Polar bear and cub. Declining sea ice has made it more difficult for some polar bear populations to find enough food and rear cubs. Photo by: Scott Schliebe/USFWS. Every winter,…

Kenneth MacDicken and Francesco Tubiello work at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The views expressed in this commentary are their own. Old-growth rainforest in Malaysian…

Stuffed tiger in Laos. Photo courtesy of EIA A city-sized resort complex in Laos is facilitating large-scale wildlife trafficking for Chinese tourists, exacerbating commercial poaching in the Southeast Asian nation…

A large Indian civet hit and killed by a car in Peninsular Malaysia. Photo by WY Lam. Habitat loss and illegal hunting are leading drivers behind mammal population decline and…

Devastation after Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu. The President of Vanuatu said climate change was partly to blame for the destruction. Photo by: Graham Crumb/Imagicity.com/Creative Commons 3.0. Global carbon emission plateaued…

Oceans not only provide important ecosystem services, including climate regulation and nutrient cycling, but they also serve as a major contributor to food and jobs. Yet human actions in the…

Mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park. Photo by: Cai Tjeenk Willink/Creative Commons 3.0. Last Friday, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced it was considering changing the…

Conversion of peatland for an industrial plantation in Riau, Sumatra. Photo by Rhett A. Butler A pair of local communities' five-year slog to establish village forest management areas in Riau…

Part 1 of 5 of a series on palm oil financing Deforestation for palm oil production in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Palm oil may be the single…

A small island off Kendawangan in West Kalimantan's Ketapang Regency has lost a substantial amount of its tree cover over the past decade, according to Global Forest Watch. Intense exploitation…

Media coverage of ruins raises controversy among scientists, but leads to stepped-up protection efforts in long-neglected region Temple at Tikal, a Mayan city in Guatemala. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.…

Dani farmer in Indonesian New Guinea. Photos by Rhett A. Butler Indonesia's indigenous population has suffered a long history of human rights violations says a report to be released by…

During February, the 14th World Congress on Public Health in Kolkata, India, revealed a new "ground-breaking" report entitled, Connecting Global Priorities: Biodiversity and Human Health, which demonstrates human health benefits…

The World in 2050: implications for sustainability Last month, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) published a new edition of its The World in 2050 report. Confirming the findings of previous studies,…

A fishing boat, which was flying Indonesian colors, is sunk off the coast of Riau, Sumatra on February 9, 2015, after the fishery ministry evacuated the all-Thai crew. Photo courtesy…

Releasing the giant mamma freshwater stingray. Photo courtesy of Ocean Mysteries and Jeff Corwin. Conservationists and scientists have managed to catch-and-release what could be the world's biggest freshwater fish ever…

Worker harvesting fresh fruit bunches in an oil palm plantation in Riau, Sumatra. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Declining crop prices usually spell bad news for farmers, and poor smallholders…

Male lion in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Most of the world's lions are now found in southern and eastern Africa. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. There's a new cat…

  An orangutan in the forest of Central Kalimantan. Photos by Rhett A. Butler One question that desperately needs to be asked when we talk about the rights of an…

G-20 nations make commitment to invest $60 to $70 trillion worldwide in new infrastructure over the next 15 years Deforestation along the Transoceanic highway in Peru. Photo by Rhett A.…

Remnant Brazil nut tree in a landscape cleared for soy fields. Photos by Rhett A. Butler The Brazilian government has officially confirmed that deforestation in the Amazon is pacing sharply…

Illegal logging in Indonesian Borneo. Photos by Rhett A. Butler A seemingly well-intended law that aims to turn forests over to traditional users could instead lead to large-scale destruction of…

Redwoods in Big Basin State Park, California. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. If you Google "rainforest," you're almost assured to get a page of search results mostly about the tropics.…

Sprawl near Law Vegas. Photos by Rhett A. Butler If there's one thing most governments and even political parties appear to agree on it's a desire for more infrastructure, i.e.…

The Southern Suriname Conservation Corridor came one step closer to fruition when indigenous leaders present members of Suriname's parliament with a declaration on March 5. “They’ve been protecting it, and…

Worms come in all different sizes, shapes, textures, colors, and flavors. Some attack human digestive systems, some surface after a rainstorm, and some come in plastic wrappers, covered in sour…

The cryptic treehunter lives the in highly threatened Atlantic forest, but researchers hold out hope that more might be found. The cryptic treehunter (Cichlocolaptes mazarbarnetti). Photoart by Rolf Grantsau. In…

When I was ten, I acquired my first dog. Rani was a Doberman Pinscher—tall, lean, and a huge pushover. She was wonderfully friendly, but sadly misunderstood her whole life, regularly…

A log yard in Myanmar's southern state of Tanintharyi. Photo courtesy of Forest Trends. The Myanmar government has been allocating land for large-scale private agricultural businesses in the country’s biodiversity-rich…

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Tanzanian government have launched an ambitious new initiative to protect East Africa's largest population of elephants (Loxodonta Africana). With funds from USAID, the…