Climate change spikes wildfire risk in Sri Lanka
COLOMBO – Ella, one of Sri Lanka’s most popular tourist destinations, draws scores of foreign visitors who come to admire its natural beauty and marvel at engineering wonders like the…
Habitat Destruction News
As apes adapt to human disturbance, their new behaviors also put them at risk: Study
Human activities such as mining, agriculture, urbanization, damming and logging threaten the habitats of great apes in Africa and Asia. Apes have shown resilience to these disruptions by adapting their…
Bleak future for Karoo succulents as desert expands in South Africa
Sometimes words fall hopelessly short. This might explain the silences between the two botanists as their vehicle crunches over a gravelly Richtersveld moonscape, a desert that straddles the South African…
Global outcry as petitioners demand no mining expansion in orangutan habitat
JAKARTA — Nearly 200,000 people have signed a petition calling on U.K. multinational Jardine Matheson to cancel its plan to expand deeper into Indonesia’s Batang Toru Forest, the only known…
Yet another abandoned mine erodes — this time, in a Panamanian protected area
Ever since the Cobre Panamá mine was forced to shut down in 2023, the copper mine’s infrastructure has been eroding away in a biodiverse jungle on Panama’s Atlantic coast —…
As elephant conflict shifts, Nepal’s border village offers clues for coexistence
SUNDAR HARAICHA, Nepal — A bundle of firewood lay abandoned on the path, a silent witness to tragedy. Nearby, a red shawl, once wrapped around Chandra Kumari Limbu, remained. The…
Surge in legal land clearing pushes up Indonesia deforestation rate in 2024
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s deforestation is once again rising after several years of decline, with 2024 marking the highest rate since 2021. The data also show that the vast majority of…
Amazon states lead rebellion on environmental enforcement
Brazilian Amazon states are leading an offensive against environmental regulations in the Amazon and beyond.
Underwater citizen science reveals the specter of ghost fishing in Thailand
Marine biologists diving in the Gulf of Thailand were thrilled in 2023 to rediscover several colonies of a rare type of ocean sponge once thought to be extinct in the…
Indonesian company defies order, plants acacia in orangutan habitat
JAKARTA — The Indonesian company responsible for the largest amount of deforestation, PT Mayawana Persada, has largely ceased clearing peatlands in the western part of Borneo. However, it has shifted…
Gaps in Peru’s peatland policies harm conservation and Indigenous Shipibo: Study
Significant inconsistencies and gaps in governmental policies for peatland science and protection in Peru’s Imiría Regional Conservation Area have impacted the livelihoods of Indigenous Shipibo residents, according to a new…
Nepal’s top court to rule next month on law allowing development in protected areas
KATHMANDU — Nepal’s Supreme Court has concluded hearings in a petition filed against controversial measures to open up protected areas to development. A ruling in the case, dubbed as one…
Relief in Sri Lanka as key threat to nonprotected forests is repealed
COLOMBO — Environmental activists in Sri Lanka are celebrating the end of a 2020 decree that left the island’s nonprotected forests more vulnerable to agriculture and development projects. “This is…
Coral biodiversity hotspot at risk from fossil fuel expansion, report warns
Fossil fuel projects are putting the Pacific Coral Triangle’s unique marine ecosystem at risk, according to a new report presented Oct. 31 at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity summit…
Conservationists mobilize to save Sierra Leone national park and its chimpanzees
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Standing at an altitude of 1,945 meters (6,381 feet), Mount Bintumani is the highest peak of the Loma Mountains, which is the highest mountain range in Sierra…
Canopy bridges serve a lifeline for Sumatra’s tree-dwelling primates
JAKARTA — In Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, conservation groups and authorities have built canopy bridges that stitch back together primate habitat, including for orangutans, that were fragmented by roads over…
Combined effects of human activities increase risk to ecosystem services
The combined effects of humanity’s actions are making ecosystems less resistant to change, and threatening the vital ecosystem services humanity relies upon, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience.…
A nesting haven for sea turtles in Suriname is fading away
BRAAMSPUNT BEACH, Suriname — As little as five years ago, parts of the beach here were 500 meters or wider, more than a quarter of a mile, says Kiran Balrampersad.…
