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Protect Antarctic krill to preserve the health of Africa’s coastal communities (commentary)

17 June 2026 at 17:06
This week, as governments of various coastal states gather in Mombasa, Kenya, for the Our Ocean Conference, Africa must demand an end to industrial krill fishing in the Southern Ocean before irreversible damage is done to Antarctica and the ocean systems upon which our continent depends. A clear call from Africa would bolster international calls for a ban on industrial krill fishing and support positive leadership developments like the European Parliament’s recent call for a moratorium on krill fishing. The Southern Ocean regulates global ocean circulation, absorbs enormous quantities of heat and carbon dioxide, and sustains marine life across the planet. At the center of this system is Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), the tiny crustacean that feeds whales, penguins, seals and seabirds while helping lock carbon into the deep ocean. Industrial krill fishing has expanded rapidly over the last few years, with the largest share of this extraction controlled by fleets linked to certain European and Asian countries. Most concerningly, fishing is intensifying precisely where Antarctic wildlife is most vulnerable: critical feeding grounds for whales, penguins and seals are actively targeted by the industry. A single adult Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is usually just five centimeters long, but the importance of its massive populations to marine food chains, and the millions of people who depend on ocean protein as part of their daily diet, is major. Image courtesy of Uwe Kils via Wikimedia Commons. The damage is already visible. In April, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Africa’s community-led marine organizations on which 30×30 depends

17 June 2026 at 11:45
This week, thousands of delegates are gathered in Mombasa, Kenya, for the first Our Ocean Conference to be hosted on African soil. As expected, much of the conversation will focus on the global “30×30” target — protecting 30% of the world’s land, freshwater and oceans by 2030. Yet, far from the conference halls, the big pledges and state commitments, many of the people doing the daily work of marine conservation are community organizations operating on modest budgets along Africa’s coastlines. They often do so far from the spotlight, but their contribution is vital for the global ambition to conserve ocean spaces. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), under whose Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework the 2030 targets were adopted, highlights that success hinges heavily on community involvement. Across Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia, four such groups — Coastal and Marine Resource Development (COMRED), Action for Ocean, Mwambao Coastal Community Network and the Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF) — offer a window into what community-led marine conservation looks like in practice. Their work might be underfunded, uneven and sometimes slow, but are increasingly central to how marine protection is imagined on the continent. Marine ecosystems in Africa support fisheries, tourism, transport, carbon storage and coastal protection while sustaining millions of livelihoods from the Western Indian Ocean to Africa’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. In East Africa in particular, mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass meadows and nearshore fisheries underpin food systems and local economies even as they face pressure from overfishing, habitat degradation, climate change and pollution.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In South Africa, a village learns to live with baboons — but it may be the exception

17 June 2026 at 09:00
ROOIELS, South Africa — Baboons aren’t exactly punctual, but Gavin Lundie still expected them to appear in the village around 9 a.m. “They’re coming!” his wife Lesley called. Members of the Rooiels baboon troop had begun to make their way down. Lesley made her way to the sliding doors on their patio and secured it with two shoelaces attached to a hook. She remained on the balcony and watched as the troop entered into the village a few properties away. The Lundies live in Rooiels, a small, affluent village on False Bay, approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Cape Town’s city center. The village, scattered from the coastal flats up the slopes of the Klein Hangklip mountain, is part of the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve. The mountain’s cliff faces offer sleeping baboons (Papio ursinus) protection from leopards, their natural predator, but the sparse vegetation doesn’t offer enough for them to eat or drink. In contrast, the lower slopes, where the village has grown up, is still covered with dense fynbos scrub on undeveloped plots, in gardens and along unpaved verges. The baboons forage on a range of flowers, seeds and berries in the warmer months; in winter, when the fynbos is dormant, the baboons eat kikuyu grass from lawns in the village. They also eat limpets in the intertidal zone, and the Rooiels River is a year-round source of freshwater. A juvenile baboon clings to its mother’s back as she forages in fynbos on the roadside in Rooi Els. Image by…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Lawsuit demands accountability for Cerro de Pasco mining pollution in Peru

