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News articles on forests

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Mongabay.com news articles on forests in blog format. Updated regularly.

Wood Smuggling Link between Indonesia and China

(05/08/2005) Rampant smuggling of illegal timber from Indonesia to China is a billion dollar trade threatening the last remaining intact tropical forests in the Asia-Pacific region, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telapak revealed at a press conference today in Jakarta.


Hardwood flooring linked to illegal timber smuggling ring, says group

(05/08/2005) Environmentalists today revealed how hardwood flooring sold across the U.S. is linked to the world's largest illegal timber smuggling operation. Following two years of undercover investigations, The Environmental Investigation Agency, a non-profit group, has exposed how a leading distributor of hardwood flooring, Goodfellow Inc., is selling flooring made from logs illegally felled in Papua province of Indonesia.


Illegal loggers make a fortune; American forestry companies attempt to fight back

(05/05/2005) A new report published by Seneca Creek Associates and Wood Resources Institute, says that illegal logging hurts legitimate timber operators by driving down market prices for wood and tarnishing the industry's reputation through shady dealings with corrupt regimes. While maximizing their harvest without regard for regulations or the long-term impact of their activities, these illicit operators reduce their costs through the use of well-placed bribes to avoid taxes and royalties.


Ethnologists attempt to show forest dwellers perils of leaving the rain forest

(05/05/2005) A team of experts has spent months comparing the lives of the Punan people, who still live as hunter-gatherers in the forest of Indonesian Borneo, with those of tribe members who have been lured away by civilisation.


For What It's Worth: Ecological Services and conservation

(05/04/2005) For a long time, preserving natural spaces was considered to be a favor to the environment without a true, measurable benefit to businesses, industrial production and productivity. In recent years however, scientists are increasingly producing substantial evidence to support the notion that the natural environment supplies a diverse range of renewable economic benefits beyond timber and fish. These benefits are termed “ecological services” and provide such valuable functions as water treatment, pollination and sediment capture, simply by remaining intact.


Borneo's disappearing forests

(04/26/2005) Borneo, the third largest island in the world, was once covered with dense rainforests. With swampy coastal areas fringed with mangrove forests and a mountainous interior, much of the terrain was virtually impassable and unexplored. Headhunters ruled the remote parts of the island until a century ago.


Amazon rain forest continues to fall; 200,000 square miles gone since 1978

(04/24/2005) Forest loss may worsen as Brazil seeks to expand agricultural production and fires threaten stressed ecosystem.


Drought, fire called biggest threats to Amazon rainforest ecosystem

(04/23/2005) A prolonged drought in the Amazon could lead to a massive die-off in the world's largest rainforest according to a study released in Science last week.


Farmers and landless poor battle over the Amazon

(04/22/2005) Land battles in Brazil's countryside reached the highest level in at least 20 years in 2004 as activists clashed with farmers and loggers advancing on savanna and Amazon rain forest, a nongovernmental group said Tuesday.


Studying the rainforest canopy

(04/21/2005) The Global Canopy Programme, a groundbreaking new project dedicated to studying rainforest canopies, is about to enter the implementation stage in five tropical forests across the globe. Headed by Dr. Andrew Mitchell of Oxford University, the project will place giant cranes in Brazil, Ghana, India, Madagascar and Malaysia


Borneo's peat lands going up in smoke

(04/21/2005) The tropical rainforests of Kalimantan have long been threatened and increasingly endangered by deforestation and other invasive types of human activity. However, a lesser known ecosystem in the region that is literally coming under fire, is the tropical peat lands, particularly in the central area of the province of Indonesian Borneo


Timber hungry China moves into Africa

(04/20/2005) With its projected growth rates, China will soon surpass the United States in wood consumption. This voracious appetite for timber is threatening tropical forests around the globe but nowhere is this more apparent than in Africa where China is increasingly focusing its development efforts and adding fuel to a booming trade in illegally harvested timber.


Are rainforests still worth saving?

(04/20/2005) Rainforests around the world still continue to fall. Does it really make a difference?


Another look at global rainforest conservation

(04/19/2005) With Earth Day approaching it is appropriate to take another look at conservation efforts in the world's tropical rainforests, which today are disappearing from the face of the globe. Despite growing international concern, rainforests continue to be destroyed at a pace exceeding 80,000 acres (32,000 hectares) per day. So, what should be done?


Kalimantan at the Crossroads: Dipterocarp Forests and the Future of Indonesian Borneo

(04/17/2005) Kalimantan at the Crossroads: Dipterocarp Forests and the Future of Indonesian Borneo


Chinese economy drives road-building and deforestation in the Amazon

(04/17/2005) Chinese economy drives road-building and deforestation in the Amazon


Deforestation in Borneo

(04/13/2005) Deforestation in Borneo


Coca cultivation in the rainforests of Colombia

(04/03/2005) Coca cultivation in the rainforests of Colombia



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