Global Pulse

分类： environment

  • Climate change squeezes Malaysian durian growers as they chase China’s booming market

    Climate change squeezes Malaysian durian growers as they chase China’s booming market

    Deep after midnight in the rolling hills outside Karak, a small Malaysian town an hour’s drive from Kuala Lumpur, farm workers don glowing headlamps as they trudge through durian orchards, hunting for the fully ripened, spiky fruits that have become a cultural obsession for millions of Chinese consumers. For orchard owner Stephen Chow, this grueling overnight labor is just the start of a growing battle to stay in business — one shaped by rising costs, extreme weather, and cutthroat global competition that has put many small Malaysian growers on the brink of loss.

    Malaysia’s premium durian varieties, including the famously creamy, bold-flavored Musang King and sought-after Black Thorn, are prized by durian connoisseurs around the world, especially in China, where demand for the pungent, creamy fruit has exploded over the past decade. But that growing global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has pushed production costs sharply higher, while more frequent extreme weather has ravaged yields and eroded fruit quality. Combined with fierce competition from Thailand and Vietnam, which dominate China’s booming durian import market, the pressures are pushing many small Malaysian operators struggling to turn a profit.

    Chow’s own orchard has borne the brunt of climate disruption in recent years. In 2021, catastrophic flooding triggered by unprecedented heavy rainfall destroyed roughly 100 mature durian trees and wrecked critical farm machinery. In the three years that followed, consistent unseasonable rain during the critical flowering season prevented successful pollination, slashing his total annual output. This year brought new challenges: while favorable flowering conditions, afternoon temperatures between 33 and 35 degrees Celsius paired with overnight rain, encouraged producers like Chow to ramp up care — increasing watering, upgrading fertilization, and pruning to prevent stunted or deformed fruit. But soaring fuel and fertilizer costs, exacerbated by geopolitical conflict in Iran, have pushed the price of these adaptations far higher than projected.

    Adding insult to injury, a nationwide oversupply of Malaysian durians, driven by new orchards reaching maturity and unexpected growing conditions, has sent market prices plummeting. In early July, top-grade Musang King from Chow’s orchard sold for just $8.6 per kilogram, half the price recorded in the same period one year earlier, and only one-third of the peak price reached in 2024. “Breaking even would already be very good. Most likely there’ll be a loss this year,” Chow told reporters.

    The current crisis comes amid an unprecedented industry expansion driven by Chinese demand. Official Malaysian data shows the country’s total durian cultivation area reached 92,100 hectares in 2024 — a nearly 40% increase from 2016, and an area larger than the entire landmass of Singapore, the city-state just off Malaysia’s southern coast. Over the same period, total national durian production grew nearly 90% to 568,800 tonnes.

    This boom was triggered by policy shifts: China first allowed imports of whole frozen Malaysian durians in 2019, and expanded access to fresh Malaysian fruit in 2024, part of a broader “durian diplomacy” push that has opened China’s massive market to multiple Southeast Asian producers. UN Food and Agriculture Organization data shows China absorbed roughly 95% of global durian exports between 2020 and 2022. 2025 Chinese customs data puts total fresh durian imports at 1.87 million tonnes, worth $7.5 billion — a six-fold increase in volume over the past decade. For Chinese consumers, durian has become a staple treat: 30-something Shanghai resident Song Xiaohua says she would eat the fruit once a week, instead of once a month, if not for its high calorie count, comparing the experience of eating durian to celebrating Lunar New Year.

    While Thailand and Vietnam hold the largest share of China’s durian import market, Malaysian producers have staked their reputation on superior quality, choosing to harvest only naturally fully ripened fruit rather than picking early to extend shelf life. But that commitment to quality is becoming harder to maintain as the climate warms.

    Malaysia’s Meteorological Department records show Peninsular Malaysia has seen an average temperature increase of 0.24 degrees Celsius per decade between 1969 and 2025, a rate that aligns with global warming trends. Extreme heat, floods, and irregular rain patterns are now the norm, not the exception, forcing growers to adapt or go out of business.

