The world’s largest meatpacking company, JBS, has scrapped two of its key environmental goals in its latest annual sustainability report. JBS’s “Net Zero by 2040,” which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout its supply chain, and zero deforestation targets were substantially rolled back compared to previous years, according to its 2025 Sustainability report, published July 8. Instead, the company redesigned its targets with a focus solely on its most direct emissions, called Scope 1 and Scope 2. Those include direct emissions from JBS factories, vehicles, and electricity provided to its facilities. Indirect emissions, called Scope 3, make up the vast majority of the company’s emissions and were dropped. Those include methane from cows, and transportation and deforestation emissions from supplier farms. “Backtracking on measurable targets doesn’t diminish the scrutiny JBS will face for its climate and nature-wrecking record of pollution, deforestation, land grabbing, human rights abuses and corruption,” Gemma Hoskins, global climate lead at U.S.-based environmental nonprofit Mighty Earth, wrote in a statement. Until 2025, JBS touted a commitment to “zero illegal deforestation in all Brazilian biomes by the end of 2025 for direct and indirect cattle suppliers,” Mongabay previously reported. JBS justified the change by saying it’s difficult to control indirect emissions. “Bold ambition is fine, but you now need to actually have really good, measurable, accountable goals. And that’s what we’re doing — we’re now setting goals that we believe where we have operational control,” Jason Weller, JBS’s chief sustainability officer, told the Financial Times. JBS operates more than 250 meat production facilities, mostly in Brazil and the U.S. It…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The European Union has dropped leather from its final list of products targeted under the bloc’s landmark antideforestation law. Experts say the July 13 decision is the result of industry lobbying rather than a true reflection of leather’s deforestation footprint. The EU deforestation regulation, or EUDR, mandates that companies selling commodities such as cattle, soy, palm oil and cacao in the European market must prove their supply chains aren’t sourcing from recently deforested land. The law is currently set to take effect at the end of this year, following two years of delays. It has faced a series of revisions that effectively weaken the law since it was first passed. “The decision to exclude leather from the EUDR is deeply disappointing. It ignores strong evidence linking European consumption of leather to deforestation in Latin America,” Fyfe Strachan, policy lead at U.K.-based watchdog organization Earthsight, wrote in an email statement. “It overlooks the voices of EU citizens from the recent public consultation and instead prioritizes the interests of industry lobbies,” she added. As Mongabay recently reported, the European Commission’s own research concluded that leather could account for up to 17% of the deforestation footprint linked to imports covered by the EUDR. Transparency records compiled by the nonprofit LobbyFacts revealed that leather industry groups met with lawmakers at least 22 times since 2021, and the EUDR was explicitly listed as a discussion topic in 11 of the meetings. The lobbying efforts were led by two Italian leather tannery unions, COTANCE and Unione…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In 2008, wildlife researchers surveying a massive, underexplored forested region in the Democratic Republic of Congo photographed a black monkey. That region eventually became Lomami National Park. And now, nearly 20 years later, the team has confirmed in a study that the black primate is a new-to-science species of colobus monkey. The monkey isn’t well known by local communities, but those who have encountered it call it likweli, said John Hart, study lead author and scientific director at the Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation, which spearheaded the creation of Lomami. The researchers have given the monkey the scientific name Colobus congoensis. Both male and female likweli are almost entirely black. What makes the species easy to distinguish from other colobus monkeys is a prominent patch of pinkish to orange-cream bare skin surrounding the mouth, Hart told Mongabay in a video call. When the likweli was first photographed in 2008, it was one of several monkeys the researchers couldn’t identify. “They are not in our field guides,” Terese Hart, the Lukuru foundation director, wrote in a blog post in 2008. Another of those monkeys, locally named lesula, also turned out to be new to science and was scientifically described as Cercopithecus lomamiensis in 2012. With the focus on the lesula and conservation work in the area, the likweli went on the back burner, John said. It was only 10 years later, in 2018, that local field researcher Jean Pierre Kapale photographed likweli several times during surveillance patrols and surveys. Kapale insisted the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In its most recent update to the Red List of threatened species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) identified deep-sea mining as the biggest threat to a critically endangered deep-sea snail. Discovered in 2021, scientists named the mollusk Lirapex felix — the lucky lirapex — because of the luck it took to find the roughly 2.5 millimeter (0.1 inch) long sea snail. So far, only two individuals have been recorded in one location 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) south of Madagascar in the Longqi vent field on the Southwest Indian Ridge. “Luckily, these two specimens gave us just enough information on its morphology and DNA so we could describe it comprehensively and give it a name,” Chong Chen, the scientist who first described the species, told Mongabay via email. “This likely means this species is naturally rare, making it especially vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts like deep-sea mining.” The species was found in an area that overlaps with a 15-year exploration license for polymetallic sulfide mineral extraction. The license was issued by the International Seabed Authority to China and expires this year. If exploitation-phase mining goes ahead, sediment plumes could smother and kill vent communities, Chen said. Even though little is known about the Lirapex felix, it was classified as critically endangered. By assigning the highest risk category the IUCN has taken a precautionary approach and  recommends further research into mining impacts. It has also called for surveys to see if the species exists at other vent sites along the…This article was originally published on Mongabay