Two musical instrument makers wanted to save Hawai‘i’s rare koa tree. In the process, they restored a tropical forest on the slopes of the Big Island’s Mauna Loa volcano. Part one of a three-part Mongabay mini-series on island habitat restoration.
When Teresa Chang first saw the plot of land that now makes up the Amotape Dry Forest Private Conservation Area in the Tumbes municipality of northern Peru, she was horrified.…
KATHMANDU — The B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Nepal’s central Bharatpur city, Chitwan District, bustles as patients, most of them from the country’s northern hilly areas, line up for…
For half a century, industrial tuna fishing vessels have borne scrutiny for catching animals they haven’t meant to: “bycatch,” in fisheries lingo. Purse seiner vessels, which provide most of the…
Ancient forest fires seem to have played a role in enhancing resistance to drought in the Amazon, a recent study suggests. The research, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global…
In South Los Angeles — right in the heart of the 10-million-person metro area — sits a sprawling 1,000-acre zone from another era: It’s the Inglewood Oil Field, a rolling scrubland…
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — In the middle of the Paraguayan portion of the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest, a paved road leads to the Mbya Indigenous community of Pindo’i. Roads in the…
This story was produced with funding support from the Pulitzer Center. MAZZORBO, Italy — In the kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant, a dozen blue crabs await their fate in a…
SAINT-LOUIS, Senegal — Every afternoon, Bouba Sow, 60, crosses the Ndiaël in Senegal’s Saint-Louis region with his goats so that they can graze. The territory is immense and partly desert.…
The photo speaks for itself: a woman lies on the ground with just her smiling face visible, her body covered by about 20 dead geese, the result of a “successful”…
MOCOA, Colombia — “We are experiencing a profound crisis, not only in the Amazon but throughout humanity,” said Campo Elías de la Cruz, a Catholic priest and environmental activist who…
It’s often been said that big cats don’t like water — but this mythological thinking isn’t entirely accurate. New research provides evidence that some male cougars (Puma concolor), or pumas,…
Like many beekeepers living in the vicinity of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Alejandro Oliveros López has a wildlife problem. To keep ants at bay and provide water to their bees,…
CHITWAN — The chirping of birds is interrupted by the rustling of leaves and the sound of breaking twigs. It’s breakfast time at the office of the National Trust for…
Overproduction of cash crops, vast monocultures of chemical-dependent grains and massive animal agriculture operations are putting major stress not just on U.S. farmland — where they’re contributing to soil erosion,…
Last year, farmer protests erupted throughout the Netherlands, riding a wave of rural anger at government plans to drastically halve nitrogen emissions by downsizing and closing farms. This quickly swept…
Bearded pigs play a prominent role in the lives of many people living on the island of Borneo. For some ethnic groups, they're a hunter’s most-prized quarry, providing an important…
A few years ago I was catching butterflies in a strip of rainforest in Panama. One day the camp welcomed a team of jet-lagged vagabonds dragging their rollers full of…
KATHMANDU — As dawn breaks over the forest in the Kawasoti area on the edge of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, early risers can catch a glimpse of rare vultures roosting…
The Philippine eagle, the archipelagic nation's iconic, endemic apex predator, has been declared threatened with extinction for nearly three decades. Yet despite its status as the national bird, little is…
Hundreds of thousands of European bison once grazed the grassy slopes from Spain to Ukraine — until they gradually went extinct in the wild by 1927. But when the last…
KATHMANDU — When researchers last year confirmed the presence of the manul, the “world’s grumpiest cat,” on the world’s highest mountain, they immediately looked at past records of the elusive…
Environmental and social impact assessments (ESIA) have become an important tool for decision-makers around the world to explore and understand the impacts of proposed development projects on the wider ecosystem.…
Under the searing rays of the afternoon sun, Rodolfo Assis Magalhães and his team silently scour the fields that border the forest. Their target, the charismatic Brazilian three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes…
Jaguars have been feared and revered for centuries, inspiring rituals, cults, and, more recently, conservation concerns. Although jaguars’ known range extends from Mexico to Argentina, they’ve been eradicated from almost…
Colombia and Ecuador are implementing a new joint alert system along their shared border in an effort to increase protections for Indigenous communities suffering violent attacks from organized crime groups.…
For the first time ever, researchers have plotted out the locations and tabulated the carbon stocks of more than 9.9 billion individual trees spread across the dry belt of land…
Inside Bolivia’s Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), conservationists from Asociación Armonía rigged up a network of nine camera traps and 15 audio recorders. They were seeking out…
When flesh-footed shearwater chicks hatch from their eggs, their parents start working to fill the chicks’ stomachs with as much food as possible. They do this for about 80 to…
SEPAKU/BALIKPAPAN/JAKARTA, Indonesia — In 1977, when Darna was about 8 years old, her family moved from Indonesia’s central island of Java to Borneo, its largest. They were among the tens…
