Interviews with conservation players News

MUKU, Papua New Guinea — Fidelis Nick’s eyes lock onto the police vehicle as it passes through his village in northwestern Papua New Guinea. A few people wave greetings as…

KATHMANDU — Until recently, Nepali movies tended to have lead characters who were extraordinary people who stood out from regular folks and were largely detached from their day-to-day lives. But…

“It's not going in the right direction yet,” Pierre Friedlingstein tells Mongabay of the effort to meet the Paris Agreement goals; a member of the IPCC and a climate professor, he says he’s mildly optimistic about the trend in global emissions.

HARAR, Ethiopia — In the hilly terrain of Babile Elephant Sanctuary in Ethiopia, Fetiya Ousman, a female wildlife ranger, is leading her team on a patrol. Dressed in a jungle-green…

KATHMANDU — Nepal’s owls are perhaps the least-studied birds in the country, often overlooked by researchers more focused on the rarer vultures and cranes. Yet owls also face the same…

KATHMANDU — Fishing cats are among the most elusive and understudied small cats in the world. They’re also among the most threatened, faced with habitat loss, conflict with humans, and…

KURUWITU, Kenya — Six days a week, Katana Ngala reports to his workplace, a rudimentary open-air workshop by the beach. Neat and well-shaded under huge palm trees, his workshop is…

KINGSTON, Jamaica — In November, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France was calling for an international ban on deep-sea mining, a proposed activity that has received much attention due to…

Nigeria is one of the top biodiversity hotspots in the world. However, over the past few decades, this plethora of  biodiversity has come under significant threat amid a rapidly growing…

Debbie Saunders’s quest to make wildlife tracking more efficient started in the early 2000s. The wild ecologist was studying swift parrots (Lathamus discolor) in Australia and found it challenging to…

In June, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced Monica P. Medina as its new President and CEO. Medina is the first woman to take the helm at WCS and brings…

Nepal’s diverse landscapes, from the lowland Terai Arc to the high Himalayas, are home to more than 200 mammal species. Beyond the iconic creatures like tigers and rhinos are the…

Tanzanian herpetologist John Lyakurwa was born and raised in a village at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. The chameleons he and his family encountered on their coffee farm sparked his…

MORONDAVA, Madagascar — As the director of Kirindy Mite National Park and Andranomena Special Reserve near Madagascar’s southwestern coast, Diamondra Andriambololona oversees the protection of nearly 162,770 hectares (402,213 acres)…

When Pablo Garcia Borboroglu first laid eyes on a wild penguin colony in Patagonia, Argentina, he experienced two things at once: a sense of extraordinary wonder for these wild animals,…

KATHMANDU — With the start of the monsoon season in Nepal in mid-June, rivers originating from the mountains and the hills of the country become swollen and reach the peak…

SINGAPORE — It’s been a hectic few weeks for Kevin Marriott. On a humid May morning in Singapore, he shuttles between two locations at the city’s Windsor Nature Park. At…

Last December, delegates from nearly 200 governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. This agreement aims to conserve 30 percent…

In 2019, the last Sumatran rhino in Malaysia died. Her name was Iman and ever since her capture in 2014, she had been under the care of the Bornean Rhino…

For scientists and ecologists studying wildlife, listening to the sounds of nature is all the rage now. And with good reason. The exponential growth in the use of audio to…

In 2021, Canadian technology entrepreneur and activist Dax Dasilva launched "Age of Union" with a $40 million donation to support high impact conservation projects. Operating on the conviction that conservation…

Farah Obaidullah’s life has pivoted around the ocean. Growing up in Gabon and the Netherlands, she spent as much time as possible in or near the water, snorkeling, rescuing marine…

JAKARTA — “It was heaven,” says Indonesian fisheries scientist Alyssa “Elle” Wibisono, describing her first ever scuba diving experience in the Komodo Islands when she was a high school student.…

KATHMANDU — When researchers last year confirmed the presence of the manul, the “world’s grumpiest cat,” on the world’s highest mountain, they immediately looked at past records of the elusive…

“A lot of people talk about conservation in terms of theory, in terms of simply what is shown in books; but it’s another thing to experience a place and to…

KILIFI, Kenya — An incident in Kelly Roberts Banda’s childhood set him on the path of climate advocacy. Although Banda did not realize it at the time, what appeared then…

KATHMANDU — When Tulshi Laxmi Suwal was a student in the zoology department at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, she looked through an encyclopedia in search of interesting animals for her…

Among the planetary challenges we face, biodiversity loss often takes a back seat to climate change. However, interest in “nature-based solutions” is rising as more people recognize the opportunities presented…

KATHMANDU — The National Trust for Nature Conservation was set up in 1982 as a semi-governmental body to spearhead conservation activities in Nepal. Today, it manages some of the most…

KATHMANDU — Sandwiched between China and India, Nepal is known for its geographical as well as botanical diversity. The country is not only home to the tallest mountains in the…