Kawsay Biological Station Earns Protective status
After a long evaluation by Peru’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation Allies’ partner Kawsay Biological Station has been formally recognized as an Other Effective area-based Conservation Measure (OECM)—a designation that places its 437-acre reserve on the global registry of lands recognized for delivering meaningful conservation outcomes. “This year, after a long evaluation process by the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment, our area has been recognized as an OECM,” Kawsay’s team shared. “It reflects our recognition of the area’s inherent value and the management we’ve put in place to protect it, confirming our commitment to conservation and supporting the 30×30 target.” Why The Designation Matters For decades, the world’s Protected Area system has been measured almost entirely by national parks and government reserves. The OECM framework, developed under the Convention on Biological Diversity, broadens that picture to include private reserves, Indigenous and community-conserved lands, and other governance models that deliver effective conservation in practice—whether or not they fit the traditional definition of a Protected Area. The recognition also matters for something larger than any single reserve. The global 30×30 goal—the international commitment to safeguard at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030—depends heavily on OECMs. Without them, no realistic accounting reaches 30%. With them, locally led reserves like Kawsay become part of the global conservation balance sheet. Kawsay is now listed on the World Database on Protected Areas, the international system used to track conservation coverage worldwide, and its outcomes will be monitored alongside thousands of other sites. For a small biological station in Peru working at the intersection of research, capacity building, and on-the-ground wildlife conservation, the designation is both a recognition and a commitment. It is one more piece of evidence that locally led conservation, properly resourced, can stand alongside the world’s most established protected landscapes.
How A Shuar Community Used Science To Keep Their Forest Standing
Three years ago, a Shuar Indigenous community in southern Ecuador set out to defend their forest with science. They now have the data to prove it worked. The Maikiuants, a Shuar community in the gold-mining frontier of Morona Santiago province, have spent the last three years working with Ecoforensic and the University of Azuay on a pilot project that paired Indigenous land governance with rigorous biological monitoring. Conservation Allies was a key funder of the work. As that project wraps up, the community’s paraecologists and their academic collaborators have arrived at a single quantitative finding that summarizes the rest: more than 80% of the Maikiuants’ territory remains in primary forest. In a region under constant pressure from expanding mining concessions, that number is not typical. It is what success looks like. What The Pilot Proved The framework was simple in concept and complex in execution. The community’s life plans—the locally authored documents that codify how Shuar territory is used, managed, and defended—provided the governance backbone. Trained paraecologists from inside the community ran the science: drone mapping, camera trap surveys, biodiversity assessments, and documentation of land-use change. Two graduate theses, including one from the University of Sussex, are now being developed into academic papers, and the work is positioned to anchor future Rights of Nature legal cases under Ecuador’s constitution. The takeaway, according to Ecoforensic’s founding director Mika Peck: when Indigenous governance and ecological evidence are built side by side, both grow stronger. The life plans direct what the science measures. The science makes the life plans defensible in court. A Research Center On The Way The most consequential outcome of the three-year pilot isn’t going onto a final report. It’s being put into action. In 2027, the Maikiuants and their partners will begin co-designing and building the Shuar Arutam Scientific and Cultural Center—a permanent research station inside the territory designed to host transdisciplinary work that bridges Indigenous knowledge and academic science. The Center is a significant step for the Shuar communities, opening new opportunities for higher education, cultural continuity, and long-term ecological research in one of the most understudied stretches of the western Amazon. Conservation Allies’ funding of the pilot phase made the transition to the new Center possible—the next three years will be shaped by the community and academic partners on the ground. What’s Next The immediate next step is smaller in scope, larger in implication. With Conservation Allies’ support, the Maikiuants are expanding a camera trap program across the territory: a rigorous baseline of population estimates for Jaguars and other large mammals, paired with documentation of incursions onto Shuar land. The conservation value of that data is obvious. The legal value may be larger. Under Ecuador’s constitutional Rights of Nature framework, ecosystems themselves can be represented in legal proceedings—but cases turn on evidence. A multi-year camera trap dataset showing a stable Jaguar population is admissible proof that the territory functions as a viable ecosystem, and that mining incursions are damaging something the constitution protects. Looking Ahead The political landscape in Ecuador has shifted, and the Maikiuants’ work is happening under conditions that are anything but stable. But the underlying model—community-authored life plans, paraecologist-led monitoring, university partnerships, and Rights of Nature litigation—is now too well-evidenced to dismiss. The first three years answered the question of whether it works. The next three will determine how far it scales.
