Imperial systems historically fall by the weight of their insatiable greed, reckless wastefulness and institutional hubris. Today, the United States stands as the sole imperial power, with Israel – the last remaining colonizing state – serving as its vanguard in West Asia. Both are showing the first signs of fundamental decline. A single miscalculation can […]

America has a deadly addiction to war. Since 1950, presidents of both political parties have sent American troops into conflicts across the globe, killed countless people, sacrificed the lives and limbs of American servicemen and women, and wasted trillions of dollars. Yet these wars have consistently failed to achieve the objectives proclaimed when the killing […]

As we indicated in Part 1, even by the end of the 18th century, the nation of “Ukraine” was nowhere to be seen on the maps of the era. And shortly thereafter the greatest map-making assemblage of nations that the world had ever seen only confirmed its non-existence within the maws of an expanding Russian […]

PAMARAWAN, Philippines — For years, residents of Pamarawan barangay, or village, in the City of Malolos, had to live with floodwater inundating their streets as the southwest monsoon, known locally as hagabat, brought strong waves into the fishing village. It got even worse during typhoons. “When there was a typhoon, the waves would go over the breakwater by almost a meter, a direct hit on the houses beside the dike,” said Roldan Dayao, secretary of Pamarawan, a low-lying fishing village at North Manila Bay that is only accessible by boat. The village already has a concrete breakwater that stands 3 to 4 meters (9-13 feet) high, Dayao said. But it does little to prevent the recurring flood. The situation changed after the construction of a nature-based coastal defense and flood control project. It used locally available materials, such as bamboo poles, oyster shells and coconut husks, to protect Pamarawan from tidal waves and storm surges. Interlocking, interconnected bamboo cribs now cover 14 hectares (35 acres) off the coast. The bamboo structures, alongside discarded oyster shells placed inside cocomesh, or coconut husk nets, serve as breakwaters that reduce incoming wave energy. Small boats inside a bamboo enclosure, part of a nature-based coastal defense and flood control project, in Pamarawan barangay, in Malolos City, Bulacan province, the Philippines, on Sept. 28, 2026. Image by Oliver Samson for Mongabay. The cribs also trap drifting mud and sand. Over time, the accumulated sediment is expected to gradually raise the seabed to a height sufficient…This article was originally published on Mongabay

KAWEMHAKAN, Suriname — Beneath thousands of square kilometers of rainforest here lie vast deposits of gold and other minerals. Around a million ounces are extracted legally every year, but much more remains buried throughout the Amazon. In some of the farthest-flung parts of the rainforest, such as these small villages along the border with French Guiana, the government hasn’t stopped locals — joined by Brazilian miners and Chinese traders — from clearing the forest in search of gold. Moving up and down the Lawa River and its tributaries, these criminals establish mining camps and trading posts far beyond the reach of most law enforcement, where robberies, extortion and other violent crimes happen out of sight. Many Indigenous Wayana families live on both sides of the Lawa River — which also marks the border with French Guiana — and face a growing list of challenges, including health issues from mercury use on their land and dwindling wildlife populations they’ve long relied on for food. Indigenous Wayana communities have lived in the area for generations but still lack an official land title that might offer some protection. The only airstrip for kilometers around, and the primary practical connection to the capital, Paramaribo, sits in the middle of one of the Indigenous villages, giving leadership some leverage with miners and traders: Unless they want to travel for days by river to get back and forth from the city, it’s important to be on good terms with the community, residents said. These delicate relationships…This article was originally published on Mongabay

