This is the second part of a Mongabay series investigating Cambodia's illicit timber trade. Read Part One. Several Cambodian journalists helped to report this investigation, but have requested not to…
JAKARTA — Indonesian prosecutors have launched an investigation into the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, as there are indications of corruption related to the palm oil industry. The attorney general’s…
This is the first part of a Mongabay series investigating Cambodia’s illicit timber trade. Read Part Two. Several Cambodian journalists contributed to this report, but have requested anonymity due to…
PHNOM PENH — In a rare move to combat forest crimes, Cambodian Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth on Sept. 2 banned all forest clearance at the site of a dam project in…
STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — It was late in the afternoon of Sept. 16 when Ouk Mao finally answered his phone. The environmental journalist had spent much of that Monday making…
STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — Rain poured down in torrential sheets as Ouk Mao guided reporters through the winding dirt tracks that were, in August, rutted with deep trenches of mud and…
In May, authorities in southern Thailand arrested six people for illegally transporting 48 lemurs and more than 1,200 critically endangered tortoises, all of which had reportedly been obtained from the…
This is the first of a two-part Mongabay series about hydropower dams in the Cardamom Mountains. Read Part Two. PURSAT/KOH KONG, Cambodia — Rumbling south down a rutted dirt track…
This is the third part of a Mongabay series about challenges faced by Cambodia’s small-scale fishers along the coast. Read Part One and Part Two. KOH RONG ISLAND, Cambodia —…
Vietnam is a mountainous country, with three-quarters of its land area covered by mountains and hills. However, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, forest cover was…
JAKARTA — A dispute simmering for years has erupted into conflict between villagers and a palm oil company on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi over the latter’s failure to abide…
PHNOM PENH — The trial against Mother Nature Cambodia, one of the country’s last environmental activism groups, kicked off at the Phnom Penh Court of First Instance on the morning…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — On Oct. 13, 2023, on National Road 39, a police…
PURSAT, Cambodia — On the outskirts of the western Cambodian city of Pursat, some 180 kilometers, or 110 miles, north of Phnom Penh, tourists and travelers stream out of minivans…
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia — Vegetation lurches over a concrete wall that runs alongside a quiet road in the northern Cambodian province of Preah Vihear. Behind the wall, and the rusty…
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia — “I would like to announce to the public and the journalists that on November 2, the Ministry of Mines and Energy requested [Prime Minister Hun Manet]…
Reporting for this story was supported by the Dom Phillips Grant of the Rainforest Journalism Fund in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center. IQUITOS, Peru — On the Peruvian side of…
EAST LOMBOK, Indonesia – Takdir spent years protesting against the sand mine by his home on the east coast of Lombok, an island east of Bali in Indonesia’s West Nusa…
One of the world’s largest palm oil companies appears to have overseen a network of companies responsible for deforestation of tens of thousands of hectares, according to a new investigation…
JAKARTA — Indonesian fisheries authorities have welcomed as “better than nothing” a new policy by neighboring Singapore that should in theory help stem the smuggling of lobster larvae out of…
PHNOM PENH — “Make the bosses rich in Cambodia,” then-prime minister Hun Sen said at the 2012 inauguration of a sugar refinery in Kampong Speu province. “If a country has…
Tourists from around the world pay top dollar for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hobnob with gorilla families in Uganda’s montane forests. Part of the rationale for the steep prices is…
This report was produced with the support of the Rainforest Investigations Network in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. LUBUMBASHI — In Kolwezi, the self-proclaimed cobalt capital of the world, 400…
This report was produced with the support of the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. MOKOLO, Cameroon — The sun is already beating down this morning, a…
JAKARTA — Experts have slammed a court ruling that significantly slashes the fines imposed on Indonesian palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi, even as it increased his jail sentence, in the…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s palm oil heartland, has sentenced a high-ranking official to 12 years in prison for taking bribes in exchange for issuing…
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A flurry of subdecrees released through the end of July and early August show that the Cambodian government has approved he addition of more than a…
BATAM, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities have called on their counterparts in neighboring Singapore to crack down on the illegal lobster larvae trade, given that the city-state is a key hub…
PHNOM PENH — The Cambodian government has awarded another large swath of Botum Sakor National Park to local conglomerate Royal Group, carving out yet more land from this ostensibly protected…
JAKARTA — A million-dollar bribery case in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s palm oil heartland, has prompted calls for a wider investigation into corruption between business players and the local…
In 2020, 282 containers full of mixed waste bales sailed from Salerno, Italy, to Sousse, Tunisia, in four shipments. Italian customs did not raise any flags. Customs classified them as…
BOTUM SAKOR, Cambodia — Once Cambodia’s largest national park, Botum Sakor has shriveled under the gaze of tycoons, whose parcels of land have swallowed up more than 80% of the…
