Scientists team up for Snapshot USA nationwide mammal survey
Javier Monzon has been deploying camera traps for close to two decades. He likens retrieving the equipment and the data to opening a present. “You just don’t know what’s inside…
United States News
As US agroforestry grows, federal funding freeze leaves farmers in the lurch
Agroforestry, the ancient agricultural system of integrating trees and shrubs with crops and livestock, has seen a revival in recent decades in the U.S. Around the country, agroforestry projects have…
Deep-sea miner TMC seeks U.S. approval, potentially bypassing global regulator
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, where Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a fellow. Canadian deep-sea mining firm The Metals Company (TMC) has announced it "initiated…
Beyond reforestation, let’s try ‘proforestation’
Edward Faison, an ecologist at the Highstead Foundation, stood quietly in a patch of forest that stretched for miles in all directions. Above him, the needles from white pine trees…
Rep from American Samoa calls for opening protected Pacific waters to tuna fishing
U.S. Congresswoman Amata Radewagen, who represents American Samoa, has urged the Trump administration to reopen most of an enormous marine protected area in the Central Pacific Ocean to industrial fishing…
Counting whales by eavesdropping on their chatter, with help from machine learning
What better way to track whales than listening in on them? Passive acoustic monitoring, in which microphones are placed underwater to pick up any sounds, has long helped scientists detect…
500,000 barrels of DDT in the sea: Interview with documentary directors on California coast crisis
Half a million barrels of toxic waste lurking beneath the waves just miles from California's coastline sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller. Yet this environmental catastrophe is real,…
Re:wild and Age of Union announce conservation partnership
Two of the conservation world’s most innovative organizations are joining forces to expand their impact — combining funding, grassroots activism and immersive storytelling to raise awareness and create action on…
How one woman’s wolf ‘moon shot’ changed Yellowstone forever: Interview with director Tom Winston
In March 1995, a few wolves cautiously exited their pens into the melting snow of Yellowstone National Park, returning there 70 years after guns, traps and poison had wiped them…
Indonesia seeks alternative funding as USAID freeze delays marine conservation efforts
JAKARTA — A freeze on foreign aid funding from U.S. government agencies, including USAID, has delayed several marine conservation programs in Indonesia, according to senior officials in the world’s largest…
‘Without us, no scrutiny’: Indonesia’s independent media count cost of US funding cuts
Last November, Jakarta-based Muhamad Heychael, program director at nonprofit media organization Remotivi, began offering small grants to local journalists to report on the nickel mines and smelters proliferating in remote…
The U.S. terminated its 30×30 conservation plan but this also presents an opportunity (commentary)
In his first week in office back in 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a historic commitment to conserve 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030. Two years later,…
US security think tank warns of China’s grip over Indonesian nickel industry
JAKARTA — More than 75% of the nickel refining capacity in Indonesia, home to the biggest reserves of this critical mineral, is controlled by Chinese companies, many with affiliations to…
Salmon farms under fire on U.S. East Coast after being shuttered on West Coast
This month Washington banned salmon aquaculture over environmental concerns, making it so there are no active operations on the U.S. West Coast. A new lawsuit now takes aim at operations…
Right whales can live to 130, but in North America they die young
Groundbreaking research in the late 1990s showed that Arctic-dwelling bowhead whales could live more than 150 or even 200 years — longer than any other mammal. New research, inspired by…
Warming threatens flies more than bees, raising pollination concerns
Life can’t function without insects. At least, not for long. They pollinate, break down waste, cycle nutrients, and touch every node in the web of life, filling endless niches across…
How the U.S. got no old growth forest protections from the Biden Administration (commentary)
Wikipedia defines a 'nothing-burger' as “a situation that receives a lot of attention but which, upon closer examination, reveals to be of little to no real significance.” That unfortunately applies…
Campaigners celebrate as firm making first-ever GMO fish ceases operations
In 2015, AquaBounty Technologies became the first company in North America, and likely the world, to get regulatory approval to sell a genetically engineered animal for human consumption. Its Atlantic…
