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In 2016, Lumber Liquidators, a US retailer, paid a record-setting $13 million penalty after pleading guilty to importing flooring manufactured from illegally logged timber. As part of its plea deal,…
The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a hairless rodent that lives in the arid areas of eastern Africa, is one of the strangest-looking creatures in the animal kingdom. But what it…
Between April and November last year, the government of the Brazilian state of Bahia authorized agribusinesses to collect nearly 2 billion liters (528 million gallons) of water a day.
AKLAN, Philippines — At dawn on Dec. 30, 2020, police officers raided Indigenous villages within a military reservation camp in the central Philippines in search of alleged members of the…
In the past decade we've seen an incredible rise in the availability of information, from open-access journals to freely accessible high-resolution satellite imagery to high-quality investigative journalism. But we've also…
Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s state of Amazonas, has gained worldwide notoriety for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, first for the collapse of its hospital system in April 2020…
Update: The five activists were released on February 8 after they "signed an agreement not to enter restricted areas without permission," as Reuters reported. On Friday afternoon Kratie provincial environment…
Over the past century, researchers have discovered an average of two novel viruses per year with the ability to infect humans. Many of these viruses come from animals, and as…
For citizens of the Netherlands and Japan, the dream of a comfortable retirement is fueling an environmental nightmare in the Amazon. Three of the biggest pension funds in thse countries,…
Underwater meadows of a seagrass endemic to the Mediterranean appear to trap some plastic debris that would otherwise drift out into the open ocean and pollute the bottom of the…
In July 2019, Australian authorities on the island of Tasmania received a report of a footprint spotted by an unnamed individual on a walk up to Sleeping Beauty Mountain in…
For decades, scientists observed a puzzling group of whales in the Gulf of Mexico. The animals looked like Bryde's whales — but not quite. They fed like Bryde's whales —…
Western forests are pretty healthy, though our relationships with them may not be. Humans crave the spotlight in environmental narratives. We shape the land and fix the bad contours. Of…
Michael Regan, President Biden’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2019 saw no climate benefit to the production of wood pellets in North Carolina to make energy abroad; what will he do at EPA?
BANTEN, Indonesia — Every day, Subur and his wife walk past giant chimneys, painted red and white at the crown, pouring smoke out of a cluster of coal plants. Subur,…
In the far west of Brazil’s Bahia state, sprawling soybean plantations extend from the edges of the highways right up to the horizon. The region is considered Brazil’s new grain…
Big cats require big home ranges. In February 2016, a young male Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) walked from Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary in western Thailand to Kayin state…
As the planet continues its trajectory into what some have dubbed “the sixth mass extinction,” the diversity of life is on Earth is at risk. The Aichi Biodiversity Targets were…
In 1992, global leaders gathered at a United Nations summit in Rio de Janeiro to sign the landmark Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to promote sustainable development. Eighteen years later,…
The Sumatran orangutan is in a difficult position, heavily dependent as it is on the Indonesian island's Leuser and Batang Toru ecosystems. This formerly lowland species has now adapted to…
The native vegetation of Brazil’s vast savanna is rapidly being replaced by plantations and pastures. At risk along with the biome’s grasslands are hundreds of endemic, uniquely adapted reptile species.
A new study has found that sea levels are rising faster than expected, which would put 40% of the world’s population living in coastal regions at elevated risk. Published Feb.…
JAKARTA — Illegal loggers in Indonesia’s remote Papua region have largely evaded any meaningful kind of punishment and continue to operate unimpeded, in what a new report calls a failure…
Mongabay editor Philip Jacobson has been awarded the 2020 Oktovianus Pogau Award for Courage in Journalism. The award, announced Jan. 31, recognizes Jacobson's dedication to environmental reporting in Indonesia, work…
Even in this era of “alternative facts,” the letter to the New York Times from Norte Energy (the company responsible for Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam) will surely be remembered as…
As we welcome the new year, Democrats control both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, creating real momentum to advance campaign-promised actions on climate change. With this opportunity, a…
Environmental monitoring and firefighting saw budgets cut by over a third in two years; agencies endured massive deregulation, with nearly 600 rule changes aimed at undermining conservation, say critics.
High-resolution satellite imagery, modern digital cameras and drones have opened up new possibilities for surveying remote wildlife populations. But the huge volume of data created presents its own unique challenge…
A bipartisan group of former U.S. officials have joined forces to propose a set of policy recommendations to help the Biden Administration deliver on its campaign pledge to put $20…
Like a thick scarf, the Galápagos Marine Reserve encircles its namesake islands, protecting 133,000 square kilometers (51,400 square miles) of nutrient-rich ocean that supports nearly 3,000 marine species. But the…
