Visual storyteller Taiwo Aina-Adeokun traveled across Nigeria over several months from 2025-26, documenting areas of the country where heavy plumes of smoke, containing the sooty pollutant black carbon, are a part of daily life. In some cases, the soot comes from Nigeria’s smoked-food culinary traditions. In others, it is a byproduct of the country’s oil industry.

Up in the misty mountains, teems a kaleidoscope of life: trees drip with epiphytes, hummingbirds sip from bright blossoms, and rare creatures occupy every nook in the cloud forests, which scientists have likened to terrestrial coral reefs. But a new study warns that climate change could strip away the conditions that make cloud forests possible,

Deforestation coupled with climate change is rapidly pushing the Amazon Rainforest toward a perilous tipping point that could come much sooner than previously thought. That’s the warning from a new paper, published in Nature, which determined that deforestation of 22-28% of the rainforest, combined with 1.5-1.9° Celsius (2.7-3.4° Fahrenheit) of global warming, could trigger a

Tanzania canceled 40 mining exploration licenses and put another 43 license holders on notice in a crackdown linked to the government’s “Mining for a Brighter Tomorrow” program that aims to create a more “inclusive and sustainable” mining sector. Anthony Mavunde, the minerals minister, told journalists on April 15, in Tanzania’s capital, Dodoma, that the government

The famous bird specialist Tony Silva had cell phones and a computer seized by Brazil’s Federal Police at Guarulhos Airport, in São Paulo, according to a source.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently proposed listing Jamaica’s most imperiled butterfly, the Jamaican kite swallowtail, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The species (Protographium marcellinus), a small, fast-flying butterfly, flutters through its limestone forest home. Its wings, painted in streaks of bright turquoise and black with a dash of red,

More than 50 sloths were recently reported dead due to unsuitable conditions at Sloth World, a proposed so-called “slotharium” in Orlando, Florida. The facility—due to open this month—has permanently closed. Many of the animals had been sourced from the wild in Peru and Guyana, and died either during transport or in holding conditions, according to

Fieldwork in the wet grasslands of the Brazilian Cerrado often means long trudges through head-high reeds, following tapir trails and watching for tick nests or boggy pitfalls. All this is made more difficult when your equipment is not waterproof. So in February 2024, when a thunderstorm broke over Chapada dos Veadeiros, a national park in

The Salween River, Asia’s longest free-flowing waterway that briefly serves as a border between Thailand and Myanmar, is facing a crisis as recent testing has found arsenic levels far exceeding the safe limit set by the World Health Organization. Researchers from Thailand’s Chiang Mai University first raised the alarm in September 2025 after detecting high

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a lowland forest in southeastern Madagascar, what was missing proved as telling as what was found. Researchers working in the Manombo Special Reserve trapped tufted-tailed rats in intact interior forest. But in the nearby degraded littoral areas,

On April 25, 2026, a male elephant suffering from illness died in the hilly district of Rangamati in southeastern Bangladesh. Residents from the remote village where it died hacked away at its legs and trunk, which highlight serious failures by the country’s Forest Department as well as a lack of public awareness and sensitivity towards

The European eel population has declined sharply since the 1980s due to environmental factors.

Sweet wrappers, drinks containers and fast-food packaging were the most common items, campaigners said.

“I would like for me and my children to live here forever,” said Lâm Thu Sang, a resident of Vietnam’s Cần Thơ, a city of more than 2 million people located near the mouth of the Mekong River on one of the world’s largest river deltas. But that may not be possible. In the past,

Calving season for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale has come to a close with 23 new baby whales, the most calves born in a single year since 2009. Part of the baby boom during the winter calving season can be attributed to females giving birth at closer intervals than in years past: 18

To mark Attenborough's 100th birthday BBC Bitesize invited teens to react to some of his encounters.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Venezuela insisted Wednesday that a disputed mineral-rich region of Guyana was “fraudulently” taken in a 19th-century example of colonialism, arguing that a 1966 agreement and not the United Nations’ highest court should finalize ownership of the territory. The International Court of Justice is holding a week of hearings between the South American

Ted Turner, who died on May 6th, liked to present himself as a businessman who had simply applied the same habits to a larger subject. First he bought a struggling billboard company and made it work. Then he built a television empire, beginning with CNN in 1980. After that, he turned much of his attention

'Hundreds' of salmon may have died at Tievenny Burn in County Tyrone, anglers say.

“When I was a kid, forestry was more sustainable,” Mark Graham said, leaning against a massive tree trunk. “Now 30-tonne industrial machines bulldoze everything in their path.” He’s an ecologist who’s worked for state and federal governments — and has often been at odds with the forest industry. We were walking through the Coffs Harbour

New research suggests glacier melt driven by climate change is increasing the risk of giant waves.

New research suggests glacier melt driven by climate change is increasing the risk of giant waves.

