A military-backed operation shut down a major illegal gold mining site in Gashaka-Gumti National Park, driving more than 4,000 miners from Nigeria’s largest national park, according to the Africa Nature Investors Foundation (ANI). The miners had already fled by the time Nigerian soldiers arrived at the Kila mining area in July, according to Tunde Morakinyo, executive director of ANI, a Nigerian conservation organization working with the government to manage Gashaka-Gumti. He said no shots were fired during the operation, and bulldozers were brought in to fill the mining pits and shafts. As world leaders and conservation practitioners head to Armenia for the U.N. biodiversity summit Oct. 19-30, with the goal of protecting and conserving 30% of land and waters by 2030, the crackdown spotlights the complexity of safeguarding some of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Gashaka-Gumti is a stronghold for one of the rarest primates in the world: the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti). The park is also home to more than 1,000 plant species and hundreds of bird and butterfly species, with some of the highest rates of endemism on the continent. A ranger patrols Nigeria’s Gashaka-Gumti National Park, where the Africa Nature Investors Foundation says it employs more than 180 rangers to help protect the park. Image courtesy of Africa Nature Investors Foundation. The operation followed years of growing friction over mining in the park. Tensions came to a head in late 2025. Two rangers were killed by miners in October 2025, according to Morakinyo. The…This article was originally published on Mongabay

JAKARTA — Wisye Sahambangung is a fisher, community leader, and mangrove conservationist from Sarawet, a coastal Indonesian village in North Sulawesi province. Since 2022, the 45-year-old has led Rhizopora, a women’s group that restores mangroves and helps create economic opportunities for women in the village. Rhizopora, named after the Rhizophora genus of mangrove trees, has become a community-based conservation movement. Its members collect mangrove propagules and seedlings, support restoration projects, monitor coastal areas, and teach other villagers how to plant mangroves. They revive the mangrove forest that is home to crabs and fish, which are their primary source of income. In collaboration with the NGOs Yayasan Bumi Tangguh and CARE Indonesia, Rhizopora helped plant 30,000 mangrove trees during an eight-month restoration project this year. For Wisye, protecting mangroves is about protecting the people who depend on the coast. The group sells seedlings, collects and sells mud crabs, and runs savings-and-loans activities that boost their incomes. Her work has taken her from Sarawet’s muddy coastal areas to an international forum in Australia, where she shared the women’s experiences of protecting their coastal environment. “Since Rhizopora was established, Sarawet has become more widely known nationally and internationally,” she said proudly. Wisye Sahambangung in Australia during her trip to Melbourne for Women Deliver 2026. Image courtesy of Wisye Sahambangung. Wisye spoke with Mongabay via video call about how she leads Rhizopora in protecting coastal ecosystems while creating income opportunities for women in the community, the challenges of community-led conservation, and the impact on…This article was originally published on Mongabay

For Nyaradzo Auxilia Hoto, one of the most memorable moments of becoming a wildlife ranger was a trip to town. She and her fellow recruits walked through the streets in their new uniforms, on their way to open bank accounts. Soon, they would receive their first salaries. For a woman who had struggled to make ends meet in rural Zimbabwe, it was an extraordinary moment. “We were very proud,” she recalled. Hoto, 34, grew up in Huyo, a village in Zimbabwe’s Lower Zambezi Valley, where her family depended largely on growing and selling vegetables. Money was scarce, and although she had done well at school, she could not afford to continue her education beyond secondary school. Marriage, she hoped, might offer a better life. Instead, she says, she endured nearly four years with a violent husband before deciding to leave. She returned to her parents’ home with her young daughter and resumed working in the family garden. Her fortunes changed in 2017, when the International Anti-Poaching Foundation began recruiting local women for Akashinga, a new wildlife protection initiative. Hoto was among 16 women selected from roughly 100 applicants. Many men in her community doubted that women could confront poachers or withstand the demands of ranger work. She went anyway. Within a few years, she had become a ranger sergeant, leading other women on patrol. She later returned to university, graduating in 2023 with a degree in wildlife, ecology and conservation. Today, she works as a biodiversity officer with Akashinga, using…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Spain’s law enforcement agency, the Civil Guard, announced on Sept. 25, 2026, that it seized 209 reptiles from breeding facilities in Jérica and Sot de Ferrer (Castellón), including critically endangered iguanas endemic to Fiji. Nearly half of the reptiles were protected under CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty. They