    Veteran grower Ooi Teik Hock, who owns an orchard in Perak state near the Thai border, recalls that 20 years ago, when temperatures were cooler, quality issues were far rarer. A decade ago, concerned about rising heat, he relocated his entire operation from lowland plains to cooler highlands, where overnight temperatures remain lower and humidity is higher. Even there, however, climate change has brought new threats: once-rare pests have become widespread, forcing Ooi to increase pesticide use, while pesticide prices have jumped 30% in just three years. This year, for the first time in decades, Ooi saw no fruit bats — the primary natural pollinator for durian — on his orchard during flowering season, a shift he attributes to extreme heat and expanded pesticide use.

    Lim Chin Khee, an industry adviser to the Durian Academy, a Malaysian organization that trains durian growers, explains that weather shifts have an outsize impact on fruit quality, especially for the temperature-sensitive Musang King variety. Too much rain during the critical rapid growth stage causes discolored white and gray patches on the fruit’s signature golden flesh, while drought during the same period leads to unappealing black spots, rendering premium grades unsellable.

    In response to growing climate instability, some growers have turned to modern technology to protect yields and quality, while industry experts are helping producers prepare for more extreme weather ahead. With climate forecasts predicting El Nino-driven record high temperatures between March and May each year, Lim advises farmers to expand water storage capacity and install backup tube wells to protect against pond drying during heat waves. He notes that while extreme weather will cut overall national supply, that shortage will push up market prices, creating opportunity for growers who prepare effectively. “So for those farmers who are well prepared, actually when any disaster strikes, that is an opportunity,” Lim said.
    Third-generation grower Kie Kim Hwa, who manages a family orchard on Penang Island off Malaysia’s west coast, has adapted traditional farming methods with modern monitoring. He installed a network of sensors throughout his orchard, placed in tree lines, grassy areas, and deep below the soil, to track real-time data on rainfall, humidity, wind speed, and soil conditions, all synced to a cloud server that he can access from anywhere. He also combines high-tech monitoring with low-tech checks, such as examining water bucket surfaces to track pest populations. The data lets him address growing problems early, helping him maintain consistent quality and adjust output to match market demand. “We live and die by the weather,” Kie said. “But we can still prepare.”
    This reporting on climate and agriculture from the Associated Press received funding from multiple private foundations, with AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • Colombian baby hippo of Escobar stock dies after rescue

    Colombian baby hippo of Escobar stock dies after rescue

    A 15-day-old hippopotamus, part of the notorious invasive colony descended from animals once owned by the late Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, has died shortly after wildlife teams pulled the malnourished calf to safety in northwestern Colombia, an environmental agency confirmed to Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.

    Today, Colombia is home to roughly 200 wild hippos, all traced back to four specimens that Escobar imported from Africa in the 1980s to stock a private zoo on his luxurious Hacienda Napoles estate. This population makes up the largest wild hippo colony found outside of the African continent, a fact that has put Colombian environmental authorities in a years-long battle to manage the destructive invasive species.

    The infant hippo at the center of this latest incident was found by local fishermen along a riverbank, separated from its mother and already suffering from severe health complications. Wildlife crews launched an emergency rescue mission earlier on Wednesday to retrieve the vulnerable young animal, which was immediately moved to a dedicated hippo sanctuary located on the grounds of the former Escobar estate – a property that now operates as a public theme park.

    Veterinary staff with the regional environmental authority Cornare detailed the calf’s critical condition upon arrival. In a statement to AFP, the attending vet explained that the young hippo was admitted with long-term signs of dehydration, severe malnutrition, and an acute gastrointestinal infection that exacerbated its already fragile health. Despite aggressive intervention including targeted rehydration therapy and emergency clinical care, the animal never showed positive improvement, and ultimately did not survive the treatment.

    The fate of this young hippo underscores the broader, ongoing crisis surrounding Escobar’s hippo colony. After Escobar was killed by police in 1993 during an escape attempt, the abandoned zoo animals escaped captivity and established wild populations along the banks of the Magdalena River, Colombia’s most important river system. Since then, the large, aggressive herbivores have thrown the local ecosystem drastically off balance: they outcompete native species for food and habitat, alter river ecosystems, and have even been recorded attacking local residents in the region.

    Classified as a destructive invasive species by Colombian environmental officials, the hippo population has grown far faster than management efforts could contain. For years, authorities tried to slow population growth through sterilization programs, but those initiatives failed to curb the colony’s expansion. Earlier this year, the national government approved a controversial management plan that will allow the culling of approximately 80 hippos to reduce the population and protect native ecosystems.

