A large property containing a unique wetland system in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin was transferred into long-term Indigenous ownership in 2026 for conservation. The 33,000-hectare (81,545-acre) property contains most of the Great Cumbung Swamp, located at the end of the Lachlan River in the state of New South Wales. The swamp has a mix of open water and reed beds, bordered by river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) woodlands, and is an important habitat for waterbirds, frogs, fish and reptiles. The Nari Nari Tribal Council (NNTC), an Indigenous conservation land management organization, purchased the property in January 2026 following joint fundraising efforts by the conservation NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and NNTC. James Fitzsimons of TNC recently wrote about the sale of the property in Oryx. Fitzsimons told Mongabay by email that the Great Cumbung Swamp “acts a refuge when the rest of the landscape is dry,” He added that it supports threatened species such as the Australasian Bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus), Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii) and the southern bell frog (Litoria raniformis). Each year, approximately 11,500 waterbirds visit the swamp. The wetland is not only of local, state and national significance, but has been evaluated to be listed as a Ramsar wetland of international significance, Fitzsimons said. The property had experienced decades of logging and cattle grazing. In 2019, TNC and the Tiverton Agricultural Impact Fund jointly purchased it to prevent future agricultural intensification and further degradation of the ecosystem. Fitzsimons said grazing pressures have reduced since the purchase. This, combined with…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Researchers have identified three new-to-science species of snake mantises, two from Australia and one from Papua New Guinea, and figured out their distribution and behavior with the help of citizen scientists. Matthew Connors, a Ph.D. candidate at James Cook University in Australia, led the effort to revisit the taxonomy of Kongobatha, a little-studied group of praying mantises known as snake mantises for the snake-like patterns on their wings. They’re also referred to as leaf-planking mantises, because they press their bodies against leaves to camouflage. The blending in helps because they are both predators of insects, including flies and mosquitoes, and prey themselves. “They have this special organ right on their chest that is a sensory thing, and it helps them flatten themselves down really nicely against a leaf, so that they’re really hard for a predator to see,” Connors said in a news release. Previously only two species of Kongobatha were known: one from Australia and another from Papua New Guinea. Now, there are three more, named K. serpens, K. spinosistyla and K. rufilinea. To describe these three species, Connors collected new specimens of the mantises and sourced others from Australian and international museums and private collections. He examined them under a microscope, focusing on male anatomical features called styli, which are a pair of small appendage-like structures located on the end of the abdomen, and may function in mating, although this remains a “mystery,” Connors told Mongabay by email. The styli of snake mantises have many spines on them,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Wildlife monitoring in Australia could get a boost from a new platform that uses AI and computer vision to speed up the processing of millions of camera trap images being collected across the country. The national initiative named the Wildlife Observatory of Australia (WildObs) is a way to collect, store and share camera trap data at scale, while improving collaboration between scientists, governments and environmental groups, according to the WildObs website. The platform is being developed by researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ), with backing from the Australian Research Data Commons, Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Camera traps are commonly used to monitor wildlife globally: they’re easy to set up and can be left at locations for long periods, providing an invaluable window into the natural world. Across Australia, thousands of projects collect millions of images, Matthew Luskin, associate professor at the UQ School of the Environment and director of WildObs, said in a statement. However, processing the images and identifying species takes time, money and computing power. WildOBS plans to speed it up. “In conservation, timing matters and detecting problems early can mean the difference between recovery and extinction,” Luskin said. WildObs requires users of the platform to upload images, which get stored and processed in the cloud. The platform’s models have been trained specifically to identify species found in Australia and can help track biodiversity trends, monitor invasive species and identify conservation priorities, according to the UQ statement. “In one collaborative space,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

On the Greek islet of Formicula, researchers have found rare Mediterranean monk seals will take refuge in an air-filled “bubble cave,” according to a recent study. This type of hidden chamber, accessible via underwater passages, allows the seals to breathe, and possibly hide from tourists, the researchers said. Mediterranean monk seals (Monachus monachus), the world’s rarest pinniped, are the only seals found in the Mediterranean Sea. Fewer than 1,000 of them remain, according to the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.     Historically, these seals hauled out on open coastal beaches to rest, molt and give birth to pups. But with increasing human disturbance from tourism, fishing and land development, they retreated to marine caves along the Mediterranean coastline to rest and breed. Study lead author Joan Gonzalvo of the Ionian Dolphin Project at the Tethys Research Institute in Italy described the “ideal cave” to Mongabay as one with a pool, a dry beach for hauling out, an entrance corridor and protection from adverse weather and choppy seas. Typically, these caves are accessible by entrances above or below water level. During a habitat assessment in the Inner Ionian Sea Archipelago, the team was setting up a camera to monitor one of these “comfortable” marine caves on Formicula when they discovered that an underwater corridor connected to it led to a second smaller chamber. This “bubble cave” had water and a pocket of air on top, but no dry beach or platform to haul out. The team placed an underwater camera in the…This article was originally published on Mongabay