Students and scientists collaborate to maintain Navajo Nation forests
Surviving desert heat, alpine cold, and meager rainfall each year, two-needle pinyon pines (Pinus edulis) are the backbone of many forests in the southwestern United States. Their stout branches offer…
Eastern U.S. floods could persist longer toward the end of the century
A "once-in-a-century" flood washed through much of the eastern and southeastern United States in spring 2019 as the Mississippi River overflowed for 145 days straight, breaking the river’s 1927 record…
Controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision threatens the country’s inland wetlands with new development, study says
In forested and marshy wetlands near the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek in North Carolina, a large landowner allegedly took liberties about a decade ago to install a kilometer…
New research maps microbial life in U.S. rivers
A new study published in Nature unveils the mysterious world of microbial life shaping the rivers that millions of Americans depend on for drinking water. The research spans waterways across…
Desalination plants proposed for Texas Gulf Coast spur broad opposition
Corpus Christi is a city of 316,000 residents on Texas's Coastal Bend, a rich marine area along the Gulf of Mexico. Located close to multiple water hungry industries, this city…
Rappahannock Tribe first in US to enshrine rights of nature into constitution
The Rappahannock Tribe has become the first tribal nation in the United States to successfully recognize the rights of nature in their constitution, giving legal protection to the river they…
As global fire risk rises, modern homes become toxic plastic traps
Rob Wilson stood on his home’s back deck in Flagstaff, in the U.S. state of Arizona, as the wildfire approached. All was chaos: Utility trucks rushed through his neighborhood, shutting…
Bobcats are back, and they’re helping protect people from zoonotic disease
A bobcat, with its characteristic reddish fur and black markings, trots across a snow-covered field in central Oregon, in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, hunting birds at the Warm Springs National…
U.S. policy experts confident of future climate action despite Trump election
With the start of the 29th U.N. climate summit, COP29, less than a week away, former U.S. environmental leaders said they have no delusions as to what the election of…
Will ‘Trump Part II’ be the wakeup call needed toward more effective conservation? (commentary)
What a week. The global biodiversity conference in Cali, Colombia (COP16) had just concluded. And then Trump got re-elected as President of the United States. Clearly the latter puts an…
Do forest conservation pledges work? (commentary)
In late September 2014 a besuited and bearded Leonardo DiCaprio stood at the grey marble dais in the UN General Assembly in New York and declared somberly that world leaders…
U.S. toughens stance on plastics production in run-up to key treaty summit
The chances for a stronger international agreement on limits to plastic production may have increased dramatically as the world nears a U.N. deadline for achieving a plastics treaty. The game…
Salmon is ‘everything’ for Lummi Nation highlighted in new PBS documentary
The sacred relationship between the Lhaq'temish (Lummi) people and wild salmon takes center stage in a powerful new documentary premiering Nov. 4 on PBS. Scha'nexw Elhtal'nexw Salmon People: Preserving a…
50 years of geographic insight: In interview with Jack Dangermond on Esri’s journey and the future of GIS
As Esri nears its 60th anniversary, Jack Dangermond exemplifies how geographic information systems (GIS) have grown from a specialized field into a critical tool for modern planning, environmental management, and…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Narco airstrips beset Indigenous communities in Peruvian Amazon
- 15 illegal narco-trafficking airstrips found near Peru Indigenous communities
- Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
Oceans
- Peruvian fishers sue for additional compensation after big December oil spill
- Smuggling networks exploit migrant debt to fuel tiger poaching in Malaysia, study shows
- Community-based conservation cuts thresher shark fishing by 91% in Indonesia: Study
- With climate change, cryosphere melt scales up as a threat to planetary health
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Should mining companies consider no-go zones where isolated Indigenous peoples live? (Commentary)
- Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
Endangered Environmentalists
- Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- Environmental journalist in Cambodia shot and killed by suspected logger
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
