Every day, people protect what matters. These are their stories.
Overharvesting has raised conservation concerns for a widely foraged plant, but researchers say that better genetic insights could support more effective protection efforts. For years, the wild ramp community has disagreed about how many kinds there really are. Some have insisted the plant is jus...
At 75, Hasta Bahadur Sathighare Magar vividly recalls the once-barren slopes above his Nepali village, now transformed by a thriving forest. This remarkable restoration has revived the land and his spirit.
A young boy's mysterious disappearance in Indonesian Borneo captivated an entire village, as he claimed spirits from a towering fig tree had lured him away, evading his mother's desperate search.
Guardians of the planet, yet sidelined: Indigenous and local communities lead conservation efforts worldwide, despite barriers in global governance.
I write short obituaries for people who spent their lives protecting parts of the natural world. I work on them in the margins of other responsibilities, yet they have become a constant. In 2025, I produced over 70. The people I write about are often described as conservationists, scientists, activi...
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One morning, a couple of years ago, Deachen Chuksit went to her field to milk the cows, a usual morning routine. But she was distraught to find one missing. As a native of Ladakh — also home to the snow leopard — this didn’t come as a shock. She’d often heard of the snow leopard’s notoriety and how ...
The Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia is collecting and storing cheetah sperm samples to preserve the species' genetic material in case the world's fastest land animal runs out of time, as cheetah populations have dropped by 80% in the last 50 years due to habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, and the illegal wi...
Winter has officially arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. With today’s winter solstice, the days will start to get a little bit longer, but the cold will stick around. We humans typically handle the dipping temperatures by staying inside, sleeping more, and dressing in layers. But what about other m...
For much of the second half of the 20th century, the American outdoors attracted a particular kind of devotee. They moved easily between disciplines, took seasonal work without much concern for titles, and regarded time in wild places as both education and obligation. Their lives did not unfold alon...
Cartagena, Colombia, is set to ban its iconic horse-drawn carriages, replacing them with electric buggies — a move dividing the historic city over tradition, tourism, and animal welfare....
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When Mats Janzon found Leya, she was just a tiny baby curled up alone in the grass near his home in Sweden. Janzon was out on a quiet walk in the woods when he heard a soft peeping sound and saw it was a baby otter. He kept his distance for several hours, hoping her mother would return. When no one ...
Getting to The Cedars, an ecological preserve in California’s Sonoma county, is a slog. Multiple rivers and creeks must be crossed, and it can be tough going on an often storm-destroyed road. But it’s home to a rich diversity of species found nowhere else on Earth that are uniquely adapted to serpen...
Since 2023, South Korea’s largest island — Jeju Island — has been developing legislation to grant constitutional rights to approximately 120 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in their coastal waters. It would be a first for the country in granting animals “legal personhood.” Indo-Pacific bottlenose d...
Founder s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For a movement so often framed by loss—and confronting a particularly difficult moment—conservation is relearning how to talk about itself. This shift may signal someth...
There are plenty of annual recap lists circulating around this time of year, but few of them involve the amount of work put in by California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Over the past year, researchers guided remotely operated vehicles more than 3,000 feet down to survey the v...
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Protected areas (PAs) are cornerstones of global biodiversity conservation strategy, yet their social impacts remain contentious. The prevailing narrative often pits global benefits, like biodiversity protection and carbon sequestration, against local costs like restricted access to land and resourc...
Despite their name, tree hyraxes — small, furry, nocturnal African mammals — don’t always live in trees. In Tanzania’s Pare mountains, near the border with Kenya, they’ve adapted to life on steep rocky outcrops as forests disappeared over the centuries, a recent study has found. Eastern tree hyraxes...
View image in fullscreenOn top of the whirl … a fox admires the northern lights in Kilpisjärvi, at the north-western tip of Finland Photograph: Dennis Lehtonen/SWNSShareView image in fullscreenHoneymoon of a lifetime … this is one of the two mated burrowing owls who stowed away on a cruise ship o...
Featured image source: L: Bhavna Menon | R: Ravi Pathak Trigger warning: Mention of death My call with Rajkumari Yadav was brief — perhaps the shortest interview I’ve ever done. In just three minutes, the 16-year-old broke down. My simple “How are you feeling today?” brought back the day in June whe...
A 22-year-old woman is the subject of celebration after she hugged a tree continuously for 72 hours amid fluctuating temperatures and rainfall on the foot of Mount Kenya. Truphena Muthoni’s endurance embrace beat her own 48-hour endurance earlier this year. On Friday, the Guinness World Records reco...
