Starting in 2018, gray whales began regularly stopping in California’s San Francisco Bay, where they are vulnerable to ship strikes in one of the busiest ports in the United States. In response, researchers have deployed a monitoring network of thermal cameras and AI software to alert ships when whales are present in the bay to help them avoid whale collisions.  Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) have one of the longest migrations of any mammal species, roughly 19,000 kilometers (12,000 miles) from their feeding grounds in Alaska to their breeding grounds in Mexico, and back again. Climate change is making their feeding grounds in Alaska less productive, leaving the whales hungry as they head south to breed. Scientists believe that’s why gray whales have started stopping in San Francisco Bay to eat along their migration route. But the new pit stop brings whales into busy shipping zones, where more than 20 were killed by ship collisions in 2025, according to a news release. Whale biologists at the Benioff Ocean Science Lab, WhaleSpotter, and the Marine Mammal Center have developed thermal cameras that can detect the heat signature of whale spouts and bodies when the whales surface.  “Next a trained human confirms the detection and will help classify the species when possible,” Rachel Rhodes, a project scientist with the Benioff Ocean Science Lab told Mongabay in an email. Then the information is, “posted publicly on [the] Whale Safe website, which is accessed by mariners in the Bay Area including Vessel Traffic Service and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Small-scale gold mining is a major cause of deforestation in the Amazon, and researchers found that in Guyana it destroys dung beetle communities and prevents their recovery for decades. Gold mining causes 90% of the deforestation in the Guiana Shield, which contains a quarter of the Amazon rainforest as well as large gold deposits, according to a recent study. Most of the gold mining in this region, including in Guyana, is artisanal, driven by small-scale mining rather than large industrial mines. To understand the long-term “ecological legacy” of such mining, a team of researchers measured dung beetle communities at 16 abandoned small-scale gold mine sites in northwest Guyana. They choose dung beetles, because the insects are easily sampled and play key roles in rainforest functions like nutrient cycling, seed dispersal and pollination. For control, the team monitored dung beetle communities at five nearby intact forests. At every mining site, the researchers sampled dung beetles at three locations: the center of the mine where vegetation was regrowing, at the edge where the mine met the forest, and about 100 meters (328 feet) away into the forest. They trapped dung beetles using human feces as bait.  Study lead author Sean Glynn from the University of Kent, U.K., told Mongabay by email that because they were camping remotely, they didn’t have reliable access to feces from other animals to use as bait, “however, human seems to always be the best.”  The team also recorded air temperature and vegetation structure at each of the…This article was originally published on Mongabay