VJOSA-NARTA, Albania — In late April, heavy machinery began moving into the Pishë Poro-Narta protected landscape on Albania’s Adriatic coast without permits or public notice. Bulldozers and excavators felled coastal pine trees, flattened sand dunes, and cut new roads through previously untouched habitat. Then, barbed wire fences went up along the shoreline. The incursion was the realization of a luxury resort development backed by Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. The development plans of Kushner’s Affinity Partners, a private equity fund, stretch from the uninhabited Sazan Island into the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape, the delta region of Albania’s Vjosa River that includes Pishë Poro-Narta. Roughly twice the size of Paris, the Vjosa-Narta area shelters flamingos, Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus), loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and more than 70 endangered species, among them the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus). Neither Affinity Partners nor the office of the prime minister of Albania responded to Mongabay’s requests for comment. Aerial drone video of demonstrators gathering at Dalan Beach on June 6 for a rally near the site of the original resort-construction site. Footage by Stefan Lovgren for Mongabay. When protesters arrived at the site, security guards confronted them. Video of a demonstrator being dragged across the dunes on May 30 near the village of Zvërnec went viral. Soon demonstrations erupted in Tirana, the Albanian capital, in what has since been dubbed the Flamingo Revolution. The protests have grown larger every day, with tens of thousands demanding accountability for corruption, an end to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
A luxury resort backed by the US president’s family may be built on a wildlife-rich nature reserve in one of Europe’s poorest nations
If the real estate dreams of a billionaire political family come true, an island in one of Europe’s poorest countries will become a luxury hotel complex, sweeping up stretches of the wildlife-rich nature reserve that sits across the water.
No public consultation has taken place, but there are signs the idea is on the way to becoming reality. Albania has been rocked by nearly two weeks of fierce protests after fences and heavy machinery came to a sensitive wetland and preparatory work began on the tourism vision of Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Majestic great white shark glides through the ocean waters. Credit: Elias Levy / OpenVerse / CC BY-2.0
Volunteer divers have recorded what researchers believe is the first footage of a great white shark filmed underwater in the Mediterranean, captured during a ghost net removal dive near a shipwreck in the Strait of Sicily.
Derk Remmers, a technical diver with Ghost Diving, was about 40 meters (131 feet) below the surface between Sicily and Tunisia when the shark appeared. He filmed the encounter. The footage and photographs were released on June 8 to mark World Oceans Day.
Remmers said that the odds of meeting such an animal underwater are far lower than winning the lottery, and that his hands were shaking as he filmed.
The shark circled the group, then turned and moved back toward the divers. Remmers said that its behavior appeared calm and curious, not aggressive. When the team released air from their regulators, the shark picked up speed and disappeared from view.
First great white shark sighting in the Mediterranean stuns researchers
Marine biologists who reviewed the footage called the sighting rare and scientifically significant.
Dr. Carlo Cattano, a researcher at the Sicily Marine Centre of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, said that most knowledge of great white sharks in the region has come from dead animals caught accidentally in fishing nets, and that direct observations help researchers better understand the species.
A great white shark circled divers in the Mediterranean as they worked to pull deadly ghost nets from a shipwreck in the Strait of Sicily. pic.twitter.com/tdJKJ37TMY
— Tom Marvolo Riddle (@tom_riddle2025) June 9, 2026
He said that prior research had already identified the area as a key location for threatened species and that this sighting reinforces its conservation value. Researchers cautioned that broader conclusions would require further study.
The mission was organized by the Healthy Seas Foundation, along with Ghost Diving and the Society for the Documentation of Submerged Sites. The wreck’s location is being kept confidential.
Ghost nets, fishing gear lost or abandoned at sea, continue killing marine life long after leaving a vessel. Previous dives at the site documented loggerhead sea turtles and large fish species caught in the gear.
Shipwrecks attract marine life, and when ghost nets settle on them, those structures become underwater traps.
Ghost nets turn shipwreck ecosystems into ongoing ocean traps
Veronika Mikos, director of Healthy Seas, said that the sighting is a reminder of how much marine life still exists in offshore Mediterranean waters and how much is at risk from discarded gear and overfishing.
Remmers said that between 1% and 10% of all fishing gear worldwide is lost each year, possibly adding more than 500,000 metric tons of abandoned nets to the ocean annually.
