New Future

COLOMBO — In December 2024, Sri Lanka’s newly appointed minister of agriculture K. D. Lalkantha told the Parliament that farmers should have the right to take action against crop-raiding wild animals. His comments drew backlash, particularly from environmentalists who termed the minister’s remarks harmful and an invitation to kill wildlife at will.

Dom Philips, Bruno Periera, Mukesh Chandrakar, Chhoeung Chheng — these are just a few environmental journalists among many who have been killed while doing exactly that: environmental reporting. Mongabay’s own Gerald Flynn was recently barred from Cambodia on January 5th, 2025, despite having a valid visa and work permit.

CHITWAN, Nepal — One of Nepal’s biggest cities on the northwestern fringes of Chitwan National Park has been dumping its municipal waste in a forest that serves as an international wildlife corridor, by relying on falsified environmental safeguard documents submitted 15 years ago, a Mongabay investigation has found.

GEBE ISLAND, Indonesia — Abdul Manan Magtiblo watched the excavator dump a piece of Gebe Island into the back of a truck. Barely a thicket remained on the buzz-cut upland above Umera village as the vehicle drove off to the nearby port.

The Ocean Census project has identified 866 new marine species, many from the deep seas, less than two years since its launch. The project announced its findings on March 10, marking the first phase of its goal to document 100,000 new species in the Earth’s oceans.

A new-to-science species of praying mantis found in Iran has been named as a symbol of universal freedom. Sinaiella azadi was found in the mountainous region of central Iran in 2022 by Mahmood Kolnegari, a Ph. D. researcher at the University of Córdoba in Spain.

The Trump administration, as part of its downsizing of the federal government, fired roughly 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) employees, who manage protected areas in the U. S. With more terminations on the horizon, former NPS employees are sounding the alarm that critical visitor services and research won’t be conducted, to the detriment of U. S.

Synthetic chemicals found in a wide range of products, from textiles to food packaging, and now even breast milk, are endangering infants’ lives in Africa, researchers say. Scientists are still investigating exactly how these “forever chemicals” affect babies, but there’s reason to worry, according to David Koli Essumang, co-author of a study conducted in Ghana.

What’s new: Rising temperatures and variation in the length of dry seasons appear to influence the prevalence of dengue fever, according to a recent study conducted in the Philippines. What the study says: Cases of dengue fever are rising globally; in the Americas, they more than doubled from 4.6 million cases in 2023 to 10.

Numerous events and policy decisions across the world in the last several months are causing despair among many environmentalists.

KOH KONG, Cambodia — “[Officially], the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project was suspended for more than a year and then restarted/reinstated recently.

As the growing demand for charcoal and firewood hastens the decline of shea trees in Ghana, communities living on the fringes of the country’s Mole National Park are planting fast-growing trees of other species as a buffer.

Three New Zealand islands will join an international initiative to remove invasive species and restore native wildlife. With the addition of Maukahuka (Auckland) Island, Rakiura (Stewart) Island and Chatham Island, the Island-Ocean Connection Challenge (IOCC) will now have 20 ongoing projects aimed at restoring and rewilding 40 globally significant island-ocean ecosystems by 2030.

Jeane Da Gama Costa, 42, grew up in Umburanas, a small municipality of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil. Her family raised cattle for meat and grew crops like beans, corn and watermelon. It was a quiet and modest life. “It was isolated, very isolated, ” she says.