Phyllodesmium acanthorhinum sea slug. PHOTOGRAPH: ROBERT BOLLAND. A group of taxonomists has released their annual list of the top 10 'new' species. The International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE), based…
Logged over forest and oil palm in Sabah. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Sabah, a state in Malaysian Borneo, is weighing a proposal to produce only palm oil certified under…
Elephant in South Africa. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. The Chinese government announced today that it will "eventually" shut down its legal domestic ivory market. The move, which surprised conservationists,…
Young swift parrots (Lathamus discolour). Photo courtesy of Dejan Stojanovic. In the forests of Tasmania lives the swift parrot (Lathamus discolour), a highly threatened bird that breeds nowhere else in…
Rainforest in Kinabatangan, Malaysia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts have developed vegetation height maps for the entire tropics at…
A butterfly in Malaysia. Photo credit: Bernard DUPONT. In choosing sites to target for protection, conservationists typically look for healthy ecosystems with high biodiversity — places with a great number…
A fisherman hauls up a critically endangered vaquita porpoise accidentally entangled in his net in 2008. Entanglement in fishing gear threatens the species with extinction. Photo credit: Omar Vidal. With…
An adult male yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Lagothrix flavicauda) in northeastern Peru. Photo credit: Sam Shanee. Community conservation projects — initiatives that actively involve local people in conservation efforts — have…
Forest in Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia. Photo by Dtfman. A proposed border checkpoint at Kbal Damrei, on Cambodia’s border with Vietnam, together with a new road leading up to it, may…
On the border of Colombia and Venezuela lies a mountain range called Serranía de Perijá in which a small brown songbird is going about its day entirely unaware of what…
West African countries have recognized that when it comes to food security, no nation is an island. Since achieving independence, West African countries have strived for regional integration. By building…
A male saiga. Photo by: Seilov/Creative Commons 3.0. No one knows what's killing them, but scientists estimate that almost half of the world's saiga (Saiga tatarica) have perished since May…
Palm oil fresh fruit bunches in Indonesia. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Last summer, an Indonesian NGO published research showing that an oil palm developer controlled by one of the country's…
A youth leader who lives near one of Wilmar's Nigerian oil palm projects shows an alternative water hole the community has dug as a result of the plantation polluting its…
Fragments of cerrado forest in Brazil's Mato Grosso state. The proposed railroad route goes through some of the last standing intact forest in the state. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.…
Savanna elephant in Uganda. Photo by: Andrew Plumptre/WCS. In the 1980s, Uganda's elephants looked like they were on their way to extinction. The country had only about 700-800 elephants left,…
River in the Peruvian Amazon. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has defended a plan to build a railway across the South American continent as a way to protect the environment and…
Blooming Amazon rainforest in southeastern Peru. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Human activity has destroyed huge swaths of the Amazon rainforest's biomass as trees are cleared to make way for…
Acacia plantation in Riau. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Greenpeace is re-engaging with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) after the Indonesian forestry giant quickly responded to the killing of a…
Desert elephants in Namibia. Photo by: Rhett Butler. HEC, otherwise known as "human elephant conflict," is a centuries-old problem responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of elephants. This…
Children carry a banner commemorating two children allegedly killed in 2013 by an employee of the company that owns the Santa Rita dam. The banner reads in part "They are…
Mongabay-Indonesia chief editor Ridzki R. Sigit argues that efforts to increase smallholder productivity among Indonesian smallholders are sorely needed. A mature oil palm plantation. Photo: Ridzki R. Sigit In a…
Panther chameleon in Maroantsetra, Madagascar. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. The panther chameleon, a lizard prized in the pet trade for its remarkable color changing abilities, may actually represent 11…
Tigers are endangered by demand for their bones and pelts. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. In a recent stand to help reduce hunting of endangered wildlife, first South African Airlines…
Poached elephant in Niassa National Reserve. Photo by: Alastair Nelson/ WCS. Mozambique has lost nearly half of its elephants to relentless, brutal, and highly-organized poaching in just five years, according…
Indian rhino with horn removed to prevent poaching. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A new survey in Nepal counted 645 one-horned rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis), up from 375 animals ten years…
Belize's Great Blue Hole, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that would be included in areas opened to oil and gas drilling under a new proposal from the Belizean…
Motive not yet clear in nightclub stabbing of Indonesian environmental campaigner Slain activist Jopi Peranginangin posted this photo to his Facebook page in April. (The children are not his.) An…
Other Special Reporting Initiatives Articles by Sandra Cuffe Nickel Mine, Lead Bullets: Maya Q'eqchi' seek justice in Guatemala and Canada The Guatemalan cabinet ministers for the environment, the interior,…
ith demand for seafood increasing and numerous fish species declining due to overfishing and other threats, scientists are proposing a seemingly drastic solution: close the high seas to fishing and…
