When invasive rats are removed from islands, the ecological benefits can ripple across both land and sea more quickly than scientists expected, according to recent research.
Scientists have long assumed that meaningful recovery after the predators are eradicated would take decades. However, researchers with the U.S.-based NGO Island Conservation conducted a rat-removal experiment on Ulong Island in Palau, which provides the first experimental evidence that ecosystems can rebound far more quickly than previously expected.
Until recently, rats, which are typically nocturnal, were so abundant on Ulong Island that they were regularly seen during the day. They were a nuisance to campers and deadly for wildlife.
As opportunistic omnivores, rats readily prey upon seabird eggs and chicks, devastating nesting colonies on tropical islands. As a result, there were “very few nesting seabirds that we would find,” Coral Wolf, the conservation science program manager at Island Conservation, told Mongabay in a video call.
To measure the effects of rat eradication, Wolf designed an experiment in which all the rats were removed from Ulong, while the rats on nearby Ngeruktabel Island remained, serving as a control site. Before the eradication, researchers collected baseline biodiversity data. On land, they recorded bird calls and took soil samples. In the surrounding water, they measured indicators like fish biomass and coral cover.
One year after rats were removed, the team repeated the survey and found a dramatic improvement in the biodiversity. Freed from rat predation, seabird activity on the island surged. Detections of bridled tern (Onychoprion anaethetus) calls rose by 286% while brown noddy (Anous stolidus) and white tern (Gygis sp.) calls increased by roughly 50%.
Seabirds are critical connector species in what scientists recently dubbed the “circular seabird economy.”
“They’re out foraging, they feed on fish [and] they bring those nutrients back to the island,” Wolf said. Such nutrients accumulate on land, improving soil quality, and are eventually washed back into the sea where they enrich surrounding marine ecosystems, she added.
Areas with large seabird populations are associated with more phytoplankton in the marine environment, higher fish biomass and better coral health, Wolf said.
On Ulong, researchers found fish biomass increased significantly once rats were removed. One location recorded a 183% increase. Increased nutrients in the water also appear to be supporting reef-building coral. In a statement shared with Mongabay, Island Conservation said early results suggest “seabird-derived nutrients [are] beginning to fuel reef productivity,” around the island.
“It’s powerful proof that terrestrial action spills over into benefits for surrounding reef communities, which people rely on for their livelihoods,” Nathaniel Hanna Holloway, marine ecologist at Scripps Oceanography, said in a statement.
Wolf said the team had expected such improvements to Ulong Island’s ecosystem would take decades. Seeing measurable gains after just a year, she said, “is pretty remarkable and gives us hope for the restoration of the Rock Islands across this island community.”
The study is currently being submitted for publication.
Banner image: A rainbow over Ulong Island. Image courtesy of Island Conservation.
The Bornean ferret badger is a small carnivore with the slinky body of a ferret and a face mask like a badger. A new study confirms that it lives only in the mountains of Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo.
Ferret badgers are nocturnal carnivores, widespread across Southeast Asia, but the Bornean ferret badger (Melogale everetti) lives only in a narrow mountain range on the island of Borneo. A group of researchers from the Bornean Carnivore Programme, part of the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), Sabah Forestry Department, and Sabah Parks set out to understand the Bornean ferret-badger’s distribution within Sabah.
Between 2021 and 2024, the research team set up 188 camera-trap stations across Sabah’s western highlands and recorded the badgers more than 400 times, discovering a new population in the process. The new population in the Nuluhon-Trusmadi Forest Reserve of Malaysian Borneo, expanded the known range of the species, but photo-traps and habitat modeling showed that Bornean ferret badgers are only found within the greater Sabah’s Kinabalu-Crocker-Trusmadi mountain landscape.
“I grew up in Tambunan and had never seen or even heard of the Bornean ferret badger,” said Mohammad Aliyuddin bin Jaini, field manager of the Bornean Carnivore Programme in a press release. “I decided to place some camera traps around my family’s farm simply to see what wildlife might be there, and I was amazed when a Bornean ferret badger appeared in the photographs. To discover that an Endangered species found only in Sabah was living right on our doorstep was a special moment.”
