elephant,” Albright said.

In about four minutes after the earthquake, the herd resumed foraging. During an aftershock, they formed a circle again, but dispersed more quickly this time, possibly learning the rumbles weren’t a threat, Albright said.

Elephant biologist Joyce Poole, scientific director of conservation NGO ElephantVoices, told Mongabay by email the circling behavior is scientifically called “bunching,” where elephants cluster together in a tight defensive circle facing outward.

“In this position they are best able to face a threat — with their more vulnerable backsides (and young) protected in the center and their more formidable side facing outward toward any potential danger,” she said.

Poole noted that in the video, the elephants’ heads were raised high and their ears were spread “to appear larger and also to listen for any sounds associated with the threat.” The gesture of touching one another was a “reassuring behavior.”

The elephants likely bunched during the earthquake because they “have receptors in their feet and the tip of their trunk that are extremely sensitive to vibrations,” Poole said.

She added she’s twice been with elephants during an earthquake and seen similar responses. “In the wild they picked up on the tremors several seconds before I did and ran together to form a bunch or defensive circle in the same way they did at the zoo.”

In general, elephants bunch whenever they feel vulnerable, and the behavior is “very common” in the wild, Poole said. The intense human and media interest in the video could be because captive elephants are usually less animated than wild ones, she added.

“In the wild elephants have plenty to animate them — common events that bring them joy, great excitement, annoyance — and yes, fear. Sadly, captive elephants don’t really get much of a chance to be elephants,” Poole said.

Banner image of the San Diego Zoo Safari Park elephants in Escondido, California, courtesy of San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

There was a time when an ecologist’s education was not complete without the mud of a marsh on their boots or the scent of damp earth after a rainforest downpour. Increasingly, however, the discipline is moving indoors. A paper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution by Masashi Soga and Kevin J. Gaston highlights a disconcerting trend: the decline of fieldwork in ecological research and education.

The concept of the “extinction of experience” has been used to describe the dwindling human connection with nature, often applied to the general public. But ecologists themselves are not immune. Across universities and research institutions, field-based studies are in retreat, giving way to remote-sensing technologies, laboratory analysis, and large-scale data synthesis. The consequences of this shift, while not yet fully understood, could be far-reaching.

The decline is driven by a confluence of factors. Financial constraints and time pressures increasingly deter lengthy field excursions, particularly for researchers juggling academic careers with family responsibilities. Institutions, particularly those in urban settings, struggle to provide students with access to wild environments. Meanwhile, concerns over carbon footprints discourage long-distance field campaigns. The rise of sophisticated ecological monitoring tools — unmanned aerial vehicles, camera traps, and environmental DNA sampling — further reduces the perceived necessity of direct observation.

These shifts are not without their advantages. Remote monitoring technologies allow for noninvasive, large-scale data collection, often at a fraction of the cost and effort of traditional fieldwork. The ability to analyze vast data sets has enriched ecological research, uncovering patterns that might have been imperceptible through site-specific studies. Moreover, a reduction in helicopter science, where researchers from wealthier nations conduct studies in developing countries with minimal local collaboration, addresses long-standing ethical concerns.

Yet something is lost when ecology becomes detached from the environments it seeks to understand. Scientific progress in fields such as behavioral ecology and biodiversity monitoring relies on direct, immersive study. Without field experience, researchers risk misinterpreting data or missing subtle ecological interactions. A decline in fieldwork also weakens the transmission of ecological knowledge to students, many of whom develop their passion for conservation through firsthand encounters with nature.

As Soga and Gaston suggest, balance is needed. Modeling and data analysis are essential tools, but they cannot fully replace fieldwork’s role in ecological discovery and education. If the discipline moves too far from the ecosystems it seeks to protect, it may lose something more fundamental than data: Its connection to the natural world itself.

Banner image of canopy platform in Amacayacu National Park, Colombia, by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Torricelli Mountains, a tiny mountain range in northern Papua New Guinea, is estimated to host roughly 4% of the world’s known species, many found nowhere else on Earth, Mongabay’s John Cannon reported in March.

“I mean, for 0.003% of the world’s land area — it’s a ‘wow’ factor for me,” Jim Thomas, CEO of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance (TCA), told Cannon. “I’m so lucky to be working here.”

Tim Flannery of the Australian Museum in Sydney told Mongabay that PNG’s Torricelli Mountains and its immensely rich biodiversity emerged as a result of slow geological processes.

“It was only that slow development of understanding of the geological history of [the Torricelli Mountains] that we started to make sense of this exceptional richness that we were discovering up there,” Flannery told Mongabay.

Flannery himself has described four species of tree kangaroos while surveying the island of New Guinea. Three of them coexist on the Torricelli Mountains. But before Thomas and his wife Jean started TCA in 2003, two of those species, the tenkile (Dendrolagus scottae) and the weimang (D. pulcherrimus), had been hunted to near extinction.