Madagascar Releases Landmark Scientific Roadmap to Protect Its Wildlife
Madagascar’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD) is releasing the findings of a landmark scientific workshop that will guide the country’s ambitious plan to create new Protected Areas – an effort supported by Conservation Allies, Re:wild, Hempel Foundation, Rainforest Trust, and Campaign for Nature. In late March 2026, 70 participants – including 50 scientists representing seven major taxonomic groups, 70% of them Malagasy – completed the country’s first comprehensive scientific re-prioritization of terrestrial biodiversity since 1995. The result is a consensus map covering roughly 44.5 million acres of priority land—about one-third of Madagascar—providing government, conservation organizations, communities, and funders with a shared scientific foundation for determining what to protect and where to act first. Within that area, the workshop identified priority zones for new and expanded Protected Areas, ecological corridors to reconnect fragmented landscapes, and for the first time, freshwater ecosystems critical for water security and biodiversity. Madagascar covers just 0.4% of the world’s land surface but harbors approximately 5% of all species on Earth, more than 90% of which occur nowhere else. One acre of forest lost in Madagascar has a greater impact on global biodiversity than almost anywhere on the planet. The last time scientists systematically mapped where protection was most needed was in 1995. Thirty-one years later, scientific knowledge has advanced dramatically while pressures on biodiversity have intensified, making this moment both overdue and urgent. “Madagascar has demonstrated extraordinary leadership by moving from commitment to implementation,” said Dr. Paul Salaman, President of Conservation Allies. “This workshop brought together the country’s leading scientists to answer a fundamental question: where should we focus our efforts to secure the greatest conservation impact? The result is the most comprehensive scientific roadmap for terrestrial biodiversity conservation ever produced for Madagascar, and it gives government, communities, NGOs, and donors a common blueprint for action.” “In my years working in Madagascar, I have never seen an exercise of this scale or rigor,” said Professor Lily Arison Rene de Roland, lead scientist for the bird group at the workshop. “The gaps we identified are just as important as the sites themselves. They are an honest map of where the next discoveries are waiting to be made.” “What stood out to me from the workshop was not just the science, but who was doing it,” said Dr. Steven Goodman, MacArthur Field Biologist at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and Association Vahatra. “A generation of Malagasy scientists now leads this work, building on decades of international collaboration to produce something that is genuinely their own. That transition in scientific leadership is as significant as the findings in this report.” In February 2026, the Government of Madagascar designated 21 new Protected Areas covering 4.5 million acres, bringing the national Protected Area network to 22 million acres. In April 2026, Prime Minister Mamitiana Rajaonarison formally reaffirmed his government’s commitment to the 30×30 Biodiversity Plan – a global goal to protect 30% of the planet by 2030. Through periods of political uncertainty, Madagascar’s commitment to this work has remained steadfast. “For the first time in more than three decades, we know exactly where to focus our efforts to save Madagascar’s terrestrial biodiversity,” said Alain Liva Raharijaona, 30×30 Coordinator at MEDD. “This workshop has given us that clarity, grounded in the best available science and collectively owned by Madagascar. Now we act on it.” The findings now feed directly into implementation. The highest-confidence priority areas will be fast-tracked for protection over the next two years, while targeted biological surveys begin filling knowledge gaps that will guide conservation action throughout the remainder of the decade. The workshop was convened and organized by Conservation Allies in partnership with Madagascar’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD), with financial support from Conservation Allies, Re:wild, Hempel Foundation, Rainforest Trust, and Campaign for Nature.
