JAKARTA — An Indonesian company with ties to Japanese conglomerates has cleared large swaths of rainforests, including habitat for critically endangered orangutans, according to a report. The company, Alas Kusuma,…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian forestry company with possible links to pulpwood and palm oil powerhouse Royal Golden Eagle has cleared forests the size of 500,000 basketball courts since 2016, some…
For decades, Indonesia has been blighted by some of the highest levels of deforestation on earth. It also provides more than half the world’s palm oil. The two things are directly related. Palm…
Over the past two decades, orangutan researcher Marc Ancrenaz watched as a tidal wave of oil palm has engulfed his once-forested research sites in northern Borneo. When he would find…
An intergovernmental organization representing countries that produce the bulk of the world’s timber has thrown its support behind a decade-long effort to protect the last remaining primary forest in the…
Noormala Anwar’s frustration comes through in an Aug. 4 video she posted on Facebook. She swings her phone’s camera back and forth, revealing a bulldozer sitting right next to her…
In Malaysia’s Bornean state of Sabah, a small NGO is replanting forest over land that was once a legally operating oil palm plantation — essentially reversing time for a small…
To some humans, the idea of treating an orangutan as a person is absurd. For Leif Cocks, spending billions of dollars to find life on Mars while living beings are…
Logging for timber by definition reduces tree cover. But what happens when logging stops? A new study has found that in concessions where timber firms have stopped operating, deforestation actually…
JAKARTA — The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction,…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with our adventurous Middle East-based staff writer John Cannon, who recently traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway to assess…
The global trade of products that come at the expense of tropical forest is driving many primate species closer to extinction, a new study suggests. The research, published June 17…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Kinari Webb, founder of Health in Harmony, an organization using healthcare for humans to save rainforests and their wildlife inhabitants.…
A prototype system to identify rare species in real time using thermal-imaging cameras mounted on unmanned aircraft, or drones, passed its latest test when it successfully identified orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)…
“It was very peculiar,” says Anne Russon, a primatologist and psychology professor from York University, Toronto, recalling her 2010 study of orangutans in Indonesia's Kutai National Park. Having previously worked…
Social anthropologist Liana Chua leads a project, POKOK, that aims to reduce the killing of orangutans in Indonesian Borneo through deeper engagement with local people. The project came about as…
Researchers say a recent Indonesian government report inaccurately claims that the orangutan population in the country is increasing, which could have significant implications for future conservation plans. The report, issued…
KUCHING, Malaysia — For more than a decade, June Mary Rubis has worked on orangutan conservation in Borneo. The critically endangered apes face a bleak future there, hammered by habitat…
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia are investigating the killing of a rare orangutan whose body was found riddled with bullet and knife wounds in an oil palm plantation…
On May 17, 2018, the first eight orange-furred students arrived to begin their studies at a new orangutan forest school in the province of East Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo. Under…
JAKARTA — At least six illegal logging camps have sprung up in a peat forest in Indonesian Borneo that the government had declared off-limits last year, a Greenpeace investigation has…
JAKARTA — Activists in Indonesia are calling for a set of federal guidelines on orangutan conservation that will compel local authorities and companies to take a more active role in…
JAKARTA — Two years after he announced a freeze on new oil palm plantation permits, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia finally appears to be on the verge of putting it…
Rafts of research in the past few decades have convinced scientists that there's less that separates humans from other animals than we'd originally thought. Take the concept of culture, for…
On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with the co-author of a new book about the minds and lives of animals — their memories, how we know that…
JAKARTA — Police in Indonesia have arrested and charged four farmers with the killing of an orangutan found shot more than 100 times. Investigators in East Kalimantan province, in Indonesian…
JAKARTA — The world lost nearly 150,000 orangutans from the island of Borneo in the past 16 years due to habitat loss and killing, and is on track to lose…
JAKARTA — A second orangutan has been found killed in Indonesian Borneo in as many months, this time shot more than 100 times with a pellet gun, a conservation group…
JAKARTA — Police in Indonesia have arrested and charged two rubber farmers for allegedly shooting and beheading a Bornean orangutan whose body was discovered last month in a river. Investigators…
JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities have retrieved 17 air gun pellets from the body of an orangutan found decapitated and seemingly tortured in Indonesian Borneo earlier this week. The discovery was…
