Amid accelerating biodiversity loss and shrinking ecological spaces, it’s easy to lose hope. But every year, there are stories of optimism: of species that are making a comeback after being nearly wiped out.

Here are five such species whose recovery Mongabay reported on in 2025:

Cape vulture

The Cape vulture (Gyps coprotheres), southern Africa’s largest vulture species, saw its conservation status improve from endangered to vulnerable on the IUCN Red List in 2021. The bird’s recovery is thanks to more than five decades of conservation efforts, which include reducing conflict with landowners, mitigating electrocution on power lines, and rehabilitation and captive breeding. However, researchers warn that some colonies are still seeing localized extinctions. (Full story)

Green turtle

After decades of decline, green turtles (Chelonia mydas) are recovering in some parts of the world. The species was reclassified from endangered to least concern on the IUCN Red List this year. The recovery in some regions is thanks to legal protections against international trade and direct hunting, and conservation measures like protecting nesting beaches and the use of turtle excluder devices to keep them from getting entangled in fishing gear. (Full Story)

Campbell’s keeled glass-snail

Campbell’s keeled glass-snail (Advena campbelli) was once presumed extinct. But after discovering a small population of the snail on Norfolk Island, off the Australian mainland, organizations came together to create a snail-breeding program at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo in 2021. There are now more than 800 individuals, of which 340 tagged snails were released into Norfolk Island National Park in July this year. During subsequent monitoring, researchers found the snails are multiplying, which is promising. (Full story)

Bali starling

The Bali starling (Leucopsar rothschildi) was once down to six individual birds in the wild in Indonesia due to habitat loss and poaching of individuals for the songbird trade. But the species is now recovering, partly through Indigenous-led efforts on Nusa Penida Island off Bali. In 2006, all villages on the island agreed to protect 64 captive-bred birds released there by inscribing the protections into their customary laws. The Bali starling population on Nusa Penida grew to about 100 by 2009. Another 420 wild Bali starlings live in Bali Barat National Park as of 2021. (Full story)

Siberian crane

The population of the critically endangered Siberian crane (Leucogeranus leucogeranus) has increased by nearly 50% over the past decade. This boost in the snowy-white crane’s numbers is the result of efforts to secure the migratory bird’s stopover sites along its eastern flyway, or migratory route, between Russia and China, experts told Mongabay. (Full story)

In 2025, Mongabay’s investigative journalism earned international honors for stories exposing environmental crime, corruption, and abuse of both people and the environment. Mongabay journalists uncovered hidden public health risks, schemes to take advantage of Indigenous groups, and took personal risk traveling to underreported regions on nature’s frontlines.

Mongabay’s Karla Mendes won first place in the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism for her investigative report, “Revealed: Illegal cattle ranching booms in Arariboia territory during deadly year for Indigenous Guajajara.” In this three-part series, Mendes uncovered a direct connection between the cattle industry and a spike in violent crime against local Indigenous Guajajara people in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory of the Brazilian Amazon. Federal prosecutors said they will use Mendes’s reporting as evidence in a trial for the murder of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, a forest guardian allegedly killed by loggers in 2019.

Contributor Gloria Pallares won in the Innovation & Investigative Journalism category of the International Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award, and received an honorable mention from the Trace Prize. Both honors were for her story “False claims of U.N. backing see Indigenous groups cede forest rights for sketchy finance.” Pallares’s investigation dug into false claims by entities in Latin America that they had the backing of the U.N. to convince Indigenous groups to give up economic rights to their forests for decades to come.

The Rio Grande do Sul Press Association awarded second place for national reporting to Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, Philip Jacobson and Fernanda Wenzel, alongside the Pulitzer Center’s Kuang Keng Kuek Ser, for their report, “That ‘fish’ on the menu? In Brazil’s schools and prisons, it’s often shark.” The investigation found the Brazilian government is buying shark meat for consumption in public institutions including schools, hospitals and elder care facilities. The report cites concerns that shark meat, which can be high in toxic mercury, is potentially dangerous to serve in large quantities, especially for children. A follow-up report also raised concerns that endangered angelshark species were being sold under the blanket term peixe anjo, often without the knowledge of the people buying it.

Mongabay’s Sonam Lama Hyolmo and Latoya Abulu won first place for best international Indigenous coverage from the Indigenous Media Awards. Their investigation, “Reporting confirms alleged Indigenous rights violations in Nepal hydropower project,” underscored complaints by Nepalese yak herders that a hydropower company had fabricated information in its environmental impact assessment, forged signatures, didn’t properly consult the community, and proposed a site that was 90 times larger than what it had received approval for.

Mongabay’s Aimee Gabay won third place for best coverage of Indigenous communities at the Indigenous Media Awards for her four-part series focusing on the struggles that the Yaqui tribe faces for defending its water rights in Sonora, Mexico.

Banner image: Indigenous youth playing soccer in the rain in northeastern Peru. Image by Gloria Pallares for Mongabay.

