Belo Monte location. Courtesy of Google Earth. Brazil's National Development Bank (BNDES) on Monday announced it has approved a $10.8 billion (22.5 billion Brazilian reais) loan to the consortium that…
Scientists discover new fish, name it after Obama The Spangled Darter (Etheostoma obama) from Tennessee is named after President Barack Obama. Illustration by Joe Tomelleri Scientists have named five newly…
Logs smuggled across the border from Myanmar to China. Photo © : EIA. Runaway economic growth comes with costs: in the case of China's economic engine, one of them has…
OIC’s Human Orangutan Conflict Response Unit (HOCRU) with the assistance of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SCOP), the Leuser Ecosystem Management Authority (BPKEL), and the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA)…
A cow stands in Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetland which is threatened by cattle ranching and agriculture. In 2006 it was announced that 17 percent of the Pantanal had…
Deforestation for a palm oil plantation in Malaysia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Environmental damage poses a long-ignored risk to sovereign bonds, according to a new report by the UNEP…
The reticulated python. Photo by Rhett Butler. Bird conservationists in the United States are urging Congress to ban imports of five types of snakes that are considered a threat to…
Rainforest logging. Photo by Rhett Butler. An initiative that aims to slow global warming by paying developing countries to protect and better manage their forests is expected to be an…
Arctic snowfall accumulation plays a critical role in ringed seal breeding, but may be at risk due to climate change, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. Sea…
Hurricane Sandy storm surge on the New Jersey shore. Photo by: Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen/U.S. Air Force/New Jersey National Guard. Sea levels are rising 60 percent faster than Intergovernmental…
Palm fruit. Photo by Rhett Butler. The European Commission has approved palm oil-based biodiesel for the renewable fuels standard provided it is certified under the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil…
Organic farm in Montana. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. With the worst effects of climate change, we are seeing how pollution hurts both human health and the environment but there is…
A live Imantodes chocoensis. Its head is about the size of an American penny. Photo by: Omar Torres-Carvajal et al. There's no question that blunt-headed vine snakes are an odd…
27% less forest chopped down in the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to the lowest rate since annual record-keeping began in 1988 according to provisional data released…
A young male leopard (Panthera pardus) in China's Shuishui River Reserve is this year's contest winner. Photo by: Zhou Zhefeng/BBC Wildlife Magazine. The third annual BBC Wildlife Magazine Camera Trap…
A new video explores local indigenous views of the forests of Kalimantan or Indonesian Borneo. Having depended on the rainforest ecosystems for centuries, indigenous groups now find themselves under pressure…
Stream and forest in the Tongass National Forest, the world largest temperate rainforest located in Southeast Alaska. Photo by: Matthew Dolkas. Although unlikely to pass anytime in the near term,…
Clearing of trees in a concession area of Herakles Farm’s area for a palm oil plantation. Greenpeace says these clearings are illegal since Herakles' lease has not been given final…
In 1990, British cloud physicist John Latham published a paper arguing he could cool global climate by brightening clouds over the ocean. Most colleagues ignored the paper, titled “Control global…
Indonesian fishermen load sardines into the back of a truck. Photo by Rhett Butler. Global fisheries are gutting the world economy by US$13 billion annually, according to an economic analysis…
Apparent recovery of endangered muriqui monkeys in Brazil may not tell the whole story On paper, the northern muriquis (Brachyteles hypoxanthus) look like a conservation comeback story. Three decades ago,…
Hurricane Sandy storm surge on the New Jersey shore. The massive tropical storm, the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, renewed discussion of climate change in the U.S. media…
Black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) with fly near its eye in an ox-bow lake in Yasuni National Park. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. The Yasuni-ITT Initiative has been called many things: controversial,…
Surface coal mining in Bihar, India. Around 70-80 percent of India's power is currently provided by coal. Even as the clamor to reduce greenhouse gas emissions reaches a new high—echoed…
Bangui Windfarm in the Philippines. Photo by: John Ryan Cordova. As the 18th meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) kicks off this morning in oil and…
Rainforest in Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Indonesia should extend its two-year moratorium on new concessions in some 64.8 million hectares of forests and peatlands until its next presidential…
Rainforest in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Forests worldwide are at "equally high risk" to die-off from drought conditions, warns a new study published this week in the…
Illegal logged tree in Indonesian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In another blow to illegal loggers, Australia has passed the Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill, joining the U.S. in outlawing…
Groundnut breeder Albert Chamango grows tall perennial pigeon peas alongside his low-growing legumes to increase crop yields. Chamango works with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in…
Gaysay Grasslands in Bale Mountains National Park. Photo courtesy of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). There is a place in the world where wolves live almost entirely off mountain rodents,…