French cosmetics giant, L'Oreal, has pledged to stop using palm oil linked to deforestation for its products by 2020. Palm oil, which is found in both cosmetics and many food…

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Stuart Pimm Aerial view of forest fragment in Costa Rica. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Dr. Stuart Pimm is an expert in extinctions:…

The monarch butterfly population overwintering in Mexico this year has hit its lowest numbers ever, according to WWF-Mexico. Monarch butterflies covered just 0.67 hectares in Mexico's forest, a drop of…

Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd (APRIL), Indonesia's second-largest pulp and paper producer, has announced a new environmental policy that aims to stem criticism about its forestry practices, which include…

Scientists have described a new species of eagle ray in the northwest Pacific Ocean, which they have named "narutobiei" (Aetobatus narutobiei) after its local name in Japan. While the new…

The range of habitats that animals have come to occupy is nothing short of staggering. Take the dicyemids for example. They are among the simplest animals on the planet, with…

Facing plunging profits, Royal Dutch Shell has announced it will cut exploration and development funding by nearly $10 billion this year, including halting their long-suffering plans to drill in the…

Forest disturbance in Madagascar and Vietnam increased significantly in the aftermath of cyclones that hit the countries last year, according to a forest tracking tool developed by a team of…

Rainforest Alliance has agreed to conduct an audit of Asia Pulp & Paper's progress in implementing the zero deforestation policy the forestry giant signed last year. The deal, announced Thursday…

Lioness feeding. Photo by: Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson. In the new book, In Predatory Light: Lions and Tigers and Polar Bears, authors Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Sy Montgomery, and John…

On December 17th, officials first discovered a massive oil spill in the Caribbean-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Since then, a series of oil spills have been discovered, coating beaches,…

Living whale shark. All photos courtesy of WildLifeRisk A four-year investigation by WildLifeRisk, a Hong Kong-based marine conservation group, has found that a single factory in China’s Zhejiang Province slaughters…

Hunters and trappers have killed 2,567 gray wolves in the U.S.'s lower 48 states since 2011, according to recent data. Gray wolves (Canis lupus) were protected by the Endangered Species…

The Wildlife Conservation Society-India has been camera trapping wild animals for over 20 years in the Western Ghats. The results reveal the most intimate, fascinating and sometimes comical insights into…

Kelumpang Sarawak (Sterculia megistophylla) in Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler Humans have been actively managing vast areas of Southeast Asia's forests for longer than previously believed, according to research…

Ameerega macero poison dart frog in Manu N.P. Photo by Alessandro Catenazzi. It's official: Manu National Park in Peru has the highest diversity of reptiles and amphibians in the world.…

Fire burning on an oil palm plantation in Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Storebrand, one of Norway's largest life insurance and pension savings companies, has sold off holdings in…

Sea anemones are supposed to sit on the bottom of the ocean, using their basal disc (or adhesive foot) to rest on a coral reef or sand. So, imagine the…

Increasing forest protection in the right areas could increase benefits up to 10.4 percent to coral reef condition, according to a recent study of Fiji's forests and reefs in Marine…

Global warming continues apace as 2013 was the seventh warmest year in the past 133 years, according to a new analysis from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). In…

Animation: The 2013-2014 California drought. By Rhett A. Butler using NASA imagery. A pair of satellite images released this week by NASA reveal the shocking impact of California's drought, which…

Rainforest in Sumatra For the past decade and a half, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has been one of the most controversial paper producers on the planet. Environmentalists, human rights…

Andean Condor. Photo by Francisco Sornoza. Conservationists have acquired a 2,800-ha (7,000-acre) property that completes the acquisition of some 108,000 ha of key Andean Condor habitat in Ecuador. The lands…

Elephants in Namibia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler The government of Hong Kong will destroy 28 tons of ivory confiscated from traffickers, reports CNN. The announcement, which comes just weeks…

Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Lian Pin Koh Collage of photos showing orangutan nests taken from a conservation drone. Photo courtesy of ConservationDrones.org. At the foothills of the…

Inia araguaiaensis Researchers have discovered a new species of river dolphin from the Amazon. Writing in the journal Plos One, scientists led by Tomas Hrbek of Brazil's Federal University of…

Secondary forests, which are areas that were previously cleared of old-growth cover, now comprise the majority of the forested areas in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. A heavily debated…

Much of what we know about patterns of biodiversity has come from extensive fieldwork, with expert researchers sampling and identifying species in a process that takes thousands of man-hours. But…

The European Commission has proposed setting a binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels for 2030, reports Thomson Reuters Point Carbon. The target, which aims…

A study on deforestation in Cambodia has found that forests are better protected when local communities are given the responsibility to manage them locally. Cambodia has one of the highest…