16 June 2026 at 22:14
A mine that has been operating for decades in the Peruvian Andes continues to contaminate the soil, water and air for thousands of people living nearby, according to a lawsuit filed last month. The contamination has displaced farming and livestock, the lawsuit said, while causing cognitive issues in children, among other public health concerns. Companies working at the Cerro de Pasco mine, located in Peru’s central highlands, need to be held responsible for the pollution and public health issues that have affected more than 100,000 people, according to Cerro de Pasco Mayor Julio Rupay Malpartida and public prosecutor Darwin Alejandro Ramón Yalico, who filed the injunction petition on behalf of the municipality. “[The] environmental contamination is on such a scale that it’s present in every corner of the city,” the lawsuit said, “a consequence of the accumulation of heavy metals and toxic substances.” The area has been home to mining activity since at least the 16th century, when the Spanish discovered silver deposits during colonization. More recently, the private company Volcan Compañía Minera took over the mines in 2000 and has overseen underground and open pit operations to extract silver, copper, zinc and lead, among other metals. The lawsuit also lists Volcan subsidiaries Óxidos de Pasco, Empresa Administradora Cerro and Empresa Minera Paragsha as defendants. The Cerro de Pasco mine from above. Image courtesy of SkyTruth/Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Some of the operation is located in the center of the city, with a population of more than 74,000. As a result, particulate…This article was originally published on Mongabay

‘Thinking how traffickers think’: Study uses AI to detect marine wildlife smuggling

16 June 2026 at 18:53
On Sunday, April 26, Argentine officials stopped an unusual shipment arriving at an airport near Buenos Aires. Inside, they found so many dead and dying fish, octopuses and crabs that a national rescue center had to install 10 new emergency tanks to support the survivors. It was the third time in a year authorities had seized an illegal shipment of sea life at the same airport, the Associated Press reported. Marine wildlife trafficking is a growing global business, driven by demand for ornamental fish, luxury foods and traditional medicines. Much of that trade is routed through airplane luggage or airmail, where the vast majority of animals, dead or alive, go undetected. The combined use of artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D X-ray machines could change that, according to an international team of researchers. Training an algorithm on samples of seahorses, shark fins and sea cucumbers, the scientists achieved successful detection rates between 86% and 96%, according to a research paper published last week. “As it stands, our methods of detecting something that shouldn’t be in our bags on the front line is reliant on human inspection and biosecurity dogs,” Vanessa Pirotta, a marine biologist at Macquarie University in Australia and the paper’s lead author, told Mongabay. “AI could be used to complement that. It’s not a silver bullet, but an assistant and a tool.” Image from the study showing (from top to bottom) shark fin, seahorse and sea cucumber samples next to a security X-ray of each item. Image courtesy of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

How a popular spaghetti dish is threatening Italy’s marine ecosystem

16 June 2026 at 18:47
NAPLES — On a warm, moonlit night in May, Maurizio Simeone sat in an ambush at his desk about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of Naples, Italy. The marine scientist and director of the Marine Protected Area (MPA) Gaiola Underwater Park was watching the grainy live feed from cameras surveilling the MPA as poachers descended on the seafloor. “It was midnight. Here they were again,” Simeone told Mongabay. The poachers had come a few nights before to scout the area. Then a second time. This time, Simeone was waiting for them. He rushed to alert the Coast Guard. The poachers operated with ruthless efficiency, using a dangerous illegal method known as the hookah system. A compressor on a small boat pumps air through a hose to a diver, allowing them to stay underwater for hours and systematically strip the seabed. Every 20 minutes, the diver resurfaced to hand over a net full of purple sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus), grab an empty net and then dive back down. When the authorities moved in, the two men on the boat began dumping hundreds of sea urchins and their gear into the sea, as the diver quickly resurfaced. The three men were old acquaintances of Simeone’s. “They are repeat offenders. It’s not the first time we’ve caught them,” Simeone said. Illegally harvested sea urchins seized in July 2024. Image courtesy of Maurizio Simeone. During a previous bust a year earlier, the vessel was apprehended with a staggering haul: 976 sea urchins pulled from…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Teeming with turtles: Cabo Verde island sees 80-fold increase in nesting loggerheads