How a Guatemalan Rainforest Started Paying Its Protectors
In the northwestern reaches of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, Sierra del Lacandón National Park covers some of the most intact lowland tropical forest left in Central America. It is home to Jaguars, Scarlet macaws, Baird’s tapirs, and Morelet’s crocodiles, and it sits inside the largest contiguous protected forest north of the Amazon. It is also under sustained threat. Forest fires, illegal occupation, and land conversion have erased thousands of acres in recent years, and the conventional tools of conservation—patrols, prosecutions, fire response—can only go so far when the underlying economics push local people toward clearing the land rather than keeping it standing. This year, that calculus shifted. Conservation Allies’ partner, Defensores de la Naturaleza, which co-manages Sierra Lacandón alongside Guatemala’s National Council of Protected Areas, confirmed that more than 135,000 acres of the Park have been formally recognized under Guatemala’s Emissions Reduction Program and folded into the “Lacandón: Forests for Life” project. The recognition spans community agreements, state-owned areas, and private property—a structure deliberately designed to bring the full range of local landholders into a single conservation framework. Translated into practical terms: forest protection now generates payments to the people doing the protecting. What 135,000 Acres of Recognition Actually Means To date, the program has paid 204 people inside the recognized area for their conservation work. 42% of them are women. Both numbers reflect a deliberate effort: pay the people closest to the forest, and make sure women are central to the model rather than peripheral to it. The financial structure of the community-based portion is built to reinforce that. 55% of resources go to conservation activities and community projects; the remaining 45% is distributed directly to community members involved in conservation. Other areas of the park—not necessarily community-managed—were also recognized under the program, opening the door to new financial resources for management, protection, and rapid response in the years ahead. The Wildfire Backstop Recognition under an emissions program is meaningful only if the forest is still standing. That’s where Conservation Allies’ support has focused. In Sierra Lacandón, we’ve supported wildfire mitigation and patrol coordination across the park—the unglamorous, year-round work that prevents a single dry-season blaze from undoing years of community agreements and ecosystem recovery. The combination is what makes the model functional. Fire prevention and law enforcement protect the asset. The Emissions Reduction Program pays for keeping it intact. Community participation ensures the people closest to the forest have a real stake in its survival. A Model Worth Watching Sierra Lacandón sits at the intersection of some of the hardest problems in conservation: vast scale, contested land, real poverty, and ecosystems that simply cannot be replaced. The breakthrough at the park isn’t that any one of these problems has been solved. It’s that a workable structure now exists for confronting them together. For the Jaguars, macaws, and tapirs of the Maya Biosphere—and for the families now stewarding their habitat—this is what a future looks like.
The Somali Sengi Was Never Lost—Just Out of Sight
The article below was written by Houssein Rayaleh, a Djiboutian field biologist with Conservation Allies’ new partner, Association Djibouti Nature. In 2019, Houssein led the expedition that rediscovered the Somali sengi after more than fifty years out of sight of international science, and he is co-author of the PeerJ paper that introduced the species to the world under its new genus name, Galegeeska. What follows is his account, in his own words. For more than fifty years, the Somali sengi—a tiny mouse-sized creature with a long, curious nose, closer in kinship to elephants than to shrews—was thought lost to the world. Yet in Djibouti, and across the wider Horn of Africa where Somali communities live, it was never forgotten. Known as wali sandheer or walo sandheer, “the one with the long nose,” it lived in the whispers of nomadic tales, a shadow in the memory of communities who always knew it was there. Then, in 2019, hope took form. A collaborative field expedition between Djiboutian wildlife specialists from Association Djibouti Nature and American sengi experts from the Duke Lemur Center and the California Academy of Sciences was coordinated. My colleagues, Steven and Galen, thought it would be difficult to locate the sengis in Djibouti. But since I (Houssein Rayaleh, Field Biologist at Association Djibouti Nature) knew that sengis lived in Djibouti, particularly in the Djalelo Protected Area in the Arta region, I was confident in our first target site for trapping. On the very first night in the field one of our traps revealed what the world thought it had lost: the Somali sengi, alive and resilient. DNA studies later confirmed that it belongs to a new genus, Galegeeska—a name that refers to the Horn of Africa, where the species is endemic, and that also honors the late Galen Rathbun, the world’s foremost sengi expert. Rathbun, who was part of the team that rediscovered the species in Djibouti, passed away only a few months before the publication of the PeerJ paper on the Somali sengi. The Somali sengi (Galegeeska revoilii) was first described in northern Somalia—today’s so-called Somaliland—and was long thought by the international scientific community to be restricted to that region, until its rediscovery in Djibouti in 2019 expanded its known distribution range. I had regularly