Articles by Mongabay.com

Tropical rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Governors from 13 states have pledged to reduce deforestation 80 percent by 2020 provided rich companies step forward with adequate levels of financial…

Elephants in Namibia. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Marking World Elephant Day, a designation intended to raise awareness about the plight of elephants that are being widely poached for the…

Shipment of Malagasy rosewood intercepted in Sri Lanka in early April 2014. Courtesy of Sri Lanka Customs. Voluntary guidelines established by the Chinese government won't be enough to curb rampant…

New satellite data from NASA suggests that deforestation is sharply increasing in Bolivia and Mekong countries during the second quarter of 2014. NASA's Quarterly Indicator of Cover Change (QUICC), a…

Roads in the Brazilian Amazon. Courtesy of Google Earth. 94.9 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon occurs on land less than 5 kilometers from a road or navigable river,…

Elephant in Namibia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has signed into law a ban on elephant ivory sales, reports NorthJersey.com. The measure, passed earlier by…

The Brazilian government has released footage showing 'first contact' with an isolated group of indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest, reports G1. The video, released by Brazil's National Indian Foundation…

The spill site in Cuninico, Peru. Courtesy of Google Earth. A ruptured pipeline that spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Marañón River in late June…

Annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon since 1988. Clearing has declined sharply since 2004. Targeted law enforcement efforts via Brazil's green municipalities programs were responsible for reducing deforestation by 10,653…

Agriculture and forest in the Brazilian Amazon Better utilization of its vast areas of pasturelands could enable Brazil to dramatically boost agricultural production without the need to clear another hectare…

This nadir true-color image was acquired by the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) instrument on August 26, 2000, and shows part of the southern portion of the reef adjacent to the…

Sunda pangolin. Courtesy of the Danau Girang Field Centre Lush Cosmetics has agreed to support an effort to battle trafficking of the Sunda pangolin. Lush will provide funding to an…

The RFCx system. Courtesy of Rainforest Connection After exceeding an ambitious fundraising target to launch a near-real time forest monitoring system in the Congo Basin, a San-Francisco based start-up is…

The number of fires burning in Sumatra's Riau Province doubled on Sunday, raising concerns that dry conditions could unleash an especially severe haze this dry season in Indonesia. An image…

Australia's native mammals have fared poorly since the arrival of Europeans. On Tuesday a prominent group of conservation scientists condemned the Australian government's recent moves to eliminate protections for native…

Greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production have increased by more than 50 percent over the past 50 years and are set to zoom higher as the developing world consumes more…

Despite concerns that the el Niño weather phenomenon could reduce output, palm oil prices have fallen by more than a fifth in local currency terms since their most recent peak…

Aida Greenbury, Asia Pulp & Paper's Managing Director Sustainability, says Indonesia needs to work toward a model that encourages forest protection. An APP acacia timber plantation in Riau. In response…

On Wednesday NASA successfully launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), a satellite that will track carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The two-year, $468 million mission will measure carbon dioxide concentrations…

Stream in the middle of a new oil palm plantation. Oil palm cultivation is a lucrative form of land use in Indonesia, but the new study suggests that it may…

Sugar cane in the tropics. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. If Brazil wants to respect its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions it should target low productivity cattle pasture rather…

New data from NASA and the World Resources Institute (WRI) show that peat fires are again burning in Sumatra, yet both leading presidential contenders are ignoring the issue of climate…

Elephants in Namibia. Photos by Rhett Butler Musician Billy Joel has weighed in on the ivory bill making its way through the New York State legislature. On Thursday, the legendary…

Tropical peacock bass. The new study looked at fish in the boreal forest but the results may apply to the tropics as well. Loss of forest cover can dramatically affect…

After being implicated in a Greenpeace report on illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, UK building supplier Jewson has pulled controversial wood from its shelves until it can conduct a…

New snake species: the Zoos Victoria wolf snake or Lycodon zoosvictoriae. Photo by Neang Thy/FFI. A new species of wolf snake has been discovered in the forests of the Cardamom…

Industrial rainforest logging is often posited as a benign activity by groups funded by the logging industry. Australia is seeing a rise in groups that purport to champion environmental causes…

Rainforest in Costa Rica. Efforts to slow destruction of tropical forests seem to be paying off in a number of countries, argues a new report published by the Union of…

Recent large-scale clearance of peatland forest inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. Asia Pacific Resources International…

Oil palm plantation in Malaysia. Activists have leveraged National Doughnut Day to call to major chains on their palm oil sourcing policies. Forest Heroes and SumOfUs say some of America's…