Conserved areas, indigenous and traditional communities are being put at risk by illegal roads rapidly being built in the Amazon’s Purus / Madeira basin, while authorities do nothing.
When threatened, the pangolin — also known as the scaly anteater — curls up into a ball, hiding its head and face under its tail. While helpful in the short…
The European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR), which came into force in 2013, prohibits operators from placing illegally harvested timber on EU markets. EUTR implementation relies on a due diligence process…
It’s such a simple idea: plant a tree, let it grow, and each year it will capture more and more carbon from the atmosphere. This is the logic behind a…
Every day for the past week or so, I have woken up only to find a daily dose of more than 300 messages on my mobile phone. Piled up overnight…
In Peru, communities in the Andes and the Amazon have come together to defend the health of people and families affected by pollution from toxic metals. To achieve this, they…
The lion. The king of the jungle. It’s certainly one of Africa’s (if not the world’s) most iconic animals. It is on the ‘must see’ list of just about every…
The biodiverse rainforest of the Amazon’s Purus and Madeira river basins is at risk; new roads could be built to eventually serve extensive oil and gas wells.
In 2012 I spent 3 weeks in Palau as part of the ‘Micronesia Challenge,’ a conservation approach sponsored by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in conjunction with Palau International Coral Reef…
Poaching is threatening wildlife conservation in Africa. Elephant (Loxodonta africana) and rhino (Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis) populations have been devastated and the bush meat trade is severely impacting wildlife…
Fire is not natural to Australia, as incomprehensible as that may seem today. When humans first landed on the northern shores it was a very different continent. Most of Australia…
A forest in Brazil is set on fire to make way for soy plantations. An oil pipeline leak in South Dakota threatens the drinking water of local communities. A Honduran…
Every year, thousands of apes and monkeys are cruelly bought and sold as part of the illegal wildlife trade. The recent outbreak of the coronavirus, believed to have originated in…
A surfeit of disinformation is hampering public health efforts to contain and counter the coronavirus disease before it turns into a fully-fledged global pandemic. Various conspiracy theories are circulating about…
The extinction of the Chinese paddlefish, announced by researchers in January 2020, is entirely the result of human impacts on the Yangtze River over the last 50 to 60 years.…
Every day, tourists to lodges along the Kinabatangan River catch glimpses of Borneo’s “Big Five”: orangutan, proboscis monkey, pygmy elephant, rhinoceros hornbill, and estuarine crocodile. I wish I could tell…
The recent fires in Australia bring flashbacks of last August in the Brazilian Amazon, when news of massive blazes also captured the world’s attention (and for many, provoked intense concern…
In the past, wetlands — marshes, fens, peatlands, flooded forests, mangroves — were widely considered unproductive wastelands full of disease and danger. In a world where the human instinct was…
This was meant to be a moment of triumph in the long battle to save the world’s forests. The year when the bold commitment hundreds of companies made to eliminate…
Brazil is the most biologically diverse country in the world, harboring 10 to 18% of the world’s total biota. This biodiversity, however, is rapidly declining due to habitat degradation, overexploitation,…