encountered the Somali sengi, but I was unaware of its conservation status and taxonomy, or that the international scientific community had lost sight of it. With this rediscovery, Djibouti shone brightly on the global map of biodiversity. But this was more than science. It was a story of pride, of resilience, of ancestral knowledge meeting modern discovery. While the world had written the sengi off as extinct, Somali communities in Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya carried its memory like a flame. Its return reminds us that nature still holds secrets, waiting for those who care enough to listen. The few known natural habitats of the Somali sengi in Djibouti are increasingly under pressure from activities such as the extraction of construction materials, including basalt rubble that may serve as shelters for the species; electricity line development projects, where construction work disrupts and destroys many of its shelters; the concentration of nomadic herds and their livestock around its known distribution sites, as secondary villages attract more former pastoralists; and climate-driven degradation, including recurrent and intensifying droughts, which cause permanent disturbances linked to the movement of herders in search of grazing lands. Without such measures, emerging threats such as the expansion of development infrastructure, quarrying, overgrazing, climate change, and predation by domestic animals—particularly feral cats associated with the growth of new villages and human settlements within the species’ known range—will continue to threaten the survival of sengi. These settlements generate domestic waste and introduce domestic cats that may breed with wild cats, producing hybrid cats that invade habitats and could further compromise the fragile survival of the Somali sengi. Although the species is still listed as Data Deficient on the IUCN Red List, experts from the IUCN Species Survival Commission Afrotheria Specialist Group recommend reassessment to better reflect its true vulnerability. To ensure this rediscovery becomes a lasting survival story, three actions are essential: urgent field surveys across all potential natural habitats to assess population size, distribution, and status; comprehensive threat assessments; and awareness-raising campaigns targeting communities, government agencies, civil society organizations, and conservation partners. And the story does not end there. In 2023, the cheetah—absent for more than thirty years—was once again confirmed in Djibouti. That same year, the elegant lesser kudu was also documented for the first time in the nation’s natural history. Each rediscovery is a heartbeat, proof that Djibouti is not a barren land defined by military bases, but a sanctuary of hidden wonders. Association Djibouti Nature, modest in resources yet rich in dedication, has carried these treasures into the light. With greater support, more secrets can be unveiled, more species safeguarded, more pride restored. The Somali sengi, the cheetah, the lesser kudu—they are not just animals. They are symbols of resilience, of hope, of the fragile beauty that binds us to the earth.
Two Birds, New Hope: Eastern Bhutan Discovery Expands the Range of the White-bellied Heron
Just 49 White-bellied herons remain on Earth. For decades, scientists believed this towering, slate-gray bird—standing nearly four feet tall—was confined to a narrow stretch of river valleys in central and western Bhutan. Then, in 2025, a field team surveying eastern Bhutan saw something no one expected: two individuals in a region where the species had never before been recorded. It was a discovery that did more than add to a global count—it redrew the conservation map for one of the world’s rarest birds. A Species on the Edge The White-bellied heron (Ardea insignis) is the rarest heron species on the planet and among the most endangered birds globally. Once found along river systems stretching from the eastern Himalayas into Myanmar, it has disappeared from most of its historical range. Hydropower development, river disturbance, unregulated mining, and human encroachment have steadily eroded the remote, fast-flowing riverine habitats it depends on. Today, Bhutan is the species’ last stronghold. According to the most recent global assessment, just 49 birds remain worldwide: 31 in Bhutan, 9 in India, 8 in Myanmar, and 1 in China. Bhutan’s 2026 count—26 wild and 5 in captive care—marks the highest number recorded in more than two decades of monitoring. For years, the Royal Society for Protection of Nature (RSPN), a Conservation Allies partner, has led efforts to monitor and protect the White-bellied heron, working across some of the most rugged and inaccessible landscapes in the Himalayas. Every individual matters. Every nesting site is critical. And until now, conservation strategies have been built around a relatively limited known range. The discovery in eastern Bhutan changes that. It suggests the species may occupy a broader landscape than previously understood—opening the door to new surveys, new habitat protections, and the possibility that additional, undiscovered individuals may still persist. At RSPN’s March 2026 international conference in Thimphu, the eastern range expansion was identified as one of the most urgent new frontiers for conservation action. Restoring the Rivers They Depend On Discoveries like this do not happen in isolation. They are the result of sustained, on-the-ground conservation. In 2025, RSPN restored 31 acres of critical wetland habitat—stabilizing riverbanks, improving foraging areas, and reducing human disturbance in the river corridors where herons hunt for fish and amphibians. These targeted efforts are part