On a warm, humid morning, along the Içana River in Brazil’s upper Rio Negro Basin, researchers observed a group of Baniwa men heading to the river to check the fishing traps they left in shallow, fast-moving waters. Slightly further downstream, a group of giant otters (Pteronura brasiliensis) was also hunting. They stayed in the water by the riverbank, their heads popping through the surface and dipping back down like a wild version of the arcade game Whack-A-Mole. One resurfaced with a striped fish held between its front paws before it climbed onto the bank to eat. The sound of it eating carried across the water; sharp cracks as it worked through the bones and wet chomps as it tore through scales and flesh. The otters’ feeding site along the bank was littered with fish bones and reeked of feces. “They’re almost impossible to ignore,” Jansen Zuanon, ecologist and fish specialist who contributed to a 2026 study about Baniwa people and otters, told Mongabay. Giant otters tend to live in groups of between nine and 12 family members. Image by Allan Hopkins via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). The Içana flows into the Rio Negro, a major tributary in the Amazon with dark, tea-colored, naturally acidic water. Its rivers and tributaries are home to diverse fish species — though they are not especially abundant. For the Indigenous Baniwa people, who live along the Içana’s banks and tributaries in northwestern Brazil near the Colombian border, fishing is an essential source of protein. But…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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

BOA VISTA, Roraima — “For those who live off the river, water isn’t just scenery: It is also a road, work and income.” That is how tour guide Fredson Guedes, known as “Tarzan,” learned to view the natural world around him over the course of his 55 years. “I work entirely with nature and depend heavily on it. Just the other day, I was at Serra Grande [an ecotourism destination in the municipality of Cantá, Roraima], working at the Véu de Noiva [bridal veil, in Portuguese] waterfall, but now there is no waterfall anymore. It dried up.” In the Amazonian region of Serra Grande in Brazil, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the state capital, Boa Vista, the seasonal waterfall known as Véu de Noiva usually draws visitors from May through early September during Roraima’s rainy season. That changed in 2026. By late July, the water that defines the landscape had already vanished. Fábio Wankler, a geologist and professor at the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR), points to a “super El Niño” as the driver behind the disruption. The phenomenon, unusually intense this year, has triggered a series of shifts in weather patterns that, across various parts of the country, “have caused longer and more intense periods of drought,” he said. The effects are felt daily. The waterfall, whose cascading flows resemble the delicate lace of a wedding gown, sits along one of the primary routes traveled by Guedes, who navigates the Branco River to reach it at least twice…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Investigations by environmental groups have found new evidence that companies linked to deforestation in Borneo are likely controlled by First Resources, a Singapore-listed plantation firm that produces palm oil marketed as sustainable. A report by Rainforest Action Network (RAN) cites shipping records, internal accounting documents and employee testimonies that link palm oil producers in Indonesia, the Kalimantan Agro Sejahtera (KAS) Group and FAP Agri, to First Resources, which is run by Indonesia’s billionaire Fangiono family. The investigation, conducted from January to July 2026, found that crude palm oil from mills run by the three businesses was transported to a First Resources storage and shipping facility on the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan province, where it was mixed then shipped to refineries for processing. A separate report by NGOs the Environmental Investigation Agency and Kaoem Telapak also suggests ties between First Resources, FAP Agri and KAS Group with evidence of these firms operating as a single corporate group. The findings echo long-held concerns that major agribusiness firms are using opaque corporate structures to gain access to palm oil sourced from plantations that flout sustainability commitments. First Resources adopted a No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation (NDPE) policy in 2015 and is a long-standing member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a global certification body for sustainably produced palm oil. FAP Agri adopted an NDPE policy in 2019. Across the industry, NDPE policies represent a commitment to stop clearing any natural forest and to stop buying from other companies…This article was originally published on Mongabay

