How do you search for the world’s smallest monkey? Earlier this year, Nicolás Schuldt Durán took on this task after he was approached by members of an Indigenous community in Ecuador. Ever since, he’s been tapping into the knowledge of the Siekopai people and combining it with passive acoustic monitoring technology to look for pygmy marmosets. Spoiler alert: They’re still looking for this elusive species. Working in the Siekoya Remolino community in Ecuador, Durán is collaborating with Indigenous community members to track pygmy marmosets (Cebuella pygmaea), locally called leoncillo, and gather data on where they live and how they’re faring. “The community has already been setting up camera traps and running a territorial monitoring program to catch hunters and loggers,” Durán, founder of conservation technology organization Neblina Labs, told Mongabay in a video interview. “This is just adding one more tool to their toolkit to monitor biodiversity.” Pygmy marmosets are threatened by the illegal pet trade as well as deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Image by David Reece via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0). Pygmy marmosets, native to the western Amazon Basin, are so small that an adult weighs only 140-150 grams (about 5 ounces), or the weight of a small apple. They live high up in trees and are known for their high-pitched calls, including whistles that are often in the ultrasonic range and which they use to communicate with one another. Classified as vulnerable to extinction, these primates are threatened by the illegal pet trade as well as deforestation…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Nigerian conservationist Rachel Ikemeh has been named the 2026 Rolex Award laureate, for her work with communities in the Niger Delta to protect the region’s ecology and the critically endangered Niger Delta red colobus monkey. The red colobus (Piliocolobus epieni), a monkey known as epieni by the region’s communities, is listed as one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates by the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. It was first described scientifically in 1993. At the time, there were about 10,000 epieni estimated to be living across its limited range in the Niger Delta. However, by 2013, their numbers had plunged to just hundreds rather than thousands of individuals, Ikemeh noted in a study. In 2021, Ikemeh and her colleagues helped establish a 1,010-hectare (2,496-acre) community-protected area for the epieni in Apoi, a town within the monkey’s range. By 2024, the monkey’s population had doubled within the community-protected forest, from 180-200 individuals in 2021, Ikemeh told Mongabay by email. She added the team has since helped create community conservation areas in the neighboring communities of Garnaut and Kokoloama. The award “feels less like a personal honour and more like validation for the community model itself,” Ikemeh said. She added she’s optimistic about the epieni’s future because she’s seen community perception around their conservation model shift over the years. “[T]he same community who once suspected we’d come to ‘collect their forest’ for the government now talk about epieni as a source of pride, something that put their village on the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In Madre de Dios, Peru, gold mining is deeply intertwined with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. But the industry is also leaving a heavy mark on the Amazon, with mercury pollution and deforestation reshaping one of the world’s most biodiverse forests. In La Pampa, an area known for gold mining, a formalized artisanal mining operation is attempting to find a different path. By using mercury-free technologies, the project aims to show that small-scale mining can produce “clean gold.” But making that transition is far from simple. The operation faces violence, informal economies, bureaucratic obstacles and limited government support. Through the stories of miners, workers and local businesses, the film looks at the challenges of moving toward more responsible mining in a region where environmental protection and economic survival are deeply connected. This video is supported by the Amazon Film Grant, as part of the One World Media Fellowship.This article was originally published on Mongabay

Indonesia’s critically endangered Javan rhinos appear to be safe despite an ongoing eruption of Mount Anak Krakatau near their last remaining habitat, conservation authorities said. Ardi Andono, head of Ujung Kulon National Park, home to the world’s only wild population of Javan rhinos (Rhinoceros sondaicus), said on Sept. 7 that the rhinos’ habitat had been minimally affected by vibrations and noise from Anak Krakatau, which began erupting on Sept. 4. Mount Anak Krakatau, an active volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, lies about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the park on Java’s southwestern tip, and its recent eruption sent ash across parts of both islands, disrupting air travel and prompting some schools and fishing activities to halt. “The Javan rhinos remained safe and still appear normal,” Ardi told Mongabay in a WhatsApp message, adding that his park rangers continue to stand on guard. A female calf of the Javan rhinoceros with her mother. Image courtesy of the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The number of Javan rhinos remaining in the wild is disputed. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates the current minimum population of Javan rhinos at about 50, a figure used by conservation groups such as Save the Rhino International, while Indonesia’s forestry ministry puts the population at 87 to 100. The government’s figures have previously faced scrutiny after a 2023 investigation by Indonesian environmental group Auriga Nusantara found that rhinos not seen by camera traps for years, including some later…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A U.S. federal court recently ruled that residents of Jackson, Mississippi, don’t have a constitutional right to truthful information from public officials, nor the right to municipal drinking water that is free of lead, a neurotoxin. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, who was appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion. The case was brought by a group of Jackson residents in 2022 who alleged that the city allowed lead to enter the municipal water system and then lied to residents saying the water was safe, though they knew it was not. “Knowing what is in our water is fundamental to protecting public health,” Caroline Leary, general counsel at the U.S.-based nonprofit Environmental Working Group, told Mongabay by email. Jackson is home to roughly 150,000 people. Nearly a quarter of them are children under 18 who are particularly vulnerable to the potentially life-long toxic impacts of lead exposure including seizures, lowered IQ, impaired brain development and even death. The plaintiffs alleged that several of their children have been diagnosed with lead poisoning and now require special educational, medical, sociological, occupational and disability services. The plaintiffs also argued that exposure to contaminated water and the failure to be informed about the risks violated their 14th amendment due process right to bodily integrity. A November 2025 ruling by a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed…This article was originally published on Mongabay

MEMPAWAH, Indonesia (AP) — A Japanese military transport ship docked on the island of Borneo on Thursday as part of a disaster relief mission to help fight wildfires in Indonesia that are causing a toxic haze impacting people’s health in other countries. Japan deployed 300 crew members, landing ship JS Kunisaki and three CH-47 helicopters, which arrived in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The mission in Indonesia marked the first known overseas firefighting operation carried out by the Japan Self-Defense Forces, or JSDF. “To this end, we will learn from the Indonesian military’s operational experience and work in coordination and cooperation with them, striving to ensure that the Indonesian people can lead stable lives as soon as possible,” Col. Syunji Nakahara, the commander of the disaster relief activities, said at a port in Mempawah district. Japan and Indonesia have been also increasingly strengthening their military cooperation ties, with the two sides discussing the Japanese sale of its used destroyers. Indonesia has been plagued by forest and land fires for decades, but an intensifying El Niño pattern this year and a prolonged dry season worsened the impact of the fires. Toxic haze and smoke have caused a health crisis in neighboring countries. The smoke has drifted as far as the Philippines, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) away, and breached Malaysia’s emergency-level threshold for air pollution, forcing authorities to declare an emergency last week in a town in Sarawak state on Borneo. The air pollution has also affected several areas on the island of Sumatra, forcing…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In 2018, the Amazon Fund chose to support a project in the Brazilian Amazon helping 614 families engaged in babassu coconut breaking in 11 traditional communities. Encroached on by soy farming and cattle ranching, the families in the state of Tocantins would receive financial support to keep producing oil, flour and handicrafts from this unique Amazonian fruit while reinforcing their role as guardians of the forest. But the promise was short-lived. Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president in January 2019, and immediately set his far-right agenda to work dismantling the country’s environmental frameworks and freezing the Amazon Fund’s contributions. The fund was created in 2008, with initial donations from Norway and Germany to reward Brazil for its success in reducing Amazonian deforestation. Over the last 18 years, it has benefited 288,000 people and supported 144 projects in forest restoration, sustainable production, firefighting, inspections and monitoring of environmental crimes, and Indigenous issues. “It is one of the world’s leading funds for investing in projects that protect the rainforest,” said Rayandra Araújo, climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank. When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva replaced Bolsonaro, returning to the presidency in January 2023, he revived the Amazon Fund’s operations. The babassu coconut breaker project, led by the group Alternatives for Small-Scale Farming in Tocantins (APA-TO), was again considered and began implementation in April 2026. “The project was on hold for almost 10 years,” says Selma Yuki Ishii, the project coordinator and technical director at APA-TO. With Lula,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

