SHENZHEN, China (AP) — Typhoon Ragasa, one of the strongest in years, has caused massive destruction in Taiwan and the Philippines before slamming ashore in southern China. The typhoon whipped waves taller than lampposts onto Hong Kong promenades and turned seas rough on Wednesday. In Taiwan, 17 people died in a flooded township and 10 deaths were reported in the northern Philippines. Nearly 1.9 million people were relocated across China’s Guangdong province. Hong Kong and Macao canceled schools and flights, with many shops closed. Ragasa is the strongest tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific and South China Sea region so far this year. Read full reporting by Kanis Leung and Ng Han Guan, Associated Press. Banner image: A fallen tree sits inside the park in Ho Man Tin area, as super typhoon Ragasa approaches in Hong Kong, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei).This article was originally published on Mongabay

BARINGO, Kenya — Salina Chepsat and a neighbor are loading tomatoes into a vehicle in the scorching midday heat. Chepsat picked the produce earlier that morning from her farm in the remote village of Loboi, a stone’s throw from west-central Kenya’s Lake Bogoria. From there, it’s headed to the market in the town of Marigat, 30 kilometers (19 miles) away. Amid the overlapping challenges facing her community in largely semiarid Baringo county — repeated droughts, badly degraded land, and conflict between and among ethnic communities — this tall, 49-year-old widow and mother of three is prospering as a farmer. This season’s bumper harvest is special to her, Chepsat tells Mongabay, because she plans to use the proceeds of her labor to pay to roof and plaster a new house she’s been building for the past two years. “When I settled here, I was mainly planting maize, beans and millet. Although I was earning income to sustain me and my children, I wasn’t making enough to construct a good house like the one I am building,” she says. “Unpredictable rainfall has been a limiting factor, especially for maize.” Making compost on a farm in Baringo County: the Indigenous Women and Girls Initiative’s is training women — and some men — to make organic fertilizer and pesticides. Image by Gilbert Nakweya for Mongabay. Farming on the rise Chepsat learned to farm from her parents and grandparents. But for those older generations of Indigenous Endorois, agriculture was usually a sideline to herding livestock.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

ANTANANARIVO — An international team of biologists has identified a new species of gecko in small forest remnants of southeastern Madagascar. Named Paragehyra tsaranoro, the lizard is microendemic to isolated patches of community-managed forests west of Andringitra National Park, highlighting the remarkable biodiversity found there. Fieldwork to identify the tsaranoro gecko was led by Francesco Belluardo from the Department of Biosciences at the University of Molise in Italy. The team found the new gecko species in small patches of montane forest in Tsaranoro, Ambatomainty and Iantaranomby. This nocturnal and elusive gecko shows a particular preference for rocky habitats, where its mottled brown skin blends almost perfectly with the surrounding stone. Lead study author Francesco Belluardo and co-author Gonçalo Rosa handling expedition samples. Image courtesy of Javier Lobón-Rovira. The forests around these sites are highly fragmented after decades of deforestation. While Andringitra National Park protects much of the massif, it doesn’t include the western slopes, where only a few patches of forest remain. “It’s not certain that its range is limited to these areas,” said Nirhy Rabibisoa, a lecturer and researcher at Madagascar’s University of Mahajanga, who wasn’t involved in the study. “It often happens that a species is initially thought to be microendemic, but later turns up elsewhere,” he added, citing the case of Blaesodactylus antongilensis, a gecko native to the dense rainforests of northeastern Madagascar. Even so, the study’s authors argue that P. tsaranoro should be listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List — a mournful irony…This article was originally published on Mongabay