New research suggests glacier melt driven by climate change is increasing the risk of giant waves.

Historically, conservation has mostly focused on numbers like population and habitat size. However, in the mid-2000s, scientists started to investigate animal emotions, even trauma, when considering conservation success. In a recent Mongabay podcast, Khatijah Rahmat, a geographer at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, shared her research examining how elephants perceive and

Researchers have for the first time assessed the extinction risk of soil-dependent animals, invertebrates and fungi. They found that some 40% of these species are either threatened or data deficient on the IUCN Red List, according to a recent study. Soil hosts nearly 60% of life on Earth. These species are key for biogeochemical cycles,

In the remote Dolpo region of western Nepal, the ancient practice of yak herding is facing an existential crisis. Traditional herders of domesticated yaks in these alpine rangelands are struggling against the convergence of climate change, rising operational costs, labor shortages, and the spread of lethal diseases, reports Mongabay’s Sonam Lama Hyolmo. According to the

In the Chittagong Hill Tracts of southeastern Bangladesh, Indigenous farmers are increasingly abandoning jhum, a traditional method of shifting cultivation. Instead, they’re moving toward the machan method where vegetables are grown above the ground on bamboo trellises. This transition is driven by a growing scarcity of arable land and declining yields, reports Mongabay contributor Sifayet

Yala National Park, Sri Lanka’s most famous wildlife destination, is facing a conservation crisis as overcrowding and speeding safari jeeps increasingly threaten its wildlife, particularly its famed leopards, reports Mongabay contributor Kamanthi Wickramasinghe. Block I of the park, which boasts of one of the world’s highest leopard densities at one animal per square kilometer (2.6

Figures show that spring drought events are happening more often while there has been a sharp rise in "fire weather".

On June 12, 2025, Everton Lopes Rodrigues was found beheaded in the state of Paraná in southern Brazil. An Indigenous Avá Guarani, Rodrigues was the 21-year-old son of the chief of the Yvyju Avary Indigenous village, and next to his body was a letter, left by his killers, containing “serious threats” against Indigenous communities. Marcelo

 “That might be something that you see in a decade, not in two years of filming,” Tara Stoinksi, CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, tells me. The behavior she’s referring to occurs in mountain gorilla groups, such as a “dominance transfer,” where a younger male silverback takes over leadership from an older male, and

Illegal invasions in the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous territory in Brazil’s Pará state, home to isolated Igarapé Ipiaçava Indigenous people, has continued since 2022, during one of the latest land use restriction orders meant to protect the territory, according to satellite analysis by Mongabay. Between 2022 and 2025, data from Global Forest Watch show the area lost

In Senegal, artisanal fishing kills a surprising number of sharks and rays, according to a new study — so many, it probably eclipses industrial fishing, which is more commonly blamed for the species’ decline. The study was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution in March. Researchers analyzed landings of sharks, rays and guitarfish at

“The whale sharks are a good omen for the fishers because they know when the whale sharks come, that means that lots of small fish or anchovies are around,” says Edy Setyawan, the lead conservation scientist of the Elasmobranch Institute Indonesia. It is the relationship between whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) and fishers in Indonesia that

As the world turns its attention to China’s increasingly stringent waste import ban, a dangerous stream of electronic waste is entering Bangladesh. Despite the enactment of the Hazardous Waste (e-waste) Management Rules 2021, weak regulatory systems and illegal trade routes are making the country a major destination for global “e-waste.” Electronic waste (e-waste), which includes

With just the click of a button or a swipe on a phone, it’s possible to buy almost anything online, including rare or endangered animals. From quirky shark trophies to exotic live birds, contraband rhino horns or ivory, buyers can flock to e-commerce platforms and find them all. Traffickers hide behind their screens while profiting

Researchers have recorded microplastics in frog tadpoles and their pond habitats in the wild in the Amazon for the first time, according to a new study. This confirms widespread microplastic contamination in the Amazon Rainforest, the researchers say.   Previous studies from the region have found microplastic contamination in fish, invertebrates, soil and water samples.

Bird deaths from collisions with glass structures are a global problem. But in India, conservationists are just beginning to learn the scale of the issue, reports Mongabay India’s Kartik Chandramouli. While humans are taught the concept of glass and its transparency, birds likely perceive the reflection of vegetation or the sky as reality, researchers say,

The leather industry spent most of the last year intensifying an already determined lobbying campaign in Brussels to win an exemption from the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR. The effort is paying off: on May 4, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, formally proposed excluding leather, hides, and skins from the regulation’s product

A suspected chemical discharge is flowing into Nairobi National Park, raising concerns over the vulnerability of a unique protected ecosystem and the growing pressure of urban-industrial activity at its borders. On April 30, 2026, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) reported in a press release sent to Mongabay “abnormal foamy water inflows” entering the park through