Elephant poachers are using logging roads to infiltrate some of the last remaining pristine forests in Central Africa, according to a study published in July. The study’s authors also revealed…
The length of roads in Congo Basin logging concessions has doubled since 2003, according to new research, raising concerns about the impacts of these incursions into the world’s second-largest bank…
Forests have been at the core of Mongabay's coverage since our founding 20 years ago. So for the International Day of Forests 2019, below are the top 5 most read…
The Philippines was highly forested about a century ago. But today, forests cover less than a third of the country, due to logging, agriculture, fuelwood extraction and mining. To tackle forest depletion,…
2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…
The 2015-16 El Niño briefly turned Amazon, African and Indonesian tropical forests from carbon sink to carbon source. Will climate change make that shift permanent?
In the midst of ongoing violence against rangers and a kidnapping of two British tourists, Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo announced it is closing to visitors…
Five countries that are home to some of the most iconic and threatened animal species in the world have joined forces in a high-tech collaboration to improve wildlife law enforcement.…
An industrial rubber plantation is currently developing land right on the edge of Cameroon’s Dja Faunal Reserve. And it's getting closer, according to an analysis of satellite data released by…
The word “pygmy” conjures images of hunter-gatherers living deep in the Congo rainforest, far removed from the modern world. But that modern world is closing in on them, as the…
When a farmer cuts down a tree in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there’s often a reason for it. She’s most likely clearing the land to plant crops — the…
A warming climate and decreased humidity is threatening yields of plantains, a food staple that rural families in Cameroon and elsewhere in Central Africa bank on to pay for their…
Can you answer important questions about conservation by playing a game? Yes, and it works. In August, ForDev, the research team I lead, was invited by the Forest Stewardship Council…
Tropical timber has earned a bad reputation. When we think of timber from lush, tropical forests, it conjures up images of valuable old-growth trees pillaged by logging companies and illegal…
The chimpanzee nest was a few months old, but there it was, right next to the tracks of the endangered forest elephant. We were in a conservation area that had…
The word came in that a small chimp was for sale up the road near Aketi, a town in remote, northernmost Democratic Republic of the Congo. The seller: a policeman…
The dramatic urban energy of Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital, seems a world away from the green expanse of the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Les Petites…
Elephant poachers have killed two wildlife rangers in a shootout in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), reports African Parks, a not-for-profit conservation group that manages…
YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Two male chimps, Avi and Max, take turns inside an electric-fenced compound where eight Central chimpanzees are housed at the Mefou Primate Sanctuary not far from Cameroon’s…
Great apes should be humanity’s best bet for conservation — charismatic, intelligent, strikingly familiar, with big emoting eyes. It’s hard to think of creatures with whom the public empathizes more…
Map for Environment is a free online open-source mapping platform that offers spatial data, tools, and hosting to encourage a wider environmental community to produce maps and increase transparency in decision-making.
For weeks, the primatologists had followed a group of Grauer’s gorillas over rugged terrain — hacking through dense rainforest; following knife-edged ravines; and crossing a nearly impenetrable mountainous landscape in…
Using remote cameras attached high up in trees and in the understory, researchers have captured the first ever video footage of a new population of the rare Dryas monkeys (Cercopithecus…
The Lebialem Highlands, located in Cameroon’s southwest, is a global biodiversity hotspot, a place long protected from development by its ruggedness and small human populations, though that is no longer…
Great apes need intact, safe habitat to thrive. But deforestation and hunting have imperiled that safety, with four out of six species now Critically Endangered, including Eastern and Western gorillas,…
Nests, footprints and dung have been leading primatologists to new gorilla populations in the Congo Basin nation of Cameroon for over a decade. In 2002, researchers discovered nearly 100 Western…
Massive forest fires in the Congo and Amazon, surging deforestation in Brazil, and tentative steps toward reform in Indonesia and Myanmar: there were no shortage of major happenings in tropical…
Protecting one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet in the Congo Basin is no easy task. Nor is looking after the 25 billion tons of carbon, 10,000 plant and…
It’s no secret that logging roads stimulate the movement of people and goods into and through once-remote areas. But tracking their secretive inception has proven difficult. Now, a project aimed…
This is the second in a four-part series on palm oil in Cameroon. Read the first, third, and fourth parts for more discussion on the topic. n Cameroon’s 500,000-hectare (1,931-square mile)…
