As the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity’s 17th summit opens in Yerevan, Armenia, on Oct. 19, what’s at stake for Africa? In 2022, parties signed the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework, agreeing to maintain, restore, and substantially increase the area of natural ecosystems and end human-induced extinction of threatened species; to sustainable use of biodiversity; to fair and equitable sharing of both monetary and non-monetary benefits derived from genetic resources; and to establish adequate means to implement the framework — including finance, scientific cooperation and building capacity of all parties. The summit, which runs through Oct. 30, marks the halfway point to the deadlines for a first set of 23 action-oriented global targets. The progress report is not encouraging: Fewer than half of countries say they are on track to meet their self-designed biodiversity targets. “The report shows that many of the critical elements of progress, including finance, capacity, cooperation and data — are still missing in action,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a press release accompanying the organization’s State of Biodiversity Action report. Three of the world’s “megadiverse” countries are in Africa: The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and South Africa make the list of 17 countries that are each home to at least 5,000 of the world’s plant species that are endemic. None of the three met the initial 2024 deadline for a national biodiversity strategy as set out under Kunming — South Africa still hasn’t submitted an action plan. The headline goal — to see 30% of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Fifty automated recording units scattered across the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. gather roughly 500,000 hours of ambient sound each year. Computer models then sift through those recordings for wolf vocalizations, reports Justin Catanoso for Mongabay. Jeffrey Reed, a linguist and former software engineer, helped launch the Cry Wolf Project in 2023 within the long-running Yellowstone Wolf Project. It uses machine learning to pick out and analyze wolf calls. It turns the audio into spectrograms that reveal the structure of individual calls. So far, the project has isolated more than 8,000 continuous hours of wolf recordings, creating what researchers say is the largest database of wild wolf communication. Tracking wolves has generally meant catching them and fitting them with radio collars. Dan Stahler, Yellowstone’s chief wildlife biologist, told Catanoso that doing so is expensive and carries risks for both wolves and people. Recorders can simply be left in the field. Researchers are testing whether differences in wolves’ voices can identify individuals and help track their movements. The idea is also being tested in Europe. In northern Italy’s Po Valley, Osservatorio Lupi — “Wolf Observatory” — has deployed a dozen recording units near farms and towns. It hopes eventually to use the recordings to warn communities when wolves approach livestock. Researchers are exploring similar uses for brown bears and along wildlife migration corridors. Reed has annotated roughly a fifth of the archive by hand to check the models’ results. For now, listening to wolves still involves a fair…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The polished leather of Francisco “Torrinho” Torres’ shoes gleamed as he walked toward the lectern in the plenary chamber of the Pará state legislature in the Brazilian Amazon. The 57-year-old rancher-turned-politician moved unhurriedly as he prepared to deliver a speech that would set in motion a series of events leading to new invasions of the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory. It was June 30, 2026, in what seemed to be a routine session for the state representative from one of Brazil’s largest Amazonian states. Behind his sharp suit and the supportive nods of his agribusiness allies was a track record of environmental fines, a corruption investigation, and land disputes. In a brief speech, Torres defended a bill he’d authored to create a new state-run environmental protection area, APA Bacajaí. He presented the measure as a solution for families struggling to farm and rural families in need of land regulation. Three other state representatives took the stand to support the proposal. They spoke of farmers who had waited decades for land titles, of families unable to access credit without them, and of the uncertainty created by the possibility of an Indigenous land claim. It only took 24 minutes for the chamber to pass the bill into law unanimously. There were no objections and no requests for technical notes — even though it was known that the new 142,400-hectare (about 351,900-acre) reserve would overlap entirely with the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory. The area has been under a land-use protection order since 2011 to safeguard the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Typhoon Champi has moved from the western Pacific into the Philippine Sea and has become a Category 5 super typhoon, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. It had maximum sustained winds of 160 mph (258 kph) by late Monday Asia time, and was not near land. Champi earlier passed close to Guam, and the governors of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands requested emergency disaster declarations Friday. U.S. President Donald Trump approved the emergency declaration for Guam. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said federal assistance was available for the territory to supplement local response efforts. Airports, harbors and some health facilities in the territories were closed. Relief supplies were unlikely to reach the islands for three to five days, FEMA said Saturday. Meanwhile, former hurricane Trudy weakened to a tropical storm early Monday after it lashed parts of Mexico’s Pacific coast with rain and winds. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (100 kph) and was moving west at 6 mph (9 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Trudy was moving away from the coast and its center was forecast to pass south of the Baja California Peninsula on Monday and Tuesday. Some further rainfall was possible in the region where the ground has been saturated by successive storms. By Associated Press Banner image: This GOES-19 GeoColor satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and taken on Thursday, Oct. 15 2026, shows Hurricane Trudy in the Pacific. Image courtesy…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Camera traps in Spain have captured a behavior never documented before in a wild cat: Iberian lynxes soaking their prey in water before eating it. Over five years, researchers recorded multiple females carrying dead rabbits to water troughs and repeatedly dunking them underwater. Scientists aren’t sure why. The behavior may help lynxes stay hydrated during hot summers, soften prey for cubs, or serve another unknown purpose. The discovery comes from long-term monitoring of the Iberian lynx, a species that has made a remarkable recovery from the brink of extinction and continues to surprise researchers with previously unseen behaviorsThis article was originally published on Mongabay
Last year the Christmas Island shrew, slender-billed curlew, and three Australian bandicoots were among the species formally declared extinct. None has been seen in at least 30 years, but bureaucracy takes a while. They may be joined in the next decade or so by the vaquita and the Sumatran rhino. A child born today may grow up knowing them through archival footage of the last few animals or AI-generated simulations. But biodiversity loss isn’t only about species extinction. The death of a single elder elephant can have consequences for the entire herd. Her knowledge of water sources, for example, can be critical in a drought. And the disappearance of that herd can have knock-on effects on a forest. Seeds lose their dispersal mechanisms, and clearings maintained by elephants may fill in. The result is a less resilient ecosystem even if the change isn’t immediately apparent. Forest elephants in Dzanga Bai, Central African Republic. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay. Delegates gathering in Yerevan, Armenia, for the U.N.’s COP17 biodiversity talks will assess countries’ progress toward goals to slow these kinds of losses. Under the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework, adopted in 2022, governments pledged to conserve 30% of land and seas by 2030 and restore degraded ecosystems. Only four years remain before that deadline. The previous agreement doesn’t inspire much hope: not a single one of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets had been fully achieved globally by 2020. Implementation of these agreements is also entirely at the mercy of whoever holds office.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Every year, Amazonian rivers spill over their banks and flood the forests around them for months. These wetlands cover around 30% of the Brazilian Amazon and are often home to riverine families, who live in adapted homes built on stilts. They fish and plant crops with the natural ebb and flow of the rivers. But a new study has found that more than 6% of the total area of Amazon floodplain forests and other wetland areas has been cleared over the last 40 years. Nearly a third of that destruction occurred between 2015 and 2024. “When we think about 6%, we may get the impression that it’s small, but the converted area is basically the size of Belgium,” lead author Guilherme Lobo, a researcher at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, told Mongabay by phone. Researchers compared wetland clearing across 13 types of land designations and found huge differences. Public land not yet assigned by the government to any specific use had the largest share of human-converted wetland: a median of nearly 14% had been deforested. According to Lobo, people burn these lands to show they’re in use, hoping to claim a land title later. According to a 2026 study by Imazon, a Brazil-based research institute, federal and state land laws create incentives for such land-grabbing practices, locally called grilagem. Undesignated public land is routinely granted to the people who clear it, with deforestation used as proof of the productive use of the land to justify the land title…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Insects like fall armyworm or mealybugs can decimate food and commercial crops; like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, South Africa’s small and large farmers alike use synthetic chemical pesticides to control these and other pests. But about 385 million cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning are reported worldwide each year, according to the Pesticide Action Network, an umbrella group of more than 600 NGOs in 90 countries campaigning to reduce the use of chemical pesticides. As researchers look for alternatives, new pesticides that use genetic technologies are raising questions about what should replace hazardous agricultural chemicals. Colette Solomon, co-director of Women on Farms Project, an organization that advocates for farm workers and farm dwellers in South Africa, says pesticides are often sprayed while female farm workers are harvesting crops. In many cases, these workers, mostly women, are not provided with gloves or other protective equipment, she told Mongabay, as hand protection is seen as impractical for the handling of delicate fruit such as grapes. “[The workers] are not provided with PPE, such as hand protection, or they’re not practical for the delicate types of work they do, leaving them to handle contaminated vines barehanded, as well as breathing in these chemicals” Solomon said. Even when agrochemicals aren’t sprayed while women are working, they must often re-enter vineyards soon after they have been sprayed, she added in an email interview, and because farm workers’ homes are often located next to vineyards, pesticides can also drift into their houses. Led by…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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