A eucalyptus boom in Brazil’s biodiverse Cerrado savanna is drying up land and water springs, making subsistence farming more difficult, local authorities and farmers tell Mongabay.

Adilso Cruz, a 46-year-old rancher from the Alecrim settlement in Mato Grosso do Sul state, said the water shortages began around 2013, coinciding with the growth of eucalyptus plantations in the region, and have gotten worse since.

“Streams that used to run all year started flowing less, drying up, and then taking a long time to fill again,” Cruz told Mongabay by phone. “Grass is suffering because water is disappearing from the topsoil.

”I had 70 head of cattle. Now I have 42, and I’ll need to sell more,” he added. As farms sold their land to eucalyptus plantations, they also sold off their herds, causing cow prices to plummet. “I estimate about a 45% drop in income,” Cruz said.

A study led by Valticinez Santiago, the deputy environment secretary of Selvíria, a eucalyptus-heavy municipality, found that springs located 50 meters (164 feet) from plantations, the legal minimum, had either dried up or were severely degraded. Santiago told Mongabay that they used satellite imagery to map out 400 springs surrounded by eucalyptus farms and now recommend expanding the buffer to 500 m (1,640 ft) to better protect water sources.

The expanse of eucalyptus farms in Mato Grosso do Sul state has increased fourfold in 15 years, from just over 375,000 hectares (741,000 acres) in 2010 to 1.6 million hectares (3.95 million acres) in May 2025.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a law in May 2024 that eliminates the need for environmental licenses for eucalyptus. In practice, Santiago told Mongabay, authorities can no longer access private land to evaluate environmental impacts without a warrant, which is hard to obtain without on-site evidence.

Roughly 90% of the farms are owned by large investment banks.  

Corporations including Apple, Meta and Microsoft have invested millions in eucalyptus to offset their carbon emissions. However, critics say eucalyptus is not effective at sequestering carbon, as the trees are harvested every six years and turned into pulp for cardboard and toilet paper, meaning any carbon they’ve stored is easily re-released into the atmosphere.

Cruz said about half the families have already left his settlement. Those remaining are struggling to survive and often take extra work with the eucalyptus companies.

“A lot of people here end up providing labor to the very people who are taking away their ability to produce food and have financial freedom,” Cruz said. “This land was something we fought for … It was a dream. But many are seeing that dream fall apart and feel forced to resign themselves to it.”

Banner image: Aerial view of eucalyptus logs. Image courtesy of Tamás Bodolay/Repórter Brasil.

In 2008, the United Nations recognized June 8 as World Oceans Day to spotlight the rising vulnerabilities facing the oceans that cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface.

Seventeen years later, average ocean temperatures have never been higher. Heat stress has hit 84% of the world’s coral reefs. In places as far as Antarctica, whales are competing with fishing boats for krill, and in the deepest parts of ocean floor, steps toward mining threaten deep-sea creatures we do not yet know.

At the same time, scientists are uncovering more about marine life than ever before, from new species in Chile’s deep trenches to insights into the behavior of marine animals that may help shape future conservation efforts.

On World Oceans Day 2025, we present two discoveries from the past year about life in our oceans:

Deep-sea predator identified in Chile’s Atacama Trench

In November 2024, scientists identified a large and active predatory crustacean at a depth nearing 8,000 meters (26,200 feet) in the Atacama Trench off Chile’s coast.

The Dulcibella camanchaca is considered huge for the nutrient-poor hadal zone in the deep sea, growing up to 4 centimeters (1.6 inches). Robotic landers that were adapted to withstand pressure 800 times greater than at sea level successfully captured four individuals of the newly identified species.

“DNA and morphological data suggest this is also a new genus, highlighting the Atacama Trench as an endemic hotspot,” Johanna Weston, a biologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told Akhyari Hananto, a journalist with Mongabay Indonesia. “The discovery … underscores this uniqueness, indicating an evolutionary lineage found only in this trench.”

Whales sing more when there is more food

In a six-year study off California’s coast, scientists discovered that blue (Balaenoptera musculus), humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) and fin whales (B. physalus) sing more when food is abundant, and that humpback whales may even be able to understand when a blue whale is announcing a krill swarm through song.

