Oil slicks from ships and offshore oil platforms cover nearly 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles) of the ocean surface each year, an area slightly larger than the nation of Mongolia. The estimate comes from a recent report by Skytruth, a U.S.-based nonprofit that used satellite imagery, machine learning and vessel tracking data to trace global oil pollution in the oceans between 2023 and 2025. According to John Amos, CEO of Skytruth, this kind of pollution was largely invisible before satellite imagery made it possible to track. “Any vessel operator could be pretty confident that nobody was going to notice what they were doing out in the middle of the ocean,” Amos told Mongabay by phone. “So that’s changed. We can see it now.” Map courtesy of SkyTruth. Much of the vessel oil slicks come from bilge waste, a mix of oil and water that collects in the bottom of a ship’s hull during operation. Tankers sometimes also wash out their cargo holds and flush crude oil residue into the sea. “It’s nasty oily dirty gunk that you just want to get rid of,” Amos said. “And the easiest thing to do with it is just pump it out into the ocean while you’re at sea.” According to the report, most of these discharges are illegal under MARPOL, the international treaty on pollution from ships. A MARPOL treaty adopted in 1973 allows vessels to discharge bilge water containing no more than 15 parts of oil per million parts of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Renewable energy companies are driving most of Brazil’s plans for new data centers, according to a recent joint analysis by The Intercept Brasil and Mongabay. As of December 2025 there were 68 requests to connect data centers to Brazil’s national power grid with 65% registered by renewable energy companies, including wind and solar power plants, the investigation found. Brazil produces more renewable energy than it can distribute across its territory, and the national power grid cannot always absorb all the power generated by renewable energy plants. Doing so would cause disruptions in provision, and potentially even blackouts. To avoid this, the national grid operator frequently orders plants to halt production. In the first half of 2025 such measures cost power generators an estimated 3.2 billion reais ($617 million). One solar plant was forced to cut production by nearly 40% in 2025. Renewable energy companies argue that data centers, which constantly demand large amounts of energy, can provide more stability and income for the renewable energy sector. The Brazilian government has been actively seeking deals with big tech companies, advertising Brazil as an environmentally friendly host for data centers. On Sept. 15, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a law exempting data centers from several taxes on equipment purchases if they meet water efficiency criteria and use renewable or low-emission energy. In April 2026, Brazil’s foreign trade agency, Apex, organized a roundtable in the U.S. to attract foreign investment for sustainable data centers. “Renewable energy companies are able to sign…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Scientists have described a species of tiger cat that was previously unknown to science. From Bolivia’s Yungas cloud forests, it is the first discovery of a living novel cat species in more than 100 years. The tilcayo (Leopardus tilcayo) takes its species name from the name locals already had for it. Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a National Geographic explorer who discovered the species and co-author of the Current Biology paper that describes it, said the name honors traditional knowledge in the region. The tilcayo is smaller than a domestic cat at 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds). It has rounded ears, a slender body and a coat with large spots. “I have the honor of naming a cat, and that’s a really big thing,” Nogales-Ascarrunz, who is also a researcher at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia, told Mongabay by phone. Photo © Fernando Faciole/National Geographic. For decades, researchers lumped small spotted cats across South America under a single species name: Leopardus tigrinus or tiger cat. However, evidence had been mounting for years that the group might contain several species. In the article published on Sept. 17, researchers unwound the species’ genetic web and confirmed at least four distinct species. Many newly recognized small cat species result from this kind of taxonomic reshuffling:  Researchers find a subspecies is actually a distinct species; or two different species that had been lumped together are separated. But the tilcayo was different. Researchers knew a cat occurred in the Yungas cloud forests, but it…This article was originally published on Mongabay