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Feature Stories

Mongabay Environmental News •

Choosing coexistence over conflict: How some California ranchers are adapting to wolves

This is the fourth part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read Part 1,  Part 2 and Part 3.

A lone gray wolf (Canis lupus) named OR-7 — then a 2 ½-year-old male — created history when he crossed over the state line from Oregon into California in 2011, becoming the first wolf to set foot in the state after nearly a century. His arrival, followed by his descendants who then established new packs, became a thumping conservation success for an endangered species in...
Mongabay Environmental News •

First state-authorized killings mark escalation in California’s management of wolves

This is the third part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read the first and the second parts.

In late October, wildlife authorities in the U.S. state of California announced they captured and euthanized three adult gray wolves and shot a juvenile dead, all from the Beyem Seyo pack in the Sierra Valley. Wardens killed them, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) said, because the wolves (Canis lupus) had become “habituated to preying on cattle” r...
Mongabay Environmental News •

It’s ‘whack-a-mole’: Alarming rise in pet trade fuels wildlife trafficking into California

In October, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at California’s Otay Mesa border crossing noticed an odd bulge inside a man’s pants. Jesse Agus Martinez, a U.S. citizen who lives in Tijuana, repeatedly claimed the bump was “pirrin,” a Spanish word for penis. His history of smuggling birds into the U.S. prompted further examination, and the officer found two brown sacks hidden in his underwear. Each contained an unconscious, heavily sedated orange-fronted parakeet (Eupsittula canicularis...
Mongabay Environmental News •

With ‘terrifying’ trade in African hornbills, scientists call for increased protection

For millions of years, the African landscape — the rainforests, woodlands, savannas and scrublands — has echoed with the booms and cackles of large, raucous, strange-looking birds: hornbills. When U.S. ornithologist Nico Arcilla came to Gabon in the late 1990s as a Peace Corps volunteer, these noisy birds enchanted her.

“There’d be a big flock of them flying together, and you could hear them because their wings are big, and they’re loud when they fly,” she reminisced. “They’re fabulous birds …...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Africa’s little-known golden cat gets a conservation boost, with community help

It was mid-2008. Mwezi “Badru” Mugerwa was almost done with his bachelor’s degree in forestry, an academic field that had trained him to view forests as a resource for extraction. However, as he inched closer to graduation, the idea of cutting down trees didn’t sit well with him, and he was looking for ways to put his academic training to better use. In June, an internship opportunity in the remote forests of Bwindi came calling, and Mugerwa jumped at it. He didn’t know it then: but he had a dat...
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels
Engineering @ Maryland •

Engineering Headway in Microelectronics Manufacturing | A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland

Boasting expertise across the spectrum of semiconductor manufacturing, the Clark School is leveraging new funding and partnership opportunities to advance next-gen semiconductor research underway in its laboratories.  

“The University of Maryland has clear leadership in technological areas including design tools, packaging, lifecycle engineering, and thermal management,” Graham says. “Maryland Engineering brings this expertise to the table to address society’s larger challenges.”

Carlos A. Río...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Sierra Leone cacao project boosts livelihoods and buffers biodiversity

In eastern Sierra Leone, straddling the border of Liberia, lies Gola Rainforest National Park, one of the last remaining intact tracts of the tropical Upper Guinean forests in West Africa. Towering trees with massive buttress roots create a dense, emerald-hued canopy where monkeys hoot, malimbes chatter and hornbills flutter between the branches with their high-pitched honks and impressive wingspans.

Along the park’s fringes, 122 communities own small patches of the jungle within the four-kilom...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Culture and conservation thrive as Great Lakes tribes bring back native wild rice

In the late summer of 2023, thick stands of wild rice stood tall and shimmered gold in some of Lac du Flambeau’s lakes. The plant has been virtually absent in these lakes for decades, so for Joe Graveen, the sight of grain-filled stalks was a thing of joy, he says. As the wild rice program manager for the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, a tribal band in northern Wisconsin, Graveen was seeing the fruits (or grains, literally) of hard work he and his tribe’s members had put
Photo by Tina Nord on Pexels
Deccan Herald •

Birders find help in artificial intelligence

Human relationships with birds have metamorphosed with time. From seeing them as a source of food, gathering their feathers, eggs and skin and hunting them for sport, we have come a long way in appreciating birds for what they are: intriguing life forms that aesthetically please our eyes and make sounds that are music to our ears. Our fascination has morphed into a hobby called birdwatching or birding, a term coined in the early 1900s by British ornithologist Edmund Selous.

When birding began a
Mongabay Environmental News •

Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea

Plonked between the formidable Owen Stanley mountains to its west and the Solomon Sea to the east lies Oro, a remote province in Papua New Guinea east of the capital Port Moresby. Lush, green tropical rainforests, with their famed canopies, blanket the land while rivers and streams glitter in hues of turquoise and emerald—a landscape found across much of Papua New Guinea (PNG), where 71.8% of land still harbored primary forest in 2022, according to data from monitoring platform Global Forest Wat
Mongabay Environmental News •

Big promises to Indigenous groups from new global nature fund — but will it deliver?

VANCOUVER — The devastating wildfires in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, in mid-August, forced the province into a state of emergency and gloom. But just a few days later, as the smoky skies of Vancouver began to clear up, environmentalists found a reason to cheer.

