OLKIRIMATIAN, Kenya — As night falls on the Olkirimatian Group Ranch, in south-central Kenya, a cacophony of whistles and cowbells fills the air. Herders are hurrying cattle, sheep and goats…
Before clothes from the outside world arrived, the Sápara people of the Ecuadoran Amazon made their own clothes from tree bark harvested in the rainforest. Today, the Sápara are in…
My organization, the Elephant Action League (EAL), spent 14 months investigating and infiltrating the illicit totoaba swim bladder supply chain, from Baja California in Mexico to Southern China. We released…
Climate research has demonstrated that the overall warming of the planet is leading to a jump in extreme weather. High temperatures have risen even higher than they’ve typically been, of…
A leading science advocacy group has suspended its decision to award two Sri Lankan scientists for their efforts to link a controversial weed killer to kidney disease, following a public…
GOMBE, Tanzania — On the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika, 16 kilometers (10 miles) north of the town of Kigoma in Tanzania, lies the green, dense forest of Gombe National…
Eucalyptus plantations in southern India that were abandoned and left to recover for nearly 40 years are still far from resembling the primary forest surrounding them, a new study has…
Scientists have long wondered why zebras wear striped coats — none other than Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin are known to have debated the question well over a century…
THAKURDWARA, Nepal — Staff at Bardia National Park in mid-western Nepal have been looking after a "special guest" for the last eight years. The inmate, an Indian or greater one-horned…
Forests store vast quantities of carbon and play a huge role in the world’s carbon cycle – as well as in human hopes of mitigating global warming. Tropical rainforests, the…
On February 20, Nature published a comment on hydropower claiming that dams are good for the climate and should be subsidized through the Climate Bonds initiative, a proposal that is…
Blue whales in the northern Pacific Ocean use their memories to guide them to the best feeding spots, instead of seeking out the locations of shorter-term surges in prey, a…
TSUMKWE, Namibia — Just south of Tsumkwe, an isolated San settlement in northeastern Namibia, a sun-shredded sign indicated the Nyae Nyae cultural activity center was 10 kilometers (6 miles) away…
Ujung Kulon National Park is the last habitat of the Javan rhinoceros. There are only an estimated 67 of the one-horned animals left, according to the park management. A long…
The big cats of Java haven’t had it easy. First to vanish was the Sunda clouded leopard, a small species that today survives only on Borneo and Sumatra. Next to…
Human-dominated mangroves are far from what is considered an ideal environment for otters. And yet an estuarine island on India’s western coast is home to a thriving population of the…
A silver lining of global warming is that it is forcing every nation to rethink its future, to open its mind to new possibilities. The latest IPCC report gives the…
Almost a decade after it was founded, the Green Climate Fund is ready to start paying tropical countries for emission reductions from REDD+. A proposal from Brazil has been submitted…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian scientist says his signature was forged to obtain a key permit underlying a $1.6 billion hydropower project in an orangutan habitat on the island of Sumatra.…
The last time scientists officially reported seeing a living Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto), the world’s largest known bee, was in 1981. Now, in Indonesia’s North Maluku archipelago, the giant bee has…
In a classic poem, an ancient mariner finds himself haunted by the albatross he killed. Two hundred years after Samuel Coleridge penned that poem, albatrosses still follow fishing ships. But…
The environmental impact of the global demand for lithium and more jaguar protection in South America, plus profiles of five pioneering women in conservation science, and a newly discovered tree…
According to Elle Bowd, a researcher with Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society, there have been very few studies about the long-term impacts of disturbances like wildfires…
Tropical forests A doctoral student in India discovered a new frog species in a puddle (The Independent). Authorities in Brazil have arrested eight employees of the mining company Vale over…
It was 1997, and while record fires were raging across Indonesia a new socio-economic crisis may have been quietly unfolding among the country’s infants and unborn children, according to a…
Chimpanzees' health is not just an issue of concern for conservationists or animal rights activists. Great apes can spread plagues of biblical proportions — the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) first…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency has joined a growing chorus of criticism against a government decision to permit deforestation in a concession at the heart of a bribery scandal. It…
The Philippines was highly forested about a century ago. But today, forests cover less than a third of the country, due to logging, agriculture, fuelwood extraction and mining. To tackle forest depletion,…
MENABE, Madagascar — As the plane starts its descent toward Morondava, a city on Madagascar’s west coast, it crosses the Tsiribihina River. From here, almost all the way to Morondava…
Researchers who examined 50 marine mammals that had washed up on Britain’s shores say they found microplastics in the guts of every single animal. In a paper published in the…