16 June 2026 at 17:36
In 2018, night patrol teams on Boa Vista, the third-largest island in the Cabo Verde archipelago, started noticing a change along the beaches: The loggerhead turtles were arriving in significantly larger numbers than usual. In previous years, each team, comprised of staff and volunteers from local conservation NGO Cabo Verde Natura 2000 (CVN2), encountered between five and 10 female turtles (Caretta caretta) a night. But now, the teams were each recording between 20 and 30 females a night. By 2021, that number had grown to between 30 and 40. A recent study published in Biological Conservation confirms the upward trend: An 80-fold increase in the population of loggerheads nesting at three of Boa Vista’s beaches over 27 years, from 1998 to 2024. The authors of this first long-term study of Cabo Verde’s nesting loggerheads ascribe the remarkable trend to decades-long conservation efforts at the local and national level. Loggerheads, which primarily inhabit temperate and subtropical regions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean Sea, are long-lived, slow-maturing migratory animals. With a lifespan of 80 years or more, female loggerheads take decades to reach sexual maturity. The global loggerhead population has declined by 47% over the past three generations, according to the last IUCN Red List assessment, where it remains listed as a globally ‘vulnerable’ species. The IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, largely attributes this decline to anthropogenic pressures such as habitat loss, marine pollution, bycatch, poaching and multiple climate change-driven impacts. Loggerhead turtle eggs. Image by…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In Rio Indio, farmers fight Panama Canal reservoir project — and displacement

16 June 2026 at 16:20
LIMÓN DE CHAGRES, Panama — In Panama’s Rio Indio Basin, a $1.5 billion reservoir project aims to meet water demand for the next 50 years. But the project would displace dozens of farming communities, sparking widespread opposition to the reservoir’s construction. “We will give our lives to save Rio Indio! I came from Limón de Chagres, the first community that could be flooded to make space for the dam,” shouts Maricel Sanchéz at the microphone from a stage during a May 1 march in Panama City. “Today, I’m so proud to see how united we are in our resistance.” Sanchéz, 25, is the spokesperson for the Rio Indio farmers’ assembly, which is part of Coordinadora Campesina por la Vida (Peasant Coordinator for Life), a grassroots social and community organization of farmers, Indigenous communities and civic groups in Panama. During the march, she spoke out about their mobilization against the Río Indio reservoir: a $1.5 billion project by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), Panama’s government agency responsible for managing the canal. Rio Indio is a 98-kilometer (about 61-mile) river in central Panama, flowing through the Costa Abajo area (home to 231 farming communities) to the Caribbean Sea. Here, the ACP plans to create a reservoir to provide water to nearby Gatun Lake (the northern entrance of the Panama Canal in the Atlantic Ocean) to meet water demand for the next 50 years for human consumption and for canal operations, especially during droughts. The construction is expected to begin in 2027 and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Beyond wildlife trade: Endangered pangolins are losing habitat in Pakistan

16 June 2026 at 14:22
Tariq Mahmood was alarmed when he found 19 sacks tucked away in a railway tunnel in the Chakwal district of northern Pakistan. Their contents were extremely disturbing: 45 rotting pangolin carcasses, all devoid of their distinct, orange-and-light-brown scales. That was in 2012. “It was very difficult to see these innocent, dead bodies,” said Mahmood, a wildlife biologist at Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University in Pakistan, who began studying pangolins in 2009. Finding so many slain Indian pangolins (Manis crassicaudata) alerted Mahmood to a dark truth. Poachers were paying local citizens to capture them, so the overlapping scales that cover their bodies — the pangolin’s first line of defense — could be sold into the illegal wildlife trade. “It was terrible to know that.” At the time, global conservationists were realizing that demand for pangolin was driving trade, mostly to China. “We first saw the emergence of this intercontinental trafficking around 2010, and it’s continued to take place since then,” said Dan Challender, a pangolin expert at the University of Oxford who has studied international wildlife trade for 15 years. This shy, toothless, nocturnal animal has become the world’s most-trafficked mammal. When Asia’s four species were nearly poached to extinction, traders turned to the four African species and their numbers soon plummeted. All pangolins are on the IUCN Red list: Four of them, including the Indian pangolin, are endangered, and three hang on the brink, critically endangered. Pangolin scales command substantial prices on the black market. The demand is…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Climate-fueled landslides killed an estimated 58 Tapanuli orangutans, study finds