About 1,500 delegates representing environmental ministries, youth, women, Indigenous Peoples, and civil society gathered in the coastal city to promise a slew of actions to save the planet’s biodiversity. One of them came
Deccan Herald •

When storms disrupt life underwater

When cool air blows over warmer oceans in the tropics, it heats up, picks up moisture and rises. Soon, cooler air from the surroundings swirls to fill the gap, gets heated and rises to form clouds. Over time, this system of clouds grows, and the wind spins faster and faster, with gusts over 100 km/hour. A tropical cyclone is born.

However, severe tropical cyclones can uproot kilometres of vegetation and sea life from the seafloor and along the coast. While massive-but-mobile life forms, like wh
Nature •

How to make the leap into industry after a PhD

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Spoorthy Raman is a freelance science and environment journalist in St. John’s, Canada.

Landing that first job in industry requires planning, homework and networking — and a bit of soul-searching.

Melanie Zeppel stepped off the academic path to become a data scientist in industry. Credit: Stephen Jackson

Plant physiologist Melanie Zeppel had heard that hard work, a good publication list and securing highly competitive postdoctoral
Mongabay Environmental News •

Progress is slow on Africa’s Great Green Wall, but some bright spots bloom

The southern fringes of the Sahara are dynamic. As rainfall varies, land patches on the edge chop and change between green and arid brown. Human activities, like overgrazing, deforestation or poor irrigation, further degrade some of the already arid parts of the Sahel, resulting in desertification. As the planet heats up, changes in rainfall patterns can cause longer dry spells on the southern boundaries of the Sahara, stretching the desert further down, and affecting nearly a million people and
Deccan Herald •

Snakebite: India’s silent killer

Inherently shy, snakes can turn defensive when disturbed or threatened. The slithering reptiles then bite by injecting a cocktail of toxins at the intruder through their fangs. Based on the species of snake, the toxins can over time cause respiratory paralysis, bleeding, breakdown of muscle fibres, shocks, organ failures, and death. It only takes a few hours to sniff out human life with a snake bite.

Studies estimate that each year, about five million snake bites occur around the world, while 8
Mongabay Environmental News •

Volunteers, First Nations work to bring back a disappearing oak prairie

On the eastern edge of Victoria, British Columbia, abutting the Salish Sea, sits Uplands Park, spanning about 30 hectares, or 74 acres, amid the bustling municipality of Oak Bay. Although an urban park, it lacks manicured lawns, ornamental flowers or asphalted walkways — quintessential elements of modern-day urban parks.

Instead, the landscape is sprinkled with stunted, gnarled and crooked oak trees. A few shrubs of snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) and ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor), and som
Mongabay-India •

Habitat loss due to tourism in the Western Ghats pushes endangered frogs to the edge

The picturesque Munnar in Kerala, with its lush green tea gardens carpet rolling hills, sits at the south of biodiversity hotspot that is the Western Ghats. Coffee and cardamom plantations intersperse the tea gardens, giving this lofty range the name Cardamom Hills. Groves of eucalyptus, black wattle and acacia — trees grown for firewood and timber — are peppered within these plantations.

Patches of shola forests — stunted tropical montane forests which once covered all these hills — lie scatte
Scroll.in •

Tourism boom in Kerala’s Western Ghats threatens to wipe out habitat of endemic frog species

Nestled within the lofty Cardamom Hills, which forms part of the Western Ghats Unesco World Heritage Site, lies the picturesque town of Munnar in Kerala. Lush green tea gardens carpet the rolling hills of the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot, interspersed by coffee and cardamom plantations. Groves of eucalyptus, black wattle and acacia – trees grown for firewood and timber – are peppered within these plantations.

Patches of shola forests – stunted tropical montane forests which once covere
Mongabay Environmental News •

As tourism booms in India’s Western Ghats, habitat loss pushes endangered frogs to the edge

Nestled within the lofty Cardamom Hills, which forms part of the Western Ghats UNESCO World Heritage Site, lies the picturesque town of Munnar in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Lush green tea gardens carpet the rolling hills of the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot, interspersed by coffee and cardamom plantations. Groves of eucalyptus, black wattle and acacia—trees grown for firewood and timber—are peppered within these plantations.

Patches of shola forests—stunted tropical montane fo
Hakai Magazine •

Shining the Light on Baby Crabs

It’s a gray summer evening on Galiano Island, a long strip of land about 1.5 kilometers across at its narrowest. Home to nearly 1,400 people, it is one of the 200-odd islands and islets in the Gulf Islands archipelago dotting the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the mainland coast. The air here at the wooden pier in Whaler Bay on the island’s southeast end is heavy and moist, tinged with a whiff of boat fuel and old wood, and infused with sea salt. Amid a lineup of moto
Ancient Forest Alliance •

Indigenous funding model is a win-win for ecosystems and local economies in Canada

• First Nations in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii of Canada, have successfully invested in conservation initiatives that have benefited ecosystems while also increasing communities’ well-being over the past 15 years, a recent report shows.
• Twenty-seven First Nations spent nearly C$109 million ($79 million) toward 439 environmental and economic development projects in their territories, inclu
BioScience •

Mining the sea floor: Implications for biodiversity

An air of urgency permeates the offices of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the international agency in Kingston, Jamaica, tasked with regulating mining-related activities on the ocean floor. Overlooking the Caribbean Sea through their windows, representatives from the 168 member states are scrambling to finalize the Mining Code, a rule book that will govern the commercial extraction of deep sea minerals.

For over a decade, different organs of the ISA have been working toward framing r
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