Articles by Rhett Butler

If world leaders are serious about addressing climate change, staving off the sixth great extinction, and raising living standards of the world's rural poor, they must 'stop the burning' of…

An interview with Matthew Luskin, a part of our on-going Interviews with Young Scientists series. The direct impacts of converting rainforests and peatlands to industrial oil palm plantations are clear…

Construction work on a controversial canal that would link the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean via an overland route across Nicaragua and through Central America's largest lake has been postponed…

Deforestation jumped 16 percent in the Brazilian Amazon to 5,831 square kilometers for the year ended July 31, 2015, but still remained well below historical levels, according to data released…

Protecting, restoring, and better managing tropical forests could provide as much as half the net carbon emissions required to meet a 2-degree Celsius climate target, argues a commentary published this…

Native people have lived along what is now Canada’s rugged north Atlantic coastline for thousands of years, fishing and hunting marine mammals for sustenance. New research in the Proceedings of…

Compounds from our makeup and bathrooms are winding up in the bodies of dolphins, sea otters, and polar bears – sometimes thousands of miles away. For the first time, research…

Amphibians occupy almost every ecological niche, from the highest tropical trees to the most fetid pools of desert water. Brightly colored and cryptically camouflaged, they have evolved an astounding array…

Another prominent environmentalist has been killed in Peru. On Thursday night, Alfredo Ernesto Vracko Neuenschwander, a woodworker who led a movement to resist forest invasions by illegal gold miners in…

Efforts to protect the Amazon River's headwaters got a boost today with a $4 million commitment from the Wyss Foundation to a new conservation initiative. In an event hosted by…

Visitors to the tropics remember the bright colors. Take the blue-and-yellow macaw with its egg-yolk breast and turquoise back – “the usual gaudy colouring of the intertropical productions,” as Charles…

A recent report, published by the Biological Society of Washington, details the discovery of a new rat species, Batomys uragon, on the mountainous island of Luzon in the Philippines.A member…

A hodgepodge of laws protects roughly 15 percent of Earth’s land, but safeguards for the ocean lag behind. Today, laws shelter a meager 3.6 percent of the planet’s liquid blue…

At a time when wildfires around the world are burning through records for intensity and size, several western U.S. ecologists argue that in many forests our best hope is to…

Invasive species are great hitchhikers. They float in the ballast of ships, lurk in luggage, stick to unwashed sports gear, and cling to the soles of hiking boots. Scientists focus…

Ask anyone dangling a rabbit’s foot from their keychain what the severed appendage is for, and they’ll tell you it brings good fortune. Ask a traditional healer in West or…

Pedestrians and bicyclists in Asian metropolises like Beijing, Delhi or Jakarta often wear face masks as shields against the smog and polluted haze engulfing them. But they risk more than…

With its furry face and adorable antics, the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) attracts an equally giant wave of financial support. Zoos pay the Chinese government up to $1 million each…

In a decision that environmentalists say sets a “dangerous precedent” against efforts to stop trafficking in illegal timber, a court in Singapore has okayed the release of a large shipment…

In response to the fires that have hospitalized roughly 500,000 people, polluted skies over a large swathe of southeast Asia, and released upwards of 1.7 billion tons of carbon, Indonesian…

Need an antidote to all the gloomy and frustrating environmental news? The new book No More Endlings: Saving Species One Story at a Time may prove just the thing. No…

With devastating fires in Indonesia providing a backdrop for the destruction wrought by unrestrained plantation development, the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah on Wednesday announced it is pressing forward with…

See our feature article on Sierra del Divisor: ‘A critical gift': Peru rejoices as a new national park is born After more than a decade of discussion and planning, Peru…

New photos released today by Greenpeace show that palm oil developers are quickly planting burned peatlands with oil palm seedlings in Indonesian Borneo. The findings strongly refute a statement made…

While rain showers have diminished the number of fires burning across Indonesia's peatlands and forests in recent days, the fires have now surpassed Japan's annual emissions and could pass Brazil's…

Author's note 10/23/15: the status of the golden-crowned langur is now being challenged by some primatologists, who say the photographed individuals used for the description may have been bleached by…

This week data from Guido van der Werf of the Global Fire Emissions Database showed that carbon emissions from fires raging across Indonesia's peatlands have surpassed 1.4 billion tons of…

Greenhouse gas emissions from peat fires in Borneo and Sumatra are currently exceeding emissions from the entire U.S. economy, putting Indonesia on track to be one of the world's largest…

With political pressure mounting on plantation companies, including threats of fines and legal action by the Indonesian and Singaporean governments and boycotts in consumer countries, palm oil and timber giants…

Activists have documented a palm oil company destroying lowland rainforest in Sumatra's endangered Leuser Ecosystem. Last month, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) reported that PT. Tualang Raya was clearing rainforest in…