also seized unlicensed handguns and nearly 200 rounds of ammunition. Authorities arrested three individuals — two men aged 48 and 51 and a 37-year-old woman — on a litany of charges: Belonging to a criminal organization, wildlife-related offenses, smuggling, money laundering and illegal weapons possession. The alleged traffickers reportedly smuggled reptiles from the wild in the Americas, Africa and Asia, and then bred them without permits, the authorities said. They added that these reptiles were then sold at European reptile and trade fairs, mixing smuggled animals with legally acquired animals — a practice called laundering that’s prevalent in wildlife trade. In this way, traffickers exploit the “legal gray area surrounding documentation that certifies the animals’ origins,” the authorities said in a press release. The Spanish case is just one recent example among a slew of seizures and arrests involving rare tortoises, endangered turtles, poisonous frogs, endemic iguanas and many other protected reptiles and amphibians worldwide. The trade is lucrative — estimated to be worth some $2.5 billion — and comes with little risk. It’s often unregulated. Smugglers are rarely caught, and if they are, they get off by paying a small fine, which is absorbed as the cost of doing business.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Plastic pollution has rapidly escalated into a global environmental crisis that threatens ecosystem function and human health at an epic scale. Solutions are urgently needed, but while scientists, conservationists and more than 75 nations have called for binding limits on fossil fuel-driven plastic production, the plastics industry is opposed to all limits and is instead pushing a collection of technologies known as ‘chemical recycling.’ Critics say the industry is utilizing deceptive accounting practices and marketing jargon to rebrand polluting plastic incineration disposal methods. To date, chemical recycling facilities have created a relatively miniscule amount of recycled plastic, according to industry critics. But consumer product labels claiming “20% recycled plastic” have become an increasingly common sight on single-use plastic items. Reading such labels, consumers might logically assume that the product contains 20% recycled material, but that might not be the case. In addition, that potentially misleading label could be greenwashing environmentally damaging plastic incineration. Chemical recycling: Cutting-edge solution or sleight of hand? Chemical recycling, also dubbed ‘advanced recycling’ by the industry, uses chemicals, intense heat and/or pressure to break down plastic waste into its molecular building blocks. This contrasts with traditional ‘mechanical’ recycling methods which shred plastic waste into tiny flakes that can be melted and re-molded into new products. The most common form of chemical recycling, called ‘pyrolysis,’ uses high temperatures and pressure to convert waste plastic into an oil, which can be further processed into a variety of chemicals, some of which can be used to create new plastics.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

For centuries, wolves have been cast as vicious, bloodthirsty creatures of nightmares and fairy tales, rather than as deeply social animals with an important place in nature. We wanted to understand the animal behind those stories. So, in the 1990s, we spent six years living alongside a pack of gray wolves (Canis lupus) on the edge of Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness. In a remote mountain setting, we camped among wolves, listened to them, filmed them, and slowly became part of their world. What we came to know was an animal very different from the one humans have been taught to fear. We witnessed wolves raise their pups, care for their injured, and mourn their dead. When a mountain lion killed a member of the pack, we saw how the loss affected the wolves for more than six weeks. Above all, we learned that a wolf pack is an extended family devoted to one another by relationships, experience, and knowledge passed from one generation to the next. The Dutchers’ camp was surrounded by chain-link fence, not to protect them from the wolves, but to protect their gear from the animals’ insatiable curiosity. Image © Jim and Jamie Dutcher. That understanding shapes how we see what is happening to wolves across the American West today. After decades of effort and revenue spent to restore gray wolves to a fraction of their former range, U.S. states are now pursuing aggressive policies to radically reduce their numbers once again. In Idaho, legislation enacted in 2021…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Adriana Hora dos Santos stands waist-deep in the water. Her dark hair is tied in a single braid; her arms and torso covered by a pink Lycra shirt. The thick mangrove mud reaches her thighs. Using a machete just over 40-centimeters (16-inches) long, she pries dozens of oysters from the twisted roots with a steady cadence: Not too fast, not too slow. Across the Vaza-Barris river, the buildings of Sergipe’s state capital Aracaju seem otherworldly. Here, one hears the lapping of the water, the strike of the blade and Santos’s voice: “I am, I am a shellfish gatherer / Queen of the mangrove, I am a warrior! / I am, I am a shellfish gatherer / A fighting woman, a striver / It’s the wind that gives it to me / It’s the river, it’s the mangrove, it’s the sea / My chest aches, enclosed river / My chest aches with no fish caught / Come, woman, fight, emancipate yourself / We are Sergipe’s shellfish gatherers!” This is the anthem of the Movement of Women Shellfish Gatherers of Sergipe (MMS), a grassroots collective that has resisted continuous environmental degradation and cultural erasure for decades. Acting as guardians of the mangrove, they do environmental protection work while facing pressures that put their own survival at risk. To hear one of these women is to hear many: Their verbs almost always come in the plural. “We are always in a flock,” Santos says. And it was as a flock that they introduced…This article was originally published on Mongabay

For more than two decades, National Geographic photographer Steve Winter and environmental journalist Sharon Guynup have followed big cats into some of Earth’s wildest, most dangerous places. Their work has taken them from the jungles of India and Brazil to the high Himalaya, from Southeast Asia’s forests to the African savanna and the urban wilds of Los Angeles, documenting the world’s big cats and the ways humans are succeeding or failing in living alongside them. Winter’s iconic photos of tigers, jaguars, snow leopards, cougars and lions have earned some of the field’s highest honors, including Wildlife Photographer of the Year. He is also known for his innovative use of remote camera traps, which has allowed him to capture intimate glimpses of animals that are extraordinarily difficult to observe in the wild. A young male Bengal tiger trips a camera trap in India’s Kaziranga National Park. Image © Steve Winter/Big Cat Voices. Guynup, an award-winning environmental journalist, and now, Mongabay’s global wildlife editor, has penned prolific reporting on numerous topics. She’s especially known for her coverage of big cat conservation, exposés on wildlife trafficking, documenting the creation of wildlife corridors, and alerting the world to the threats posed by zoonotic diseases. The two have been partners in life and work for 37 years (they married just last year), and together have produced investigations delivering real change. Their reporting on captive tigers in the U.S., for example, (featuring Steve’s photos and Sharon’s prose), revealed abuse and wildlife trafficking, contributing to the passage of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

SEOUL — Wedged between skyscrapers and a bustling passenger ferry port in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, a celebrity of sorts is drawing thousands of admirers as it has been swimming for weeks now in a shallow city canal. Bukangi, a shark named after the waterfront park where she is trapped, has attracted nearly 1.4 million spectators since she was first spotted in mid-September in the southeastern coastal city, according to local authorities. At least two failed attempts to guide the shark from the canal to the open sea have added to the spectacle. Meanwhile, online videos of the marine creature swimming amid Busan’s urban landscape have gone viral on social media. The 3-meter (10-foot) female dusky shark (Carcharhinus obscurus), categorized as endangered on the IUCN Red List, is so popular that she has been named an official “honorary ambassador” to the city. On Oct. 6, South Korea’s National Institute of Fisheries Sciences (NIFS) identified Bukangi as a dusky shark from the ridge between its dorsal fins. Image by NIFS, Fisheries Resources Research Department via Wikimedia Commons. The Busan city government deploys more than 100 workers daily to monitor her condition and watch out for signs of poor health. Meanwhile, the city’s baseball team released special edition merchandise in her likeness, with a local distillery offering the same treatment on its bottles of soju rice liquor. The public has “developed a sense of affection” for Bukangi, said Hong Sun-kee, director of the Institution for Marine and Island Cultures at Mokpo…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Demand for metals has exploded in recent decades, thanks to population growth, technological innovation, and economic development. The volume of metal ores like iron and copper extracted globally quadrupled during the last half-century, and the trillion-dollar industry shows no signs of slowing down. But the growing demand comes with environmental risks. Both metal mines and the storage facilities that hold vast amounts of toxic mining waste, known as tailings, can release pollution into the surrounding environment, contaminating land and water with heavy metals and harmful chemicals. This pollution can eventually wash downstream, affecting coastal communities and marine ecosystems. An analysis recently published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews warns that climate change could exacerbate the risks of metal mining pollution on marine environments. Researchers examined areas where compounding risks from warmer temperatures, rising seas, and changing weather patterns could release more toxic waste into the landscape over the next century, highlighting the need for remediation and monitoring. They identified the six regions where overlapping hazards pose the highest risk: North America, South America, Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, East Asia, and Australia. “We isolate six hotspots, but that makes up a large part of the world,” study lead author Adam Sproson, a research scientist at the National Oceanography Centre in the U.K., told Mongabay. “There’s quite a lot of coastline to cover.” The coastal Levant Mine in Cornwall, U.K., in 2008. This tin and copper mine operated from the 18th century until the 1930s, and its workings extended under the sea. Legacy…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Researchers surveyed 40 sites along the East African coastline from Kenya to Mozambique, studying seagrass and coral reef ecosystems. They found that when it comes to benefits for coastal communities, seagrasses bring something important to the plate. In a paper published in Cell Reports Sustainability, they write that while reefs support “greater fish biomass, abundance, and richness overall,” fish communities living in seagrass meadows may provide a richer mix of nutrients when seen from the perspective of human sustenance. These marine habitats have gained prominence in recent years not only as fish nurseries but as carbon sinks and acting as the first line of defense against floods and storms. “Protecting seagrass meadows should therefore be seen not only as biodiversity conservation but also as a public health and food security priority,” the study authors write. Rabbitfish in a seagrass meadow. Image courtesy of Benjamin Jones. Lead author Benjamin Jones, a Ph.D. student at Stockholm University at the time of the research, said the study isn’t about comparing ecosystems, but rather about applying a new lens to marine conservation. Often, a marine ecosystem’s value is determined by fish production. But for vulnerable coastal communities, “the reliability of catching nutritious fish can be just as important as the total number of fish in the sea,” said Jones, who’s now the chief conservation officer at Project Seagrass, a U.K.-based environmental charity. Accounting for fish biomass and depth, the seagrass meadows studied were “1.6 times more nutritionally multifunctional” than coral reefs, according to the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

JAKARTA — Indonesia is facing growing criticism over its response to a forest and land fire crisis that has sent choking haze billowing into neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, but officials insist the government is not to blame. The president has claimed that a drawdown in firefighting efforts means the number of fires has gone down, while one of his spokespersons trotted out a familiar rebuke that neighboring countries should be grateful for the oxygen they get from Indonesia’s forests and not complain only when they get “sent smoke.” Meanwhile, Malaysia said it was still awaiting a response to its offer of assistance fighting the fires, while Singapore raised the prospect of taking legal action against any Singapore-linked companies behind the burning. Indonesian officials have acknowledged the fires’ effects on neighboring countries, but as of Oct. 16 had issued no public apology for the haze that pushed Kuala Lumpur and Singapore into the ranks of the most polluted cities in the world. Haze from Indonesia’s wildfires obscures the sun in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Sept. 15, 2026. Image courtesy of Estelle Ng. Instead, Syahganda Nainggolan, head of the government communications office, said Malaysia and Singapore should see the problem as being “beyond human error” and “truly nature.” “We do not just send smoke; when there is no smoke, we send oxygen,” he said, echoing remarks made by previous administrations during similar fire crises. The statement drew criticism in Malaysia, where Andrew Chen Kah Eng, a politician from Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Every year between February and May, when mahua flowers begin to fall, Mamta Tigga collects them. Mamta comes from a village in Gumla in the Indian state of Jharkhand and has been collecting mahua (a flower from Madhuca longifolia), gethi kanda (or air potato, Dioscorea bulbifera) and tendu leaves from the Indian ebony tree (Diospyros melanoxylon) for the past three years. All of these plants are important sources of food, medicine and other traditional uses in her culture. Mamta is not just a tribal gatherer, but a homemaker and a mother of two children. Over the years, she has noticed a change in what the forest gives her. “There is less mahua than before,” she says, and the amount changes with the weather. When there is more heat, more mahua falls and when it rains, the mahua flower sheds off. “This year there was less mahua, between March to April we usually collect around 4-5 quintal [100 kilograms or 220 pounds] but this time due to excessive rain we got around 25 kg of mahua.” Forest produce is an essential source of income for families like Mamta’s. Her husband is a driver, and often, when they are short on money, the funds collected by selling mahua help them survive. But what happens when the resources people depend on begin to change, while the demand for those products continues to grow? A recent review in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems examines this question in the Indian states of Jharkhand…This article was originally published on Mongabay

