The Liberian government designated a new national park in August 2017 that will protect an important population of Critically Endangered western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus), as well as several other species of large mammals. The rainforests of the new Grebo-Krahn National Park in southeastern Liberia are home to some 300 western chimpanzees, according to the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF), based in Leipzig, Germany. A decade in the making, the 961-square-kilometer (371-square-mile) park won the approval of Liberias legislature on Aug. 22. Now, it only requires signatures from the president and the Minister of Foreign Affairs formalities, WCF says to become officially designated. Grebo-Krahn National Park is situated in southeastern Liberia and is part of the Ta-Grebo-Sapo forest complex that extends into Cte dIvoire. Map courtesy of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation Creating a new national park is of course very exciting after years and years of collecting data and engaging the various stakeholders, said Annika Hillers, a primatologist with WCF, in an email. What bigger reward could there be? But those years of work that WCF, other conservation organizations, and the Liberian government have put it were just the beginning, Hillers said. It is now that we all have to work harder than ever, to make sure that Grebo-Krahn National Park is effectively protected and local communities are adequately involved, she added. Grebo-Krahn forms the heart of the Ta-Grebo-Sapo forest complex, extending into neighboring Cte dIvoire. The contiguous habitat is a critical home to not only chimpanzees, but

After years of documenting some of the worlds bloodiest conflicts, a vacation in Kenya inspired photojournalist Kate Brooks to turn her lens to a different kind of violence: the slaughter of elephants and rhinos to feed black-market demand for ivory and rhino horn. Poaching is having a devastating impact on Africas wildlife. From 2006 to 2015, the population of African elephants is estimated to have declined by around 110,000, leaving just 415,000 still alive in the wild. The situation is no better for the continents rhinos: demand for their horns as decorative items and in traditional medicine has caused more than 7,100 to have been poached in the last decade, leaving a population of just 25,000. In her film The Last Animals, war-photographer turned filmmaker Kate Brooks traces this deadly trade across four continents traveling from protected areas in Africa to wildlife markets in Asia and North America in order to illustrate the complex web of global consumer demand, transnational criminal syndicates and local conflicts and political problems that contribute to the current poaching epidemic.  Along the way, Brooks also meets with investigators, scientists, zookeepers and rangers engaged in an all-too-often life threatening struggle to preserve the last remaining elephants and rhinos. The Last Animals is a finalist for the Special Jury award in the 2017 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival taking place September 24-29 in Jackson, Wyoming. Winners in 25 awards categories will be announced September 28. In an email interview, Kate Brooks shared her experience documenting the

The majority of Malaysia and Singapores most popular brands have failed to push for the use of sustainable palm oil in their products, with some refusing to disclose who they buy from, according to a new survey by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Earlier this year, the international NGO surveyed 47 locally based food and restaurant-chains, with 27 from Singapore and the rest from Malaysia. The survey is called the Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard (pdf). Of the 47 companies that were contacted, only 16 disclosed information on their palm oil usage. And half of those had taken no action to support the use of sustainable palm oil. Even though 100% certified palm oil is available today, most businesses in Malaysia and Singapore are still not sourcing it, the report of the survey read. A snapshot of Singapores brands surveyed by the WWF in its Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard. Image courtesy of the WWF. Palm oil is one of Southeast Asias biggest industries, with Malaysia and Indonesia responsible for most of the worlds production. These countries are also home to many manufacturers that use palm oil. For its part, Singapore serves as a base for the regional operations of major growers and refiners in the industry, as well as a financial hub by supplying loans and investments to these companies. As the industry expands across the world, calls for more sustainable practices have intensified as well on the back of environmental concerns. Many oil palm companies take community lands without their

As the old saying warns, its bad enough to put all your eggs in one basket. If you have to, though, at least try not to leave that basket sitting on the beach under an active volcano. Unfortunately, thats basically the situation of the last population of the Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus). The Javan rhino was once found throughout Southeast Asia, but since the poaching of the last member of its mainland subspecies in Vietnam in 2009, its only population is found in Ujung Kulon National Park on the western tip of Indonesias Java Island. Such a limited geographic distribution puts any species at risk, but to make matters worse, this location is subject to a number of hazards. One is the volcano Anak Krakatau, growing basically right next door where the famous and deadly Krakatoa once stood. Recently published work also shows that the locations the rhinos prefer are at high risk from tsunamis. On the bright side, this research is collecting previously unknown information thats crucial for ensuring the future of this little-known species. However, the findings also add to the pressure to find a location for a second population a process thats far from simple. Ujung Kulon National Park sits on the western tip of Java Island, and is one of a few intact forested areas on the densely populated island. Map created using Map For Environment. Where the rhinos are Although they are all in a limited area, its not easy to study these animals,

