Russia's dictator Vladimir Putin has seemingly just had jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny assassinated. Navalny incarnated the best chance for democracy and human rights in Russia. He was a beacon…
It’s been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine and since the Arctic scientific community was cut off from its Russian colleagues. But permafrost melt is quickening and renewed data flow is needed to track Russian carbon emissions.
As winter closes in, Ukraine is facing demoralizing news. Western support for the war is faltering, Ukrainian troops in the east are being pushed onto the back foot amid a…
Growing up in Gällivare/ Váhtjer, a Swedish village in Sápmi, north of the Arctic Circle, the threats facing Sámi people were a daily reality. We are Europe’s only Indigenous people,…
Before Ukrainian biologist Mikhail Rusin can grab his shovel and venture afield, he first needs to ask locals if there are land mines nearby in one of the few areas…
The red-breasted goose is a well-traveled bird. From their breeding grounds in Arctic Siberia, flocks typically migrate over northern Kazakhstan through the Russian Republic of Kalmykia and Rostov Oblast to…
Last July, as the Ukraine war raged, the EU barred all Russian woody biomass imports; even as South Korea took in Russia’s supply. Illicit woody biomass may also still be flowing to the EU from Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
READER ADVISORY: This story contains images of dead cetaceans that some viewers may find disturbing. On May 9, Bogdan Bulete, regional head ranger at the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve in…
The Bolivian government is set this month to choose companies that would turn the lithium in reservoirs below its salt flats into economic resources exported to the world market. Launched…
Across Russia, Europe, Indonesia, the Amazon Basin, North America, Australia, and beyond, we have watched fires blaze across landscapes, causing immense damage to life and land. Now, a new analysis…
Having spent 27 years as a wild cat scientist, I have been fortunate to run my fingers through the coarse fur of a 170 kg tiger while wrapping a GPS…
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…
However horrific, the Ukraine crisis has the potential to finally nudge the world towards a long overdue clean energy future. As one of the world’s top three suppliers of fossil…
Tiger conservation and politics seem two worlds apart, but they are not. In fact, politics is one of the main reasons tiger conservation has become so complicated. On Sep. 5,…
Why is cooperation within tiger conservation so hard to accomplish? Despite efforts for decades, tigers are threatened with extinction. Twelve years ago, when the Global Tiger Recovery Program (GTRP) started…
The Glasgow climate summit is failing to address the danger of burning forests to make energy — a practice classified as carbon neutral, though science shows that its emissions exceed that of coal per unit of energy produced.
Our pollution of the planet with heavy metals, plastics, industrial chemicals, pesticides and more is pushing Earth systems to the limit, and us closer to crossing a dangerous planetary boundary we don’t understand.
In the wake of a Russian hack on giant meatpacker JBS, U.S. policymakers have argued that we must shore up the nation’s cyber-defenses in order to protect the food supply…
Ikea has allegedly been sourcing timber for its products from Russian companies engaged in illegal logging of pine trees in Russia’s protected Siberian boreal forests, a new investigation has revealed.…
Naryan-Mar is a sea and river port town on the Arctic coast of Russia with a population of 22,000. It is a tundra ecosystem, with shallow peat soils. The local…
A new report shows that the world’s top fishing nations are using subsidies worth billions of dollars to exploit the high seas and the waters of other nations, including some…
When Viktor Nikiforov heard about the dead Caspian seals along Russia’s Dagestan coast near the city of Makhachkala, he and a group of researchers went to have a look. On…
Polar phytoplankton, fish, seabirds and mammals are increasingly threatened by global warming, which is destabilizing Arctic ecosystems, even as southern species move northward — will the imbalanced biome collapse?
No one was sure exactly what near-term impact the global pandemic would have the world’s forests in 2020. Some expected lockdowns and economic shocks to dampen deforestation rates; others thought…
While the world focuses on the development of new vaccines against COVID-19, biologists are building the case for using vaccines for the conservation of wildlife. Our own research on the…
Timber linked to one of Russia’s largest illegal logging scandals has entered the E.U. despite rules meant to tackle the illicit trade, according to a new report. The report, titled…
In the arctic tundra of northeastern Siberia lies a graveyard of a now-extinct species of megafauna, the woolly rhinoceros, dating back 50,000 years. Now, a new genomic analysis of the…
On Sept. 15, Aleksandr Rybin was checking a camera trap in Russia’s Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve when something red and long-tailed darted in the bushes in front of him. “A thought…
There have been more fires alerts around the world this year than last year, spelling dire consequences for health, biodiversity, and the economy — and human actions are mostly to…
The forest biomass industry is booming, with forests in the U.S., Canada, Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Eastern Europe cut to provide wood pellets for burning at former coal power plants in the UK, EU and Asia.
Meet biologist Jonathan Slaght as he spends years tracking a giant bird “the size of a fire hydrant with a six-foot wingspan.” Slaght’s new book, Owls of the Eastern Ice, offers engaging tales from the field.
This week, Greenpeace International released a series of dramatic photos revealing megafires burning in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, Russia. The images, captured on July 16 by drone, show red…
