Jeff Sikich, the biologist for the National Park Service in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, thought that Steve Winter “was crazy” for wanting to capture a photograph of a mountain lion in front of the Hollywood sign. “He looked at me like I was crazy because he said, ‘There are no mountain lions in Griffith Park.’ But I knew in the past that there had been,” Winter says. It took him around a year, but Winter managed to do it. He captured the famous mountain lion, named P-22 by scientists, sauntering down a hill at night wearing his tracking collar, with the Hollywood sign shimmering in the background. This helped spark a conservation movement in L.A. and eventually inspired funding for the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over U.S. Route 101, which will be the world’s largest wildlife crossing when it opens on Dec. 2. Winter and Mongabay contributing editor Sharon Guynup join the Mongabay Newscast this week to detail this story and others that are featured in her and Winter’s upcoming book of impactful photojournalism, Big Cats from Nat Geo Books. Each of the nine stories in this book was selected specifically for the conservation outcomes these stories helped inspire. “We really wanted to emphasize that storytelling and photography can change the world. And beyond that, we all can have impact, so we all need to contribute our skills, whatever they are,” Guynup says. After reading all 25,000 words, this book stands out to me as more than a collection of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Mongabay staff writer Aimee Gabay joins the Newscast this week to discuss her reporting trip to the Peruvian Amazon, where she spoke with the Indigenous Matsés community. She made the trip initially to examine environmental threats to Matsés territory. Instead, she found them suffering from an epidemic of malaria and hepatitis B, which they have been asking the Peruvian government to help address. “The story itself was a surprise … every question directed to them about environmental changes would immediately become an issue about health,” Gabay says. The Matsés people have long experienced conflict with outsiders such as rubber tappers encroaching into their territory. So in 1969, in the hope of finding help to ease the conflict, they chose to initiate contact with the outside world, reaching out to evangelical missionaries, Gabay says. But making contact also exposed them to diseases they’d never encountered before, and since then they’ve suffered from a barrage of epidemics. “They don’t have the immunological defenses to be able to fight these diseases that maybe, for us, we are constantly exposed to,” she says. The current epidemic of malaria and hepatitis B they face is being exacerbated by climate change, drought, and state neglect. Prolonged dry weather allows for favorable conditions for malaria-bearing mosquitoes to breed, and at the same time cuts off the river transit that the Matsés depend on for access to health care. Community members have travelled to the nearest major city to plead with the Peruvian government, but they say they’re…This article was originally published on Mongabay

On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, I speak with travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa. She has documented the violence and natural destruction that the presence of oil companies have brought to the people of the Niger Delta in her latest book, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria. Saro-Wiwa is also the daughter of the late activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. Her father led a peaceful resistance against the oil companies’ presence in the Niger Delta by mobilizing 300,000 people from Ogoniland in 1993. It is fair to say his activism started the movement against the destruction and exploitation led by oil companies in the nation. While peaceful at first, Noo Saro-Wiwa says many people gave up hope on peaceful resistance when the government failed to hold the companies accountable, and men turned to forming violent militant groups.  “Oil has been literally the worst thing that’s happened to the Niger Delta. If I could go back in time and I had the power, I would never have allowed oil to have been discovered,” she says. “ The amount of instability, political, economic instability it causes. And the damage to the environment … that goes without saying.  So we really need to shift to solar power … oil companies do not have this kind of leverage over people, and governments will have no incentive to go in and destroy people’s lives.” While her latest book chronicles the harm of oil and the resulting…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The Mediterranean Sea accounts for less than 1% of the world’s ocean surface water, but it contains roughly 18% of global marine biodiversity. It is home to 150 million people along its coastline (roughly equivalent to Russia’s population). And it sequesters 17.2 million metric tons of CO2 each year. Joining the Newscast this week to talk about the unique biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea and its threats is journalist Manuela Callari. Callari has written for Mongabay, highlighting the threats to purple sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus) along the Italian coast. These marine invertebrates are crucial to the health of marine ecosystems, such as those in the Mediterranean, by helping regulate algal abundance and serving as food for predators. However, they are being overfished and even poached in marine protected areas due to demand for them as the primary ingredient in a popular tourist dish: spaghetti ai ricci di mare. “In certain areas of Italy, like Puglia and Sicily, especially and Sardinia … ricci di mare are eaten either raw, or cooked with spaghetti … because [of] this, the sea urchins have been overfished. There are areas that where they don’t exist anymore,” Callari says. While the situation with urchins persists, Italy has been investing in an unprecedented effort to map its entire underwater coastline using deployed sensors to better understand the marine environment and manage conservation efforts. This is allowing them to identify where meadows of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, which are “absolutely vital” to the Mediterranean ecosystem, persist, Callari says.