Within a forested limestone landscape of Papua New Guinea lives a shy, striking bird that’s new to science. This bird is also incredibly rare and may already be endangered, according to a recent study.

Researchers have photographed fewer than 10 individuals of the newly described hooded jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa urrissia) in about 10 years of monitoring — all within a 100-hectare (250-acre) area of Iagifu Ridge, located in the Agogo mountain range of Papua New Guinea.

Extrapolating from these figures, “we estimate that Iagifu Ridge may support some 50-100 individuals,” Iain Woxvold, study co-author from the Australian Museum Research Institute, told Mongabay by email. “However, an accurate estimate will require further research, and the actual number may well be fewer.”

Jewel-babblers are ground-dwelling birds with distinctive black masks and white throats or cheeks. Four species were known until now, all from the island of New Guinea.

Woxvold and colleagues first chanced upon the hooded jewel-babbler in 2017. They had set up camera traps to survey biodiversity on Iagifu Ridge, and among the images were those of two birds on the forest floor with distinctive coloration. “We were fairly certain it was a new taxon in 2017 … However, at that stage we were still not 100% sure that it was a new species,” Woxvold said.

More of these birds turned up during subsequent camera-trapping surveys in 2019 and later. “It was strange and wonderful to see them in those early photographs!” Woxvold said. “In 2022, we also set a video camera nearby, and were extremely lucky to film a sequence of a calling male.”

The researchers compared the birds in the images and video with museum specimens and field photographs of other jewel-babbler species. The male and female hooded jewel-babblers exhibited notably different feather colors and patterns from those of the other species, confirming them as new to science.

Conventionally, taxonomic descriptions of new-to-science species require specimens — one or more killed individuals — that are deposited in museums as a reference for future comparisons. But the hooded jewel-babbler has been described solely on the basis of camera-trap images and video.

A combination of factors “make it both acceptable and important to describe the species without a specimen,” Woxvold said.

These include the difficulty of capturing the elusive bird, he said. Its only known population on Iagifu Ridge is also tiny, and the area is subject to various threats like domestic cats and dogs, climate change impacts, and habitat fragmentation from roads and infrastructure for petroleum production facilities, the authors write.

“[G]iven available data on the species’ status and distribution, we feel that taking a whole animal specimen from the only known population would be unethical on conservation grounds,” Woxvold said. “For these reasons, we felt strongly that naming the species now is both taxonomically well-founded and important to encourage appropriate research and conservation action.”

Banner image: Newly described hooded jewel-babblers (Ptilorrhoa urrissia) from Papua New Guinea. Image courtesy of I. Woxvold/B. Gamui.

In 2025, Mongabay’s team of multimedia journalists won international journalism prizes for audio, visual and digital storytelling. The content they produced range from an immersive audio series exploring bioacoustics, to a visually rich investigation into organized crime, and a video on reviving Indigenous culture.

Mongabay strives to meet people where they are and make high-quality reporting available to as many people as possible. These awards are a recognition of the type of multimedia work that Mongabay plans to expand upon over the coming year.

Digital  

Mongabay Latam won two major awards: first place in the large outlet category of the Global Shining Light Award, and first place for digital storytelling in the Future of Media award. The winning story for both awards, “Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories,” found that 67 airstrips have been carved into the Peruvian Amazon for drug flights. The team used satellite imagery and AI to identify potential sites for these airstrips, then spent a year interviewing more than 60 sources and traveling to the region to ground-truth the findings. What emerged was a data-rich picture of the deadly toll that narcotrafficking has had on Indigenous communities and the forest. The investigation found that at least three reserves set aside for Indigenous people living in voluntary isolation have been inundated with six illegal airstrips.

Written

Mongabay’s Malavika Vyawahare was one of 12 recipients of the 2025 Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership (SEAL) award. The award is given to journalists whose “work has illuminated the urgent realities of climate change and environmental justice around the world,” the SEAL website notes. Vyawahare’s 2025 work includes stories about a Qatari-backed project to build luxury accommodation near a giant tortoise habitat in Seychelles, the dangers of PFAS “forever chemicals” in breast milk in Africa, and fires that threaten rare lemurs in Madagascar. 

Podcast

A Mongabay India podcast produced by Shreya Dasgupta, Kartik Chandramouli and Abhijit Shylanath collected three awards; First place for regional audio from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), first place for best science and medical podcast from the Podcast Publisher Awards, and first place for best produced science show from the India Audio Summit Awards. The team won for their three-part series, Wild Frequencies, which explores how researchers in India are using bioacoustics to locate, monitor and better understand the country’s wildlife.

Video

Contributors Matthew Reichel and Robyn Huang won second place for best coverage of Indigenous communities at the Indigenous Media Awards. Their short film, “Youth leaders revive Indigenous seafood harvesting heritage,” follows young Indigenous people in Canada reclaiming cultural traditions by freediving for seafood that they provide to the community. “It’s food for the soul and it’s … food to actually eat,” Brycen George, coordinator of the Ucluelet Warrior Program, told Mongabay.

