Asia News

COLOMBO — Each day, as the sun set over the horizon, Thettuwage Tennakoon and his wife would carefully climb up into their treehouse in the middle of their rice field.…

The indiscriminate use of gillnets by fishers in Bangladesh has become a major threat to the two freshwater dolphin species found there: the Ganga River dolphin (Platanista gangetica) and the…

During a dietary study on fishing cats living near Colombo, Sri Lanka, researchers made an unexpected finding: Some scat samples collected contained plastics. Varying in size from tiny microplastics to…

Tropical forests play a key role in our efforts to stabilize the global climate. As a readymade means of ameliorating our continued greenhouse gas emissions, tree-clad tropical landscapes provide us…

EAST LUWU, Indonesia — Environmental journalists investigating the impact of nickel mining on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have won a freedom-of-information ruling against local authorities, whose inability to release…

KATHMANDU — When residents of Pokhara Valley in western Nepal spot Egyptian vultures nesting on cliffs and trees, they sometimes misidentify them as crows and shoo them away. Sometimes they…

KATHMANDU — When residents of Nandapur village on the western fringes of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park rushed to the scene of a rhino death near the Narayani River on Jan.…

COLOMBO — When Uditha Hettige started out doing field excursions in 1990, in search of Sri Lanka’s rich bird life, he would visit Bodhinagala Forest Reserve in the country’s west…

The village of Rukubji, in Bhutan’s central Wangdue Phodrang district, lies in a valley at the intersection of three rivers, its surrounding hillsides scattered with yak herder tents or swathed…

Each year, the European Union imports an estimated 4,000 metric tons of frogs’ legs. That sum is the equivalent of around 200 million frogs killed to feed demand, the majority…

KATHMANDU — On the morning of Jan. 16, the day after Yeti Airlines Flight 691 crashed near Pokhara International Airport in Nepal, killing all 72 people on board, authorities at…

KATHMANDU — When Tulshi Laxmi Suwal was a student in the zoology department at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, she looked through an encyclopedia in search of interesting animals for her…

BANGKOK — A graft scandal involving the head of Thailand's national parks department has raised questions about the effects of institutional corruption in the agencies charged with protecting the country’s…

DHAKA — On July 20 last year, representatives from 11 NGOs held a joint protest against a government decision to establish a FIFA-funded training facility inside a reserved forest. The…

AMBON, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia’s Maluku province say they will establish new marine protected areas this year, following from five created last year alone, as part of wider efforts…

BATAM, Indonesia — “There’s no more fish,” says Abdul Ganip, holding up a mostly empty flask containing a few prawns. “It's a quiet catch.” For decades, the 57-year-old has lived…

The village of Khariakandi in is a typical farming community. Is lush green environment also makes it an ideal habitat for different types of birds. As a result, like in…

KATHMANDU — During his regular patrol in the forests of Dadeldhura district in Nepal’s westernmost tip in 2020, forester Bishnu Prasad Acharya heard something strange from a temple priest. “He…

JAKARTA — Indonesia must develop a new feedstock alternative to palm oil as the government intensifies an ambitious biofuel program meant to move away from diesel, observers say. From February…

DHAKA – In the hopes of becoming overnight millionaires, five wildlife traffickers tried to sell a tokay gecko (Gekko gecko), locally known as takkhak, in Bangladesh’s border district of Panchagarh.…

Among the planetary challenges we face, biodiversity loss often takes a back seat to climate change. However, interest in “nature-based solutions” is rising as more people recognize the opportunities presented…

JAKARTA — Anticorruption activists in Indonesia have criticized as too lenient the sentences handed down by an Indonesian court against officials at the center of a cooking oil shortage that…

After hours of wading through raging rivers and braving the steep, slippery slopes of the Victoria-Anepahan Mountain Range (VAMR) on a rainy morning in October 2022, wildlife specialist Aubrey Jayne…

A known breeding Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) has made its way to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington state, in hopes it will produce more cubs of…

JAKARTA — How do you supercharge vegetation growth for a reforestation project? Bring in the microorganisms. That’s the finding from a new study, which shows that incorporating a microbial community…

JAKARTA — New palm oil regulations being adopted by the European Union and the U.K. could put even more pressure on independent small farmers in Indonesia who are already struggling…

JAKARTA — Shares of a private company with the rights to develop tourism facilities inside a marine reserve in Indonesia have reappeared for auction later this month despite the government's…

Not quite aquatic but not fully terrestrial, mangrove forests are uniquely adapted to inhabit the interface between land and sea in the warmer parts of the world. Compared to the…

In 2022, Mongabay continued its mission to hold the powerful to account through its investigative reporting program. Below is a selection of some of our most impactful work this year.…

In an effort to feed 170 million people in a rapidly growing economy, Bangladeshi farmers rely on the widespread use of chemical fertilizers to boost production, leaving the country’s soil…