New Future

For a plant, life in Argentina’s Monte Desert is hard enough. Daily temperatures can fluctuate dramatically; it rarely rains, and there are few nutrients in the parched soil for a hungry plant.

Three young conservationists were recently named winners of the 2025 Future For Nature (FFN) Awards for their initiatives to conserve amphibians, pangolins and Andean wildlife. The winners will each receive 50,000 euros ($54,000), FFN said in a statement. “Working in conservation can be tough, ” Anthony Waddle, the winner from Australia, told Mongabay by email.

COLOMBO — Monkeys were expected to be among the chief culprits identified as Sri Lanka carried out a nationwide survey on March 15 of crop-raiding animals. But in a small village near the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an unusual population of langurs has captured attention, becoming a local tourist attraction.

On March 13, U. S federal Judge James Bredar issued an order requiring the Trump administration reinstate thousands of probationary federal employees recently fired as part of government downsizing. The reinstatement order applies across 18 agencies including the Department of Commerce, which administers the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

OLEMBÉ, Cameroon — About 10 kilometers (6.3 miles) north of the Cameroon capital of Yaoundé, local members of the Yanda community say the construction of a stadium has resulted in the clearing of their ancestral forest, depriving roughly 600 people — 52 families — of their land and their means of livelihood.

Conservation authorities and groups, along with Māori people, recently established a new population of the critically endangered kākāriki karaka, or orange-fronted parakeet, on a New Zealand island. Thirty-four kākāriki karaka (Cyanoramphus malherbi), raised in captivity, were released on the predator-free Pukenui, or Anchor Island, in the Fiordland National Park.

After more than a decade studying California ground squirrels, Jennifer Smith felt she had a solid understanding of their behavior. Then, in the summer of 2024, her students spotted something she never expected: one of the squirrels chased, killed and ate a vole, a small rodent common across the western coast of North America.

Unusually heavy rainfall struck southern Botswana and eastern South Africa from Feb. 16-20, flooding cities and killing at least 31 people. In Botswana, the government said nearly 5,500 people were affected, and more than 2,000 people evacuated.

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Walhi, has filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, accusing 47 companies of environmental destruction and corruption. The companies, which operate in industries like palm oil, mining and forestry, are accused of being responsible for 437 trillion rupiah ($26.5 billion) in state losses.

A moving coming-of-age story of two Kenyan teenagers brought together in friendship by a murder, the documentary film Searching for Amani opens a window into complex tensions between conservationists, crop-growing farmers and pastoralists in Kenya as extreme drought throws them into conflict over dwindling resources.

In the rainforests of West Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, the Indigenous Dayak Iban listen to what they call “omen birds, ” or birds they say sing messages from spirits, Mongabay’s Sonam Lama Hyolmo reported in November 2024.

A study in the United States found a dramatic 22% decline in butterfly populations between 2000 and 2020. Previous research has focused on a specific butterfly species or regions of the country. For this study, researchers wanted to understand overall butterfly population trends across the U. S. They gathered records of 12.

CORUMBAÍBA, Brazil — The hoary fox (Lycalopex vetulus) is a small canid found only in Brazil. Although commonly seen running across the open grasslands of the Brazilian Cerrado, surprisingly little is known about the species. Researchers Fernanda Cavalcanti and Frederico Lemos have spent the past two decades working to change that.

The tropics are celebrated as hotspots of biological diversity and renowned as supply houses for food, fiber and pharmacies. They also harbor linguistic diversity, a proxy for cultural diversity, critical to people’s health, well-being and identity. Embedded in linguistic variation is a library of human knowledge, cosmologies and institutions.