Google.org, Google Corp's philanthropic arm, earlier this month pledged $5 million toward efforts combat wildlife poaching. The grant is going to the World Wildlife Fund to help the conservation giant…
Moth larvae munching on a host plant. Photo by: Tom Corcoran. Poaching is a major threat to endangered lemurs in some parts of Madagascar, but a group has come up…
Black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) with fly near its eye in an ox-bow lake in Yasuni National Park. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. The Yasuni-ITT Initiative has been called many things: controversial,…
The ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice hit a new record this year that rocked even the most pessimistic predictions. The low sea ice extent hit 18 percent below the…
The mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz) is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. If the world is to conserve its wealth of life—species great…
View from Varandha Pass in the Western Ghats. A massive expert panel report on the conservation of the Western Ghats has caused a political stir in India. The report, headed…
Berkeley Earth Project temperature graph going back to 1750, shows how volcanic eruptions lower temperatures in the short-term. Image courtesy of Berkeley Earth Project. After starting his own project to…
Sprawl outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. Icarus, according to ancient Greek myth, attempted to escape Crete by flying using wings that his father constructed from feathers…
Logging in Gabon, Central Africa. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Industrial logging in primary tropical forests that is both sustainable and profitable is impossible, argues a new study in Bioscience,…
Diatom, a type of phytoplankton, as seen by a scanning electron microscope. Photo by: University of Tasmania Scanning Electron Microscope. For a long time, oceanic iron fertilization was seen as…
Belo Monte protest: around 300 people dug a channel though an earthen dam blocking the Xingu River last month. Photo credit: Atossa Soltani/ Amazon Watch / Spectral Q. As of…
A Malagasy girl. While Madagascar faces widespread deforestation and erosion, it is estimated that 70 percent of its people suffer from malnutrition. The Rio+20 Summit is attempting to tackle both…
This month, momentous events will occur on the global scene that will set the tone for whether 2012 will be a hopeful year or one in which dislocations and disconnects…
Aerial view of the infamous Río Huaypetue gold mine in the Peruvian Amazon. This remote but massive gold mine is known for the destruction of primary rainforest, widespread mercury pollution,…
Coal truck in western China. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Governments, NGOs, and others fighting climate change should consider buying coal and oil deposits—not to exploit them, but to keep…
Seeking to capitalize on the crowd-funding trend, a pair of biologists this month launched the #SciFund Challenge to raise money for dozens of scientific projects. Jai Ranganatha and Jarrett Byrnes…
Sawmill in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last year researchers took the first ever publicly-released video of an African golden cat (Profelis aurata) in a Gabon rainforest. This beautiful,…
Corn growing in Colombia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In general, industrial agriculture beats organic farming in yields, according to a comprehensive new study in Nature. The study adds new…
An interview with Dr. Sarah Bexell. The vanishing giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is just one victim of the global environmental crisis. Photo by: Sarah Bexell. Several years ago while teaching…
Observations of planet Earth from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on July 11, 2005. Photo by: NASA. Seventeen top scientists and four acclaimed conservation organizations have called for radical…
Right of left: Evgenia Chirikova, Edwin Gariguez, Ma Jun, Ikal Angelei, Caroline Cannon, and Sofia Gatica. Photo courtesy of Goldman Environmental Prize. A controversial dam, a massive mine, poisonous pesticides,…
Forest clearing in the Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Indigenous populations in the Amazon successfully farmed without the use of fire before the arrival of Europeans, demonstrating a potentially…
Cattle in Brazil. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Making productive use of degraded lands and boosting productivity of small-holder farmers are key to meeting surging global consumption of agricultural products…
Burning in the Peruvian Amazon. Such burning produces significant soot (as well as carbon), which disrupts rainfall, poses health hazards, and warms the Earth. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Photo…
The Amazon rainforest meets cleared area for cattle pasture. A radical meteorology theory argues that loss of forest, both in temperate and tropical regions, will lead to less precipitation over…
Graph covers observed temperatures through 2009 and projected temperatures thereafter under various scenarios including cutting methane, black carbon, and carbon, all relative to the 1890–1910 mean. The rightmost bars give…
A possibly ground-breaking idea has been kept on life support after Ecuador revealed its Yasuni-ITT Initiative had raked in $116 million before the end of the year, breaking the $100…
Victories won by activists around the world tops our list of the big environmental stories of the year. In this photo: a young woman is placed in handcuffs and arrested…
Recent deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Brazil, which last week moved to reform its Forest Code, may find lessons in Russia's revision of its forest…
A program proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation made mixed progress during climate talks in Durban. Significant questions remain about financing and safeguards to protect against…
