Brazil has opened its first rehabilitation center for golden-headed lion tamarins, an endangered monkey species threatened by urban expansion and the loss of agroforestry farms to monocrop plantations.
The tamarins, Leontopithecus chrysomelas, have been filmed in and around Ilhéus, a coastal city in Bahia state, eating fruit inside a supermarket or running across high-voltage electricity lines; many have been electrocuted this way. Road strikes have also injured or killed several individuals, as have attacks by domestic dogs.
Until now, there wasn’t any specialized place to take the monkeys and prepare them for reintegration into the wild, according to Leonardo Oliveira, a biologist who has studied the species for more than 20 years.
“Often, for the general public seeing these monkeys in their backyard or at the market gives them the false impression that everything is fine: ‘Wow, there are so many of them, they’re even coming into the city.’ No. The city is the one moving into their space,” Oliveira, who will work with the new rehabilitation center, told Mongabay by phone.
Golden-headed lion tamarins are found only in Brazil. From 1992 to 2024, their range shrank by 42%, from an estimated 22,500 square kilometers (8,700 square miles) to 13,000 km2 (5,000 mi2). This resulted in a nearly 60% population decline, from an estimated 50,000 individuals 30 years ago, to fewer than 24,401 individuals today, according to a 2024 population reassessment.
A large part of the tamarins’ existing range is cacao farms, where the crop is grown underneath a canopy of native trees. Cacao is also one of their favorite fruits. In recent years, however, some agroforestry cacao farms have been lost to soy monocultures and livestock pasture, according to the Tamarin Trust, a U.K.-based charity funding the new rehab center.
In 2024, the city of Ilhéus adopted the species as its official mascot and dedicated a day to it, March 26, which coincides with Brazil’s national cacao day, to highlight the symbiosis between the two.
The rehab center was inaugurated at the State University of Santa Cruz on March 26, the second anniversary of the species’ local day. It has the capacity to accommodate up to three groups of tamarins, with plans to expand to hold up to eight groups at once.
According to Oliveira, the center will receive injured and displaced tamarins for veterinary care and rehabilitation, with the goal of relocating them away from urban centers, where they face fewer threats.
Banner image: A golden-headed lion tamarin. Image courtesy of Leonardo Oliveira.
In a major advance for the U.S. push to secure critical minerals and compete with Chinese firms in Central Africa, U.S.-based Virtus Minerals has signed a megadeal for copper and cobalt deposits in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). After lengthy negotiations that reportedly included heavy behind-the-scenes pressure by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on DRC President Félix Tshisekedi’s government, Virtus has acquired Chemaf, a mining company that operates in southeastern DRC, along with all its assets.
The deal is the first concluded by a U.S. firm in the DRC since the two countries signed an agreement on critical minerals access in December 2025. Virtus has just eight employees and little track record in major mining ventures. However, the company now holds the rights to deposits that include the Mutoshi mine, which is capable of producing up to 5% of the world’s cobalt supply.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Virtus says it plans to sell the minerals it produces exclusively to American or “U.S.-aligned” buyers.
But the region where Virtus will operate has long suffered pollution and environmental damage related to mining. Among the unanswered questions surrounding the takeover is how Virtus plans to address such concerns and whether the U.S. firm will hold itself to a higher standard than its Chinese counterparts.
After Chemaf acquired the mine in 2015, Amnesty International said the company warned nearby residents they would have to move. When they refused, Congolese soldiers allegedly destroyed an entire town.
“The two primary mines are situated within urban areas, with detrimental consequences for both the local populations and the cities of Lubumbashi and Kolwezi,” Jean-Claude Mputu, spokesperson for a coalition of Congolese civil society groups, said in a text message to Mongabay. “Yet until now Chemaf has consistently evaded its responsibilities.”
The Virtus website says operations will include “clear standards for safety, labor, and environmental performance.” A request by Mongabay for details on those standards was not answered.
After more than a decade of dominance by Chinese firms in the production of African minerals, the deal has been hailed by U.S. policymakers as a turning point in American competitiveness.
However, Frederic Mousseau, policy director of the U.S.-based Oakland Institute, told Mongabay via email, “The deal made by Virtus, a newly created firm led by former US military and intelligence personnel, should raise serious concerns in a country where mining has long been a synonym of violence, exploitation, corruption, and devastating pollution.”
One of the primary financiers of the deal is the New York-based Orion Resource Partners, which recently formed a $1.8 billion three-way investment consortium between ADQ, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, and the U.S. government’s International Development Finance Corporation. In a Mongabay request for comment, Orion declined to say whether American public funds would be directed toward Virtus’ operations in the DRC.