JAKARTA — Climate change has become a direct threat to the survival of the world’s rarest great ape, according to scientists, after landslides triggered by an unusually intense storm killed an estimated 58 critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans (Pongo tapanuliensis) in Indonesia’s Batang Toru ecosystem. The estimate comes from a new study published in Current Biology, whose authors say the findings may represent one of the first examples of climate change immediately threatening the survival of an entire species. The researchers found that landslides triggered by extreme rainfall associated with Cyclone Senyar in November 2025 likely killed about 7% of the estimated global population of Tapanuli orangutans, which number fewer than 800 individuals and are concentrated in the Batang Toru landscape in North Sumatra. After analyzing satellite imagery, the researchers identified more than 50,000 individual landslide scars and estimated that about 8,300 hectares (20,500 acres) of forest in the western block of Batang Toru were affected by the disaster. The western block is considered the species’ most important stronghold, hosting more than 500 orangutans and one of the three known population clusters within the Batang Toru landscape. The researchers believe most orangutans caught in the landslides died rather than being displaced because of the violence and speed of the event. While the landslides were relatively shallow, they moved extremely rapidly and transformed into channelized debris flows. With little or no warning, orangutans and other wildlife likely had little chance of escaping and may have been buried, drowned or fatally injured by…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In Bangladesh, scientists learn what happens after rescued pangolins return to the wild

16 June 2026 at 03:00
In a forest reserve in northeastern Bangladesh, two Chinese pangolins rescued from trafficking have been given a second chance at life in the wild. As poaching pushes the critically endangered species toward extinction, the releases aim to do more than boost flagging local populations. With the help of tiny radio transmitters, scientists are tracking each individual to learn about their survival, movements and behavior. Equipped with an armor-plated body, elongated snout and sticky tongue the length of their body, Chinese pangolins (Manis pentadactyla) are beautifully adapted to a life spent grubbing out ant and termite nests and resting in burrows dug into the forest floor. However, like all eight of the world’s known pangolin species, Chinese pangolins are among the most trafficked mammals on Earth. They’re plucked from forests across their range to feed an illegal trade driven by demand in China and Vietnam for pangolin meat, and scales and other body parts used in traditional medicines. While no global population counts exist, the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, classifies the species as critically endangered, due to the combined threats of poaching, habitat loss and deforestation. High poaching rates in China in the late 20th century caused local extinctions, displacing hunting pressure to other parts of the species’ range, which spans from northern India and Nepal, through Bangladesh and northern parts of Southeast Asia to southern China and Taiwan. Yet very little is known about the species in many countries, including Bangladesh, says Shahriar Caesar Rahman, co-founder and CEO…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Peter Klopfer, the scientist whose civil-rights case helped bring lemurs to Duke

16 June 2026 at 01:04
In the American South of the late 1950s, segregation was part of the daily architecture. Airports had separate facilities. Restaurants barred Black customers or served them apart. Schools, buses, waiting rooms, and lunch counters carried the same instructions. The system depended on law, custom, and the expectation that most white people would accommodate it. Resistance often began with small acts that carried real costs. A professor might drive arrested students back to campus. A family might refuse to send its children to segregated schools. A group of faculty members might walk toward a restaurant door together and be met in the parking lot by men who intended to stop them. The work required patience, and it also required a willingness to be arrested, disliked, and misunderstood. Peter Klopfer, who died on June 5 at 95, spent nearly seven decades at Duke University as a zoologist, teacher, and builder of institutions. He helped develop behavioral ecology, studied mother-offspring bonding, and co-founded the Duke Lemur Center, which became the world’s largest collection of lemurs outside Madagascar. He was also the named plaintiff in a Supreme Court case that extended the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial to state courts. The civil-rights defendant and the lemur scientist were the same man, formed by the same habits of attention and conscience. He was born in Berlin in 1930 and raised in a German immigrant family in the United States. He attended Friends schools and later studied at UCLA and Yale. At UCLA he…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Australian authorities seize 100,000 live cockroaches in crackdown on exotic insect trade

15 June 2026 at 20:11
On June 5, Australian authorities announced that they confiscated more than 100,000 live exotic cockroaches from an unnamed commercial breeder in Bathurst, a town in New South Wales (NSW), about 200 kilometers (124 miles) west of Sydney. It was the largest bust of illegal invertebrates ever made in the country. The insects were estimated to be worth about AU$200,000 (about $140,000 at current exchange rates). They included dubia cockroaches (Blaptica dubia), endemic to South America, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) found only in the island nation of Madagascar. They were bred to be sold as food for pet reptiles, authorities said. Hissing cockroaches are also sought after as pets since they don’t have wings and can’t fly away. No one has been charged with a crime, according to a statement by an environment agency spokesperson. Australia has strict biosecurity laws, permitting live import of only certain animal species; controls are needed to effectively protect crops, plants and native wildlife. The legally-imported list excludes exotic insects like cockroaches that can become invasive or spread diseases “We’re seeing illegal breeding and trading of exotic cockroaches, and we’re putting pet businesses and pet owners on notice,” a spokesperson from the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, the agency responsible for environmental protection, said in a press release. “If you are found to possess, breed or trade exotic cockroaches such as dubia cockroaches and Madagascar hissing cockroaches, they will be seized and you could face penalties under federal law.” Officials…This article was originally published on Mongabay

