In the West African nation of Benin, Vodun, an ancient spiritual religion rooted in a deep connection between humans and nature, has become a primary tool for protecting the country’s disappearing mangroves.
By invoking the authority of the Zangbéto deity, local communities and conservationists create spiritual sanctuaries that forbid the destruction of mangroves under threat of divine punishment, reports Mongabay Africa’s Jahëna Louisin.
Mangroves are vital carbon sinks, capable of capturing up to four times as much carbon as terrestrial forests. Benin’s mangroves are under extreme pressure from logging, salt production, intensive agriculture and urbanization. Between 1995 and 2015, mangrove cover in the country decreased by 29%, according to a study published in 2025.
To combat this loss, the NGO Eco-Bénin partners with Vodun dignitaries to designate specific areas as sacred. In the last decade, this collaboration has preserved about 500 hectares (more than 1,235 acres) of mangroves. The process involves seeking permission from the spirits through a Fâ priest, a mediator who uses a traditional spiritual language to communicate with the divine.
In the video, Isidore Jinou, a 57-year-old advertising director and the son of a fisherman, emphasizes the importance of this spiritual oversight for the Mono River region in the southwestern corner of Benin. This region is home to Bouche du Roy, an estuary and one of the richest mangrove ecosystems on the Beninese coastline.
“All our resources, all our wealth comes from the water,” Jinou, who was initiated into the Vodun religion 14 years ago, tells Mongabay. “There is a certain communion between mangroves and us humans. So it [the mangrove] has a soul. We consider it a living being that we must not destroy or mistreat.”
The community’s belief in the Zangbéto, a respected deity that forbids woodcutting, enforces spiritual regulation. In villages such as Dado, spiritual guardians oversee the respecting of these traditions. During ceremonies, a miniature Zangbéto is placed on a tree to signify a “pact” between spirits and the community, effectively banning fishing or woodcutting in the area.
The Beninese government, which officially recognized Vodun as a national religion in 1996, now incorporates these traditional systems into its environmental strategy.
Adjakou Akoutan Adjinda, Benin’s director general of the government agency for water, forests, and hunting, says in the video that the state actively supports these traditional conservation frameworks. “I think the two are complementary,” Adjinda says. “The local authority, which embodies the public force, is involved. The communities, through their chiefdoms and their deities, are involved. This will allow us to take all aspects into account and hope for better results for the conservation of mangroves in Benin.”
Watch the video by Jahëna Louisin, Cynthia Hégron, Leslie Cauquais, Florian Roche and Juliette Chapalain here.
Banner image: Mongabay journalist Jahëna Louisin documents the role of Vodun traditions in conserving mangroves in southern Benin. Image courtesy of Cynthia Hégron.
The U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration recently finalized a rule that narrows what qualifies as “harm” under the Endangered Species Act. Under the new definition of harm, only actions that directly harm or kill endangered species will be prohibited. Until recently, the definition of harm also included damaging the habitat endangered wildlife depend on for food and shelter.
“This rule change is ludicrous. A kindergartener could explain that destroying an animal’s home will harm the animal,” Tierra Curry, endangered species co-director with the U.S.- based nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told Mongabay in an email.
The Endangered Species Act is a bedrock U.S. environmental law established more than 50 years ago. The law prohibits any person to “take” endangered species. “Take” has widely been interpreted to prohibit both directly killing or harming endangered species and damaging the habitat that is essential for their survival. That interpretation was upheld by a 1995 Supreme Court case involving spotted owls which ruled that harm also includes “significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife.”
The new rule abandons that longstanding interpretation.
“Actions that directly injure or kill listed wildlife will continue to be prohibited,” the U.S. Department of Interior and the Department of Commerce said in their announcement. However, “[t]he final rule will reduce unnecessary permitting, cut compliance costs, and eliminate confusion for landowners, small businesses, energy producers, farmers, ranchers and local governments,” it stated.
Tawny Bridgeford, the general counsel and senior vice president of the National Mining Association, an industry trade group, welcomed the narrow interpretation. “[T]he definition of ‘harm’ has long been abused to serve as a punitive obstacle impeding critical projects,” Bridgeford told the New York Times.
