Brazil bets reducing poverty can protect the Amazon

worldrfnews on January 12, 2026

In the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, in Brazil’s western Amazon, daily life still depends on the forest. Families tap rubber, collect Brazil nuts, and manage small plots without clearing large areas. The reserve is named after Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper and labor leader murdered in 1988 for defending that way of life. More than three decades later, the logic he argued for—that forests are better protected when people can make a living from them—has returned to the center of Brazilian conservation policy.

That shift is taking place within ARPA, the Amazon Region Protected Areas program. Created in 2002 by the Brazilian government and later backed by WWF and major donors, ARPA supports 120 protected areas covering more than 60 million hectares, an expanse roughly the size of Ukraine. Its early years focused on expanding protected areas and building a long-term financing structure. The results were tangible. Between 2008 and 2020, deforestation in ARPA-supported areas was significantly lower than in comparable regions, avoiding large volumes of carbon emissions.

A new phase, ARPA Comunidades, reflects a change in emphasis, writes Constance Malleret. About half of the protected areas under ARPA are sustainable-use reserves, where people live and work inside the forest. Until now, these communities benefited indirectly from conservation spending. The new program aims to support them directly.

“We were missing closer attention to the communities living in these sustainable-use conservation units,” said Fernanda Marques of Funbio, which manages the $120 million fund behind the initiative.

Announced at COP30 in Belém, ARPA Comunidades will focus on 60 such reserves, covering nearly 24 million hectares. Over 15 years, it seeks to improve livelihoods for roughly 130,000 people while reducing pressure on forests. The approach is pragmatic. Investments will range from basic energy and connectivity to support for cooperatives and local supply chains. The goal is to raise incomes through products such as açaí, Brazil nuts, cacao, rubber, and fish, while strengthening local institutions.

The economic case is straightforward. A 2023 study by Instituto Escolhas found that small reductions in extreme poverty in the Amazon can yield large declines in deforestation.

Supporters argue that durability depends on prosperity. “You have a financial backing and policy backing,” said WWF’s Carter Roberts, “but you will only have true durability if you really deliver prosperity to communities on the ground.” The challenge is ensuring that new markets do not undermine the forest itself. Guardrails will matter.

ARPA’s record suggests cautious confidence. Its financing model has expanded beyond Brazil. If ARPA Comunidades succeeds, it will reinforce a simple lesson from the Amazon: conservation lasts longer when people have a stake in it.

Rare twin mountain gorillas born in DRC

worldrfnews on January 10, 2026

In the eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two newborn mountain gorillas were found early this year, clinging to their mother in Virunga National Park, reports Elodie Toto. Unusual for gorillas, the infants are twins, both male.

Their mother, Mafuko, is known to rangers. She has given birth to twins before. Those infants died within days. This time, the park says the newborns appear healthy, and additional monitoring has begun. For those who have spent decades watching mountain gorillas struggle back from near extinction, the timing matters.

“For me, it is a huge sign of hope and a great way to start the new year,” said Katie Fawcett of the Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE Gorillas).

Hope in Virunga is never uncomplicated. The park sits amid armed conflict, illegal charcoal production, and poaching. Rangers patrol under constant threat. Gorillas have been killed by men seeking fuelwood or territory, not trophies.

The species has surprised before. From a few hundred animals in the 1980s, mountain gorillas now number more than 1,000 across the region, enough for the IUCN to lower their risk category. Two infants do not change the arithmetic much, but they reinforce the sense that recovery, though fragile, remains possible.

The year in rainforests, 2025

worldrfnews on December 31, 2025

This year’s review of major tropical forest storylines covers 12 thematic areas:

The Amazon
If 2025 produced a clear signal for the Amazon rainforest, it was that deforestation can be slowed—it fell 11% in Brazil in the year ending July 31—but that maintaining the world’s largest rainforest as a healthy and productive ecosystem is increasingly constrained by past degradation and a warming climate.

The Congo Basin
The Congo Basin’s defining story in 2025 was a steady intensification of pressures in areas long treated as buffers. DRC embodied this trend, with deforestation reaching a record level in 2024 and the resurgence of M23 wreaking havoc in the eastern part of the country.

Indonesia
2025 reflected a familiar contrast: national-level progress (deforestation fell 11%) alongside persistent pressure on the ground, including policy shifts that could exacerbate forest clearing. A deadly disaster in Sumatra illustrated what is at stake.

COP30
There was excitement in the run-up to the “Amazonian COP,” but the summit did little to translate that ambition into specific commitments. It reinforced a familiar pattern of multilateral climate diplomacy advancing largely through deferral of the hardest decisions.

Tropical Forest Forever Facility
TFFF was designed as an endowment-style mechanism: raise $125 billion, invest the capital conservatively, and distribute annual payments to forest countries that keep deforestation and degradation below agreed thresholds. It got off to a slow start, however, securing just $6.7B in pledges at COP30.

EUDR
The European Union’s deforestation regulation was postponed again.

Commodities
Rather than a synchronized boom, pressures diverged. Gold prices surged, palm oil rose, while soy, beef, timber, and wood pulp were stable to lower. Critical minerals and rare earths attracted growing attention.

Forest carbon markets
After several years of rapid expansion, activity slowed and scrutiny intensified.