The researchers propose using the common name Kinabalu ferret badger, after its core range on Mount Kinabalu, to help people realize how special the species is. “[N]ames can play an important role in shaping how people perceive a species and their connection to it,” lead author of the study Andrew Hearn told Mongabay in an email.
“Several of these communities already have small-scale ecotourism initiatives, and we would like to explore whether the ferret badger could become an additional attraction for wildlife enthusiasts,” Hearn said. “If local communities can derive benefits from protecting the species, that could provide a powerful incentive for its long-term conservation.”
Benoit Goossens, an expert on Bornean wildlife who was not involved with the study, told Mongabay in an email that refining the habitat map for Bornean ferret badgers is crucial for their conservation.
“In a rapidly changing landscape where forests continue to face pressures from development and climate change, knowing where the species lives is the first step toward ensuring its long-term survival,” Goossens said.
Banner image: A Bornean ferret badger. Image courtesy of Surinkumar via iNaturalist. (CC BY-NC 4.0)
On June 6, nine female white rhinos arrived in Mozambique’s Zinave National Park following a two-day translocation. Their arrival marks the culmination of nearly 10 years of rhino reintroduction efforts in the park, aimed at rebuilding a viable breeding population of the mammals in Zinave after decades of local extinction.
The white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) were transferred from the Manketti Game Reserve in South Africa and join another 30 white rhinos and 22 black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) introduced to Zinave since 2022.
“[The translocation] went fantastically well,” Antony Alexander, a regional manager for the conservation nonprofit Peace Parks Foundation, which manages Zinave and organized the translocation, told Mongabay by phone. “I’m sure they’re happy to be in the wild again.”
Zinave, which covers around 4,090 square kilometers (1,580 square miles) in the southern province of Inhambane, has previously been called a “silent park” after decades of civil war wiped out much of its wildlife.
“You could almost sense the very low levels of life with insects and birds and smells and sounds,” said Alexander, describing Zinave before wildlife restoration efforts began. “That’s changed dramatically over the last 10 years.”
Among the species reintroduced since 2016 are the critically endangered black rhino and Selous’ zebra (Equus quagga selousi), as well as the endangered African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), vulnerable leopard (Panthera pardus) and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta).
The rhinos help maintain Zinave’s ecosystem as they are bulk grazers, eating a high volume of grass. This helps prevent fire risk, as overgrown grass can enable the spread of wildfires in drier conditions.
“You can imagine if you don’t have rhinos in the park, which was the situation in Zinave National Park when we first started 10 years ago. We were at a park that had very high grass levels, which is a very large fire hazard,” said Alexander.
Lower levels of grass also makes the ecosystem more accommodating for species such as impala, wildebeest, and several insects and birds, he added.
The rhinos of Zinave may subsequently become feeder populations to establish rhinos in other Mozambican parks as they are expected to produce offspring in the coming years. So far, five black rhino and two white rhino calves have been born and successfully raised in Zinave.
The white rhino population “can potentially expand across Mozambique”, said Alexander, warning that conservation efforts take several years of planning and preparation to be successful. “Of course, it doesn’t come easily; one’s got to spend many years preparing for it.”
Banner image: Rhino released into the boma, a large wildlife enclosure, inside Zinave National Park’s rhino sanctuary. Image © Peace Parks Foundation.
The rumble of ship traffic is drowning out the calls of long-finned pilot whales and potentially other marine species in the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow strip of water between Morocco and Spain that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean Sea.
Researchers who investigated this looked at near and long-distance communication between long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas), which are actually a species of large dolphin. They found the mammals were able to increase the volume of their calls used for short distances, but long-distance calling was more challenging, according to their recently published study.
The dolphins may not be able to overpower noise pollution in the Strait of Gibraltar when calling pod mates far away, raising concerns that they could become lost and isolated from the group, the researchers said. Roughly 60,000 ships pass through the Strait of Gibraltar each year.
“If they cannot communicate with one another, they may need to stay much closer together, or all that communication may become ineffective,” study co-author Renaud de Stephanis, director at the Spain-based organization CIRCE (Conservación, Información y Estudio sobre Cetáceos), told Mongabay by phone.