He said that the shark’s presence near the wreck signals an abundance of prey, and that those same animals face entanglement risk. Volunteer cleanups alone cannot resolve the problem, he said, and stronger action against industrial and illegal fishing is needed.
The mission also included environmental DNA sampling and underwater monitoring. Healthy Seas said that it plans to release additional footage and scientific material in the coming weeks.
In the mountain villages of Guatemala’s Western Highlands, farmers are combining ancient Maya knowledge with modern sustainable farming techniques to protect their crops from pests and disease. Smallholders are creating homemade biopesticides using plants with strong smells and flavors to deter pests on their family plots. This is helping to cut back on the use of increasingly expensive agrochemicals, many of which have been labeled as dangerous to human health and linked to soil degradation. About 60 Guatemalan communities in the Western Highland departments of Sololá and Huehuetenango, as well as Chiquimula in the east, are working to revive these traditional techniques with support from the international development organization World Neighbors. Their focus is to restore and strengthen traditional knowledge, combining it with agroecological practices that help families produce surplus food they can sell to boost household incomes. “Traditional farming techniques are becoming popular because they are simple practices to apply, use local resources, and have proven to be effective,” Dayani Roche, a program associate at World Neighbors, told Mongabay via email. Rather than a single ancient recipe, farmers are using “a living combination of ancestral knowledge, local experimentation and more recent agroecological practices,” he said, which are “safer for families, soil, water and biodiversity than many chemical alternatives.” The Maya civilization, which once stretched across modern-day Central America, had a rich history of farming dating back to 2000 B.C.E. Its most celebrated agriculture system is the milpa, a form of intercropping that involves a mix of maize, beans and…This article was originally published on Mongabay
PORT HUGHES, Australia — Situated midway along the Great Southern Reef that spans Australia’s southern coastline, the waters off Port Hughes typically teem with life. The coastal hamlet northwest of Adelaide plays host to a multitude of coral, bivalve and fish species. But in late March, the largest and longest harmful algal bloom (HAB) in Australian history arrived to Port Hughes, depleting its waters’ rich biodiversity. The bloom had first appeared elsewhere off the state of South Australia’s coast a year earlier, causing eye and skin irritation and respiratory symptoms among beachgoers. Then, along with waves of acrid-smelling sea foam, scores of dead marine animals began washing ashore. In Port Hughes, the HAB’s impacts were most visible below the surface. The town’s wooden jetty had previously been one of the most consistent locations in South Australia to observe temperate species, said Stefan Andrews, co-founder of the Great Southern Reef Foundation, a conservation advocacy group. But by mid-April, when Mongabay joined Andrews on a dive, the site was drab compared with vibrant photographs taken in February and March. Under the jetty, sponges and corals that had previously adorned its pylons in a brilliantly hued mosaic appeared colorless. Apart from a short-headed seahorse (Hippocampus breviceps) — a “sign of hope,” Andrews called it — little life was visible in the murky waters. The reef, he said, had become quieter, lacking the sounds of snapping shrimp and other creatures that once played in the underwater soundtrack. “There’s a sense of loss when you…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Wildlife department says drought conditions and water released from dam led to ‘major fish kill’ at San Carlos Lake
Arizona officials have indefinitely closed a popular lake to visitors after its entire population of fish died recently.
The recreation and wildlife department that maintains San Carlos Lake said in a Facebook statement on Friday that drought conditions as well as water released from a dam there “resulted in a major fish kill affecting approximately 100% of the fish population”.
