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- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.- Click the “Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.

- Hunting for bushmeat can impact the populations of rare and threatened wildlife in forests around the world.- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, subsistence hunting is often intertwined with the trade of bushmeat and in some cases live animals to sate the demand from larger markets, which can increase the pressure on wildlife populations.- The trade of bushmeat provides one of the few sources of income for hunters, porters and traders, as well as a source of protein for families, in the town of Lodja, which sits close to forests that are home to unique species.- Activists in Lodja and the DRC are working to save live animals from entering the illicit trade of endangered species and encourage alternative sources of income to the commercial trade of wild meat and animals.

- A Mongabay investigation has uncovered a logging operation being run out of Koh Kong provincial prison that gets its timber from the site of a new hydropower dam being built in Thma Bang.- Old-growth forest in Central Cardamom Mountains National Park is being cleared to make way for the Stung Tatai Leu hydropower dam, but the environmental impacts remain opaque.- NGOs and the Ministry of Environment provide minimal oversight to prevent illegal loggers from exploiting the project site, and former loggers detailed how bribes facilitate the illicit timber trade.- Prison officials maintained that the timber is used in a skills development program, but former inmates alleged that officials have been exploiting prison labor to craft luxury furniture.

- Despite citizens voting out the Scott Morrison-led government of Australia in 2022, Dan Ilic says there’s still a lot of talk around climate change policy with not enough action to meet national climate targets.- Known widely for his epic billboards appearing in New York’s Times Square during the COP26 climate summit satirizing Australia’s lack of seriousness at the conference, Ilic is host of the award-winning Australian comedy/climate-focused podcast “A Rational Fear” and spoke with the Mongabay Newscast in Sydney about the landscape surrounding climate policy in the country today.- He also shares his thoughts on victories for Indigenous communities in the Tiwi Islands and the Galilee Basin, both in Australia, where massive fossil fuel proposals were recently blocked.

- Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.- Author Timothy J. Killeen is an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia, where he lived for more than 35 years.- Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.- Click the “Perfect Storm in the Amazon” link atop this page to see chapters 1-13 as they are published during 2023.

- Mosses cover a China-size area of the globe and have a significant impact on ecosystems and climate change, according to a new study.- Researchers conducted the most comprehensive global field study of mosses to date to quantify how soil moss influences soil and ecosystem services in different environments on all seven continents.- Soil mosses can potentially add 6.43 billion metric tons of carbon to the soil globally, an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.68 billion cars.- Moss-covered soil offers several other benefits, including cycling of essential nutrients, facilitating faster decomposition, and reducing harmful plant pathogens.

- Black-footed cats (Felis nigripes) are the smallest and also one of the rarest wildcat species in Africa. They’re very reclusive, extremely hard to find, and are among the least-studied nocturnal mammals on the continent.- Data-scarce species like the black-footed cat are difficult to conserve because the most basic knowledge — of their home ranges, territories, habitat, and reproductive, dietary and other behaviors — is often lacking. Without these many life-cycle details, the targeting of effective preservation strategies is near impossible.- German ecologist Alexander Sliwa has made it his life’s mission to research the elusive black-footed cat. Establishing and working with a small team, he eventually led the way to the formation of the Black-footed Cat Working Group. Thanks largely to those efforts, a substantial database on Felis nigripes now exists.- This work led to the black-footed cat being listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Though the species’ survival remains far from secure, the design and implementation of conservation strategies will no longer have to start from scratch, and can be built on valuable, already accumulated baseline data.

- Since the colonization of the Congo Basin by Europeans, many Indigenous communities have been cordoned off from land they once relied on in the name of conservation.- The contentious “fortress conservation” model remains popular with some governments in Central Africa, but conservation leaders are shifting their opinion, signaling a desire to move toward inclusive and rights-based approaches to protected areas and ecosystems, including in declarations such as the Kigali Call to Action.- However, Indigenous leaders and conservation experts say action, not just talk, is urgently needed to achieve the goals outlined by the 30×30 initiative, and to make good on promises to address injustices faced by Indigenous communities across the basin.- On this episode of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, Cameroonian lawyer and Goldman Prize winner Samuel Nguiffo, Congolese academic Vedaste Cituli, and Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo detail the troubling history of fortress conservation in Central Africa, the role of paramilitary forces in it, the impacts on local communities, and ways to address the conflicts it has created.

- In December, world leaders adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, targeting the conservation of 30% of Earth by 2030.- However, Jeff Morgan, founder of Global Conservation, points out that simply designating protected areas is not enough to safeguard nature. His organization, therefore, focuses on strengthening protection within UNESCO World Heritage Sites in lower and middle-income countries, utilizing cost-effective technologies for law enforcement against poaching, illegal logging, and more.- Global Conservation currently operates across 22 national parks and 10 marine parks in 14 countries and aims to expand its work to 100 sites by 2033. Morgan believes that this focus on existing national parks and habitats is the most efficient and cost-effective way to achieve climate goals.- Morgan recently spoke with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler about Global Conservation’s approach.

- Food insecurity, famine and malnutrition have blighted the agropastoralist communities of the Lower Omo River Valley in southwestern Ethiopia.- A government source blames a long-term drought for the recent suffering and, in some cases, the deaths of people in this part of the country.- But researchers and human rights advocates say the drought has only exacerbated fundamental changes to the cultures of these peoples brought on by the construction of a dam and the establishment of sugarcane plantations in the region.- They say such “economic development” projects have dispossessed the Lower Omo’s peoples of their farming and grazing lands and irreversibly altered the natural cycles of the Omo River that was once the mainstay of their livelihoods.