of a broader program that has restored roughly 135 acres of degraded forest in heron habitats since 2021 and helped designate nearly 3,800 acres as official Key Biodiversity Areas. Protecting the heron also means protecting the people who share its landscape. RSPN’s community programs have cut crop damage by more than 80 percent across 17 villages using electric and solar fencing, built 15 climate-resilient water supply systems, and helped local families boost incomes by more than 30 percent through homestays, ecotourism, and climate-smart agriculture. At the same time, RSPN established 20 Nature Clubs across Bhutan, engaging students in hands-on conservation and fostering a new generation of environmental stewards. In a country where people and nature remain deeply interconnected, this investment in youth is essential to securing the future of species like the White-bellied heron. With support from Conservation Allies, RSPN is now expanding both habitat protection and survey efforts—building on this discovery to better understand where the species persists and how best to safeguard it. What Comes Next In March 2026, RSPN convened the second-ever White-bellied Heron International Conference, bringing together experts from all four range countries—Bhutan, India, Myanmar, and China—for the first such gathering in over a decade. Participants committed to standardizing surveys, launching a joint regional conservation project, and expanding captive breeding, with a goal of releasing satellite-tagged birds from RSPN’s Tsirang breeding center beginning in the coming years. Following the eastern Bhutan sighting, RSPN is now planning expanded surveys across previously unexplored river systems. Each new observation has the potential to reshape conservation priorities—identifying critical habitats, informing protection strategies, and guiding future investment. For a species once thought to be slipping irreversibly toward extinction, this moment offers something rare: renewed possibility. The discovery of two birds may seem small. But for the White-bellied heron, it signals something far larger—that with the right science, local leadership, and sustained support, even the most endangered species can surprise us. The next chapter for the White-bellied heron is still being written. With continued commitment, it can be a story not of loss, but of recovery.
Conservation Allies Launches Bold Commitment to Save Madagascar’s Protected Areas
Tragically, 90% of Madagascar’s primary forest has been lost, yet the 109 terrestrial Protected Areas that remain hold the densest concentrations of endemic and threatened species anywhere on Earth. Yet these last bastions of biodiversity are under immense pressure from illegal logging, gold mining, and politically driven clearing for commercial agriculture. Recognizing what is at stake for both Madagascar and the planet, Conservation Allies has already mobilized more than $7 million to support over 85% of all terrestrial Protected Areas in Madagascar—93 protected areas in total. This announcement formalizes the first phase of a landmark five-year commitment to support 38 local conservation organizations that manage Protected Areas across the country. What The Funding Will Do The funding is designed to strengthen the protection of Madagascar’s Protected Areas in two strategic and interconnected ways. Continuous coverage by Conservation Brigades—composed of defense and security forces protecting environment ministry agents and Protected Area managers—will help deter illegal logging, mining, forest fires, and wildlife trafficking, while safeguarding watersheds and Critically Endangered species. At the same time, Conservation Healthcare Brigades are being established in communities surrounding dozens of Protected Areas facing the greatest pressure. These brigades will expand access to medical and family planning services for rural populations whose long-term stewardship is essential to the future of Madagascar’s forests. A New Strategic Partnership This year’s support initiative was launched during a ceremony marking the signing of a Memorandum of Collaboration between Conservation Allies and the Madagascar Biodiversity and Protected Areas Foundation (FAPBM), formalizing a strategic partnership focused on long-term financing for Madagascar’s Protected Areas. This MoU was signed in the presence of representatives of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Développement (MEDD), reflecting a shared commitment between government institutions and conservation organizations to strengthen the protection and sustainable management of Madagascar’s protected areas. “This financial mobilization marks a major milestone in strengthening sustainable financing for Protected Areas in Madagascar,” said Dr. Rija Ranaivoarison, Executive Director of FAPBM. “It reflects the trust of our partners and helps consolidate the efforts undertaken in the field for the benefit of biodiversity and communities.” Dr. Paul Salaman, President of Conservation Allies added: “Madagascar is the most irreplaceable biodiversity hotspot on Earth, yet its protected areas remain dangerously underfunded relative to the scale of the threats they face. Our commitment reflects our belief that long-term conservation success depends on long-term investment in local organizations, frontline protection, and the well-being of communities living alongside these forests.” This commitment recognizes that conservation in a country like Madagascar cannot be sustained by short funding cycles alone. It requires long-term investment in the people, institutions, and field operations that hold the entire system together. That is the work Conservation Allies is committed to supporting.
