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A dancing lemur could help save one of Madagascar’s most endangered ecosystems

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Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Madagascar’s rainforests often steal the spotlight, with their flamboyant biodiversity and familiar lemur mascots. Less noticed are the country’s dry forests in the west and southwest, which shelter equally remarkable life yet have been steadily eroded by agriculture, fire and logging. Now, conservationists are betting that one of their most charismatic residents, Verreaux’s sifaka, a white “dancing” lemur famed for its sideways bounds across the ground, could rally support to save what remains, reports contributor Mino Rakotovao for Mongabay. Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) has just been added to the World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates list, a move driven by a new Madagascar conservation alliance, the Ankoatsifaka Initiative for Dry Forests (AID Forests), a coalition of NGOs, scientists and government officials. Its advocates say they hope the listing will draw attention not only to the sifaka’s plight but also to the fragile forests it depends on. “In the west and southwest [of Madagascar], the situation is just as serious, with widespread food insecurity, increased bushmeat hunting, and similar threats like deforestation,” said Rebecca Lewis, a primatologist and founder of AID Forests. Dry forests provide food, medicine, timber and grazing land for some of Madagascar’s poorest communities. They also face some of the world’s fastest rates of loss. Yet unlike the better-known humid forests, they lack coordinated international backing. The alliance aims to change that by pooling knowledge, strengthening patrols and amplifying the voices of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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Alaskan rivers turn orange as permafrost thaws, threatening fish and communities

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25 September 2025

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The writer John McPhee once described Alaska’s Salmon River as having “the clearest, purest water” he’d ever seen. Today, that same river runs orange with toxic metals unleashed by thawing permafrost. “During the summer of 2019, the clear waters of the Salmon turned distinctly orange and have remained discolored and turbid since,” according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Salmon River’s transformation represents a much larger crisis. In Alaska’s Brooks Range,75 streams have “recently turned orange and turbid,” the study found. “This is what acid mine drainage looks like,” said Tim Lyons, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside, and co-author of the study. “But here, there’s no mine. The permafrost is thawing and changing the chemistry of the landscape.” The cause lies underground in permanently frozen soil, known as permafrost. As global temperatures rise, this ancient layer is thawing. When water and oxygen reach the newly exposed soil, they trigger chemical reactions that break down sulfide-rich rocks, creating sulfuric acid that leaches naturally occurring metals like iron, cadmium and aluminum from rocks into the river, the research shows. Researchers tested 10 major tributaries of the Salmon River and found that nine had toxic concentrations of at least one metal on at least one of three sampling dates. The study shows that levels of metals in the river’s waters exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) toxicity thresholds for aquatic life. Metal levels in the Salmon River mainstem were dangerously high…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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Turning camera traps into real-time sentinels: Interview with Conservation X Lab’s Dante Wasmuht

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25 September 2025

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Camera traps are ubiquitous in conservation. They’re deployed to monitor biodiversity, study animal behavior, observe habitats over long periods of time, and enforce effective conservation action on the ground. However, they have an inherent shortcoming that’s especially prominent in remote locations like dense forests and cut-off islands. “They’re largely passive. People put them out and then half a year later, or a year later, they go and collect this,” Dante Wasmuht, head of artificial intelligence at the nonprofit Conservation X Labs, tells Mongabay in a video interview. “From the moment something happens in that area until a human knows about it, a lot of time can pass.” To address this issue and encourage early intervention, Conservation X Labs has developed an AI-powered tool that can be attached to camera traps to provide real-time updates on what’s happening in the forests. “It’s as if that camera is connected to a small computer which is the Sentinel,” Wasmuht says. “Whenever the camera trap takes a picture, the Sentinel knows and transfers the image onto its inner computer chip and can run all those AI models completely locally right there in the field.” The Sentinel has been deployed in various countries to track invasive species, monitor wildlife poaching, and keep an eye on threatened animals. In New Zealand, more than 80 Sentinel devices have been used to monitor invasive species on remote islands. On Ova Island, for example, the device played a critical role in detecting invasive rats that were wreaking havoc on…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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A dancing lemur could help save one of Madagascar’s most endangered ecosystems

Published

5 hours ago

on

25 September 2025

By

This post was originally published on this site.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Madagascar’s rainforests often steal the spotlight, with their flamboyant biodiversity and familiar lemur mascots. Less noticed are the country’s dry forests in the west and southwest, which shelter equally remarkable life yet have been steadily eroded by agriculture, fire and logging. Now, conservationists are betting that one of their most charismatic residents, Verreaux’s sifaka, a white “dancing” lemur famed for its sideways bounds across the ground, could rally support to save what remains, reports contributor Mino Rakotovao for Mongabay. Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) has just been added to the World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates list, a move driven by a new Madagascar conservation alliance, the Ankoatsifaka Initiative for Dry Forests (AID Forests), a coalition of NGOs, scientists and government officials. Its advocates say they hope the listing will draw attention not only to the sifaka’s plight but also to the fragile forests it depends on. “In the west and southwest [of Madagascar], the situation is just as serious, with widespread food insecurity, increased bushmeat hunting, and similar threats like deforestation,” said Rebecca Lewis, a primatologist and founder of AID Forests. Dry forests provide food, medicine, timber and grazing land for some of Madagascar’s poorest communities. They also face some of the world’s fastest rates of loss. Yet unlike the better-known humid forests, they lack coordinated international backing. The alliance aims to change that by pooling knowledge, strengthening patrols and amplifying the voices of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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