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Insects like fall armyworm or mealybugs can decimate food and commercial crops; like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, South Africa’s small and large farmers alike use synthetic chemical pesticides to control these and other pests. But about 385 million cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning are reported worldwide each year, according to the Pesticide

For nearly a decade, divers off Tasmania’s east coast have been getting a boost from the government to harvest the invasive sea urchins killing off kelp forests that fringe the Australian island state. A state program offers financial incentives to support a commercial fishery for the highly valuable roe of the long-spined sea urchin (Centrostephanus

Thousands of delegates are now gathering in Yerevan to discuss the future of life on Earth as we know it at the U.N.’s COP17 biodiversity summit. Countries have made considerable progress in developing national conservation plans under the biodiversity framework agreed to at COP15 in Montreal in 2022, but most remain well off pace to

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,

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

Scientists, on two separate occasions, have observed orcas ramming into heavy sunfish with such force that the boney fish literally explodes. But why? Scientists, at least currently, have no idea. They could be doing it to portion of food to feed the pod. Or they might just be doing it because they’re bored. Scientists plan

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to the lowest level on record. Data released today by Brazil’s national space research institute, INPE, shows that forest clearing in Earth’s largest rainforest over the 12 months ended July 31, 2026, amounted to 3,335 square kilometers (1,288 square miles), an area smaller than the Spanish island of

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

Promises by nations to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to finance nature and increase protections for oceans around the globe are falling short ahead of a key U.N. biodiversity conference. The warnings from the head of the conference and environmental groups comes as the countries gather Monday in Yerevan, Armenia for the United Nations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservationists are launching a project to protect dwindling vulture populations in Chad amid a Central Africa-wide decline. Run by the nonprofit Sahara Conservation, the project is part of a larger EU-funded LIFE EV Safe Return program that focuses on protecting the endangered Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus). Egyptian vultures migrate from their breeding sites in the

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

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,

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,

ISTANBUL (AP) — A heavy downpour has shut down Istanbul, flooded homes and roads and killed at least three people, officials said Thursday, as rescuers evacuated hundreds of stranded people. The downpour Wednesday night flooded homes and businesses and inundated roads and underpasses, stranding vehicles and causing traffic chaos in Turkey’s largest city. In some

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

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)

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

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

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

Authorities in Thailand say they have seized about 400 pieces of African elephant ivory in a shipment of timber from Zambia, and are now testing the contraband to identify the origin of the animals. The tusks were found concealed inside logs in two containers declared as holding processed timber at Laem Chabang Port, Chonburi province,

A mushroom is analogous to a flower on a plant — it’s the reproductive organ of a fungus, which protects and distributes fungal spores. Mushrooms are critical part of our ecosystems. For humans and other animals, mushrooms are also food. And they may be part of the solution for food security and solving the plastic

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

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

“The wet markets in Laos are like wildlife parks; however, while you can only look at the animals in our zoos back in China, the wild animals in Lao markets can be eaten.” So proclaimed a Chinese vlogger as he toured a wildlife market. As he explored, he filmed himself showing off bear paws, various

After Donald Trump began his second term as president of the U.S. in 2025, his administration moved to dramatically cut federal funding for agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which administers grants for community-based projects that often focus on climate resilience. The nonprofit Grant Witness has created a database of those awards

El Niño, a naturally occurring climate pattern that involves unusually warm surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean can alter atmospheric circulation and significantly influence rainfall and temperatures patterns far beyond the ocean, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO, the United Nations’ weather agency, says this warming is already