KAMALCHHORI, Bangladesh — Anupam Chakma, 60, has lived in the hilly village of Kamalchhori in Bangladesh all his life. When his grandfather and his contemporaries arrived in the region many…
For the first time, a portion of the EU government has challenged the sustainability of burning forest biomass to make energy, a controversial policy pushed by the forestry industry but condemned by environmentalists.
MINDANAO, Philippines – Legislators in the southern Philippine province of South Cotabato moved this week to overturn a 12-year-old provincial ban on open-pit mining that has for years stalled the…
Last month, the Democratic Republic of Congo approved the auctioning off of 16 oil blocks, at least nine of which are in the fragile peatland ecosystem of the Cuvette Centrale.…
Satellites have detected forest clearing within Triunfo do Xingu this year, an area that’s supposed to be a legally protected swath of Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s northern state of Pará.…
Protected areas and lands managed by Indigenous and traditional communities have been bulwarks of forest preservation and restoration in the Brazilian Amazon in recent years, a new study shows. It…
Daniel Kabichi’s telephone has been ringing a lot lately. As head of law enforcement operations within Malawi’s Department of Forestry, he represents the country’s latest strategy to fight deforestation and…
Japan and South Korea are increasingly burning biomass, such as wood pellets, to make energy, with potentially adverse impacts on the global climate, deforestation and biodiversity.
The Ambatovy nickel mine located in a biodiversity-rich Madagascar rainforest made up for the forest lost due to its operation, a recent study in Nature Sustainability concluded. The mine operators…
JAKARTA — The office of the Indonesian ombudsman says it has found indications of maladministration in the government’s decision to revoke hundreds of logging, plantation and mining permits across the…
Ban Khao Mo, THAILAND — Standing in the house where she has lived since she was born 45 years ago, Premsinee Suntornthammathat points to the temple where her grandparents took…
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon exceeded 1,000 square kilometers in April, the highest total since 2008 and roughly twice the level of April 2021, according to data released today by…
The publication of an audit of forestry contracts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first step in a $500 million deal struck between funders and the government last November,…
JAKARTA — An independent initiative in Indonesia has mapped Indigenous lands covering an area half the size of Germany since it began in 2010, nearly a third of it in…
Based on the best scientific data available, the unprecedented Amazon Water Impact Index draws together monitoring and research data to identify the most vulnerable areas of the Brazilian rainforest. According to the index, 20% of the 11,216 Brazilian Amazon microbasins have an impact considered high, very high or extreme; half of these watersheds are affected by hydroelectric plants.
Brazil’s plan to open vast areas of Amazon forest to the entry of deforesters via Highway BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) and associated side roads such as AM-366 is undoubtedly the planned…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia are pressing the government to uncover the true scale of illegal oil palm plantations in the country, following the revelation that the state missed out…
A plan being pushed by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro to pave a long-abandoned road in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon has spurred a rash of land grabs…
The Amazon gets a lot of attention, but there’s another massive forest in South America: the Gran Chaco. This hot, dry forest stretches across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina, covering 87…
For the ancient Mayans, the king vulture was an intermediary that crossed the skies, communicating with humans and the gods. Seeing it soar through the air today, with its wingspan…
JAKARTA — A court in Jakarta has rejected a lawsuit by a remote island community against a gold-mining operation that overlaps onto their villages, in a ruling deemed “problematic” by…
Birds, bats, elephants, apes, rodents and many other animal species spread plant seeds throughout the world. But as those animal populations diminish, so do the plants that rely on wildlife to shift their range, especially as climate change worsens.
With national borders created for geopolitical rather than ecological reasons, it’s unsurprising that the ranges of more than half of all terrestrial mammals, birds and amphibians cross at least one…
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…
Illegal miners operating insider the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon are coercing Indigenous girls as young as 11 into sex work, as well as inflicting violence and disease…
The seventh and final episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast series about New Guinea examines the growing galip nut industry and the many social, economic and environmental benefits this agricultural…
*UPDATE: On April 1, 2022, Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) said it would designate the wetlands of La Kisst and María Eugenia as “critical habitats” for the…
An international team of scientists studying the distribution and threats facing some of South and Southeast Asia’s most economically important tree species has confirmed that current environmental protections fail to…
Conservationists feared that chimpanzees in Comoé National Park might have been wiped out during a decade of civil conflict in Côte d'Ivoire. But camera-trap footage found a healthy population and…
How do you justify tearing down the world’s greatest rainforest for agribusiness? Pretend it’s not a rainforest. That appears to be the thinking behind a bill introduced into Brazil’s lower…