  • Wildfire near Athens leaves rescuers scrambling to reunite hundreds of animals

    Wildfire near Athens leaves rescuers scrambling to reunite hundreds of animals

    As containment orders were lifted Wednesday for a destructive wildfire that ripped through mountain and coastal terrain west of Athens, Greece, one rescued puppy still waited to go home. Sasa, an alert mixed-breed dog with floppy ears, remains in temporary shelter alongside hundreds of other domestic and wild animals pulled from the path of the blaze by local volunteer rescuers.

    The wildfire, which at its peak spread across five active fronts, has scorched more than 100 square kilometers of land and destroyed dozens of residential properties. It is just one of dozens of massive wildfires sweeping Europe during an unseasonably hot summer, a crisis that has put growing numbers of animals at risk and raised urgent alarm among animal welfare organizations across the continent. Even nations that typically experience mild, cool summers have faced large-scale blazes this year, amplifying the scope of the threat.

    In Megara, the coastal town 40 kilometers west of Athens at the center of this latest fire, local rescue coordinator Elena Dede says volunteer teams managed to save more than 280 animals — most of them domestic dogs — while operating through extreme heat shifting, unpredictable fire paths, and high winds that amplified the blaze’s spread. Rescued animals including Sasa are currently housed in a repurposed indoor sports facility, each kept in collapsible wire enclosures with basic enrichment and access to fresh water.

    Dede described the chaotic conditions rescuers faced, noting “There was so much heat and the fire was so aggressive. It was changing directions all the time.” While the volunteer effort has saved hundreds of lives, both rescuers and welfare advocates acknowledge that the current response system is stretched far beyond its limits.

    Richard Parr, director of the U.K.-based Center for Wild Animal Welfare, called the on-the-ground work of firefighters and local volunteer groups “heroic,” but warned that rising global temperatures driven by climate change have dramatically increased risks for millions of animals across Europe. Currently, he explained, most animal rescue efforts during wildfires are unplanned, ad-hoc operations carried out by private citizens and small local charities. “The scale of the challenges they’re facing in terms of the number of animals affected and the areas of fire is gigantic and completely out of step,” Parr said.

    His organization is now pushing the European Union to establish a dedicated, centrally funded EU animal rescue service that can coordinate large-scale responses across member states during climate-driven disasters. Parr also called on national and local governments to pre-emptively create designated “fire refuges” for wild and domestic animals across fire-prone regions, such as maintained ponds and rocky outcrops that can offer emergency shelter when blazes break out.

    Back in Megara, the rescue effort faces a new logistical challenge: reuniting displaced animals like Sasa with their owners, and finding permanent placement for animals whose owners cannot be located. Dede says local authorities are working to cross-reference rescued animals with posted missing pet notices, and temporary foster homes are being lined up for animals waiting to be rehomed.

    Even as the work continues, Dede acknowledges that the animals now in the shelter are the lucky ones. Rescuers worked through thick toxic smoke and extreme stress to carry out missions, and many animals remain unaccounted for. “It was really hard for every volunteer and every person involved to survive the smoke and the stress,” she said. “I will never forget the animals that we knew were left behind. I’m just hoping they were saved and ran free.”

  • Central Europe swelters and Slovakia and Austria hit their record high temperatures

    Central Europe swelters and Slovakia and Austria hit their record high temperatures

    A brutal new wave of extreme heat has swept across Central Europe this week, pushing temperature gauges past historic milestones in Slovakia and Austria and marking yet another alarming milestone in the region’s accelerating climate shift. On Wednesday, both nations recorded the highest daily temperatures ever documented on their territory, capping a summer defined by repeated, unprecedented heat extremes.

    Slovakia’s new national high comes as the third time the country has broken its all-time heat record in just one summer. Data released by the Slovak Meteorological Institute confirms that the southern town of Kamenica nad Hronom hit 41.4 degrees Celsius (106.5 degrees Fahrenheit) during the latest heat surge, shattering previous marks set only weeks earlier. Prior to this week, the nation’s record stood at 41.3 C (106.3 F), also set in Kamenica nad Hronom on June 30, which itself broke a 41.0 C (105.8 F) record set the day before in Turna nad Bodvou. That back-to-back-to-back record-breaking streak has even toppled a long-standing 2007 high of 40.3 C (104.5 F) set in Hurbanovo, which stood as the national benchmark for 16 years before this summer’s relentless heat.

