Paul Palosualrea Pavol of New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has won the Alexander Soros Foundation’s Award for Environmental and Human Rights Activism. In a statement, the Alexander Soros…
rom huge expanses of Acacia trees to ancient Baobab trees, forests and woodlands cover more than half of Tanzania’s rugged landscape. In this East African nation, forests help fuel the…
The multi-billion-dollar rosewood trade has wreaked havoc on some of the world’s most endangered old-growth forests. But now, protection for rosewood — the most trafficked wild product in the world…
ven with two grades to go before completing high school, Vincent Kiptum has already figured out how to deal with a problem troubling his village in Kenya’s Rift Valley: truancy…
Interpol has released a purple notice about an illegal timber trading operation involving four companies in Brazil. The notice, issued on August 30, stems from an investigation by the Brazilian…
Much of timber exported from Peru to the U.S. in January 2015 was illegally sourced, according to a verification report released yesterday by the U.S. government. The findings have prompted…
n a Tuesday in March, indigenous activist Nelson García was shot in the face in northwest Honduras. The next day, in Guatemala, unknown attackers found environmentalist Walter Méndez outside his…
It has been estimated that as much as 50 percent of tropical timber still comes from illegal sources. In response, international efforts to combat the illegal timber trade have intensified…
Rumors that have been building for months have come to fruition, with Myanmar announcing a national logging ban effective immediately. Although temporary, conservationists are lauding the ban, which will run…
Earlier this summer, members of the Forest Legality Alliance (FLA) gathered in Washington, DC for their Semi-Annual Membership Meeting. As a precursor to the upcoming CITES COP17 meeting in September,…
Corruption in Cambodia and Laos is driving the illegal exports of endangered rosewood species in violation of UN protections, according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency. The…
Last week, some 500 members from governments, corporations, and NGOs from 47 countries convened in Norway to discuss tropical forest conservation at the Oslo REDD Exchange (REDDX). The event concluded…
A search warrant executed earlier this month at the premises of California-based Global Plywood and Lumber was issued on the basis of probable cause that the company had smuggled illegal…
There is a new global norm emerging for tackling the trade in illegal wood, and it’s centered around due diligence, according to experts. Due diligence in the context of the…
Late last month, news reports heralded a new move by the Myanmar government that would ban the logging of all hardwood in the country. However, it now appears that the…
t age 70 Ngai Mutuoboro may not possess the vibrancy of his youthful days, but he can still pack a punch when it comes to environmental conservation. The elder from…
Several members of an illegal logging gang in Peru were reportedly arrested last Friday in Ucuyali, an inland region located in the Amazon rainforest. According to reports, a joint action…
Harold Clause Kupers, a wood buyer and mill owner in Washington state who pled guilty last November to violating the Lacey Act, has been sentenced to prison time. This is…
Eleven West African countries have come together and agreed to take collective action to curb illegal rosewood logging and trade in response to a quickly developing crisis. Several species of…
Other stories in Mongabay’s series on the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve Communities lead the way in rainforest conservation in Guatemala Controversial park…
After snowballing for years and culminating in a peak of nearly a million cubic meters of wood smuggled in 2014, the illegal timber trade between Myanmar and China appears to…
The theft of bigleaf maple to feed the demand for rare tonewoods used by musical instrument makers has been a persistent problem in the U.S. Pacific Northwest for years, but…
An Indonesian police officer convicted of illegal logging and money laundering is on the run from the law — again. The convicted officer, Labora Sitorus, was originally charged in early…
In 2013, the European Union enacted the EU Timber Regulation law (EUTR) to help stem the tide of illegally sourced timber into EU states. But a recently released report by…
Over the past few years, West Africa has become one of the largest tropical log exporting regions feeding the growing demand for luxury furniture in Southeast Asia. Demand is booming…
Last week in Geneva, the Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) decided to extend an international embargo on the…
This week, the 66th Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is meeting in Geneva, and multiple countries are calling…
Editor’s note (22-Jan-2016): An earlier version of this story contained several errors that have now been corrected. See the end for a summary of the changes. n September 2015, a…
China is the largest global consumer of rosewood and skyrocketing demand over the past decade and a half is having serious repercussions for some of the world’s most endangered old-growth…
A boat carries freshly-cut logs along the Tambopata River in Perú. Photo by George Powell. “We will keep working on these operations [such as 'Operación Amazonas']," said to Mongabay a Peruvian government…