NORTHERN SHAN STATE, Myanmar - Looking back, it just seemed natural for Aung Tin Oo* to become a timber smuggler. Especially given that he hails from a central trading point…
Attendees at the world’s largest wildlife conference have called for stepping up protection for 34 migratory species, including giraffes, whale sharks and two of Africa’s big cats. “Migratory animals play…
Brazil’s Temer has forgiven 6o percent of $3.5 billion in fines for environmental crimes, so long as perpetrators pay other 40 percent. No new means of enforcement was announced.
Seagrass, the “ugly duckling” of the conservation world, is a vital lifeline for thousands of communities around the globe and an efficient absorber of “blue carbon.” It is also quickly…
Held every three years, the General Assembly (GA) is supposed to be the top Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) platform for decision-making. The idea is that members of the three FSC…
BHAMO, Myanmar – Bhamo is a small, busy town set on the bank of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar’s Kachin state. Its location – at the juncture between the river…
Congress is locked in a heated debate over the 2018 budget, but if the GOP follows Trump’s lead, they could do extensive harm to the world’s wildlife and to developing nations.
Setting forests aside in the tropics is helping to stanch the upward creep of global temperatures, according to new research, in addition to the benefits that parks and other protected areas…
Two decades after the catastrophic Indonesian wildfires of 1998-9, writer and artist Khairani Barokka revisits her feelings about the disaster in a book-length poem that highlights environmental degradation and indigenous…
The wholesale destruction of rainforests across parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island to make way for cash-crop plantations has not just devastated animal and plant biodiversity in the region, but may…
When Indonesian President Joko Widodo took office in October 2014, he made it clear that one of his key domestic policies was to develop and upgrade infrastructure across the archipelago.…
MAGDALENA MEDIO, Colombia – It is a usual hot and humid day at one of the oil palm plantations in Magdalena Medio, Colombia. Beneath the two-story canopy of the plantation,…
KATHA, Myanmar – The train rocked from side to side like a sketchy funhouse. It was the rainy season in northern Myanmar and we had been traveling for nearly a…
Germany’s flying insect biomass has dropped 76 percent in the past 27 years, according to a study published last week in PLOS ONE. The findings have stunned biologists around the…
Federal police arrest a gang of timber thieves who cut rare ipê trees on an Amazon indigenous reserve and used falsified records for export to U.S., Europe and Asia.
Starting around 2004, the deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon began a precipitous decline. By 2012, the rate had dropped about 80 percent, reaching the lowest levels recorded since annual…
JAKARTA — Under pressure from President Joko Widodo’s administration, Indonesia’s second-largest pulp and paper company has agreed in principle to retire plantation land in eastern Sumatra, in line with a…
Can technology drive conservation? That was the question Mongabay founder Rhett Butler recently posed to a panel of three specialists on the frontlines of applying technology to conserve key species…
At first glance Cameroon's western regions seem lush, but a closer look shows a land degraded by overgrazing, unsustainable cropping practices, deforestation of vegetation for firewood, and uncontrolled bush fires.…
BHAMO, Myanmar – A trader turns off his truck’s engine at yet another checkpoint and, again, the soldiers ask him for cash. His truck is filled with charcoal from Myanmar,…
Can you answer important questions about conservation by playing a game? Yes, and it works. In August, ForDev, the research team I lead, was invited by the Forest Stewardship Council…
Bamboo-eating lemurs in Madagascar could be slowly starving as a changing climate slashes the availability of their favorite part of the plant, a new study shows. “For extreme feeding specialists…
In Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed militias terrorize people and wildlife, brave scientists have found 50 uncounted great apes.
Steven Kotler is a leading thinker on how technology can be employed to halt the global loss of biodiversity. Recently the prolific author and journalist convened a weekend forum for…
On Sept 26, two scientists and a NASA astronaut completed TransAmazon +25, a bike trek across the Brazilian Amazon. What makes this trip particularly interesting is that one of the…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Nothing says patience quite like tromping around wet woods in the middle of the night to collar bats and track them back to their daytime roosts. And…
For the first time, a team of scientists has captured and then released a vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a rare porpoise in the Gulf of California, as part of a project…
In July this year, poachers killed a female black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis), and hacked off her horns, in Liwonde National Park, Malawi. A Malawian court has now convicted and sentenced…
PUERTO LEGUIZAMO, Colombia – Already infamous for coca production and conflict, Colombia’s southwest department of Putumayo borders Ecuador and Peru and is ripe for a variety of eco-crimes. In 2016…
In a first for the species, several black rhinos in Tanzania’s Mkomazi National Park have had small, networked sensors embedded directly in their horns in order to allow park rangers…