Mongabay journalist Karla Mendes has received the 2025 John B. Oakes Award from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Mendes was presented with the prestigious prize at an event in New York on Sept. 18 for her investigation documenting a direct connection between increased violence against Indigenous Arariboia leaders and the expansion of illegal cattle ranching in Brazil’s northern Maranhão state. “Today, receiving this award is really an honor. Not for me, but especially to honor the memory of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, all the guardians of the forest, and all the Indigenous people who give their lives to protect their territory,” Mendes said at the award ceremony. Paulo Paulino Guajajara was an Arariboia forest guardian who was killed by loggers in an ambush in 2019. Mongabay journalist Karla Mendes receives the 2025 John B. Oakes award on Sept. 18. Image courtesy of Sirin Samman. This is the first time Mongabay has won the Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, one of the top prizes recognizing exceptional contributions to the public’s understanding of environmental issues. It’s also the first time a Brazilian journalist has received the award. The annual award, founded in 1993, recognizes journalists “whose work meets the highest standards of journalistic excellence” and “makes an exceptional contribution to the public’s understanding of environmental issues.” The award was followed by a talk at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Image courtesy of Sirin Samman. “Congratulations to Rio-based Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes. She has done groundbreaking reporting on illegal cattle ranching on…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