Carved out of the narrow isthmus that connects the Malay Peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi region rises from the Andaman Sea in the west…
This story is a reporting partnership between Mongabay Latam and La Barra Espaciadora. Balsa wood is a hot commodity in Ecuador, with the country exporting $402 million worth of the timber in…
Indigenous people in Brazil are bracing for a surge in invasions and violence on their territories after a controversial bill that could make land grabs easier cleared a key legislative…
Nearly 10,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon, an area the size of Lebanon, is at high risk of being cleared, according to a new tool using artificial intelligence technology…
After getting involved in controversies and becoming the target of an inquiry into alleged interference in illegal timber seizures, Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles resigned from his post in late…
The European Union has imposed new sanctions on a state-owned timber enterprise in Myanmar following the coup in February, as part of an international effort targeting businesses whose profits are…
A hundred and ninety-six trees per minute. That’s how fast the forest was being cleared in Brazil’s Xingu River Basin between March and April this year. A total of 29,191…
A new regulation signed into law in March this year but only unveiled publicly in May will see almost 127,000 hectares (313,800 acres) of previously protected land in Cambodia made…
Ricardo Salles publicly sided with suspected illegal loggers following a record timber seizure, but claims his interference in the police operation wasn’t a crime
The satellite’s eye view from high above northern Peru in mid-2013 laid out a stark reality: Ecologist Matt Finer and his colleagues were watching “blow by blow” in a series of…
MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Illegal logging of rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi surged by 70% in 2020, according to findings by local NGO JURnal Celebes. The group attributes the…
Tropical forests around the world are being destroyed at an alarming rate, even in 2020 when the global economy slowed dramatically during the pandemic. A new report released this week…
Seven years ago, I published a major report for the US think-tank Forest Trends: ‘Consumer Goods and Deforestation’ revealed how international markets for commodities like beef, soy and palm oil…
Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado traveled the Amazon for six years to capture nature and the people of the world’s largest rainforest, now depicted in his new book, Amazônia.
A week after Brazil’s Lower House of Congress approved a bill that exempts environmental impact assessments and licensing for development projects, Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has been named in a probe for alleged illegal exports of Amazon timber, following a Federal Supreme Court ruling on May 19.
An unprecedented lawsuit by an Indigenous group that was once nearly wiped out seeks $8.2 million in damages for continued invasions and destruction of their territory
JAKARTA — Authorities should go after illegal loggers with financial charges like money laundering, Indonesian officials said last week at an online panel. Officials from the Attorney General’s Office and…
Covering a vast peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Thailand on Cambodia’s southern coast, Botum Sakor is one of the largest national parks in the country and known…
The Brazilian president is making big promises to reduce Amazon deforestation, even as he moves to legalize large scale land theft with potentially catastrophic results for Earth’s climate and the Amazon.
Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary sprawls across a vast expanse of Cambodia’s eastern reach. But much of what used to be covered in lush rainforest has been laid barren by deforestation.…
A new report reveals that investing in securing the land rights of Indigenous and tribal communities across Latin America and the Caribbean could cut carbon dioxide emissions at low costs…
The Kadiwéu Indigenous group, living where the Cerrado and Pantanal biomes meet, has resisted annihilation since the colonial era. Their secret weapon: the creative arts that help define their identity.
“It was the same court, the same actors, the same script — it was just like the sequel,” laughed Ouch Leng as he recounted what is now his second arrest…
Wild pigs have reputation as a destructive lot. Farmers and scientists alike know that, when they’re too numerous, their constant rooting and wallowing can run roughshod over crops and regenerating…
MANILA — Palawan is an outlier in the Philippine archipelago, its topography and habitat closer to that of Borneo than the rest of the country’s major islands. This so-called last…
It happened the way it so often does in Colombia: the government announced a new official appointment and outrage ensued. As the year 2020 drew to a close, the minister…
Over the past two decades, orangutan researcher Marc Ancrenaz watched as a tidal wave of oil palm has engulfed his once-forested research sites in northern Borneo. When he would find…
The world’s leaders, private companies and individuals must take a coordinated approach to address three environmental calamities facing the Earth at this moment, according to a report released Feb. 18…
The Naso Tjër Di people of Panama now have a protected territory of their own. The creation of the 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca, as it’s called in Panama, came as a…
Since the 2018 emergence of African swine fever in China, the viral disease has torn through Asia, leaving behind a trail of economic devastation. It’s witheringly fatal to pigs but…