Cannon writes that experts like Flannery and Jane Goodall credit the TCA for bringing education, health services and economic opportunities to the communities in the Torricellis, while reducing hunting through an agreed-upon hunting moratorium. Although both the tenkile and weimang are still listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, TCA’s surveys show the marsupials’ populations are growing.

However, the unique landscape is facing increasing threats due to logging and road construction, Cannon writes.

TCA had filed a proposal to establish the Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area, but it hasn’t seen any government action since 2008, likely because of the political influence of the logging industry, Thomas told Mongabay in a 2022 podcast.

Satellite data from Global Forest Watch show that from 2012-2023, the mountain range lost 2% of primary forest cover. And in 2024, logging road expansion accelerated, Cannon found.

Using IUCN data, University of Cambridge postdoctoral research associate Alison Eyres at Mongabay’s request used a new risk-of-extinction tool to find that the Torricelli Mountains would rank in the top 1% of areas with the most species extinctions over the next 100 years under the worst-case scenario of all of the forests being razed.

Although a complete wipeout is highly unlikely, Cannon reported that it highlights the species susceptible to extinction. This includes the norther glider (Petaurus abidi), which hasn’t been seen since 2007, and several amphibians living at higher elevations. Many species remain listed as data deficient by the IUCN, and many more await discovery.

To expand surveys of the region’s biodiversity, the TCA has now equipped local women with mobile phones, so they can take photos of wildlife they come across.

Read the full article here.

Banner image of a weimang (Dendrolagus pulcherrimus) in Lumi, Papua New Guinea, by John Cannon/Mongabay.

Brazil designated a refuge twice the size of Manhattan near the Amazonian city of Manaus in June 2024 to protect the pied tamarin, South America’s most endangered monkey.

But almost one year later, the 15,000-hectare (37,000-acre) reserve is still being implemented institutionally, and conservationists say it falls short of what the species needs to survive.

Pied tamarins (Saguinus bicolor) live exclusively in the forests surrounding Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state and home to 2.2 million people. Their range spans just 800,000 hectares (about 2 million acres), much of it now fragmented by roads, farmland and urban sprawl into isolated forest patches.

“They’re a very unlucky species for having happened to choose Manaus,” Diogo Lagroteria, head of the pied tamarin conservation committee at Brazil’s conservation agency, ICMBio, told Mongabay by phone. “The pied tamarin has a very small range that sits in the eye of the storm of the Amazon.”

The recently decreed Pied Tamarin Wildlife Refuge joins five other forested areas, including a military training ground and the Rio Urubu Indigenous Territory, to become the sixth patch of standing forest within the monkey’s range. Conservationists say it’s a step in the right direction, but without more protected forest corridors connecting these forest fragments, the risk of a population collapse caused by loss of habitat, inbreeding and roadkill remains high.

“When we created this refuge, we filled a gap in the species’ range where there was no protection at all,” Lagroteria said. “But the refuge alone won’t guarantee the species’ survival.”

Pied tamarins are smaller than a red squirrel, at 21-28 centimeters (8-11 inches), with a hairless black face, fluffy white upper body, and pointy ears. They’re known to be feisty and confrontational.

“These tamarins will lift themselves up and start shouting right at you in tamarin,” Dom Wormell, director of the U.K.-based Tamarin Trust, told Mongabay by phone. “They’re always talking, with 35 to 40 different calls. They’re highly intelligent animals.”

The pied tamarin became the mascot of Manaus in 2005, and efforts to raise awareness of its plight have been in the works for decades. However, challenges remain for engaging communities near the wildlife refuge.

“Conversations with local communities are still in the early stages. We’ve had some field visits and held one public hearing so far,” Lagroteria said. “We want the residents to be involved and help us preserve the area. But some people invaded land in recent years and are trying to legalize their land claims.”

Lagroteria added the goal is to ensure the refuge benefits both local populations and pied tamarins. Early efforts include installing wildlife bridges over roads to prevent tamarin roadkill deaths, and planting native fruit trees that both feed the animals and generate income for nearby families.

Banner image: The pied tamarin (Saguinus bicolor) is one of the world’s most endangered monkeys. Image courtesy of Diogo Lagroteria.

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation allowing commercial fishing in Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (PIH), a massive marine protected area home to threatened fish, sea turtles and marine mammals. The proclamation says U.S.-flagged vessels may now fish within 50-200 nautical miles (90-370 kilometers) inside PIH’s boundaries.

While the proclamation and factsheet published by the White House refer to the protected area as Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM), it was recently renamed PIH.

