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Mongabay Environmental News •

Sun, sand and skulls: Bali tourism trade peddles threatened primate skulls

Charmed by the picturesque beaches and enchanting temple complexes, millions of tourists flock each year to the tiny Indonesian island of Bali to experience its unique culture and art. When they leave, many take home a piece of Bali in the form of souvenirs, such as carvings, pottery or textiles. Unbeknown to them, some may even be committing a crime if they pick up primate skulls — a commodity openly sold in Bali’s curio shops, despite it being illegal.

A recent study, published in the journal...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Rhino poachers imprisoned in back-to-back South Africa sentencing

A South African court in January sentenced four poachers to several years in prison for two separate crimes committed in Kruger National Park (KNP).

The Skukuza Regional Court, which in the past has boasted a near-100% conviction rate and under whose jurisdiction KNP falls, held two South African citizens, Sam Khosa and Solly Selahle, and a Mozambican named Oddis Maluleke, guilty of poaching a rhino and taking its horns in February 2019.

Khosa and Maluleke were handed a 22-year prison term and...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Report reveals staggering levels of wildlife trafficking in Hispanic America

From the glacial fjords of Chilean Patagonia to the beaches and mountains of Baja California, Hispanic America, representing Spanish-speaking countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean, is a biodiversity treasure trove. These include colorful macaws, showy iguanas, gaudy poison frogs and charismatic cats — animals so beautiful that people want to own them as pets.

A recent report throws light on what this desire for exotic pets means for biodiversity in Hispanic America, where wil...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Vietnam and China partner on wildlife-friendly traditional medicine practices

Vietnam and China, the two largest markets for traditional medicine (TM) that uses wild plants and animals, announced a new partnership in January to adopt practices that protect wildlife while preserving the countries’ cultural heritage.

The first-of-its-kind agreement involved leading TM associations from Vietnam and China — the Vietnam Oriental Traditional Medicine Association (VOTMA) and the China Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine (CATCM) — along with researchers, policymakers and...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Camera traps capture first glimpse of genetically distinct chimps in southwestern Nigeria

In a win for Nigeria’s only Indigenous grassroots conservation organization, camera traps installed in Ise Conservation Area have captured the first known video of a resident Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee.

The individual, seen swinging between tree branches and feeding on figs, is a mature male in his prime, said Rachel Ashegbofe Ikemeh, founder director of the South-West/Niger Delta Forest Project (SWNDF). “We are able to show the world these chimps for the very first time.”


Camera traps at I...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Increase in gibbon trafficking into India has conservationists worried

With oversized and inquisitive eyes, an infant-like expressive face, and a palette of thick, furry coats ranging from beige to black, gibbons tick all the right boxes to be called “cute” and “cuddly.” But their endearing appearance is now costing these native Asian apes their lives and a future in the wild, thanks to people wanting them as pets.

This surging demand in the exotic pet trade, especially from countries where gibbons aren’t native, is thrusting them into the illegal wildlife trade....
Mongabay Environmental News •

Record seizure highlights scale of wild bird egg theft in UK

Police in the U.K. recently announced the seizure of more than 5,000 eggs belonging to several wild bird species, following nationwide raids in November 2024. While no arrests have been made in this case, the investigations are continuing.

The seizure, the largest of its kind in U.K. history, was part of an international crackdown on the illegal trade in wild bird eggs, called Operation Pulka, that originated in Norway in June 2023. As part of it, authorities in other countries have so far arre...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Five-month-old male gorilla, victim of illegal wildlife trade, seized in Istanbul

On Dec. 22, 2024, Turkish customs officers conducting a random search of a plane’s cargo hold found a surprise stowaway inside a small wooden crate with holes: a malnourished baby gorilla dressed in a soiled T-shirt.

The Turkish Airlines flight was headed from Nigeria to Thailand and was transiting via Istanbul, authorities told local media. The baby gorilla, transported without necessary permits, is one among many wildlife seized in recent months in Istanbul, a major air-transit hub.

After it...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Indonesia’s voracious songbird trade laps up rare and poisonous pitohuis

Among New Guinea’s rainforest inhabitants is a group of birds called pitohuis, chatty songbirds that stand out for their loud, attractive songs. But there’s more to these birds than their songs: their poison.

Pitohuis are among the few poisonous birds on the planet. Their skin and feathers contain potent neurotoxins, which help them fight off parasites such as lice, ticks and fleas, and predators, including humans. When humans handle these birds, the neurotoxins irritate the nasal passage and c...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Atlantic puffins are perilously attracted to artificial light, new study shows

As the long summer days of August turn into nights, a few dozen volunteers gather in the small community of Witless Bay, a tiny town on the Atlantic coast about a half-hour’s drive south of St. John’s, capital of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. After a briefing by a coordinator from conservation NGO the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), the volunteers don reflective vests, grab butterfly nets and flashlights, and place plastic crates in their cars. They then set...
Mongabay Environmental News •

New evidence spells massive trouble for world’s sharks, rays and chimaeras

Evolution has perfected the world’s sharks and rays for more than 420 million years. Unlike the ammonites or pterosaurs that they once shared the oceans with, sharks and rays persevered through five mass extinctions. But now, their resilience has been put to test by a human folly: overfishing. In 2023, the Java stingaree (Urolophus javanicus) became the first marine fish on record to have gone extinct because of humans. If our current fishing trends continue, it won’t be the last, scientists war...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Nigerian authorities seize 2 metric tons of pangolin scales, arrest 1 suspect

On Dec. 5, Nigerian authorities seized more than 2 metric tons of pangolin scales in yet another effort to clamp down on the country’s booming transnational wildlife trade.

