A new report states that boreal forests store nearly twice as much carbon as tropical forests per hectare: a fact which researchers say should make the conservation of boreal forests…
The power outage that affected nearly a third of Brazil's population Tuesday could be used by development interests to justify a renewed push for hydroelectric dams in the Amazon rainforest.…
Meeting this week in Merida, Mexico, the 9th World Wilderness Congress (WILD9) has released a declaration that calls for increasing wilderness protections in an effort to mitigate climate change. The…
Visiting Washington DC, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated that the United States was the world's most important actor when it comes to negotiations for a new climate change treaty, while urging…
Costa Rica is considered by many to be a shining example of environmental stewardship, preserving both its terrestrial and marine biodiversity while benefiting from being a popular tourist location. However,…
A group of nations especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change have released a declaration calling for developed countries to keep CO2 emission below 350 parts per million (ppm)…
On Monday October 26th a three-year-old boy mistakenly ate the pesticide Furadan (also known as carbofuran) in western Kenya. His father, a teacher at a primary school, said that he…
Oil palm developers in the Indonesian half of New Guinea are signing questionable deals that exploit local communities and put important forest ecosystems at risk, alleges a new report from…
Today, many of our planet's natural areas are seriously threatened by human incursion, overexploitation and global warming: Less than a fifth of the world's original forest cover remains in unfragmented…
Physician Christopher Herndon explores how Amazon shamans diagnose and treat disease. Ethnobotanists, people who study the relationship between plants and people, have long documented the extensive use of medicinal plants…
Forty percent of lowland forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) were cleared from 1990 to 2005, reports a high resolution assessment of land cover change in Indonesia. The research,…
Norway will provide up to $250 million to Guyana as part of the South American country's effort to avoid emissions from deforestation. Under the terms of the agreement, signed today,…
There have been numerous studies showing how climate change is impacting a variety of environments—from the Arctic to coral reefs to alpine—but how could a warmer world damage deserts, already…
Saving the Ethiopian wolf in face of habitat loss, diseased dogs, and climate change, an interview with Claudio Sillero-Zubiri, founder of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme. Living on the roof…
In George W. Bush's eight years as president, he placed 62 species under the protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), an average of eight species per year. While, Bush's…
Seventh in a series of interviews with participants at the 2009 Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) conference. A large flying fox eats a fruit ingesting its seeds. Flying…
On Tuesday, November 3rd, while Panamanians celebrated Independence Day Holidays, heavy machinery unexpectedly entered and began cutting down tropical forest and mangroves near Galeta outside of Colon, Panama, report local…
Important safeguards to protect natural forests are still lacking in negotiating text on REDD, a proposed mechanism for mitigating climate change by paying developing countries to keep trees standing, reports…
The Green Economy Coalition is urging G20 finance ministers to rapidly put an end to fossil fuel subsidies. In a letter to the ministers, the coalition argues that these subsidies…
A new image from NASA shows the severity of the drought in East Africa, which impacted Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Three failed rains in a row brought the region…
Rare, elusive, and endangered by habitat loss, the bay cat is one of the world's least studied wild cats. Several specimens of the cat were collected in the 19th and…
This year's IUCN Red List has updated its assessment of the Kihansi spray toad, moving the species from Critically Endangered to Extinct in the Wild. With that another amphibian species…
Currently there are an estimated nearly 9,000 reptiles in the world, while the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List has assessed all of the world's described mammals,…
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) 2008 report, released yesterday, 36 percent of the total species evaluated by the organization are threatened with extinction. If…
A House of Representatives resolution introduced by Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) condemns the illegal plundering of natural resources in Madagascar, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The resolution condemns the political…
Oil palm expansion is threatening Borneo's rarest wild cats, reports a new study based on three years of fieldwork and more than 17,000 camera trap nights. Studying cats in five…
Science, Economics, and REDD: Struggling for Balance My friend Rezal Kusumaatmadja contacted me in July to ask if I could join him and some of his associates for a couple…
A new study by Wetlands International and Greifswald University (The Global Peatland CO2 Picture [PDF]) provides country-by-country data on peat stocks and emissions. Overall the assessment found that drainage of…
The EU is the world's second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions from peatlands drainage, after Indonesia, reports the first country-by-country assessment of peat stocks. The study, conducted by Wetlands…
Palm oil producers outside of Malaysia and Indonesia pledged to stop developing new plantations on peatlands, circumventing an impasse that developed between palm oil producers and environmental groups meeting this…
