Categories for global forests
KAMALCHHORI, Bangladesh — Anupam Chakma, 60, has lived in the hilly village of Kamalchhori in Bangladesh all his life. When his grandfather and his contemporaries arrived in the region many…
MINDANAO, Philippines – Legislators in the southern Philippine province of South Cotabato moved this week to overturn a 12-year-old provincial ban on open-pit mining that has for years stalled the…
Birds, bats, elephants, apes, rodents and many other animal species spread plant seeds throughout the world. But as those animal populations diminish, so do the plants that rely on wildlife to shift their range, especially as climate change worsens.
With national borders created for geopolitical rather than ecological reasons, it’s unsurprising that the ranges of more than half of all terrestrial mammals, birds and amphibians cross at least one…
As hot and muggy as most tropical rainforests are, you only need to leave their florid confines and step onto a recently razed plot of land to feel an immediate…
Slice through a tree trunk, and you’ll find a series of rings that tell a story of how that tree grew over the course of its life. These rings are…
Activists and an opposition lawmaker in the Malaysian state of Pahang have demanded government accountability after reports that just 5% of forest reserves cleared to make way for plantations have…
Only aerial footage captures the true scale of the horror: Houses have been flattened, roads ruined, and everything looks like it’s been covered in a film of dark-brown syrup. A…
(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) The Sundaland bioregion spans Borneo, Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsula and a myriad of smaller surrounding islands. Sundaland hosts one of the largest tracts of primary…
In the past decade, the European bison (Bison bonasus) has made a comeback in Central and Eastern Europe. Hunters had killed the last known bison in the region nearly a…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Upon his inauguration as governor of Riau in early 2019, Syamsuar promised to “protect the dignity of Indonesia” by ensuring that the vast Sumatran province, home to…
Indonesia is the biggest palm oil producer in the world. Alongside Malaysia, both countries dominate 85% of the global market. Palm oil is considered one of the strategic commodities in…
Tropical forests across the world are hurting. Climate change is intensifying drought and wildfires worldwide, and deforestation continues to challenge conservation efforts to save intact forests. This means scientists need…
In November 2018, Earthsight published an in-depth investigation in collaboration with Mongabay into the Tanah Merah oil palm project in Papua, on the Indonesian half of the island of New…
Organizations in the Malaysian state of Sabah have filed a complaint with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples about a once-secretive deal aimed at locking up…
Climate protection policies restricting the import of goods produced through deforestation have increased in recent years, but there has been little research into whether these measures have had their intended…
Since October 2020, Thailand's national parks authority has demolished or ordered the demolition of more than 20 luxury mansions, resorts and tourist hotels illegally built in national parks throughout the…
Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…
Major investment managers including BlackRock and Capital Group are among more than a dozen U.S. and Brazilian institutions heavily financing mining companies that are destroying Indigenous reserves and their inhabitants’…
JAYAPURA, Indonesia, and NEW YORK — A palm oil firm that was among more than 100 companies targeted in a mass cancellation of permits for plantations by Indonesia’s environment ministry…
PEKALOBEAN, Indonesia — Haeriah is a young homemaker and a member of the Marena Indigenous community on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Although she’s lived all her life near her…
The “Black Summer” bushfires burned an area the size of the U.K. in Australia in 2019-20, forcing foresters to reconsider the meaning of forest resilience and how best to restore forests as climate change and drought intensify.
The price of palm oil has doubled since the early weeks of the pandemic. In May 2020, the price of palm oil contracts sold on the Bursa Malaysia, the main…
The earliest reports of nutcracking behavior in chimpanzees by Western scientists came in the 1840s. In the time since, evidence of animals modifying something in their environment and then using…
Many Indigenous communities in northern Nicaragua are struggling with hunger and malnutrition as increasing land invasions force them from ancestral forests that they once sustainably managed for crop cultivation. Residents…
In late 2021, the Mexican government made a controversial announcement that many of the country’s major infrastructure projects, most notably the Tren Maya project being built across the Yucatán Peninsula,…
Activists in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, say they fear logging will ramp up following the state government's decision to overturn a ban on exporting unprocessed timber. The ban was imposed by…
MINDANAO, Philippines — For environmental groups in the Philippines, 2021 went out with a big blow: on Dec. 23, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) reversed a 4-year-old…
If 2021 was the year when global supply chains began to creak and groan under the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, palm oil proved to be no exception. Partially due…
For the Congo Basin, 2021 proved to be an up-and-down year. Funding commitments totaling in the billions of dollars were announced that would help forested countries preserve some of the…
