The number of fires burning in standing Amazon rainforest spiked dramatically in recent weeks, threatening the forest’s biodiversity — a richness of flora and fauna not adapted to withstand the flames. Of all major fires detected in the Amazon this year, 43% were in standing forests, as of Sept 21, (up from only 13% in […]
Tag: Mongabay.com
Don’t cross this tiger mom: Close encounter in Russia’s Far East
On Sept. 15, Aleksandr Rybin was checking a camera trap in Russia’s Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve when something red and long-tailed darted in the bushes in front of him. “A thought flashed in my head: cougar?” Rybin, a 45-year-old researcher at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Russia, said in a statement. “No, what cougar can be […]
Shark fin trafficking ring busted as trade ban comes into effect in Florida
U.S. authorities say they’ve broken up a conspiracy to traffic shark fins in and out of Florida by a company based in California, where their sale and export is banned by law. In an indictment released Sept. 4 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia, prosecutors allege that 12 people took […]
Spots of hope: Some good news for South Africa’s cheetahs
DURBAN, South Africa — South Africa is home to around 1,300 of the world’s roughly 7,100 remaining cheetahs. It’s also the only country in the world with significant cheetah population growth, thanks largely to a nongovernmental conservation project that depends on careful and intensive human management of small, fenced-in cheetah populations. Because most of the […]
For the Pantanal’s jaguars, fires bring ‘death by a thousand needle wounds’
Fernando Tortato usually spends his time scanning camera trap footage to monitor jaguars in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, a region that sprawls across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. But for the past 45 days, he’s taken on a new role as a firefighter, sometimes working grueling 24-hour shifts to help extinguish the flames […]
500 years of species loss: Humans drive defaunation across Neotropics
A new study provides an in-depth look at the detrimental impacts of human activities on wildlife in the Neotropical region of the Americas over the past 500 years. The study, published Sept. 15 in Nature Scientific Reports, found that more than 56% of species in mammal assemblages, or groups of coexisting species, living in the […]
How Morgan Stanley is linked to deforestation in the Amazon
Increasing deforestation in the Amazon in 2020 has prompted banks and funds to promise changes in investments that affect the region. Nordea, the largest asset management company in the Nordic countries, announced the withdrawal of all its investments from JBS, the world’s largest meat exporter. A month earlier, another group of 29 financial institutions that […]
Bolivia’s jaguar seizures down as suspicions rise over new mafia
In 2016, in the midst of the first investigations into jaguar trafficking in Bolivia, biologist Ángela Núñez received a short audio clip via Whatsapp: “Teeth, tiger”. That was all she could hear and it was enough. The file was sent by an informant close to the Manuripi-Heath Amazon National Wildlife Reserve in Pando who claimed […]