An episode of the popular cartoon Wild Kratts has been named a 2017 finalist in the biannual Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival competition. Drawn from a pool of over 1,000 entries competing for only 25 awards, finalists include a diverse range of entries. Wild Kratts: Spirit Bear was nominated for finalist for Best Engaging Youth Film. The mixed live video and animation film tells the story of the importance of bears and presents a popular scientific hypothesis about the origin of the white fur of the so-called spirit bear, or the Kermode bear. The spirit bear is a rare subspecies of the American black bear. The bear can be found in the central and north coastal regions of British Columbia in Canada. Mongaby interviewed Chris Kratt, who makes Wild Kratts with his brother Martin, by email. Mongabay: What led you and your brother to create Wild Kratts? Chris Kratt: Martin and I have been making wildlife programs for decades. Our previous work, like Wild Kratts, Zoboomafoo, and Be The Creature were all wholly live action, filmed in various locations around the world. When creating the Wild Kratts series, we thought what if we could make a series that utilizes both live action and animation, and combines them in a way that maximizes story elements and natural history content for the kids audience. The result is the Wild Kratts series, which looks at animals in terms of their amazing creature powers. The animated portion allows us to showcase wildlife behaviors that are difficult,

Representatives of more than 150 civil society organizations gathered in Brasilia on Tuesday (19 September) to protest over the speech made by Brazilian president Michel Temer on Monday (18 September) at the opening of 72nd General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. In his speech, Temer said: Deforestation is a question that worries us, especially in Amazonia. We have concentrated attention and resources on this question and I now bring you the good news that the first available figures [for this year] indicate a fall of over 20 percent in deforestation in [Amazonia]. Temers speech appears to have been intended to re-assure the international community, which has strongly criticized the environmental and indigenous policies of his administration over the past few months. We have returned to the good path and we will continue along this path, Temer told the Assembly. Brazilian president Michel Temer speaks before the UN General Assembly on Monday, September 18. Photo courtesy of the United Nations.Brazil In June, Norway gave a stern warning to Temer on his visit to Oslo that Brazil could lose millions of dollars from the Amazon Fund if Brazils deforestation continued to rise. In August, the outcry after Temer signed a presidential decree to abolish a gigantic national reserve in the Amazon was so great that Temer had to issue a second decree, clarifying the first. Eventually, a federal judge annulled both decrees. In his address, Temer also stressed Brazils contribution to combatting global warming. My country and it

Coral reefs support 25% of the worlds marine species, protect shorelines, support fisheries, and encourage eco-tourismtheir global economic value is over US $30 billion per year. A new film, Chasing Coral, documents the mass coral bleaching that occurred across the tropics between 2014 and 2016 and killed large portions of reefs. The cameras follow a team of divers to help audiences visualize what happened to the corals and what is expected to happen in the coming years. The divers and photographers spent more than 500 hours filming underwater over three years, engaging reef conservationists in more than 30 countries, to capture healthy corals and the changes they experienced during the bleaching process, in real time. The unseen underwater effects of rising ocean temperatures on coral, here in American-Samoa. Photo credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey The Ocean Agency Richard Vevers Coral reefs are iconic structures made of millions of coral polyps, tiny animals that eat passing microorganisms, reproduce in annual mass spawning events, and add their skeletons to the structure of the reef. Corals have algae living inside their tissues. Like most plants, these algae photosynthesize, converting the energy from sunlight to food, which helps sustain the coral. They also give the corals their color. When the oceans waters become too warm, the algae cant photosynthesize properly and either abandon or are expelled by the corals, causing the coral to turn white. Corals can survive a short-term bleaching event, but only if conditions improve and the algae recolonize

Tropical timber has earned a bad reputation. When we think of timber from lush, tropical forests, it conjures up images of valuable old-growth trees pillaged by logging companies and illegal timber mafias, ignoring the plight of wildlife and local communities. But tropical timber does not have to be bad, some experts say. Tropical wood forms an integral part of many of our daily-use products, like furniture, toilet paper, flooring, construction, and packaging material. And this important resource can be harvested from forests responsibly and sustainably, experts say, ensuring that we meet our future wood needs while conserving forests. When you speak about tropical forests with anybody, my mom or whoever, its always corruption, its always blood, its always stealing, its always dirty. Nobody wants tropical timber anymore, Paolo Cerutti, a senior scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) who has been working on sustainable forest management in sub-Saharan Africa, told Mongabay. But that is bad because we can harvest the forest in a way that is clean and proper and sustainable. It is this need for clean timber that gave birth to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) a voluntary, worldwide certification program formed in 1993 by a group of environmentalists, indigenous groups, human rights organizations, and timber users and traders. The FSC, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, hopes to change the way forests are managed.

