‘Opening the lid’ on toilet innovation: Q&A with author Chelsea Wald
Toilets: They’re not any easy subject to discuss. Even though eliminating waste from our bodies is an essential function we all must do, talking about how we deal with that…
Articles by John C. Cannon
John is a journalist currently based in Armenia. Before that, he lived in Gaza, 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, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Rwanda.
Nearly half the Amazon’s intact forest on Indigenous-held lands: Report
A new report reveals that investing in securing the land rights of Indigenous and tribal communities across Latin America and the Caribbean could cut carbon dioxide emissions at low costs…
Pension and endowment funds linked to conflict-plagued oil palm in DRC
Well-known investment funds in the U.S., Europe and South Africa are financing a set of oil palm plantations that have been at the center of more than a century of…
Pig nest-building promotes tree diversity in tropical forest: Study
Wild pigs have reputation as a destructive lot. Farmers and scientists alike know that, when they’re too numerous, their constant rooting and wallowing can run roughshod over crops and regenerating…
Forest patches amid agriculture are key to orangutan survival: Study
Over the past two decades, orangutan researcher Marc Ancrenaz watched as a tidal wave of oil palm has engulfed his once-forested research sites in northern Borneo. When he would find…
U.N. report lays out blueprint to end ‘suicidal war on nature’
The world’s leaders, private companies and individuals must take a coordinated approach to address three environmental calamities facing the Earth at this moment, according to a report released Feb. 18…
Indigenous community wins recognition of its land rights in Panama
The Naso Tjër Di people of Panama now have a protected territory of their own. The creation of the 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca, as it’s called in Panama, came as a…
Southeast Asian wild pigs confront deadly African swine fever epidemic
Since the 2018 emergence of African swine fever in China, the viral disease has torn through Asia, leaving behind a trail of economic devastation. It’s witheringly fatal to pigs but…
Seven financial firms key to rooting out deforestation, report finds
fExchange-traded funds, or ETFs, have swept through the financial world, building to a collective worth of $6.7 trillion by the second half of 2020. An ETF is a sort of…
Timber organization’s backing ‘one step’ toward ‘peace park’ in Borneo
An intergovernmental organization representing countries that produce the bulk of the world’s timber has thrown its support behind a decade-long effort to protect the last remaining primary forest in the…
Protesters hold back military takeover of Balkans’ largest mountain pasture
Mileva "Gara" Jovanović's family has been taking cattle up to graze in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina Highlands for more than 140 summers. The mountain pastures of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor Massif are the largest…
11 notable books on conservation and the environment published in 2020
Books have provided a welcome refuge in 2020. The global pandemic has, in many cases, turned even routine travel into a risk not worth taking, and it has left many…
Soy moratorium averted New Jersey-size loss of Amazon rainforest: Study
The advent of the Amazon soy moratorium in 2006 seemed to usher in a new era of hope for ending deforestation for food production in the world’s largest rainforest. From…
Hope and peace: Bison return to the Rosebud reservation
The bison circled four times around the holding pen, before the lead animals took them into the 3,400-hectare (8,500-acre) pasture, their new home on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in the…
The promise of ‘bird-friendly’ cities: Q&A with author Timothy Beatley
Tim Beatley will humbly tell you that he’s not a birder. But in his new book, there are enough appearances by obscure members of the class Aves to suggest that…
Activists in Malaysia call on road planners to learn the lessons of history
Noormala Anwar’s frustration comes through in an Aug. 4 video she posted on Facebook. She swings her phone’s camera back and forth, revealing a bulldozer sitting right next to her…
Peruvian Indigenous groups thwart oil drilling in their territory — for now
In the Peruvian Amazon, two Indigenous groups have been battling the government and oil companies for decades to prevent an incursion they believe would forever alter their homeland. An immense…
IPBES report details path to exit current ‘pandemic era’
Avoiding the loss of human life and the economic fallout caused by future pandemics will require a seismic change in our approach to the causes of the emergence of disease-causing…
Mining covers more than 20% of Indigenous territory in the Amazon
Mining, both legal and illegal, impinges on more than one-fifth of Indigenous territory in the Amazon, according to a new study from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Amazon…
World’s protected areas lack connections, recent study finds
The world’s protected areas are largely a jumble of disjointed refuges, separated from each other by the encroachment of human impacts, a recent study has found. Fewer than 10% of…
‘Tamper with nature, and everyone suffers’: Q&A with ecologist Enric Sala
Early on in his new book, The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild, marine ecologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence Enric Sala offers a warning about our ability to…
Study revealing New Guinea’s plant life ‘first step’ toward protection
New Guinea's diversity of life, cultures and landscapes has long inspired prominent scientists, from Alfred Russel Wallace to Jared Diamond. Sitting just below the equator at the nexus of Asia…
The ‘Cougar Conundrum’: Q&A with author Mark Elbroch
In 2016, a mountain lion known as P-45 killed 10 alpacas on a ranch in California’s Santa Monica Mountains. That’s rare behavior for a mountain lion, writes wildlife biologist Mark…
New report asks, do land titles help poor farmers?
