Community-based Conservation News

Mayra Parra presses play on her laptop, and the video on the screen comes to life for the Perez family in the town of Abriaquí, Colombia. As a spectacled bear…

In front of his rural home in the district of Thyolo in southern Malawi, Douglas Tana grows maize on a tenth of a hectare, or a quarter acre. Before 2010,…

JAMBI — A quintet of Jambi residents gathered one morning in May at the home of Leni Haini, an Indonesian environmental activist who last year received a prestigious award from…

BELO-SUR-MER, Madagascar — The situation was dire in Kirindy Mite National Park during a visit in November 2022. The previous year, a huge tract of forest had been ravaged by…

When growing up in the Congo Basin forest, I witnessed the consequences of forest destruction by logging and industrial agricultural plantations. In some areas, Indigenous communities used to live alongside…

SILINGE, Nepal — On a sunny afternoon, 70-year-old Dhanikram Praja squats on top of a hillock overlooking the lush green rows of trees dotting his farm, distinct from his other…

Thirty-five years ago on a sweltering April night, Enrique Cárdenas, a biology and natural sciences teacher, watched El Papantón burn. The mountain, which stands 1,939 meters (about 6,360 feet) tall,…

A population of endangered elephant shrews has rebounded in a threatened coastal forest reserve in Kenya, suggesting the rabbit-sized mammals with endearingly long snouts could be adapting to both human…

The founding CEO of the world’s most prominent standards organization for carbon credits sold on voluntary markets will step down. David Antonioli will leave the U.S.-based nonprofit standard-setting organization Verra…

On 27 March 2021, the natural sounds of the teak and bamboo forests of eastern Myanmar — calling birds, croaking frogs and barking deer — were drowned out by a…

A group of Indigenous-led organizations released a letter May 9 supporting forest protection efforts known collectively as REDD+ projects. They argue that REDD+, short for “reducing emissions from deforestation and…

The town of San José del Fragua is just over an hour's drive from Florencia, the capital of the department of Caquetá, in southern Colombia. On one side of the…

MBONJO, Cameroon — Felled palm trees litter the ground at the entrance to Mbonjo, a town at the heart of Cameroun’s palm oil and rubber-producing region. Mbonjo hosts palm groves…

PRIETO DIAZ, Philippines — Working quietly before a bucket of rabbitfish, known locally as danggit, two women precisely cut open each fish with square knives, gutting and deboning before repeating…

Conservation International and its partners pledged to plant 73 million trees in the Brazilian Amazon in 2017. Only 20% of that goal has been met, with the pandemic, the anti-environmental presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, and fires taking a toll.

In the village of Costa de San Juan, mangroves still dominate the landscape. Located on the shores of the Alvarado Lagoon System in Mexico, village homes sit on the edge…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — After 14 years in Madagascar, it was the last straw for Graine de Vie, a Belgian NGO dedicated to reforestation. In October, 50,000 saplings in the Ambohitantely…

AMBOHITSY HAUT, Madagascar — Etsizakay, 40, stood amid the rugged knolls of his village, Ambohitsy Haut, and pointed right. “That’s where my brother is buried,” he said. “There ahead are…

KATHMANDU — Tulshi Laxmi Suwal, a Nepali conservationist, has been named one of the seven winners of this year’s prestigious Whitley Awards, known as the “Green Oscars,” in recognition of…

Reliant on its fisheries, Japan has long known the importance of maintaining healthy forest watersheds so as to protect coastal fisheries. It’s a lesson other nations could benefit from as the global environmental crisis worsens.

SANTA CATARINA, BRASIL — A serene orange hue cuts across the horizon with the first rays of sunlight as dawn breaks in the mountainous countryside of Brazil’s second-most southerly state,…

Newly captured images from camera traps in the Tayna Nature Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have recorded two mother-infant pairs of critically endangered eastern lowland gorillas. These…

For Indigenous women in the Amazon, the wetland of Lake Tarapoto is a living classroom. The women consider it not just a home for the fish they rely on to…

Farmer and agronomist Roberto Rodríguez first taught the farmers of Lejanías they weren’t poor. Once they learned this critical lesson, they relied on themselves, their neighbors and nature to thrive sustainably.

EBURU, Kenya — The twin peaks of Mount Eburu are draped with 87 square kilometers, about 34 square miles, of montane forest. They’re home to more than 40 species of…

After four years of conservation action, the number of flying foxes — large bat species — flocking to the Indonesian island of Mantawalu Daka has grown from around 8,000 to…

Community-based conservation, which seeks to simultaneously benefit people and nature, is a promising approach for tackling biodiversity loss, climate change and socioeconomic inequalities. A recent publication identifies 15 key emerging…

JAKARTA — A new study has shown that farmers who aren’t traditionally perceived as having the most social and cultural power in their community can be more effective at convincing…

In 2007, an NGO began linking up forest fragments in Brazil’s most at-risk biome. Today, Saving Nature has forest corridor projects underway on three continents. Part three of a three-part Mongabay mini-series on island habitat restoration.

In 2002, a couple vacationing in Costa Rica, stunned by deforestation there, bought land and regrew a transitional cloud forest — a grassroots model worth emulating: Part two of a three-part Mongabay mini-series on island habitat restoration.