In 2020, a group of botanists and members of the Indigenous Banao community were macheting their way through a rainforest in the Philippines in search of a rare flower called Rafflesia banaoana. Just a few hours after setting off, however, they stumbled upon a plant they hadn’t planned on finding: a vine with purple-spotted white tubular flowers with tufts of hair within them.

“We came across the plant quite unexpectedly — it was hanging from the vegetation above our heads,” Chris Thorogood, head of science at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, U.K., told Mongabay by email. “We took a specimen, and when we reached the river so had more light, we stopped to examine it. It was clear to us then that it was new.”

Eventually, Thorogood and his colleagues, Jayson Mansibang, Adriane Tobias and Pastor Malabrigo Jr. from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, confirmed that the plant, a species of the genus Aeschynanthus, referred to as lipstick vines, was indeed new to science.

In a new paper, the botanists have named it Aeschynanthus pentatrichomatus, after the five tufts of hairs deep within the tubes of the flowers. “Penta” in Latin means five and “trichomatus” refers to trichomes or hair-like growths.

The botanists found the plant while on an expedition into the remote Balbalasang rainforest on the northern Philippine island of Luzon. The expedition was led by men from the Indigenous Banao community.

“We wouldn’t have been able to visit the forest without them,” Thorogood said. “They live in the Balbalasang and knew where to go. They navigated by making small gashes on the trees so that we could find the way back — it was a bewildering place with no landmarks. We owe the discovery to them!”

Lipstick vines, named for the lipstick-like appearance of their developing buds, are found across India, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Southeast Asia, southern and southwestern China, and Sri Lanka. While widespread, the species can be highly endemic, meaning they’re usually restricted to certain locations, the authors write.

The Philippines, for example, hosts some 32 of the 180 known species of lipstick vines, found nowhere else. Of these, 12 species of Aeschynanthus have been recorded on Luzon Island alone.

The study’s authors assess the newly described A. pentatrichomatus as critically endangered. This is because surveys suggest the population may be restricted to the Balbalasang rainforest. While this forest is remote and not as threatened as those near human habitation, forest fires are a growing problem in the area, Thorogood said. There’s also a high risk of loss from typhoons that are becoming more intense because of climate change, the researchers write.

“For now the priority is documenting new species from these ‘botanical darkspots’; we need to understand the biodiversity that exists before we can understand how to prioritise protecting it,” Thorogood said.

Banner image of the new species of lipstick vine, Aeschynanthus pentatrichomatus, courtesy of Chris Thorogood.

The wolf-like golden jackal still thrives in some parts of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, according to a new study, reports contributor Sneha Mahale for Mongabay India.

Historically, the golden jackal (Canis aureus) could be spotted in several areas of southern Mumbai, study co-author Nikit Surve, research manager at Wildlife Conservation Society-India told Mongabay India. “Today, their southernmost habitat is limited to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre [in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai], while thriving populations are found in the mangrove belts of Gorai, Manori [in north Mumbai] and Vashi,” he added.

Surve and his colleagues set up camera traps across different mangrove areas in the Mumbai metropolitan region and captured nearly 3,000 images over the course of 938 nights. Of these, 790 images featured the golden jackal. These jackal populations seem to be doing well, Surve told Mongabay India.

“Though we do not know their exact numbers, we observed pups of various ages during our two-month survey, suggesting that breeding occurs year-round,” Surve said. “Even in smaller packs, we found pups and lactating females, which is a strong indicator of a healthy, active breeding population — not a stagnant one.”

Along with jackals, the cameras captured 1,666 images of people, although the jackals appeared to be more active at night, with their activity peaking during dawn and dusk, when human presence was low.

Additionally, the researchers obtained 374 pictures of free-ranging dogs, suggesting that jackals and dogs were sharing the same spaces.

This poses two challenges, Mahale reports. The overlap between jackals and free-ranging dogs raises the risk of transmission of diseases like rabies; one record of rabies infection was in fact confirmed in five jackals in October this year, all of which died within a month.

“While there’s no definitive evidence of a population-wide outbreak, more in-depth methods are required when it comes to studying diseases, including blood sample collection and cultures. At the moment, we don’t know what’s happening,” Surve told Mongabay India.

Another threat is the risk of hybridization between jackals and dogs. The presence of suspected hybrid individuals in the camera trap images suggests this may already be happening, Mahale reports.

The golden jackal is listed as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List. But within India, it’s afforded the highest level of legal protection.

“The golden jackals of Mumbai remain vital to the city’s ecological balance,” Mahale writes. “They act as natural waste managers, controlling prey populations and cleaning up organic debris. Yet, their survival is heavily reliant on the preservation of contiguous mangrove patches. Fragmentation of these habitats could push these resilient predators toward local extinction.”

This is a summary of “How Mumbai’s golden jackals adapt to survive in the urban wilderness” by Sneha Mahale for Mongabay India.