Researchers focused the study on a small resident population of roughly 250 pilot whales in the strait. The team attached suction-cup recorders to the backs of 23 individuals. Later, they categorized more than 1,400 calls into four different categories. They found that pilot whales were able to adjust to the noise pollution for two types of calls, the high-frequency and short-pulsed calls, by simply raising their voices.
This phenomenon is called the Lombard response, and it’s observed in several animals, including humans. It is the reason why people speak more quietly in silent environments and more loudly in a noisy restaurant, for example.
But for two other types of pilot whale calls, the animals were not able to activate the Lombard response. For low-frequency calls and two-component calls, in which the animals emit two different sounds at the same time, the marine mammals were already calling as loudly as possible.
“Both low-frequency and particularly two-component calls were produced at relatively high output levels in general, and showed very limited Lombard response,” study co-author Frants Jensen told Mongabay by email. “This is important since those are long-distance call types they likely use for ensuring group cohesion and finding each other after separations.”
De Stephanis said the study results raise conservation concerns for other marine animals in the region, including orcas (Orcinus orca).
“Given that that this happens with pilot whales, it is likely that it also happens for other whale species. We aren’t sure yet because it is a very difficult study to carry out,” de Stephanis said. “In addition to generating noise that affects smaller species such as pilot whales and orcas, larger species can suffer from ship strikes.”
Banner image: Pilot whale (Globicephala melas) off the coast of Spain. Image courtesy of circe.info.
Government officials in Malawi have applied to withdraw bribery charges against wildlife trafficking convict Lin Yunhua, which would pave the way for his release from prison.
In July 2025, a presidential pardon set Lin, a Chinese national, free from a 14-year jail sentence he’d received in 2021 connected to illegally trading in wildlife parts such as ivory, rhino horn and pangolin scales. Malawian authorities had arrested Lin, his wife and 13 members of his transnational wildlife crime syndicate in 2019.
While pardoned, Lin remained in prison on charges of bribing a prison official and a judge to influence his sentencing; offenses he allegedly committed while on trial for the wildlife crimes.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Fostino Maele, has now instructed the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), which brought the bribery charges against Lin, to drop those charges. Maele was previously Lin’s lawyer. Environmental and anti-corruption activists demanded that he recuse himself from the case due to a conflict of interest. But Maele did not.
At the time of publishing, Maele had not responded to questions from Mongabay about reasons for dropping the bribery charges and concerns of conflict of interest.
“We have a serious contradiction here,” environmentalist Charles Mkoka told Mongabay in a phone interview. “We sit in one room and plan what to do to send a strong message to wildlife traffickers that we will not tolerate their crimes. In another room, some offices are scrapping off cases of those that are engaging in wildlife trafficking. This is regrettable.”
The hearing on the corruption case started on May 13, and two prison officials had testified as state witnesses. The anti-corruption body’s chief legal and prosecution officer, Peter Sambani, said the DPP, in a letter on May 19, directed the ACB to withdraw the case. The ACB then applied for the case’s discontinuation at the High Court in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, on June 9.
According to the Malawi Constitution, while the DPP has sole power over discontinuance of a case, he is required to provide reasons to the Parliament within 10 days.
In an online petition, environmental and anti-corruption civil society organisations say discontinuing the case against Lin would lead to questions about Malawi’s commitment to combating corruption and organized wildlife crime.
Mkoka, who is also the executive director of the Coordination Union for Rehabilitation of the Environment (CURE) in Malawi, told Mongabay that the presidential pardon last year set a tone for the collapse of the bribery case as it undermined the work of law enforcement agencies that had arrested and prosecuted Lin.
“Probably, we did not speak out hard enough against that pardon,” he said. “Now, we need to have a serious reflection [on] whether we still need laws that empower certain offices to set free high-profile wildlife offenders and whether those offices are using their powers responsibly.”
Banner image: Lin Yunhua in a court appearance in May 2026 answering bribery charges. Image courtesy of Lloyd M’bwana.
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon biome fell by 23.5% in 2025 compared with 2024, according to a new report from MapBiomas, a Brazil-based land-use mapping project.
Reductions in deforestation were recorded across the board in all of Brazil’s biomes, culminating in a 21% nationwide decrease in forest loss. In total, nearly 985,000 hectares (2.4 million acres) of forested land was cut down in 2025, the report found. Of this, 289,478 hectares (715,315 acres) was deforested in the Amazon.