Banner image: Bags of cobalt powder ready for export from Chemaf’s mines in the DRC. Image by Didier Makal/Mongabay.
The Colombian government has authorized a plan to euthanize dozens of hippos descended from animals smuggled into the country by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1980s.
There are an estimated 200 hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) scattered throughout Colombia, according to a 2022 census, which could exceed 1,000 by 2035. The animals are not native to South America; all are descendants of four hippos (three females, one male) that Escobar brought over illegally for the private zoo at his Hacienda Nápoles estate, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the city of Medellín.
The hippos went feral after his death, multiplying and spreading to nearby waterways, eventually reaching the Magdalena, Colombia’s biggest river.
Irene Vélez, Colombia’s environment minister, announced on April 13 that the government aims to cull approximately 80 hippos starting in the latter half of 2026, marking the first sanctioned hunt in 40 years. The government has budgeted some 7.2 billion pesos ($2 million) for the cull, which also includes provisions for confinement and relocation.
“It is out of responsibility to our ecosystems that we must take these actions,” Vélez said at a press conference as reported by Spanish newspaper El País. She noted that previous efforts, such as sterilization, had failed to control the population and that talks with other countries about transferring the hippos to their zoos or sanctuaries hadn’t amounted to anything.
“Today we are announcing a euthanasia protocol so that environmental authorities can implement it with the support of scientific institutions, because without this action it is impossible to control the growth of the species,” Vélez said.
In its native sub-Saharan Africa, the hippo is considered vulnerable to extinction. But in the lush environment of Colombia, where resources are abundant and there are no lions and Nile crocodiles — its few natural predators — the massive mammal has thrived.
Each hippo consumes some 70 kilograms (150 pounds) of vegetation daily; the animals trample farmland and displace native wildlife like the river manatee for food and space. And because the Colombian hippo population is highly inbred, it has low genetic diversity.
The decision to cull the hippos has sparked fierce backlash from animal rights advocates. Andrea Padilla, a national senator, condemned the move as a “cruel” decision.
“Killings, massacres will never be acceptable solutions,” Padilla wrote on X in Spanish.
“I will never support the killing of healthy creatures; even less so if, as in this case, they are victims of irresponsibility, negligence, indolence, and state corruption,” she wrote.
Some locals have also come to view the hippos with a “mixture of affection and even protectiveness,” the Smithsonian magazine reported in 2024.
Álvaro Díaz, a fisherman who benefitted from hippo tourism, told The Guardian in 2023 that they consider the hippos part of the community. “[T]hey were born here. They’re Colombians too now,” Díaz said.
Banner image: A hippo residing at Hacienda Nápoles, Pablo Escobar’s former ranch. Image by Alvaro Morales Ríos via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The critically endangered banteng is making a comeback in Thailand’s Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, and has become a unique community-led conservation icon, reports Mongabay’s Carolyn Cowan.
Thailand’s population of banteng (Bos javanicus), one of the world’s rarest wild cattle species, was once reduced to just a few hundred individuals due to decades of deforestation, agricultural expansion and hunting. However, habitat protection and reduced poaching pressure, widely credited to the implementation of SMART (Spatial Monitoring And Reporting Tool) ranger patrols, have helped the banteng population in Huai Kha Khaeng double over the past 20 years. With an estimated population of at least 1,400 individuals today, the sanctuary is now recognized as home to the largest banteng population in Southeast Asia.
The successful recovery has prompted several herds to naturally disperse from the protected area into surrounding buffer zones. This expansion initially caused concern over the potential for human-wildlife conflict, as the wild cattle entered lands used by local communities for farming and livestock grazing. Villagers faced crop damage, while the banteng faced the risk of poaching in areas with limited law enforcement.
To address these challenges, residents of Rabam subdistrict, among the most affected by banteng presence, established a community-based ecotourism initiative in 2021 that focused on banteng-watching tours. The project has since transformed the species into a vital financial and cultural asset for the community.
Today, more than 320 residents from 19 villages participate in the program, which includes wildlife watching, boat tours, and traditional cultural activities. For many participants, tourism has grown from a supplementary source of income to their primary livelihood.
The initiative has a community fund in which 5% of revenues are reinvested in local infrastructure. All members abide by mutually agreed-upon rules, such as not hunting or consuming wild animals or harvesting plants in protected forests.
The success of the community project has also shifted perspectives among residents like Supaporn Kulkhot, who now increasingly view the forest as a shared asset.
“In the past, I would look at wildlife as a type of food,” she said. “But now my understanding of wildlife has changed. Instead, I look at the animals as they are. I feel we have a responsibility to preserve them, as they can be an everlasting source of income.
Read the full story by Carolyn Cowan here.