MUARO JAMBI, Indonesia — Pineapples rattled around in the basket on the back of Tahang’s motorcycle as he drove through the cracked and dried out peatland in eastern Sumatra’s Muaro Jambi district. Tahang later pulled up beside local residents Ali and Haidir, as smoke drifted in the distance over a grove of areca palms, which are grown for their betel nuts. “Did you see that fire earlier?” Tahang asked. “Yes, but it was only small,” Haidir replied. A few hours later, as Tahang rested in Muara Medak village and Ali returned to collect pineapples, the fire spread through dry grass and reached the carbon-rich peat. “It exploded,” Tahang said. Tahang picked up his water pump and raced to the field by motorcycle. By the time he arrived, he told Mongabay Indonesia, state firefighters and disaster agency staff were already battling the blaze, with little water available. A dry canal in the Air Merah community forest area. Image by Teguh Suprayitno/Mongabay Indonesia. Wildfire crisis across Indonesia Indonesia is facing its worst wildfire crisis in years, as months of drought across much of Borneo and Sumatra are compounded by a strong El Niño, which is delaying the onset of the archipelago’s main rainy season. In Sumatra’s Jambi province, fires have burned in Bukit Tigapuluh National Park and across extensive peatland areas in Berbak-Sembilang National Park, a major wetland adjacent to the subdistrict of Sungai Gelam designated as a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Peat in Jambi’s Sungai Gelam reaches depths of up to 11 meters…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Perhaps the best-known target of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is what’s commonly known as “30 by 30,” the aim to bring at least 30% of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine ecosystems into effective conservation and equitable management by the year 2030. According to Skytruth’s tracker, which combines multiple databases to provide a ready overview, as of October 2026, African countries had secured 19.9% of terrestrial and 17.2% of marine areas, a tick above the global coverage of 18.7% of land, and 10% of marine landscapes. As delegates from around the world gather in the ancient city of Yerevan, Armenia, for the 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity from Oct. 19 to 30, it seems unlikely that the 30 by30 target will be met. Since the GBF was agreed in 2022, diverse observers have argued that we should also be turning our attention to what lies beneath these numbers. “The objective is not simply to reach 30% on paper by 2030,” says Daniel Marnewick, a conservation expert with the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. “It is to secure biodiversity, strengthen ecological resilience, and build conservation approaches that are socially legitimate, locally grounded, and sustainable over the long term.” Beneath the headline figures, Marnewick says, “land and natural resources are under increasing pressure from competing demands, including agriculture, infrastructure, energy, mining, and other forms of economic development.” One obvious obstacle across the African continent arises from governments’ own conflicting priorities.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