Banner image: Seema Lokhandwala records elephant calls at Kaziranga National Park. Image courtesy of Vijay Bedi.

Rarely do species presumed extinct reappear with renewed hope for a better future. But researchers in Australia not only discovered a wild population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail on Australia’s Norfolk Island in 2020 — they’ve now bred the snail in captivity and recently released more than 300 individuals back into the wild, where they’re multiplying.

This translocation, according to the Australian Museum, is the first large-scale reintroduction of a snail species in Australia.

Officially, Campbell’s keeled glass-snail (Advena campbelli) is still listed as extinct on the IUCN Red List, based on a 1996 assessment. In Australia, it’s considered critically endangered.

In 2020, Isabel Hyman and colleagues from the Australian Museum, with the help of a Norfolk Island resident, confirmed there was still a small population of the snail living in a sheltered rainforest valley in Norfolk Island National Park.

To boost its survival prospects, organizations including Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, Norfolk Island National Park, Western Sydney University and the Australian Museum started collaborated on a snail-breeding program at Taronga Zoo in 2021.

The teams knew very little about the snail’s life history, diet, behavior, or what negatively impacts it, Hyman told Mongabay by email. But with “a lot of careful, painstaking work and record keeping from the husbandry team,” they began seeing progress, she said.

The zoo-bred population of Campbell’s keeled glass-snail has now grown to more than 800 individuals. In June, the teams flew about 600 snails to Norfolk Island, which sits in the South Pacific, closer to New Zealand than to the Australian mainland. A month later, they released 340 of the snails, each marked with an ID label, into a part of the national park where the species was once found.

The conditions of the release area closely resemble the ones where the wild population lives, Hyman said. “None of our chosen release sites overlap with the wild population. This was intentional; in order to mitigate the risk of extinction for the species, we felt it better to establish our second population in a different area of the National Park.”

The team prepared the release area by installing rodent traps and cameras to monitor predator levels. It also has a sprinkler system, Hyman said, for use when conditions become dangerously dry for the snails.

Since the release, the team has observed several newborn snails. “We realize that it is still early days and that the population needs more time to become fully established,” Hyman said. “However, the fact that we are seeing live snails including some neonates at the site is promising. We have not seen many signs of rodent predation, which is also promising.”

Hyman added they’re planning another reintroduction in June 2026 at the same site, “to bolster the new population and give it the best possible chance of becoming established.”

Banner image: A Campbell’s keeled glass-snail with a number tag. Image courtesy of Junn Kitt Foon.

The guiding star at Mongabay isn’t pageviews or clicks; it’s meaningful impact. As 2025 draws to a close, we look back at some of the ways Mongabay’s journalism made a difference this year.

Empowering Indigenous and local communities

• A Mongabay Latam investigation found 67 illegal airstrips were cut into the Peruvian Amazon to transport drugs, resulting in deforestation and a surge in violence against local Indigenous groups. The report was republished by national news outlets, bringing broader attention to the threats against an often marginalized group.
• National media also picked up a Mongabay story about an Indigenous community protecting a biodiversity corridor in Colombia and a report about an Indigenous group in Mexico protecting mangroves from an ammonia facility.

From newsroom to classroom

• Mongabay Kids was named a media partner by the U.S.-based nonprofit Lemur Conservation Network “to create and share content about lemurs and Madagascar” every October during the World Lemur Festival.
• A French article about a great ape census in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now being used as educational material for conservation stakeholders.

Serving as evidence

• An analysis, made at the request of Mongabay, found two carbon credit projects in the Brazilian Amazon are linked to illegal timber laundering. The Brazilian federal police have since indicted the people identified in Mongabay’s reporting.
• Following an investigation into the Brazilian government’s practice of purchasing shark meat for public institutions including schools and hospitals, members of Brazil’s Congress said they would call for a parliamentary hearing and Brazil’s National Environmental Council recommended a government ban on shark fin exports. The report was also cited as part of a class-action civil suit to ban federal public institutions from issuing tenders to purchase shark meat.
• Brazilian authorities used Mongabay’s award-winning coverage of illegal cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon to launch an operation to remove invaders from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory. The reporting will also be used in a court case against loggers accused of killing a local Indigenous leader.
• A recent Mongabay investigation in collaboration with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) found a rise in tourist shops in Laos illegally selling wildlife products including rhino horn, elephant ivory and pangolin scales. Since the report, WWF notified GI-TOC it had begun warning visitors about the consequences of purchasing illegal wildlife products.

Community engagement

Of the more than 870 impacts that Mongabay logged in 2025, many spurred community engagement and support.

• For example, Mongabay’s podcast interviews with authors of environment books inspired some people to start community book clubs.
• Another story resulted in additional funding for marine protected areas in Ghana.

These positive outcomes are what motivate our journalism. As Mongabay CEO and founder Rhett Butler puts it, “When credible information circulates freely, it holds powerful interests accountable, equips decision-makers with evidence, and gives frontline communities the tools to defend their rights and ecosystems.”

Banner image of a rainbow over a forest in Sabah, Malaysia, by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.