VJOSA-NARTA, Albania — In late April, heavy machinery began moving into the Pishë Poro-Narta protected landscape on Albania’s Adriatic coast without permits or public notice. Bulldozers and excavators felled coastal pine trees, flattened sand dunes, and cut new roads through previously untouched habitat. Then, barbed wire fences went up along the shoreline. The incursion was the realization of a luxury resort development backed by Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. The development plans of Kushner’s Affinity Partners, a private equity fund, stretch from the uninhabited Sazan Island into the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape, the delta region of Albania’s Vjosa River that includes Pishë Poro-Narta. Roughly twice the size of Paris, the Vjosa-Narta area shelters flamingos, Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus), loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and more than 70 endangered species, among them the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus). Neither Affinity Partners nor the office of the prime minister of Albania responded to Mongabay’s requests for comment. Aerial drone video of demonstrators gathering at Dalan Beach on June 6 for a rally near the site of the original resort-construction site. Footage by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay.   When protesters arrived at the site, security guards confronted them. Video of a demonstrator being dragged across the dunes on May 30 near the village of Zvërnec went viral. Soon demonstrations erupted in Tirana, the Albanian capital, in what has since been dubbed the Flamingo Revolution. The protests have grown larger every day, with tens of thousands demanding accountability for corruption, an end to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Solve the crossword from our July 2026 issue, in which we raise our solving skills to the next level.

From pollution to overfishing to the escalating effects of climate change, human activities are placing mounting pressure on the world ocean, fueling what U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres describes as a “deepening crisis.” Those warnings are detailed in the third U.N. World Ocean Assessment, released June 8 and authored by approximately 600 experts from 86 countries. Covering the period between 2021 and 2025, the report echoes concerns raised in the U.N.’s earlier World Ocean Assessments, published in 2015 and 2021, which describe a global ocean under immense strain due to human-driven pressures. The authors point toward progress in ocean governance through a review of 57 global treaties related to ocean protection, including the recently ratified high seas treaty, known more formally as the marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement. However, they caution that existing frameworks generally remain “fragmented” and cannot fully address the scale of the challenges facing the ocean. Even so, the authors argue that it is imperative to continue strengthening conservation efforts, regulations and international cooperation to mitigate the damaging impacts of human activities and preserve marine ecosystems. Some 52.1 million metric tons of plastic waste enters the ocean each year, impacting more than 4,000 marine species, including seabirds. Image by NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). “The imperative for a healthy and resilient ocean has never been more urgent,” Rafael González-Quirós, director of the Oceanographic Centre of Gijón, Spain, who played a key role in coordinating the report, said in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

MTWAPA, Kenya — On a mid-morning in March, Mohamed Mwazigona, 58, had just landed a measly catch on the town beach in Mtwapa on Kenya’s north coast. His crew was preparing the boat for a second trip into the sea with hopes of better luck. As traders started trickling in to buy fish, Mwazigona sat on a broken upturned boat staring at the horizon beyond the sea. His morning trip had netted only 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of fish. He worried that his catches had decreased a lot in recent years. “The number of fishermen has gone up; we have become too many,” he said. That’s the reason he left his village of Shariani, 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the north, to base his fishing in Mtwapa, which he felt had fewer fishers and better access to markets. In Kenya, local beach management units (BMUs), like the Mtwapa BMU that Mwazigona belongs to, have a legal mandate to support collection of fisheries data for submission to the government: mainly the type of fish its members catch and the weight. These data are meant to inform government decision-making about small-scale fisheries so it can help reverse the competition for dwindling fish stocks that Mwazigona and his colleagues are experiencing. They are also meant to help fishers themselves make decisions on where and when to fish. However, the BMUs’ small-scale fisheries data have been inaccurate and inaccessible to stakeholders. To address this problem and improve the sustainability of Kenya’s small-scale fisheries, WorldFish,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