However, environmental groups warn that the new definition of harm paves the way for land development including agriculture, logging, mining and oil and gas projects in habitats where endangered species live.
The U.S. Geological Survey, a federal scientific agency, acknowledges that “[h]abitat loss is the primary cause of higher extinction rates.” Without safe habitat many endangered species could be pushed closer to extinction, just as scientists warn of a sixth mass extinction.
“This absurd slashing of protection means that the rivers where candy darters swim could be choked with coal mining waste, forests Pacific martens need could be clearcut, burrows of desert tortoises could be bulldozed for development, and oil drilling could ravage the habitat of polar bears,” Curry said.
The environmental law non-profit Earthjustice has said it plans to sue the administration. “This senseless rule has no scientific or legal basis,” Earthjustice said in a statement. “We will see the administration in court.”
Curry said the Center for Biological Diversity also plans to “take urgent legal action to prevent harm to species from this political nonsense.”
Banner image: Pacific Martens (Martes caurina) are an endangered species in western North America. Image by Carita Berbman, via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).
President Donald Trump is sharply reducing the size of two national monuments in Utah. The move to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by about 90% unravels protections established by former presidents for areas with unique archaeological and historical features. It comes as Republicans under Trump have sought to drastically reshape the management of vast taxpayer-owned lands concentrated in Western states. Republicans have moved to expand oil and gas drilling, ramp up logging and remove habitat protections for imperiled species. The altered monuments had been designated under the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law meant to preserve important sites. Democrats and conservationists warn of the disposal of treasured landscapes for commercial gain.
By Matthew Brown and Savannah Peters, Associated Press
Banner image: A hiker watches a waterfall at Lower Calf Creek Falls at Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, July 12, 2023, in Escalante, Utah. Image by Ross D. Franklin via Associated Press.
Happy World Chimpanzee Day. On July 14, as the world celebrates one of humans’ closest living relatives, here’s a roundup of recent Mongabay stories about chimpanzees and their world:
Chimps at war in Kibale National Park
Chimpanzees, like humans, sometimes fight wars with each other. Mongabay contributor Keith Anthony Fabro reported on a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) “civil war” in Uganda’s Kibale National Park where a chimpanzee community split into rival factions and attacked former allies.
Before the split, the Ngogo community was unusually large, with 150 to 200 individuals making it one of the largest chimp groups ever recorded in the wild. The community then divided into two factions, which researchers call the Central and Western groups — named after the areas of forest they occupied.
Between 2018 and 2024, the Western group carried out 24 attacks on the Central group, killing at least seven adult males and 17 infants. The conflict is still unfolding and may have lasting consequences for the population. The findings of a study show how shifting social ties can fracture animal societies and trigger collective violence.
What do chimpanzees and Ringo Starr have in common?
Drumming and singing at the same time is impressive, whether you’re Karen Carpenter, Ringo Starr or a chimpanzee. Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough reported on Ayumu, a 26-year-old male chimpanzee at Kyoto University’s Institute for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior (EHUB). Ayumu has been spontaneously tearing floorboards from a walkway, fashioning them into instruments and performing extended drumming displays while also vocalizing.
Researchers recorded 89 performances and found the drumming wasn’t random; it followed a structured, rhythmic pattern similar to chimpanzee vocal calls. Ayumu displayed play faces and appeared to be laughing while drumming, suggesting the behavior was emotionally rewarding and not just a social display. The findings of a study support the hypothesis that instrumental music may have evolved from vocal emotional expression.
Humans tend to take more chances and put themselves in the most danger in adolescence, so the expectation has been that chimpanzees, among humans’ closest evolutionary relatives, would follow a similar pattern. However, Mongabay’s John Cannon reported that chimpanzees actually appear to be the biggest daredevils when they’re infants.
Researchers in Uganda found that infant and young chimpanzees were more likely to launch themselves through the trees than adolescents or adults, despite the risk of injury. Researchers hypothesize that the level of care human parents provide may reduce the risks children might otherwise take.
