New Future

JAKARTA — Prosecutors in Indonesia have charged four judges and two lawyers accused of bribery in a recently concluded trial involving palm oil giants Permata Hijau, Wilmar and Musim Mas.

Parrots numbered 44460 and 44461 don’t know it yet, but they’re about to meet the human species — with all the trauma that entails.

Illegal gold miners have been moving into Amapá in the wake of federal raids on mining hotspots in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon, including the Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories.

EILAT, Israel — Rugged red mountains tower over the aquamarine waters off Eilat in southern Israel. A group of divers plunges beneath the waves on a warm winter morning, bound for a crag encrusted with coral known as Japanese Gardens.

KHANKE, Iraq — In the wind-swept town of Khanke in northern Iraq, a fragile tree stands as a quiet symbol of resilience. Its slender trunk bends slightly in the dry breeze, its roots gripping soil once strewn with plastic waste. Beneath its shade, a group of women gathers: survivors of war, displacement, and unimaginable loss.

Microplastics are pervasive in the environment and often so small they can’t be seen with the naked eye. Removing them has been a big challenge, but recent research finds that water hyacinths can be effective at remediating microplastic from aquatic environments.

In February, Seychelles became the first country to comply with an international standard that aims to make governments’ management of their fisheries more transparent. The goal of the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) standard is to improve oversight and public accountability. Seychelles, with an exclusive economic zone of 1.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. At a time when traditional news outlets are shedding reporters and chasing clicks, Mongabay is bucking the trend: it’s growing.

MALINAU, Indonesia — Indonesia is pressing ahead with construction of a new network of dams in Borneo to power a major “green” industrial estate that will relocate Indigenous communities and cut into one of Asia’s largest stretches of intact rainforest.

In what’s being hailed as a conservation success, the wattled crane has seen its conservation status in South Africa improve from critically endangered to endangered.

As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, coral bleaching events are expected to become more frequent. So, scientists are looking for ways to help coral reefs recover more quickly, and a new study from Japan suggests that artificial structures like breakwaters may be helpful.

COLOMBO — Beneath Sri Lanka’s serene waters, a pearl oyster cherished her pearl, living in harmony. But disaster struck when a blazing ship sank, poisoning the sea. Entangled in debris, she lost her treasured pearl. Desperate, she started to search despite the waves and found glistening orbs.

A Mongabay investigation that revealed an illegal cattle boom amid a record-high number of killings of Indigenous Guajajara has been cited by Brazilian authorities to remove thousands of head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Rainforest.

A pair of Galápagos tortoises in their 90s recently made headlines for successfully producing offspring for the first time. The female tortoise, aptly named Mommy, at Philadelphia Zoo is now considered the oldest recorded first-time mom for the Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoise (Chelonoidis porteri), at the age of 97.