PORT LOKO, Sierra Leone — When the tide pulls away from the beach in the agricultural regions in Mahera in Lungi, about 27 kilometers (17 miles) across the sea from the country’s capital, Freetown, the digging commences. Young men shovel sand into cement bags and carry them to a flat open area to pile sand into heaps to be sold by local women to truck drivers. These women are dedicated sand sellers. They negotiate prices, buy sand from the shovelers and sell to heavy-duty truck drivers to be transported to Lungi, Port Loko and other areas. The income helps pay for food, school fees and other basic needs of their families. However, their work relies heavily on the seasonal tide: The sellers can buy sand during low tide but are banned from doing so during high tide. In Mahera, the sand trade began as a survival strategy for 14 women who became family breadwinners, mostly due to absent partners. Aminata Kargbo is the chairperson of the sand sellers in the locality in Mahera, and entered the business to support her seven children after her husband’s death. “Most of these women have lost their husbands, and the money we make goes to support our children,” she said. She oversees about 19 sand sellers, the majority of them women. Many of these women have become widows after losing their husbands to Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002) and various illnesses. Aminata Kargbo, chairperson of the sand sellers in Mahera, stands in front of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
BAY OF ISLANDS, Aotearoa New Zealand — Since an invasive seaweed called caulerpa was discovered in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2021, forming meadows that blanketed parts of the seabed, it’s taken on an almost mythical status among people who spend time in coastal waters. “It’s so wily and so resilient,” Michele Rogalin-Henderson, a doctoral candidate at the University of Auckland’s Institute of Marine Science, told Mongabay. “Yes, I did say wily,” she added. “I anthropomorphize it. I spend a lot of time in the lab and in the field with this beast.” Stephen Te Tai, a commercial diver who removes the caulerpa, mainly in the Bay of Islands area in New Zealand’s tropical far north, also spoke about the invasive seaweed in such terms. “I know it’s airy fairy but sometimes I feel its energy,” Te Tai told Mongabay. In winter, he said, “it’s real low, it’s almost cowering, but in the summertime, it feels like its chest is puffed out, and it’s real vibrant and strong.” Te Tai is Ngāti Hine, a Māori tribal grouping, and his surname means “coast” or “tide” in Māori. He spoke to Mongabay on the shoreline after he’d worked in the waters off Urupukapuka Island one day in July. “The moana [ocean] is vital to our people,” he later added in a text message. “It is not just something that nourishes us, it is a part of us, it was a part of our ancestors and it will be part of our mokopuna [descendants].…This article was originally published on Mongabay
COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s spectacled cobra (Naja naja) carries a two-million-year-old genetic mystery, and a new study finds that the island’s cobras form a genetically distinct lineage, reopening a taxonomic question raised by a Sri Lankan zoologist nearly nine decades ago. The study also established that the spectacled cobra has evolved from an African ancestor that reached the region via the Middle East. The story dates back to 1939, when Sri Lankan zoologist P. E. P. Deraniyagala described a distinctive form of the spectacled cobra with additional eye-like markings on its hood. He named it Naia naia colour var. polyocellata. At the time, it was treated as a color morph of the Indian spectacled cobra than a distinct subspecies native to Sri Lanka. Deraniyagala returned to cobra taxonomy in 1945, proposing several geographical races of the spectacled cobra across the Indian subcontinent, and in 1960, revisited cobra taxonomy. Subsequent morphological work, however, consolidated these geographical forms under Naja naja. Then, in 2022, the question was reopened. A genetic study proposed resurrecting Deraniyagala’s polyocellata as a separate species as Naja polyocellata, after finding substantial genetic differences between Sri Lankan cobras and the Indian mainland cobras. An albino cobra is a snake with a genetic mutation that causes a complete lack of dark pigments, and such unusually colored cobras are reported more often in some regions than others. Image courtesy of Dushantha Kandambi. However, that proposal was challenged the following year. In 2023, herpetologists Wolfgang Wüster of Bangor University, U.K., and Frank…This article was originally published on Mongabay
BANGKOK — Marine biologist and photojournalist Sirachai “Shin” Arunrugstichai has taken many notable photographs in Thailand, from white bleached coral reefs to beaches blackened by oil spills. He shot the viral, award-winning photo of orphan baby dugong (Dugong dugon) Marium being hugged by her carer. Many of Shin’s works have ignited public awareness of marine conservation in Thailand. He recently took part in a scientific study on necrophilia behavior in squids, which was inspired by his photographs. In an interview with Mongabay, Shin, 39, talks about his career journey, recent research and how his work can make a difference. Trained as a marine biologist, Thai photojournalist Sirachai Arunrugstichai has a passion for taking pictures of marine wildlife and telling stories through photographs. Image courtesy of Pratch Rujivanarom. Mongabay: Can you tell me how the research about necrophilia behavior in squid began? Sirachai Arunrugstichai: I was working at Mergui Archipelago in Myanmar from 2019 to 2020. We found ghost fishing nets wrapped around an entire reef. So, our team went diving to retrieve the net. I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be two squids mating. I thought it was strange, so I swam closer. I found that one squid was trapped in the net while another was outside, mating with it. I felt it was very unusual that a dying squid would still be mating. However, after I finished photographing them, I noticed that the trapped squid was actually already decaying. Its tentacles were completely severed, and there were…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The future of tourism and hospitality will be in the spotlight at Vale do Lobo on Thursday, October 22, when the Ireland Portugal Business Network (IPBN) hosts the fifth edition