As human cases continue to climb in the latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, concern is growing for the gorilla population, which have been devastated by the virus during previous outbreaks. On May 15, the Congolese Health Ministry announced a new outbreak of the lethal virus, which has struck the country at least 17 times over the past half-century; the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 676 Ebola cases in the eastern DRC and 136 deaths as of June 10 — and continue to rise. In neighboring Uganda,  19 cases and two deaths have been reported, with no new cases in the last days. So far, the outbreak seems to be largely contained within the region. The Bundibugyo virus is the culprit, one of five Ebola viruses within the family Filoviridae that spark illness in people. It has no approved treatment or vaccine. As cases mount, virologists — as well as ecologists and primatologists — are warily monitoring its spread. First discovered in humans in 1976 along the Ebola River (where it got its name), Ebola is highly contagious, and this virus can also sicken and kill gorillas and other non-human primates. While some symptoms are flu-like — fever, vomiting and diarrhea — the disease can progress to a gruesome, often-fatal hemorrhagic fever, causing both internal and external bleeding. Previous outbreaks have exacted vast human death…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which stretches from oil fields in Uganda’s Lake Albert region to Tanzania’s port town of Tanga, is once again under scrutiny after a new report mapped out the biodiversity areas and wildlife habitats it runs through or passes by. Drawing data from maps and economic value estimates, the report by U.S.-based NGO Earth Insight shows that the 1,443-kilometer (990-mile) pipeline is close to areas that are important for livelihoods and water security for millions of people and serve as migration corridors for animals. The report concludes that the construction of the pipeline has already disturbed communities and the environment and that oil transportation will bring further long-term risks. EACOP is a joint project involving TotalEnergies (62% stake), the governments of Uganda (15%) and Tanzania (15%), and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC, 8%). EACOP will carry oil extracted from two oilfields in the Lake Albert region: Kingfisher, owned by CNOOC, and Tilenga, owned by TotalEnergies. According to Earth Insight, the project is nearing completion. Oil transportation through the pipeline is expected to start as early as October 2026. Construction of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Uganda. Image courtesy of Thomas Lewton. “It crosses right through endangered species ranges, the most important and critical one being the black rhino habitat range,” Earth Insight’s Katie Boston, the study’s main researcher, told Mongabay on the phone. She added that the pipeline could cause habitat fragmentation in the Kibale/Bukoora River Crossing area, where…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The man’s cheekbones are painted with achiote, a red pigment extracted from the seeds of the Bixa orellana plant. He wears a thin headband over his gray hair, and a traditional green shirt with yellow and blue trim on the collar and sleeves. In his right hand, he holds a wooden spear, 2.5 meters long, or just over 8 feet, made from the chonta palm (Bactris gasipaes). He stares at the journalist. His dark eyes widen as he laments the occurrence of several cases of community residents, including children, suffering from fungal infections. “Even two people have already died from stomach pain, and at the hospital, they said: ‘Maybe it’s the water.’” The video was first broadcast on Sept. 28, 2024, on an Ecuadorian national news program. The man recorded is Galo Villamil, one of the leaders of the Capirona community, an Indigenous Kichwa resistance enclave in the Ecuadorian Amazon. One year before, in 2023, 22-year-old Joana Ashanga and her 2-year-old nephew, Ville Ashanga, were victims of what the community considers the fatal consequence of river pollution. “Despite the complaints, official reports from the [Ecuadorian] Ministry of Health made no mention of links between the pollution and the deaths, which generated distrust and outrage,” said Linda Tapuy, president of the Capirona community, before an audience at a university auditorium in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, two years after the deaths. The victims’ death certificates said the cause of death was “unknown.” For the Indigenous group, appearing in that television news story was…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have made an important commitment to environmental justice for the 680 million people who call this region home. Now comes the hard part: putting it into practice. Last October, ASEAN member states — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam — adopted a Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment. They are currently in the process of drafting a regional plan of action to give it life. The right to a healthy environment as it’s usually called is now globally accepted as a fundamental human right. ASEAN first recognized this right in 2012 in the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the right in a virtually unanimous vote: 161 governments voted in favor, none against, and only eight abstained. At the national level, more than 100 countries now include it in their constitutions. Southeast Asia enjoys a rich natural heritage, like this coral reef in the Philippines, that supports the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Image courtesy of Jett Britnell/Coral Reef Image Bank. At the same time, international tribunals and domestic courts have made strides in clarifying what the right requires. In July 2025, the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, issued an opinion on climate change in which it said the human right to a healthy environment is inherent and essential for other human rights, including…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A ruling by Brazil’s Supreme Court has given new momentum to one of the most controversial infrastructure projects in the Brazilian Amazon: The Ferrogrão railway. The plan is to link Sinop, in the grain-producing state of Mato Grosso, to the port of Miritituba in Pará, a key commodity export hub on the Tapajós River. Conceived by the agribusiness sector to reduce grain transportation costs, Ferrogrão is a priority project for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration, despite warnings about its potential impacts on Indigenous territories and protected forests in an Amazon region already under significant socio-environmental pressure. In May, the justices upheld a 2017 law that removed 862 hectares (2,130 acres) from Jamanxim National Park, a conservation unit located in Pará state, to allow Ferrogrão to pass through the protected area. The initiative had been challenged on the grounds that Brazil’s Federal Constitution requires a formal law to reduce the size of protected areas, rather than the conversion into law of a provisional measure issued by the executive branch. “The STF decision does not give the green light to the Ferrogrão project, which still must undergo environmental studies and the licensing process,” said Alice Dandara de Assis Correia, an attorney at Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), a nonprofit that advocates for environmental and Indigenous rights. “But the courts have ruled that specially protected areas can be altered through an expedited process, an extremely dangerous shortcut that could pave the way for Congress to approve similar changes in other protected areas facing…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, opening tomorrow, protagonists race across the globe to expose a decades-long government cover-up and reveal to the world that extraterrestrial life is real. It’s a question Spielberg has been asking since his 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind: How would the knowledge of extraterrestrial intelligence change us? Spielberg makesContinue reading "The real disclosure day: The protocols for announcing extraterrestrial intelligence"

