Editor’s note: While renewable energies won’t save the climate and need to be fought against, it’s as neccessary to keep on fighting against fossil fuels. Because the oil and gas industries will continue with their business as usual - even if they promote an energy transistion from fossil to renewables. This is a lie, all technology inventions for new energy extraction are added up. That’s why it’s effective when people organize in order to continue the abolition of burning fossil fuels, be it in court or outdoors. ...

by Basten Gokkon on Mongabay 14 May 2024 A new study concludes that chimpanzees displaying a range of ailments seek out plants with known medicinal properties to treat those ailments. The finding is important because it’s a rare instance where a species is shown to consume a plant as medicine rather than as part of its general diet. The study identified 13 plant species that the chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest relied on, which can help inform conservation efforts for the great apes. ...

Editor’s note: A pandemic in our backyards - The squirrel walked a bit wobbly, it wasn’t as agile and funny as these small creatures often move. It had its eyes rather closed which gave it a tired look. I was concerned and called a squirrel rescue station, luckily there was one closer to me. The poor squirrel got worse meanwhile and couldn’t jump anymore. Lastly, it just sat in the corner of the roof with its head down. ...

by Riza Salman on Mongabay 11 June 2024 During the COVID-19 pandemic, a young documentary filmmaker began quietly joining a growing number of Facebook community groups run by traders of rare Indonesian birds. Over the following two years, a reporting team from several news organizations uncovered a wide network of actors offering species for sale for as little as 250,000 rupiah ($15). These individuals included a serving naval officer. One shop owner selling birds in Morowali, the epicenter of Indonesia’s nickel mining and smelting boom, said they began trading in birds in 2018, after ships began docking in the local port bringing oil and cement. KENDARI, Indonesia — In 2021, as the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, Irwan watched online as a flurry of new social media groups dedicated to parrots sprang up across Indonesia. ...

Editor’s note: Most Indigenous economics or land-based communities appreciate nature in its complex lifegiving and intelligent values it provides - for free - to all forms of creatures on earth. Yet we live in a century where shareholders and voracious businessmen and women on Wall Street want to put not only a monetary value but tradable assets on nature. In this podcast episode by Mongabay Newscast, you’ll learn why this fails to recognize the intrinsic value of biodiversity and how the principles of Indigenous economics would lead to balance and harmony towards biological and physical reality. ...

Anita HofschneiderSenior Staff Writer Grist Goldman Prize Winner Murrawah Maroochy Johnson talks climate justice and inheriting a legacy of Indigenous resistance. In 2019, Australia was on the cusp of approving a new coal mine on traditional Wirdi land in Queensland that would have extracted approximately 40 million tons of coal each year for 35 years. The Waratah coal mine would have destroyed a nature refuge and emitted 1.58 billion tons of carbon dioxide. ...

Editor’s note: Our current society is based on standards that lobbyists, financial markets, and industries target. That way the powerful can lead secret wars against human and non-human animals without the majority questioning their strategy. Any political or economic decision is based on these standards, not on the values of functioning ecosystems or healthy families. If our society wants to maintain and build a brighter future for young people, it needs to put the wild world as its basis to flourish. It also needs to prevent domestic violence from happening in the first place and make sure that babies have the birthright to a thriving ecocentric society in which informed people have the actual freedom to consent. Power to the people not to a few mighty people at the top requires civil disobedience, something that only empowered people can implement. But without civil disobedience, we won’t end the secret wars against our living planet. ...

by Liz Kimbrough on Mongabay 30 May 2024 The critically endangered Devils Hole pupfish population has reached a 25-year high of 191 fish, offering hope for the species that lives in the smallest known habitat of any vertebrate. Above water and SCUBA surveys conducted by scientists twice a year carefully monitor the pupfish population in Death Valley, Nevada, which has fluctuated dangerously in the past, dropping as low as 35 individuals in 2013. A landmark 1976 Supreme Court decision, informed by environmental science, protected the pupfish by limiting groundwater pumping that threatened its habitat, setting a precedent for science-based conservation policy. Despite recent success, the pupfish remains threatened by climate change impacts on the delicate desert ecosystem, as well as growing human demand for water resources in the region. In a glimmer of hope for one of the world’s rarest fish, scientists have counted 191 Devils Hole pupfish this spring in their tiny desert habitat. This number marks the highest spring count for the critically endangered species in more than two decades. ...

by Mike DiGirolamo, Rachel Donald on Mongabay 21 May 2024 The “right to roam” movement in England seeks to reclaim common rights to access, use and enjoy both private and public land, since citizens only have access to 8% of their nation’s land currently. Campaigner and activist Jon Moses joins the Mongabay podcast to discuss the history of land ownership change in England with co-host Rachel Donald, and why reestablishing a common “freedom to roam” — a right observed in places like the Czech Republic and Norway — is necessary to reestablishing human connection with nature and repairing damaged landscapes. At least 2,500 landscapes are cut off from public access in England, requiring one to trespass to reach them. “There needs to be a kind of rethinking really of [what] people’s place is in the landscape and how that intersects with a kind of [new] relationship between people and nature as well,” Moses says on this episode. Like most nations, England doesn’t have legally recognized rights for citizens to cross non-public lands. This means that the nearly 56 million people who live there are only legally allowed to access 8% of the country. One particularly picturesque example of this problem was recently noted by the BBC, which discussed a large piece of public land that’s actually inaccessible due to being surrounded by private land, forcing people to trespass in order to reach it. ...

Editor’s note: Civilization is in free fall, and most people do not accept that. Humans will have to use a lot less energy. That future is hard for people to grasp. They will need to adjust their expectations of how reality is going to look. This will require going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining(excuses), depression, and acceptance. We can still create social relations that can improve the world through policy and interactions. Rememberthe win is always in the movements struggling together with others toward those victories, the fighting against the fascism of industrial civilization. ...