How Ukraine’s Conservationists Won 43 Battles For Nature
When bombs are falling, biodiversity doesn’t usually make the priority list. Since 2022, as the Russian invasion has reshaped every aspect of life, pressure on Ukraine’s natural landscapes has intensified. Illegal logging, speculative development, and opportunistic land conversion have accelerated under the cover of crisis. For the Ukraine Nature Conservation Group (UNCG), a partner of Conservation Allies and Member of IUCN, this has made their mission more urgent—not less. In 2025, their response was extraordinary. UNCG secured: 43 legal victories blocking harmful development projects. Ten new Protected Areas established, covering over 2,470 acres. Nearly 250,000 species observations recorded in the global GBIF biodiversity database—one of the largest annual contributions in Eastern Europe. And perhaps most remarkably, UNCG’s efforts accounted for 34% of all new Protected Areas established across the entire country in 2025. These are not just conservation wins. They are acts of defense. A forest burns in Donetsk Oblast after Russian shelling. UNCG documents a parallel toll of war: forests cleared, wetlands drained, habitats fragmented. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine (CC BY 4.0) Conservation As Resistance For UNCG, protecting nature during wartime is inseparable from protecting the country’s future. While global attention focuses—rightly—on the human toll of war, the environmental damage unfolding in parallel could shape Ukraine for decades. Forests are being illegally cleared. Wetlands are being drained. Habitats are fragmented just as species face mounting stress from conflict. UNCG has responded by turning to the law. Their 43 courtroom wins in 2025 didn’t just block individual projects—they established legal precedents that will protect Ukrainian landscapes for decades to come. One of the most significant milestones was securing protected status for Chorny Lis, a long-contested landscape now preserved for future generations. European bison in Skole Beskydy National Park—among the protected Ukrainian landscapes UNCG defends and helps expand. Photo: Rbrechko / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) Building A Record Of Life Even under sirens and blackouts, UNCG’s scientists have continued the painstaking work of documenting Ukraine’s biodiversity. Their 249,564 species observations added to GBIF in 2025 represent one of the largest single-year contributions from any conservation organization in Eastern Europe. A brown bear in the Ukrainian Carpathians. UNCG’s scientists added 249,564 species observations to the global GBIF biodiversity database in 2025—among the largest single-year contributions in Eastern Europe. Photo: Larisa Uhryn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) These observations are more than data points—they are proof. Proof of what exists.Proof of what is at risk.Proof that these places matter. This growing body of evidence will be critical when the war ends, providing the scientific foundation for rebuilding and strengthening Ukraine’s conservation system. A Model Of Perseverance UNCG operates underconditions that would haltmost organizations: air raid warnings, disrupted infrastructure, constant uncertainty. Yet their team continues—mapping habitats, filing cases, standing in defense of places that cannot defend themselves. Their work challenges a common assumption: that conservation can wait. In Ukraine, it cannot. And thanks to UNCG, it isn’t. A wetland in Ukraine—the kind of habitat UNCG defends from drainage, illegal logging, and speculative development. DONATE TO UNCG
How A Local Hero Changed the Fate of a Rainforest
Luis Alberto Pérez Martínez—Don Luis, as he’s known locally—has spent years learning the trails of Sierra Llorona. As a park ranger in Colón province, Panama, he knows every trail, every canopy gap, every sound the forest makes. So when the sound changed one February morning—engines and chainsaws where there should have been birdsong—he knew something was wrong. “The first thing I saw was a crew cutting down trees,” he recounts. The workers claimed to be government personnel sent to begin road construction through the forest. Don Luis acted quickly: he photographed the site, recorded GPS coordinates, and contacted Guido Berguido, Executive Director of Conservation Allies partner ADOPTA. The engineer ordered the logging to stop—but the next day, the crews returned. With Guido’s backing, Don Luis took the case to Panama City. A month later, ADOPTA mounted a protest at the site that stretched nearly two weeks and held firm until a court temporarily suspended the project. Why Sierra