The post The real disclosure day: The protocols for announcing extraterrestrial intelligence appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest producer and the top exporter of jute. The “golden fiber” is so abundant here that, in rural regions, piles of dried jute sticks are commonly burned as cooking fuel or used as low-cost fencing. Scientists have now found a way for this agricultural waste to become an unlikely solution to one of Bangladesh’s overlooked industrial dependencies — imported printing ink. A Bangladeshi-led research team has developed environmentally friendly ink using submicron carbon particles derived from discarded jute sticks. This is a potential low-cost alternative to imported commercial black ink. The innovation could help Bangladesh reduce import dependence in a market worth millions of dollars annually while creating new economic value from agricultural waste. The research, published in Chemistry: An Asian Journal in 2022, was led by Md Abdul Aziz, a Bangladeshi scientist at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia. “We are trying to convert low-value biomass into advanced industrial materials,” Aziz told Mongabay. “But when we tried it with jute sticks, we were surprised. We have obtained better-quality ink from jute sticks, and it can reduce the cost by about 10 times compared with the import cost.” “Bangladesh produces huge amounts of jute sticks every year,” he said, and referred to the country’s raw jute production sometimes reaching 9 million bales (1.6 million tons) annually. “Instead of treating them as waste, they can become raw materials for sustainable technologies.” Jute plantation and harvest in Bangladesh. Image by Shahnoor Habib Munmun via…This article was originally published on Mongabay

COLOMBO — The mist-covered tea estates, forest patches and mountain valleys of Sri Lanka’s hill country support some of the country’s most important leopard populations outside protected areas. Yet the same landscapes have emerged as the deadliest places for the threatened big cats of Sri Lanka. A new study analyzing 17 years of leopard mortality records has found that nearly 40% of recorded leopard deaths occurred within a single district of Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands, the tea-growing Nuwara Eliya, which accounts for only 4.4% of the species’ estimated range. The study, published in Wildlife Letters, documented 164 human-caused leopard deaths between 2008 and 2024. Most of the victims were adult males, with adults accounting for 87.3% of deaths, out of which 68.4% males made up 68.4% of that adult population. With fewer than 1,000 mature leopards believed to remain in Sri Lanka, deaths of adult leopards are raising concerns for the species’ long-term survival, as deaths of breeding-age individuals, even modest increases in adult mortality, can have significant impacts, said Sanjaya Weerakkody, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden. The majority of recorded deaths were of males, also problematic as the males maintain large territories overlapping with multiple females, which could lead to destabilize local populations, Weerakkody told Mongabay. A rare image of a mating leopard pair captured by a camera trap in the tea fields of Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands highlights that the human-dominated hill country tea landscape is habitat for Sri…This article was originally published on Mongabay

When Rainforest Action Network began in 1985, it had little of what usually makes an organization powerful. It had no large budget, no legal department, no reliable access to politicians, and no formal way to force global corporations or development banks to change. It had Randy Hayes, a wide activist network, a way to connect distant forest destruction to everyday choices, and a willingness to use tactics that many mainstream environmental groups avoided. David Benac’s new book, Rainforest Radicals: A History of Rainforest Action Network and Transnational Organizing, tells the story of how that combination became effective. RAN’s early campaigns targeted Burger King over rainforest beef, True Geothermal in Hawai‘i, the World Bank over development projects, and Mitsubishi over tropical timber. These were different fights, involving different places, institutions, and coalitions. Together, they show how a small San Francisco-based group helped bring tropical deforestation, Indigenous rights, and corporate accountability into late twentieth-century environmental politics. Rainforest Radicals: A History of Rainforest Action Network and Transnational Organizing Benac, an environmental and public historian of the postwar United States, came to the subject indirectly. He was researching timber-industry history in the Pacific Northwest when he encountered the MacMillan Bloedel papers and a grassroots campaign against clear-cutting in British Columbia’s coastal rainforests. RAN appeared in the archival trail. That led him to Hayes, RAN’s co-founder, then to a larger oral-history project with activists, allies, and contemporaries. The result is a history built around interviews, archives, and a close look at how people organize when…This article was originally published on Mongabay