For most Indigenous peoples in the Bolivian Amazon, the forest is far more than a collection of trees. It is the casa grande, Spanish for “the main house”, where communities, rivers, wildlife, spiritual beings and ancestral memories coexist. For them, conserving the forest means conserving life itself. Yet data analyzed by Amazonía Traficada (Trafficked Amazon) — a journalistic collaboration backed by the Pulitzer Center in partnership with Mongabay, Bolivian independent environmental journalism platform RAI Bolivia and the multiplatform newsroom Asuntos Centrales — show that this casa grande is now under siege. According to the analysis, between 2003 and 2023, more than 186,500 hectares (460,900 acres) of forest were cleared across the 48 Indigenous territories of the Bolivian Amazon basin — an area nearly three times the size of Madrid. Of that total, the Bolivian Authority for the Supervision and Social Control of Forests and Land (ABT) authorized only 10%; the remaining 90%, or 168,670 hectares (416,800 acres), was cleared illegally. For Rivelino Segundo, leader of Isoso — the Bolivian Indigenous territory with the largest area of illegal forest clearing, more than 43,000 hectares (106,000 acres) — the deforestation eating into ancestral lands is directly tied to land invasions and an expanding agricultural frontier. Those occupying the land illegally seek to convert forest into farmland, he told Mobgabay: “We are not the ones clearing the land. It is the invaders. [In Isoso], they do it to plant large-scale soy. We, as the Guaraní Indigenous people, coexist with nature.” These findings stem…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Seabird protections drew debate at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), held Oct. 5-8 in Brussels. The eight-member multilateral body that manages the stock has long struggled to curb seabird deaths caused by longline fishing targeting southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) across several oceans. This year’s meeting saw a modicum of progress on the issue. Based on recent modeling, the parties agreed on 13 priority seabird species for conservation efforts and designated high-risk areas for them. However, the designations don’t carry any new mandatory protections: Due to the reluctance of some members, the commission stopped short of adopting proposed conservation measures for the high-risk areas, most notably tighter seabird bycatch mitigation requirements. Oliver Yates, head of the marine program at BirdLife International, a U.K.-based NGO, told Mongabay that the identification of high-risk areas was “a good step forward” but said it was a problem that “they’ve not then adopted any management action to accompany the fishing activity in those spatial areas.” “[T]hey recognise bycatch of seabirds is a very serious issue but again agreed to do nothing about it,” Yates, who attended the Brussels meeting, added in a text message. There are more than a dozen RFMOs in the world, with some overlapping geographically but managing different fish stocks. The map shows the five best-known and most commercially important RFMOs, which focus on tuna and tuna-like species. Image courtesy of Pew Charitable Trusts. Sources: U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO Map Catalog.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Belize is turning to its deep waters to fulfill its pledge to protect 30% of its ocean and achieve the sixth milestone of its Blue Bond agreement. A draft marine spatial plan submitted on Sept. 8 for government approval proposes closing the final gap to 30% by establishing three offshore marine protected areas (MPAs). Officials say the choice serves two ends at once: protecting distinctive deepwater features the country has never fully safeguarded, and steering clear of the coastal grounds fishers depend on. The decision to protect offshore areas emerged from previously agreed criteria for establishing marine protected areas, according to Samir Rosado, who led the plan’s development as head of marine spatial planning at the government’s Coastal Zone Management Authority & Institute (CZMAI). “These criteria contain social as well as ecological considerations for the identification of the areas,” Rosado told Mongabay in an email. “Overwhelmingly, stakeholders expressed their absolute reluctance to increase protections in nearshore areas as they believe this space was already saturated. A gap analysis was done on the representation of ecosystems within the existing MPA network, and it confirmed this.” With more than 50% of Belize’s corals and nearly 40% of its seagrass already within MPAs, he said the underrepresented features of Belize’s MPA network were in the deep. For local fishers who pushed back hard against earlier proposals to close traditional inshore fishing grounds instead, the new zones, sitting well beyond the waters where they work, are welcome. However, experts say this decision is unlikely…This article was originally published on Mongabay

