In a world that treats foxes as either fur or folly, Mikayla Raines saw something else entirely: Sentience.

Not the cartoonish cleverness of folklore, nor the soft luxury of fashion, but the quiet, confused lives of animals bred to die or discarded as inconvenient pets. From the age of 15, when she bottle-fed her first fox, she was drawn to their wild complexity. Skittish, solitary, destructive—foxes do not make easy companions. But that was part of the point. She loved them not in spite of who they were, but because of it.

Ms. Raines founded Save a Fox Rescue in 2017, after receiving her wildlife rehabilitation license and training as a veterinary technician. Her sanctuaries in Minnesota and later Florida became unusual havens for animals trapped by human contradiction: bred in captivity but illegal to release, unsellable for fur but unfit for the wild. She saved them anyway—thousands over the years—many through painstaking work with fur farms she refused to vilify, preferring collaboration over condemnation.

This was not glamorous work. Her days were filled with paperwork, permit battles, fundraisers, and grief. She mourned every animal she couldn’t save. She was autistic, and often struggled with depression and borderline personality disorder, a combination that made the brutal unpredictability of rescue work especially difficult. But her sensitivity, her husband said, was also her gift: she could intuit distress before it was spoken, in people and in animals alike.

In the end, the burden proved too heavy. Harassment from online detractors, exhaustion from years of emotional labor, and the sheer relentlessness of care wore her down. She died by suicide on June 20th.

She is survived by her husband, Ethan, their 3-year-old daughter Freya, her mother Sandi, and the many creatures she gave a chance at life.

Header image: Mikayla Raines. Photo courtesy of Save a Fox Rescue

PORT STEPHENS, Australia (AP) — Sydney’s harbor becomes a humpback highway in winter as the whales migrate from feeding grounds in Antarctica to breeding areas off Australia’s coast. Whale watchers are spoiled for sightings during peak traffic weeks in June and July, when 40,000 creatures the size of buses will navigate the waters of New South Wales. A pod of the giant, graceful mammals even created traffic delays for humans this month when a passenger ferry had to halt its passage across the harbor because they were swimming by. The humpback population boom is a sharp reversal from the 1960s, when numbers dwindled to a few hundred.

Reporting by Charlotte Graham-McLay and Mark Baker, Associated Press 

Banner image of a humpback whale breaching in Iceland, by Giles Laurent via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Peter Seligmann, the founder of Conservation International (CI) and longtime Chair of its Board of Directors, has stepped down from the Board effective June 22, 2025, the organization announced. He will continue to support the organization in the role of Chairman Emeritus.

Seligmann co-founded Conservation International in 1987 after a decade at The Nature Conservancy, where he led its International Program. Under his leadership—first as CEO and Chair, and later as Chair alone—Conservation International has grown to be one of the world’s largest conservation organizations, with work in over 70 countries and more than 1,200 protected areas. He also helped shape the organization’s partnerships with governments, businesses, and Indigenous communities.

“As Peter transitions into this new role, we celebrate his extraordinary legacy and the enduring impact of his leadership,” said M. Sanjayan, CEO of Conservation International, in a statement. “While he is stepping back from our Board, we will always be guided by his passion, wisdom, and vision as we build on the foundation he helped create.”

“Peter Seligmann is a visionary force in conservation—a leader who understood long before many that protecting nature is not charity, it’s survival,” said Actor Harrison Ford, Vice Chair of CI’s Board. “I’m proud to have stood beside him in this fight for our planet.”

In addition to his ongoing role with CI, Seligmann serves on the boards of the Mulago Foundation and the New School’s Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. He also co-founded Nia Tero in 2017, after stepping down as CI’s CEO, and continues to serve on its board. Nia Tero supports Indigenous guardianship of nature.

“All of humanity depends upon what happens to our Earth,” said Seligmann in the statement. ”Our work must inspire, uplift, and embrace all political parties as well as the full diversity of cultures.”

Related:

• “Securing Indigenous guardianship of vital ecosystems”: Q&A with Nia Tero CEO Peter Seligmann

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

Bangladesh is preparing to add to its tally of 56 protected areas by declaring a new sanctuary in its northeast — not for forests or tigers, but for a group of elephants trapped by geopolitics, reports Mongabay’s Abu Siddique.

The “non-resident” herd, believed to have migrated from India’s Meghalaya state, has been stuck in the border region since 2019, when cross-border elephant corridors were blocked by Indian fencing. Since then, these elephants have roamed the cropland-dominated Bangladeshi districts of Sherpur, Mymensingh and Netrokona in search of food, fueling increasingly deadly conflicts with humans.

The plan follows an on-site assessment prompted by a March investigation by Mongabay. Syeda Rizwana Hasan, an adviser to the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, said the government intends to both protect the area and reduce human-elephant clashes.

“At the same time, we will continue to talk to India to find a sustainable solution,” she told Mongabay.

