A pioneering global study published March 15 in the journal Nature showed that humid tropical forests recovering from degradation and deforestation have the potential to absorb a vast amount of…
Campaigners sue Ghana’s government to block mining of Atewa Forest biodiversity hotspot Twenty NGOs and individuals are taking legal action to prevent the Ghanaian government from mining bauxite in the…
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — The first big news of the COP27 climate conference was a forest promise: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a 26-nation partnership to conserve woodland…
After five months of waiting, the Indigenous pygmy peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have secured a major victory. Earlier today, the president of the DRC, Felix…
Healthy ecosystems are often noisy places: from reefs to grasslands and forests, these are sonically rich thanks to all the species defending territories, finding mates, locating prey, or perhaps enjoying…
African cocoa plantations have seen massive growth in recent years on its path to help feed the world’s veracious appetite for a popular delicacy – chocolate. The Ivory Coast, the…
Gorillas and chimpanzees living in a remote part of the Congo Basin hang out together and some, like humans, even establish “relationships with benefits,” a new study reveals. Observations of…
One of the first on-the-ground investigations into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s proposed oil exploration blocks suggests that in some of the regions marked for auction, many residents are wary…
In 2006 and 2010, Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula collected catfish and other species from the rivers in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Then he hopped…
The world’s largest bank of the partially decomposed plant matter known as peat in the tropics is even more extensive than initially thought, according to a new study. The peatlands…
Iluka Alain was a bit surprised when the two men turned up on a motorcycle in December 2021 in Bofekalasumba, the village where he’s chief in the northwestern Democratic Republic…
Our footsteps intermingled with the sounds of rain dripping through the canopy as my eyes examined the surrounding green vegetation, which was usually so vibrant, but was now subdued as…
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…
This March, the NGO Friends of Bonobos released 14 bonobos into the wild — only the second time ever a bonobo group has been reintroduced to their natural habitat. Their…
LAGOS — Nigeria has for years failed to hold wildlife traffickers and poachers accountable for their crimes, despite federal and state laws that criminalize the killing and trading of protected…
The Batwa Indigenous peoples lived in the Kahuzi-Biega forests of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo for centuries before Belgian colonial rule imposed formal change in 1937 with the establishment of…
2021 was a year where tropical forests featured more prominently in global headlines than normal thanks to rising recognition of the role they play in addressing climate change and biodiversity…
For the Congo Basin, 2021 proved to be an up-and-down year. Funding commitments totaling in the billions of dollars were announced that would help forested countries preserve some of the…
This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay…
This is the fourth article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. The muddy cores that Ian Lawson and his colleagues…
This is the third article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Four. The logging concession moratorium signed in 2002 was supposed to shore…
This is the second article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Three and Part Four. The announcement came in mid-2019: A pool of oil lay deep…
On Nov. 2, a group of 12 donors, including the European Commission, United Kingdom, United States and the Bezos Earth Fund, collectively pledged at least $1.5 billion in financing toward…
This is the first article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. The notion seemed straightforward: A massive swamp in the Congo Basin…
More than 200 Congolese and international NGOs have published an open letter calling for a government clampdown on “illegal activities” in protected areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).…
As the annual meeting of the world's most recognizable ethical wood certifier, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), kicked off on Oct. 25, environmental NGOs accused the body of failing to…
As a clear morning dawned on May 18, 2021, a baby was born. She was a gorilla, born to the Mapuwa family, one of 10 gorilla families in Virunga National…
A new study promises to give Africa’s mountain forests a leg up in the eyes of climate scientists. They store nearly 150 metric tons of carbon dioxide per hectare, according…
Today we’re looking at Indigenous-led projects and the latest research informing conservation of elephants, the largest land animal in existence and one of the world’s most widely recognized and beloved…
There may be far fewer bonobos in the wild than recent surveys have predicted, a new study concludes. Population surveys of bonobos (Pan paniscus) rely not on counting individual apes,…
