The trafficking of illicit timber has hit the forested, tropical countries around the Mekong River Delta hard in recent years. Regulations and laws in places like the European Union and…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has rejected a bid by two palm oil companies to have their permits restored after they were scrapped by local authorities for a litany…
Steven Donziger, the U.S. advisory lawyer for the Ecuador legal team that won a $9.5 billion ruling against Chevron over oil contamination in 2011, surrendered to a six-month prison sentence…
JAKARTA — A recent analysis of the legal wildlife trade in the last 46 years puts Indonesia, a biodiversity hotspot in Southeast Asia, among the top 10 exporters of live…
A drone camera soars over a timber yard where thousands of tons of logs are strewn across the ground. In one clip, a bulldozer scoops up a heap of wood…
Widespread lockdowns and working from home to combat the COVID-19 pandemic have led to booming demand for home furnishings. As furniture manufacturers scramble to keep up with the rush on…
Only 14% of wildlife seizures made in Vietnam in the past decade have resulted in convictions, according to a new report that highlights the weak enforcement in the country and…
MONROVIA, Liberia — Civil society groups say logging companies are exploiting weak monitoring and enforcement of Liberia’s forestry laws. A new briefing highlights the illegal harvest of as much as…
When the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was created by a coalition of industry giants, retailers, banks, and NGOs in 2004, it was supposed to be the catalyst for…
PEKANBARU, Riau — Anti-corruption investigators in Indonesia’s palm oil heartland have arrested a local official for allegedly taking bribes from a palm oil company in exchange for extending its business…
MEDAN, Indonesia — At the corner of Sei Batanghari Road in Medan, the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, kindergarten students run around a building in their school uniforms. The…
Early on the morning of Nov. 15, five Constitutional Court judges arrived by canoe to the Indigenous Cofan community of Sinangoe in Ecuador’s northern Amazon rainforest, wearing rubber boots and…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a ruling declaring a palm oil company not responsible for fires in its concession, in a verdict that boils down to the company…
Five years ago, one of South Africa's largest coal mines was given permission to grow even larger. In 2016, the Tendele mine was granted mining rights to an additional 212…
We cannot expect forest countries to halt the bulldozers if we keep paying for the fuel. Yet that is what we will continue to do if the EU doesn’t get…
As a fisheries biologist in Indonesia, Andhika Prasetyo connects with fishers by accompanying them on their voyages out to sea. He can always tell from their faces whether the day’s…
Before the pandemic, Ecuador’s Indigenous communities were on a roll, winning a series of lawsuits against the state for selling, or trying to sell, their land to oil and mining…
Just a day ahead of U.S. congressional hearings on climate change with heads of the largest oil companies in the world, a scathing new report has found that Chevron oil…
CROSS RIVER STATE, Nigeria — Sampson Akoba's long career as a ranger has left him with a wealth of assorted memories: hunters’ revolts, the death of his nephew in a…
Medical, public health, and conservation experts are calling for greater pathogen surveillance and regulation of the legal wildlife trade in order to quickly identify pathogens and prevent the next pandemic.
JAKARTA/BATAM, Indonesia — National policies in Indonesia fail to provide full protection for deckhands working at home and abroad, experts say. Reports of labor right violations against Indonesian mariners have…
DENPASAR, Indonesia — An elected official in Bali surrendered a baby gibbon to conservation authorities last month after a social media post showing him playing with the animal at home…
Almost eight years after Typhoon Haiyan barreled into Busuanga Island in the western Philippines, the lesson it left is still etched in the mind of village leader Annabel Dela Cruz.…
Brazil’s highest court has upheld a ban on missionary activity inside reserves that are home to isolated or recently contacted Indigenous people, in a bid to protect the communities against…
This week the United Nations General Assembly is expected to formally adopt its fifth Resolution on Tackling Illicit Trafficking in Wildlife. One might be forgiven for asking “another resolution -…
More than 50 years after the Krenak Indigenous people were subjected to torture, arbitrary confinement, beatings and forced labor in military-run concentration camps, a federal judge has ruled for reparations and an official apology.
Malawi’s illegal wildlife trade crackdown has earned a Chinese national 14 years in jail. Yunhua Lin, considered the lynchpin of a notorious wildlife trafficking cartel operating across in Southern Africa,…
In August 2021, authorities at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport discovered a shipment of eight hornbills, caged but alive, en route to international markets. The Department of Wildlife and National…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Law enforcers are working to disrupt a wildlife trafficking ring connected to a man arrested last month with the skins and bones of three Sumatran tigers,…
BOGOTÁ — In Colombia’s Chocó department, renowned by environmentalists for its abundant biodiversity, Afro-Colombian communities collect gold from rivers as part of an ancestral way of life. “When we talk…
