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…
Thousands of square kilometers of the world’s second-largest rainforest, the Congo Basin, sit on the verge of destruction, according to a new report released today by Earthsight, the London-based non-profit…
More than 50 conservation and human rights organizations have called on international donors to halt funding aimed at economic development and forest protection in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the…
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…
The equatorial ecosystems of the Albertine Rift are packed with plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Formed as tectonic plates in eastern Africa have slowly pulled away from…
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…
Between America's abandonment of leadership on conservation and environmental policy, Brazil's backtracking on forest conservation, massive forest fires worldwide, and the revelation of a sharp increase in global forest loss…
As timber companies move into Central Africa’s forests, apes increasingly have to find ways to survive in the altered forests they call home. Scientists still don’t know the full impact…
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…
Earth’s tropical forests store an incredible amount of carbon, and as they grow they are continually absorbing even more of the carbon in the atmosphere, which is why forest protection…
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…
