Biodiversity. When you hear this word, what do you picture? Iconic animals like African elephants, gray wolves and humpback whales? Or multicolored coral species that make up a reef system?…
In Brazil, calling someone a tapir is usually an insult. But there’s plenty of reason it should be seen as a compliment. Few animals are as essential, underestimated and persecuted…
An international conservation group is pushing forward with ambitious plans for extended elephant corridors in Africa that would allow the animals room to move more freely — not just across…
Serendipity underlies some of the greatest scientific discoveries. And it was certainly at play in 2015 when a team of biologists stopped off to relax at a popular waterfall on…
Very reclusive and hard to research, the world’s 33 species of small cats are already under pressure due to habitat loss and human-wildlife conflicts, while being increasingly threatened by climate change and pollution.
Amid the smog, butterflies, bees and other insects are having a hard time smelling the flowers they so dutifully pollinate. Researchers found that common, ground-level air pollutants such as nitrogen…
They may be labeled “degraded,” but forests that have been logged, or are otherwise no longer pristine due to human activity, can still provide immense value. According to new research…
This is the second in a two-part series. Read Part One. Palm oil, a popular cooking oil as well as an ingredient in an ocean of products ranging from cookies to cosmetics,…
This is the first in a two-part series. Read Part Two. San Javier de Cachaví is a small village of some 120 families in Ecuador near the Colombian border. The…
Coconut crabs, known in Indonesia as ketam kenari, are the world’s largest land crab. They’re also quite an unusual species: these invertebrates can live up to 60 years and measure…
Up in the trees of a misty sky island, folded into the foliage, a tiny rainfrog bears the name of a climate giant. The new-to-science species, found on a mountain…
U.S. timber companies imported nearly 1,600 metric tons of teak from Myanmar last year, circumventing sanctions and channeling millions of dollars in revenue to the country’s junta, according to a…
Bangladesh’s population of one of the world’s largest tortoise species received a boost last month when researchers and villagers released 10 captive-bred juveniles into the evergreen forests of the Chattogram…
Conservation ecologist Thomas Davies has long known that natural light plays a pivotal role in the lives of many marine organisms. “They use it as a clock,” Davies, a lecturer…
Combating illegal logging and deforestation in the tropical forests of southwest Myanmar helps preserve wildlife populations, but remains insufficient in the face of unsustainable local hunting pressures, a new study…
ORE, Nigeria — More than two decades ago, fate took Tajudeen Babalola to his lifelong ambition. The 52-year-old longed for a more serene life that offered hope for survival away…
Over the past decade, the European Union entered into collaborative agreements with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime and verify the legality of wood imported into the EU. Within…
Myanmar’s rainforests, home to the endangered Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), critically endangered Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and endangered lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), are some of the most biodiverse in the…
The flooding of land for hydroelectric dams has affected more than one-fifth of the world’s tigers (Panthera tigris) and one in two hundred jaguars (Panthera onca), according to the findings…
A new study shows that two-fifths of coral reefs globally are seriously threatened by sediment runoff — the transportation of accumulated material from land to sea, often with harmful pollutants…
The canary in the coal mine for how climate change is affecting the treasure trove of biodiversity in the Amazon is … also a bird. Dozens of them, in fact,…
Defeat for Japan’s opposition party in last month’s national elections has dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the contentious relocation of a U.S. military base on the island of…
JAKARTA — Protecting all remaining orangutans and their forest habitat in Indonesia will provide a bastion for the survival of Asia’s only great ape, wildlife experts say in a new…
ACEH BESAR, Indonesia — A Sumatran elephant calf has died days after conservation officials in Indonesia amputated half of her trunk due to severe injuries from a suspected snare trap.…
JAMBI, Indonesia — Conservation authorities in Indonesia have reported the death of a Sumatran tiger captured in October following reports of deadly attacks on people. Officials have linked the death…
IKOM, Nigeria — When 57-year-old Linus Otu was a child, each dawn arrived with the chatter of monkeys and occasional belches of gorillas from the mountain that overlooks his small…
JAKARTA — Conservation groups are calling on the Asian Development Bank to tighten its scrutiny of a road project it plans to fund in Indonesian Borneo that may pose risks…
Before the clearing and excavators and bulldozers, before plans to build a gold mine and oil palm plantations, the Jemaluang and Tenggaroh forest reserves in Johor, Malaysia, were wildlife-rich jungles…
On a cold and humid morning in March, two bird surveyors stood in the dim forests of Kenaboi State Park in Malaysia, straining their ears for birdsong. From where they…
As demonstrations and deadly crackdowns continue to roil Myanmar following the military coup in February, land and environmental defenders are increasingly under threat. In the seven months since protests erupted,…
It’s easier to spot the bristly, gray-brown hide of a Bornean bearded pig (Sus barbatus) ambling through orderly rows of oil palm trees, than amid a dense tropical forest. But…
The first signal of the day is the sun stretching steadily upward amid a gigantic sea of mountains. The mass of rock, forest and water is so huge that the…