Chimpanzees like to tease each other
For younger readers, Mongabay Kids reports on how great apes like to tease each other. Researchers watched 75 hours of chimps in a zoo and documented 142 playful teasing events; most of them were juveniles teasing adults.
Banner image: Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Budongo Forest, Uganda. Image by Julie Larsen ©Wildlife Conservation Society.
KUBUQI DESERT, China (AP) — For half a century, workers in northern China have been using a technique called “straw checkerboards” to combat desertification. This method stabilizes sand dunes and helps plants take root. The effort is part of the Three-North Protective Forest Program or Green Great Wall, aimed at reversing desertification. Since 2000, desertified land in northern China has shrunk significantly. The program has transformed vast regions, with forests now covering 200,000 square miles. Experts say continued success depends on long-term commitment and community involvement. The initiative has involved over 300 million rural laborers, mostly on a part-time basis.
Banner image: Desert control worker Yin Yuzhen walks along sand dunes covered by grass checkerboard that’s part of desertification control efforts at the Engebei Ecological Area near Ordos in northern China’s Inner Mongolia province on Friday, June 12, 2026. Image by Ng Han Guan via Associated Press.
The endangered Indian pangolin, already devastated by the illegal wildlife trade, is facing another crisis in Pakistan, one of the four countries where it’s found: rapid habitat loss.
Key habitats of the Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) have particularly disappeared in Pakistan’s rural, mountainous northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to new research, reports contributor Emma Smith for Mongabay.
The province is Pakistan’s third most densely populated region, where development projects such as roads, mining, and industrial sites have fractured vital habitats.
In 2021, ecologist Tariq Ahmad, with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Wildlife Department, and his colleagues revisited 102 sites in the province where pangolin signs had been detected in a survey conducted in 2000. They found signs of pangolins in only 67 of those sites. According to Ahmad, the study’s lead author, pangolin populations in the province have plummeted by 25-40% over the last 25 years.
“It was heartbreaking to return to sites where pangolins once thrived and find them replaced by roads and buildings. We are pushing this species to the edge,” Ahmad said.
Beyond physical displacement, the species remains a primary target for the illegal wildlife trade. Poachers target the pangolin for its scales, made of keratin, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine and claimed to hold special curative powers. There is no scientific evidence for these claims.
Asim Haider, a wildlife ecologist and conservationist with WWF in Pakistan, who wasn’t involved in the study, said some communities in the country also kill pangolins due to the myth that they enter graveyards to eat human remains. He added that any pangolins found in cemeteries are there to look for insects. Some people also consider pangolins to be an agricultural pest, but Haider said the animals are a “natural pest controller.”
“They eat all the termites and ants,” Haider said – around 70 million a year. According to the nonprofit The Nature Conservancy, a pangolin can protect some 16 hectares (41 acres) of forest from termite damage, an area the size of 31 football fields.
Climate change further exacerbates the threats that pangolins already face. Record-breaking heat waves and flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have destroyed pangolin burrows, forcing the animals into human-populated areas where they’re often killed out of fear or misinformation.
In response to these mounting pressures, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Wildlife Department has established four pangolin protection zones, including sites in Margalla Hills and Nizampur national parks. Haider said saving the species is vital for regional biodiversity. “This is the most important species for our ecosystems,” Haider said.
Read the full story by Emma Smith here.
Banner image: An Indian pangolin in the city of Mardan, one of the newly designated protected zones for the species in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Image courtesy of Asim Haider.
For decades, Southeast Asia was the global epicenter of mangrove deforestation, but a recent study reveals a dramatic reversal: Since 2010, the region has transitioned from a net loss to a net gain in mangroves, making it a primary contributor to a global mangrove rebound.
The study, which analyzed 40 years of satellite data, found that Southeast Asia accounted for nearly 60% of global mangrove losses between the 1980s and 2010. The region saw its highest rates of mangrove loss between 1990 and 2005. Since 2010, however, mangrove cover in the region has expanded, according to the study: Between 2010 and 2023, Southeast Asia accounted for roughly 43% of global mangrove gain.
“Southeast Asia was a hotspot for deforestation and degradation in the late 1990s and 2000s,” study co-author Zhen Zhang told Mongabay in a video call. “But after 2010, we see some very hopeful signals. It’s a good story.”