    The extreme conditions are not limited to daytime temperatures. Overnight temperatures between Tuesday and Wednesday also hit a historic peak, with the southwestern town of Skalica recording a low of 28.4 C (83 F) — the warmest night ever recorded in Slovakia.

    Neighboring Austria followed suit, breaking its own all-time heat record just one day after the previous milestone was set. Austria’s GeoSphere meteorological service confirmed that a reading of 41.2 C (106.1 F) was recorded in Bad Deutsch-Altenburg, a town located right on Austria’s border with Slovakia. That reading beat the previous national record of 41.0 C (105.8 F), which was set just 24 hours earlier. The news comes weeks after the Czech Republic and Hungary, two other Central European neighbors, also notched their own all-time national heat records earlier this hot season.

    The string of simultaneous broken heat records across Central Europe aligns with a broader pattern of extreme climate across the entire continent this year. Europe is currently experiencing an exceptionally hot, dry summer that has turned vast stretches of forest and rural land into tinderboxes, sparking unprecedented wildfire seasons that have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes and popular tourist vacation spots.

    Data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms that Europe is warming faster than any other continent on Earth. Since the 1980s, the continent’s average temperature has increased at twice the rate of the global average, a trend that scientists link to human-caused climate change and that has made extreme heat events far more frequent, more intense, and longer-lasting across the region.

  • Record heatwave in South Korea as temperatures soar to 42.5C

    Record heatwave in South Korea as temperatures soar to 42.5C

    South Korea is grappling with an unprecedented climate event that has made history for all the wrong reasons: a relentless record-shattering heatwave that has pushed national temperatures to a never-before-seen high of 42.5°C. According to official reports, the extreme heat has already claimed at least 19 lives, making this one of the deadliest heat-related events the East Asian nation has faced in modern recorded history.

    Meteorological agencies confirm that the peak temperature logged during this heat event marks the highest reading ever captured since systematic temperature tracking began in South Korea. The sweltering conditions have stretched across large swathes of the country, putting unprecedented strain on public health services, vulnerable populations including the elderly and low-income communities without consistent access to cooling, and critical infrastructure. Public health officials have issued repeated urgent warnings, urging residents to stay hydrated, avoid prolonged outdoor exposure, and check on at-risk neighbors to prevent additional heat-related fatalities.

    Climate researchers note that this extreme heat event aligns with a broader global pattern of increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves driven by anthropogenic climate change. South Korea, like many nations across the globe, has seen a steady rise in average annual temperatures over the past century, with extreme weather events becoming more common and more severe in recent decades. This record-breaking event is already prompting renewed calls for accelerated action on both climate adaptation measures to protect public safety and broader emissions reduction efforts to curb long-term global warming.

  • Record heat wave impacts people and animals in Japan and Korean Peninsula

    Record heat wave impacts people and animals in Japan and Korean Peninsula

    A relentless, record-shattering heat wave has swept across Northeast Asia, leaving a trail of human casualties, animal deaths, and disrupted daily life in South Korea, North Korea, and Japan, with extreme temperatures pushing communities and emergency systems to their breaking point.

    In South Korea, the crisis has escalated to the status of a national disaster, according to top government officials. Since mid-May, national data from the Interior and Safety Ministry confirms 2,220 people have developed heat-related illnesses, with 19 losing their lives to extreme temperatures. The agricultural sector has also suffered catastrophic losses: more than 17,000 head of livestock including chickens, ducks, and pigs have perished from heat exhaustion, alongside roughly 160,000 farmed fish. On July, the southeastern city of Yangsan recorded a historic high of 42.5 degrees Celsius (108.5 Fahrenheit), the highest temperature ever measured in the country since consistent weather monitoring began in 1904.

    As of Wednesday, most of South Korea remained under extreme heat warnings, with temperatures in the greater Seoul metropolitan area—home to more than 20 million residents—climbing as high as 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 Fahrenheit). During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung ordered government agencies to treat the ongoing heat emergency as a full national disaster and deploy all available resources to protect civilian lives.

