Wellington’s solitary coral, a species thought to be extinct for more than two decades, was rediscovered in 2024 near Tagus Cove in Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands, according to a recent study. 

Over multiple dives in 2024, scientists from the Charles Darwin Foundation, the Galápagos National Park Directorate, and the California Academy of Sciences spotted more than 290 live colonies of Wellington’s solitary coral (Rhizopsammia wellingtoni) in several locations off Isabela and Fernandina islands, including four sites where the species had never been recorded before.

“There were underwater handshakes and shouts of excitement,” Terry Gosliner, a senior curator at the California Academy of Sciences and study co-author, told Mongabay Latam contributor Ana Cristina Alvarado. “We didn’t just rediscover the species, we saw healthy colonies reproducing. It was one of the most exciting underwater moments of my career.”

Unlike most reef-building corals, R. wellingtoni is a solitary coral, meaning each polyp lives independently. The species, found only in the Galápagos Islands, also doesn’t rely on sunlight or symbiotic algae to live, meaning it can survive in deeper and darker waters.

The species was almost completely wiped out following the 1982-1983 El Niño warming event, leading the study’s authors to infer that it’s sensitive to increases in surface water temperature. However, between August 2000 and March 2023, water temperatures in the region were cooler than average due to a La Niña event, which may have allowed the coral to bounce back, the researchers say.

They also speculate that that rather than going extinct, the coral possibly survived in the deep sea, where temperatures are cooler. Then, when conditions improved in shallower water, the coral reoccupied those areas.

Wellington’s solitary coral has remained listed as critically endangered (possibly extinct) on the IUCN Red List since 2007. Gosliner said that if the coral continues to reproduce at healthy rates, the threat status could be reassessed and eventually improved to vulnerable.

But global warming across the Earth’s oceans makes this uncertain. “More El Niño events will come, and the ocean keeps warming,” Gosliner said. “As long as we don’t move away from a carbon-based economy, we’ll keep facing these problems.”

Read the full interview with Terry Gosliner, in Spanish, here.

Banner image: Purple and gray Wellington’s solitary corals. Image courtesy of Inti Keith/Charles Darwin Foundation.

A new analysis has found that lawsuits against transition mineral mining firms and renewable energy companies are increasing worldwide.

The NGO Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) in its new report published July 1 notes that since 2009, its transition litigation tracking tool has documented 95 legal cases filed against companies linked to the renewable energy value chain — from transition minerals extraction to wind, solar and hydro installations — for allegedly violating human rights. Nearly half the cases were filed by Indigenous peoples, while the rest were filed by local communities and human rights defenders.

Three-quarters of the lawsuits were filed starting 2018, indicating a recent rise in such complaints. Most of the cases seek to stop or suspend the project, alleging human rights violations, environmental abuses, and the failure to consult local communities, particularly their right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).

More than half (53%) of the 95 lawsuits were initiated in Latin America and the Caribbean, followed by North America (16%), Africa (11%), Europe (9%), Asia (8%), and Australia and Oceania (3%).

Elodie Aba, senior legal researcher at BHRRC, told Mongabay’s Aimee Gabay that people affected by transition mineral projects are increasingly turning to courts to uphold their rights. “Most of the time, litigation is going to be the last resort for them. But when there’s no other choice, we can see that people are more aware of their rights now and [are] actually using the tools at their disposal for that,” she said.

BHRRC’s just transition litigation tool shows that 70% of the 95 cases filed since 2009 involve companies mining for transition minerals such as bauxite, copper and lithium.

Most cases involving transition mineral mining focused on the environmental impacts, followed by issues of water pollution or access to water — mining for transition minerals requires large amounts of water.

Of the 29% of lawsuits related to wind, hydroelectric and solar energy projects, 80% alleged a lack of, or inadequate, consultation with the affected communities. A third of them also raised issues about water access.

“If you don’t engage them from the start, there’s a risk that these communities are going to resist your project and you can be faced with litigation, which doesn’t help your project in any way,” Aba told Gabay.

Reacting to the BHRRC report, Emily Iona Stewart, head of policy and EU relations for advocacy group Global Witness’s transition minerals campaign, told Gabay that such numbers “tell us a lot about the nature of our energy transition, and the ways in which it is systematically harming Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities.”

BHRRC has urged companies, governments and investors to conduct due diligence across their renewable energy value chain to ensure that human and environmental rights are being upheld.

Read the full story by Aimee Gabay here.

Banner image of a copper mine in Espinar, Peru. Image courtesy of Miguel Gutiérrez/Cooperacción.

For a man who spent his life studying the movements of wildlife, Roberto Zolho was most at peace when not moving at all—drifting in a kayak down the Guacheni channels, pausing to admire an egret, a kingfisher, or a sunlit curve in the reeds. In these secluded corners of Mozambique’s wetlands, he was not a former government official or a decorated scientist. He was simply a witness, content to observe the “amazing birdlife,” as he once wrote with characteristic understatement.