The transition in Southeast Asia is mainly due to shifts in mangrove cover in Indonesia and Myanmar, the study found.
In Indonesia, the expansion of the agricultural industry and the construction of aquaculture ponds had been the major drivers of mangrove deforestation in the country, Zhang said. Yet, the world’s most mangrove-rich nation, stopped seeing steep declines in its mangrove forest area after 2005.
Meanwhile, Myanmar, historically the most severely deforested major mangrove country, has seen a 10% increase in area covered by mangrove since 2010, according to the study.
“While some mangroves are still being lost, this could make them a rare conservation success story and an important source of optimism for climate action,” study co-author Daniel Friess from Tulane University, U.S., said in a press release.
Mangroves are critical ecosystems for carbon storage and protection against extreme weather such as storms and cyclones.
Zhang said strengthened legal protections, increased public awareness of the importance of mangroves following disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the intrinsic resilience of the trees themselves are likely reasons for the Southeast Asia’s conservation success.
In particular, mangrove trees are good at naturally recolonizing available habitats, such as abandoned aquaculture ponds, the study’s authors write. They highlighted Indonesia’s Mahakam Delta as an example where mangroves are regenerating in areas that were historically deforested for shrimp ponds. “These abandoned ponds actually provide a very suitable place for mangroves to recover,” Zhang said.
Despite the gains, the study said that newly established mangrove forests are not yet functional equivalents to the ancient stands, groups of mangrove trees, they have replaced. Younger trees have underdeveloped root systems, making them more vulnerable to extreme weather, and they require decades to match the carbon storage capacity of mature forests.
“The most immediate and effective way to protect mangroves is to stop deforestation,” Zhang said.
Banner image: Mangroves shown sprouting in Pulau Ubin, Singapore. Image courtesy of Daniel Friess/Tulane University.
The animal emblem of Western Australia, the numbat, is recovering after decades of conservation efforts, according to the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.
For decades, the numbat or banded anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus) was listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. It has now been moved to the lower threat category of near threatened.
“The ‘downlisting’ of the numbat on the IUCN Red List from Endangered to Near Threatened is what we have been working for over the last 40 years!” Tony Friend, research associate at the Western Australian department of biodiversity, conservation and attractions (DBCA), told Mongabay via email. “Consequently, I feel very elated that the more secure status we’ve been able to achieve with the numbat has been recognised by IUCN.”
The striped, ant-and-termite-eating marsupial with reddish-brown fur was once on the verge of extinction. By the late 1970s, around just 300 individuals remained. Their decline was primarily driven by the introduction of predators, such as the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and domestic cats (Felis catus), alongside threats including habitat destruction and changes in the intensity and frequency of fires.
In 2026, numbat numbers have grown to about 2,000-3,000 individuals thanks to more than 40 years of conservation actions taken by wildlife scientists, the DBCA, Perth Zoo, conservation organizations and community volunteers.
Conservationists have, for example, baited and removed foxes and cats from certain areas. This has “caused spectacular increases in numbat numbers in the two original populations, both located in Western Australia: one of these has been shown to number up to 2000 now,” said Friend, who is a member of the IUCN SSC Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group.
Conservation teams also created fenced areas to keep non-native predators out and established new populations using translocated wild and zoo-bred numbats.
The additional populations have now persisted for at least 10 years, with the oldest established more than 30 years ago, Friend said, “The new populations vary in size, between 20-30 up to 150-200 and are spread across southern Australia, with three in Western Australia, one in South Australia and one in New South Wales.”
Friend added that for the species’ security, it’s important that both overall numbers and the geographic spread of the populations increase. This will help protect the species from pressures such as drought, disease or an increase in predation, he said.
Despite the numbat’s promising recovery, Friend urged caution. Its overall numbers, at around 3,000 “are still very low for an entire species,” he said, “[T]his success has only been achieved by a huge sustained effort in controlling introduced predators (fox and feral cat), the effort must continue or the numbat will quickly fall back to low levels or into extinction.”
Banner image: A numbat in Western Australia. Image by © Kym Nicolson via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0).
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