Traditional wood stoves in developing countries are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and rely on a steady supply of wood, often causing habitat destruction. Around Kibale National Park,…
At the beginning of the 1990s, while observing the large trees of the Amazon ceding ground to the scrub-like vegetation of the Cerrado, in a process driven by human activity,…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting South America’s crab-eating fox. The crab-eating fox…
Jana Winderen finds it hard to get away from human noise. As a sound artist, she’s traveled to some remote parts of the world — from the Barents Sea to…
In a once-cleared patch of rainforest, four black-tufted marmosets scamper up to a pile of bananas lying in a plastic dish on the ground. Within the banana flesh are the…
The past 50 years have seen a catastrophic decline in the planet’s ecosystems and natural environments. Every day at least 32,300 hectares (80,000 acres) of forest vanishes, and the size…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has walked back its denial that deforestation for coal mines exacerbated recently deadly flooding in southern Borneo, saying it will now push to rehabilitate abandoned…
In the midst of political chaos fomented by a Feb. 1 military coup of the government in Myanmar, the country's forestry sector is seeking legitimization from the international community. A…
The flower-gatherers of the Cerrado uplands, invisible for centuries, win UN recognition for sustainable farming, even as threats from mining, agriculture, and a national park deepen.
In 2016, Lumber Liquidators, a US retailer, paid a record-setting $13 million penalty after pleading guilty to importing flooring manufactured from illegally logged timber. As part of its plea deal,…
The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a hairless rodent that lives in the arid areas of eastern Africa, is one of the strangest-looking creatures in the animal kingdom. But what it…
Between April and November last year, the government of the Brazilian state of Bahia authorized agribusinesses to collect nearly 2 billion liters (528 million gallons) of water a day.
AKLAN, Philippines — At dawn on Dec. 30, 2020, police officers raided Indigenous villages within a military reservation camp in the central Philippines in search of alleged members of the…
In the past decade we've seen an incredible rise in the availability of information, from open-access journals to freely accessible high-resolution satellite imagery to high-quality investigative journalism. But we've also…
Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s state of Amazonas, has gained worldwide notoriety for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, first for the collapse of its hospital system in April 2020…
Update: The five activists were released on February 8 after they "signed an agreement not to enter restricted areas without permission," as Reuters reported. On Friday afternoon Kratie provincial environment…
Over the past century, researchers have discovered an average of two novel viruses per year with the ability to infect humans. Many of these viruses come from animals, and as…
For citizens of the Netherlands and Japan, the dream of a comfortable retirement is fueling an environmental nightmare in the Amazon. Three of the biggest pension funds in thse countries,…
Underwater meadows of a seagrass endemic to the Mediterranean appear to trap some plastic debris that would otherwise drift out into the open ocean and pollute the bottom of the…
In July 2019, Australian authorities on the island of Tasmania received a report of a footprint spotted by an unnamed individual on a walk up to Sleeping Beauty Mountain in…
For decades, scientists observed a puzzling group of whales in the Gulf of Mexico. The animals looked like Bryde's whales — but not quite. They fed like Bryde's whales —…
Western forests are pretty healthy, though our relationships with them may not be. Humans crave the spotlight in environmental narratives. We shape the land and fix the bad contours. Of…
Michael Regan, President Biden’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2019 saw no climate benefit to the production of wood pellets in North Carolina to make energy abroad; what will he do at EPA?
BANTEN, Indonesia — Every day, Subur and his wife walk past giant chimneys, painted red and white at the crown, pouring smoke out of a cluster of coal plants. Subur,…
In some of the wettest parts of the Amazon rainforest, dry air may increase plant photosynthesis rates — a response that contradicts the assumptions of many climate models, according to…
In the far west of Brazil’s Bahia state, sprawling soybean plantations extend from the edges of the highways right up to the horizon. The region is considered Brazil’s new grain…
Big cats require big home ranges. In February 2016, a young male Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) walked from Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary in western Thailand to Kayin state…
As the planet continues its trajectory into what some have dubbed “the sixth mass extinction,” the diversity of life is on Earth is at risk. The Aichi Biodiversity Targets were…
Frank Glaw is no stranger to discovery. The German herpetologist has helped describe scores of new species from Madagascar, but the latest one is special: Brookesia nana is arguably the…
In 1992, global leaders gathered at a United Nations summit in Rio de Janeiro to sign the landmark Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to promote sustainable development. Eighteen years later,…