This is Part Three in a Mongabay series about trends in the offshore wind industry. Part One describes the sector’s untapped potential and gaps between installed energy generation capacity and climate goals. Part Two describes challenges the sector faces in scaling up to meet climate goals. Offshore wind farms are growing in number, with many experts saying this renewable source of energy is vital to tackling climate change. But many of the same experts caution that responsible construction is required to avoid potentially large impacts on marine ecosystems as farms proliferate in the coming years. On one hand, offshore wind farms can provide an ecological boon by acting as de facto marine reserves that limit fishing, including harmful practices like bottom trawling. They can also be refugia for fish like sharks and rays, crustaceans and other species, as their structures act as artificial reefs. But offshore wind farms also have a host of negative impacts across their life cycle, from construction to decommissioning. Birds and bats risk collision with offshore wind turbines and loss of habitat to farms, while some marine mammals avoid wind farms or change behavior due to their presence. Bass Rock, Scotland, is home to the world’s largest colony of northern gannets (Morus bassanus). The offshore Berwick Bank Wind Farm is expected to have a significant impact on populations of seabirds like the gannets, as well as guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills and puffins. Image by Stephen Magee/RSPB. Over the past two decades, offshore wind farm numbers have increased, particularly…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The Vashishti River, originating in the biodiversity-rich Western Ghats and flowing into the Arabian Sea along India’s western coast, has long supported traditional fishing communities. But in 2023, local fishers encountered something entirely unexpected. As they hauled a gill net into a boat, a gray body, still making faint movements, emerged tangled in the mesh, and then another surfaced beside it. By the time the net was lifted aboard, three bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) were tangled inside. The video of the incident quickly spread across social media, drawing renewed scientific attention to the presence of sharks in inland and estuarine waters. “This is the first documented report of sharks from the Vashishti River, although historically sharks and rays have been recorded from several major Indian river systems,” Priyankar Chakraborty, an independent marine and wildlife researcher in India, told Mongabay. Across India, dozens of species of sharks and rays (collectively known as elasmobranchs) have been reported as inhabiting estuaries and rivers, but while species such as the bull shark are relatively well documented, many others are known from only a handful of records, leaving major gaps in understanding, Chakraborty said. Globally, around 60 species of sharks and rays spend at least part of their lives in inland waters. Yet compared with their marine counterparts, these species have received remarkably little scientific attention, even though many are among the most threatened vertebrates on Earth, Michael Grant, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Australia and member of the IUCN Species Survival…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Every year, the villagers of Kiang Jifarong contribute labor and money to build earthen dikes using clay and mud in an effort to keep seawater out of their farms. Rice fields once stretched unbroken for 5 kilometers, about 3 miles, along the Bintang Bolong estuary here in western Gambia. For generations, families cultivated rice on these fertile lowlands, relying on seasonal floods and freshwater to sustain one of the country’s oldest farming traditions. There are now worrying gaps in this productive landscape. For 10 years now, many of the villagers have retreated inland, away from the coastline, as saltwater transforms once-productive rice fields into barren land. Farmers say saltwater stress is easy to recognize: rice leaves turn yellow, while harvested grains become light and hollow because the plants fail to develop properly. “The grains become almost empty,” says Tombong Barrow from the Kiang Jifarong village development committee, a statutory body responsible for identifying local development needs at the village level and coordinating responses to them. “The salt makes them useless.” Aerial view of the Bintang Bolong estuary at Kiang Sankandi, the Gambia. Image courtesy of Ansumana Darboe. Jonni Kinteh and Mama Njie, both veteran rice farmers, say they abandoned their fields eight years ago after repeated crop failures linked to salinity. “We have farmed these fields since childhood alongside our mothers,” Kinteh says. “Now we can no longer use them.” “Our parents farmed much closer to the river,” Barrow says. “Now those fields have been completely taken over by salt.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

