Primary rainforests are top conservation priority Old growth rainforests should be a top conservation priority when it comes to protecting wildlife, reports a new comprehensive assessment published in the journal…
Baby olive ridley sea turtle. Photo by Rhett Butler The number of sea turtles accidentally caught and killed in United States coastal waters has declined by an estimated 90 percent…
Deforestation worsens famine in Africa, but drylands restoration could help. Millions of people across the Horn of Africa are suffering under a crippling regional drought and tens of thousands have…
Selectively logged lowland forest in Indonesian Borneo. Photo by Rhett Butler With old-growth forests fast diminishing and land prices surging across Southeast Asia due to high returns from timber and…
Reversing global forest decline will require private sector engagement and finance, argues a new report published by the United Nations and a coalition of more than 200 financial institutions. The…
Map of the Herakles/SGSO plantation in Cameroon. Courtesy of SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund Industrial palm oil production is coming to Africa, its ancestral home. And like other places where expansion…
Indonesia will establish a REDD+ agency to support the country's efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, according to a statement released by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's…
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has introduced a new program, Bolsa Verde (Green Allowance), to compensate the poor for environmental protection, reports Globo News. Eighteen thousand families living in extreme poverty…
Banking giant Deutsche Bank is under investigation by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) for its dealings with the family of Abdul Taib Mahmud, the chief minister of the…
Arctic sea ice cover fell to its lowest level on record, report researchers from the University of Bremen. Analyzing data from NASA's Aqua satellite, Georg Heygster and colleagues found that…
Conserving and Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity: Economic, Institutional and Social Challenges provides a much needed survey reflecting upon recent institutional experience yielding analysis that concludes that there exists financially…
Although they are little-known, the hutia and solenodon are some of the last surviving mammals of the Caribbean. A hefty rodent, the hutia spends its time grazing in trees like…
Lowland tapir in Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. Patricia Medici will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 1st, 2011.…
Malay Red Harlequin (Paralaxita damajanti) in Indonesian Borneo Photo by Rhett A. Butler. The Malay Red Harlequin (Paralaxita damajanti) is a butterfly species found in the rainforests of peninsular Malaysia,…
Indigenous tribes in Borneo suffered a stinging defeat Thursday after Sarawak's highest court ruled against them in 12-year-long legal battle. Tribal groups had challenged the Malaysian state government for seizing…
Customs authorities in Malaysia seized two containers full of 695 elephant tusks in the country’s largest port, reports TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. The shipment — labeled as “recycled…
A boy pushing a shopping cart load of wires going for burning in the Agbogbloshie ghetto in Accra, Ghana. Photo by: Kwei Quartey. In Agbogbloshie, a slum outside the capital…
Giraffe patterns. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. A South African giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa) in Chobe National Park, Botswana. The world's tallest land animal, giraffes inhabit sub-Saharan Africa. Giraffes are listed…
The coastline of the 'Patagonian Sea' covered with seabirds and seals. Photo by: W. Conway. Claudio Campagna will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on…
Gold mining in Peruvian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Peru's new president, Ollanta Humala, has signed into law a measure requiring that indigenous groups are consulted prior to any…
Leopard Shark (Triakis semifasciata). Photo by Rhett Butler. California moved a step closer to banning the sale and trade of shark fin with the passage Tuesday of Senate Bill 376.…
A four-month old baby Bolivian gray titi monkey hangs from its mother at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo. Photo by: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS. The Bolivian gray titi…
A Brazilian court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of a rancher for ordering the murder of Dorothy Stang, an American nun who fought to protect the Amazon rainforest and rights…
Villagers with the largest crocodile on record. Photo courtesy of AFP. Authorities in the Philippines captured the largest crocodile on record after a series of fatal attacks, reports Agence France-Presse…
James Hansen (on the left) with religious leaders at Keystone XL civil disobedience. Photo by: Josh Lopez/Tar Sands Action. Two weeks of climate disobedience at the White House ended over…
As many people in the United States question whether renewable energy is a viable alternative to fossil fuels, Germany now derives 20.8 percent of its electricity from renewable sources—a 15…
Where the Andes meets the Amazon. Photo taken August 2011 by Rhett Butler The zone where the Amazon rainforest meets the Andes mountains is the most biodiverse place on Earth.…
62 percent of the area deforested in the Brazilian Amazon until 2008 is occupied by cattle pasture, reports a new satellite-based analysis by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE)…
Background on why the US Fish & Wildlife Service raided Gibson Guitars. The following is a statement from the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit that has worked closely on the…
Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration, World Resources Institute, South Dakota State University, International Union for Conservation of Nature. September, 2011. Larger version of the map Conservationists and politicians meeting…
