As a best-selling author, the co-founder of the award-winning Amazon Conservation Team, and an acclaimed public speaker, Mark Plotkin is one of the world’s most prominent rainforest ethnobotanists and conservationists.…
A senior Malaysian forestry official faces serious public backlash after claiming logging is beneficial for tigers. The claim, made by Abdul Khalim Abu Samah, director of the Kelantan state forestry…
Botanist Álvaro Pérez didn’t expect to discover a new species of magnolia while hiking through Ecuador’s Canandé Reserve. He said it was the enormous, unique fruit that tipped him off.…
In 2010, the 13 countries that still retained tiger populations in the wild converged on St. Petersburg, Russia, to sign a summit declaration to double the number of tigers before…
Many Indigenous communities in northern Nicaragua are struggling with hunger and malnutrition as increasing land invasions force them from ancestral forests that they once sustainably managed for crop cultivation. Residents…
Ten Native American tribal nations, forming the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, have received ownership of 215 hectares (532 acres) of California’s redwood forest. The tribal council is partnering with Save…
In late 2021, the Mexican government made a controversial announcement that many of the country’s major infrastructure projects, most notably the Tren Maya project being built across the Yucatán Peninsula,…
On the 1st of February 2022, the Year of the Tiger starts. The Chinese zodiac is an increasingly popular pseudoscientific classification scheme with followers in Asian countries, like China, Japan,…
JAKARTA — A sting by anti-corruption officers in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province has uncovered evidence that a powerful local official allegedly used slave labor on his oil palm plantation. Agents…
A chief from the Bakanga clan of Batwa living within view of Mount Kahuzi was asked in the 1970s to help delineate a boundary using surveyor’s chains. He agreed, not…
Hawksbill turtles, Antillean manatees, and groupers — these are just a few inhabitants of a newly designated marine protected area (MPA) in Cuba. This week, Cuba publicly announced that it…
After reaching a historic low, the population of monarch butterflies overwintering in California has increased a hundredfold, according to the annual Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count. More than 247,000 butterflies were…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This month we’re meeting an African viverrid: the African civet. The African…
NIMBA COUNTY, Liberia — In 2020, villagers from the Blei and Sehyi Kodoo districts agreed to allow Solway Mining Incorporated to explore for iron-ore deposits in their territory in the…
Today we review how the world’s forests fared in 2021 and take a look at the major forest and conservation storylines to watch in 2022. Listen here: The UN’s Food…
For Indigenous tribes living in Alaska’s remote Yukon-Kuskokwim region, southwest of the state, the future is bleak and uncertain. Tribal councils worry that plans to construct a 6,474-hectare (15,990 acres)…
The Javan ferret badger, a small nocturnal carnivore endemic to the islands of Java and Bali, is becoming an increasingly popular pet throughout Indonesia, where it continues to be found…
JAKARTA — Deforestation for new oil palm plantations in Indonesia has decreased over the past decade, strengthening the case that palm oil doesn’t have to be associated with the destruction…
JAKARTA — Efforts to tie smallholder farmers into sustainable cocoa cultivation leave them vulnerable to climate change impacts and economic risks, according to a recent study that focuses on the…
On Oct. 23, 2021, the bulk carrier NS Qingdao, carrying 1,500 metric tons of fertilizers and industrial reagents, docked in South Africa’s Indian Ocean port of Durban. During offloading, rainwater…
COLOMBO — The recent killing of a fisherman by a crocodile off the coast of the Sri Lankan capital has shone a spotlight on the city’s long-overlooked crocs — and…
On July 19th, 1989, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi lit the match on twelve tons of elephant tusks soaked in gasoline. The elephants had been the victims of a relentless…
7.8 billion people produce a lot of waste, but governments, entrepreneurs and NGOs are developing a host of technologies that work with nature to transform a dirty problem into a suite of elegant sustainable solutions.
MAASAI MAU, Kenya — Two years ago, Kenyan authorities evicted 30,000 people from their homes in the Maasai Mau section of the Mau Forest. The evictees, many of whom had…
JAKARTA — Palm oil companies in Indonesia’s West Papua province are suing a local district head for revoking their permits, the second such case filed since authorities last year rescinded…
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Armed assailants recently attacked the home of Congolese environment lawyer Timothée Mbuya. Mbuya, head of human rights NGO Justicia, is fighting a defamation lawsuit…
Initiatives to inject billions of aerosol particles into the stratosphere to deflect solar rays and cool Earth are too risky to go forward; governments must act fast to rein in potentially disastrous planetary-scale solar geoengineering, say critics.
Felipe “Pipe” Henao is a young environmentalist from the small town of Calamar in southeastern Colombia. At the meeting point of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, it’s an area of…
PALAWAN, Philippines — When park ranger Allan Daganta travels to work from his home in a village just outside Palawan's Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (PPSRNP), he’s usually welcomed…
Three years after the collapse of a mining dam forced them from their homes in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, a small community of Pataxó and Pataxó Hãhãhãe Indigenous peoples face…