American retreat
A freeze on foreign aid, followed by contract terminations & staff losses, turned what is usually slow, technical work—park budgets, ranger salaries, forest monitoring, community agreements—into improvised crisis management. The cumulative result was a reduced U.S. footprint.

Forest recovery and regeneration
Tropical regrowth is expanding in some regions but remains vulnerable to re-clearing and degradation. Tree planting still has a role, but persistence matters more.

Tropical forest ecology
Ecological research continued to link forest function more directly to environmental stress, shifting attention away from abstract services and toward how specific pressures alter forest health and productivity over time.

Remote sensing
Remote sensing of tropical forests increasingly focused on whether data could arrive quickly and reliably enough to inform decisions. The year also exposed operational fragility.

The year in rainforests 2025: Deforestation fell; the risks did not

A tiny orange has been discovered in Brazil. It is named after Lula.

worldrfnews on December 23, 2025

In the leaf litter of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, scientists have added another name to a genus that seems determined to rewrite its own census. A pinky-nail-sized frog, bright orange and barely a centimeter long, has been described as a species new to science. It has been christened Brachycephalus lulai, after Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The frog belongs to a group sometimes called flea toads, a lineage notable for its extremely small size and for the pace at which new species are being discovered. Of the 42 known Brachycephalus species, most have been described this century, often from single mountaintops or narrow bands of forest. The latest addition was found at two nearby sites in the Serra do Quiriri in southern Brazil, concealed among damp leaves in montane cloud forest.

Researchers confirmed its novelty by comparing DNA, body form, and its distinctive mating call with those of close relatives. Males are under 12 millimeters long; females slightly larger. For now, the species appears secure. “The new species occurs in highly preserved forests that are very difficult to access, which means it is not threatened with extinction,” Marcos R. Bornschein, one of the study’s authors, told Popular Science.

That reassurance comes with caveats. Elsewhere in the same mountain range, grassland burning, grazing, mining, and invasive pines are eroding habitats that host other, more vulnerable frogs. Climate change also could affect its niche habitat.

B. lulai underscores how incomplete scientific inventories remain, even in forests long assumed to be well mapped. In the Atlantic Forest, it turns out, there is still room for small discoveries.

Small cat conservationists welcome Uganda’s new national park

worldrfnews on December 20, 2025

Uganda’s decision to elevate Echuya Forest to national-park status have given one of Africa’s most elusive predators a better chance at survival, reports Sean Mowbray.

The African golden cat survives by staying unseen. That strategy has failed it. In forest reserves, snares set for bushmeat and steady habitat degradation have taken a significant toll. Camera traps tell the story. In nearby Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a golden cat appears within days. In Echuya, it took months.

“Having Echuya elevated to that level of protection is massive,” says Badru Mugerwa, founder and director of Embaka, who has spent years documenting the decline. “Protected areas, especially national parks, remain the strongholds.”

The upgrade matters beyond one species. Echuya’s montane forest shelters endemic birds and primates, and it sits in a region where ecological margins are thin. Uganda’s broader decision to add six national parks signals a bet that protection still works.

It also raises familiar tensions. Communities depend on the forest for livelihoods, and some worry about new restrictions or relocated wildlife. Uganda’s answer has been to pair protection with revenue sharing and negotiated access, borrowing lessons from elsewhere.

National-park status is not a cure. Enforcement, trust, and time will decide the outcome. But for a cat being pushed toward extinction by invisibility, attention is a start—and sometimes that is enough to change the trajectory.

Indonesia’s first attempt to move a Javan rhino ended in failure.

worldrfnews on December 19, 2025

Musofa, a mature male captured in early November as part of a long-planned genetic-management effort, died four days after arriving at the Javan Rhino Study and Conservation Area. Park officials said he received round-the-clock veterinary care. A necropsy later showed he had been living with severe parasitic disease, chronic malnutrition and age-related organ decline. Those conditions would have been difficult to detect in the field. They also made him far less able to withstand the stress of capture and transport.

Experts have asked why his condition deteriorated so quickly. John Payne, a veteran rhino conservationist, told Mongabay’s Basten Gokkon that animals with heavy parasite loads can often cope in familiar surroundings, but that in Musofa’s case, the strain appears to have overwhelmed whatever reserves he had left.

For a species pushed to the brink by poaching and hemmed into a single park, the loss is more than symbolic. Yet the response has not been paralysis. Officials say the failure will sharpen disease screening, surveillance and planning. Conservationists insist the work must continue. They have brought the Javan rhino back before, and they say it can be done again.

Sloth selfies are feeding a booming wildlife trafficking trade

worldrfnews on December 14, 2025

The growing trade in sloths for tourism and the pet market has turned a once-overlooked mammal into one of Latin America’s more exploited wildlife species, reports Fernanda Wenzel.

The animals’ slow movements and algae-tinted fur help them evade predators in the canopy. They do little, however, to deter hunters. Once spotted, a tree can be felled in minutes. Mothers trying to defend their young are often killed, and the infants are mutilated to make them easier to handle. Many are then sold as props for photos or as pets for travelers who like the idea of a docile, “smiling” creature.