    The extreme heat has already disrupted public events across the country. Last Tuesday, a spectator in his 20s collapsed mid-game during a professional baseball match between the SSG Landers and LG Twins at Incheon’s stadium, forcing a 10-minute game stoppage as emergency crews administered CPR and rushed him to a hospital. A second fan in his 20s also lost consciousness shortly after the game concluded and required on-site medical care. In response, the Korea Baseball Organization announced Wednesday it would cancel all 10 scheduled professional games for Wednesday and Thursday, with plans to reschedule the matches at a later date.

    To the north, North Korean authorities have also issued heat wave warnings across most of its territory, urging residents to take precautionary measures to prevent heat-related health complications. A top hospital official from Pyongyang General Hospital, Min Son Yong, told state newspaper Rodong Sinmun that people should consume specific foods to maintain stamina in extreme heat. Min recommended dog meat—known euphemistically in North Korea as *dangogi*, or sweet meat, a traditional summer food believed to boost energy during hot weather—alongside fish porridge to add protein to diets. He also listed cooling produce including watermelons, cucumbers, tomatoes, and mung beans as ideal heat-beating foods. While dog meat consumption is also common in other parts of East Asia and parts of Africa, South Korea is set to implement a full national ban on the slaughter, breeding, and sale of dog meat for human consumption starting in 2025.

    In Japan, the ongoing heat wave has compounded existing recovery efforts in the wake of a recent major earthquake. Japan’s Anti-Disaster Agency reported that between July 20 and 26 alone, more than 18,000 people showing heat stroke symptoms were admitted to hospitals across the country. On Wednesday, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a top-level heat stroke alert for most of western and southern Japan. While temperatures in the Tokyo region have dipped slightly this week, extreme heat continues to batter southern areas of the archipelago.

    In the southwestern city of Kumamoto, recovery work is still underway after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the region on July 28, which killed 38 people. Among the fatalities was a 70-year-old woman who suffered fatal heat stroke while sheltering in her car after the quake. As of Wednesday, more than 43,000 households in the affected area still remained without running water, leaving residents even more vulnerable to the extreme heat.

    The heat has also proven deadly for captive wildlife in the region: three female lions have died from heat-related complications at Tokyo’s Tama Zoological Park, with other animals also showing clear signs of heat stroke. Park officials reported that the first fatality, 3-year-old Mugi, developed a loss of appetite on July 19 and lost the ability to stand just one day later. Zookeepers attempted to cool her down with increased ventilation and water sprinklers, and administered subcutaneous fluids, liver tonics, and vitamins, but Mugi died on July 28. Two other lions—11-year-old Ichigo and 15-year-old Luena—died within a few days of Mugi. Autopsies confirmed all three lions suffered from severe dehydration and multiple organ failure, which park officials have attributed directly to the extreme ongoing heat.

    The deadly heat wave across Northeast Asia aligns with broader scientific warnings that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events globally, with the upcoming El Niño pattern expected to push global temperatures even higher in coming months.

  • Disaster prevention stepped up

    Disaster prevention stepped up

    Against a backdrop of rising extreme weather events that have exposed critical gaps in legacy disaster mitigation frameworks, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources has launched an ambitious new five-year plan to reform the country’s geological disaster prevention system, shifting focus from monitoring individual hazard points to managing entire at-risk zones to cut disaster-related casualties and economic damage.

    Releasing the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) for National Geological Disaster Prevention and Control in early August 2026, officials outlined that the policy update comes in response to a growing trend: more frequent extreme rainfall is triggering sudden, clustered and cascading geological disasters in regions previously classified as outside traditional high-risk zones. Point-based prevention strategies, which only target documented individual hazard sites, have proven ill-equipped to handle these emerging threats, according to the ministry.

    As of the end of 2025, China has recorded nearly 280,000 registered geological disaster hazard points across the country. These sites collectively put more than 11.48 million people at risk, and threaten more than 760 billion yuan ($112.54 billion) in property, underscoring the ongoing severity of the nation’s disaster prevention challenge despite major progress in recent years.