Banner image: A herd of banteng in a buffer zone of Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary. Image courtesy of KU Faculty of Forestry/DNP/WCS.
April 13 marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), a landmark conservation law credited with saving numerous U.S. fisheries from collapse and protecting vital ocean habitats. Despite decades of success, conservationists warn that recent federal funding cuts could undermine those gains.
The MSA was passed in 1976, in the same decade the Environmental Protection Agency was established, and half a dozen bedrock environmental laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were enacted. It was a time of widespread environmental degradation: Ohio’s Cuyahoga River frequently caught fire and smog choked cities like Los Angeles.
U.S. fisheries were in a similarly dire state. “Fishing off the U.S. coast was a free-for-all, with vessels from both the U.S. and other nations racing to catch as many fish as they could,” Gib Brogan, fisheries campaign director at the advocacy organization Oceana, told Mongabay in an email.
Before the MSA was enacted, international waters began just 19 kilometers (12 miles) from shore. Beyond that, both American and international fishing fleets could operate with very few regulations. It was a classic example of the tragedy of the commons; fishers were incentivized to capture as many fish as they possibly could before the fish were gone.
By the 1970s, numerous fisheries were on the brink of collapse, including groundfish, lobster, haddock, cod and yellowtail flounder. Many fish populations could not reproduce enough to sustain themselves or a fishing industry.
In response, Senators Warren Magnuson and Ted Stevens introduced the MSA. It extended U.S. jurisdiction to 370 km (200 nautical miles or 230 mi) from land, effectively prohibiting foreign fleets from fishing in rich coastal waters. It also established eight regional fishery management councils comprised of fishers, tribal members, scientists and seafood processors. The councils were tasked with developing fishery management plans based on the best available science, to ensure long-term sustainability.
According to NOAA Fisheries, at least 50 fish stocks have been rebuilt since 2000, including those of Atlantic sea scallops (Placopecten magellanicus), North Atlantic swordfish (Xiphias gladius) and Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis).
Today, NOAA estimates seafood as well as commercial and recreational fishing generate more than $300 billion in sales and support roughly 2.1 million jobs.
However, NOAA estimates 18% of U.S. fish stocks continue to be overfished and fishing pressure is likely to increase. In an April 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump directed the government to “unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation.”
The latest budget proposes nearly $1.6 billion in cuts for NOAA next year, which “will only further undermine the MSA and fisheries management around the country,” Brogan told Mongabay.
Still, Eugenio Piñeiro Soler, NOAA Fisheries assistant administrator, said in a statement the MSA will continue to “serve as our compass” as the U.S. strives to “strike that perfect balance between harvesting for today and conserving for tomorrow.”
Banner image: Trawling operations on the NOAA Ship Miller Freeman. Photo by Allen M. Shimada, NMFS/NOAA.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The High Court in Kenya ruled Thursday that a class action lawsuit can move forward against multinational oil and gas company BP alleging that decades-long toxic waste disposal contaminated drinking water in northern Kenya.
The lawsuit, filed by 299 petitioners in February at the Land and Environment Court in Isiolo, alleged that BP caused serious environmental pollution by improperly disposing of and discharging toxic waste from oil exploration activities in parts of northern Kenya.
It claimed that the waste, which contained radioactive materials, contaminated ground water and sickened or killed hundreds of residents and livestock nearby.
“During operations at the sites, hazardous and toxic contaminants were improperly disposed, discharged and released into the environment,” the petition said.
The exploration work was carried out in the 1980s by Amoco Corporation, which was later acquired by BP in 1998. In that period, Amoco drilled several dry wells near Kargi and Kalacha in the Chalbi Desert in northern Kenya.
The petition alleged that more than 500 residents living near the exploration sites died from cancers and other illnesses linked to drinking water contaminated with heavy metals and carcinogens. Court documents cite contaminants including radium isotopes, arsenic, lead and nitrates allegedly dumped in unlined pits or left exposed.
The suit also accuses multiple Kenyan government ministries and agencies responsible for environment, water, mining and health of failing to act despite evidence of contamination.
The case is scheduled to resume in May.
BP has not issued a public response and declined to comment.
By Nicholas Komu, Associated Press
Banner image: A sign at a BP petrol station in London, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. Kirsty Wigglesworth, Associated Press.
From fish and turtles, to hippos and crocodiles, about 43% of all known large freshwater animal species have been deliberately introduced into ecosystems outside their native ranges, a recent study finds.
Most species were introduced to boost fisheries, food security or tourism, but many have had unintended consequences for local wildlife, habitats and people.