“That ‘smile’ hides immense suffering,” says Neil D’Cruze of Canopy. The biologist has documented how sloths endure severe stress when handled, confined or surrounded by crowds. Few survive it. For small infants, mortality can reach 99 percent, according to Tinka Plese of the Aiunau Foundation in Colombia. Many arrive “hungry, thirsty, with an impressive sadness,” she says.

Deforestation remains the greatest threat to sloths, but trafficking tied to wildlife tourism has expanded the danger. A 2018 study led by D’Cruze identified hundreds of attractions in the region advertising direct contact with wild animals. Some markets, such as Belén in Iquitos, openly offer sloths for purchase. Tens of thousands are believed to be involved in the trade, with animals shipped to the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Concern over the scale of exploitation has prompted Brazil, Costa Rica and Panama to seek CITES Appendix II protections for two species, Choloepus didactylus and C. hoffmanni. Advocates say both have become increasingly targeted, with rising seizures in the Amazon. Legal sales in some countries also complicate enforcement, creating incentives for traffickers to move animals across borders where regulations are weaker.

Stronger international controls may slow the trade. They will not address the underlying loss of habitat. As D’Cruze puts it, “We need not only to stop sloths from being unsustainably removed from the wild but also to stop nature from being destroyed.”

Congo Basin nations to pay communities for protecting forests

worldrfnews on December 1, 2025

Last month Congo Basin governments used the COP30 summit in Belém to unveil a payments-for-environmental-services scheme meant to shift incentives for communities that rely on forests. The plan, backed by the Central African Forest Initiative, sends money directly to farmers and other participants through a mobile app. Payments are tied to verified tasks such as agroforestry, reforestation, forest regeneration, conservation work, and deforestation-free agriculture, reports Anne Nzouankeu.

Officials say the system has moved beyond the experimental stage. “Hundreds of farmers are already under contract and the first direct mobile payments based on performance were successfully made this month, confirming the efficiency and fairness of the system,” Kirsten Schuijt, director-general of WWF International, told Nzouankeu. Pilot efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of the Congo now cover nearly 3,000 hectares and involve about 10,000 people. In Gabon, 15 villages are slated to sign conservation contracts next year that will apply to roughly 50,000 hectares.

To expand the model, CAFI has pledged another $100 million, in addition to the $25 million already committed. Whether that funding translates into durable results will depend on execution. Roger Pholo Mvumbi, who leads a DRC civil-society platform focused on food security, argues that precision matters. “The deployment of Payments for Environmental Services is a fine initiative, on the sole condition that the real producer is formally identified,” he said. Without that, benefits could drift away from those doing the work.

The urgency is clear. The Congo Basin lost more than 35 million hectares of forest between 1990 and 2020, with clearing driven by farming, fuelwood demand, logging and mining. Pholo sees the new approach as one way to slow the trend.

“The payment system can precisely offer communities alternative incomes by remunerating them for practices that preserve the forest rather than destroy it,” he told Nzouankeu.

Nigeria passes major new wildlife law

worldrfnews on November 1, 2025

Nigeria’s Parliament has approved sweeping legislation to protect endangered species from traffickers, reports Valentine Benjamin. Once signed by the president, offenders caught trading elephant ivory, pangolin scales, or other products from threatened animals could face fines of up to 12 million naira ($8,300) and as much as ten years in prison. The law is among the toughest of its kind in West Africa. Yet even its supporters admit that laws are only as strong as their enforcement.

The Endangered Species Conservation and Protection Bill of 2024, passed by the Senate on October 28, brings Nigeria closer in line with international conservation treaties such as CITES.

“This new bill addresses long-existing gaps in our legal framework,” said Terseer Ugbor, the bill’s sponsor and deputy chairman of the House Committee on Environment. “The old law was riddled with ambiguities. It failed to specify whether its provisions applied only to international wildlife trade or also to domestic transactions.”

The new measure broadens the list of protected species, strengthens penalties, and allows courts to seize assets linked to wildlife crimes. It also gives agencies new powers to close the bureaucratic gaps traffickers have long exploited. Whether those tools will be used effectively is another matter.

Nigeria has for years been a global hub for illegal wildlife trade. Between 2010 and 2021, roughly a million pangolins—about 90,000 a year—are believed to have been trafficked through Nigerian networks. In 2024 alone, nearly 1.6 metric tons of ivory seized in Vietnam were traced back to Nigeria. Yet prosecutions remain rare; only a dozen convictions have been secured in the past three years.

“A law is useless without enforcement,” said Tunde Morakinyo of the African Nature Investors Foundation. 

Still, optimists hope that with stricter laws and coordination, Nigeria could move from being a trafficking hub to a leader in conservation.

Elephants on the edge

worldrfnews on October 31, 2025

In northern Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve, elephants once starved and parched by drought now graze in knee-high grass. The rains that began in late 2023 transformed the landscape into a lush plain of acacia and tangled vegetation.

“These were salad days for the Samburu elephants,” writes journalist Hillary Rosner in ROAM: Wild Animals and the Race to Repair Our Fractured World, published by Patagonia. Her visit to the reserve early in 2024 captures both the beauty of recovery and the fragility of coexistence in a country racing toward modernity.

