Tropical rainforests have an outsized role in the world. Of the Earth’s ecosystems, rainforests support the largest variety of plants and animal species, house the majority of indigenous groups still…
Primary forests in the tropics are declining at an accelerating rate according to analysis of satellite data released last week by the University of Maryland (UMD) and World Resources Institute…
Forest communities around the world struggling to achieve the legal recognition that would give them a greater say in how their natural resources are managed now have recourse to an…
Between 2002 and 2005, a series of Ebola outbreaks spread through the forests of northwest Republic of Congo. Dozens of people died. For the region’s western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla…
The peatlands of the Congo Basin are home to more than just massive carbon stocks and some of our closest — and most threatened — relatives in the animal kingdom,…
A survey of 40,000 existing and 3,700 planned dams finds that the structures could fragment fish habitat in the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Salween and Mekong river systems by 25% or more.
The effects of commercial logging, mining and farming can ripple beyond the boundaries of the operations, leading to the substantial loss and degradation of nearby forest for subsistence agriculture, a…
After a decade of increased deforestation, broken commitments, and hundreds of murders of rainforest defenders, the 2020s open as a dark moment for the world’s rainforests. Here are some key…
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. Widely available satellite imagery via platforms like Google Earth brought new levels of accountability which, for the first time,…
Salt clearings deep in the Congo basin host numerous breeding groups of Western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). These intelligent social mammals usually reside in groups of two to eight…
Tropical insects are wildly diverse, but most species are unstudied or unknown, even as they’re heavily impacted by deforestation, climate change and pesticides.
On today’s episode, we talk to primatologist Cleve Hicks, who recently led a research team that discovered a new tool-using chimp culture in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Listen here:…
With 3,700 dams in the planning stages worldwide, it is time for governments and builders to consider the true socio-environmental cost of hydroelectric dams before building them: study.
It was an ambitious project from the start: to capture the Congo Basin rainforest in the pages of a book. Stretching across an area larger than Saudi Arabia, the world’s…
The recent plunge in numbers of Grauer's gorillas in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has lopped off one-fifth of the subspecies’ genetic diversity, leaving it potentially vulnerable to…
2018 wasn't a great year for tropical rainforests, with major conservation setbacks in Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and the United States coming on top of back-to-back years of…
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…
On this episode, we look at research into an African bat that might be the key to controlling future Ebola outbreaks. Listen here: Our guest is Sarah Olson, an…
Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world's tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers — an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined…
Logging to feed furniture factories in China, spurred by demand from the United States, is thinning the forests of Central Africa, recent research has found. Lead author Trevon Fuller, an…
A recent analysis of logging roads in Africa’s Congo Basin has revealed that timber concessions certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) lost more blocks of untouched forests than non-certified…
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?
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has put a new community forest strategy in place, a move that proponents say could help provide Congolese with the chance to have a…
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…
According to the results of a census released last week, the mountain gorilla population in East Africa’s Virunga Mountains numbered 604 as of June 2016, up from from 480 in…
LOKOLAMA, Democratic Republic of Congo -- Sometime in March, I found myself trudging forward in a remote swamp in the heart of the Congo rainforest. As I worriedly tried to…
The world's largest forests can help solve some of the biggest problems facing humanity, but only if we move to safeguard them, argue two experts in a New York Times…
A British government office has prosecuted a wood importer certified by the Forest Stewardship Council after it was found to have failed to ensure the legality of a shipment of…
The camera follows the men through the forest as they arrive at the splintered stump of what looks to have been a massive tree. “For me, the forest is a…
