Rubber plantations cover around 86,000 square kilometers (33,200 square miles) in Southeast Asia and conservationists worry they are posing an increasingly major threat to the region’s rainforests. A new study…
Saproxylic beetles live in and eat dead and decaying wood, and play important ecological roles in nutrient recycling and pollination, and as an important food source for birds and other…
Seemingly nondescript messes of tangled branches and exposed roots, mangrove forests cling to the coasts of many tropical countries. However, mangroves are far from unexceptional, providing critical ecosystem services like…
When it comes to habitat quality and ecosystem services, research has shown that natural landscapes do it best. A new study, published today in Nature, adds fodder to this argument,…
Deforestation in the tropics is caused by many different human activities that vary in intensity depending on location. In South America, industrial agriculture is the big driver of deforestation while…
A new study drastically upends conventional wisdom about when plants colonized land, pushing back the date about 80 million years to around half a billion years ago. The new date…
With their long “necks” and sharp, fang-like mouthparts, assassin spiders hunt a strange prey – other spiders. Now, thanks to a study published recently in ZooKeys, there are 18 more…
La Paya National Park sits on the edge of the Amazon rainforest along southern Colombia’s border with Ecuador and Peru. It comprises more than 4,200 square kilometers (1,620 square miles)…
Although they may lie thousands of miles apart and house different species, the world’s tropical forests may not be as different from each other as they seem to be. A…
A new study finds small-scale deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has been increasing over the past decade, with new hotspots emerging in Bolivia and Peru. The news somewhat dampens Brazil’s…
Three people have been shot and killed by soldiers in northeastern Cambodia, according to officials as reported by The Associated Press. Those killed were a conservation worker, a military policy…
Late last year, the Peruvian government gave the go-ahead for the construction of new roads along its border with Brazil in the Ucayali and Madre de Dios regions. The main…
In May 2015, more than 200,000 saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) suddenly died. Entire herds perished, their bodies littering the steppe grasslands of central Kazakhstan as if dropped from the sky.…
As big carbon storehouses, forests have the power to influence the climate. So much so that the protection and expansion of forests is a key part of the Paris Agreement,…
While surveying the rainforests of eastern Ghana’s Atewa mountain range, scientists stumbled upon a surprise as they were checking footage from their camera traps: monkeys with long tails and distinctive,…
As nations try to stem emissions to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius in line with their commitments towards the Paris Accord, replacing fossil fuels with…
Papua New Guinea has been granted its largest-ever conservation area, a 3,600-square kilometer (1,390-square mile) protected area of rainforest in the country’s southeast that stretches from near the ocean up…
The natural world is full of medicines, many of which have been tapped by pharmaceutical companies to derive products that adorn our drugstore shelves and bathroom cabinets. But humans aren’t…
Deforestation is rife in the Brazilian state of Rondônia, which lies deep in the western Amazon rainforest. A new investigation by Greenpeace reveals that as deforestation of protected areas has…
As nations race to keep forests standing and the world from warming, scientists are trying to figure out what human activities are causing deforestation and how best to stop them.…
When it comes to restoring deforested landscapes, letting them regenerate naturally through passive means is generally cheaper than human-driven, so-called “active,” restoration techniques like re-planting. But a new study finds…
Scientists have issued a second warning of impending doom for the natural world if humanity does not make significant changes in how we treat the planet. The warning is presented…
Yesterday, there were seven recognized great ape species in the world. Today there is an eighth, with the release of a study describing a new species of orangutan in Sumatra,…
Germany’s flying insect biomass has dropped 76 percent in the past 27 years, according to a study published last week in PLOS ONE. The findings have stunned biologists around the…
Last year the world lost an area of tree cover the size of New Zealand, according to satellite data. That’s around 29.7 million hectares (297,000 square kilometers) – and was…
Predators are often depicted as the villains in films and other media. Even in wildlife documentaries, hunt scenes are often shot from the prey’s point of view and accompanied by…
Research has shown community-managed protected areas are often more effectively conserved than protected areas run by outsiders. A new study, published this week in Scientific Reports, a journal by Nature,…
We know very little about the deepest parts of the ocean – and are disturbing them faster than we’re learning about them, according a study published this week in Molecular…
Last week, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the largest-ever recorded low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. At 22,730 square kilometers (8,776 square miles)…
A recent report by conservation NGO Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is decrying what they say is Norwegian government complicity in funding a project they allege could result in the clearance…