From a field camp beside the Ewaso Ng’iro River, researchers with Save the Elephants have tracked hundreds of individuals since 1997, fitting them with GPS collars that reveal “elephant highways” across northern Kenya. The data show how herds migrate in search of water and acacia seed pods, crossing communal grazing lands and private plots in intricate seasonal patterns. But those ancient corridors are fast disappearing. As Rosner observes, “by building roads and rail lines, putting towns and cities in the midst of elephant roads, and erecting fences that make it impossible for the animals to cross, humans are cutting off the elephants’ ability to move across the landscape.”

Kenya’s push to achieve middle-income status by 2030 hinges on vast infrastructure projects: railways, highways, and new towns springing up along transport routes. The Standard Gauge Railway—funded by China’s Belt and Road Initiative—has already bisected two national parks. The next wave of expressways and private land conversions threatens to wall off the remaining migration routes entirely.

Rosner’s account centers on one such bottleneck near the settlement of Oldonyiro, where GPS maps show the animals’ meandering tracks condensing into a single line—a narrow, perilous passage through encroaching development. Conservationist Benjamin Loloju, a local Samburu who earned an “elephant scholarship” from Save the Elephants, works with communities to mark and preserve corridors before they vanish. Yet even he admits, “We already think maybe we have been late for Oldonyiro.”

The elephants adapt, forging new routes where they can, but each fence and erosion gully narrows their options. Rosner’s narrative makes plain what data alone cannot: that Kenya’s test of progress is not only economic. The country’s future—and that of its elephants—depends on whether it can build prosperity without severing the ancient paths that bind the wild to the human world.

An excerpt from ROAM.

Rescued African gray parrots return to Democratic Republic of Congo’s forests

worldrfnews on October 30, 2025

In the forests of Maniema province, fifty African gray parrots soared back into the wild this October, marking a small victory against one of Central Africa’s most persistent wildlife crimes. The birds had spent a year recovering at a sanctuary run by the Lukuru Foundation after being rescued from traffickers. Since its creation, the foundation has rehabilitated nearly 400 parrots, but much work remains, reports Didier Makal.

A new decree issued in July 2025 bans the capture, trade, and possession of African gray parrots in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet poaching continues. “It is good to have a ministerial decree banning poaching, but there needs to be action on the ground,” said conservationist Corneille Kalume.

The trade is brutal: only a third of captured birds survive the journey from forest to buyer. 

The Lukuru Foundation and the Congolese conservation agency have established rehabilitation centers across the country, including a new one at Kisangani Zoo. Caring for the birds is costly—feeding 100 parrots can exceed $2,000 a month—but the greater challenge lies beyond the cages. Conservationists fear that once released, the same parrots could be caught again, unless enforcement and community engagement take flight alongside them.

The Forest Stewardship Council’s will vote on new traceability rules amid fraud allegations

worldrfnews on October 29, 2025

This week the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) will vote on whether to build a global volume-tracking system—an effort to plug the holes through which, critics say, billions of dollars in fraudulent wood slip each year, reports Philip Jacobson.

The Bonn-based group’s tick-tree logo appears on everything from tables to tissue boxes, a promise that forests were managed responsibly. But insiders and watchdogs argue the certification often rests on faith.

“It’s a trust-based system,” says Sam Lawson of Earthsight. His group estimates that up to $30 billion of falsely labeled wood moves through FSC supply chains annually.

FSC rejects that as speculation, insisting its audits, wood-sample tests, and “transaction verifications” safeguard integrity. Yet even a senior official concedes fraud remains widespread. The system’s flaw is structural: companies report to outside auditors but not to any central database, leaving no way to reconcile what goes in with what comes out.

A proposal backed by WWF and U.K. retailer Kingfisher—known as Motion 30—would require companies to record trades in a unified ledger, possibly blockchain-based. Business members, wary of cost and bureaucracy, have blocked similar ideas before.

Supporters say this time the stakes are higher. Since Russia and Belarus were expelled from the scheme in 2022, certified forests have shrunk by nearly a third while the number of licensees has grown. The math, as one FSC insider put it, “doesn’t add up.”

See Jacobson’s piece at https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/fsc-to-vote-on-new-traceability-rules-amid-fraud-allegations/

A rare bloom transforms Sri Lanka’s highlands, turning its hills violet

worldrfnews on October 29, 2025

Every dozen years or so, Sri Lanka’s misty highlands erupt into a fleeting spectacle of color. Across the Horton Plains, slopes shimmer in violet, pink and white as native shrubs known collectively as nelu bloom in unison. Belonging to the genus Strobilanthes, these plants flower together, set seed and die, transforming the grasslands into a living mosaic before fading away. The synchronized flowering, a marvel of ecological timing, remains only partly understood, reports Malaka Rodrigo.

Researchers say the nelu’s mass blooming is an evolutionary gamble. By releasing enormous quantities of seed at once, the plants overwhelm predators such as rodents and insects, increasing the odds that some seeds will germinate, said Siril Wijesundara of Sri Lanka’s National Institute of Fundamental Studies. The bloom also draws pollinators, particularly giant honeybees that migrate from the coast to the hills each year, perfectly timed to the floral feast.

The phenomenon has fascinated scientists for more than a century. British naturalist Thomas Farr first documented the 12-year cycle in the late 1800s, predicting future blooms with uncanny accuracy. Botanists forecasted the latest event for 2024-25, and the hills have again proved them right.