“Protected areas are protected areas,” says Nadège Nzoyem, WWF’s regional director for the Congo Basin. For her, mining has no place in landscapes that governments have committed to conserve. Yet keeping extractive industries out and ensuring effective protection remain major challenges across the region. A recent analysis by U.S.-based Earth Insight highlights the conflict between conservation commitments and extractive interests. Across the tropical countries examined, the report says, oil and gas blocks overlap across nearly 62 million hectares (153 million acres) of protected and conserved areas. Mining concessions overlap with another 43 million hectares (106 million acres). In the Congo Basin, 29% of identified terrestrial Key Biodiversity Areas remain unprotected. The findings raise questions about where protection is needed and how effective it is against industrial pressures. WWF’s “Living Planet Report 2026” adds to those concerns. It reports an average 80% decline in monitored wildlife population sizes across Africa between 1970 and 2022. The figure is continent-wide, not specific to the Congo Basin. Next week, the global community will meet for the biodiversity COP17 in Armenia, where the urgency of meeting the global 30×30 target puts protected areas under greater scrutiny. Conserving 30% of land and waters by 2030 means more than drawing boundaries, the Earth Insight report argues. It requires effective management, equitable governance, and respect for Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ rights. Semi-industrial mining at Muchacha along the Ituri River, in the southwestern sector of Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the DRC, has caused deforestation and contamination of water…This article was originally published on Mongabay
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — A steady stream of chacma baboons flows down the walking path in the beautiful wooded ravine that leads up to Admiral’s Kloof, on the slopes of Table Mountain National Park. The score of baboons (Papio ursinus) descending the ravine — half of the 44-strong Waterfall troop — are on their way to raid the naval barracks at the bottom, in the affluent suburb of Simon’s Town. A baboon monitor with a paintball gun slung over his shoulder stands and watches as a car marked “Shark Spotters”, the name of the NGO responsible for the monitors, pulls up to transport three of his colleagues to try and head them off. On this particular June morning, the effort is futile. The sound of the monitors’ paintball guns and the screeching of juvenile baboons fighting over choice morsels fills the air for 45 minutes, while the agile primates scale trees and buildings, and grab what looks like a bag of cereal from an unattended kitchen on the base. While the monitors manage to get some of the baboons out of the barracks, others move toward the surrounding suburb. Simon’s Town, the harbour, and the red brick walls of the Waterfall Barracks as seen from Admiral’s Kloof. Image by Barry Christianson for Mongabay. A WhatsApp group set up by the Cape Baboon Partnership to alert residents about the whereabouts of the troop, recorded 25 such raids between June 11 and July 11. Cape Town city officials are ready to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
SHENKENG, Taiwan — Ten kilometers east of Taipei’s high-rises and dense traffic, the city gives way to a succession of steep, forested ridgelines sheltering villages in the valleys below. The subtropical mist that cloaks these slopes at dawn has already thinned, and by 9 a.m. the heat is climbing. Li Chao-shiang, an assistant professor in the Department of Interior Design at China University of Technology in Taipei, winds upward on a narrow stone path, pausing to wipe his brow. Rounding a bend, he stops at an opening in the brush. Half the hillside before him is covered in dark-green ribbons, the regular corduroy of cultivated land. The other half looks like something took a bite out of it. “This jungle has a secret,” Li says. “If you look closely at the hills all around us, you can still make out faint lines that run through the forest. It may not be much to look at now, but what you are seeing are stone terraces — the remnants of one of the world’s great empires of tea.” For much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tea made these hills valuable. By 1897, tea accounted for 22% of Taiwan’s export earnings, four times the value of sugar, with 96% of the island’s Formosa oolong sailing for New York and Chicago. Shenkeng’s own signature style, the lightly oxidized Wenshan pouchong, came on the scene around 1912 and was refined through the 1920s, becoming Taiwan’s leading export to Southeast Asia. “The soil,…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Just after midnight on New Year’s Day 2024, a man and his two children stood near the harbor in the Danish town of Gråsten, watching fireworks over the water a short walk from the house where the children had been living. A witness later told a court in Hamburg that several gray cars had drawn […]
On October 9th, the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize Was awarded to Navi Pillay, the South African international lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid political prisoners on Robben Island, and went on to serve as a judge on the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC), then as UN […]
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