On one of our business trips to the city of Madison, in the U.S., we visited Graze, a restaurant that is proud to show the origin of the ingredients it uses in its kitchen. At the entrance, we were struck by a map of the state (Wisconsin) showing the restaurant connected to dozens of farms, their suppliers of vegetables, meat, cheese, and other products. Inside the restaurant, always packed with costumers, we observed a huge panel with a picture of the producer of the month and the characteristics of their products and farm. Wanting to know more, we surfed the Graze website and found a map and a list of its farm suppliers. Revealing the source of food is a worldwide trend now that consumers increasingly seek information on the origin of the products they consume, whether they are concerned about the quality, animal welfare, workers, or the environmental impact of production. In Brazil, however, many rural producers are reluctant to reveal too much about how their farms are operated. Environmental, labor, and fiscal problems explain this resistance. Currently, however, there is a battle to increase transparency about the farms to eliminate these problems, especially in the Amazon, which is responsible for 40 percent of the countrys cattle herd. In the region, about 86 million head of cattle graze on 61 million hectares, distributed throughout 400 thousand farms. Pastures are equivalent to two-thirds of the total deforestation in the region, which very frequently is illegal and, in all cases, releases

Animals in the worlds oceans have faced an ever-increasing cacophony in recent decades. Theyre inundated with sonar intended to keep countries safe, air gun charges that help energy companies find new sources of oil and gas, and the sounds of the 60,000 commercial ships that ply the seas at any given time. A new film called Sonic Sea by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Imaginary Forces catalogs the growing risks that noise poses to whales, dolphins, and porpoises and what scientists and conservationists are doing about it. Its up for the Best Science in Nature prize at the 2017 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival beginning Sept. 24 in Jackson, Wyoming. The film Sonic Sea explores the impacts of sound in the ocean on whales, dolphins and porpoises. Photo courtesy of Imaginary Forces Cetaceans, the group that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises, depend on sound to communicate, to hunt and to avoid predators. The problem is, in the ocean, we are injecting enormous amounts of noise, so much so that we are basically acoustically bleaching the ocean, said bioacoustician Christopher Clark of Cornell University in the film. All the singing voices of the planet are lost in that cloud of noise. The recent uptick in sounds in the ocean has also been linked to lesions on cetaceans organs and hemorrhaging around their brains. Its also been connected to mass strandings, in which large animals beach themselves, often with fatal consequences. Scientists suspect that they may be trying to get away from

BOGOR, Indonesia Scientists described four new toads from the hills of Sumatra, adding to the islands already astounding biodiversity. The discoveries mark the first Sumatran additions to the Philautus genus of shrub frogs since the early 20th century. Several were described in the Western Ghats of India in 2009. The researchers published their findings in Herpetological Monographs last month. They hail from the University of Brawijaya in Indonesia, and the University of Texas at Arlington and Broward College in the U.S. Specimens of the newly described species Philautus amabilis, Philautus polymorphus, Philautus thamyridion and Philautus ventrimaculatus were collected from 2013 to 2015 in jungles over 1,000 meters above sea level. As in the rest of Indonesia, the forests of Sumatra are full of unknown creatures, but are rapidly dwindling as industry expands, especially in the agriculture and mining sectors. Globally, scientists believe that more than 80 percent of species remain undiscovered. Maps showing the distribution of the Sumatran Philautus genus. Image courtesy of Herpetological Monographs. The four toads differ from one another in their skin patterns, limb shapes and voices. The last name of Philautus amabilis derives from a Latin word meaning charming or pretty. For the scientists, this defines the toads bright brown back and the dark lines that appear on its arms, thighs, hind legs and outer fingers. The name Philautus polymorphus was inspired by its variety of colors and patterns, but the animal is recognizable by the cone-shaped bumps on its eyelids. Philautus thamyridion was named after Thamyris,

