More than one-third of the world’s remaining pristine forests, known as intact forest landscapes, exist within land that’s either managed or owned by indigenous peoples, a new study has found.…
Governments could vastly improve the efficiency of money spent on conservation if they took a hard look at the species they prioritize, according to a recent study. The research probed…
Grappling with the challenges of minimizing carbon footprints, memoirs of careers spent on the frontlines of conservation and stark warnings about the future inhabitability of our world, the roster of…
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — The upstart deforestation over the past year and a half that's sidling up to Pochon Lili’s land has him worried. "As a landowner, I'm…
The outlook for eastern Africa's mountain gorillas is growing brighter, as a recent census released on Dec. 16 shows that the subspecies’ numbers have risen since 2011. Scientists believe there…
For seabirds, an Arctic Ocean with less sea ice could provide some tantalizing alternatives to the long-haul flights that some undertake each year. In a recent study, ecologist Manon Clairbaux…
The prevailing narrative about the Brazilian Amazon this past summer was that the world’s largest rainforest was burning. A more accurate assessment would be that vast areas that used to…
The world’s most impoverished communities don’t need to be told that intact ecosystems are vital to their health, says Joseph Walston, vice president for field conservation programs with the Wildlife…
A recent study suggests that a lot of fraudulently or inaccurately identified wood turns up in products on the U.S. market and that inspectors’ capacity to root out these issues…
VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — Seven meters. It’s one of the first instructions you get from the guides at Virunga National Park, nestled against the eastern border…
Tropical deforestation may spur the transmission of malaria at levels much higher than once thought, according to a recent study. Disease ecologist Andrew MacDonald and his Stanford University colleague Erin…
Life is reshuffling itself at an unsettling clip across Earth’s surface and in its oceans, a new study has found. The research, published Oct. 18 in the journal Science, drills…
On Sept. 3, the Republic of Congo secured a stream of funding aimed at protecting forests and peatlands. The signatures of French President Emmanuel Macron and Congolese President Denis Sassou…
Elephant poachers are using logging roads to infiltrate some of the last remaining pristine forests in Central Africa, according to a study published in July. The study’s authors also revealed…
A new app aimed at tracking forest fires in Bolivia could shake up the way authorities and firefighters battle fires, allowing them to pinpoint their locations more accurately and safely.…
Tropical forests California has approved a scheme for companies to offset emissions by buying carbon credits aimed at stopping tropical deforestation (The San Francisco Chronicle). Leaders of many of the…
Plant and animal species living in wilderness areas are less likely to go extinct, a recent study has found. Defined as intact habitats that haven’t been affected by human use…
KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — In July, I traveled most of the length of the proposed Pan Borneo Highway route with the goal of trying to understand the aims, possibilities and…
Cataloging the growing number of declining species or tracking the relentless rise of temperatures around the world today can make for some dark days for scientists in these areas of…
A planned highway network in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo threatens the forests protected as part of the Heart of Borneo agreement made with Indonesia…
John is an American journalist currently based in Gaza City. Before that, he lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. He has written for New Scientist, Slate.com, Yale Environment 360 and Bicycle Times, as well as other publications. John first wrote for Mongabay as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz in 2008, became a correspondent in 2014 and joined the site’s team full time in October 2016. Always eager to find local perspectives on global stories, he has reported from Cameroon, CAR, DRC, Peru, Malaysia and Rwanda.
