New Future
A kind of feed reader
As global leaders, experts, activists and Indigenous voices meet this October in the Colombian city of Cali at the U.N. Biodiversity Conference, COP16, missteps and successes within President Gustavo Petro’s environment agenda are watched closely.
NORTH KALIMANTAN, Indonesia — Indonesia is trying to kick its coal habit, which currently powers nearly half of the country. As part of this energy transition, the Southeast Asian nation is turning to biomass energy, generated mainly from wood chips produced by fast-growing tree plantations. These wood chips are burned alongside coal as a renewable […]
Scientists have long surmised that birds migrate during winters to save energy. The reasoning has been pretty obvious: far away from the biting cold, birds would need to expend less energy to keep themselves warm. New research has upended that assumption. A study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution found that one group […]
For a long time, the king cobra, the world’s largest venomous snake, was thought to be a single species. A new landmark study has concluded it’s not: the snake is actually four different species. “I feel like we created history,” study lead researcher P. Gowri Shankar, founder of the India-based Kalinga Centre for Rainforest Ecology, […]
Illegal logging in the Amazon jumped by 19% over the past year, according to a new report. Between August 2022 and July 2023, some 126,000 hectares, or 311,000 acres, of forest were cleared illicitly, equivalent to cutting timber from 350 football fields every day without environmental authorization. Experts point to a troubling shift: as illegal […]
In the grasslands of Yagul, in the central valleys of southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state, a jaguar makes its way through the bushes. It stops suddenly, lowering its head and sharpening its gaze, stalking. With its eyes on its target, it stealthily pounces on it. Just a short run and a jump before the jaguar’s prey […]
A new atlas by human rights groups assessed tree cover and biodiversity hotspots on lands belonging to Afro-descendant peoples in 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the Black Communities’ Process (PCN) and the Universidad Javeriana’s Observatory for Ethnic and Peasant Territories (OTEC) identified nearly 32.7 million hectares […]
This is the second part of a Mongabay series investigating Cambodia’s illicit timber trade. Read Part One. Several Cambodian journalists helped to report this investigation, but have requested not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the story. SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — On a rain-sodden day in September 2023, reporters entered the Sihanoukville Special […]
LABAN NYARIT, Indonesia — Ipu Angit’s close relationship with the forest here in the interior of Borneo is evident as he identifies the plants and trees he uses to meet his daily needs, venturing deeper in despite the hot, humid weather and his advanced age. One moment he deftly fashions a makeshift umbrella out of […]
It is time to recognize that the Western conservation model has serious historical flaws and cannot achieve global targets alone. We, Indigenous peoples, offer another way. It is just a few days until the beginning of COP16 when countries worldwide will meet to discuss biodiversity protection. The Conference of the Parties (COP) under the Convention […]
Almost 20% of the Kayapó Indigenous Territory has burned in this year’s Amazon drought, the worst ever recorded in Brazil.
Rural-to-urban migration is a worldwide phenomenon and the Amazon is no exception. Nonetheless, a very large proportion of its immigrants are small farmers who originally came from the High Andes and Northeastern Brazil, wagering their future on the frontier landscapes of the Pan Amazon. This flow of people into rural communities slowed dramatically after about […]
At the age of 15, Elvio Lagos took his first steps toward becoming a shellfish diver. He began helping his father catch conger eels and shellfish in Caleta Horcón, a cove in central Chile not far from the copper-centered industrial area of Quintero-Puchuncaví, dubbed as one of the country’s so-called “sacrifice zones” due to high […]
A new-to-science hammerhead species, the shovelhead shark, has been hiding in plain sight for three centuries due to its close resemblance to a long-lost relative, the bonnethead shark. After a decade of research, a breakthrough study published Sept. 24 found that these are two distinct species, challenging the widely accepted 1758 description by biologist Carl […]
As global leaders, experts, activists and Indigenous voices meet this October in the Colombian city of Cali at the U.N. Biodiversity Conference, COP16, missteps and successes within President Gustavo Petro’s environment agenda are watched closely.
NORTH KALIMANTAN, Indonesia — Indonesia is trying to kick its coal habit, which currently powers nearly half of the country. As part of this energy transition, the Southeast Asian nation is turning to biomass energy, generated mainly from wood chips produced by fast-growing tree plantations. These wood chips are burned alongside coal as a renewable […]
Scientists have long surmised that birds migrate during winters to save energy. The reasoning has been pretty obvious: far away from the biting cold, birds would need to expend less energy to keep themselves warm. New research has upended that assumption. A study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution found that one group […]
For a long time, the king cobra, the world’s largest venomous snake, was thought to be a single species. A new landmark study has concluded it’s not: the snake is actually four different species. “I feel like we created history,” study lead researcher P. Gowri Shankar, founder of the India-based Kalinga Centre for Rainforest Ecology, […]
Illegal logging in the Amazon jumped by 19% over the past year, according to a new report. Between August 2022 and July 2023, some 126,000 hectares, or 311,000 acres, of forest were cleared illicitly, equivalent to cutting timber from 350 football fields every day without environmental authorization. Experts point to a troubling shift: as illegal […]
In the grasslands of Yagul, in the central valleys of southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state, a jaguar makes its way through the bushes. It stops suddenly, lowering its head and sharpening its gaze, stalking. With its eyes on its target, it stealthily pounces on it. Just a short run and a jump before the jaguar’s prey […]
A new atlas by human rights groups assessed tree cover and biodiversity hotspots on lands belonging to Afro-descendant peoples in 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the Black Communities’ Process (PCN) and the Universidad Javeriana’s Observatory for Ethnic and Peasant Territories (OTEC) identified nearly 32.7 million hectares […]
This is the second part of a Mongabay series investigating Cambodia’s illicit timber trade. Read Part One. Several Cambodian journalists helped to report this investigation, but have requested not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the story. SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — On a rain-sodden day in September 2023, reporters entered the Sihanoukville Special […]
LABAN NYARIT, Indonesia — Ipu Angit’s close relationship with the forest here in the interior of Borneo is evident as he identifies the plants and trees he uses to meet his daily needs, venturing deeper in despite the hot, humid weather and his advanced age. One moment he deftly fashions a makeshift umbrella out of […]
It is time to recognize that the Western conservation model has serious historical flaws and cannot achieve global targets alone. We, Indigenous peoples, offer another way. It is just a few days until the beginning of COP16 when countries worldwide will meet to discuss biodiversity protection. The Conference of the Parties (COP) under the Convention […]
Almost 20% of the Kayapó Indigenous Territory has burned in this year’s Amazon drought, the worst ever recorded in Brazil.
Rural-to-urban migration is a worldwide phenomenon and the Amazon is no exception. Nonetheless, a very large proportion of its immigrants are small farmers who originally came from the High Andes and Northeastern Brazil, wagering their future on the frontier landscapes of the Pan Amazon. This flow of people into rural communities slowed dramatically after about […]
At the age of 15, Elvio Lagos took his first steps toward becoming a shellfish diver. He began helping his father catch conger eels and shellfish in Caleta Horcón, a cove in central Chile not far from the copper-centered industrial area of Quintero-Puchuncaví, dubbed as one of the country’s so-called “sacrifice zones” due to high […]
A new-to-science hammerhead species, the shovelhead shark, has been hiding in plain sight for three centuries due to its close resemblance to a long-lost relative, the bonnethead shark. After a decade of research, a breakthrough study published Sept. 24 found that these are two distinct species, challenging the widely accepted 1758 description by biologist Carl […]