    During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025), China recorded notable gains in disaster risk reduction: compared to the 2016–2020 period, geological disaster-related fatalities dropped by 52%, and direct economic losses fell by 38%. The country also expanded its technological disaster prevention infrastructure dramatically, deploying over 75,000 automated monitoring and early warning devices and launching successful pilot programs for comprehensive remote-sensing geological disaster identification.

    Even with these advances, unique geographic and climatic conditions leave China facing persistent geological disaster risks, explained Yang Xudong, a senior engineer at the ministry’s Geological Disaster Technical Guidance Center. China’s diverse terrain, complex geological structures, active tectonic and seismic activity, variable climate patterns, growing frequency of extreme weather, and intensive human engineering activity all combine to create conditions for frequent, recurring geological disasters. Yang added that many of these events are particularly hard to forecast due to their hidden origin, tendency to reoccur, and sudden onset, making proactive prevention the most effective strategy to reduce risk.

    According to Yang, China’s geological disaster prevention work has now entered its third evolutionary stage. “The previous two stages — whether relying on traditional community-based monitoring and professional surveys, or on large-scale high-precision remote sensing and widespread monitoring instruments — both centered on hazard points with visible deformation signs,” Yang noted. “The new stage directly addresses mass shallow landslides and debris flows triggered by extreme rainfall, which often show no clear warning signs and typically strike during the peak of heavy rainfall. Traditional methods struggle to identify and predict these kinds of disasters.”

    To tackle these new challenges, the 15th Five-Year Plan outlines seven core priorities for the 2026–2030 period, including dynamic nationwide hazard surveys, upgrades to monitoring infrastructure, and comprehensive risk governance. The plan targets the completion of more than 4,200 engineered disaster mitigation projects, over 6,100 hazard elimination projects, and the relocation of 50,000 at-risk households to safer areas.

    A dual management system that combines oversight of both individual hazard points and entire risk zones will be rolled out in 1,206 key counties, cities and districts across 17 priority provinces, with formal management rosters and clear accountability frameworks established for each administrative region.

    The plan also expands the number of national key prevention zones to 21, up from 16 during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. These zones cover approximately 2.97 million square kilometers of terrain at risk of landslides, rockfalls, debris flows and ground subsidence, plus an additional 280,000 square kilometers at risk of ground settlement and earth fissures.

    Newly added key prevention zones include the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River hydropower project area, high-altitude long-distance disaster chain regions, and the Yanshan-Taihang Mountain region. The plan also refines risk mapping for traditional high-susceptibility areas, including southeastern China’s hilly regions and the mountainous southwest.

    A central focus of the new plan is boosting the precision and intelligence of prevention efforts. It mandates detailed 1:10,000 scale geological surveys for all key towns located in extremely high and high-risk areas, and promotes wider adoption of advanced technologies including artificial intelligence and digital twins to improve hazard identification and early warning accuracy.

    Yang emphasized that these changes represent a fundamental upgrade to China’s disaster prevention philosophy. “The shift reflects the scientific recognition that under extreme conditions, some disasters remain beyond prevention with existing technology,” he said. Moving forward, disaster prevention will increasingly rely on evidence-based scientific risk assessment, precision early warning, and broad public participation to raise disaster awareness across all levels of society, he added.

  • High bills, cheap panels drive a Philippine solar surge

    High bills, cheap panels drive a Philippine solar surge

    The Philippines is experiencing a rapid, consumer-led boom in rooftop solar adoption, driven by a perfect storm of regional record-high electricity prices, frequent power outages, plummeting costs for imported Chinese solar panels, and renewed energy market volatility sparked by the ongoing Middle East conflict.

  • Mysterious elephant deaths in Kenya raise questions around pesticides

    Mysterious elephant deaths in Kenya raise questions around pesticides

    The mysterious death of 15 elephants in southern Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem has sparked urgent debate and widespread concern over the intersection of commercial agriculture, illegal chemical use, and wildlife conservation in one of Africa’s most critical elephant habitats. The deaths, which occurred over a one-month window between June 24 and July 24 this year, have left wildlife officials, local farmers, and conservation experts divided over the root cause, with a leading official theory pointing to accidental cyanide poisoning from pesticides used on surrounding tomato crops.

    Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) chief veterinary officer Dr. Isaac Lekolool confirmed that cyanide traces were detected in stomach samples collected from the deceased elephants. While the agency has not ruled out deliberate poisoning as a possibility, Dr. Lekolool noted that the unusual cluster of deaths is unprecedented in the region, describing it as an almost one-off event. The current working hypothesis is that the elephants were exposed to the toxin through agrochemicals applied to commercial tomato farms in the nearby Kimana area, a fertile corridor that links Amboseli National Park to Tsavo National Park further south.

    “It could be unintentional. Maybe people are trying to do some controls of pests on their crops, and that could have been maybe a source,” Dr. Lekolool explained.

    This corridor sits at the heart of the broader Amboseli ecosystem, which straddles the Kenya-Tanzania border and hosts more than 2,000 migratory elephants that travel the route annually in search of food and water. The Kimana area’s tomato farms rely on glacial streams from nearby Mount Kilimanjaro for irrigation, turning the region into a productive agricultural hub that supplies produce to markets as far as Nairobi and beyond. But access to unregulated toxic chemicals has long been a problem in the area, according to food safety researchers.

    A 2024 report from Kenyan food safety initiative Route to Food already documented the use of illegal cyanide-containing insecticides by Kimana smallholder farmers. Report author Wangunyu Njuguna explained that while these hazardous compounds are banned for agricultural use in Kenya, they are easily smuggled across the unpatrolled border from Tanzania, where weaker regional regulatory enforcement creates gaps for illegal trade.

    “The biggest problem is we’re not enforcing similar standards in the region,” Njuguna said. “There is no-one checking what I go and buy across the border, so I can just go buy anything and walk through the border and no-one stops me.”

    Highly toxic unregulated agrochemicals are already widespread across Kenyan smallholder farms, with previous studies linking the substances to chronic human disease. While national laws ban the most dangerous compounds, weak enforcement has meant little accountability, and almost no scrutiny of how these chemicals impact nearby wildlife populations.

    However, the official pesticide poisoning theory has faced sharp pushback from conservationists, local landowners, and farmers who coexist with Amboseli’s wildlife, who say the narrative does not align with years of on-the-ground experience and observed animal behavior.

    Renowned elephant conservationist Paula Kahumbu, who has studied Kenyan elephant populations for nearly 30 years, argues that there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that crop pesticides killed the 15 animals. “We haven’t got enough detailed information to have confidence in this claim that it’s due to pesticides in crops,” Kahumbu told the BBC. “Some information has been released to the public but it’s not adding up. Those elephants have to eat a huge amount to kill them.”

    Other conservation experts, who requested anonymity, pointed out a key inconsistency: male elephants are far more likely to risk raiding agricultural crops than females and calves, yet only one of the 15 dead elephants was an adult male. Local landowner representative Daniel Nina, who has lived alongside wildlife in the region for decades, also questioned why only elephants were affected if the poison came from crop pesticides.

    “We have stayed with this wildlife for decades and have never experienced this,” Nina said. “So that’s why we are wondering why it is happening today.” He added that previous poisoning incidents in the region affected crop-raiding zebras, antelopes, and wildebeest alongside elephants, a pattern that did not hold in this case. “How does cyanide kill the elephants and leave behind the zebras, antelopes and wildebeests, which are eating the grass together?” he asked.

    The mystery of the 15 elephant deaths comes as long-simmering human-wildlife conflict intensifies across the Amboseli ecosystem, driven by growing agricultural expansion into critical elephant migration routes. Local tomato farmer Stephen Michael told the BBC that elephant incursions are a regular threat to livelihoods, with one recent raid costing him more than $1,500 in lost cabbage and tomato crops alone.

    Frank Pope, CEO of leading conservation organization Save the Elephants, explained that the biggest threat to Amboseli’s elephant population is no longer ivory poaching – it is competing land use. Fertile, water-rich areas that attract smallholder farmers are the exact same corridors that elephants have used for migratory purposes for centuries, and as more farms and tourist lodges are built along these routes, conflict becomes inevitable.

    To date, no conclusive cause of death has been confirmed, and the lack of clarity has left communities and conservationists worried that ongoing risks remain for both the surviving elephant population and local residents who may be exposed to unregulated toxic chemicals through food and water.