Yet beauty brings burden. Visitor numbers to Horton Plains have tripled during the bloom, leaving trails eroded, shrubs trampled and litter scattered across fragile habitats. Park officials have urged restraint, fearing that invasive plants like mistflower and blue stars could colonize spaces left bare after the nelu die-off.

Ecologists warn that climate change may disrupt the subtle cues that synchronize the plants. Protecting the nelu’s rhythm, they say, will require more than admiration: it will demand careful management to ensure the hills turn violet again a dozen years from now.

“Sleeping jaguars”: Female guardians mobilize to defend their territory in the Amazon

worldrfnews on October 27, 2025

Deep in Ecuador’s Amazon, where the Bobonaza River curls through thick jungle, the Kichwa community of Pakayaku has done what few others have managed: kept industry out. For generations, its residents have shielded 40,000 hectares of rainforest from loggers, miners, and oil companies. Their isolation—reachable only after hours by road and boat—has become both refuge and resistance, reports Brandi Morin.

Leadership in Pakayaku is collective and deliberate. Every major decision passes through a 22-member council, a structure that ensures consensus rather than command. At its heart is an enduring strength: humility, loyalty, and dignity, values that guide daily life as well as defense. The community’s “plan of life,” a document six years in the making, maps not only their territory but also their future—an education rooted in Kichwa traditions and economic alternatives that keep the forest standing. One such effort, a reforestation project of 250,000 cacao trees mixed with native fruit species, aims to sustain 250 families without resorting to extraction.

Among Pakayaku’s most striking defenders are its women. Captain Gracia Malaver leads 45 female guardians who patrol the forest armed with spears carved from palm wood. Sixteen are on constant duty, the rest the “sleeping jaguars,” ready to mobilize when threats arise. “Our grandmothers used to do this,” Malaver says. “That’s why we are continually training to be warriors.” The guardians move like mist through the trees, watching for illegal miners or intruders, including officials who enter without permission. Those caught are detained until agreements are reached—a reminder that in Pakayaku, sovereignty is enforced from within.

That vigilance faces new strain. President Daniel Noboa’s government, under pressure to revive the economy, has reopened the mining registry and invited foreign investors into the energy sector. A proposed road for petroleum extraction could cut through Pakayaku’s ancestral lands. Critics warn that merging the environment ministry with energy and mines, and tightening regulations on NGOs, will weaken protections for Indigenous territories.

Yet Pakayaku’s president, Ángel Santi, remains composed. “We haven’t allowed any extractivist activity in our territory—no mining, no oil drilling, no logging,” he says. “We keep the rainforest alive.”

Indigenous communities protect Colombia’s uncontacted peoples

worldrfnews on October 26, 2025

For more than a decade, two Indigenous communities deep in Colombia’s Amazon have been safeguarding those who wish to remain unseen, reports Pilar Puentes. The residents of the Curare-Los Ingleses Indigenous Reserve and the neighboring Manacaro community have built an extraordinary system of surveillance and stewardship to protect uncontacted peoples such as the Yuri and Passé—tribes that continue to live in voluntary isolation.

Their vigilance, combining ancestral wisdom and digital tools, led the government in October 2024 to formally recognize the existence of two such groups, ending a century of speculation. The decision owed much to the patient accumulation of evidence: faint footprints, scattered seeds, traces of fire. The Indigenous monitors’ efforts filled the void left by the state, which has been largely absent from this conflict-ridden region. Armed groups, illegal miners, missionaries, and traffickers now press upon the boundaries of lands that had once been untouched.

In the face of danger, women from Manacaro have stepped into roles long reserved for men, steering canoes along the rivers, collecting data, and recording threats. Their work, supported by the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) and local associations, now spans thousands of hectares. Using GPS, georeferencing programs, and tablets, they track wildlife and human incursions, and their findings feed into national policymaking through Colombia’s Commission for the Protection of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation.

The communities’ maps are more than technical records. They are spiritual documents that intertwine geography with belief. Before every patrol, elders perform rituals at a control post named Puerto Caimán, asking for protection from the forest and permission from the unseen tribes. These ceremonies acknowledge that the act of watching is itself a relationship—one that must honor both distance and kinship.

Despite the spread of violence and mining, the network of Indigenous monitors remains the most reliable line of defense for Colombia’s uncontacted peoples. Their vigilance has not only confirmed existence, but preserved absence: the right to remain invisible. As one leader, Ezequiel Cubeo, put it, “We are uniting to protect our isolated brothers, because the territory is very large.” In a forest where the state cannot safely enter, these quiet guardians ensure that some parts of humanity may still choose to live beyond its reach.

Bangladesh to reintroduce captive elephants to the wild

worldrfnews on October 25, 2025

Bangladesh has embarked on an ambitious plan to end the centuries-old practice of keeping elephants in captivity, reports Abu Siddique.

The government has begun retrieving privately owned elephants and aims to rehabilitate them in the wild. The initiative follows a 2024 High Court order banning cruelty to wildlife and illegal use of animals for labor or entertainment.

The country’s elephant population is small and fragile. According to a government report, only 268 wild elephants remain in Bangladesh’s southeastern forests, alongside 96 in captivity. Once used for logging and transport, captive elephants are now illegally exploited in markets and towns, often in harsh conditions that have led to deaths from heatstroke.

