As rising temperatures, shifting rainfall, and increased pest pressure reduce yields and quality of Arabica and Robusta coffees, the two species that account for nearly all commercial production, researchers and growers are turning to overlooked coffee species for a more climate-resilient future, Mongabay-India contributor Meena Menon reports.

Arabica (Coffea arabica) and Robusta (C. canephora) have long dominated the global coffee industry. Other coffee species such as Excelsa (C. dewevrei) were previously relegated to the margins of coffee plantations as boundary markers or shade trees in India. Akshay Dashrath, co-founder of the South India Coffee Company (SICC), is leading efforts to re-evaluate Excelsa for its potential resilience.

According to the SICC, a British planter introduced Excelsa to India in the late 1800s as an alternative to Arabica. However, it grew tall and dense, making it an impractical crop to manage and commercialize.

Dashrath’s farm in Kodagu district in Karnataka state has 60-year-old Excelsa trees that his family preserved, which are now a source for trials aimed at scaling production. His company is collaborating with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to do the research.

Aaron Davis, a senior research leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, said that the dominance of Arabica and Robusta in the global markets could see major disruptions in the next decade or so from other coffee crop species adapted to altered climates.

Excelsa, native to parts of Tropical and West Africa as well as Southeast Asia, is already being scaled in Uganda and Vietnam. According to Kiwuka Catherine, a senior research officer at the National Agricultural Research Organization in Uganda, farmers in Uganda who have been growing Excelsa over hundreds of acres since the 2000s have reported that the species is more productive, resilient and profitable than Robusta.

Davis said Excelsa’s mild flavor could soon make it a staple, predicting that “Ugandan Excelsa could feature in supermarkets within a decade.”

Other climate-resilient coffee species being studied for their potential include Stenophylla (C. stenophylla), which offers an Arabica-like flavor with superior heat tolerance, and Liberica (C. liberica), which thrives in diverse conditions from humid lowlands to drier regions.

Pranoy Thipaiah, manager of Kerehaklu coffee estate in Karnataka’s Chikkamagalaru district, said that Excelsa and Liberica also have long growing periods, allowing them to be harvested in March and April, when the threat of unseasonal rains that often damage Arabica crops have usually passed.

Kew-led research has further identified a new hybrid between Liberica and Excelsa, proposed as Libex coffee (Coffea × libex ) that may be able to better withstand heat and moisture stress while resisting disease.

As the search for climate-resilient coffee gains momentum, the transition to mainstream will require focused research, government backing, and consumer acceptance, experts said.

Read the full story by Meena Menon here.

Banner image: Excelsa coffee fruits harvested at Kerehaklu Estate in Chikkamagalaru district, where Excelsa and Liberica coffee have been grown since 1953. Image courtesy of Pranoy Thipaiah.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

Cambodia is preparing to reintroduce tigers after nearly two decades without a confirmed wild population. The plan is ambitious, and many of its basic assumptions remain contested, report Mongabay India’s Arathi Menon and Mongabay contributor Andy Ball.

The last confirmed tiger sighting in Cambodia came from a camera trap in 2007. By 2016, tigers had been declared extinct in the country. The animals were lost after years of poaching, snaring, habitat degradation, and trade in tiger parts. Those pressures remain. Cambodia’s Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri) was declared functionally extinct in 2023, and snares continue to threaten large mammals.

The proposed reintroduction would use Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris) from India, released into Kravanh National Park in the Cardamom Mountains. Supporters of the program see a chance to restore an apex predator to one of Cambodia’s largest remaining forest landscapes. India has rebuilt its own tiger numbers over several decades, and Cambodia has approved a tiger action plan. A soft-release enclosure has already been built.

The unresolved questions are ecological and political. Tigers need abundant prey. One 2020 study found only a low probability that the proposed landscape could support 25 adult tigers, though it might support a small founder population of five tigers. However, small populations face inbreeding risk and require sustained management. Wild pigs in the landscape may form much of the prey base, but experts disagree on whether current prey data are strong enough to justify release.

The habitat is also under pressure. Logging, roads, and hydropower projects are expanding in and around the Cardamoms. Such infrastructure can remove forest directly and make it easier for hunters and loggers to enter protected areas. A tiger program will require enforcement that can hold over many years.