BANGKOK — More than 600 residents of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces embarked May 31 on a roughly 68-kilometer, six-day ‘peace walk’ to demand the Thai government take action on the river pollution crisis that has seen Thai rivers polluted with heavy metals. The ensemble of affected residents, civil society groups, monks and students marched from Tha Ton subdistrict in Chiang Mai to the city of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand, reaching their destination on June 5, World Environment Day. For more than a year, Thailand’s Pollution Control Department has reported dangerous levels of arsenic, mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals in rivers across northern Thailand, with mining operations across eastern Myanmar suspected to be responsible for the pollution. “We are walking because our rivers are slowly dying,” Pianporn Deetes, executive director of the Rivers and Rights Foundation, which helped to organize the peace walk, told Mongabay by phone. “Toxic contamination from unregulated mining upstream is already affecting water, fish, food, livelihoods, and public health. We do not want to wait until more people become sick. This is an emergency.” Pianporn said the walk (42 miles) was about taking collective action to share information, document impacts and build public pressure in a bid to force the government to address the issue, which Pianporn said has, so far, been lacking. “Monitoring has improved, but action has not matched the scale of the crisis,” she said. “We need urgent diplomatic engagement with neighboring countries, stronger health monitoring, transparency, and action to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
BANGKOK — Seven hundred days after activists from the environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia were imprisoned on charges widely regarded as retaliatory for their activism, 73 international and Cambodian civil society organizations have renewed calls for their unconditional release. After a trial lasting just over a month, 10 activists from Mother Nature Cambodia were sentenced on July 2, 2024, to between six and eight years in prison. Only five of the defendants attended the hearings, which saw Long Kuntha, 28, Ly Chandaravuth, 26, Phuon Keoraksmey, 25, and Thun Ratha, 34, each sentenced to six years behind bars for plotting against the government; fellow activist Yim Leanghy, 36, received an eight-year sentence for both plotting against the government and insulting the king. The five activists who did not attend the trial were sentenced in absentia. The appeals hearing for all 10 convicted activists was slated to take place on June 2, but has been postponed indefinitely by the Phnom Penh Court of Appeals. “The MNC5 are incarcerated in prisons in overcrowded and harsh living conditions, separated from each other and spread out all across Cambodia, hundreds of kilometers away from their families and legal counsel,” wrote the 73 NGOs in an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Hun Manet. “The … NGOs who have signed this letter sincerely request you take immediate action to ensure the unjust convictions of these five activists are reversed either prior to or at their upcoming appeals court hearing in Phnom Penh, and that their freedom…This article was originally published on Mongabay
As offshore wind farms expand rapidly in the global renewable energy transition, scientists are studying how these large marine infrastructure projects affect ecosystems beneath the waves. Research from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands suggests that offshore wind may bring both risks and benefits for sharks and rays, known collectively as Elasmobranchii, which are highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields (EMFs). A six-year project called “Elasmopower” examined how EMFs from subsea power cables in offshore wind farms affect bottom-dwelling sharks and rays. These species depend on natural electric and magnetic fields for key behaviors such as navigation, prey detection, habitat use and long-distance movement, particularly in low-visibility environments. The studies conducted as part of the Elasmopower project have been published in four papers, with three additional papers currently undergoing peer review. Sharks and rays have specialized electroreceptors called ampullae of Lorenzini. The jelly-filled sensory canals around the head and snout can detect even extremely weak EMFs from prey and predators, water movement, and the Earth’s geomagnetic field, Erwin Winter, a scientist at Wageningen, told Mongabay. This system is central to hunting and orientation, making Elasmobranchii especially relevant for studying EMF exposure from offshore energy infrastructure, Winter added. Erwin Winter, a researcher with the Elasmopower project, presented findings on offshore wind, electromagnetic fields and bottom-dwelling sharks and rays at the Sharks International 2026 conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in May. Image by Malaka Rodrigo for Mongabay. During a presentation on a summary of the Elasmopower research at the Sharks International 2026…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Deep below the ocean surface, at roughly the depth of 130 five-story buildings stacked end to end, a robot has unfurled a protest sign that reads: “LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE!” A Greenpeace remotely operated vehicle (ROV) holds the banner more than 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) below the surface of the Norwegian Sea, in front of a hydrothermal vent field known as Loki’s Castle. “This marks the deepest banner protest in history, to speak for ecosystems that have no voice of their own,” Sandra Schöttner, chief scientist for the Deep Arctic Expedition, Greenpeace International, said in a press release. The protest, carried out on May 27 during Greenpeace’s Deep Arctic Expedition, targeted an area of the Arctic seabed that the Norwegian government opened to deep-sea mining in early 2024 before reversing course under political pressure. Loki’s Castle was discovered in 2008 in the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Norway. Here in the depths, hot fluid, between 300 and 320 degrees Celsius (572 and 608 degrees Fahrenheit), pours from mineral chimneys on the seafloor. These vents support a rich and unusual community of life, including microbes that resemble the distant ancestors of complex life on Earth. A 2024 study in Scientific Reports documented the animals living around the vents, including five new-to-science species. The authors suggested areas like this along the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge should be treated as “vulnerable ecosystems” and protected. In January 2024, the government of Norway opened roughly 281,000 square kilometers (108,000 square miles) of Arctic waters (an area…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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