PIH was established in 2009 by then-president George W. Bush and expanded under his successor, Barack Obama, in 2014 to cover about 1.27 million square kilometers (490,000 square miles), mostly around uninhabited U.S.-controlled islands and atolls. Industrial fishing was until now banned in PIH.

PIH Coalition, a Hawai‘i-based advocacy group that includes scientists, fishers and Indigenous leaders, told Mongabay in an emailed statement that allowing industrial fishing “threatens to reverse decades of progress that have reduced overfishing and exploitation of one of the planet’s last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems and a place of cultural significance for Pacific Islanders.”

The proclamation says banning commercial fishing has been detrimental for U.S. fishers, who have had to fish farther away and compete against poorly regulated foreign fleets.

In January, Amata Radewagen, a congresswoman representing American Samoa, urged the Trump administration to open most of PIH to commercial tuna fishing to challenge “Chinese fishing dominance.” In an April 17 statement, Radewagen said “the American fleet is part of the solution, not the problem.”

Fisheries expert and PIH Coalition member Rick Gaffney told Mongabay that the proclamation, and the president, “seem to be oblivious to the fact” that most U.S.-flagged vessels in the Pacific have only a single U.S. citizen: “[T]he rest of the crew are foreign nationals from impoverished countries being paid pitifully low wages, working in harsh, often dangerous conditions.”

Additionally, the proclamation notes that existing laws like the Endangered Species Act are enough to protect the area’s natural resources. But Gaffney said these don’t provide the same protections as the PIH closures. “And many of them appear to be on the administration’s list of measures destined for the ‘wood chipper,’ along with the agencies that enforce them.”

Trump’s proclamation also notes that PIH doesn’t safeguard fish populations like tuna against overfishing as they’re migratory in nature. However, Robert Richmond, a marine conservation biologist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, previously told Mongabay that PIH’s location, size and diverse features make it ideal for migratory fish to recover, and an investment for the future.

Solomon Kahoʻohalahala, a native Hawaiian elder and PIH Coalition chair, said, “Opening this sacred place for exploitation is short-sighted and does not consider current or future generations of Pacific People who rely on a healthy ocean, and know this special ocean space as our ancestral home.”

Banner image: fish in the Palmyra Atoll, courtesy of Bryce Groark.

Resilience means getting through something — tough, messy, with losses, but surviving. So said Andrew Whitworth, executive director of Osa Conservation in Costa Rica, summing up a growing shift in conservation thinking.

As the planet hurtles toward a future 3-5° Celsius (5.4-9° Fahrenheit) warmer by 2075, holding the line is no longer enough. The goal now is to help nature endure what’s coming, reports Jeremy Hance in a feature published on Mongabay News.

Gone is the illusion that ecosystems can be preserved in their historical state. Climate change has entered the frame as a dominant ecological force, and the conservation toolbox is being reshaped in response. Size, structure and connectivity are now guiding principles.

“Large, connected, well-managed ecological systems” are key for climate resilience, Jean Labuschagne of NGO African Parks told Hance.

Big landscapes offer species room to move — across distances, elevations and seasons — when crisis strikes.

In the Peruvian Amazon, Manu National Park provides a case in point. Spanning from lowland rainforest to high Andes, it offers a natural staircase for species fleeing rising heat.

“Those are the climate lifeboats,” Whitworth said. But most tropical forests aren’t connected enough to serve this function. A 2019 analysis found that 62% of tropical forests lack the linkages species will need.

Rewilding, once the domain of romantics, is now strategic. In Europe, bison, wild horses and cattle are being restored to shape fire-resistant, biodiverse landscapes. In Malawi, reintroducing lions and wild dogs has brought back vultures, closing vital ecological loops. These species are not just symbols — they’re engineers of resilience.

Large, connected landscapes are vital, but so is the quality of management, Labuschagne said. She emphasized that conservation areas must be co-managed with local people. From Nicaragua to the Central African Republic, communities are central to land-use decisions, habitat restoration, and long-term viability.

“Local people are the ones who actually have the on-the-ground knowledge,” said Annamaria Lehoczky of the NGO Fauna & Flora International.

The 30×30 initiative, meant to conserve 30% of Earth’s land and seas by 2030, may offer the scaffolding for a global response. But fragmentation persists. Conservation lacks the cohesion of industries like oil or agriculture, lamented Christopher Jordan, Latin America director of the nonprofit Re:wild: “There’s never been an entity that tries to be a unifier.”

In the end, resilience is about realism. The African oystercatcher nesting ever closer to human homes in South Africa is not just a bird in retreat — it’s a signal.

“We must learn to manage for change,” said Nik Sekhran, chief conservation officer at WWF.

The future will be hotter, drier and more chaotic. Whether nature can survive it may depend on how well we prepare for it now.

Read “How is conservation preparing for a much hotter world? Experts share” by Jeremy Hance here.

Banner image: Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.