BANJARMASIN, Indonesia — Siti Sarah slept in fits and starts through August as the fires broke out around her village and surrounding peatlands. One fire on Aug. 18 at first seemed a safe distance away, but in a heartbeat the flames were within 100 meters (330 feet) of her home in Pengayuan, a village in Indonesia’s South Kalimantan province. “The fire seemed to leap up,” Siti told Mongabay Indonesia. “All of a sudden it was right there — it grew so fast.” Cries for help echoed around the village as Siti joined the community’s firefighting press. “I also helped put out a fire,” she said. “By whacking it with a piece of wood.” Two days later, firefighters scrambled to extinguish yet another blaze in the village grounds, dousing the flames before they could reach any homes. Across Indonesia, community and government firefighters have been battling fires like this since the main dry season began in July, many of them burning across carbon-rich peatlands in the low-lying deltas and plains of Borneo and Sumatra. In recent decades, Borneo’s peatlands have been drained for oil palm plantations to meet rising global consumer demand for palm oil. Fire is often used as a cheap way to clear land, but the flames can quickly run out of control across drained peatlands, which become a tinderbox when desiccated by El Niño-fueled drought. Commuters on the road try to shield their noses from the thick haze as they drive. Image by Riyad Dafhi Rizki/Mongabay Indonesia. In…This article was originally published on Mongabay

PARACATU, Brazil — As the president of Paracatu’s city council, Manoel Alves is used to being courted by companies and executives that want his blessing for new business. But on a Thursday afternoon in May 2026, he was upset talking on the phone about a data center planned for his city, about which he was informed by reporters. “I just heard the data center construction will start in two months. Don’t you guys know about this either?” Alves asked someone at the mayor’s office. The answer from the other side of the call was “no”, the same received from all interviewees: Local authorities, business owners, farmers, and citizens. “It is some new hotel concept?” a major restaurant owner in the city asked. “A dentist?” a citizen in Paracatu’s main square questioned. “Data center? What is this?” queried the guardian of an 18th-century church. Read it in Portuguese. The data center in Paracatu, a municipality located a three-hour drive from Brazil’s capital, Brasília, is not just any data center, but a 1-gigawatt data center, which will be larger than the combined total of all data centers currently installed in the country, which use around 800 megawatts. Or similar to one of the gigantic projects that are part of the Stargate initiative, one of the world’s largest artificial intelligence infrastructure networks, strongly supported by the U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. Paracatu’s data center is being planned by Atlas Renewable Energy, owned by an arm of the global asset manager BlackRock, which already…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. On the final day of a two-week expedition, where researchers were searching for a “lost” species along Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River, Helen Asu arrived with two small, greenish-brown fish. She had caught them while fishing for prawns with an umben, a traditional hand net, near Imbando village in East Sepik province. They were spinach pipefish (Microphis spinachioides), a species known only from the Sepik and not recorded by scientists since 1985, reports Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman. “It was honestly an incredible moment,” said Jerrica Agebigo, a researcher at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology and the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre, who led the expedition. “When Helen showed the fish to us, I immediately realized that we had found something very special.” The spinach pipefish is a freshwater relative of seahorses and seadragons. It grows to about 15 centimeters (6 inches) and uses its elongated snout to catch small prey. Its coloring helps conceal it among water lilies and other plants along the banks of the Sepik, Papua New Guinea’s longest river. Almost everything else about it remains uncertain. The specimen used to describe the species was held at Hamburg’s natural history museum, but was destroyed during the second world war. When the fish was last assessed for the IUCN Red List in 2016, it was classified as data deficient. It later became one of the 10 most sought-after species on the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Two species of trees helped Japan build millions of homes after World War II. However, pollen from those same trees has also fueled a nationwide hay fever allergy. More than 40% of Japan’s population now suffers from hay fever, locally called kafunsho. That’s nearly double the rate in the U.S., reports contributor Jonathan Vit for Mongabay. “Right after the New Year in January, my nose starts to get a little itchy,” Mariko Aoki, who works as a secretary at the National Diet, Japan’s legislature, told Mongabay. “It peaks in March, and the sneezing, runny nose, itchy throat and itchy eyes are really bad. It lasts all the way until just before