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…
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…
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…
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…
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 —…
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…
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…
Brazilian Amazon states are leading an offensive against environmental regulations in the Amazon and beyond.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…