by Jagath Gunawardana 17 January 2020
On Dec. 31, a fully grown male Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) was found shot and killed at the famed Uda Walawe National Park. It was also reported that…
by Basten Gokkon 16 January 2020
JAKARTA — Forest rangers in Indonesia's Aceh province will this year be allowed to carry firearms for the first time in decades, in the latest move by local authorities toward…
Colombia's 'Heart of the World': Mining, megaprojects overrun indigenous land
by Taran Volckhausen 15 January 2020
Jaime Luis Arias grew up on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. An isolated coastal pyramid-shaped massif in northern Colombia, the Sierra Nevada is one of…
Cost-effective conservation: Study identifies key 'umbrella' species
by John C. Cannon 14 January 2020
Governments could vastly improve the efficiency of money spent on conservation if they took a hard look at the species they prioritize, according to a recent study. The research probed…
One six-week expedition discovered ten new songbird species and subspecies in Indonesia
A six-week expedition to three small island groups near Sulawesi, Indonesia has yielded five new songbird species and five new subspecies. The new species and subspecies were described in a…
Update to biodiversity treaty proposes protecting at least 30% of Earth
A proposed update to the global treaty governing plant and animal life on Earth calls for nearly a third of the planet to be designated as protected by 2030. That…
by Junaidi Hanafiah, Rahmadi Rahmad 10 January 2020
EAST LAMPUNG, Indonesia — The government of the Indonesian province of Aceh, notorious for public canings carried out under sharia law, plans to put that same strict Islamic jurisprudence to…
Polly share a cracker: Study finds grey parrots are good Samaritans
by Malavika Vyawahare 9 January 2020
It looked like a game of parrot poker, but the token exchange counter set up by European researchers at a Spanish zoo was an experiment to determine if African grey…
Tool use in puffins may point to 'underestimated' intelligence in seabirds
by Mongabay.com 8 January 2020
The camera traps that ecologist Annette Fayet had set up didn't provide the clues she had hoped to find about puffin diets and nesting behavior. What they did provide, though,…
Palm oil processors top plantations in destroying proboscis monkey habitat
by Hans Nicholas Jong 8 January 2020
JAKARTA — The oil palm processing industry has become the biggest threat to the iconic and endangered proboscis monkeys of Indonesian Borneo, a new study has found. The study, published…
Audio: Ami Vitale on how meeting Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, changed her life
by Mike Gaworecki 7 January 2020
On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Ami Vitale, a photographer for National Geographic who documented the death of the last male northern white rhino, Sudan. Listen…
Killing gods: The last hope for the world's rarest reptile
by Jeremy Hance 7 January 2020
Eighty-eight-year-old Le Huy Hoanh stands up from his bench and carefully poured tea in rural Vietnam, and mimes for us how he used to kill gods. With his long spear…
Science-backed policy boosts critically endangered Nassau grouper
Scientific monitoring and protection measures aimed at helping a critically endangered species of fish in the Caribbean appear to be working, according to a recent study. The research, published Jan.…
The long goodbye: Study declares ancient Chinese paddlefish extinct
by Shreya Dasgupta 6 January 2020
In 2003, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences captured, tagged and released a female Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) that had accidentally been caught in the Yangtze River. In…
Communities in Ecuador fight back against palm oil
by Alejandro Pérez 3 January 2020
This story is a journalistic collaboration between Revista Vistazo and Mongabay Latam. Fifteen years ago, Martha Valencia relied on the nearby river for water and for food. But then…
'Rediscovered' after 100 years, Gurney's pitta is in peril once again
by Megan Stannard 2 January 2020
Gurney's pitta may be running out of time. The tiny, vibrantly colored bird, first described from the Tanintharyi region of Myanmar in 1875, was thought to have gone extinct when…
Illegal tin mining leaves trail of ruin in protected Brazilian rainforest
by Ana Ionova 30 December 2019
The damage only became clear once the rain stopped and the clouds parted over Altamira National Forest in northern Brazil. Instead of dense jungle, large patches of bare land now…
Palm oil, fire pushing protected areas in Honduras to the 'point of no return'
by Leonardo Guevara, Lesly Frazier 30 December 2019
Residents of the community of París de Leán in Honduras say they have been dealing with dirty water for a decade. To demonstrate this, Concepción Aguilera dips a dish into…
by Taufik Wijaya 30 December 2019
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — A spate of recent tiger attacks on farmers in Indonesia's South Sumatra province has renewed calls from experts to protect wildlife habitats from development projects that threaten…
Alarm over mass vulture poisoning in South Africa
by Fred Kockott 29 December 2019
DURBAN, South Africa — Another mass vulture poisoning incident has ended the year on a sour note for Wildlife ACT rangers in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Soon after…