“This idea that information about the ecosystem can travel between species is very realistic,” John Ryan, an oceanographer with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, told Mongabay Newscast host Mike DiGirolamo. “These animals use the same frequency range … so that information should be available to their senses.”

The researchers also found that whales sang significantly less during a 2015 heat wave in the Northeast Pacific Ocean, when there was less food available. “They were hard times for whales,” Ryan said, adding that whales had to swim farther to forage and may have had less time and energy to sing. “All three whale species showed by far the lowest occurrence of whale song.”

This discovery, Ryan said, may give us some insight into how whales respond to warming oceans and sudden changes in climate.

Banner image: Humpback whales in Western Australia. Image courtesy of Emilie Ledwidge/Ocean Image Bank.

Herpetology has long navigated through tangled terrain in Papua New Guinea, where species mislabeling and sparse sampling have clouded scientific understanding. But a recent revision has brought rare clarity—and four unexpected discoveries, reports Akhyari Hananto for Mongabay-Indonesia.

In April 2025, Fred Kraus of the University of Michigan published a study in Zootaxa identifying four new tree snakes in the genus Dendrelaphis, each endemic to a different island in the Louisiade and Woodlark archipelagos in PNG’s Milne Bay.

The species:

• Dendrelaphis anthracina, from Sudest Island (also known as Vanatinai and Tagula Island), is jet black with a white chin and an apparent taste for raptors. Kraus documented it subduing a goshawk with a wingspan of over a meter.
• Dendrelaphis melanarkys, found on Rossel Island, boasts orange eyes and a net-like scale pattern.
• Dendrelaphis atra, from Misima Island, darkens with age to a matte black.
• The smallest, Dendrelaphis roseni, from Woodlark Island, is named in honor of Kraus’s “late friend, snake ecologist and conservationist”, Clark Rosen.

According to the Reptile Database, Papua New Guinea is home to at least 147 species of snake among its 424 documented reptile species—highlighting both its exceptional biodiversity and the vast gaps in scientific knowledge.

Beyond their aesthetics, these snakes underscore the role of “island speciation” in biodiversity. Kraus’s findings—based on hemipenial morphology and color patterns—correct decades of taxonomic muddle.

They also sound an implicit warning: these species, though newly named, may already be under threat from mining, deforestation, and human encroachment. For example, multiple major forest conversion projects have been proposed for Woodlark Island over the past twenty years.

Fires raged across the Amazon rainforest, annihilating more than 4.6 million hectares of primary tropical forest—the most biodiverse and carbon-dense type of forest on Earth. That loss, which is larger than the size of Denmark, was more than twice the annual average between 2014 and 2023, according to data released last month by World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch.

It was the highest loss for the biome since annual records began in 2002. Sixty percent of that destruction was caused by fire—a record high. If all tree cover is counted, the toll climbs to nearly 6.2 million hectares. Brazil bore the brunt, losing 2.78 million hectares of primary forest. Bolivia saw a 586% increase over its 10-year average, as did Guyana.

In Brazil, deforestation has plunged under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who moved swiftly to reassert environmental governance. But nature had other plans. Blistering temperatures and the worst drought in 70 years—fueled by climate change and compounded by El Niño—turned routine agricultural burns into runaway infernos. Lula’s reforms proved no match for an accelerating climate crisis or the long tail of past mismanagement.

In Bolivia, policy choices stoked the fires. The government removed export quotas on beef and soy, cut import taxes on agrochemicals, and offered debt relief to those affected by fire—effectively incentivizing environmental destruction.

Elsewhere in the Amazon, only French Guiana and Suriname avoided a sharp uptick in primary forest loss. Collapsing governance in frontier regions opened the door to illegal logging, ranching, coca plantations, and mining. Soaring gold prices have only made matters worse.

The broader outlook is grim. Across Latin America, drought turned land-clearing fires into walls of flame. Though some leaders have tried to balance development with conservation, climate change is proving the more powerful force.

And it’s not just the climate. The Amazon is becoming increasingly flammable due to degradation. Selective logging, forest fragmentation, and livestock incursions expose once-humid interiors to drier air, wind, and sun. These disturbances strip the forest of its resilience, creating conditions for a self-reinforcing cycle of degradation and fire. Recent studies suggest that more vegetation is now lost to degradation than to outright deforestation in the Amazon.