The decline in deforestation likely reflects a combination of stronger environmental enforcement, improved satellite monitoring and growing market demands for sustainable production, Nathalia Crusco, a researcher with MapBiomas, wrote to Mongabay.
Only 5% of deforested land overlapped with enforcement actions or clearing authorizations in 2019, compared with 65% over the 2019-2025 period, she added, based on MapBiomas data.
Deforestation also fell by nearly 17% in the Cerrado savanna, where agriculture expansion is most aggressive. More than half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has already been cleared. And while the rate of deforestation in the Cerrado declined, the majority of forest clearing in Brazil, 55%, took place in the Cerrado savanna, the report said.
Much of the reduction in deforestation was within Indigenous territories. Clear-cut deforestation on Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 25% in 2025, according to a technical memo shared with Mongabay by Brazil’s Indigenous agency, Funai. Funai’s Remote Monitoring Center compiled the recent report. A total of 30,128 hectares (74,450 acres) of clear-cutting on Indigenous land was recorded last year, compared to 40,178 hectares (99,280 acres) in 2024.
“We’ve verified a significant reduction,” the authors of the report wrote. “The [clear-cutting deforestation] 2025 data are the lowest since 2016.”
Despite the overall decline, sharp increases were recorded on some Indigenous lands. In the Batelão Indigenous territory, in the state of Mato Grosso, clear-cut deforestation increased by roughly 10,000%, from around 5.5 hectares (13 acres) in 2024 to more than 567 hectares (1,400 acres) in 2025.
In December 2025, one of the leaders of the Batelão territory told Mongabay that Indigenous people could not access their land, that it had been taken over by soy, cotton and corn farms, as well as pastures.
“We want Terra Batelão back. We are fighting for it, but there are only promises — and so far, nothing,” Indigenous representative Porokó Kayabi told Mongabay Brasil.
In the Pantanal, the world’s largest and most biodiverse wetland, deforestation fell by nearly half between 2024 and 2025, and nearly 80%, if compared to 2023 levels. MapBiomas satellite monitoring detected around 12,260 hectares (30,300 acres) of deforested land in the Pantanal biome in 2025, an area slightly larger than the city of Barcelona in Spain.
Much of the Pantanal deforestation in 2024 can be traced back to huge wildfires that scorched habitat for jaguars (Panthera onca), hyacinth macaws (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus) and caimans, among many more species.
Banner image: Soy plantations amid savanna vegetation in Maranhão state, Brazil. Image courtesy of Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil.
Common medications that billions of people take for ailments like pain, fever and infections were detected in several sites along Djibouti’s Gulf of Tadjourah in East Africa, according to a recent study.
Researchers found that untreated urban wastewater contained dangerous concentrations of anti-inflammatory medicine like ibuprofen, caffeine, and the antiepileptic drug carbamazepine, which were contaminating Djibouti’s coastal ecosystem. They also detected the presence of levofloxacin, an anti-tuberculosis antibiotic, and 12 other pharmaceutical and personal care compounds.
The Gulf of Tadjourah is an important marine biodiversity hotspot that is home to coral reefs, mangroves and fish nurseries. Djibouti City, home to more than 70% of the country’s population, borders the gulf.
“One particularly surprising finding was the relatively high ecological risk associated with some common everyday pharmaceuticals, especially ibuprofen and caffeine,” lead author of the study Abdillahi Elmi Adaneh, an environmental chemist at the regional Observatory for Research on the Environment and Climate (ORREC) in Djibouti, told Mongabay by email.
“These compounds are often perceived as ‘ordinary’ substances, yet they were among the main contributors to ecological risk in the coastal waters we studied,” he added.
Ibuprofen was among the most concerning substances detected, Adaneh said. At one sampling site, where urban and hospital wastewater are dumped in the water, the team found ibuprofen concentrations hundreds of times higher than levels considered safe for aquatic organisms.
“[Ibuprofen] can disrupt several biological functions in marine organisms, including reproduction, growth, enzymatic activity, and physiological responses,” Adaneh said. “Invertebrates, fish, and algae are particularly sensitive to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.”