We must prevent the next pandemic, not build perfect conditions for it (commentary)

15 June 2026 at 19:54
In recent weeks, two outbreaks captured international attention: a hantavirus cluster linked to a cruise ship and an escalating outbreak of Bundibugyo ebolavirus in Central and Eastern Africa. How the world reacted to these outbreaks tells us more about inequity than about epidemiology. The Andes hantavirus outbreak aboard a luxury cruise ship generated extensive evacuation footage and widespread public anxiety. The numbers involved were small, and public health authorities clearly emphasized that the broader risk was very low. Meanwhile, the Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD) outbreak, involving a rapidly increasing number of cases and deaths, spreading across fragile border regions, and unfolding without an approved vaccine, or therapeutics, still struggles to command comparable global urgency despite its coverage in the news. This disparity reflects an uncomfortable and common truth: some outbreaks become global emergencies only when wealthy travelers, tourists, or Western borders appear threatened. Others remain regional tragedies, normalized by poverty, and neglect. However, both outbreaks point to the same deeper reality. These events are not isolated biological accidents, but predictable consequences of the ecological, economic, and political systems we have built. In partnership with local governments across Central Africa, WCS set up an early warning system for Ebola, working with traditional hunters, forest communities, and rangers to raise awareness and promote best practices in zoonotic risk reduction, and to monitor wildlife health through sampling and a carcass monitoring, as in this case where a worker surveys a gorilla. Image courtesy of A. Ondzie / WCS. Global health has largely focused…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Growing appetite for açaí is damaging bird diversity in the Amazon

15 June 2026 at 18:15
“Ah-sigh-ee.” Perhaps you don’t yet know the correct pronunciation of this Amazonian fruit, but chances are high that you’ve already seen its name – açaí – on some menu, especially in cafes and small shops specializing in healthy eating, sold mainly as the primary ingredient in bowls, smoothies, ice creams or juices. In Brazil, about 95% of the production of this small, round and very dark-purple fruit is concentrated in the Amazonian state of Pará. It’s a staple of the local diet, where it’s consumed, blended, with fish, cassava flour and other Amazonian ingredients. But because of its nutritional benefits, being rich in antioxidants and fibers, and having high energy value, açaí’s fame as a “superfood” quickly reached other Brazilian regions and, eventually, other countries. But the increase in fruit production to meet both national and international demand is reducing bird diversity in the floodplain forests of the Amazon. According to a study recently published in the journal Biological Conservation, areas with a higher density of açaí palm trees show a 28% decline in the number of bird species. “Our goal was to understand the consequences of the expansion of açaí cultivation and its various forms of management on birds, with a primary focus on frugivores, those that feed on fruits,” study co-author Raphael de Vasconcelos Nunes, a biologist at the Federal University of Pará, told Mongabay. According to Nunes, floodplain forests are already among the most impacted forest environments in the Amazon. They’re located on riverbanks and undergo constant…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Plastic food packaging blankets the world’s coastlines, study finds

15 June 2026 at 17:12
Food packaging ranks among the top plastic pollutants littering the world’s coastlines, a new study confirms. The study, published May 20 in the journal One Earth, analyzed data from 112 nations, including 5,300 shoreline litter surveys, to produce the first global index of macroplastic pollution by usage type. Based on 355 peer-reviewed studies, it found that food and beverage plastics were the most common litter type for 93% of the countries surveyed. Within that category, food packaging, caps and lids, and plastic bottles were the most consistently found items, appearing as the top three across more than half of surveyed countries. This included the world’s five most populous countries: China, India, the United States, Indonesia and Pakistan. Plastic bags and cigarettes followed as the next most prevalent categories. The study’s lead author, Max Richard Kelly of the University of Plymouth in the U.K, said he was not surprised by the volume of food and beverage plastics on beaches but was struck by similarities in the surveyed countries. “Seeing the exact pattern replicated across the vast majority of nations was a stark reminder of the true scale of crisis we are facing,” he told Mongabay in an email. Single-use plastic sachets sold in a village in Komodo National Park, Indonesia. Image by Ashley Yeong for Mongabay. Putting a lid on plastic pollution The study comes during an uncertain time for global plastics governance. The United Nations global plastics treaty talks have stalled repeatedly over whether the agreement should focus more on…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The quest to reconnect imperiled rainforest in West Africa