Fengzhi He, the study’s co-author, told Mongabay this research stemmed from his earlier work documenting where large freshwater animal species, weighing more than 30 kilograms (66 pounds), occur globally. He noticed many were present outside their native ranges.
“I realized the complex interactions between alien freshwater megafauna and people and started this project together with our colleagues,” said He, a freshwater ecologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology.
Of the 216 known large freshwater animal species, 93 have been introduced in rivers, wetlands and lakes outside their native ranges, the study found. These introductions span 142 countries and regions.
Most introductions were to improve fisheries and aquaculture. For example, large fish like common carp (Cyprinus carpio) have been introduced to more than 100 countries, while African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) are now in more than 30 countries. “Their introductions have been documented for many years in some regions and have become an important part of local aquaculture,” He said.
Species like the Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis), Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) and spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) have been introduced in China for leather farming. Certain turtles, river stingrays, crocodilians and large fishes have been introduced for the pet trade.
Many introduced animals, while bringing benefits, have also harmed the local wildlife and communities. For example, Nile perch (Lates niloticus), introduced in Lake Victoria for fisheries, caused dramatic declines in many small native fish, leading to economic hardship and reduced food security for local people, He said.
Similarly, hippos introduced in Colombia boosted tourism, but they also pose a safety risk for people living or working nearby, He added.
“We noticed that the detrimental impacts posed by alien freshwater megafauna often affect people who neither introduce freshwater megafauna nor benefit from their introduction,” He said, adding that it’s important to consider different groups of people when assessing impacts of introduced species.
Overall, the researchers found that the benefits of introduced species are better documented than their harms.
“It is probably because benefits, including enhanced food supply, provision of materials, pet trade, and recreational fishing, can be relatively easy to observe and measure. For example, data on economic activities is often available in published financial reports,” He said. “However, measuring detrimental [impacts], particularly complex indirect impacts that affect social interactions and human health, often requires more effort and long-term monitoring.”
The authors expect that large animal introductions for aquaculture, the pet trade and recreational fishing will continue to grow, making it essential to understanding their likely impacts.
Banner image: The British introduced the Nile perch to Lake Victoria’s waters. Image by Global Environment Facility via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
The Australian government recently listed the iconic alpine ash forests of mainland Australia as an endangered ecological community, citing ongoing threats from increasingly severe, frequent bushfires and climate change. While conservationists supported this decision, members of the timber and forestry industry questioned the move.
Alpine ash forests occur on high country slopes in the states of Victoria and New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, at elevations of 900-1,500 meters (about 3,000-5,000 feet). These culturally significant forests sit within the traditional lands of many First Nations peoples.
Alpine ash (Eucalyptus delegatensis), a tall eucalypt with menthol-scented leaves, dominates these forests. Alpine ash forests also support a rich community of other plants and animals, including lyrebirds and spotted-tailed quolls. The hollows of old-growth trees are important habitat for the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri).
A spokesperson for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) told Mongabay by email that the listing followed a “thorough assessment by the national Threatened Species Scientific Committee,” which “included a public consultation process and substantial input from many forest experts.”
The spokesperson said proponents of activities that may significantly harm alpine ash forests will now need to fully avoid impacts on the forests or demonstrate “a net gain,” meaning environmental benefits outweigh the damage. This will lead to stricter assessments.
The Victorian National Parks Association called the listing “an important step.” Forest and fire scientists writing in The Conversation said alpine ash is “facing an existential threat” and the listing “is a clear warning to Australians.”
However, Forestry Australia, a nonprofit association of forest managers, said: “Listing such an extensive and predominantly intact ecosystem, most of it located on public land already managed for conservation, represents an unprecedented step in Australia.”
The Australian Forest Products Association said the listing went against scientific evidence and highlighted that the geographic extent of alpine ash forest has decreased by only 5% since 1750.
However, the DCCEEW spokesperson told Mongabay that the listing of alpine ash forest as endangered was not due to a loss of geographic extent, but “because of a severe and ongoing decline in condition and function, and difficulty in recovering from bush fires.” They added that more than 80,000 hectares (nearly 200,000 acres) of forest were lost during the massive 2019-2020 summer bushfires and that multiple fires in the same area pose a clear threat.
Alpine ash trees only reach reproductive maturity and produce viable seed at 20 years of age. “More than half of the ecosystem is now structurally immature,” the spokesperson said. Young forests are particularly vulnerable; they lack seed and can’t naturally regenerate if exposed to repeated fires.
While a recovery plan for alpine ash forests was not deemed necessary, the government’s Conservation Advice document provides guidance for actions to manage threats, including protecting old-growth stands and regrowth from future fires.
Banner image: Mt. Donna Buang in Victoria. Image by Bob Tan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
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