Screeches, yowls and the hum of cicadas echo alongside yelps, squawks, splashes and drips. It’s first light in the Peruvian Amazon and my ears are enlivened with the joyous din of nocturnal symphonies jostling with the waking dawn chorus. Then, I hear it: a long growl, like an approaching storm. I peer into the towering […]
Indonesia’s native hornbills are being hammered by online and offline trade
Among the many inhabitants of Southeast Asia’s dense rainforests are hornbills — a group of birds that stand out with their raucous call, large, ostentatious beak and colorful feathers. Indonesia harbors 13 species, the most of any country in Asia, three of which are found nowhere else. Hornbills are rapidly losing their homes as large swaths of […]
“There we were, being ambushed by a probably very hungry polar bear, in a boat with no engine and no means of protecting ourselves…”
In June 2017, I travelled to the high Arctic in Northern Canada on a shoot for the Netflix series Our Planet with director Sophie Lanfear, says documentary cinematographer Jamie McPherson. The further north you go, the smaller the planes get. You hop from community to community, until snow and ice cover everything as far as the eye can […]
Big agriculture is killing our bees. We’ll all pay the price
Last winter, commercial beekeepers lost more than 60% of their colonies – their worst losses on record. We tend to blame bee losses on separate, singular threats: pests, pesticides, habitat loss or extreme weather. But we’ve been thinking about bee losses wrong. The real culprit is our industrial food system. Managed honeybees are in effect […]
“They’re equipped with 15cm claws, can run at speeds of 50kph, clear 2m when jumping and deliver a mean kick – just how worried should I be?”
Cassowaries live in the rainforests of Queensland. But despite their size, they’re not easy to find, explains Steve Portugal. There can be few more imposing sights in nature than an adult cassowary. Standing nearly 2m tall and weighing up to 50kg, it is no mystery why these large, flightless birds, found in north-eastern Australia and […]
Two pangolin traffickers in South Africa sentenced to eight years in prison
The Molopo Regional Court in Mahikeng, South Africa, sentenced two wildlife traffickers, Edward Motlatsi Phiri, 46, and Tlhoriso France Ralph, 51, to eight years in prison. They were convicted of smuggling a Temminck’s pangolin, a vulnerable species native to Southern and Eastern Africa, according to a statement released by the North West province’s environment agency. The judgment, delivered […]
10 deadliest, most ruthless, savage primates on the planet – “Their hunting expeditions involve intelligence, cooperation and utterly brutal violence.”
Super-strong simians, menacing monkeys, apes with attitude and lethal lemurs – here’s our pick of the primates that kill… Deadliest primates on the planet Mandrill This elusive inhabitant of equatorial African rainforests is the biggest of all monkeys and arguably the most beautiful. The 30kg males – three times the weight of females – […]
Cambodia wants its tigers back. So it plans to import Bengal tigers from India
Cambodia is preparing to reintroduce tigers after nearly two decades without a confirmed wild population. The plan is ambitious, and many of its basic assumptions remain contested, report Mongabay India’s Arathi Menon and Mongabay contributor Andy Ball. The last confirmed tiger sighting in Cambodia came from a camera trap in 2007. By 2016, tigers had been declared […]