Experts remain cautious. Zoologist Mohammed Mostafa Feeroz warned that most of the 200-square-kilometer (77-square-mile) stretch in question is already densely populated. He stressed the need to reopen the four existing transboundary elephant corridors and called for a comprehensive management plan, including the deployment of local elephant response teams and the diversification of crops to deter elephants.

With only 268 resident elephants remaining and rising conflict deaths, Bangladesh’s elephants are in crisis. International cooperation, including implementation of a 2020 bilateral protocol and the 2025 Siem Reap Declaration, may be crucial.

Conservation, in this case, may hinge as much on diplomacy as it does on ecology.

Read the full story by Abu Siddique here.

Banner image: Locals pass wild elephants on a farmland in northeastern Bangladesh. Image by Mohammed Mostafa Feeroz.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Flash floods triggered by pre-monsoon rains swept away dozens of tourists in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing at least eight people.

The nationwide death toll from rain-related incidents rose to 18 over the past 24 hours, officials said.

Nearly 100 rescuers in various groups rescued a total of 58 people and were searching for the missing tourists who were swept away while picnicking along the Swat River in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Shah Fahad, a spokesman for the provincial emergency service.

He said 16 members from the same family were among the dead or missing.

Fahad said divers had so far recovered eight bodies after hours-long efforts and the search continued for the remaining 10 victims.

Videos circulating on social media showed about a dozen people stranded on a slightly elevated spot in the middle of the Swat River, crying for help amid rapidly rising floodwaters.

Fahad urged the public to adhere strictly to earlier government warnings about possible flash flooding in the Swat River, which runs through the scenic Swat Valley — a popular summer destination for tens of thousands of tourists who visit the region in summer and winter alike.

Elsewhere, at least 10 people were killed in rain-related incidents in eastern Punjab and southern Sindh provinces over the past 24 hours, according to rescue officials.

Weather forecasters say rains will continue this week. Pakistan’s annual monsoon season runs from July through September.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed his deep sorrow and grief over the deaths of the tourists swept away by the floods in the Swat River. In a statement, he directed authorities to strengthen safety measures near rivers and streams.

Heavy rains have battered parts of Pakistan since earlier this week, blocking highways and damaging homes.

Still, weather forecasters say the country will receive less rain compared with 2022 when the climate-induced downpour swelled rivers and inundated one-third of Pakistan at one point, killing 1,739.

Reporting by Riaz Khan, Associated Press.

Banner image: Local residents look to the Swat River, which is overflowing due to pre-monsoon heavy rains in the area, on the outskirts of Mingora, the main town of Pakistan’s Swat Valley, Friday, June 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Sherin Zada)

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

Five years on from the publication of the climate fiction book, The Ministry for the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson finds little he would change in his sweeping speculative novel —aside from a regrettable mention of blockchain.

“What I really meant was simply digital money,” he says, dismissing the term’s cryptocurrency baggage.

But the core of the book remains intact: a “cognitive map,” in the author’s words, for navigating the climate crisis and economic upheaval of the 21st century.

In an interview with Mongabay’s podcast host Mike DiGirolamo, Robinson reflects on the story’s enduring relevance. The book, which opens with a catastrophic heat wave in India, has gained renewed resonance as real-world temperatures rise and political volatility deepens. “We are in a science fiction novel that we’re all co-writing together,” he says. “Things are changing so fast.”

A lifelong utopian, Robinson is less concerned with idealized outcomes than with the practical, often fraught process of “getting there.” His work imagines a slow evolution toward “post-capitalism,” a term he uses to describe a more equitable and sustainable political economy. Rather than advocating “degrowth” — which he considers a “spiky, negative, counterproductive name” — Robinson envisions a “growth of goodness,” particularly for the world’s poorest.

His perspective, however, is far from rosy. The book confronts the likelihood of “reversals” — from political backlash to social unrest — and examines how righteous anger can devolve into unproductive violence. Its protagonists, Mary and Frank, represent the uneasy alliance between institutional reform and grassroots resistance. Both are drawn from recognizable archetypes: Mary from real-world figures like Christiana Figueres and Mary Robinson; Frank from the wounded idealists Robinson observes attempting to do good in a broken world.

For Robinson, storytelling is a key battleground in what he calls a “war of ideas.” And books alone won’t win it. He praises platforms like Mongabay for amplifying underreported stories of environmental progress and resilience. “If there were more of those kinds of stories,” he says, “it would be a sign that things were getting better in world history.”

His next project, a nonfiction book on Antarctica, extends Ministry’s influence even further. It explores real-world efforts to preserve ice sheets using methods first imagined in fiction. “We have not lost this fight yet,” Robinson insists. If anything, the enduring interest in his novel suggests the opposite: Stories of change, however imperfect, can help shape a better future.

Banner image: White rhyolite spires on the shores of Jodogahama Beach in Miyako, Japan. These spires are estimated to be around 45 million years old and form a natural version of a Japanese garden. This beach is part of Sanriku Fukkō National Park. It was incorporated into this national park as a reconstruction effort following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Image by Mike DiGirolamo for Mongabay.