Researchers wrote that caffeine, which was detected in all the sampling sites, is widely used as an indicator of pollution from domestic wastewater. They also noted the combined effects of these contaminants are even more concerning than their individual effects.
The study is one of the few of its kind to be carried out in East Africa. However, pollution from medicines has been a growing concern globally, especially as many of these compounds can have long-lasting effects in marine organisms. A global study published in 2022 found evidence of pharmaceutical pollution even in remote locations like Antarctica.
Researchers highlighted wastewater treatment as a solution to preventing pharmaceutical pollution in marine environments; according to the U.N., just 11% of domestic wastewater is treated in Djibouti.
In Marseille, a city on the southern coast of France, species like neptune grass (Posidonia oceanica) and salema porgy (Sarpa salpa) were able to bounce back after the city introduced a wastewater treatment plant in 1987.
“Discharges of untreated urban and hospital wastewater are turning Djibouti’s coastal waters into a chemical cocktail that poses a high ecological risk,” Adaneh said. “It is a problem that makes Djibouti a cautionary tale for many low- and middle-income countries.”
Banner image: From left to right, Tannwir Sagid Abdoul-Bari, Ismael Said Ismael, Mahamoud Ali Chirdon and Abdillah Elmi Adaneh collect water samples in Djibouti. Image courtesy of Abdillah Elmi Adaneh.
Every April, eastern Nepal’s Tinjure-Milke-Jaljale region sees a rush of tourists, arriving for the vibrant spring bloom of rhododendrons, the country’s national flower. The flowers have now become more than a photo backdrop; they’re part of a new, unregulated market for a “souvenir:” Unlicensed rhododendron liquor. Sold openly in reused bottles with handwritten labels, the rhododendron alcohol market operates without health testing, official tracking or sustainability monitoring, Mongabay contributor Mukesh Pokhrel reports.
The Tinjure-Milke-Jaljale (TMJ) region is home to at least 26 species of rhododendron (Rhododendron spp.). It has seen a massive post-pandemic tourism surge, with local officials estimating 500,000 visitors arrived from April 1-15 this year.
For some families, the seasonal sale of flower-based alcohol provides supplemental income. “Tourists want something unique from here,” said Denga Lama, a resident who produces the liquor at their home. “People buy the alcohol because it reminds them of the flowers and mountains.”
Forests within the TMJ region, where rhododendron plants occur, are largely managed as community forests. Nepal’s conservation laws prohibit commercial harvesting from community forests without approval. However, legal ambiguity regarding rhododendrons grown in private gardens has left officials uncertain about enforcement.
When asked about bottled rhododendron liquor, Division Forest Officer Megh Raj Rai told Mongabay it was the first time he had heard about it. Rai said that if the liquor is being produced at large scales, the lack of oversight poses potential public health risks.
Certain rhododendron species contain grayanotoxins, neurotoxins that can potentially be fatal; although, the risks depend on what part of the plant is consumed and its preparation. Moreover, not all species carry the same amounts of toxins and hybridization between species may produce plants with undetermined toxin levels. The souvenir rhododendron liquor bottles haven’t undergone laboratory safety testing for toxins, Pokhrel reported.
Botanist and biodiversity researcher Kamal Maden warned that the commercialization of these flowers could have long-term ecological impacts. While community forest groups fine tourists for plucking flowers, there is little oversight of commercial-scale harvesting for alcohol production.
“The local administration should investigate where the flowers are coming from and whether harvesting levels are sustainable,” Maden told Mongabay.
Rhododendron plants are already under pressure from climate change, which is shifting blooming cycles due to prolonged droughts and late snowfall, according to Indra Bahadur Khadka, chairperson of the Chaite Community Forest in Tehrathum, a district in eastern Nepal. Research from the western Himalayas has recorded significant shifts in rhododendron blooming times linked to warming temperatures.
Maden said the TMJ region is already dealing with waste, flower picking and unmanaged visitor pressure. “There should first be a clear conservation management plan before expanding tourism infrastructure further,” Maden said. “Otherwise, we risk increasing pressure faster than local communities and forests can handle.”
Read the full story by Mukesh Pokhrel here.
Banner image: Rhododenrdron flowers in bloom. Image by Nirmal Dulal via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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