Articles by Isabel Esterman

A typical morning in the village of Phlangwanbroi starts with a melodious yet primitive-sounding song: drifting over from the nearby community forest, a series of whoops, hoots and tones rise…

BOKÉ, Guinea — As he looks out on a landscape devastated by bauxite mining, Lamarana Camara remembers when chimpanzees would wander freely through the thick forests that once surrounded his…

Traffic is a decades-old problem in Penang, a common complaint shared across class, race and political lines in this Malaysian state. When it’s brought up, Siti Fadhilah, a 31-year-old selling…

A juvenile male Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus) was found dead last month in Indonesia's Ujung Kulon National Park, home to the only remaining population of the nearly extinct species. The…

KATHMANDU, Nepal — A planned census of Nepal's greater one-horned rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros unicornis) will not take place this year. "The count has been postponed," Bishnu Shrestha, a spokesman for the…

In March 2018, Sudan, the last known northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) male, was euthanized at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. With only two known female northern white…

Park rangers at Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, home to the iconic greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), receive a tip-off from one of their informants. Within a few hours, they’re ready…

On a gloomy afternoon in May 2018, conservation biologist Bibhab Talukdar was visiting Pobitora National Park in India's Assam state. As he rode an elephant into the grasslands at the…

Politicians in Papua New Guinea are ratcheting up their support for a new foray into coal mining and power generation, even as neighboring states call for a global reduction in…

Early in the afternoon on Feb. 11, 1980, in the middle of the Citadahan forest, Ali Rahman, a ranger at Ujung Kulon National Park, was assigned to accompany researchers Hartman…

A sodium craving may be the reason endangered mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) from Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda leave the park to raid nearby eucalyptus plantations, according to a…

Environmentalists in Indonesia have vowed to “never stop” in their fight to halt the construction of a hydroelectric project they say threatens the world’s rarest great ape species with extinction,…

KANYANG, Nigeria — Former bushmeat hunter Jacob Osang says poverty and lack of options drove him to the trade. “There were no jobs, no opportunity anywhere,” Osang says. In 1985,…

In the middle of the night toward the end of 1982, where the forest meets the beach, an old man, thin and barefoot, visited the Karangranjang Resort barracks in Ujung…

DJOUM, Cameroon — “This right there used to be hell.” It’s early February 2019, deep in the tropical rainforest in southeastern Cameroon, the day after a night of heavy downpour.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

While scientists worked to confirm Tapanuli orangutans were a distinct species, pressure was mounting on the apes' habitat.