Golden Week,” which runs from April 29 to May 5. Two tree species are largely to blame: sugi (Cryptomeria japonica) and hinoki (Chamaecyparis obtusa). Both are fast-growing trees that were widely planted for timber after bombing during the war left Japan in need of millions of homes. Today, forests cover roughly 70% of Japan, and 41% of those forests are planted. Sugi trees account for roughly 40% of planted forests, while hinoki accounts for another 25%. That means two-thirds of the nation’s cultivated forests are planted with trees that can make people sick. Climate change has made things worse: warming has driven sugi trees to release pollen earlier than they used to, making country’s annual pollen season longer and more severe. To solve its hay fever crisis, the Japanese government announced a plan in 2023 to cut down 20% of sugi trees…This article was originally published on Mongabay

When the European Union’s new anti-deforestation law threatened to expose the environmental costs of logging in North America’s forests, the American paper industry, supported by the U.S. government, mobilized an intense lobbying effort to weaken the legislation. According to lobbying disclosures, the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), a leading trade group representing paper and wood product manufacturers, have spent nearly $11 million dollars on lobbying efforts since 2023, including on the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). This year, the group — which represents companies such as Procter & Gamble and International Paper — has already spent $1,3 million on lobbying. AF&PA’s in-house lobbyists — Julie Landry, David Ross, and Clara Cozart — have repeatedly met with members of Congress as well as representatives from the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service, the State Department, the Commerce Department, and the U.S. Trade Representative to discuss the EUDR. Officials from those agencies went on to tour European capitals pressing for exemptions to Europe’s landmark deforestation rules. The campaign escalated last year as the EU revised the final details of the new law, which is set to take effect in December. According to the new rules, companies selling wood, paper, and certain other commodities in Europe must prove their products have not contributed to deforestation or forest degradation. Industry groups have called for the creation of a “no-risk” category with loosened due-diligence requirements. At stake is relations with a major trading partner. The U.S. exported $879.7 million worth of forest products to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Two Przewalski’s horse foals were born in a reintroduction center in the grasslands of central Kazakhstan in late August. They are reportedly the first wild horses born on Kazakh soil in more than 200 years. The first foal, a male, was born Aug. 22 to a 7-year-old mare named Tessa. The second, also male, followed on Aug. 31, born to a mare named Umbra. They share the same father, a stallion named Zorro who has since died. The Equus ferus przewalskii foals have not yet been named, but their births are being celebrated as a milestone of the Kazakhi reintroduction effort. “The birth of these two foals is important because it shows that the horses are adapting to this climate, to this territory,” Alyona Krivosheyeva, conservation director of the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), told Mongabay by phone. “This is the proof of success of what we do.” Rewilded Przewalski’s horses with the second foal born on Aug. 31. Image courtesy of Kanat Batyrkhanuly/ACBK. Both foals were born inside a 56-hectare (140-acre) enclosure at the Alibi Wild Ungulates Reintroduction Center, part of Kazakhstan’s 489,000-hectare (1.2-million-acre) Altyn Dala State Nature Reserve. The reserve has also been an important recovery site for saiga antelopes (Saiga tatarica) and Asiatic wild asses (Equus hemionus kulan). Known locally as kertagy, Przewalski’s horse is the only living wild relative of the domestic horse.  It was listed as extinct-in-the-wild until one adult was found in 1996, after which it was re-listed as critically…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Changes like increasing geological and glacial instability driven by the warming climate are a growing concern across the Himalayas. Our hearts go out to the thousands of families across Nepal, China, and around the world grieving their loved ones and searching for those missing after the recent catastrophic flash flood at the Nepal-China border. Though nearly 400 kilometers (almost 250 miles) to the northwest of the recent flash flood zone, our study area in Nepal’s Limi Valley in Upper Humla — a landscape with several villages and a rich wildlife heritage, that we have spent years trying to understand and protect — is also affected by such changes. Limi Valley has been wild for as long as we’ve studied it, but not anymore. After many days of travel to reach the study area recently, our team was excited to check on the Himalayan wolves, to see if its family would be denning in the same spot as last year. We found no wolves. Instead, we found thousands of sheep and goats, trailed by herders from lower-lying villages, free-ranging herd dogs, and patches of burning vegetation. A Himalayan