Environmental headlines

‘Multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth,’ warned Pope Francis, urging conservation of the rapidly vanishing Amazon — but the world’s media barely took notice.

Today Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced he will commit $10 billion of his personal wealth to combat climate change. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and aerospace company Blue…

MANILA — There might be more fruit bat species in the Philippines than previously thought, according to a genetic study, underlining the possibility that each individual species might be more…

Homero Gómez González took a circuitous path to becoming an advocate for butterflies. After strongly opposing the creation of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, he became one of its most…

JAKARTA — Felicia Siregar was only 2 years old when her father, Golfrid Siregar, an outspoken Indonesian environmental activist, died in suspicious circumstances last October. Four months on, Felicia is…

Local forest managers in southeastern Mexico are sounding the alarm that their livelihoods are under threat, as companies press for access to the region’s gold, silver and other minerals. “They…

COLOMBO — A big part of conserving any wildlife species is to conserve its natural habitat. But when that becomes an increasingly difficult task due to human-driven changes in those…

An illegal armed group connected to land grabbers killed four members of the indigenous Mayangna people, left two injured and burned 16 houses in northern Nicaragua on Jan. 29, according…

COLOMBO — In recent years, leopards in Sri Lanka (Panthera pardus kotiya), an endangered subspecies native to the island, have been grabbing local and international headlines for all the wrong…

The extinction of the Chinese paddlefish, announced by researchers in January 2020, is entirely the result of human impacts on the Yangtze River over the last 50 to 60 years.…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is planning to sue five companies, and possibly up to 16, over the fires that burned on their concessions last year. But recent cases indicate…

For the first time ever, a baby Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) was born in a captive environment at the Save Vietnam’s Wildlife (SVW) facility in Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam.…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has for the first time prioritized passing new legislation on renewable energy, and activists have seized the opportunity to call for a shift away from coal.…

A comment piece published in Nature yesterday urges tropical countries to adopt a tax on carbon emissions in order to halt global warming, species loss, and deforestation. The authors of…

Humanity has depended on the ocean for millennia. Today, however, the rush to the sea is occurring with unprecedented diversity and intensity, propelled by population growth and demand for diminishing…

Being a single mom is tough, even for a strong and formidable tigress. Hunting, protecting the territory, spending time with the cubs, resting — how does she do it all? For the…

The death toll from the novel coronavirus outbreak, the disease now called COVID-19, crossed the 1,000 mark this week as confirmed cases surpassed 60,000, but it remains unclear how the…

A new analysis based on estimated deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 pinpoints hotspots of forest loss and identifies several country-specific trends in the region. The figures project that deforestation…

There’s no doubt 2019 was a bad news year for the planet, and for many of the more than 7.5 billion human beings inhabiting it — not to mention countless…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has shut down 26 mining pits on the hilly outskirts of Jakarta, following floods and landslides last month exacerbated by environmental degradation in the area.…