Panchase Protected Forest, in the hills above Nepal’s second city of Pokhara, is known among botanists as an orchid haven. Hundreds of species grow there, many of them found nowhere else in Nepal. I have been working in Panchase for some time now, starting with the insects that live on mistletoes, trying to understand who is there, what they are doing, how they connect to the plants around them. It is slow, careful work and one of the things it has taught me is how little we know, not just about Panchase but about insects in Nepal generally. We do not have a proper picture of what is there. We are still, in many parts of this country, at the very beginning of asking the question. Nobody, for instance, has properly studied the pollinators of Panchase’s orchids. Those relationships exist, they have existed for thousands of years, but they are undocumented. We do not know which insects visit which flowers, which ones are essential, and which are incidental. That work is still ahead of us. Orchids like this large group growing on a tree in Nepal’s Panchase Forest need insects, too. This protected area is home to 142 orchid species from 52 genera. Image courtesy of Kumar Paudel/Greenhood Nepal. I think about this every monsoon season, when the rivers rise and the news fills with the same images: fields gone under, families on rooftops, roads washed away. The death tolls come in. The damage figures follow. And then, a few…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Delegates from most of the world’s governments are assembling this week in Yerevan, Armenia for the latest summit of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP17), whose aim is to prevent the extinction of our fellow creatures, and promote sustainable and just land use. There could be no more fitting location: in the Bible, Mount Ararat is where Noah’s Ark found dry land after the great flood – and where the animals he had rescued, two by two – finally disembarked: “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Then God said to Noah, ‘Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you — the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground — so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.’” (Genesis 8). Thousands of years later, our fellow creatures need another rescue in the shadow of Mount Ararat, via this summit. That is fitting, because, as a lifelong environmentalist, I have personally never seen a time where politicians around the world seem to care less about nature than they do right now. A wreathed hornbill, found across South and Southeast Asia. Image by Nick Volpe via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0). A leading edge of this political assault on nature is the U.S. Government, even though America was in many ways the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

VERSHIRE, Vermont – When Sabra Ewing and Sebastian Lousada bought a tired dairy farm with pastures featuring old apple trees alongside sprouting maples, it was obvious that the grass below these trees’ crowns was a lot lusher than in the open. Then they noticed their sheep began to prefer those shady spots, and their manure added to the richness of the grass and of the other annual plants growing underneath. “You do a lot of observation when you’re a farmer, and when we put the heritage sheep in the orchard, we quickly noticed,” Ewing said in a phone interview after Mongabay’s recent visit. Then the couple discovered a grant program offered by the American Farmland Trust that would help them incorporate more kinds of trees into the 30 acres (just over 12 hectares) of pasture on their overall 250 acres (nearly 102 hectares). “I pounced on it, because I was already excited about this,” Ewing said. Flag Hill Farm co-owner Sebastian Lousada provides water to heritage breeds of sheep grazing under 80 varieties of apple and other sorts of useful trees, Vershire, VT. Image by Erik Hoffner for Mongabay. That grant and other financial supports like one from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) helped turn their Flag Hill Farm – which now grazes heritage breeds of sheep under 80 varieties of apples plus other useful trees, to produce high quality wool, hard cider and brandy created in an on-farm distillery – into an idyllic,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

As global leaders convene in Armenia this week for the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference of the parties (COP17), it is difficult to ignore how women’s oppression is deeply intertwined with the exploitation of ecosystems. After almost two decades of pledges, biodiversity action remains underfunded, forest loss continues to be a growing threat, socio-ecological transitions are a low priority, and ecosystems are spiraling toward collapse. The impacts of resulting climate disasters and biodiversity destruction are not felt equally, yet gender justice issues also remain unresolved within these international talks. In Yerevan, Armenia, countries will consider the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), which was the first formal assessment to measure progress since its adoption in 2022. COP17 is also poised to advance efforts on biodiversity finance under the umbrella of common but differentiated responsibilities. But progress cannot be measured only in targets, financial commitments and international mechanisms. We should also ask a more basic question: What can we learn from the people who are already protecting biodiversity in their territories? Women leading agroecology and community conservation initiatives in Zambia. Image courtesy of Kapyanga Women Association & Zamsof. While hundreds of policymakers spend long hours negotiating decisions to promote false solutions and powerful corporate actors lobby to continue profiting from biodiversity destruction and obstruct environmental regulations, women from the Global South continue working without big cameras or fancy social media presences to protect what is left of their territories. They are ensuring the continuation of…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

On Indigenous Peoples Day, let’s honor the leadership and contributions of Indigenous women in water. Women – and particularly Indigenous women – are underrepresented in the water workforce and make up less than one in three voices in water governance. Yet, the water sector has much to learn from women’s leadership. Women have always led, and women get things done. Across the water community, women bring people together, build partnerships, solve problems, and move important work forward every day. Their leadership takes many forms. Some lead through community engagement and relationship building. Others advance technical solutions, policy, research, infrastructure, public health, or education. Many do all of these things at once. Different perspectives help turn vision into action. Women lead in complementary ways, and that collaboration often drives meaningful progress. Indigenous women and girls gather stones to make water filters to provide their community with safe water in Ecuador. Image courtesy of Yachana Foundation. In working alongside Indigenous leaders such as Emma Robbins and Crystal Tulley-Cordova, I have seen how community knowledge, technical expertise, and relationship-building complement one another. Throughout this work, women continue to champion Indigenous knowledge, environmental stewardship, water justice, and community resilience. They advance conversations about water rights, water hauling, universal access to clean water, public health, policy, research, and infrastructure. They also recognize that solving water challenges requires more than technical expertise: Real progress happens when communities, researchers, educators, advocates, and decision-makers come together around shared goals. Women play a leading role in creating and sustaining…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A group of activists in the small border town of Lochiel, Arizona, U.S., is fighting to save 200-year-old cottonwood trees by stopping contractors from building a section of the U.S.’s new wall along its border with Mexico. One activist lived for over 70 days in the upper branches of an ancient cottonwood dubbed the “Grandmother Tree,” preventing construction workers from cutting it down while other activists used pulleys to bring them food and water. The protest was about more than protecting ancient trees: Activists were also fighting habitat fragmentation caused by the border wall in a landscape where biodiversity depends on ecological connectivity. The tree encampment began on July 28, after construction workers cut down three of the four cottonwood trees that were in the path of the wall. This double wall consists of two 30-foot-high (just over 9 meters) steel walls that run parallel to one another with a buffer zone between. Since then, helicopters, drones, U.S. Border Patrol agents, and local law enforcement have been surveilling the area, according to the activists at the encampment. I interviewed activists camped in the meadow adjacent to the tree, photographed the landscape, and participated in the daily morning rituals aimed at honoring Grandmother Tree and the land. There I learned that the movement has connected social and environmental issues since its inception. Many of the activists I met at the Lochiel protest are involved in No More Deaths, a humanitarian group that provides water and aid to migrants crossing the border,…This article was originally published on Mongabay