Katelynn Delos Reyes thought she knew what to expect when Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into Saipan in April. As a lifelong resident of the island, Delos Reyes had survived frequent storms, including Super Typhoon Yutu, the second-strongest in U.S. history. Eight years ago, Yutu’s 274-kmph (about 170-mph) winds devastated her village in the southern end of Saipan. Just three years before that, she survived Typhoon Soudelor. But Sinlaku was different. “At the beginning, it was OK. But later on it wasn’t,” said Delos Reyes, who is Chamorro, Indigenous to the Mariana Islands. A few days before it hit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, on April 14, Sinlaku had tropical-storm winds. That made it what is known in the Marianas as a “banana typhoon” because such storms level banana trees but leave others standing. Then over the weekend, the typhoon rapidly intensified by 120 kmph (75 mph) in just 24 hours before becoming a 298-kmph (about 185-mph) monstrosity and the strongest storm on Earth so far this year. Delos Reyes and her family had done what they could to prepare. They boarded up the windows. They bought gallons of drinking water and filled plastic drums to use in the shower and toilet. Then the storm hit, and Delos Reyes grew scared. The winds, which had weakened to 240 kmph (about 150 mph), ripped the wood from a window. Rainwater gushed through the ceiling and soaked their belongings, including Delos Reyes’ mattress. She and her partner, her mother, her…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The year 2011 marked the first time a land-use restriction order was enforced for the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory, a swath of Brazilian Amazon roughly twice the size of Singapore and home to people living in voluntary isolation. The order was meant to protect the latter by prohibiting unauthorized individuals from entering — but rates of forest loss and invasions grew. In 2019, Ituna/Itatá was one of the Indigenous territories with the highest forest loss, primarily due to illegal land grabbers. In Brazil, land-use restriction orders exist to protect isolated Indigenous peoples and are a temporary tool in cases where the demarcation process to formalize the protected status and boundaries of Indigenous territories are not yet complete. But as recent Mongabay reporting has shown, they’re often renewed many times over for years while the formal land titling stalls, and aren’t always effective at protecting isolated peoples’ lands from invaders. Following one of the latest land-use restriction orders in 2022 for the Ituna/Itatá territory, the area lost 2,211 hectares (5,464 acres) of tree cover, or about 1.5% of its total area, according to satellite analysis by Mongabay. The most recent renewal was in 2025. Brazilian federal public prosecutor Daniel Luís Dalberto, head of the office for recently contacted Indigenous peoples and those living in voluntary isolation, told Mongabay in a recent interview that while the legal measure is important, it should have “a short time frame, until the Indigenous territory is demarcated as quickly as possible,” and should be accompanied by other…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The 2026 Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in Central and East Africa has already left at least 49 people dead, with health authorities racing to stop the spread of the disease. What if they could have known ahead of time where it would begin? That’s the question behind a study published last year by Carson Telford and a group of researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). They wanted to know whether it would be possible to predict where Ebola outbreaks might start by looking at the characteristics of areas where the virus had already “spilled over” from an animal host into a human. Telford and his colleagues analyzed 24 outbreaks between 2001 and 2022, using variables like population density and forest cover to train their model. When they ran the analysis of where those outbreaks occurred, they found a high correlation with forest loss and fragmentation. The model they built with that data was strikingly accurate. It put a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo in its top 0.1% of risk areas — just a few months before an outbreak happened there in 2022. Another that followed in Uganda was in a district it had identified as being in the top 6% for that country. Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo spoke to Telford about the link between Ebola and deforestation, and how understanding it could help stop outbreaks early on. Medical staff carry an Ebola patient to a treatment center. Image by Moses Sawasawa via Associated Press. Mongabay: How would…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. The European wildcat is not one conservation story, but several. In the Czech Republic’s Lusatian Mountains, the signs are encouraging. Conservationists have found a male and female wildcat, which they named Jonáš and Tonka, the first recorded in the region in nearly a century. Tonka has since given birth to at least three kittens. For a species once pushed out by habitat loss, persecution, and the spread of domestic cats, that is a meaningful foothold, reports contributor Sean Mowbray for Mongabay. The animal itself is easy to overlook. The European wildcat (Felis silvestris) is roughly the size of a large housecat and lives mostly out of sight in forests. The species, found across Europe, is listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List. That label can make the picture look simpler than it is. Yet its fortunes vary sharply from place to place. In parts of Central Europe, wildcats are moving back into former habitat as forests recover and hunting pressure has fallen. Germany and France show what can happen when habitat protection, legal safeguards, and time line up. Italy, too, has seen enough progress for the species to be downlisted nationally. Elsewhere, the picture is much more fragile. In Scotland, the wildcat was declared functionally extinct in the wild in 2018. A breeding and release program in Cairngorms National Park, in the Scottish Highlands, is now trying to rebuild a population…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A massive railway project, The Simandou corridor, in Guinea is cutting through one of West Africa’s most important ecosystems. The Simandou corridor is fragmenting forests that are home to the largest population of endangered western chimpanzees, putting their survival at risk. But why is this massive railway project being built? Deep within Guinea’s forests lie the world’s largest untapped iron ore deposits, and they require infrastructure to enter the global supply chain. However, as tracks slice through the rainforest, wildlife is pushed into smaller, isolated areas, making survival harder than ever.This article was originally published on Mongabay

In the remote, over-the-water village of Muara Enggelam in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, the introduction of reliable solar energy has become a catalyst for female entrepreneurship and economic stability. Historically cut off from basic services and reliant on expensive, noisy diesel generators that ran only from dusk to dawn, the village underwent a transformation starting in 2015 following a solar power allocation from Indonesia’s energy ministry, reports Mongabay Indonesia contributor Yuda Almerio. For women like Asniah, a mother of three, 24-hour electricity thanks to a solar array meant the ability to scale a home business. She began using electric blenders to produce amplang (fish crackers), a task that was previously difficult due to the high cost and unreliability of diesel fuel. “Using a blender was a bit of a worry, because the fuel would run out quickly,” Asniah told Mongabay Indonesia. “A liter [of diesel] wouldn’t last an hour — now it’s much more convenient.” Asniah has since expanded her ventures to include a food stall and a digital boutique, utilizing social media for marketing. Muara Enggelam’s solar infrastructure is managed by a village-owned enterprise, BUMDes, led by Jam’ah, a mother of one. This makes it a rare example of female leadership in the energy sector; the United Nations Development Program estimates that women make up less than 5% of energy managers in Indonesia. “Using a generator was expensive, that’s why so few people started businesses,” Jam’ah said. “The solar energy has been a relief for people.” While Muara Enggelam serves…This article was originally published on Mongabay

BUTEMBO, Democratic Republic of Congo — In the lush forests of North Kivu, Gangala Yafali Mangusa Jr. leads a forest patrol with members of his community. Together, they monitor human activity, identify threats and prevent damage to biodiversity, such as large-scale logging, unregulated timber harvesting and artisanal mining. “For example, once a month or once a quarter, we conduct inspections to check whether there are people in the community who are illegally hunting [protected] animals,” he explains. In his 30s, Mangusa Jr. leads the local management committee in the Bamasobha Local Community Forest Concession (CFCL), located in Lubero, a region threatened by terrorist attacks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Composed of Indigenous Batwa, Bapiri and local communities, Mangusa Jr.’s team works together to protect this community forest, promote sustainable management of natural resources and strengthen coexistence between communities and the ecosystems on which they depend. According to him, this commitment is rooted in a personal history marked by tensions and, at times, violence experienced around the Maiko National Park — a sprawling park protecting endemic species such as eastern lowland gorillas, okapi, chimpanzees and forest elephants — after the 1970s. Aerial view of forest and river in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Image by MONUSCO/Myriam Asmani via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). He recounts that, when the park was established, his family, like so many others, faced park rangers for several years who had been sent to enforce the new park boundaries, particularly in the Batike settlement, within…This article was originally published on Mongabay