Zolho’s legacy lies most visibly in Gorongosa National Park, once a paradise gutted by civil war. Appointed its administrator in 1996, he inherited a landscape where over 90% of large mammals had vanished. Rather than despair, he set about recovery with meticulous care—counting what was left, building systems for what might return, and working closely with the local community. It was his 2005 proposal for species reintroduction that laid the groundwork for one of the most remarkable wildlife restorations in history. By 2025, Gorongosa’s plains were again teeming with tens of thousands of animals, its predators prowling and its forests mending.

Zolho saw conservation not as an exercise in nostalgia, nor as a fortress to be built against humanity. His career, spanning more than three decades across Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, and Australia, reflected a broader conviction: that biodiversity could only endure if local communities shared in its benefits. Whether coordinating climate resilience programs or leading cross-border conservation corridors, he insisted on integrating ecological goals with the aspirations of rural people.

He was not drawn to grandeur. Though awarded the Medal of Environmental Merit in 2022 by Mozambique’s president and honored as a “Conservation Hero” at Gorongosa’s gala, Zolho seemed more comfortable in the field than behind a desk—mentoring young professionals, writing strategy documents rooted in realities on the ground, or volunteering with Banhine National Park, where he was a proud “top fan.” He preferred working where conservation was implemented, not just discussed.

In meetings, colleagues recalled his steadiness and kindness; in the field, his pragmatism and resolve. He could speak of degraded miombo woodlands in the morning and listen with delight to a child describing a monkey she’d seen in the afternoon.

Following his passing, Mozambique’s biodiversity community is mourning the loss not just of a leader, but of a unifying presence. Zolho leaves behind a network of protected landscapes and the people trained to protect them. More enduring still is the ethic he embodied: that conservation, at its best, is not conquest or control, but care.

Zolho leaves behind his wife Brit; his daughters, Hannah, Nyangala, and Adriana; and the countless animals that now thrive in the wilderness he helped restore.

Banner image: Roberto Zolho. Photo from his Facebook page.

A federal court in Brazil has blocked the start of planned explosions along a 35-kilometer (22-mile) rock formation called Pedral do Lourenço in the Tocantins River, pausing a major infrastructure project until a judge can inspect the site.

The decision suspends the federal government’s attempt to clear the way for large cargo ships to travel year-round through the Tocantins-Araguaia waterway, which runs from the Cerrado savanna in central Brazil, an agricultural stronghold, north to the Amazonian state of Pará.

“The suspension is necessary to avoid irreversible damage,” the judge wrote in his June 26 ruling, calling the rock formation in the Tocantins River an area of “high socio-environmental relevance.”

The Pedral do Lourenço rock formation is considered a “significant refuge” for turtles such as the Amazon river turtle (Podocnemis expansa), at least 10 endangered fish species, as well as the critically endangered Araguaian river dolphin (Inia araguaiaensis). One catfish identified in the region, Baryancistrus longipinnis, exists nowhere else in the world.

Establishing the Tocantins-Araguaia waterway, which includes blasting rocks and dredging the river before and after the formation, is expected to take 36 months and cost 1 billion reais ($178 million), according to Brazil’s National Department of Transport Infrastructure.

Pedral do Lourenço currently blocks the passage of large ships during the dry season, June to December, when water levels are lower than the rest of the year. The federal government says opening up the waterway would allow the equivalent of around 500,000 trucks to traverse the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers all year round, potentially reducing logistics costs by up to 30% as the river provides a more direct route to ports in the Amazon.

But prosecutors say the environmental license granted by IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, in May 2025 was approved without properly consulting the potentially impacted communities.

Federal prosecutor Rafael Martins da Silva previously told Mongabay contributor André Schröder that the agency left fishing-related problems as an afterthought, adding: “This permit should not have been granted.”

An assessment of the impact that the explosions and subsequent ship traffic may have on fishing, the main source of food and income for the communities in the region, wasn’t carried out, prosecutors added.

“This new project threatens to further worsen the destruction of the river, the forest, and the communities,” Darcilene, a resident of one of the impacted communities, said in a statement by activist group Movement of People Affected by Dams.

“The suspension is a breath of relief. It’s time to listen to the communities, to truly measure the impacts, and to stop making top-down decisions,” she added.

No date has been set yet for the judicial inspection, when the court can “observe in person the facts and circumstances relevant to the case.”

Banner image: Plans to blast the Pedral do Lourenço rock formation in the Tocantins River have been suspended by a court. Image courtesy of Antonio Cavalcante/Ascom Setran-PA.

A zoo in the U.S. state of Kansas has welcomed the birth of a healthy baby pygmy hippopotamus, raising hope for a species that’s becoming rare in the wild.