MOCUBA, Mozambique — Mozambique ranks among the 10 countries with the highest deforestation rates in the world. Each year, it loses about 267,000 hectares (660,000 acres) of forest, with the heaviest rates concentrated in the provinces of Nampula, Zambézia, and Manica. To counter this, a decade ago the country set an ambitious goal to reforest 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) by 2030, alongside a 2025 target to restore 52,000 hectares (128,500 acres) per year through 2029 on a budget of 105 billion meticais ($1.65 billion). To date, however, only 58,000 hectares (143,300 acres) have been reforested — a total that includes tree plantations established before the million-hectare goal was set, according to data compiled by Sá Nogueira Lisboa, a forestry professor and researcher at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) in Maputo. Zambézia province in central Mozambique holds one of the country’s main forest areas, key to conserving biodiversity, regulating water resources, protecting soil, storing carbon, and supporting local communities. Yet it also faces severe pressure from deforestation, suffering some of the nation’s steepest losses in tree cover. Between 2000 and 2024, cumulative forest loss across the province reached 1.26 million hectares (3.11 million acres) — roughly 19% of its total forested area — according to the Provincial Directorate of Territorial Development and Environment (DPDTA). Replanting is critical to restore degraded landscapes, but inadequate follow-up monitoring has squandered much of that effort. A technician from the District Service for Economic Activities (SDAE) among trees with charred stems in the Tónduè Forest,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Fishers in the east Indonesian Maluku Islands say rough seas are keeping them ashore and shrinking their catches as El Niño builds, according to early local monitoring and interviews. Yustinus Pesireron, a 64-year-old fisherman from Kaibobo village on Seram island in Maluku, told Mongabay on Oct. 2 he had not been to sea for almost a month — the longest break of his three decades on the water. He said fishing is the main source of income in the village of about 1,800 people. Yustinus said the earnings he makes from selling his catch finance daily household needs and school expenses for three of his six children. Local monitoring by partners of the UK-headquartered conservation group Blue Ventures shows the amount of fish caught on an average fishing trip in coastal waters around Ambon and Seram islands fell to an average of 3.6 kilograms (7.9 pounds) in April-July 2026 at one monitoring site, down from 8.3 kg (18.3 lb) in 2025 and 10.6 kg (23.4 lb) in 2024. The group said the data do not show that fish populations are shrinking. Rather, fishers report that higher waves and rougher seas are limiting how long they can fish and how far they can travel. “Sometimes, even when the weather isn’t good, we still go out to sea and catch some fish,” Yustinus told Mongabay in a phone interview. “But, as we say here in Maluku, such a catch is only enough to cover the cost of fuel, and perhaps food. That’s…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Less than half a century ago, the thickly forested landscapes of Laos rumbled with herds of Asian elephants as well as two species of rhinoceros — the Javan rhino and Sumatran rhino. Wild water buffalo and the now-globally-extinct kouprey cattle wallowed in more open habitats that were also stalked by Indochinese tigers. However, decades of habitat loss, infrastructure expansion and hunting for food and the illegal wildlife trade have diminished this impressive assemblage of some of the world’s largest mammals. Today, only the elephants remain. A new study in Global Ecology and Conservation that examined the historic losses, current status and recovery prospects of large mammal megafauna in Laos, suggests that the disappearance of these species could have been avoided if stronger conservation, monitoring and protection plans had been in place. “These trajectories were not necessarily inevitable,” the study, which analyzed historical species records and survey data dating back to 1850 alongside information on threats and conservation policies, says. “Delayed recognition and response, insufficient control of hunting, and limited enforcement capacity likely contributed to these declines.” The loss of so many key large predators and herbivores, along with their ecological functions, occurred despite Laos retaining relatively extensive forest cover compared to other countries in mainland Southeast Asia, the study notes. Laos’s “empty forests” might at first glance seem intact and structurally diverse, yet they often lack key large animals that should inhabit them. “Laos still has high forest cover and a large protected area network. The task now is to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

SYDNEY — After more than a decade of campaigning, Australian conservation and community groups celebrated a historic win on Oct. 23 after legislation was passed to create the Great Koala National Park in New South Wales (NSW). The campaigners’ success came 10 days after NSW Premier and Labor politician Chris Minns tabled a bill proposing the creation of the park in the Mid North Coast region of the state. The park was a key 2023 election promise made by Australia’s Labor Party. “This park will protect our precious Australian wildlife and boost tourism for the region for generations,” Minns wrote on Facebook after the result of the vote. The park, slated to open before the end of 2026, will incorporate 178,000 hectares (440,000 acres) of state forests, primarily earmarked for native timber harvesting, and other government land into the existing national park estate. It will create a protected area spanning 475,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) for 12,000 koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) and more than 100 other threatened fauna and flora species, including southern greater gliders (Petauroides volans), glossy black cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus lathami) and rare spider orchids. The park, slated to open before the end of 2026, will incorporate 178,000 hectares (440,000 acres) of state forests. Image courtesy of NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. The Gumbaynggirr and Dunghutti people, who have helped shape the national park, “will continue to guide its management,” according to the NSW government. “Eight Aboriginal rangers will be employed through community-controlled organisations and some park roles will…This article was originally published on Mongabay

As expected, the early Israeli exit polls indicate that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his prime adversary former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot face deadlock. In the past 10-15 years, the country’s political center of gravity has shifted sharply toward security and military power, documented in my The Fall of Israel (2024). Unsurprisingly, the election aftermath […]

For almost two months, an Air Force officer has been sitting alone in a cell, twenty-four hours a day. When they let him out to eat or exercise, he’s still alone, according to his attorney. His name is Major Jason Watson. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. Under military law he is presumed innocent, yet […]