Llorona Matters Sierra Llorona is no ordinary forest. Nestled between the Panama Canal and the Atlantic slope of Colón province, its ancient primary rainforest shelters Jaguars, Harpy eagles, Baird’s tapirs, and the Critically Endangered Limosa harlequin frog. It also forms a critical link in the Mesoamerican Biodiversity Corridor, connecting Panama’s Soberanía and Chagres national parks and serving as a vital passage for wildlife moving across the region. The road in question is the Caribbean Corridor—a $91 million highway planned to run 17.6 miles along the Colón coast, with the stated goal of boosting tourism and local commerce. Road construction threatens Sierra Llorona not only through direct habitat loss, but by opening the forest to illegal hunting, logging, gold prospecting, and invasive species. Panama law requires a full Environmental Impact Assessment for projects of this scale—but the highway was deliberately divided into multiple sections, each evaluated separately, which critics argued was designed to make the project’s impacts appear more moderate than they actually were when considered as a whole. A Hard-Won Victory The court suspension that ADOPTA’s protest helped force didn’t cancel the construction of the road, but it did create the opening for something larger. With the project under legal scrutiny and public attention focused on the region, ADOPTA has been working with Panama’s Ministry of Environment to make the case that the existing Protected Area is far too small to withstand the pressures a new highway will bring—and conversations about significantly expanding protections in the region are ongoing. For Don Luis, who raised the alarm alone on a trail that February morning, it is a hard-won start, and a reminder that acting quickly, even in the face of uncertainty, can change the course of what is protected and what is lost.
How Camera Traps Are Shedding Light On The Secretive Leopards Of South Africa’s Cape Mountains
When camera traps photographed a female leopard nicknamed “Stella” on South Africa’s Simonsberg mountain in 2010, researchers had no idea she’d still be there 15 years later. But she is—and the reason researchers know this isn’t just from their own surveys. It’s because our partner, the Cape Leopard Trust (CLT), has built a citizen science network where private landowners across South Africa’s Cape Fold Mountains run their own camera traps and submit their observations to the CLT’s leopard data portal—a collaboration that’s proven invaluable for tracking individual leopards over time. Late in 2025, the CLT completed a five-month camera trap survey across the Boland Mountain Complex (BMC) with support from Conservation Allies. The survey identified 38 individual leopards—including at least two females accompanied by cubs—across 965 square miles of rugged mountain landscape. When Landowners Become Custodians One of the survey’s most encouraging findings was that several individuals, including Stella, remain in the same area for a relatively long period, which is a good indicator of habitat stability. These leopards have been photographed in the same territories for years by the CLT and also by landowners contributing data to the CLT’s citizen science database. This matters because with leopard density in the Western Cape being comparatively very low, understanding whether individual leopards maintain stable territories over time is critical for conservation planning. The citizen science network is providing promising data that this is indeed the case in many areas. Apart from landowners with their own camera traps contributing data to the CLT, other landowners are also playing an important part in the research. The recent CLT survey in the BMC not only included vast swathes of officially Protected Areas (PA), but also 29 private properties surrounding these PA’s. The willing participation of so many landowners in welcoming and granting the researchers access is good news for conservation. The CLT’s efforts into building relationships, and sharing camera trap images and results back with landowners have helped to improve their appreciation and knowledge of nature, encouraging them to be long-term custodians of biodiversity. The collaboration between the CLT and private landowners demonstrates what’s possible when conservation extends beyond Protected Area boundaries. Armed with this data, the CLT can now target conservation resources where they’re needed most—protecting key habitats and reducing human-wildlife conflict in critical leopard corridors. For Stella and the other leopards of these mountains, the partnership between researchers and landowners may be their best chance at survival.