Articles by Mongabayauthor

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…

In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into the…

SIGAPITON, Indonesia — In mid-August, when Mangatas Togi Butarbutar visited an ancestor’s grave in this village on the shores of Indonesia’s biggest lake, he had to tread carefully. Though the…

An hour’s drive south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, set against the backdrop of the volcanic Mount Salak, lies Bogor, whose frequent rainfall — even during the dry season —…

PASURUAN, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia have managed to put out a wildfire that had been tearing through a national park that’s home to rare leopards and eagles. The fire…

A palm oil executive was secretly filmed describing the payment of bribes to public officials in exchange for logging permits and access to land in Papua New Guinea, in a…

DENPASAR, Indonesia — An elected official in Bali surrendered a baby gibbon to conservation authorities last month after a social media post showing him playing with the animal at home…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Law enforcers are working to disrupt a wildlife trafficking ring connected to a man arrested last month with the skins and bones of three Sumatran tigers,…

This story won an Excellence in Investigative Reporting award from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) in 2022. (Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia | 阅读中文版  | 日本語で読む) When Sepri was…

On a clear night in 2017, a team of students from Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) set out into a lowland forest on the southwest coast of Java, Indonesia’s most…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — A mother Sumatran tiger and her two cubs were found dead this week in a snare trap in Indonesia’s westernmost Aceh province. Local people in Buboh,…

Fishing is integral to millions of Indonesians’ livelihoods and identities, with an estimated 2.5 million households involved in small-scale (non-industrial) fishing and aquaculture. Small-scale fishing includes a wide variety of…

JAKARTA and JAMBI, Indonesia — As Indonesia reels from a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, a requirement that vaccine recipients have a national identity number is hampering access…

A pair of Sumatran tigers are recovering from COVID-19 after testing positive for the disease at a Jakarta zoo in mid-July, Indonesian officials said on Sunday. After the two male…

GORONTALO, Indonesia — Camera traps have confirmed the presence of babirusa on Indonesia’s Buru Island for the first time in 26 years, the country’s environment ministry announced earlier this month.…

A new study has identified 2050 as the tipping point by which stakeholders in the Mekong Delta will no longer be able to mitigate the issue of saltwater intrusion, which…

PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Nine districts in Indonesia have pledged to protect 50% of forests, peatlands and other “important ecosystems” in their jurisdictions by 2030, local leaders announced last week. Spread…

Difficulty tracing the assets of plantation companies convicted in civil court of causing forest and land fires in Indonesia is among the “technical problems” preventing the nation’s environment ministry from…

HIYUNG, Indonesia — For the village cultivating Indonesia’s most pungent chili pepper, July is a time of prosperity — and potential ruin. That midsummer month is when hundreds of farmers…

BANGKA, Indonesia — In the lore of Bangka Island, one of the world’s main tin-producing centers, the rocky, white-sand beach of Tuing holds a special place. Tuing Beach is one…

Parrots, inhabiting pan-tropical and temperate regions across the world, are highly sought after as pets due to their attractive colors, calls and clever nature. But some of the trade in…

Vast terrains dominated by grasses, shrubs or sparse trees, rangelands are more than unproductive places where reticent herders graze their livestock and wildlife browse dry — or green, if lucky…

Indonesia has more mangrove forests than anywhere else on Earth. The country's 17,500 islands house around 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) of mangrove, or one-fifth of the world's remaining…

BANGKA, Indonesia — For more than two decades Ardianto has walked to the coastal mangrove trees from his village in Indonesia’s Bangka Island at sunrise with a triangular net, searching…

LAMONGAN, Indonesia — President Joko Widodo met with fishermen in East Java last week for a discussion on fishing gear policy, infrastructure and how the COVID-19 pandemic had affected their…

SOUTH TAPANULI, Indonesia — The death toll from a landslide at the site of a hydropower plant being built in Indonesia’s Batang Toru forest has risen to 10, with three…

JAKARTA — Authorities should go after illegal loggers with financial charges like money laundering, Indonesian officials said last week at an online panel. Officials from the Attorney General’s Office and…

KUPANG, Indonesia — In Indonesia’s arid, southern East Nusa Tenggara province, clean water is hard to come by. The issue made national headlines last year when an “extreme drought” triggered…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  A court in the Indonesian city of Jayapura has ruled against a Malaysian logging and property conglomerate in its bid to retain…

Celine van Bijsterveldt and her team had traveled to Central Java’s mangrove forests to investigate efforts to restore them. But when the researchers saw plastic trash strewn throughout the swamps,…