ACEH TAMIANG, Indonesia — Maksum, a resident of Aceh Tamiang district in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, can still vividly recall when a flash flood hit the area 11 years ago this…
Four sperm whales were reported to have died Tuesday following a mass stranding on a beach on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, Indonesia. A group of 10 sperm whales (Physeter…
Nobody knows exactly how many Sumatran rhinos survive in the wild. But the numbers aren't looking good.
A mining project in Indonesia's Leuser Ecosytem that has for years pitted environmental activists and local residents against mineral mining company PT Wanyang Mining Gayoindo (PT WMG) appears to have…
The first baby orangutan was born at the Pinus Jantho Nature Reserve in Sumatra, a sign that the species might survive the global extinction crisis now underway. Jantho serves as…
Oil palm plantation companies are still eating away at the Leuser Ecosystem, one of Indonesia’s last best rainforests, despite a provincial ban on forest clearance to make way for the…
JAKARTA -- The Indonesian government is struggling to collect fines from companies found guilty of damaging the environment, leaving trashed rainforests and peat swamps to stay barren as restoration work…
JAKARTA -- Fire season has returned to Indonesia, marking the first real test of President Joko Widodo’s efforts to prevent a repeat of the 2015 haze crisis. Land and forest…
One of the last and largest remnants of tropical rainforest in Asia is under threat from multiple road development plans. This forest complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as…
ACEH, Indonesia — Police in western Indonesia are investigating an alleged wildlife trafficking network after a recent raid confiscated the hacked horn of a Critically Endangered Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)…
Indonesia's Leuser Ecosystem — one of the largest expanses of tropical rainforest in the world and an ecological hotspot celebrated as the last place on earth where orangutans, rhinos, tigers…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — The governor-elect of Aceh province said he would revoke a proposal to drill for geothermal energy and build a power plant in the heart of Sumatra’s…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia --- The son of a local parliament chief has been named a suspect over illegal land clearing in the Singkil Swamp Wildlife Reserve, a heavily protected area…
KEUDE TRUMON, Indonesia — On Oct. 29, villagers here came upon an excavator tearing a gash through the Singkil Swamp Wildlife Reserve. The biodiversity hotspot is one of the archipelago…
No roads shall pass through Mount Leuser National Park. So said the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry in response to just such a proposal from the governor of North Sumatra…
Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem lost 4,097 hectares of forest cover in the first six months of 2016, according to Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh (HAkA), an NGO. At the same…
The Indonesian environment ministry has denied the Aceh provincial government’s proposal to rezone part of Mount Leuser National Park for geothermal development, reacting to opposition from conservationists who argued the…
The governor of Indonesia’s Aceh province is moving forward with a plan to rezone part of Mount Leuser National Park for geothermal development, despite opposition from conservationists who say the…
Since August 3, peat fires in Indonesia’s westernmost Aceh province have blanketed some areas in a choking haze, sickening hundreds of people and forcing at least one school to close.…
An NGO is suing an Indonesian district head for permitting a cement factory to operate in the nationally protected Leuser Ecosystem, one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact…
Judges in Indonesia’s Bengkulu this week handed down the harshest sentence ever for tiger trafficking in the country, imprisoning a man for four years and fining him 60 million rupiah…
In 2003, the EU agreed to work with countries like Indonesia to do something about the scourge of illegal logging, a devastating problem for tropical states whose vast rainforests were…
Top officials in Indonesia have reportedly declared a moratorium on new oil palm and mining concessions in the Leuser Ecosystem, the only place on Earth where elephants, rhinos, orangutans, and…
ast week, Leonardo Dicaprio was threatened with deportation from Indonesia after he visited a Sumatran jungle and then posted critically to Instagram about the palm oil industry. Some bureaucrats and politicians accused…
Three wildlife traffickers who were caught in November with as many baby Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) were sentenced to between two and two-and-a-half years behind bars this week by a court in…
Authorities in Aceh arrested two more tiger poachers last week, with investigators posing as buyers to catch the men in the act of making the illegal sale. Police recovered two skins…
Local governments, environmental agencies, emergency services and the military are working across Indonesia’s fire-prone areas as President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo tries to minimize this year’s haze in what could be…
Despite new research that doubled the estimated number of orangutan living in Sumatra's rainforests, the great red ape is still "on the road to extinction", say the authors of the…
A coalition of indigenous leaders and NGOs from Indonesia's Aceh province is demanding that the governor revoke a plantation company’s license to operate in an important water catchment area. The forest in question is said to be…
With the filing of a class-action lawsuit today in Jakarta, a bitter fight over the future of one of Sumatra’s last intact rainforests will move to the courts. Registered by…