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s oldest and largest environmental group, Walhi, has formally intervened in an environmental lawsuit filed by the government against a major logging company, arguing the government’s case fails to account for the full extent of ecological damage allegedly caused by the company’s operations. Walhi filed the intervention on May 20, 2026, in the Medan District Court, where the environment ministry is seeking 3.89 trillion rupiah ($214 million) in damages and environmental restoration measures against pulpwood plantation operator PT Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL). The environmental group is not arguing that the ministry’s damages claim is too small. Instead, it says the lawsuit overlooks key ecological impacts, such as critical orangutan and tiger habitats, that should also be addressed through court-ordered restoration. In January 2026, the environment ministry filed lawsuits against six companies over alleged damage to watersheds in North Sumatra province, which the government says contributed to the floods and landslides that struck the region in late November 2025 following cyclone-driven storms across Sumatra. The government also announced the revocation of the permits for TPL and 27 other companies in January 2026. TPL later disclosed to investors that it had received a forestry ministry decree dated Jan. 26 formally revoking its forest-use license, and that it had subsequently ceased forest-use activities within its concession. The floods and landslides struck three provinces on the island of Sumatra, including North Sumatra, and claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people. In its lawsuit against TPL, the environment ministry identified 1,261.5 hectares…This article was originally published on Mongabay

SALONGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — Just before sunrise, while much of the rainforest remains cloaked in darkness, a team of researchers and trackers leaves the Inkomu research camp. Their destination is the previous night’s nesting site of a group of bonobos deep within the Salonga forest, located in the center of the DRC. Their mission is to persuade the bonobos (Pan paniscus) to accept human presence as a natural part of their environment. By earning the animals’ trust, researchers hope to create opportunities to better understand their behavior, ecology and health. This painstaking process, bonobo habituation, involves spending time near the apes day after day until they gradually become accustomed to people. It is a slow and demanding undertaking that can take years, requiring patience, consistency and thousands of hours in the forest. Long before dawn, often around 3 a.m., trackers — some of them former poachers whose knowledge of the forest has become an asset for conservation — begin making their way toward the previous night’s nesting site. They must arrive before the bonobos wake. Then begins an all-day pursuit through one of the most remote rainforests on Earth, following the apes from dawn until they build fresh nests for the night. “The whole idea of habituation is that you meet the group every day in a very friendly, non-interactive way so they accept you as part of the forest,” says Felix Bofeko, an assistant researcher working with a bonobo habituation program in Salonga National Park.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