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Theonila Roka Matbob grew up next to what was — at the time — the world’s largest open-pit mine in Bougainville, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea, operated by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. This mine wrought environmental and social devastation on the community of Panguna for decades. And many of these impacts carry on today, says Roka Matbob, who is an Indigenous Nasioi woman and politician. With the help of Jubilee Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre, Roka Matbob was able to file a legal complaint with Australia’s National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct. As a result, Rio Tinto signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bougainville government to remediate the impacts of this mine. For this legal achievement, Roka Matbob was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize. However, she is skeptical that remediation for these impacts will occur. She joins the podcast this week to tell the Bougainville story and what she wants people to understand about mining’s impacts on the autonomous region and her community. “ The Bougainville story is a result of Australia’s political decision through Papua New Guinea government now implemented on Bougainville and leaving behind a toxic legacy that is already been kind of fenced out, not to have a forum to talk about,” she says. “So my intention is for us to start telling this story.” Late last year, the Bougainville government signed another memorandum of understanding with an Indian metals company, Loyd’s Metals, to redevelop the Panguna mine. Roka Matbob says…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Katharine Wilkinson has a Ph.D. in geography and the environment, is well known for being a co-author of the book Drawdown and co-founder of The All We Can Save Project. She joins the Newscast this week to discuss her latest book Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home. As a journalist, it’s unhelpful for me to divorce myself from the topic of this interview, as I have experienced, time and again, the sense of “murky overwhelm” this book is specifically designed to address. But Wilkinson didn’t just write this book for journalists like myself who cover ecological crises for a living. She wrote it for readers and listeners like you. “I think we’re all in our own ways grappling with this increasingly mapless time, right? And that is quite literally true,” Wilkinson says. “‘Is there hope?’ and ‘What can I do?’ I think these are fundamentally navigational questions as much as they are questions of action.” What Climate Wayfinding does that I think is unique is it directly addresses the reader and takes them through a process of self-examination. Of sitting with the uncomfortable emotions one feels about our ecological crises, without judgment. And from that self-compassion, asking the reader to imagine the world they want to see instead and encouraging them to map out how they see themselves working to achieve it. It sounds relatively simple, but the work is real and, from my own experience, not unlike therapy. In my opinion, it’s a brave piece…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A group of 57 nations mostly from the Global South, describing themselves as “coalition of the willing” intent on making the Transition Away From Fossil Fuels, or TAFF, convened in the Colombian city of Santa Marta, from April 24-29, 2026, for the inaugural TAFF summit. Also referred to as the “Santa Marta Coalition,” this group of countries met to discuss and develop frameworks and pathways for nations to phase out fossil fuel dependency. Joining the Mongabay Newscast this week is Mamphela Ramphele, a medical doctor, activist and member of the Planetary Guardians, a network of experts advocating for the planetary boundaries as a measurement framework. Ramphele explains the highlights of the conference, which included the unveiling of a dedicated scientific panel to advise nations on developing road maps to transition off fossil fuels. The science panel includes experts such as Carlos Nobre from Brazil and Johan Rockström from Sweden, who pioneered the planetary boundaries concept. The conference also saw the establishment of “workstreams” to help nations connect their phaseout road maps to their emissions reduction targets as part of their U.N. climate commitments; leverage support to change their financial systems for the transition; and reform trade systems. Two nations in attendance, Colombia and France, announced their own phaseout road maps at the conference. Ramphele, from South Africa, suggests that as countries in the Santa Marta Coalition develop and implement their own road maps, other nations not yet on board will eventually be pressured to follow. Until a legally binding agreement, such…This article was originally published on Mongabay