In 2004, archaeological anthropologist Renzo Duin joined an expedition into the mountainous tri-border area where Brazil, Suriname and Guyana meet alongside French botanists and ecologists. While the scientific team focused on mapping the biodiversity of what appeared to be untouched vegetation, Duin noticed that the ground told a very different story, rich with traces of pre-Columbian human occupation. “While they investigated what they perceived as pristine rainforest, I found the area dotted with fragments of pottery and other archaeological indications, including a site surrounded by a ditch,” Duin told Mongabay in a video call from The Hague, Netherlands. The evidence uncovered by Duin was one of many showing that the Amazon rainforest of Suriname and the Guianas region has been shaped and inhabited by people for millennia. Over the years, the researcher returned regularly to the region, making him one of the leading Amazon archaeologists, reshaping the knowledge about human occupation in the rainforest. “In the last three decades, archaeological knowledge of the Amazon has made a great stride forward in Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia,” Duin said. “In Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, the picture of the past has improved along the coast and major rivers. Yet, in the inland-uplands we have barely scratched the surface regarding the long-time histories of the Indigenous peoples.” Renzo Duin in the Tumuc-Humac Mountains. Image by © 2004, Renzo Duin /AMIK. As elsewhere in the Amazon, archaeological research in the region has unveiled a wealth of ancient rock art sites, stone tools, pottery and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Stoke Park is a natural haven in a busy British town. Centered in Guildford, Surrey, its rolling fields pop with wildflowers in the spring; birds sing and ducks paddle serenely in a pond beside ornamental gardens; and the sun casts dappled shade on the grass from oak, spruce and beech trees, scattered across 52 hectares (130 acres) of green. Yet as residents and visitors stroll, jog and lounge across Stoke Park’s green reaches, it’s doing even more for them than they realize: According to two recently-published studies, its green areas reduce heat, pollution and noise — and have benefits that extend beyond the park’s borders. Parks have a well-documented benefit to urban areas, particularly given the rising heat of climate change: Many previous studies have established that parks are much cooler than the surrounding area, and that they also tend to reduce air pollution and noise. These previous studies also found that air and surface temperatures were lower for tens or even several hundred meters around green spaces, depending on the park. However, “most of the work in this field has been focused around one benefit — so either you see just health benefits, or how they affect air pollution, or overheating,” Prashant Kumar, professor at the University of Surrey, co-director of the university’s Institute for Sustainability and director of its Global Centre for Clean Air Research, said in a Zoom interview with Mongabay. “You hardly see studies which look holistically at the multiple benefits of the plants [or] the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

It is a peculiar irony: as technology reaches ever deeper into Earth’s living systems, the primal sonic expressions of the natural world—wind, water, leaf, and creature—have never been more imperiled. Soundscape ecology rests on a simple conviction: the collective voices of the nonhuman world are not only eloquent, but essential. Recorded and preserved over time, these biophonies become enduring ledgers of planetary health, as valuable as genetic databases or satellite images. Over more than half a century, I have gathered more than 5,000 hours of marine and terrestrial recordings. Across those decades, I have heard both the vivid symphony of life and its alarming decline. When science came under siege In recent years, the value of these scientific records—and the ethics of preserving them—has been thrown into sharp relief by forces not of nature, but of governance. In 2017, only weeks after a new U.S. administration took office, a chill settled over the scientific community. Colleagues described research suddenly treated as suspect, funding cut, and datasets removed from public view. It became alarmingly clear that science itself was under siege. Archiving natural soundscapes was no longer solely an act of devotion and curiosity. It had become an urgent responsibility. The danger was not only the destruction of habitat or the extinction of a particular songbird; it was also the erasure of a coherent body of knowledge. Beyond political reach I felt compelled to act. With a sense of defiance and duty, I copied my entire field collection—thousands of hours documenting…This article was originally published on Mongabay