Over the past year, scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the U.K., officially named 125 plants and 65 fungi. The new-to-science species include a parasitic fungus that turns…
There are around 60,000 known tree species in the world, and they can do amazing things: store carbon, provide people with food and firewood, shelter creatures big and small, and…
It was 27 December 2004. I was sitting at my computer in my office in Jakarta, Indonesia, my mind busy with plans for the New Year party I had organized…
In India, arguments about nature are often treated as friction in the path of progress. Madhav Gadgil insisted they were arguments about power: who gets to decide what happens to…
After facing sustained pushback from environmental groups, Ghana revoked a 2022 law that had empowered the president to allow mining in the country’s forest reserves. In December, the Minister for…
Between 2000 and 2023, more than 6,000 African primates were traded internationally in 50 countries, according to a newly published report. Endangered chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and critically endangered western gorillas…
MERANGIN, Indonesia — There wasn’t much Aris Adrianto felt he could do when the gold miners’ heavy vehicles broke into Bukit Gajah Berani, here in this remote pocket of Sumatra’s…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has announced what it describes as a sweeping, science-based effort to reassess environmental governance, zoning and corporate accountability in the wake of floods and landslides…
MITÚ, Colombia — Beneath the rising sun, people from nearby Indigenous communities navigate across the Vaupés River in traditional wooden canoes toward Mitú, a rapidly expanding town in the Colombian…
A burnout pushed one woman to build a new, nature-friendly career in one of the rainforest’s most deforested cities.
More than 145,000 African forest elephants roam the rainforests of Africa, according to a recent population assessment. Published in December by the African Elephant Specialist Group at the IUCN, the…
In Indigenous Asháninka belief, bees were once spirits in human form. Stories tell of a woman who enjoyed making masato, a traditional Amazonian fermented beverage. Every day, she would boil…
Environmental and territorial defenders in Guatemala face a critical moment as violence targeting them increases across the country. In 2024, at least 20 such defenders were killed for their work,…
In the forests of the Sierra Nevada, the black-backed woodpecker is without parallel. The bird appears almost born of fire, thriving on the flames that flicker through California’s coniferous forests…
JAKARTA — Indonesia closed 2025 facing an uncomfortable reality: climate disasters are escalating while policy direction has remained largely unchanged during President Prabowo Subianto’s first year in office, with the…
Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area encompasses an area of Amazon Rainforest more than half the size of Belgium. Or at least it used to. The embattled reserve has…
ELEUTHERA, Bahamas — Tucked away beside the main road that runs along Eleuthera, a narrow island in the Bahamas, the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve holds 12 hectares (30 acres)…
In 2018, researchers from Bat Conservation International, Cameroon's University of Maroua and the American Museum of Natural History entered abandoned mining tunnels in Guinea’s Nimba Mountains as part of an…
In the late 20th century, forest conservation in the eastern United States was rarely a matter of sweeping victories or clean resolutions. It was a practice shaped by hearings that…
BANGKOK — 2025 saw global conservation plunged into chaos, with an estimated $500 million in funding from the United States government abruptly slashed after Donald Trump returned to office. The…
The Van Eck Forest in northwestern California is home to iconic coast redwood trees, which store more above-ground carbon per acre than any other forest type. The oldest trees can…
In small island states, conservation has often depended less on formal institutions than on vigilance: watching harbors, checking traps, noticing what does not belong. The work is repetitive, practical, and…
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka continues to grapple with the human toll of Cyclone Ditwah, which triggered devastating floods and landslides killing 650 people and leaving another 200 missing. In the…
Conservation debates are usually framed by damage already visible. Forests are cleared, fisheries decline, protected areas invaded, and budgets cut. Developments that have not yet hardened into crises tend to…
Conservation has a habit of being treated as either romance or emergency. In practice it is closer to logistics: permits, budgets, awkward meetings, long drives, and the slow work of…
In the late 1980s, something began to go wrong in places that were supposed to be safe. Protected cloud forests, buffered from chainsaws and bulldozers, started losing animals that had…
The story of the world’s tropical forests in 2025 was not one of dramatic reversal, but one shaped by accumulated pressure. In several regions, deforestation slowed. In others, loss continued…
Colombia is the world's third-largest coffee producer and the main producer of Arabica coffee, which is known worldwide for its quality. The nation began developing commercial production in 1870, which…
High in the Andes, Polylepis trees, with their stunted gnarled trunks and twisted limbs, cling to steep mountain slopes, boulder fields and sheltered ravines. Growing at altitudes of up to…
Trust in the criminal justice system varies among countries in the Pan Amazon, but in no country do citizens have an overall positive view of the police. In the Andean…
Getting to The Cedars, an ecological preserve in California’s Sonoma county, is a slog. Multiple rivers and creeks must be crossed, and it can be tough going on an often…
PADANG, Indonesia — At low tide along Padang's coastline, fishing boats sit idle, not because of rough seas, but because the water is clogged with timber. In late November, flash…
