Month over month, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined for the 13th consecutive month as forest clearing in Earth’s largest rainforest fell to the lowest level in five years. This decrease occurred despite a historic drought in the region, according to data published on Friday by Brazil’s national space research institute, INPE. In April, the area of forest loss registered by INPE’s deforestation alert system was 174 square kilometers, a 47% drop compared to last April. Over the past 12 months, deforestation totaled 4,661 square kilometers, marking a 51% decrease compared to the prev ..read more

If you’ve ever thought of the caracal before, you’ve probably pictured it inhabiting the savannas of Africa, its long-fringed ears sticking up above the wild grasses. But although the caracal (Caracal caracal) is best known from its African habitats, a tiny population persists in India. It’s here, on the Chambal River, that a tourist, Vaibhav Sanghavi, took an astoundingly unusual photo of a caracal — a medium-sized wild cat with stunning ears — swimming the large river. The photo is noteworthy not only because of the cat’s unusual aquatic behavior, but because it was taken in Madhya Pradesh ..read more

When the organization Save Vietnam’s Wildlife receives a pangolin rescued from the wildlife trade, it can take months to remind the scaly, housecat-sized mammal how to be a pangolin again. After treating any diseases or injuries, SVW caretakers place the pangolin in a small, semiwild enclosure. Here they monitor the rehabilitating animals to see if they’re behaving the way they would in the wild: if they’re investigating tubes of bamboo filled with ants, if they’re climbing trees, and if they’re digging burrows in the soft dirt. It can take up to a year for rescued animals to start acting like ..read more

Over a decade of studies conducted by the National Caatinga Observatory revealed that it has the best carbon sequestration performance among Brazilian biomes. For every 100 metric tons of CO2 absorbed by that forest in Brazil’s semiarid area, 45-60 tons are retained and do not return to the atmosphere. Even the researchers were surprised by the result of the studies. One of them was Aldrin Perez, from the National Institute of the Semiarid Region (INSA), one of the organizations responsible for the project. “To our surprise, the Caatinga is the most efficient biome in Brazil and one of the mos ..read more

It was Hope who first dared to approach Juvenal. They had been on the opposing sides of a quarrel ever since Hope’s family wrapped their tails around the branches of that 10,000-acre urban forest in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. The arrival of her clan contested the eight-year rule of Juvenal’s group in Tijuca National Park. Brown howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba) are, by primate standards, peaceful denizens of the Atlantic Forest — gentle leaf-eaters that also enjoy the occasional fruit. But that doesn’t put them above skirmishing for territory. Around two weeks ago, Juvenal and another male h ..read more

Chimpanzees, like humans, can use a variety of tools to perform tasks such as getting food from hard-to-reach places. Now, a study published in PLOS Biology has found that, also like humans, chimps continue learning and refining those skills well into adulthood. This lifelong learning and continual development of skills is critical for the survival of chimpanzees in the wild, says lead author Mathieu Malherbe, from the Ape Social Mind Lab at Marc Jeannerod Institute of Cognitive Sciences in France and the Taï Chimpanzee Project in Côte d’Ivoire. “Chimpanzees’ ability to extract food [that woul ..read more

Many cats despise mud and water, but not so the fishing cat. This enigmatic medium-sized cat species roams South and Southeast Asia and is uniquely adapted to life in wetlands — so much so that its call resembles the quack of a duck. Little known and underresearched, it faces an uphill battle against multiple threats, including loss of its wetland habitat to humanity’s incursions, and escalating climate change, as extreme drought and rising coastal waters disrupt aquatic ecosystems. Though in peril, the fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) has many champions fighting for its survival. A pione ..read more

SEPINTUN, Indonesia — Past generations of Dahwas’s family lived off the food and fuel growing all around them, traversing Sumatra’s forest unobstructed whenever cultural norms required the seminomadic Suku Anak Dalam people to seek out a fresh location. Dahwas has lived with his seven children inside the forest here in Indonesia’s Jambi province his entire life, but in recent decades the land available to the Suku Anak Dalam has been shrinking. “We have been living here for 13 years,” Dahwas told Mongabay Indonesia, as he pointed to nearby fruit trees and the family cemetery. Around half of th ..read more

For long, cucumbers and pumpkins remained the only popular squash vegetables in Bangladesh. When Bangladesh Agricultural Extensions introduced zucchinis to farmers in the late 1990s, there was some confusion among both farmers and consumers regarding the cultivation and uses of this new type of squash. However, zucchini squash has now gained popularity among farmers in Bangladesh as a short-duration crop. Farmers feel secure cultivating this vegetable because it requires less water, requires lower production costs, has higher yields, and a growing market demand. Shithi Rani is a farmer from th ..read more

“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in the poem The Waste Land. For the 30 million residents of India’s southern state of Kerala, this April was particularly cruel, with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declaring the first ever recorded heatwave in the state. The heatwave also came at a time when Kerala, along with other parts of the country, is part of the national elections process, with campaigning, public meetings and voting taking place in high temperatures. The ambient heat is expected to continue in the coming days, too, while the political heat is likely to continu ..read more