Connecting an island: Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway
This is the first article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” MIRI, Malaysia — Tucked under the sweep of green that blankets parts of Malaysian Borneo is…
Articles by John C. Cannon
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.
Forests and forest communities critical to climate change solutions
How we use the planet’s land, including forests, will make a huge difference in determining the path of climate change in the future, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate…
New roads in Papua New Guinea may cause ‘quantum leap’ in forest loss
Papua New Guinea hopes to nearly double the length of its road network by 2022, posing grave threats to more than 50 parks and biodiversity-rich areas, according to a new…
Congo government opens Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to oil exploration
The government of the Republic of Congo has, according to its own maps, opened up new areas for oil exploration in sections of the world’s largest peatlands and Nouabalé-Ndoki National…
Altered fish communities persist long after reefs bleach, study finds
The bleaching of coral reefs could permanently change the composition of the fish communities that inhabit them, a new study has found. The research, published online June 18 in the…
New film details wrenching impact of illegal rhino horn trade on families
Communities around the world often pay a hidden toll in the global wildlife trade. Across its 17 minutes, Sides of a Horn, a new film released June 25, aims to…
Logging road construction has surged in the Congo Basin since 2003
The length of roads in Congo Basin logging concessions has doubled since 2003, according to new research, raising concerns about the impacts of these incursions into the world’s second-largest bank…
’Livestock revolution’ triggered decline in global pasture: Report
Globally, the land we use for pasture is contracting, according to a new report from the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank based in Oakland, California. The technical know-how also…
Leopards get a $20m boost from Panthera pact with Saudi prince
Wild cat conservation group Panthera has signed an agreement with a member of the Saudi royal family to help protect leopards worldwide, especially perhaps the rarest subspecies in the world,…
Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds
Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…
Chinese banks risk supporting soy-related deforestation, report finds
The homegrown banks that back the flood of soy into China have with little knowledge of the deforestation their funding is potentially supporting, according to the nonprofit CDP, an international…
Interest in protecting environment up since Pope’s 2015 encyclical
Just before Pope Francis released Laudato Si’, an encyclical, or formal letter from the pope, on the environment, on May 24, 2015, global concern for the environment seemed to be…
Social media enables the illegal wildlife pet trade in Malaysia
It might seem harmless enough at first. The big eyes and the rambunctious, bounding play of the tiny cats and monkeys on your social media feed draw you in, and…
Bird flu in Namibia’s penguins wanes, after killing nearly 500
For more than three months, penguins living off the coast of Namibia have been battling an outbreak of bird flu. The worst of the disease seems to have passed, but…
Community buy-in stamps out elephant poaching in Zambian park
The elephant poaching epidemic continues to tear across the African continent. It’s even reached remote refuges in recent years, like the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, where poaching deaths began surging…
Swelling amount of plastic in the ocean confirmed by new study
Scientists have fretted over the expanding masses of plastic in the ocean for decades. Most have seen the rise with their own eyes, and yet the available datasets typically don’t…
Deforestation diminishes access to clean water, study finds
Deforestation can reduce communities’ access to clean drinking water, according to a recent study conducted in Malawi. A lot of prior research on how deforestation impacts water dynamics has shown…
Scientists urge overhaul of the world’s parks to protect biodiversity
Countries should concentrate on outcomes instead of actions when they set aside areas for parks and reserves to shore up the loss of biodiversity, according to a group of scientists.…
Hunting pumas to save deer could backfire, new research suggests
The puma family took biologist Mark Elbroch by surprise. They were supposed to be a ways off. But here they were, year-old kittens, bungling the final moments of a baby…
Climb confirms that the world’s tallest tropical tree tops 100 meters
There’s a new record for the tallest tree in the tropics, and the scientists who found it say it could add to our understanding of how and why some trees…
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- Activists fighting for their lands swept up in Philippines crackdown
- Philippine officials not spared as attacks on environmental defenders persist
- ‘Guardian of the Forest’ ambushed and murdered in Brazilian Amazon
Indonesias forest guardians
- 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
Amazon infrastructure
- Yanomami Amazon reserve invaded by 20,000 miners; Bolsonaro fails to act
- Amazon infrastructure puts 68% of indigenous lands / protected areas at risk: report
- Amazon fish kill at Sinop spotlights risk from 80+ Tapajós basin dams
Asian rhinos
- Indonesia plans IVF for recently captured Sumatran rhino
- Malaysian attempt at Sumatran rhino IVF fails on low quality of sperm
- At India’s Assam Zoo, decades of experience lead to rhino-breeding success
