PALANGKARAYA, Indonesia — The road from this inland provincial capital in southern Borneo to the delta city of Banjarmasin is littered with degraded forests and peat swamps, hallmarks of a…
U Ye Aung spent most of his adult life in a war zone. For over 60 years his village of Kalaikyi served as the frontline in one of Myanmar’s longest…
ven with two grades to go before completing high school, Vincent Kiptum has already figured out how to deal with a problem troubling his village in Kenya’s Rift Valley: truancy…
ndonesia’s Ogan Komering Ilir was an epicenter of last year’s disastrous forest and peatland fires. It is one of four districts in which the newly created Peatland Restoration Agency is…
Community Forest Management (CFM) is an increasingly popular approach to conserving forests worldwide, due to the fact that involving the local community that uses and lives within the forests helps…
Last week, some 500 members from governments, corporations, and NGOs from 47 countries convened in Norway to discuss tropical forest conservation at the Oslo REDD Exchange (REDDX). The event concluded…
n May 2013, the journal Conservation Biology published an editorial describing 10 conservation methods that emerged since the late 1970's as fads, “approaches that are embraced enthusiastically and then abandoned.”…
Other stories in Mongabay’s series on the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Killing of Guatemalan activist in the Maya Biosphere Reserve raises alarm Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve…
In May, the Indonesian government announced that nearly half of the peatlands protected under a 2011 forestry moratorium have actually been damaged or converted. Last week, the forestry ministry said…
Other stories in Mongabay’s series on the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Killing of Guatemalan activist in the Maya Biosphere Reserve raises alarm Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve…
Other stories in Mongabay’s series on the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Killing of Guatemalan activist in the Maya Biosphere Reserve raises alarm Communities lead the way in rainforest conservation in Guatemala…
t age 70 Ngai Mutuoboro may not possess the vibrancy of his youthful days, but he can still pack a punch when it comes to environmental conservation. The elder from…
A landmark decision by Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen could see almost a million hectares of forest reclassified as protected areas in a country with one of the highest deforestation…
Forty women, a few small children, and one adventurous dog pile into pick-up trucks parked in the town square. It is an early Saturday morning in March in the small…
Kenya suffered severe deforestation from the 1970s to the 1990s, mainly for charcoal and timber production. Forest destruction is still a problem in the East African country. Of Kenya’s 30,000…
uatemalan communities engaged in sustainable forestry in the Maya Biosphere Reserve have rallied some high-profile supporters. Musicians from multiple Grammy Award winning pop group Maroon 5 have spoken out for…
In a local indigenous language, Guatemala means “land of many trees”. However, today only 34.7% of its territory is still covered with canopy. In only 50 years, between 1950 and…
Other stories in Mongabay’s series on the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve Communities lead the way in rainforest conservation in Guatemala Controversial park…
ambodian authorities released a leader of the Chong indigenous group from prison on March 3. Ven Vorn, imprisoned since October, was convicted of harvesting forest products without authorization and sentenced…
n December 12, 2015 representatives from 196 nations approved the Paris Agreement to address the challenges of climate change. Proponents praised the agreement as a long-term pathway to curbing global…
Research has shown that land held by indigenous and local communities tends to be more effectively protected from human-driven changes like deforestation than land managed by governments or private entities.…
The pinabete pine tree from Guatemala has been cut down for decades, and there are few left that grow as tall as they used to be, 45 meters high. This 40 year-old specimen is…
ew places offer a glimpse of Indonesia’s forlorn environmental track record like Meru Betiri, a 58,000-hectare national park tucked away in the southeast corner of Java island. The park is…
Every day at noon Bahar and Nasirah set out on foot into the South Sulawesi backcountry. The couple moves instinctively through single-stem plants, gathering chilies and pumpkin, knowing as each day…
One night in June 2013, the rev of a car engine caught the ear of Markus Ilun, an indigenous leader in the remote Indonesian village of Punan Adiu. He was…
Deep in the mountains of eastern Bali sits a traditional Aga village, whose inhabtants – legendarily the island’s first – still reside and abide by ancient ways. Long before Indonesian…
On this rare occasion, the longhouse in Sungai Utik, a Dayak Iban settlement in Indonesian Borneo, was extremely busy. Every one of the 28-door dwelling’s inhabitants was home, gathered for…
On May 5th a group of indigenous people from two villages quietly gathered in their Central Kalimantan regency hoping to make history. After centuries spent fighting different ruling empires, the Dayak…
One March morning on the island of Sulawesi, not long after Yerri Otoluwa was appointed acting head of Rumbia village, two men she didn’t know arrived on her doorstep. “Can…
Jemi Delvian was astonished the first time he stood in the dipterocarp forest of Indonesia’s Pahmungan village. The lead singer of Hutan Tropis, the Sumatran punk rock band that cares…
