KATHMANDU — This past July 20, Radha Krishna Rijal noticed a strange animal struggling in the drainage channel of his house in the Parshyang neighborhood of western Nepal’s Pokhara Valley. He’d never seen such an animal before, he tells Mongabay: it was small, with a long tail and a furry body. “It had rained continuously […]
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The only pig species known to migrate: the bearded pig
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. In this episode we’re meeting the only pig species known to migrate: the bearded pig. The bearded pig (Sus barbatus), also known as the Bornean bearded pig, lives in Southeast Asia. It is well adapted to […]
New oil refinery ‘a huge disaster’ for Nigerian forest reserve
IWUOCHANG, Nigeria — It was morning in mid-March and the wooden canoe skimmed silently across the Ibeno River in the southern Nigerian state of Akwa Ibom. A young boy and an elderly man paddled with measured rhythm towards the shore of Iwuochang, where passengers disembarked beside a group of chatting fishers and a pile of […]
Europe moves to protect deep-sea sites in Atlantic from bottom fishing
BRUSSELS — On Sept. 15, the European Commission made a historic announcement: it will prohibit bottom fishing across 16,000 square kilometers, or 6,200 square miles — an area about half the size of Belgium — in waters controlled by the European Union in the northeast Atlantic Ocean. While some fisheries representatives have criticized the decision, […]
As poachers poison wildlife, Zimbabwe finds an antidote in tougher laws
Nearly a decade ago, poachers used cyanide to slaughter more than 135 elephants for their ivory in and around Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. In the wake of these poisonings, the Southern African country tightened its laws to prevent similar deadly attacks on its wildlife. A new study shows that, even as international demand for ivory […]
Big data monitoring tool aims to catch up to Indonesia’s booming online bird trade
JAKARTA — Researchers in Indonesia have harnessed the power of big data to monitor the flourishing online trade in songbirds, proposing it as a critical conservation tool in the absence of any other platform to crack down on trafficking. The researchers, from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), developed their “Support Vector Machine,” or […]
Indonesia and Norway give REDD+ deal another go after earlier breakup
JAKARTA — Indonesia has signed a new climate deal with Norway that will see the Nordic country pay the Southeast Asian one to keep its forests standing. The deal comes a year after Indonesia terminated a nearly identical scheme between the two countries over the lack of payments. Land-use change, forest degradation, and deforestation account […]
Education can change local perception of bats, help conserve species, study says
Increasing knowledge of ecosystem services is key to conserving bats and supporting communities in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, according to a recent study published in the journal Biodiversitas. Researchers quizzed members of local communities around the Batang Toru ecosystem to understand their perception of bat populations. The researchers found that local communities have limited knowledge […]