Banner image of golden jackal by Shino jacob koottanad via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A U.K.-Mauritius deal recognizing the latter’s claim to the Chagos Islands in the Western Indian Ocean could be in trouble as Mauritius seeks to renegotiate it.

The agreement was reached in October, but no formal treaty was signed by the two countries. Following elections in Mauritius in November, the new prime minister, Navin Ramgoolam, ordered a review of the deal, saying the draft agreement “would not produce the benefits” the island nation expects.

Chagos, a cluster of more than 55 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, was initially administered as a British colony alongside Mauritius until 1965, when the U.K. carved it into the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Mauritius gained independence in 1968, but the U.K. retained control of Chagos, allowing the U.S. to establish a military base on the largest of its islands, Diego Garcia. Consequently, about 2,000 Chagossians were expelled between 1968 and 1973, in what Human Rights Watch has called a “crime against humanity.”

Mauritius brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) challenging British control of Chagos. In 2019, the ICJ gave an advisory opinion in favor of Mauritius. However, the U.K. continued denying Mauritian claims until its October 2024 announcement, when it said it would cede sovereignty of Chagos to Mauritius, but maintain authority over Diego Garcia for military purposes for an initial period of 99 years. Some Chagossians see the continued U.K. control of Diego Garcia as a betrayal.

The announcement was also thin on details concerning the future of the Chagossians, some of whom allege they were left out of the negotiations. They’re calling for the deal to be scrapped and have opposed Mauritian control over the islands.

“I was uprooted, deported, and dumped in the Seychelles,” Bernadette Dugasse, who was born on the island of Diego Garcia, told Mongabay. “They say the negotiations are between states and we are not a state. Who made us stateless in the first place?”

Olivier Bancoult, who heads the Mauritius-based Chagos Refugees Group, supported the Mauritian case. “We were not part of the discussions, but we were briefed on the talks by the Mauritian government,” he told Mongabay. Bancoult said he’s hopeful the deal would stand despite the change in administration.

The future of the Chagos marine protected area that the British created in 2010 is also uncertain. The MPA creation was criticized for being an ocean grab, allegedly to keep Chagossians from returning to the islands and accessing their traditional fishing grounds. The October deal favored the establishment of a Mauritian MPA.

On Dec. 20, the U.K. and Mauritius published a joint statement saying they were committed to “finalising a treaty as quickly as possible, whose terms will agree to ensure the long-term, secure and effective operation of the existing base on Diego Garcia and that Mauritius is sovereign over the [Chagos] Archipelago.”

The Mauritian PM’s office didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.

Banner image of a demonstration in London against the UK-Mauritius deal, courtesy of Patrick Allen.

In 2016, scientists became aware of a die-off of common murres, seabirds resembling flying penguins, that were found washed ashore from Alaska to California. A 2020 study estimated, based on an extrapolation from carcasses found on beaches, that roughly 1 million murres may have died, calling it “unprecedented and astonishing,” even “biblical.”

However, a new study undertaken by some of the same researchers suggests the death toll may have been far greater.

The research estimates that 4 million common murres (Uria aalge) died from 2014 to 2016 during the height of a marine heat wave nicknamed “the blob” in the north Pacific Ocean, with murre deaths seemingly peaking in early 2016. This makes it the largest mortality event not just among birds but of any non-fish vertebrate in the modern era, the researchers say.

“I think what really punched us in the gut was having a really abundant, widespread top predator in the marine ecosystem that, over a really short period of about a year, lost half of its population,” study lead author Heather Renner, a supervisory wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told Mongabay.

To determine the scale of the loss, Renner and co-authors compared the common murre populations at 13 breeding colonies in Alaska for seven years before and after the heat wave. Until 2014, there were roughly 8 million murres in Alaska, about one-quarter of the world’s population. But during the heat wave between 2014 and 2016, there was a dramatic population drop-off of 52% to 78% at the 13 colonies, and no recovery thereafter.

The researchers, echoing the conclusion of the 2020 paper, write that the die-off was most likely from starvation due to reduced access to forage fish. Murre typically eat half their weight in food daily, or about 60 to 120 forage fish. The heat wave also affected predatory fish like Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) and humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae).

The authors write that their study “is the first to show that climate impacts can be swift (1 year) and intense (eliminating half of the population).”

Tim Birkhead, a murre expert and professor emeritus at the University of Sheffield, U.K., not involved with the research, agreed that the finding was substantial. He noted the study showed that “the marine heatwave has had far reaching, long-lasting effects,” and said this was the latest “tragic” news for seabirds, which have been in substantial decline around the world in recent decades.

“The blob” that hit areas like the Gulf of Alaska in the Pacific Ocean in the mid-2010s has been linked to climate change, and more marine heat waves are expected.

“Common murre populations in the Gulf of Alaska and East Bering Sea will likely fail to recover to pre-heatwave levels before the next extreme warming event occurs,” the authors write.

Banner image: Common murres die-off in the Gulf of Alaska, in 2016. Image by David Irons via U.S. FWS (Public domain).

