- There are many important conservation and environmental stories Mongabay isn’t able to cover.
- Here’s a digest of some of the significant developments from the week.
- If you think we’ve missed something, feel free to add it in the comments.
- Mongabay does not vet the news sources below, nor does the inclusion of a story on this list imply an endorsement of its content.
Tropical forests
The Indonesian government announced that deforestation dropped in 2017 in the Southeast Asian nation (The Jakarta Post).
A planned phaseout of palm oil in the European Union rests on data showing deforestation due to oil palm expansion from 2008 to 2015 (The Jakarta Post).
Ghana is hosting a gathering of representatives from 18 countries to discuss the protection of Africa’s forests and REDD+, short for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation, Forest Degradation and Conservation (News Ghana).
The trade war between the U.S. and China could lead to millions of hectares of deforestation for soy in Brazil (PBS, The Guardian).
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s designs on indigenous territory and the Amazon are part of a broader authoritarian strategy (The New Yorker).
An investigation has tied Chinese companies to illegal logging in Central Africa (Africa Times).
Top leaders of logging companies operating in Indonesian Papua have been arrested on suspicion of illegal logging (The Jakarta Post).
Other news
What role can religion play in addressing climate change? (Pacific Standard).
A recently identified species of whale lives all over the tropics, new research shows (The New York Times).
Scientists in Antarctica are going for the oldest-ever ice core, hoping to shed light on 1.5 million years of climate history (Nature).
Avoid single-serving pods and skip the milk for a “greener” cup of coffee (The New York Times).
Focusing on renewable energy, Copenhagen plans to become carbon neutral by 2025 (The New York Times).
An agreement to settle a lawsuit in California may keep whales from getting entangled, but it may also hurt crab fishers due to new limits on the season for Dungeness crabs (Lost Coast Outpost, AP/The San Francisco Chronicle).
The European Union parliament banned 10 types of single-use plastic (Al Jazeera).
WWF says that illegal logging worth $86 million happens annually in Bulgaria (Novinite).
Emissions from burning coal hit a record high in 2018 (The Washington Post).
The U.S. state of Lousiana faces a “land-loss crisis” along its coast (The New Yorker).
A court found that Monsanto is responsible for the health risks of its weedkiller Roundup and ordered that the agricultural giant pay $80 million in damages (The Guardian, The New York Times).
Illegal loggers are plundering Morocco’s Atlas cedar trees, according to a new report (The Observers).
Housing policy and climate change are intimately linked, a commentator argues (The New York Times).
A potentially threatened songbird in the U.S. state of Texas is at the center of a scientific controversy (Science Magazine).
The “Green New Deal” stalls in the U.S. Senate (The New York Times).
The “Doomsday Vault” in Norway, which holds around a million seed samples, is under threat from climate change (The Washington Post).
Warmer waters off the eastern coast of North America could cause more sea turtles to strand, new research has found (Pacific Standard).
Land management decisions tilt more toward conservation when women’s views are considered (Women’s Agenda).
Thirty years after the Exxon Valdez Oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, signs of the disaster remain (Hakai Magazine).
Sardine populations have crashed since 2006 along the West Coast of the U.S. and Canada (The San Francisco Chronicle).
A fungal disease affects far more species of amphibians than previously thought (The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New York Times).
Marine protected areas may be more about politics than conservation, some critics say (Yale E360).
Banner image of a blue dart frog by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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