Deforestation News

2020 was supposed to be a big year for forests. Six years ago this month, world leaders gathered at the UN Climate Summit and endorsed the New York Declaration on…

337,427 square kilometers of Amazon forest were degraded between 1992 and 2014 ¬(mostly due to logging and understory fires), compared to 308,311 square kilometers completely cleared.

In 2009, traditional Brazilian Amazon communities and Catholic nuns brought the transnational mining company to the negotiating table and galvanized Amazonia’s land rights struggle.

A unique rainforest island lying 270 kilometers (168 miles) off Papua New Guinea is once again at the center of a tug-of-war between multiple extractive industries vying for its rich…

Located in northeastern Brazil, the Caatinga, with its shrublands and dry forests, is seen by many as poor in biodiversity. As a consequence, the region receives little investment for conservation…

Brazil is a leading producer of the world’s beef, but ranching is also the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Now the global pandemic has curbed meat consumption in both Brazil and China.

Humans have not treaded lightly on the Earth. Over the centuries, we have left our mark on almost every ecosystem, contributing to a steady, and increasingly rapid, decline in the…

The socio-economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is heavy and multi-sectoral, marked by an increase in inequality, with the brunt of the pandemic borne mostly by the poorest and most…

For three decades, INPE, Brazil’s civilian space agency has successfully and publicly monitored Amazon deforestation and fires. Now Jair Bolsonaro is intent on giving the job over to the secretive Brazilian military.

In the midst of a planetary biodiversity crisis, 71 world leaders have endorsed the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. Jacinda Ardern, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the red howler monkey. As their name…

Earlier this month Rieli Franciscato of the Brazilian government’s Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI was killed on the edge of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous territory in Rondônia, Brazil. Franciscato, a sertanista or…

Satellites are powerful tools for monitoring deforestation. Now, a new partnership aims to make high-resolution, satellite imagery of the tropics free and accessible to everyone. Norway's Ministry of Climate and…

The Swiss NGO Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF) has lodged a complaint against the local subsidiary of furniture giant Ikea and its CEO, Jessica Anderen, accusing them of violating Swiss wood…

The number of fires burning in standing Amazon rainforest spiked dramatically in recent weeks, threatening the forest’s biodiversity — a richness of flora and fauna not adapted to withstand the…

Wall Street fund manager BlackRock administers 2.2 billion reais ($408 million) in shares in the three largest Brazilian meatpackers operating in the Amazon today. The cattle purchase and slaughter operations…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the pampas cat. This cat may look…

OGAN KOMERING ILIR, Indonesia — Over the past two decades, much of the forests in Ogan Komering Ilir district in southern Sumatra, Indonesia, have been cleared to make way for…

In June, three environmental defenders from the remote island of Nende celebrated their acquittal from arson charges, along with the many supporters who had attended their trial. But the later…

The environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth has blasted BlackRock and other asset management titans in a new report that says they aren’t doing enough to curb global deforestation.…

Increasing deforestation in the Amazon in 2020 has prompted banks and funds to promise changes in investments that affect the region. Nordea, the largest asset management company in the Nordic…

As the planet plunges headlong into its sixth mass extinction, caused by humans, biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate. Global targets to slow this alarming trend have not…

For more than a century, the natural cycles of the Cerrado grasslands have guided the lives of the farmers and cowboys in the deep west of Brazil’s Bahia state. Residents…

A new automated near real time fire monitoring system could inform smarter strategies and solutions for curbing Amazon fires and reducing impacts; researchers call it a valuable tool for Amazon conservation.

A new study provides an in-depth look at the detrimental impacts of human activities on wildlife in the Neotropical region of the Americas over the past 500 years. The study,…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we're meeting the red panda. Did you know that…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was more than 20 percent lower for the second straight month relative to the prior year according to data released today by Brazil's national space…

JAKARTA — Newly published research has linked the spread of oil palm and rubber plantations across a watershed area of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island to worsening floods in the region. The…

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that slaughterhouses are among the outbreak hotspots for the disease because of the low temperatures and crowded production lines. But they are also ideal locations for the emergence of new viruses due to the contact between humans and the blood and entrails of cattle.

Reaching down into the Malay Peninsula, Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi region is home to rainforests that support a unique assemblage of endemic and endangered species, including the endangered Malay tapir (Tapirus…