Follow the prey: How servals adapt to an industrialized landscape
Why did the serval go to the petrochemical complex? For the refinery rodents, of course. These swift and slender wildcats that call the marshes and reedbeds of sub-Saharan Africa home…
The promise of ecocide law, from boardroom to courtroom (commentary)
Every day, decisions are made worldwide that generate substantial profits but cause severe environmental harm. This degradation affects everyone, including the decision-makers themselves. Business is not immune to externalities: climate…
Indonesia palm oil lobby pushes 1 million hectares of new Sulawesi plantations
GORONTALO, Indonesia — A palm oil industry body and a state-owned company are proposing a vast new palm oil plan encompassing around 1 million hectares (nearly 2.5 million acres) of…
In Brazil’s Amazon, land invasions — and fires — threaten a protected reserve
BOM JARDIM, Brazil – Amid corn fields and pastures, miles of barbed wire enclose an island of pristine rainforest, likely next in line to be razed. Just beyond, in the…
In choice of mangroves or livelihood, Vietnam shrimp farmers choose the latter
Shrimp farming is a leading driver of mangrove deforestation the world over. As demand for the sweet crustaceans boomed over the past few decades, swaths of vital coastal forests were…
On heavily dammed Mekong, tracking study tries to find where the fish are going
Key migratory fish species travel hundreds of kilometers along the Mekong River, including through several active and planned hydropower dam projects in Laos, a recent Researchers outfitted hundreds of fish…
Shrimp farms threaten Mexico’s mangroves and the jaguars that inhabit them
Among the spindly saline roots of the mangrove trees that line western Mexico’s coast, the jaguar is the ecosystem’s apex predator. Yet despite being at the top of the food…
In Peru, conservationists and archaeologists unite to save a threatened gecko
LIMA — For more than two decades, José Pérez Zúñiga, a researcher at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, has set out at night to search by the light of a…
Frog ‘saunas’ may help threatened frogs fight off deadly fungus
Researchers have developed simple, sun-heated shelters that allow frogs to raise their body temperatures and fight off infections. These frog “saunas” may bring hope for populations threatened by a deadly…
U.K. court to hear lawsuit for victims of Brazilian dam disaster
After years of delays, a class action lawsuit is finally moving forward against the companies involved in a catastrophic dam collapse that released toxic sludge into communities across rural Brazil.…
Bottom trawling in U.K.’s marine reserves, legally, is apparently a thing
In 2023, commercial fishing vessels equipped with dredges and bottom-trawling gear spent more than 33,000 hours operating in the U.K.’s offshore marine protected areas, according to ocean advocacy group Oceana…
From Egypt to Syria, ‘water cancer’ chokes waterways
AL-LANI, Syria and KAFR-EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — On the banks of Syria’s Orontes River, a beautiful flower has become a nightmare. Each spring, it creeps out of the soft mud that…
Small-scale fishers lose out to trawlers in race to catch Cambodia’s last fish
This is the first part of a Mongabay series about challenges faced by Cambodia’s small-scale fishers along the coast. Read Part Two and Part Three. KOH KONG, Cambodia — At…
Bangladesh island’s switch from solar power to fossil fuels threatens birds
Almost all 2,500 households — mostly fisher folks — on Nijhum Dwip, a national park that has the second-largest mangrove forest in Bangladesh, used solar PVs LED bulbs at night…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Narco airstrips beset Indigenous communities in Peruvian Amazon
- 15 illegal narco-trafficking airstrips found near Peru Indigenous communities
- Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
Oceans
- Peruvian fishers sue for additional compensation after big December oil spill
- Smuggling networks exploit migrant debt to fuel tiger poaching in Malaysia, study shows
- Community-based conservation cuts thresher shark fishing by 91% in Indonesia: Study
- With climate change, cryosphere melt scales up as a threat to planetary health
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Should mining companies consider no-go zones where isolated Indigenous peoples live? (Commentary)
- Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
Endangered Environmentalists
- Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- Environmental journalist in Cambodia shot and killed by suspected logger
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