Local consultation appears incomplete. Mongabay interviews found that many nearby residents had not been formally informed about the project. Some depend on forest access for income and worry about personal safety, livestock loss, and new restrictions.

Reintroducing tigers would be a major conservation event for Cambodia. Whether it becomes a recovery story will depend on prey, enforcement, habitat protection, and whether nearby communities are treated as participants rather than bystanders.

Read the full story by Arathi Menon and Andy Ball here. 

Banner image: A Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) in India. Image by Charles J. Sharp via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Kyrgyzstan has officially designated a massive stretch of its high-altitude landscape as a protected corridor for snow leopards and other mountain wildlife.

The Ak Ilbirs ecological corridor, formalized in 2025, spans nearly 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) and was designed with the future climate in mind, Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough reports.

The corridor connects several existing protected areas in the country, as well as pastureland, forest and other ecosystems across 14 rural municipalities to ensure wildlife, including snow leopards (Panthera uncia), can move freely as climate change shifts their habitats.

The project was spearheaded by the Central Asian Mammals and Climate Adaptation (CAMCA) initiative, led by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) in collaboration with the Kyrgyz government, Humboldt University of Berlin, and local conservation groups including CAMP Alatoo and Ilbirs Foundation.

Murat Zhumashev, director of CAMP Alatoo, said that while the Ak Ilbirs corridor carries official protected area status, it functions differently from most.

“The ecological corridor in Kyrgyzstan is based on a regulatory rather than a restrictive approach,” Zhumashev and his colleague Salamat Zhumabaeva told Mongabay by email. “It builds on existing environmental legislation, but unlike strictly protected areas, it does not involve land withdrawal or the introduction of strict prohibitions.”

To design the corridor, scientists at Humboldt University “applied a combination of expert local knowledge, climate predictions and technical expertise to build the narratives for the future scenarios,” Julieta Decarre from Humboldt told Mongabay by email.

Under future climate emissions scenarios, more than 60% of suitable habitat for snow leopards and their primary prey, such as argali sheep (Ovis ammon) and Asiatic ibex (Capra sibirica), fall within the designed corridor, she said.

Snow leopards are a sign of a healthy mountain ecosystem. As top predators, they depend on thriving prey populations, which in turn need a healthy mountain ecosystem. However, with shrinking glaciers, unpredictable rainfall and deteriorating pastures, herders are moving higher into the mountains increasing competition between livestock and wild ungulates.

This will “affect the well-being of snow leopards,” Zairbek Kubanychbekov, director of the Ilbirs Foundation, told Mongabay by email.

To mitigate these pressures, there are specific management rules within the corridor, such as no-grazing zones and seasonal grazing bans like during early spring. Herders must also leave at least 40% of vegetation cover as forage for wild animals.

“Projects like this are good for hope, because you can see changes at the policy level and changes in people’s mindsets on the ground,” Maarten Hofman, associate program management officer at UNEP, told Mongabay in a video call.

To reduce financial dependence on large livestock herds, the CAMCA project is training local communities in alternative livelihoods such as beekeeping, orchard cultivation and ecotourism.

Read the full story by Liz Kimbrough here.

Banner image of an Asiatic ibex (Capra sibirica) in the mountains, a key prey of snow leopards. Camera trap photo courtesy of Ilbirs Foundation/UNEP.

Kenya became the first African nation to receive landmark climate disaster funding. It will be used to identify Kenyans who have suffered climate-related losses and damages during the last decade.

The Sh90 million ($700,000) in funding comes from the Santiago Network on Loss and Damage, a Switzerland-based United Nations mechanism funded by voluntary contributions from developed countries and the international community.

The Kenyan funding will be administered by the national government and used to identify Kenyan communities that have suffered losses as a result of climate-induced droughts, floods, crop failures and other extreme weather events.

Festus Ng’eno, principle secretary for Kenya’s Environment, Climate Change and Forestry, announced the achievement at a recent U.N. climate meeting in Bonn, Germany. He said the assistance is a milestone as Kenya is only the second country globally to benefit from the fund. Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago, was the first.

In a Facebook post, the State Department for Environment and Climate Change in Kenya said, “Despite enduring some of East Africa’s most devastating climate shocks, Kenya has never fully measured the true scale of what has been lost. That is set to change.”