wolf in its natural habitat in Limi Valley, northwestern Nepal. Photo courtesy of Himalayan Wolves Project. Every season we return, there is less wild left to find. Upper Humla’s once-pristine high-altitude habitats are suffering from human encroachment advancing at an unprecedented pace, pushing wildlife into ever-smaller pockets of shrinking habitat. While formal protection of this unique ecosystem has been on the political agenda…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Indigenous land restitution in Chile came with a mixed bag of environmental outcomes and did not boost natural forest cover, according to a new study published in Nature Sustainability. While the return of ancestral lands gave the Indigenous Mapuche communities in southern Chile greater control over how their land was used — leading to an increase in grasslands for livestock production and a reduction in non-native tree plantations — it did not improve biodiversity, carbon sequestration or erosion control. Researchers say these findings challenge long-held assumptions that Indigenous self-determination automatically equates to positive changes in natural forests, carbon sequestration or biodiversity. “In the past, conservation advocates have at times adopted romanticized views of what such self-determination would mean, assuming that Indigenous communities will always choose to allocate land towards more ‘natural’ uses,” said study co-author Robert Heilmayr, an associate professor at the University of California Santa Barbara in the U.S. He told Mongabay over email that the new research “complicates this narrative,” arguing that true self-determination only emerges when Indigenous communities define for themselves what land uses align with their needs and values. The study set out to understand how Indigenous land restitution in Biobío, Araucanía, Los Ríos and Los Lagos reshapes the environment. It did so by analyzing satellite and administrative data from 1,577 properties across 36 communities to compare land use and environmental outcomes before and after land restitution. Researchers focused on what happened after a Chilean land restitution program, known as the Chilean Indigenous Land and Water…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Ocean ecosystems are under extreme stress on several fronts including overfishing, ocean acidification, climate change and marine warming. While ocean conservation efforts often tend to focus on creating marine protected areas, researchers recently stressed the need to move beyond protection toward active recovery using a different approach: Marine rewilding. In a new perspective paper, the researchers laid out eight key principles that can guide such rewilding. The concept of “rewilding” is usually applied to terrestrial ecosystems, where the goal is to restore ecological processes and create resilient, self-sustaining ecosystems with minimal human interventions. Gavin Stark, a post-doctoral researcher with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, and his colleagues, write that one important principle of marine rewilding is that people can’t simply be fenced out of the process. “You cannot really separate people from the rewilding process inside the marine ecosystems,” Stark told Mongabay in a video call. Another key principle of marine rewilding is restoring food webs, which may include reintroducing top predators such as sharks. In 2024, for example, Mongabay reported on a project where eggs of the endangered Indo-Pacific leopard shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) raised in an aquarium in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., were shipped to nurseries in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. So far, the project has released more than 60 young sharks into the protected waters of Raja Ampat with the goal of restoring balance to the region’s coral reef ecosystem.  The authors note that along with restoring food webs, strengthening connectivity between ecosystems is also a pillar…This article was originally published on Mongabay

BELHAVEN, N.C. (AP) — Scientists and investors are restoring a 23-square-mile tract of peatland in North Carolina to help curb climate-warming emissions and restore native habitat. Ditches have drained water from thousands of years of accumulated peat, leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfire and unleashing huge volumes of carbon dioxide. One-third of global carbon is stored in saturated peatlands, more than all forests combined. But that reverses when peatlands are damaged. Pantheon Regeneration plans to restore the water table to curb emissions, then sell carbon credits to help fund its goal of preserving a million acres of peatland from Virginia to Florida. A planter, right, works in a field adjacent to a peatland forest Tuesday, May 5, 2026, in Belhaven, N.C. Image courtesy of Joshua A. Bickel, Associated Press By Tammy Webber and Joshua Bickel, Associated Press   Banner image: Neal Flanagan, right, a research scientist at Duke University, uses a tool to take a soil sample from a peatland as Curt Richardson, an ecology professor at Duke, observes Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in Belhaven, N.C. Image courtesy of Joshua A. Bickel, Associated PressThis article was originally published on Mongabay