Choosing a Christmas tree. Kissing under the mistletoe. Many people enjoy these fun traditions during the holiday season. But with climate change and habitat loss, some of these plants associated with Christmas are under threat.

Fraser fir

The Fraser fir (Abies fraseri), native to the southeastern U.S., is popularly used as a Christmas tree. However, it’s classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List.

Its population has declined since the 1960s, partly due to invasive pests like the balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae). According to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information, the insects have killed 95% of Fraser firs across North Carolina state.

Climate change is also putting these firs at risk. Fraser firs sustained the most damage among Christmas trees during the U.S.’s extreme drought in 2021. When Hurricane Helene hit the U.S. in September this year, it caused mudslides that uprooted thousands of trees. The Miami Herald reported the hurricane cost North Carolina farmers $30 million to $125 million, in addition to around a million saplings lost. The warmer and wetter climate is also helping the spread of a root-rotting mold called Phytophthora, the report said.

Mistletoe

In some Christmas traditions, if you stand underneath a hanging mistletoe, you kiss the person beside you. Historical accounts claim the tradition dates back thousands of years when mistletoe symbolized fertility. Sprigs of mistletoe, usually the American species (Phoradendron leucarpum) with white berries, have become a Christmas staple.

Mistletoes are parasitic plants, with more than 1,300 species, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). However, a recently published study counts 58 mistletoe species as globally threatened. One species, the Adams mistletoe (Trilepidea adamsii) from New Zealand, is documented as extinct.

Of the threatened species, 67% are in Africa. Habitat destruction due to agriculture, residential and commercial development, as well as logging, are reported as the primary reasons behind mistletoe loss and the decline of the plants’ pollinators and seed dispersers.

Holly

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly” is probably one of the most recognizable Christmas lyrics. With its red berries, holly is often used to adorn Christmas wreaths.

The holly family of plants have more than 600 species. One species, Ilex gardneriana, was previously listed as extinct on the IUCN Red List, but was reassessed as critically endangered in 2019 after it was found to be present in the Nigiri Hills in India. The IUCN notes that “it is described as rare, possibly heading towards extinction” as it faces threats from farming, residential and commercial development.

However, the English holly (Ilex aquifolium) and American holly (Ilex opaca), most commonly used for Christmas, aren’t considered threatened. English holly is considered invasive in some parts of the U.S., where it’s been introduced as an ornamental plant.

Banner image of English holly by Sdjurovic via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

On Dec. 5, Nigerian authorities seized more than 2 metric tons of pangolin scales in yet another effort to clamp down on the country’s booming transnational wildlife trade.

Acting on intelligence provided by the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), an international NGO fighting organized wildlife crime, the Kano-Jigawa command of the Nigeria Customs Services (NCS) also arrested one person, suspected to be a broker. The seizures and the arrest were made in two warehouses in Mubi, a town in Adamawa state, where they were being stockpiled for export. The WJC estimates the 2,179 kilograms of scales likely originated from around 1,100 pangolins poached from across the continent.

“This seizure is estimated to be worth tens of thousands of dollars on the black market in Nigeria, making this shipment highly valuable to traffickers,” Olivia Swaak-Goldman, executive director of the WJC, told Mongabay in an email. The scales were likely intended for Asian markets and linked to Lagos-based trafficking networks, she added.

Since 2021, the WJC has partnered with the NCS to combat wildlife trafficking and dismantle criminal networks in Nigeria, which has recently become a transit hub for pangolin trafficking. “This partnership has primarily focused on pangolin scales and ivory, as they are the primary wildlife products being trafficked through Nigeria by organised criminal networks,” Swaak-Goldman said, adding they’re also looking at trafficking of shark fins and other marine species.

The December seizure is the third WJC-NCS operation in 2024 involving pangolin scales, and the fourth in Nigeria this year.

So far, their collaboration has resulted in 16 operations, 35 arrests, 12 convictions, and the seizure of around 21.5 metric tons of pangolin scales, more than half of it in 2024, and 1.065 metric tons of ivory. It’s also responsible for nearly 95% of all pangolin scale seizures in Nigeria.

“It’s amazing news,” Mark Ofua from WildAfrica, a Nigeria and South Africa-based organization that has worked with NCS in the past but wasn’t involved in this operation, told Mongabay. “It tells us that the government is up and about its work and its function is no longer lip service.”

A 2022 investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times and Mongabay found Nigerian law enforcement had mostly failed to bring wildlife traffickers to justice, as many accused settled their cases out of court or bribed local officials. Despite numerous wildlife trafficking busts since 2010, no one had faced a jail term.

But Ofua said this is changing, citing an instance where three Vietnamese organized criminals involved in ivory and pangolin scales trafficking ivory were convicted in 2023 following their 2022 arrest in an NCS-WCJ operation. “I am enthusiastic that such is happening, and it gives hope that we’ll be able to solve the Nigerian [wildlife trafficking] problem and better protect our wildlife.”

Banner image of the ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), one of the 4 pangolin species found in Africa. Image by David Brossard via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)