“It is long overdue for countries on the frontline of the climate crisis to receive support to build resilience,” Fred Njehu, a Pan-African political strategist with Greenpeace, told the Daily Nation. “Kenya’s allocation points to shifting climate actions, from frameworks, roadmaps, and dialogues to actual implementation.”

The funding comes as African countries continue to pursue climate justice and reparations from countries that are historically most responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.

Kenyan President William Ruto has often called for better financial models to hasten Africa’s economic growth. The country has established ambitious goals to mitigate the climate crisis, Jeremiah Kioli, chairman of the Kenya Climate Change Working Group, told Mongabay. He said Kenya, as the first African nation to receive loss and damage funding, demonstrates the country’s commitment to climate action and fundraising.

The funds will largely be used to create systems to assess the losses that will require compensation. “How do you measure loss and damage? You need the systems, just as it is with the Green Climate Fund,” Kioli told Mongabay.

“This achievement underscores Kenya’s leadership in climate action and its commitment to building resilience against the growing impacts of climate change,” the Environment Ministry said, as reported by Capital News.

Banner image: Mechanics attempt to rescue parts of a vehicle that was swept away from an open air garage in the March 2026 flooding that caused the death of at least 110 people and displaced 34,700 in different areas across Kenya. Image by Maxwell Agwanda.

The Molopo Regional Court in Mahikeng, South Africa, sentenced two wildlife traffickers, Edward Motlatsi Phiri, 46, and Tlhoriso France Ralph, 51, to eight years in prison. They were convicted of smuggling a Temminck’s pangolin, a vulnerable species native to Southern and Eastern Africa, according to a statement released by the North West province’s environment agency.

The judgment, delivered on May 26, 2026, followed the arrest of four suspects on June 2, 2023, when law enforcement authorities, acting on a tip, intercepted a vehicle in which they were traveling and seized a live female pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) intended for sale.

During the court hearing three years later, charges against two accused traffickers were withdrawn while Phiri and Ralph were found guilty.

“This sentence sends a strong message that wildlife crime is a serious offense with devastating environmental consequences,” said Bitsa Lenkopane, with the Economic Development, Environment, Conservation and Tourism in the North West province, in a statement. “Every operation, every investigation, and every successful prosecution strengthen our collective fight against illegal wildlife trafficking.”

Pangolins are trafficked for their scales, worth thousands of dollars on the black market. They are falsely believed to have medicinal qualities in East Asia. The demand has driven steep declines in pangolin numbers worldwide: Six of the eight species are classified as endangered or critically endangered today. Pangolins are also consumed as bushmeat in parts of Africa.

These mammals are protected under South African law, which prohibits their possession, sale, display or transportation. Their international commercial trade is also banned under CITES, the global wildlife trade agreement.

Soon after the pangolin was seized, authorities brought it to the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital for immediate care, where it was named Naledi.

In a social media post, the hospital said Naledi “arrived in one of the worst conditions” — she was severely dehydrated, starving, emaciated, already in kidney failure, and was pregnant. Despite best efforts, Naledi and her unborn baby died.

“An entire future generation, gone forever because of greed and the illegal wildlife trade,” the statement said. “This sentence sends a powerful message: Wildlife crime is not a harmless offence. It causes immense suffering, destruction, and loss.”

The North West province environment agency said illegal trade in the region is due to “proximity to Botswana and the porosity of South Africa’s borders.” It called on communities to “work closely with law enforcement authorities by reporting suspicious activities linked to wildlife trafficking, illegal hunting, and the unlawful possession or trade of protected species.”

The illegal trade in pangolin scales seems to have slowed in recent years, but poaching hasn’t stopped. Conservationists say deterrents against wildlife crimes include stricter law enforcement, intelligence-led operations to dismantle the trafficking network, along with increased prosecution and convictions.

Banner Image: A Temminck’s pangolin in Mozambique. Image by Bart Wursten via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC)

Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the U.S. and remains the leading source of new power. New reports released Wednesday by global energy think tank Ember and the Solar Energy Industries Association show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. Ember says in May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%. Coal supplied 12.2%, its fourth-lowest monthly share ever. The Republican president has been helping the struggling U.S. coal industry while curtailing solar and wind. A Democratic California congressman says the coal industry is dying.

By Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press

Banner image: Solar panels operate on a farm with cattle Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in Christiana, Tenn. Image by Joshua A. Bickel via Associated Press