EAST LOMBOK, Indonesia — Jamil stood at the water’s edge holding a bucket of fish guts and chicken heads, waiting for signs of life as the late-afternoon sun cast a sheen over the pond. “At this time of day, they’ll start becoming active and feeding,” said Jamil, 63, as the onshore breeze settled and the light began to fade. “In the morning, they’re more likely to stay in their holes.” Until recently, the mud crabs (genus Scylla) were almost entirely a product of the wild here in Sugian village on the Indonesian island of Lombok. Fishers would set traps in the estuary and sell their catch to traders, with little incentive to spare juveniles or undersized animals. “If you sell them immediately when they’re small, they’re cheaper,” Jamil said. But when crab populations fell from overzealous fishing, so too did local earnings here in a region of Indonesia where many families struggle to remain together in the face of economic pressures. Mangrove roots provide shelter, stabilize temperatures, and support the microorganisms and nutrients on which mud crabs depend. Image by Nopri Ismi/Mongabay Indonesia. Few places in Indonesia endure more family separation than the district of East Lombok. Last year it topped the list of Indonesia’s more than 500 districts for the highest number of its residents who left for work overseas. The minimum wage set by the local government for this year is 2.7 million rupiah ($150), less than half that in the capital, Jakarta. Last year, around 14,000 people…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In October 2015, Indigenous activists from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Brazil, the United States, and Honduras, together with delegates from longhouse communities throughout the Malaysian state of Sarawak, gathered at Tanjung Tepalit, an Indigenous Kenyah village on the Baram River on the island of Borneo. They called the gathering WISER: the World Indigenous Summit on Environment and Rivers. Tanjung Tepalit hosted the gathering because the village, along with more than two dozen others along the river, was scheduled to be drowned. The Baram Dam, a 1,200-megawatt hydroelectric mega project backed by the Sarawak state government and aligned with a regional industrial development scheme called the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE), would have flooded an area of more than 400 square kilometers (more than 150 square miles) and displaced an estimated 20,000 Kenyah, Kayan, and Penan people. Muslims, Catholics, Evangelicals, Buddhists, agnostics, and people who followed traditional Indigenous religions were among the attendees. As we gathered, Peter Kallang, the Kenyah founder and chair of the local advocacy group SAVE Rivers, addressed the assembly: “We are people of many faiths,” he said, “but we are united in one mission. To protect our forest homes and our ways of life.” In one sense the WISER gathering was a strategy meeting to coordinate an international coalition against a state-corporate project. In another, and perhaps deeper sense, WISER was rooted in something older. It was an assertion that the values that hold communities to their land across generations — the sanctity of the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A new study published in the journal Nature shows that Ethiopia’s protected areas successfully slowed deforestation, limited agricultural expansion and helped maintain grasslands. But the study also suggests the same conservation gains may also be linked to declines in food security and wellbeing for nearby communities — while underlining some caveats in their findings. The study, conducted through collaboration between researchers in Ethiopia and the UK, and the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority, assessed both environmental and social outcomes across 25 protected areas in Ethiopia during the period 2000–2020. They measured forest cover, agricultural expansion, grasslands, food security, dietary diversity and material wellbeing. While protected areas were broadly effective at reducing environmental degradation despite mounting pressures from population growth, agricultural expansion, and land demand, the researchers found “trade-offs” between environmental and social outcomes in their assessments. Twelve of these protected areas experienced  positive environmental performance at the cost of social wellbeing. Meanwhile, five of the protected areas had “win-win” outcomes for biodiversity and social outcomes and three protected areas had “lose-lose” outcomes. “Ethiopia is exceptionally biodiverse, but also faces major challenges around poverty, food security and demand for land,” said Sophie Jago, lead author of the study and research assistant at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK. “The fact that protected areas are delivering measurable benefits for nature in this context is important … The difficult finding is that these environmental gains have come with costs for nearby communities, particularly around food security.” A ranger discusses with community members…This article was originally published on Mongabay

When Catherine Craig first went to Gombe in 1972, she was not thinking about silk. She was an undergraduate in a four-seat plane with Jane Goodall, flying over the Tanzanian forest where Goodall’s work on chimpanzees was changing how scientists understood animals. Craig spent six months there, learning to recognize individual chimpanzees and helping track mothers and infants through the steep woodland above Lake Tanganyika. The forest stayed with her. So did the sight of people living nearby with few choices, and the later realization that even forests thought to be protected could disappear. Her path back to conservation was indirect. Craig became a biologist of spiders and silk, earning a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution from Cornell and later joining the biology faculty at Yale. For two decades, she studied webs, foraging behavior, insect flight, and the properties of silk. It was work at the level of fibers, mechanics, and evolution. Yet the question that had formed at Gombe remained: how could habitat be protected where people had few ways to earn money? The answer she pursued was both plain and difficult. If farmers could earn income from native silk-producing caterpillars and the plants that fed them, then habitat might become something worth tending. The idea drew on her scientific expertise, but it also required skills that science had not taught her: product design, marketing, patience, and the ability to listen across languages, cultures, and expectations shaped by past disappointments. Borocera cajani Vinson, 1863 family Lasiocampidae. Adult moth, caterpillar…This article was originally published on Mongabay

DEDURU OYA, Sri Lanka – On April 16, eight members of Priyantha Kumara’s family including his wife, son, brother, father-in-law, and four other relatives were swept away by strong currents in the Deduru Oya, a river in Sri Lanka’s North Western province. Sri Lanka Police reported more than 30 drowning deaths between April 12 and 21 this year, underscoring the risks posed by flooding rivers. Sri Lanka Police media spokesperson Udaya Kumara Wootler told Mongabay that 376 individuals have died due to drowning in rivers last year while 595 fatalities were reported in 2024. Buddhika Sampath, spokesperson for the Sri Lanka Navy told Mongabay that the Navy Diving Unit recovered 148 bodies of people between May 2022 and May 2023. While the police are yet to disclose official statistics of deaths due to drowning from January to May 2026, the number of reported incidents show over 50 fatalities. Kumara is a resident of Gopallawa in the northwestern district of Kurunegala. His son had requested that they all go for a bath in the river. The group had been bathing at a popular spot named Kuriyagas Mankada when they met the tragedy. “My son was only 13 years old, and he was a bright student,” Kumara told Mongabay. “My brother was about to hold a housewarming ceremony at his newly built house. But all these dreams were shattered within seconds. My father used to take us to this same spot to bathe when we were young. But the river has changed…This article was originally published on Mongabay