Tropical forest ecosystems are permanently devastated by rising reservoir waters, as seen here at Brazil's Balbina Dam, the subject of a new long term biodiversity study published in PLOS One.…
Indonesian authorities caught a prominent wildlife trafficker with this baby orangutan in his bag in February, leading to his conviction last week. The sentence has been hailed as a win…
Fire burning in Tesso Nilo. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Dozens of fires are raging across Indonesia's Tesso Nilo National Park National Park, a protected area that has lost more…
Tufted puffins in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The species is commonly caught in driftnet salmon fishing gear in the waters off Russia's far eastern shore. Photo credit: Steve…
Yunguillo Indigenous Reserve stretches out into the Colombian forest. Photo courtesy of the Amazon Conservation Team. A landmark achievement was celebrated in southwest Colombia in May when the Colombian Institute…
A sign in the Indonesian village of Wambi in Papua province's Merauke district says locals reject the presence of any company. Merauke is the site of a planned food and…
Warning: Some images in this story contain graphic content. Residents of the Indonesian village of Sibide pose with a dead Sumatran tiger, a critically endangered species. Pictures of the photo…
A partnership with foreign investors aims to scale up the East African nation’s production of palm oil, but details on its implementation and possible consequences remain scarce. Plans for a…
Dead pangolins seized by customs authorities at Surabaya's Juanda International Airport. Photo: Petrus Riski Indonesian customs officials foiled an attempt to smuggle 455 dead pangolins to Singapore from an airport…
Dysfunction plagues DRC’s logging industry, say conservation and watchdog groups, but the government and timber companies want to grow the sector. Little of the timber from the Democratic Republic of…
A boat rests on the shore of the Baram River in Sarawak, Malaysia. The area will be inundated if the controversial 1,200-megawatt Baram Dam is built. Photo credit: International Rivers.…
Police in Indonesia’s second city of Surabaya, a hotbed of wildlife trafficking, seized 16 eagles of various types from a trafficker who was using Facebook to connect with potential customers.…
Aerial view of flowering canopy trees in the Amazon. New research has found significant chemical differences between tree species that occupy just slightly different habitats. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.…
Deforestation for oil palm in Indonesia's Riau province. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Palm oil giant First Resources has committed to eliminate deforestation and rights abuses from its supply chain, making…
An oil palm development bordering Indonesia's Mount Leuser National Park. Photo: Rhett A. Butler A supplier of palm oil giants Wilmar and Musim Mas has continued to bulldoze valuable forest…
Mangroves provide many ecosystem services like controling erosion and mitigating the effects of tsunamis. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. The first-ever set of comprehensive guidelines for designing, implementing and managing…
bdul "Bolong" Hanan had a baby turtle in one hand and a toothbrush in the other. He scrubbed the squirming two-month-old vigorously before plopping it back into one of the…
Residents of Paser, a district in Indonesia's East Kalimantan province, protest against a coal mining company in February. Photo courtesy of the Indigenous People's Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) A…
This red-breasted blackbird (Sturnella militaris) is one of the relatively few bird species that is found in oil palm plantations. Photo by Alexander Lees. It may not surprise you to…
A rainforest river in Malaysia's Sabah state. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Sateri has become the latest major viscose producer to adopt a new wood- and pulp-sourcing policy aimed at removing…
A wild Bengal tiger in India. Photo by Morgan Erickson-Davis. A hundred years ago, there were thirteen times as many tigers in the world as there are today, ranging from…
A lowland jungle stream in Java's Ujung Kulon National Park. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Twenty years after ratifying a legally binding UN convention which obligates parties to deal with invasive…
The outgoing head of Indonesia's State Intelligence Agency (BIN), Marciano Norman (left), talks with the head of the Indonesian investment board, Franky Sibarani, at the signing of a agreement between…
Forest near Iquitos, close to where the new reserve is. Photo by Morgan Erickson-Davis. A tract of Peruvian rainforest bigger than California's Yosemite National Park is officially more protected, with…
by 26 June 2015
A forest is cleared for oil palm in Bulohseuma in Indonesia's Aceh province. Photo: Chik Rini Encroachers have been clearing forest at three locations in Aceh's biggest peat swamp since…
The Indigenous Peoples' Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) met Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo in Jakarta yesterday. From left, AMAN Secretary General Abdon Nababan, New Perspectives Foundation founder Wimar Witoelar…
Over the past two years dozens of companies have established "zero-deforestation" or "deforestation-free" policies for the commodities they source, trade, and produce. The pace of adoption has been staggeringly fast…
An aerial view of rainforest in Indonesia's Riau province. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Indonesia's Environment and Forestry Ministry might upgrade the partial logging moratorium from a presidential instruction to a…
Sangihe lies between Indonesia's Sulawesi island and the Philippines' Mindanao island in the Celebes sea. Image: Google Indonesia’s crackdown on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has so far focused…
by 25 June 2015
A vendor checks his phone at the Jatinegara bird market in East Jakarta. Photo: Harry Pearl The Indonesian shop owner turns and motions to the back of the grubby, concrete-floor…
A coal barge passes the Masjid Islamic Center in Samarinda, East Kalimantan. Photo: David Fogarty A few months before BHP Billiton’s Haju mine is set to begin operations in Indonesia’s…
Publicly-traded firm suspends new business with company planning to clear peatlands in Sarawak Palm oil growers who plan to convert peatlands and rainforests for new plantations have been warned: one…