Acting on intelligence provided by the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), an international NGO fighting organized wildlife crime, the Kano-Jigawa command of the Nigeria Customs Services (NCS) also arrested one person, suspected to be a broker. The seizures and the arrest were made in two warehouses in Mubi, a town in Adamawa...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Hundreds of whales to be harpooned as Iceland issues new hunting licenses

On Dec. 6, Iceland’s caretaker government announced it had issued five-year licenses to hunt fin and minke whales in Icelandic waters. It granted the fin whale hunting license to Hvalur hf., the country’s only remaining fin-whaling company, run by billionaire Kristján Loftsson, and the minke-hunting permit to a ship owned by Tjaldtangi ehf., a whaling company that was previously licensed to hunt minke whales.

The licenses were issued by Iceland’s caretaker prime minister, who also serves as the...
Mongabay Environmental News •

With Turkmenistan set to join CITES, wildlife trade regulation in Central Asia gets a boost

Turkmenistan is set to join the global wildlife trade convention as of January, in a move that could bolster conservation efforts in Central Asia. This makes Turkmenistan the 185th party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and the last country in Central Asia to join.

“Turkmenistan is ready for active cooperation within the framework of CITES at both the regional and international levels,” Babanyyazov Charygeldi, the minister of enviro...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park

When the Indonesian government established Tesso Nilo National Park in 2004 on a former logging concession, little could it have known that the legacy of logging and deforestation would continue years after granting it official protection. The park, which was expanded in 2009, now covers more than 80,000 hectares of land in Sumatra’s Riau province, and is one of the last tracts of lowland forest blocks that remains on the island.

Tesso Nilo National Park is home to nearly 3% of the world’s mamm...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Protected areas in SE Asia could do better with more resources, study finds

For the last two decades, countries around the world have been in a frenzy to earmark large swaths of their lands and waters as protected areas to meet the ambitious “30 by 30” target that calls for 30% of Earth’s land and seas to be legally protected by 2030. Governments are expanding existing protected areas and setting up new ones to prevent deforestation, conserve biodiversity and reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

But how well are these protected areas working? That’s a questi...
Hakai Magazine •

In Graphic Detail: Mouthfuls of Microplastic

It’s tasteless, odorless, and nutritionally devoid, yet eaten every day. Nearly everyone on the planet unintentionally consumes microplastic—through food, water, and even air. How much? That depends on geography.

Plastic production has increased 240-fold in the past few decades. Over time, these plastics degrade into smaller and smaller pieces that infiltrate the air, soil, and water. To determine how much microplastic people have been eating, drinking, and breathing, researchers from Cornell U...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Chatterbox chimps converse just like humans (but with more gestures)

For more than 15 years, an international team of researchers intermittently followed five groups of eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the jungles of Uganda and Tanzania. With cameras in hand, they diligently recorded hundreds of videos of chimpanzee chatter.

“This took a lot of hard drives,” says primatologist Gal Badihi from the University of St. Andrews in the U.K., talking about the largest ever database of chimpanzee conversations. With this treasure trove of data, Bad...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Regions with highest risks to wildlife have fewest camera traps, study finds

Over the past three decades, camera traps have given us a rare, never-before-seen peek into animal lives. Used by conservation organizations, academic researchers and citizen science projects around the world, camera traps have become the gold standard in monitoring biodiversity and studying cryptic and elusive species in the wild. However, a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation finds that camera traps remain missing from areas that could re...
Deccan Herald •

Diatoms: Storytellers of the past

When diatomist Karthick Balasubramanian visited the Inter-University Accelerator Centre, a research institute in Delhi, he serendipitously met archaeologist C R Gayathri, who too was at the centre with a few ancient pottery shards. They were at the centre to look back in time—biological and archaeological—for their respective research and got talking. Over the next six years, ideas bounced off each other resulting in the first-of-its-kind scientific study that uses diatoms from ancient pottery i
Mongabay Environmental News •

Conservationists welcome new PNG Protected Areas Act — but questions remain

With more than 70% of the country blanketed by tropical rainforests, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a megadiverse country home to more than 5% of the world’s biodiversity, including charismatic tree kangaroos, egg-laying echidnas and flightless cassowaries. However, since 1972, nearly a third of the country’s rainforest has been lost or degraded due to logging, road construction, agricultural expansion and mining.

In a significant push to conservation, the country’s parliament passed the Protected A
Deccan Herald •

Finding a lost turtle by tapping into people’s wisdom

In the monsoon months of 2019, turtle researcher Ayushi Jain and her team visited a few villages on the banks of the Chandragiri River in Kasargod, Kerala, to check how the Cantor’s giant softshell turtle was doing. Between 1970 and then, scientists had recorded only 15 sightings of this elusive turtle, and recent surveys had spotted none. Jain and her team set out to confirm if the critically endangered turtle had gone extinct in the region.

Local ecological knowledge is the knowledge people h
Mongabay Environmental News •

No joking: Great apes can be silly and playfully tease each other, finds study

Being silly and indulging in humor may sound easy, but our brains need to do a lot of heavy lifting to pull it off. Landing a joke requires recognizing what’s socially acceptable, being spontaneous, predicting how others may react, and playfully violating some social expectations. Until now, research on the complex cognitive abilities that underpin humor has focused primarily on humans, while other species are understudied.

In a recent study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal So
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