A team of researchers based in Australia and the United States have used historical nautical maps to determine that coral reef loss in the Florida Keys is much more extensive than previously understood. The British empire began mapping its overseas territories in the 18th century, and coral reefs in particular were quite thoroughly documented given the danger they posed to wooden-hulled ships. In the process, these imperial cartographers unwittingly provided a source of high-resolution spatial data on coastal areas that, as it turns out, can still be useful today in establishing historical baselines for the extent of coral reefs and assessing changes to those reef systems over the ensuing centuries. The degree of biologically relevant information recorded varied by cartographer, but the best of these British maps describes the depth, shape, and color of shallow-water corals and distinguishes them from other hard structures such as rocks, the authors of a study published in the journal Science Advances earlier this month wrote. The researchers used nautical charts dating from the 1770s to help quantify changes in the coral reefs of the Florida Keys over the past 240 years. The maps were essential to expansion of the British Empire, and luckily for us, they also included a lot of useful ecological information, according to Benjamin Neal, a postdoctoral researcher at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine and a co-author of the study. Loren McClenachan, a professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine who led the study, said that,

ULU PAPAR VALLEY, Malaysia A gentle afternoon drizzle provides some relief from the tropical heat as six men from the village of Longkogungan dig a narrow, snaking channel that represents one of their two possible futures. The canal theyre building will carry water from the villages new micro-hydropower electrical system, a cooperative effort to manage the areas resources and retain the local population. Like birds, they fly, but they return home, Gosibin Lodukin says of his children and grandchildren, whom he hopes will come back from the nearby big city to Longkogungan. However, Lodukin and all residents of the Ulu Papar Valley will need to leave their villages if construction of the much larger Kaiduan Dam downstream proceeds and submerges their homes, rice fields and forests.  No under any circumstance is the response of Irene Kodoyou, who leads the effort to fight any plan for a dam and resettlement. Kodoyou traces seven generations of her family back in Ulu Papar. She worries that leaving the valley would mean a loss of identity for future generations. The collective efforts at local control by Ulu Papar residents are competing with urban interests seeking a new water source for the growing population of the nearby Kota Kinabalu area. The outcome will determine the future course of the Papar River and the lives of the people dependent on it. Left: Stopped to help another truck stuck in the mud on the way to Ulu Papar. Right: Looking down the Ulu Papar Valley at

Few people get to witness the breadth and wonder of underwater life, from coral to kelp to fish and sea anemones. SCUBA divers gain a unique view of not only the beauty but also the condition of underwater communities. Unfortunately, they are increasingly seeing non-biodegradable trashmostly plastic but also metal, glass, rubber, cloth, ceramic, and cardboard on reefs and other marine habitats. Divers have the unique opportunity to observe sea life underwater, such as these sea goldies (anthias) at Little Brother, Red Sea, Egypt. Photo credit: Derek Keats, CC 2.0 According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), marine debris injures and kills marine life, interferes with navigation safety, and poses a threat to human health. Some animals become entangled in ropes or fishing gear; others mistake debris for food, which can damage their tissues or cause them to starve. Plastics degrade very slowly and can leach harmful chemicals into the ocean. Fish and shellfish consume the waste particles and chemicals and are then caught and sold in our fish markets, causing concern about harmful substances in our food. A 2015 study calculated that 192 coastal countries worldwide generated 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste in 2010, 513 million MT of which found its way to the ocean. Marine debris litters beaches across the globe, even those with little local human activity, as currents move trash across oceans. A sea turtle entangled in a ghost net, abandoned fishing nets that drift with ocean currents and harm

Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are known for their elusive ways. Even people who share the mountains with the silvery felines seldom spot them. In spring 2014 a crew of filmmakers with Bristol, U.K.-based Brian Leith Productions undertook what the companys website describes as a mission impossible. They ventured to the remote mountains of Sanjiangyuan in Chinas western province of Qinghai to film wild snow leopards for Disneynatures 2016 movie Born in China. We were successful in capturing the best footage of snow leopards ever, and a wildlife first, to film snow leopard cubs in their natural environmental [sic], the website boasts. Ghost of the Mountains, a new film by the same company documenting the excursion, is a finalist for Best People and Nature Film in the 2017 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival taking place next week in Jackson, Wyoming. Almost 1,000 entries are competing for 25 awards. The winners will be announced next Thursday, September 28. Mongabay caught up with Ben Wallis, writer and director of Ghost of the Mountains, by email. Trailer for Ghost of the Mountains via Youtube.com.   Mongabay: What drew you to make this film? Wallis: This film documents the behind the scenes adventures that took place as we attempted to film snow leopards for Born In China, a Disneynature movie. As soon as we knew we were making the film and had decided to film snow leopards, it was clear that a behind the scenes film would be very compelling. Mongabay: Snow leopards are often