The project will survey elephant populations, buy animals from owners, and prepare forest sites for rewilding. Two potential sanctuaries—Rema-Kalenga and Chunati—are under review. Officials acknowledge the difficulties ahead, from disease risks to the loss of wild instincts among long-domesticated elephants. Yet they insist that ending captivity is essential for both welfare and conservation. As one adviser put it, “the elephants will never be back in captivity.” 

If successful, Bangladesh’s experiment could become a model for other Asian nations struggling to reconcile tradition with the ethics of conservation.

One man’s mission to rewild a dying lake

worldrfnews on October 24, 2025

From a hillside overlooking Lake Toba, the vast volcanic basin at the heart of Sumatra, Wilmar Eliaser Simandjorang looks down on what he calls both a blessing and a warning, reports Sri Wahyuni. 

Once the first district leader of Samosir, Wilmar has spent his retirement rewilding parts of this landscape sacred to the Batak people. “If we don’t pay attention to this, Lake Toba will be just a memory,” he said.

That memory is fading fast. Pollution, logging, and unchecked plantations have clouded the waters of what was once among Indonesia’s purest lakes. “The forest is being cut down, both legally and illegally—biodiversity is being burned,” Wilmar said. “Rainwater is just running off; it carries ash, trash and pesticides into the lake.” Research published in 2024 confirmed nitrogen levels above national safety thresholds, threatening fish and water quality.

The deterioration stings for those who remember when people would ask travelers to bring back a flask of Toba’s crystal water. “Now? Just cooking rice with it will smell,” Wilmar said. He has watched the district lose nearly a quarter of its old-growth forest since 2002. Yet he persists, planting trees, urging families to blend fruit and forest crops, and teaching children to see trees, birds, and soil as kin. “I believe forests will be sustainable if people feel they are part of their lives,” he said.

His modest crusade has taken place as larger institutions stir. This year the Batak Protestant Christian Church, Indonesia’s biggest, called for the closure of PT Toba Pulp Lestari, the dominant plantation company blamed for decades of conflict and ecological damage. “The most painful fact is that the presence of PT TPL has triggered various social and ecological crises,” declared the Reverend Victor Tinambunan. The firm denies wrongdoing.

Fires have since scorched 16 hectares of land Wilmar spent years re-greening. “The land I turned green, which was just starting to show results, went up just like that,” he said. Yet he continues to plant and to preach renewal, even after threats from illegal loggers and indifference from officials. His faith, rooted in duty rather than reward, remains unshaken. “We can turn this destruction into hope,” Wilmar said. “But it takes will, knowledge, and love.”

The price of a monkey

worldrfnews on October 22, 2025

The long-tailed macaque has lost a battle for its survival—but won one for scientific integrity. In early October the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reaffirmed the species’ endangered status, rejecting an appeal by the U.S. National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR). The lobby group had argued that the listing impeded vaccine and drug development, since laboratories rely heavily on macaques for testing.

The IUCN first elevated Macaca fascicularis from vulnerable to endangered in 2022, after evidence emerged that wild monkeys were being laundered into “captive-breeding” farms across Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Its latest review found that wild populations have fallen by as much as 70% over the past three decades.

“I’m happy to see science prevail, but I’m not happy to see the long-tailed macaques endangered,” said Malene Friis Hansen of Aarhus University, a co-author of the assessment. “That we’ve pushed such an adaptive synanthrope to this stage should be an eye-opener.”

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified demand. When China halted exports in 2020, Cambodia’s shipments nearly doubled. Reports soon surfaced that supposed captive-bred macaques were, in fact, trapped in the wild and funneled through state-linked farms. American prosecutors later alleged Cambodian officials’ complicity in the trade, though few have faced consequences. The industry, meanwhile, has prospered: wild monkeys can fetch a few hundred dollars, while laboratory buyers pay tens of thousands.

The NABR insists the IUCN’s process was tainted by “emotive” language and conflicts of interest, allegations the conservation body dismissed after an internal inquiry. It has pledged to “educate policymakers” about what it calls an overreach of environmental science. Yet Hansen asks a sharper question: “If these companies claim they’re only using captive-bred monkeys, then why are they so concerned about the IUCN listing?”

Beyond laboratories, macaques suffer from the pet trade and from viral social-media cruelty videos, where abuse is monetized for clicks. Habitat loss and persecution complete the toll. The species’ apparent abundance at tourist sites masks its disappearance from the forests it once dominated. For a primate known for its adaptability, that may be the cruelest irony of all.

In Indonesia’s courts, truth can be a lonely witness.

worldrfnews on October 19, 2025

For more than two decades, professors Bambang Hero Saharjo and Basuki Wasis of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture have stood where science meets power, testifying against companies accused of torching forests and draining peatlands. Their measurements of ash and carbon and their calculations of hectares lost have given judges a way to translate ecological ruin into the dry language of liability. For that service to the public, they have been repaid with lawsuits, harassment, and danger, reports Rendy Tisna.