The yet-to-be-named male pygmy hippo calf, born June 26, is the fifth offspring of parents Pluto and Posie since their arrival at Tanganyika Wildlife Park in the city of Goddard from different zoos in 2014. “Posie is an attentive mother, nursing well and keeping the baby close — a true professional,” Sierra Smith, a keeper at Tanganyika, said in a statement.

The zoo had previously announced the birth of another male calf to the same couple in December last year.

Pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis) are the lesser known — and more threatened — cousins of the common hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius). While the latter is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, pygmy hippos, named because of their much smaller size, are categorized as endangered.

In the wild, pygmy hippos are only found deep inside the forests of four West African countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. While the latest IUCN assessment, from 2015, puts the species’ population at roughly  2,500 individuals, “we don’t really know” the true numbers, Neus Estela, a technical specialist with Fauna & Flora in Liberia previously told Mongabay’s Jeremy Hance.

Moreover, the forests where the small hippos live have experienced deforestation and are all fragmented, isolating the hippos and preventing gene flow, Hance reported.

In Taï National Park in Côte d’Ivoire, for example, gold mining is a big threat, said Elie Bogui, a coordinator for the Taï Hippo Project.

One major challenge for pygmy hippo conservation, Hance reported, is the lack of financial and logistical support for the species’ conservation. This is despite a recent spike in online popularity of pygmy hippos, thanks to Moo Deng, a calf born at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Bang Phra, Thailand, in July 2024, which soon became an internet sensation for its cute, playful attitude.

Estela said that unlike elephants, chimpanzees and pangolins in Africa, pygmy hippos don’t receive targeted funding for conservation; rather, they “benefit more from general conservation efforts.”

As wild populations decrease, captive breeding of pygmy hippos could play a role in the conservation and survival of the species.

“Every pygmy hippo birth, whether in human care or in their native habitat, is critical for their ongoing survival,” said Samantha Russak, curator of research and welfare at Tanganyika Wildlife Park. “This is Posie and Pluto’s fifth calf since their arrival at the park in 2014. With only three pygmy hippo births recorded in the U.S. last year, this calf holds particular significance for cooperative conservation programs aimed at preserving genetic diversity within the species.”

Images: A male pygmy hippo calf was born at Tanganyika Wildlife Park, in the U.S. state of Kansas, on June 26, 2025. Both images courtesy of Tanganyika Wildlife Park.

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

In the dense, humid expanse of the Darién Gap — a forbidding swath of rainforest bridging Panama and Colombia — a tentative transformation is underway. Once synonymous with lawlessness and unchecked migration, this biologically rich frontier is now the focus of an ambitious conservation push by Panama’s government, reports Mongabay’s Maxwell Radwin.

Since President José Mulino took office last July, Panama has poured resources into the region. The Ministry of Environment, in partnership with NGOs like Global Conservation, has trained and deployed 30 new guards to Darién National Park, increasing the total to 52. Equipped with Starlink satellite communications, smartphones and GPS mapping tools, the rangers now cover more terrain than ever before.

“We now have more equipment, more personnel, and we can cover more area,” said Segundo Sugasti, director of the park.

These steps are part of a broader campaign to regain control over a region long shaped by external pressures: migration, illegal logging, gold mining, and land grabbing for agriculture. This year alone, two major raids by SENAFRONT, a militarized police unit, dismantled illegal gold mining camps that had generated millions in profits while polluting waterways with mercury and phosphorus.

Meanwhile, efforts to regulate logging are showing signs of traction. A moratorium on new timber permits, extended through 2029, has silenced many sawmills in the province. Dozens of forest technicians, many of them recent graduates, have been dispatched to remote Indigenous communities to revise management plans, boost oversight, and help locals seek Forest Stewardship Council certification.

“The management plan is supposed to serve both environmental and social goals,” said Elsy Ortiz, a forest technician working with the Emberá-Wounaan people.

Infrastructure projects, such as new bridges and roads, are a double-edged sword. They promise life-changing access to hospitals and schools, but also draw settlers and industry. The Pan-American Highway, long interrupted by the Darién Gap, still ends at Yaviza. But smaller road extensions and a $70 million investment could bring the frontier closer to fragile forest boundaries.

The threats remain potent. Timber traffickers exploit knowledge gaps in Indigenous communities. Farmers and ranchers clear forest illegally on private land. And nearly 300,000 metric tons of waste left behind by migrants pollute ecosystems and watersheds. Yet officials remain cautiously optimistic.

“They told us about this in our training,” said park guard Edwin Cerrud. “We’re prepared to face the situation that’s coming our way.”

Read the full story by Maxwell Radwin here.

Banner image: The Geoffroy’s Tamarin can be found in the Darién rainforest. Image by Concep Arroyo via Pexels.