The familiar striped skunk of North America (think of the cartoon Pepé Le Pew) has a lesser-known cousin: the spotted skunk. These polka-dotted relatives are smaller, about the size of…
Rice landscapes are overlooked biodiversity hubs that bristle with life. Rice farming systems’ unique semi-aquatic nature mean that they offer habitats to numerous endangered species and provide many ecosystem services.…
JAKARTA — Intercropping, the practice of growing two or more crops in close proximity, could be one of the keys to mitigating the impact of oil palm plantations on forests…
Deep in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the emerald canopy of the Campos Amazonicôs National Park sprawls across nearly a million hectares of land. Within it, dense forest hugs stretches of savanna…
Traditional people and communities are vital to conserving biodiversity, but many are still absent from official maps. A new report highlights progress made in making them visible.
It's as if a professional cleaner has been let loose in the rainforest. The whistles of birds and croaks of frogs have been vacuumed up, the messy understory cleared away.…
With scientists, advocates and communities across the world making increasingly dire assessments and warnings about the planet’s health, knowing what problems to focus on becomes ever more complex. Over the…
It’s easier to spot the bristly, gray-brown hide of a Bornean bearded pig (Sus barbatus) ambling through orderly rows of oil palm trees, than amid a dense tropical forest. But…
NAIROBI — Munene Njoka, a young farmer from central Kenya, is furious. The reason for his rage is a bundle of decaying maize stacked in a corner of his home.…
Since it launched in December 2019, the RenovaBio program from Brazil’s energy ministry has been betting on increased use of biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to establishing…
How do you get a small rancher to give up cutting trees for pasture and instead produce high-value and sustainable agricultural products without the requisite skills, money, or access to…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Mario Quispe Hermoza, 37 years old and from the Peruvian Andes, is a man with long hair, deep reflections on nature and…
What do you get when you combine silk cocoons, orange peel waste, beneficial bacteria, and a dash of innovation? Quite possibly a solution to growing crops in dry places, one…
A study analyzed 56 extractive reserves in the Brazilian Amazon to assess how climate change will affect 18 of the main plant species collected from the rainforest.
Consider the bee. It’s small, and while over a lifetime it can pollinate up to 5,000 flowers, that’s only enough to produce a single teaspoon of honey. But bees don’t…
Recent scientific studies confirm what Brazilian farmers already feel in practice: the uncontrolled production of agricultural commodities is destroying the productivity and profits of agribusiness itself, a cycle researchers are calling “agro-suicide.”
IFUGAO, Philippines — Aided by a pair of glasses and a traditional short, curved dagger, 69-year-old farmer Rosita Gano harvests rice grains, one stalk after another, using only one hand,…
Two years ago, fire ravaged the Tucavaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve in the heart of Bolivia’s Chiquitania region, wiping out thousands of square kilometers of habitat. Now this threat has…
The Democratic Republic of Congo's Sankuru province saw record-breaking fires in 2020 — 9500 square kilometers (3,700 square miles) of land burned. More than 1,500 km2 (580 mi2) of this…
Fishing is integral to millions of Indonesians’ livelihoods and identities, with an estimated 2.5 million households involved in small-scale (non-industrial) fishing and aquaculture. Small-scale fishing includes a wide variety of…
MAKUENI, Kenya — A quarter of the world's 4.4 billion hectares (10.9 million acres) of cropland is degraded, often due to drying, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization…
In the wake of a Russian hack on giant meatpacker JBS, U.S. policymakers have argued that we must shore up the nation’s cyber-defenses in order to protect the food supply…
In the early hours of July 13, a group of unknown people set fire to a massive warehouse full of agrochemicals in the Cornubia area of Durban on South Africa's…
Home to a third of the planet’s tropical forests, Brazil accounts for only 0.17% of the world’s main forest-friendly exports, new research has found. Significantly smaller nations — both in…
Every few years, stretches of Borneo’s towering dipterocarp trees fruit in a synchronized pulse. In those months, the air is rich with brown, winged fruit, which fall and spin to…
Carved out of the of the narrow isthmus that connects the Malay Peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi region rises from the Andaman Sea in…
At a global level, the rate of deforestation is increasing year after year, driven by demand for products like timber, rubber, palm oil, cattle and coffee. Growing and cultivating these…
The Brazilian Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot that has already lost half of its area to crops and cattle, is at risk of no longer being monitored for deforestation…
Farming in eastern Wyoming is not for the faint of heart. The semiarid landscape receives unpredictable weather and is considered an unforgiving environment for agriculture. Despite this, farmers have grown…
The spread of fires in a Brazilian state that’s still mostly swathed in Amazon rainforest is raising alarms about risks to public health, compounding what’s already one of the worst…
