Environmental headlines

A hundred and ninety-six trees per minute. That’s how fast the forest was being cleared in Brazil’s Xingu River Basin between March and April this year. A total of 29,191…

The Pacific island nation of Nauru has stated its intention to start deep-sea mining in two years’ time, despite the fact that the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N. body…

Combining to hamstring Mexico’s climate-friendly biodiesel industry: a lack of regulatory support, a president favoring fossil fuels, competition from other industries for used cooking oil, and a crime network.

Jade mining is fueling conflict in Myanmar, channeling money into the coffers of the military and ethnic armed groups, according watchdog group Global Witness. The industry buoys the weapons trade…

A “blind spot” in the sustainability policies of major palm oil conglomerates is allowing plantation companies clearing rainforest in Malaysia to continue feeding ostensibly “deforestation-free” supply chains, according to a…

In 2006, the world's leading hummingbird photographer, Luis Mazariegos, visited La Mesenia, an isolated village in Colombia’s western Andes. He had no idea that besides taking a picture of the…

A new regulation signed into law in March this year but only unveiled publicly in May will see almost 127,000 hectares (313,800 acres) of previously protected land in Cambodia made…

Sit on a beach and watch the waves. If powered by a storm, the waves may chew away at the beach, depositing sediment in an underwater sand bar that actually…

A recent investigation has found dangerously high levels of mercury among women from different Indigenous communities in four Latin American countries. This chemical element is a neurotoxic substance that presents…

So far this year, 24 major fires have burned in the Brazilian Amazon, covering an area of 7,167 hectares (17,710 acres). All of the fires were set on land previously…

Since the early 2000s, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has invested more than half a billion dollars into efforts to protect the Amazon, making it the largest private donor…

Biogas may play a key role in the global renewable energy transition, helping communities and nations meet multiple U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and their pledged Paris Agreement emissions cuts.

Tech advances in the last decades have given humans new tools for helping animals — whether it’s printing prosthetics on a 3-D printer or building robots that scientists can send…

RIO DE JANEIRO — When the Portuguese fleet led by Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil in 1500, Pero Vaz de Caminha, a knight serving as the secretary to the…

Today we’re discussing environmental education and the importance of spending time in nature to both human health and environmental conservation. Listen here: 2020 was a year when human society reconnected…

RIO DE JANEIRO — Maracanã, Ipanema, the Lapa Arches, the Church of Our Lady of Glory of Outeiro … Millions of the visitors who flock to Brazil’s most famous city…

MANILA — In the town of Pilar in the central Philippines, a community of 11,308 residents looks after one of the most successful marine protected areas in the country: the…

On Dec. 28 last year, a Monday, a group of representatives from a local cement firm arrived at the foot of the Mount Kanthan limestone hills in Perak, Malaysia. The…

Camera trap surveys in Virachey National Park in northeast Cambodia have recorded the country’s first sightings of a critically endangered deer, the large-antlered muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis). The species, also known…

JAKARTA — The unmonitored illegal trade in porcupines across Indonesia has prompted calls from conservationists for stricter protection for the species’ population in the wild. A new study examining seizure…

Agroforestry is the most beneficial agricultural technique from a climate and biodiversity perspective: growing food, fuel, fiber, medicines and more under the cover of, or adjacent to, woody perennials like…

BOA VISTA, Brazil — When she was 24, Ariene dos Santos Lima adopted the Indigenous name Susui. In her ancestral Wapichana language, it means “flower” — the ornament that Ariene…

Mountain gorillas, one of the world’s endangered apes, appear be facing a fresh health threat after a successful conservation campaign saved them from looming extinction, a new study says. Thanks…

Behind some of the beef sold in Colombian supermarkets is a story of deforestation in protected areas and illegal armed groups who benefit from cattle ranching. The Colombian Agricultural Institute…

Malaysian scientists and activists have called on road planners in the Bornean state of Sabah to reconsider a 13-kilometer (8-mile) stretch of the Pan Borneo Highway that will cut through…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting a large antelope native to sub-Saharan Africa:…

Southeast Asia is home to roughly half of the world’s tropical mountain forests. These highland ecosystems support massive carbon stores and tremendous biodiversity, including a host of species that occur…

In an undisturbed ecosystem, elephants move across the landscape in response to the availability of food and water and the type of habitat or competition. But according to a continent-wide…

MANILA — The Philippines’ most traded turtle species, and among the world’s rarest, received a bit of a population boost as researchers introduced two juveniles in the wilds of the…

COLOMBO — Authorities in Sri Lanka have called for a renewed focus on conserving the island’s rich coastal ecosystems, identifying the “blue economy” as key to the nation’s sustainable development.…