Dominican nuns at a monastery in Mexico have become unlikely conservation heroes, maintaining the world’s largest captive population of critically endangered achoque salamanders, which number fewer than 150 in the wild. The nuns’ 150-year tradition of breeding salamanders for the production of traditional cough syrup evolved into a critical conservation program after wild populations crashed in the 1980s due to lake pollution and overfishing. by Liz Kimbrough
Conservation news
Nuns, scientists & microchips: An alliance to save Mexico's achoque salamanders
In a monastery beside a 16th-century basilica in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, Dominican nuns move between rows of aquarium tanks, checking water quality and...
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Brazil’s Cerrado savanna has experienced its worst fire season on record, but a tiny Indigenous territory here has for four years now kept the flames at bay. The volunteer brigade made up largely of Bakairi Indigenous women has been instrumental in preventing major fires from devastating the Santana Indigenous Territory in Mato Grosso state. by Mariana Rosetti and Paola Churchill
Conservation news
An Indigenous women-led revolution fights fires in Brazil’s Cerrado
When they closed their eyes, the Bakairi people of the Santana Indigenous Territory in Brazil heard a sound similar to rain in the forest. It was r...
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