Deforestation in Earth's largest rainforest is on track to rival last year's 15-year-high according to data released today by the Brazilian government. INPE, Brazil's national space research institute, today published…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Nestled between a vast palm oil plantation and the Sumatran rainforest is Alue Buloh, a hamlet in Cot Girek village, North Aceh district. To reach it,…
PHNOM TAMAO, Cambodia — Prime Minister Hun Sen has stepped in to cancel all development projects slated for the Phnom Tamao forest, near the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, following…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Saleh Kadri, a young farmer from Leubok Pusaka village in North Aceh district, was on his way to his plantation when he spotted eight elephants on…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Junaidi, the leader of an elephant patrol team in this Sumatran village, has a daunting task. The large animals, with their forest habitat destroyed, often enter…
The Iguaçu Falls, the largest in the world, sit on the border between Brazil and Argentina and are protected by national parks in both countries. Located in Brazil’s Paraná state,…
JAKARTA — Fires are flaring up in Indonesia’s Riau province, the perennial epicenter of the burning season in Sumatra, as the dry season sets in. At the end of March,…
Some 50,000 wild species provide for many of the world’s people, according to a recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). But today, those…
The deforestation sweeping across the Brazilian Amazon is driven largely by industrial agriculture, mining and cattle ranching. But those activities wouldn’t be possible without heavy machinery like bulldozers and tractors,…
Malaysian timber giant Samling has removed logging equipment from a long-disputed area in Sarawak state’s Upper Baram Forest Area, in what the Penan Indigenous community is calling a win for…
Indonesia’s planned new capital city on the island of Borneo, Nusantara, is being touted by the government as a "green" city. However, its construction may lead to a surge in…
BENGKALIS, Indonesia — On the east coast of the island of Sumatra lies a grove of timber, fruit and native trees known as the Marsawa Peat Arboretum. This shady grove,…
Chocolate is one of the world’s greatest little pleasures. But its primary ingredients — cocoa, palm oil and soy — all contribute to global deforestation. The industry is working now to make chocolate more sustainable.
The deaths of journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira in June this year exposed an interlocking web of crime involving drug trafficking, money laundering, and illegal fishing…
JAKARTA — More than 100 Indigenous people in Indonesia’s Papua region are calling on the local government to revoke all the permits of a palm oil company that’s continuing to…
As if all the strategic and political aspects of the Putin-Bolsonaro alliance weren’t detrimental enough, underlying environmental considerations add yet another undesirable dimension. Meeting with Putin at the Kremlin literally…
The 2022 Fridays for Future (FFF) International Meeting held in Turin, Italy, ended today with a climate strike. Among the demands for urgent climate action from young Indigenous leaders are…
Spanning more than 1,600 square kilometers (620 square miles), the Ulu Muda rainforest is one of the last large, continuous tracts of forest in the Malay Peninsula, and provides vital…
An Indigenous community in Ecuador has finally obtained national protections for part of its territory after decades of fighting off deforestation and pollution in its mega-diverse rainforests. Ecuador’s National System…
The world’s largest bank of the partially decomposed plant matter known as peat in the tropics is even more extensive than initially thought, according to a new study. The peatlands…
PREK TABAEK, Cambodia — The roots of the forests surrounding Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake spend half the year submerged in water. But in the past five years, they’ve been catching…
In the Indonesian village of Kun-kun, where illegal loggers once cut mangroves for timber, a new livelihood has come to the fore: crab fishing. “Without the mangroves, the crabs cannot…
JAKARTA — A part of the only forest on Earth where rhinos, tigers, orangutans and elephants coexist is seeing a resumption of deforestation for an oil palm concession. Indonesian company…
This past June, scientists and researchers gathered outside the office of INPE, Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, in the municipality of São José dos Campos. They were there to…
On an expedition in the Amazon River Delta, researchers found mangroves growing in water with little to no salinity and overlapping with freshwater forested wetlands — a phenomenon never before…
Researchers have described six species of ferns new to science from the tropical forests of Panama, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, all in the genus Danaea. “The described species are no tiny…
The highest rates of illegal exploitation of ipê trees are found in areas of the Brazilian Amazon where deforestation is skyrocketing. Increasing domestic consumption and exports have encouraged the felling…
In the sprawling Himalayas, amidst snow-peaked mountains, is a vast swathe of evergreen forest home to majestic tigers, elusive clouded leopards, charismatic hornbills, mystical giant squirrels, enchanting butterflies and bizarre…
JAKARTA — The vast majority of orangutan habitat in Indonesia is located outside of protected areas. That can be bad news for orangutans living in corporate concessions, where a new…
A new multi-million-dollar conservation initiative in Colombia aims to create numerous new protected areas and biological corridors across the country, bringing it closer to meeting long-term climate change prevention goals.…