What burns today is not only forest—it is also the hope that nature alone will heal. Without a concerted global response, the Amazon may soon pass the point of no return.

Header: Photo by Greenpeace.

At least 200 people have been confirmed dead and 500 more remain missing after flash floods devastated a Nigerian market town, media reported.

Torrential rain started early on May 29, and within just a few hours caused intense flooding in the town of Mokwa, Niger state, a major trading hub for northern farmers selling beans, onions and other crops to southern traders. The town, with a population of 400,000, is 350 kilometers (about 220 miles) west of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

Musa Kimboku, deputy chair of the local government, told the Associated Press that rescue operations have already stopped and those missing are presumed dead. The retrieval of bodies from beneath rubble is continuing in a bid to prevent disease outbreak, Kimboku added.

More than 3,000 people remain displaced after floodwaters and mud completely destroyed houses.

The Niger state emergency service spokesperson told AP that two bridges and two roads were washed away in the floods.

Jibril Muregi, chair of the Mokwa government, reportedly told local news website Premium Times that flood-control infrastructure was long overdue.

Al Jazeera quoted experts saying that climate change, in addition to unregulated construction and poor drainage, had made floods more frequent and severe.

“The amount of rain you expect in a year could probably come in one or two months, and people are not prepared for that kind of rainfall,” Ugonna Nkwunonwo, a flood risk analyst at the University of Nigeria, told Al Jazeera.

The report added that rapid development without adequate urban planning in the town has resulting in buildings being built in flood-prone areas, which in turn reduces the soil’s ability to absorb water.

The United Nations said in a statement published on June 2 that it’s working with the Nigerian government to provide humanitarian aid to affected residents. It cited its weather agency’s report linking the severity of flooding in Africa to climate change and increased surface and water temperatures. Just last year, flooding killed 230 people and displaced 600,000 people in Borno state in eastern Nigeria.

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ordered the release of 2 billion naira ($1.26 million) in funding to support the reconstruction of the destroyed homes in Mokwa. Twenty truckloads of food aid will also be sent to the town, Tinubu was quoted saying.

Banner image of Mokwa after the flooding, by the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency via X.

In December 2024, a camera trap installed in Dehing Patkai National Park in northeast India’s Assam state captured a rare scene: a clouded leopard with a Bengal slow loris in its mouth. Both species are extremely elusive, so the photograph is rare confirmation that the medium-sized wildcat preys on the small, endangered primate, reports contributor Nabarun Guha for Mongabay India.

“In fact, only one or two people in my patrol party have reported seeing clouded leopards. So, the fact that a single camera trap image captures both these animals is extremely significant,” Ranjith Ram, divisional forest officer of the Digboi Forest Division that manages the national park, told Guha.

The camera traps in Dehing Patkai were set up by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in partnership with the forest department, and the photographic record was detailed in a recent paper.

Mainland clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa), named for the cloud-like, dusky-gray blotches on their body, are classified as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Found in the tropical forests of mainland South, Southeast and East Asia, including the Himalayan foothills in India, these predators are thought to prey upon a wide range of species, from ungulates and primates, to porcupines, pangolins, birds, rodents and even domestic animals. But what the cats eat in their Indian habitats isn’t very well known, the researchers say. “This photographic record helps fill that gap,” they write.

Paper co-author Bilal Habib, a scientist at WII, said previous analysis of clouded leopard droppings in Thailand showed the wildcats there prey on the greater slow loris (Nycticebus coucang). The photograph from Dehing Patkai, captured just a kilometer (0.6 miles) from a tea estate and 2.5 km (1.6 mi) from the closest human habitation, offers the first photographic evidence of clouded leopards preying on a Bengal slow loris.

Classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List, the Bengal slow loris weighs about 850-2,100 grams (1.9-4.6 pounds) and is a nocturnal animal that spends much of its life in trees. The clouded leopard is also both nocturnal and arboreal, and so “it is likely that clouded leopards in this area may target this species as relatively easy to hunt prey,” the authors write.

The cameras set up in Dehing Patkai National Park are part of a study to assess the clouded leopard population across its range in India. The wild cats are threatened by poaching and the illegal wildlife trade.

Read the full story by Nabarun Guha here.

Banner image: Clouded leopard carrying a Bengal slow loris. Image courtesy of Digboi Forest Division.