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  LIMA: The deadly glacier related disaster in the Himalayas has renewed attention on Peru’s vulnerability to glacial lake outburst floods, as the country faces rapidly retreating glaciers, ageing protective infrastructure and gaps in disaster risk management. A report citing Dialogue Earth, highlights how Peru developed one of the world’s pioneering programmes for managing glacier related risks after a catastrophic flood from Palcacocha glacial lake devastated Huaraz in 1941. The disaster killed thousands and prompted Peru to establish systematic monitoring of glacial lakes and preventive engineering works in glacier fed basins. Over subsequent decades, Peruvian scientists and engineers developed measures including controlled lowering of lake levels, drainage tunnels, rei...

More than two dozen international wildlife conservation and animal welfare organisations have called on Vantara, the private zoological facility in Jamnagar, Gujarat, to permanently stop importing wild animals and introduce stronger safeguards around animal acquisitions. In an open letter dated September 22 and released by Germany based Pro Wildlife, 27 organisations including the Jane Goodall Institute Global and Animal Welfare Institute, urged Vantara to strengthen transparency, independent oversight and due diligence. The letter acknowledged Vantara recent decision to pause pending and new live animal import applications for up to a year following scrutiny related to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). However, the organisat...

  Guyana efforts to restore its degraded coastal mangrove forests are showing signs of ecological recovery, with a new study finding that restored mangroves aged between five and 11 years supported fish communities broadly similar to those found in naturally regenerated forests. The findings, published in Restoration Ecology, follow a major restoration programme in which more than 500,000 mangrove seedlings were planted across 19 sites covering about eight kilometres of Guyana’s coastline. Researchers compared five restored mangrove sites with five naturally regenerated sites of similar ages. The forests represented stands that were five, six, nine, 10 and 11 years old. Fish were sampled during both wet and dry seasons and during daytime and nighttime. The survey recorded ...

  Logging is continuing in Malaysia Upper Baram Forest Area in Sarawak raising concerns among Indigenous communities and civil society groups over the loss of primary rainforest and the future of a conservation initiative once envisioned as an Indigenous led peace park. A new report Plundering the Baram Peace Park published by the Swiss based Bruno Manser Fonds and other civil society organisations, alleges that logging within and around the forest area is undermining conservation efforts and raises questions about the process through which a 170,000 hectare timber concession was granted to Borneoland Timber Resources Sdn. Bhd. in 2024. The Upper Baram initiative had its roots in a proposal developed over more than 15 years to establish the Baram Peace Park. Between 2009 and ...

Global glaciers recorded their fourth consecutive year of net ice loss in 2025, with every major glaciated region registering a negative annual mass balance, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report. Between October 2024 and September 2025, glaciers worldwide lost an estimated 408 ± 132 gigatonnes of ice equivalent to about 1.1 ± 0.4 millimetres of sea level rise. The WMO report noted that six of the seven largest annual glacier losses on record have occurred during the past seven years. Mountain glaciers lost approximately 6.2 per cent of their ice mass between 2000 and 2025 while some individual regions have experienced much larger long term declines. Glaciers in Russia’s central Altai region, for example, have lost about 4...

  New Delhi, September 25, 2026: Delhi traffic planning authority has approved a 5.5-kilometre elevated corridor on Maa Anandmayee Marg, aimed at easing congestion between the Outer Ring Road and Mehrauli Badarpur Road. The six lane elevated corridor will allow through traffic to bypass around 12 intersections reducing the number of junctions vehicles currently have to negotiate along the busy stretch. The road also carries significant traffic linked to the Okhla Phase I and II industrial areas. The project includes an underpass and a roundabout at the Crowne Plaza intersection on Okhla Estate Marg another congestion prone location in the area. According to the approved plan, some through traffic will shift to the elevated structure, potentially reducing vehicle volumes on...

  Maine has removed a 60 year old ice control dam from the Narraguagus River in an effort to restore migration routes for endangered Atlantic salmon and other fish species. The dam, located in Cherryfield was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1961 to protect the town from ice jams and flooding. But the structure also blocked salmon, shad and river herring from reaching upstream spawning grounds. Only about 25 wild adult Atlantic salmon have returned to the Narraguagus River annually in recent years, a sharp decline from the hundreds of thousands that once migrated through Maine’s rivers each spring. The Gulf of Maine population of Atlantic salmon is listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. Across Maine, only about 1,000 adult salmon return from th...

  Illegal gold mining is intensifying inside Ghana Atewa Forest Reserve threatening one of the country’s most important biodiversity hotspots and potentially putting the drinking water supply of up to five million people at risk, conservation groups have warned. The 26,300 hectare Atewa Forest Reserve in eastern Ghana is home to hundreds of bird and butterfly species and more than 80 threatened and endangered species. Conservation organisation A Rocha Ghana says illegal miners have increasingly entered the reserve, overwhelming the limited number of Forestry Commission personnel responsible for protecting it. According to A Rocha Ghana, miners are clearing vegetation, digging pits and establishing temporary camps across the forest. Abandoned mining equipment and heavily distu...

  A dispute over whether Indian shipbreaking yards using the beaching method should be included in the European Union’s approved ship recycling list has intensified, with environmental groups, steelmakers, recyclers and trade unions urging the European Commission to reject two facilities in Alang Sosiya, Gujarat. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform, EUROFER, IndustriAll Europe, the European Environmental Bureau, Recycling Europe and Transport & Environment have jointly opposed the proposed inclusion of Shree Ram Vessel Scrap Pvt. Ltd./Shree Ram Shipping Industries Pvt. Ltd. and YSI Recyclers LLP. If approved, the two facilities would become the first Indian ship recycling yards to be included on the EU’s European List of Ship Recycling Facilities. The central point of conten...

  Light and moderate raindrop impacts can release soil bacteria into the atmosphere through a microscopic bubble bursting process, with the effect declining at higher impact speeds, according to laboratory research published in Nature Communications. The study conducted using individual raindrops, sterilised soils and cultured bacteria, found that when a raindrop strikes porous, partly dry soil, it can trap small pockets of air beneath the spreading water. These bubbles rise through the drop and burst at the surface, producing tiny droplets that can carry bacteria and other material from the soil into the air. Researchers found that bacterial aerosol production generally increased with drop speed before reaching a soil-dependent peak at around 1.4–1.7 metres per second. At hi...