Environmental headlines

A few months after the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 began to pop up in the U.S., a piece of news came out of the Bronx Zoo in New York…

Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park is at risk from a BR-364 branch road running from Acre state to Peru. Brazil’s Congress is about to strip away the park’s protections, risking wholesale deforestation.

North Sumatra is home to 1 of only 8 known great ape species in the world, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, first classified in 2017 after its habits and DNA…

Nearly 2 billion people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of a forest, and many rely on forests directly as a source of livelihood. But forests also play a critical…

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that when coronaviruses leap from wild animals to humans, the results can be devastating. A new study from Vietnam provides new insights about…

Reversing biodiversity loss, halting climate change and even preventing the emergence of new pandemics may seem like isolated objectives, but they are not. A group of scientists set out to…

JAKARTA — Paying village in Indonesia to ensure they don’t burn their land for farming appears to have little to no effect on reducing fires, researchers have found. The implication…

South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.

Covering a swath of ocean larger than Peru around coral reefs, golden beaches and rocky atolls in north Hawaiʻi, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is one of the world's largest marine…

Hanging in harnesses 80 feet above the rainforest floor, I realize Ruth and I might be the first humans to have ever been in the canopy of this living fossil,…

The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass, and there may be no way to stop it, scientists have concluded. Even if large amounts of snowfall return to the ice sheet,…

Amid the steaming swamps adjoining Borneo’s Mahakam River, a fisherman slows his boat to glide gently across the surface of Lake Melintang. He senses something amiss up ahead. A critically…

Europe is failing to protect its oceans, despite having policies in place to safeguard its marine environment, according to a report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) on…

A mammal native to South America’s savannas, the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) now lives in the Amazon Rainforest. That’s the finding of a recent study by researchers in the Brazilian…

JAKARTA — Two major pulp and paper producers associated with widespread deforestation and land conflicts in Indonesia may also have skimped on $168 million in taxes through a web of…

Rising across remote stretches of southeast Cambodia, the Cardamom Mountains harbor dense tropical rainforest, much of it native growth carpeting the range’s wet slopes. Due to its remoteness, the vast…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Read parts one and two of the series, and watch the film here.  It’s cloudy when my plane lands at the airport…

An analysis of the DNA of three wild dogs living above 4,300 meters (14,000 feet) on the island of New Guinea matches that of captive New Guinea singing dogs. These…

*This article is a collaboration between Mongabay Latam and GK, Ecuador.   At the beginning of June 2020, Ecuador’s National Assembly overwhelmingly passed the Oil Palm Law, officially called the…

MANILA — In 2017, a group of researchers surveying mollusks in a popular ecotourism site east of the Philippine capital stumbled upon a tiny land snail with a unique “upside…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the white-lipped peccary. White-lipped peccaries (Tayassu Pecari)…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon topped 11,000 square kilometers for the first time since 2008 reports the Brazilian government. According to data released today by Brazil's national space research institute…

While many look to sustainability certifications as a panacea for the issues surrounding oil palm plantations, a new study cautions that these programs may not be enough to prevent negative…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — On Oct. 21, Madagascar’s council of ministers issued a decision to reopen the domestic market for so-called ordinary wood — non-precious timber logged from natural forests. This…

In the arctic tundra of northeastern Siberia lies a graveyard of a now-extinct species of megafauna, the woolly rhinoceros, dating back 50,000 years. Now, a new genomic analysis of the…

Tim Beatley will humbly tell you that he’s not a birder. But in his new book, there are enough appearances by obscure members of the class Aves to suggest that…

JAKARTA — The arrest of Indonesia’s fisheries minister on bribery charges has prompted a freeze on exports of lobster larvae, but a top official has indicated this is unlikely to…

Six grassroots environmental activists will receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in a virtual ceremony this year. Dubbed the “Green Nobel Prize,” this award is given annually to environmental heroes…

Poaching is a pervasive global problem, and iconic mammals like elephants and rhinos are hit hard by illegal hunting. This is especially true in the world’s poorest countries and within…

2020 was supposed to be the year that governments, business leaders and civil society came together to report back on the past decade's worth of progress on addressing the biodiversity…