15 June 2026 at 11:22
NIGRE, Côte d’Ivoire — The village of Nigré in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire sits — like much of this part of West Africa — in a landscape of rice and cassava fields, oil palm plantations and stands of rubber trees that have replaced the forests that once clothed the landscape. Chief Djahi Bertin and his attendants offer a traditional welcome to a group of scientists, conservationists and park rangers in an open-sided building in the chief’s yard. The guests are served slices of radish-red kola nut, together with a teaspoon of ginger-colored spices, and a choice of wine, beer, spirits or soda. Bertin takes a glass of wine, half full, and empties it on the concrete floor. The splash resembles the palm of a hand, fingers splayed out. Both the palm and the digits form a unified whole, he says. “We are of one mind.” Chief Djahi Bertin, left, and his advisers meet with conservationists and scientists at his residence in the village of Nigré to discuss the creation of an ecological corridor linking the nearby Taï National Park, with Grebo National Park just 4 kilometers away in neighboring Liberia. Image by Ryan Truscott for Mongabay. The village is not far from the western edge of Taï Forest. At 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles), it’s the largest intact remnant of Upper Guinean Rainforest, which once stretched east from Liberia, across Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, to Togo. During a two-day road trip from the commercial hub of Abidjan to Taï, Mongabay…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In Thailand, EUDR pressure on small-scale rubber farmers prompts private-sector assistance

15 June 2026 at 03:02
KRABI, Thailand — Beneath a humid canopy of rubber trees, Sathit Phromraksa pauses to inspect a coagulated ball of rubber in a palm-sized bowl fastened to a trunk. Last night, he and his wife worked their way through the plantation, carefully carving a line in the bark of each tree to stimulate the flow of milky latex. With a total 500 trees to tap in their 1.6-hectare (4-acre) plantation, their work took them from midnight to 3:30 a.m. “I inherited this rubber farm from my father,” says 59-year-old Sathit, a lifelong resident of Namgaan subdistrict in Thailand’s Krabi province. “Back then, my family used a lot of chemicals to control weeds and pests, but now, we follow organic practices.” Sathit is one of roughly 1.7 million smallholders who produce 90% of Thailand’s natural rubber supply across millions of individual plantations, most of them no bigger than his. For many, staying profitable is a constant challenge amid fluctuating market prices, crop diseases and climate change. Now, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is poised to add to the pressures facing small-scale producers like Sathit. Under the law, set to take effect in January 2027, only suppliers who can prove their land wasn’t cleared after Dec. 31, 2020, will be allowed to continue selling rubber to EU markets. As the world’s leading natural rubber producer, the economic implications for Thailand are significant. While the bulk of its exports go to China and Malaysia, the value of Thai rubber entering the EU increased by…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Tony Parkes, the banker who replanted a rainforest

14 June 2026 at 16:30
On the far north coast of New South Wales, the old rainforest had mostly disappeared. The Big Scrub once covered about 75,000 hectares of rich basalt country, a lowland subtropical forest of figs, vines, palms and fruit doves. By the time modern conservationists took stock of it, little more than one percent remained, divided among small patches on farms, roadsides and reserves. Weeds pressed in from the edges. Cattle and clearing had done the rest. What remained needed legal protection, science, money, landholders, seedlings and years of follow-through. It also needed someone who could make committees matter. Rainforest restoration can sound gentle, a matter of saplings and goodwill. In the Big Scrub it required persistence of a less decorative kind. Private landholders had to be brought in. Government agencies had to be pressed. Botanists, bush regenerators, nursery owners, donors and volunteers had to keep working together after the first enthusiasm had passed. The work was local, technical and repetitive. It suited Tony Parkes. Tony Parkes. Photo by Kim Honan / ABC North Coast He came to it late. Born in Hobart, he grew up close to bush and estuary. Later came science, business management and investment banking. He retired at 56 after a successful career in Sydney, and might have chosen a comfortable retirement. Instead he and his wife Rowena bought land in the Northern Rivers, learned the history of the Big Scrub and began planting rainforest on their own property. A private restoration project became a second public life.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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