Articles by Carolyn Cowan

For the second year in a row, La Niña conditions have developed across the Pacific Ocean. A climate pattern that occurs every few years, La Niña heralds broadly cooler and…

In 2012, researchers in Sri Lanka tracked the movements of a dozen “problem elephants” that had been translocated into protected areas due to conflict with humans. Their findings were worrying:…

As a fisheries biologist in Indonesia, Andhika Prasetyo connects with fishers by accompanying them on their voyages out to sea. He can always tell from their faces whether the day’s…

Scientists striving to save the northern white rhino from extinction have announced their decision to retire one of the world's last two individuals from their assisted breeding program. The BioRescue…

The last 80 Irrawaddy dolphins that inhabit the Mahakam River in Indonesian Borneo lead precarious lives. Their forays to find fish are frequently thwarted, sometimes fatally so, by a series…

In August 2019, an unprecedented number of fires ripped through the Brazilian Amazon, sparking worldwide interest in reports of burning rainforest. In fact, the majority of blazes were on land…

The Kinabatangan River rises in the beating heart of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, where ancient primary forest cloaks the slopes of steep-sided mountains. As it meanders east toward the Sulu Sea,…

Biologists often refer to the Wallacea region of Indonesia as a “living laboratory” for the study of evolution. Spanning 1,680 of Indonesia’s central islands, including the Malukus, Nusa Tenggara and…

In August 2021, authorities at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport discovered a shipment of eight hornbills, caged but alive, en route to international markets. The Department of Wildlife and National…

They say you should never smile at a crocodile. But that’s exactly what happened on Sept. 9 when a team of researchers discovered a group of eight Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus…

Every October, at least 10 million straw-colored fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) arrive in Kasanka National Park in Zambia from the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Besides its spectacular…

Peering back over the last 120,000 years, scientists have uncovered where chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) rode out past periods of global change, providing insights into how they might be affected by…

The Hkakaborazi landscape at the northern tip of Myanmar is dominated by precipitous snowcapped peaks that tower over rainforest-cloaked slopes and valleys below. Rugged and remote, the region is home…

Scientists have completed the first-ever global, high-resolution map of the world’s shallow tropical coral reefs. The map is part of the Allen Coral Atlas, an open-access, user-friendly coral reef monitoring…

Humans have created so much plastic that it now exists from the slopes of Mount Everest to the extreme depths of the oceans. When we consider the effects of plastic…

Scientists have debated the evolution of the world’s five living rhinoceros species ever since Charles Darwin addressed the question in a treatise in the mid-1800s, predating On the Origin of…

In the wake of the Feb. 1 military coup, Myanmar’s new regime leaders escalated their forceful crackdown on nationwide protests with sweeping restrictions on the media, severely curtailing independent journalism…

Carved out of the narrow isthmus that connects the Malay Peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi region rises from the Andaman Sea in the west…

The Lower Sesan 2 hydroelectric scheme was completed in northeast Cambodia in 2018. The reservoir flooded 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) upstream of the confluence of the Sesan and…

For decades, scientists speculated that seagrass seeds served only as a backup to vegetative proliferation; they settled into the sand beneath their parent plants, ready to germinate if anything untoward…

The sound of scuffling from the tangled undergrowth enclosing a secluded sandy coastal clearing heralds a curious event. Two chicken-sized maleos (Macrocephalon maleo) emerge and make their way to the…

In her spare time as a research assistant in the forests of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, Jessica Haysom turned to perusing mammal field guides. She found herself especially intrigued by the…

Over the past few decades, scientists have used camera traps to detect rare and elusive animals, document species diversity, and record new interactions and behaviors. But most of these studies…

Tigers once roamed throughout the dense forested interior of mainland Southeast Asia and several islands of Indonesia. Positioned at the pinnacle of the food chain, tigers maintain ecosystem balance, and…

Kolombangara Island forms a 30-kilometer (19-mile) circle of green in the Solomon Sea. One of more than 900 islands that make up the Solomon Islands, it is fringed by coral…

A European meadow viper (Vipera ursinii), one of the world’s most threatened snakes, glides undetected between blades of grass in an Alpine meadow. It slips into a rocky outcrop and…

The Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands, supporting an extraordinary number of species that occur nowhere else on the planet. Eighty-six new endemic bird species have been…

Camera trap surveys in Virachey National Park in northeast Cambodia have recorded the country’s first sightings of a critically endangered deer, the large-antlered muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis). The species, also known…

Southeast Asia is home to roughly half of the world’s tropical mountain forests. These highland ecosystems support massive carbon stores and tremendous biodiversity, including a host of species that occur…

Three young environmental activists in Cambodia face between five and 10 years in prison and fines of up to 10 million riels ($2,500) on charges of conspiracy and insulting the…