  • ‘The fire’s right there’ – Families recount fleeing Washington state wildfires

    ‘The fire’s right there’ – Families recount fleeing Washington state wildfires

    A cluster of fast-moving wildfires sweeping through Spokane, Washington has left a trail of widespread destruction, tearing through hundreds of residential structures, forcing more than 60,000 people to flee their homes and upending the lives of countless local families.

    For many residents, the disaster unfolded with little warning, catching them off guard even in a region long accustomed to seasonal wildfire risk. Amy Mulligan, one of the thousands displaced, was going about a routine afternoon in her backyard last weekend, listening to an audiobook and making final preparations for her five-year-old child’s upcoming birthday party when she first detected the faint tang of smoke in the air.

    Accustomed to periodic wildfire activity across the Spokane area, Mulligan did not immediately panic. She climbed up to her home’s deck to investigate and spotted plumes of thick black smoke billowing in the distance, but a quick check of her phone’s emergency alert system showed no active warnings. Dismissing the risk, she assumed local fire crews already had the blaze under control.

    Minutes later, that calm evaporated completely. Her brother-in-law rushed to her home with urgent news: a nearby neighborhood was under mandatory evacuation. When Mulligan stepped outside again, the fire was no longer a distant threat. The smoke was already rolling over the ridge behind her property, and neighbors were rushing to escape, speeding away in their vehicles while shouting urgent warnings to get out immediately.

    “That activity started to really scare me because that was different than in the past,” Mulligan recalled in an interview. She, her husband, and their two children grabbed a small handful of essential belongings, jumped into their car, and fled the area. Stuck in gridlock evacuation traffic, the couple’s nine-year-old daughter succumbed to panic, hyperventilating and crying as she watched the fire advance around them. It took sustained calming breathing exercises in the car to help her manage her terror as the family inched toward safety.

    Seventy-year-old James Main and his wife were among the many residents who received no official warning at all before the fire reached their neighborhood. “Normally, things would come on your phone and say, ‘Hey, this area, you know, you’ve got fire, level three fire, or anything. There was zero warning for this whole deal,” Main said. He first spotted the blaze, and within just 30 minutes, realized the situation was catastrophic. As he scrambled to pack for evacuation, he experienced a sudden wave of debilitating anxiety that left him frozen. “I kind of froze up for just a few minutes. I think it was like an anxiety attack,” he said. “I’ve never had one before, but I think I had one then.”

    When the couple finally got into their truck to escape, they found their route shrouded in thick, pitch-black smoke that cut visibility to nearly nothing. “We don’t know if we’re heading out of a fire or into a fire because we can’t freaking see,” Main recalled.

    As of Tuesday afternoon, three separate wildfires have scorched more than 10,000 acres across the Spokane region, according to the state’s official wildfire tracking system. The largest of the blazes, the Old Trails fire that destroyed both Mulligan’s and Main’s homes, remains active. Authorities have arrested a suspect on suspicion of setting the Old Trails fire intentionally through arson.

    Remarkably, as of the latest update, no fatalities have been reported across the three wildfires. But the destruction left in their path is staggering: more than 700 homes and other structures have been reduced to ash and rubble. When Main returned to his property after the fire passed to survey the damage, nothing remained of his home beyond charred foundations, smoldering ash, and blackened tree trunks poking through the debris. When asked what the future holds for him and his wife, he answered simply: “We don’t know.”

    For Mulligan, the loss of her home is devastating, but the pain of losing irreplaceable personal mementos cuts far deeper. Her home now is nothing but ash, but the items that brought her to tears are not the structure or its furniture – they are the heirlooms that no insurance payout can ever replace, and no government damage tally ever counts. Among those lost treasures is a family ring passed down to her from her grandmother. The ring had been given to her grandmother by Mulligan’s grandfather on their 49th wedding anniversary, a gesture the grandmother always believed her husband planned because he knew he would not live to see their 50th – a prediction that came true that same year.

    “She had always said she thought that he knew, and that’s why he went ahead and got her this ring. And she had given it to me,” Mulligan said, pausing to hold back tears. “And it’s gone.”

    In the coming weeks and months, thousands of displaced Spokane residents like Mulligan and Main will grapple with the overwhelming work of rebuilding their lives from scratch, after a single day of raging wildfires turned their sense of security and familiar lives upside down.