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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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.…
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…
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…
Animals around the globe are losing ground to farming and ranching, and their numbers are dwindling at the hands of human hunters. But the question of where to direct precious…
UPDATE (19 March 2019): The European Parliament voted March 12 to consent to the VPA with Vietnam by a vote of 632-14 with 23 abstentions. The resolution, including the explanatory…
Hyperbolic headlines can be like catnip for newspaper editors. So when a local fisher hauls in what looks like a record-breaking catch, it often makes news. But a recent study…
More young birds survived near a road through a Thai forest than those living deeper in the forest where more predators lurked, researchers found during a recent study. The disruptive…
Wearing nothing more than leaves hanging from belts of woven vegetation, the three scientists stand in the rain with little idea of what to expect. They’ve lived and worked with…
Ecosystems in their natural state are disappearing quickly around the globe. On that most scientists agree. But how to stem those losses through conservation is hotly debated. Many believe that…
Most scientists and experts agree that forests are critical to stabilizing the global climate, and the 2015 Paris climate agreement recognized the need to “conserve and enhance” their carbon sequestration…
The recent plunge in numbers of Grauer's gorillas in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has lopped off one-fifth of the subspecies’ genetic diversity, leaving it potentially vulnerable to…
Pulsating lights placed around llama and alpaca herds warded off puma attacks during a recent experiment in Chile, suggesting the method might help avert conflict between herders and dwindling populations…
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.
