In the Indian Western Himalayas, women are the primary first responders to escalating forest fires. They risk their physical safety to protect homes and livelihoods despite receiving little formal support or equipment and no pay, reports contributor Swati Thapa for Mongabay. Uttarakhand is the most fire-prone state in India’s Western Himalayas. High-elevation warming exceeds global rates there, extending the wildfire season into the winter and hinting at bigger ecosystem-level changes. More than 71% of the state is forested, supplying the region with essential drinking water, firewood, and fodder for cattle. Climate change is both increasing fire risk and impacting local agriculture, such that men are migrating to cities for work, leaving rural women behind to manage farming, livestock, and fire defense. Kavya Pandey, a researcher at the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru, has studied extensively the relationship between women in Uttarakhand and forest fires. Pandey notes that a traditional gender role for women is collecting firewood, so they’re often in the forest for hours and, by default, on the frontlines when forest fires start. Men are occasionally hired as paid seasonal fire watchers, and while authorities also call on women to help, they’re rarely paid for the work and don’t receive protective gear. “If a woman sees fire anywhere, and she does not have a phone, she calls out to others by ululating or whistling, and all the women go together to snuff the fire,” said Kamla Devi, head of the Marhmanley village van panchayat, a community-managed forest council.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Isolated and contacted Indigenous tribes in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands face threats from illegal fishing, mega-development projects and misinformed government welfare policies that undermine their self-sufficiency, says Manish Chandi, a former research scholar who has spent decades working with tribal communities in the region. Chandi worked with the communities while he was with the Andaman Nicobar Environment Team and the Nature Conservation Foundation. He is also a former advisory board member of the Tribal Research Institute under the Andaman and Nicobar Administration. In an interview with Mongabay’s Latoya Abulu, Chandi says that protecting Indigenous autonomy is vital for both tribal survival and environmental conservation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which lie southeast of mainland India. The archipelago’s tribal reserves — home to Indigenous groups that live in voluntary isolation, such as the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island and the Shompen of Great Nicobar Island — contain some of the region’s richest biodiversity, outperforming the roughly 100 official national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across the islands, Chandi says. This is because the tribal reserved areas are both large and “have not been used for timber extraction and settlement and therefore retain the biodiversity of both various habitats and also species,” Chandi tells Mongabay. However, several escalating pressures threaten these communities. Chandi notes that commercial trawlers and poachers frequently infiltrate coastal buffer zones, harvesting sharks, lobsters and turtles that island communities depend on for subsistence. On Great Nicobar Island, a government-proposed development project directly overlaps with ancestral foraging grounds and…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

At least 20 endangered Ganges river dolphins still survive in Bangladesh’s extremely polluted Buriganga River, a 12-month study found, reports contributor Md Jahidul Islam for Mongabay. Skirting the southern edge of the country’s capital, Dhaka, the 29-kilometer (18-mile) river is recognized as one of the most contaminated urban waterways globally. Researchers surveyed a 27-km (16.7-mi) stretch of the river between September 2023 and August 2024, observing Ganges river dolphins (Platanista gangetica) in 10 out of the 12 survey months. Group sizes averaged about four individuals, with calves accounting for nearly 16% of sightings, signaling active reproduction despite severe ecological degradation. “The Buriganga is not a usual place for dolphins, where native fishes have largely vanished,” study co-author and researcher Md. Aminur Rahman told Mongabay. “When we found [the dolphins], we were amazed at how it was possible. Because the river is not livable for fish.” A 2025 study on the Buriganga River’s water pollution showed that it absorbs untreated industrial effluent from tanneries, textile dyeing plants, battery factories, and municipal sewage. Levels of toxic heavy metals, including lead, chromium, and cadmium, routinely exceed World Health Organization safety limits, driving dissolved oxygen levels near zero during the dry season, the study reads. While native fish species have collapsed, pollution-tolerant invasive suckermouth catfish (Hypostomus plecostomus), native to South America, have multiplied rapidly, Rahman said. Mohammad Abdul Aziz, study co-author and zoology professor at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, told Mongabay that the dolphins have likely adapted their diet to survive on these invasive…This article was originally published on Mongabay