Last October a court in Bogor, west of Jakarta, offered a rare reversal: it dismissed a civil suit brought by PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri, a palm-oil firm once fined for fires that scorched more than 800 hectares of Borneo peat. The company had sought billions of rupiah in damages from the very experts whose testimony helped convict it years earlier. The judges ruled for the scientists. “Hopefully this will set a good precedent to protect environmental defenders,” Bambang told Mongabay Indonesia after the verdict.

It was the fourth such case he has endured. Each time, the aim has been less to win than to exhaust—one more strategic lawsuit against public participation, designed to make truth-telling unbearably costly. “If we keep getting sued like this,” he warned, “the environment will become increasingly neglected.”

Their victory was cheered by activists and the environment minister alike, who called the suit a “form of SLAPP” and praised the decision as proof that Indonesia’s judiciary could still defend its defenders. Yet it is a fragile shield. Dozens of scientists, journalists, and campaigners have faced similar tactics, and enforcement of environmental judgments remains weak. The fires continue to burn.

Both men might have chosen easier paths. Their expertise in forestry and soil science could have earned them corporate consultancies or quiet academic lives. Instead they have lent credibility to the state’s most controversial prosecutions—often at personal cost, under threat, sometimes alone. In 2019 Bambang received the John Maddox Prize for standing up for science; the honor did little to stop the attacks.

What sustains them is a conviction that evidence matters, even when power denies it. They keep returning to court, peat samples in hand, as if proof itself were an act of faith.

“The environment,” Bambang once said, “is the lifeblood of the planet, and we must protect it together.”

Scientists discover world’s 1,500th known bat species

worldrfnews on October 18, 2025

From the slopes of a volcano on Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea comes the 1,500th bat species known to science, reports Shreya Dasgupta.

Researchers have named it Pipistrellus etula—“etula” meaning “island” or “nation” in the Bubi language. The tiny insect-eating pipistrelle marks a symbolic milestone for mammalogy and a reminder of how much remains undiscovered. “It reminds us how much biodiversity remains undocumented, particularly in under-surveyed regions like Central Africa,” said Laura Torrent, lead author of the study.

The discovery traces back to 1989, when a handful of specimens were first caught near Bioko’s Biao Peak. Decades later, genetic analyses confirmed they represented a new species adapted to montane environments where no other vesper bats are known.

Scientists warn that logging, construction, and rising temperatures could threaten its fragile volcanic habitat—a microcosm of broader conservation challenges.

Group of critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans discovered in Sumatra peat swamp

worldrfnews on October 17, 2025

A remarkable discovery has redrawn the map of one of the world’s rarest great apes. For years, scientists believed the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan lived only in the Batang Toru forest of North Sumatra. Now, researchers have confirmed the species’ presence some 20 miles away, in a peat swamp forest near Lumut Maju village—a finding that could reshape conservation strategies for the world’s most threatened ape, reports Junaidi Hanafiah who saw and photographed a mother and infant Tapanuli orangutan firsthand on assignment for Mongabay-Indonesia Indonesia.

The team from the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme and the Orangutan Information Centre (YOSL-OIC) first heard local reports of orangutans in 2022. After years of monitoring and DNA testing, they verified that the apes were indeed Pongo tapanuliensis. “We found new nests that we categorized as class one nests, which we can confirm to have orangutans,” said YOSL-OIC’s Rio ardi.

The discovery brings both excitement and alarm. Lumut Maju’s forest is unprotected and shrinking fast, cleared for oil palm plantations until less than 1,000 hectares remain. With the local population likely under 100 individuals, isolation poses a severe survival risk. For conservationists, the finding underscores both the species’ resilience and the urgency of protecting the few forests they have left.

Newly-discovered fungus can hold the weight of a person

worldrfnews on October 16, 2025

From the misty forests of Arunachal Pradesh, India, comes a discovery that has surprised even veteran mycologists, reports Divya Kilikar for Mongabay India. Researchers from the Botanical Survey of India have described Bridgeoporus kanadii, a fungus so large that “I could sit on it, and it remained firmly attached to the tree,” said lead author Arvind Parihar.

The species, named for Indian mycologist Kanad Das, grows on old fir trees and can reach over three meters across—twice the size of its North American relative, B. nobilissimus.

Though new to science, locals have long known the inedible fungus. Like others in its genus, B. kanadii performs quiet ecological labor, breaking down dead wood and recycling nutrients.

“The lens with which we look at fungi is far too limited,” Parihar observed. “Without fungi, forests will be full of debris, logs and leaf litter left undecomposed.”

Regenerative fashion initiative in Indonesia wins 2025 Pritzker Environmental Genius Award

worldrfnews on October 15, 2025

In a world defined by extraction, Denica Riadini-Flesch is showing that creation can heal instead. The Indonesian economist-turned-entrepreneur has won UCLA’s 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award for building a “farm-to-closet” supply chain—a system that regenerates land, restores heritage craft, and empowers rural women.

Riadini-Flesch founded SukkhaCitta after witnessing the hidden cost of modern progress. As a young economist from Jakarta, she once equated development with endless growth—until she met women dyeing textiles with chemicals that scarred their skin and lungs. “It burns my hands, my eyes, my lungs,” one told her. The remark revealed what Riadini-Flesch calls “the true cost of convenience.”