Companies and governments are pushing for the privatization of land around the world as a way to get at economically valuable resources, according to a recent report from the Oakland…
World Bank-funded factory farms dogged by alleged environmental abuses
A pork and chicken producer has expanded its operations in northern Ecuador with the help of funding from the World Bank's commercial lending arm, despite sustained complaints from local communities…
‘Saving sun bears’: Q&A with book author Sarah Pye
In his 2006 book, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, science writer David Quammen says, “Some people admire soldiers, or surgeons, or firemen, or astrophysicists, or medical missionaries, or cowboys. I admire…
COVID-19 and rainforest fires set up potential public health crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic and the arrival of fire season in two of the world’s major rainforests are on a collision course, scientists and public health researchers say, and the results…
Bison: (Back) home on the range
As a young boy living on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation, Wizipan Little Elk remembers the first time he saw a buffalo herd. The experience ignited a passion, and at…
Overlap of fire, COVID-19 peaks: A ‘catastrophe’ for Brazil’s Amazon
Researchers have detected the "first major fire of 2020" in the Brazilian Amazon three months ahead of the fire season, while other scientists warn that there could be a “catastrophe”…
‘Don’t let your cat outside’: Q&A with author Peter Christie
The statistics capturing the effects that pets have on wildlife are mind-boggling. Cats in the United States alone kill at least 1.3 billion birds and up to 22.3 billion small…
Special series
Forest trackers
- New palm oil frontier sparks scramble for land in the Brazilian Amazon
- Deforestation rises in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Park as cattle invade
- ‘What other country would do this to its people?’ Cambodian land grab victims seek int’l justice
- Deforestation surge threatens endangered species in Tanintharyi, Myanmar
Oceans
- Sea turtles under threat as Indian government weighs development in Andaman Islands
- European tuna boats dump fishing debris in Seychelles waters ‘with impunity’
- Red flag: Predatory European ships help push Indian Ocean tuna to the brink
- Surge in seizures of giant clam shells has Philippine conservationists wary
Amazon conservation
- As COP26 looms and tropical deforestation soars, REDD+ debate roars on
- ‘We are made invisible’: Brazil’s Indigenous on prejudice in the city
- Intimidation of Brazil’s enviro scientists, academics, officials on upswing
- Government inaction prompts voluntary REDD+ carbon credit boom in Brazil
Land rights and extractives
- Cambodia puts its arduous titling process for Indigenous land up for review
- Recognizing the true guardians of the forest: Q&A with David Kaimowitz
- Nearly half the Amazon’s intact forest on Indigenous-held lands: Report
- Pension and endowment funds linked to conflict-plagued oil palm in DRC
Endangered environmentalists
- Intimidation of Brazil’s enviro scientists, academics, officials on upswing
- Thailand’s Indigenous Peoples fight for ‘land of our heart’ (commentary)
- Brazilian woman threatened by Amazon loggers wins global human rights award
- Indonesian fishers opposed to dredging project hit by ‘criminalization’ bid
Indonesias forest guardians
- Why I stand for my tribe’s forest: It gives us food, culture, and life (commentary)
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
Conservation effectiveness
- A Malagasy community wins global recognition for saving its lake
- Scientists in Costa Rica are growing new corals to save reefs
- Technology innovations look to change the cacao landscape in Colombia
- In mangrove restoration, custom solutions beat one-size-fits-all approach
Southeast asian infrastructure
- Indonesian governor’s arrest in road project points to more tainted contracts
- Papua deforestation highlights eastward shift of Indonesia forest clearing
- Podcast: Omens and optimism for Sumatran orangutans
- Planned coal-trucking road threatens a forest haven for Sumatran frogs