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Global wildlife trade authorities say Cambodia has made little progress in cleaning up its monkey export industry, a year after the country was flagged as needing major reforms in how it manages the capture, breeding, and export of monkeys used in biomedical research. In November 2025, following years of controversies, the secretariat of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, issued a series of recommendations to Cambodia. In a document released Oct. 5, CITES stated that limited improvements to Cambodia’s monkey farm governance mean it “cannot confirm or rule out the occurrence of fraud or corruption” in the country’s trade of long-tailed macaques, a species listed as endangered. The statement comes ahead of the Nov. 2-6 CITES Standing Committee meeting in Geneva, where parties to the convention will assess progress made by countries placed under review. Countries unable to meet CITES standards can face trade bans. Monkey poaching has reportedly declined in Cambodia as the populations and habitats of long-tailed macaques are believed to have declined in recent years. Images supplied by source. Cambodia has faced widespread condemnation since a five-year United States Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS) investigation found substantial evidence of Cambodian monkey farms laundering wild-caught monkeys as captive-bred. This, experts have warned, heightens the risk of zoonotic disease spillover — the transmission of pathogens from wildlife to humans — while also posing a threat to Cambodia’s wild population of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), which dropped between 50% and 70% in the last three decades.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

In recent years, there has been a steady stream of ocean conservation pledges, from French Polynesia extending marine protection across its nearly 5 million-square-kilometer exclusive economic zone, including more than 1 million square kilometers of highly or fully protected waters, to the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor (CMAR), where Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama agreed to establish a contiguous, transboundary safe passage of more than 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) for migratory species. There is also much greater recognition of the contributions made by traditional stewards, including Indigenous communities, artisanal fishers, and other coastal communities. On paper, at least, this would seem to bode well for progress toward protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. Yet at the same time that these announcements are being made, we also hear about “paper parks” — those protected in name only — industrial fishing vessels entering protected areas, boats turning off their transponders, and abandoned fishing gear drifting through supposedly protected waters. Coral reef in the Pacific. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler / Mongabay Over the summer, looking across academic literature and Mongabay’s multilingual coverage, I tried to pin down what the evidence actually shows about marine conservation outcomes in the Americas. Merging peer-reviewed datasets with field reporting has its limitations, but it helps bridge a common divide: studies document broader ecological trends, while journalists track the political compromises and enforcement lapses that shape what happens on the water. Unsurprisingly, the central takeaway is that marine conservation is most likely to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Residents of Phra Samut Chedi, one of Thailand’s most erosion-prone districts, have long struggled against coastal erosion. It’s located in the muddy heart of the Chao Phraya River Delta, where Bangkok’s major watercourse empties into the Gulf of Thailand. Here, roughly 20-60 meters (about 66-200 feet) of land is claimed by the sea annually, eating into farmland and forcing families to relocate their homes. However, a new study suggests a new coastal defense system based on artificial mangrove roots could offer struggling communities some respite. Trialed at 11 sites in Phra Samut Chedi and other parts of Samut Prakan province over 15 months, the nature-inspired system encouraged a varying amount of sediment deposition at 10 of the sites, according to the study published in Ocean & Coastal Management. Success varied by site, ranging from 16-88 centimeters (6-35 inches) of sediment retention, depending on localized conditions. By helping stabilize the shoreline, the researchers say the system could potentially function as an effective hybrid nature-based solution — a mechanism whereby engineered or “bioinspired” structures work in consort with natural ecological processes, such as mangrove restoration. Butsawan Bidorn, senior author of the study and an assistant professor of coastal engineering at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said the dynamic nature of the Chao Phraya Delta means rapid and accessible solutions are key. “Aquaculture farmers sent us a video of the waves hitting their dikes,” Butsawan told Mongabay in an interview. “By the next day, the dike had collapsed and they’d lost everything. They need…This article was originally published on Mongabay

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” — Voltaire (1694-1778) A government that claims the authority to kill persons after they have been subdued, disarmed, tried, convicted and confined in prison has made a startling claim about the nature of […]