SukkhaCitta set out to invert that logic. Production takes place not in factories but in courtyards and small farms across Java, Bali, Flores, and West Timor. Cotton is grown in polycultures that replenish soil; dyes come from indigo and mahogany leaves; fabrics are woven on handlooms. The enterprise has restored 120 acres of degraded land, kept five million liters of toxic dye wastewater out of rivers, and raised women’s incomes by 60 percent.

The environmental gains are measurable, but the social ones may matter more. Through decentralized Rumah SukkhaCitta Foundation schools, women learn ecological literacy and entrepreneurship alongside heritage techniques. “Artisans and farmers are the missing link to solving the climate crisis,” Riadini-Flesch said. “When rural artisans lead, we lay the blueprint for a regenerative future.”

Her husband and co-founder, Bertram F., accepted the award in Los Angeles; Riadini-Flesch, seven months pregnant, joined remotely from Indonesia. He described the Indigenous practice of tumpang sari—a polyculture where cotton grows beside twenty other crops—as the model for their business. “We’ve made a business case for regeneration,” he said. “It shows you can run a supply chain that restores the environment instead of depleting it.”

Her aim is to regenerate 2.5 million acres of land and create livelihoods for 10,000 women by 2050. “We cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet,” she said. “I believe in an economy where growth is measured by how well we repair what’s been broken: soil, rivers, dignity, trust.”

Anthony Waddle, who is working to protect amphibians in the wild from chytrid, and Seema Lokhandwala, who uses bioacoustics to reduce human-elephant conflict, were the other finalists.

$1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous and local forest tenure has been met a year early

worldrfnews on October 10, 2025

When governments and private donors pledged $1.7 billion at the 2021 U.N. climate conference to strengthen Indigenous and local communities’ land rights, few expected the target to be met—let alone ahead of schedule. Yet four years later, the funders have announced that they have fulfilled their commitment a year early, reports Aimee Gabay. In a field marked by broken promises, this is rare.

The pledge was born of frustration. Between 2011 and 2020, less than 1% of global climate finance supported projects tied to community land tenure. The “Forest Tenure Pledge,” as it became known, sought to correct that imbalance. Rebeca Sandoval of the Ford Foundation said the aim was to make the rights of Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities a lasting priority in donors’ agendas. “And that is what happened,” she said.

The figures tell a mixed story. Direct funding to Indigenous and community-based organizations grew from 22 recipients in 2021 to 112 in 2024, according to the Forest Tenure Funders Group. But the proportion of total funds going straight to local organizations still hovers in the single digits.

“The important thing is that a path was opened,” said Levi Sucre Romero of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests. “That path needs to be broadened for future pledges.”

Observers credit the pledge’s success to unusual coordination among funders, facilitated by joint platforms and shared monitoring. Yet they note its limits. Early consultations with communities were scant, and the “plumbing” of aid—the compliance rules and bureaucratic hurdles that block smaller organizations—remains clogged. 

“A lot of these organizations aren’t traditional Western NGOs,” said Bryson Ogden of the Rights and Resources Initiative. “The funding architecture doesn’t make it easy for them to access resources.”

There were lessons too. Continuous dialogue and transparency matter more than lofty targets. So does inclusion: despite modest gains, projects centered on women’s leadership and youth remain scarce. And protection for forest defenders, still subject to violence and intimidation, lags behind the rhetoric of rights.

Now funders are debating whether to launch a second pledge. But global aid budgets are tightening, with traditional donors shifting resources toward defense. Without renewed political and financial commitment, the gains could erode as quickly as they came.

Ultimately, a pledge is only as good as the trust it builds—and that trust, once earned, will require careful tending.

Protecting Earth’s oldest data system: The case for biodiversity

worldrfnews on October 6, 2025

Long before humans built computers, nature built a better one. Razan Al Mubarak sees biodiversity as the planet’s original information network.

In a commentary published on Mongabay, Al Mubarak, president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the founding managing director of the The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, argues that biodiversity is not just a collection of species but a vast, self-sustaining archive of information written in DNA. Each organism, she writes, encodes evolutionary knowledge—solutions to survival challenges refined over millions of years. The loss of a species, therefore, is not merely the disappearance of beauty or ecological function; it is the deletion of irreplaceable data from Earth’s biological archive.

Drawing examples from the Arabian oryx, whose genetic code reveals how to endure the desert’s extremes, and the ghaf tree, whose roots have mastered water detection, Al Mubarak contends that nature’s research and development far surpass humanity’s. Extinctions, she warns, are akin to losing entire languages before they have been translated.

The United Arab Emirates, she asserts, understands the value of information, having built a modern economy around data and knowledge. This perspective underpins its approach to conservation, from national Red List assessments and protected areas to global initiatives such as the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund. Projects like the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx in Chad exemplify how restoring species helps repair the global ecological network.

But institutions alone cannot safeguard biodiversity. Al Mubarak calls for individuals to engage directly by observing local wildlife, contributing to citizen science, and supporting initiatives that treat ecosystems as essential infrastructure. She frames biodiversity as the ultimate backup system—a decentralized store of adaptive intelligence on which humanity depends for its own resilience.

As the world convenes in Abu Dhabi for the IUCN World Conservation Congress, Al Mubarak urges collective investment in preserving this living network. Protecting biodiversity, she concludes, is not only an ethical duty but a strategic imperative for the planet’s survival.