Last year the world lost an area of tree cover the size of New Zealand, according to satellite data. That’s around 29.7 million hectares (297,000 square kilometers) – and was…
The certification organization Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) took a step toward allowing timber companies that have cut down forests since 1994 to apply for the organization’s stamp of approval. Since its…
Roads can be arteries that ferry goods and people, connect communities and markets and bolster economic development. But if they’re not well-planned, they can instigate conflict, saddle countries with debt…
In January this year, scientists described a new species of ape – a white-browed gibbon that lives in the remote forests of the Gaoligong Mountains on the border of China…
In 1913, former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt visited a remote part of Brazil, where he shot dead a wild jaguar. Posing for a photograph, he pulled back…
The president has undermined Brazil’s slavery law, making it very difficult to prosecute the wealthy elites enslaving roughly 155,000 Brazilians, critics say.
Trump’s 2018 budget, if adopted, threatens to kill already precarious Northwest salmon fisheries — crippling the local economies of US and Canadian communities and tribal nations.
For more than a century, agroforests in the Sumatran port town of Krui used to be a prime example of how interspersing native tree species among crops could give locals…
A conservation area in western Borneo holds an unexpectedly rich population of the helmeted hornbill, a bird driven close to extinction by poaching for its distinctive casqued beak, a field…
A recent study mapped the world’s dry forests using a relatively new tool that combines creative satellite image analysis with local- and national-scale knowledge. Natural resource agencies worldwide inventory their…
When the last of the Russian troops pulled out of Estonia in 1994, for many their departure was bittersweet. While most Estonians were eager to join the Western world and…
This Monday, October 23, marks the first-ever Half-Earth Day. The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and National Geographic timed the event to occur exactly half a year after Earth Day (April…
The agency responsible for looking after the Philippines’ fish stocks has pledged to step up the science behind its management of the resource as it announced new reforms to the…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar -- In Madagascar, speaking out against corporate wrongdoing or government corruption can be dangerous business. So it took some courage for Raleva, a 61-year-old farmer, to stand up…
Brazilian environmental and human rights activist Antônia Melo da Silva received the Alexander Soros Foundation Award earlier this month in recognition of her work organizing opposition to the Belo Monte…
Fungi – a kingdom grouping that includes mushrooms, mold and yeast – have long been heralded for their beneficial properties. They’ve been used to soak up oil spills, boost your…
Deforestation in the world's largest rainforest declined over the past year, reports the Brazilian government. According to preliminary data from Brazil's national space agency INPE, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon…
During the wet season, manatees swim Amazon basin floodplains; in dry times they migrate to lakes. Hundreds of planned dams could disrupt that cycle.
AMPANG, Malaysia – Taman Rimba Ampang was once a peaceful retreat from the bustle of Malaysia’s capital, a place where Kuala Lumpur’s residents could paddle in the shallow waters of…
The sustainability and legality claims of the largest plywood importer in the US have come under question after it was found to have received shipments of Malaysian plywood worth more…
A team of scientists from Seychelles, the United States and the United Kingdom has found a new caecilian, perhaps the smallest species of the legless amphibian on Earth. "As soon…
On Sept. 25, amid a continuing crackdown on media, political opposition and civil society described by commentators as “a slide into dictatorship,” Prime Minister Hun Sen officially launched Cambodia’s biggest…
When Donald Trump pulled the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), it dashed plans to increase beef exports to Japan. But trade deals like TTP, which don’t address climate change, remain a looming environmental threat, as does rising global beef consumption.
This episode of the Mongabay Newscast takes a look at our new investigative series, “Indonesia for Sale,” and also features a new acoustic study of Amazonian bats. We recently published…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has allowed work to resume on a $40 billion project to build 17 artificial islands off the northern coast of the capital Jakarta, overturning a…
ANKAFOBE, Madagascar — When he first told colleagues at the Missouri Botanical Garden that lemurs still lived in the forest in Ankafobe, Jean Jacques Rasolofonirina said he was met with…
In the late 1950s, a young graduate student from Switzerland named Hansjörg Wyss took a summer job with the Colorado Highway Department. In his free time, he explored, climbed, and…
Last Friday, eighty Munduruku warriors — demanding an apology for destruction of two sacred sites — tried to occupy an Amazon dam; they were met by armed police.
Increasingly well-funded poaching gangs, as well as the pressure of ever-growing surrounding human populations, have made protecting wildlife and nature reserves a sometimes dangerous and uncertain way to make a…
Across the swath of vertebrate lifeforms that inhabit Earth, scientists have a pretty good idea about where most of the known land mammals, birds and amphibians live. That makes identifying…