Anthropologist Maud Mouginot recalls an encounter with bonobos early one morning in 2019 deep in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo that helped revise her impression of them…
JAKARTA — The tropics continue to lose primary forest at an alarming rate, with an area of tree cover half the size of Panama disappearing in 2023, new data from…
The global race to secure minerals critical to the clean energy transition is driving toxic pollution with severe health repercussions for communities living near some of the world’s largest cobalt…
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of the Congo — Land-grabbing, lack of consultation, communities wiped off maps and impunity. These are the serious accusations made against the mining company Alphamin Bisie Mining…
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of the Congo — On Dec. 2, Togolese authorities intercepted 38 monkeys at the airport. They were being sent from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic…
Last week, Mongabay published a recap of the major trends in the world’s tropical rainforests for 2023. Here’s a glimpse into some of the key issues to monitor in 2024.…
A recent report from U.K.- and U.S.-based nonprofit Global Witness captures the details of how a new mining rush driven by demand for “clean energy” minerals can go wrong, reproducing…
In 2023, Mongabay launched the fourth season of its serial podcast, “Mongabay Explores,” highlighting the Congo Basin. The six-part series takes a close look at the second-largest rainforest in the…
Despite the COP28 climate summit agreeing on groundbreaking language on forests, countries are still no nearer to closing the “finance gap” necessary to stop the destruction of rainforests, according to…
According to Global Forest Watch Virunga National Park, the oldest protected area in the DRC, has lost 964 hectares (2,382 acres) of forest since June. “The Nyiragongo volcanic eruption in…
Among the 3,500 inmates in the overcrowded Munzenze prison in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are five farmers from the town of Kitshanga. In November 2022, they were…
It started with monkey poop. A few years ago we analyzed the feces of wild baboons, chimpanzees, red-tailed monkeys, and red colobus in Uganda and found unexpectedly high levels of…
The African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) makes the Congo Basin rainforest what it is today. As a key seed disperser, its dietary habits help construct the giant carbon-sequestering tree community…
In the two decades since the Franco-British multinational Perenco established operations at Muanda, at the mouth of the Congo River, surrounding communities have suffered the loss of the natural resources…
This report was produced with the support of the Rainforest Investigations Network in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. LUBUMBASHI — In Kolwezi, the self-proclaimed cobalt capital of the world, 400…
The Okapi Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) protects nearly 14,000 square kilometers (5,405 square miles) of tropical rainforest and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s…
"The last 20 years have taken their toll on our forests, with increased deforestation and the sale of our land by government decision-makers cutting us off from our main means…
How much does it cost to protect the Congo Rainforest? Where does the money come from? Who pays and how is that money used? What models of forest protection work?…
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) produces around 70% of the global supply of cobalt and it is also Africa’s leading producer of copper. Despite the billions of dollars in…
On this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast, Terese Hart, a researcher with the ICCN (the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature); Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, a wildlife veterinarian and founder…
JAKARTA — The tropics lost 10% more primary rainforest in 2022 than in 2021, as forest loss in deforestation hotspots like Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continued…
The past decade has seen a wave of academic and activist writings criticizing the use of militarized conservation to protect nature. In this commentary piece, we argue that the use…
READER ADVISORY: This story contains images of dead animals that some viewers may find disturbing. LODJA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Disaster struck Héritier Mpo’s tiny NGO in the central…
Earlier this year, 25 Congolese and international civil society organizations wrote a letter to the U.S. secretary of state, calling on the United States government to maintain sanctions against diamond…
The concept of a “pristine wilderness” is a flawed one, researchers argue, but this pervasive idea — one where human absence is required in order to preserve land — occupies…
Chimpanzees tend to sleep more on the ground than previously thought, a behavior that has implications for their conservation and could help explain how and when early humans abandoned trees…
The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest rainforest at a staggering 178 million hectares (just under 440 million acres). It is also one of the biggest carbon sinks on the…
Newly captured images from camera traps in the Tayna Nature Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have recorded two mother-infant pairs of critically endangered eastern lowland gorillas. These…
While in some corners of the world, the clean energy revolution conjures up images of electric vehicles and expansive wind farms, in countries with mineral reserves critical for producing that…
Gorillas and chimpanzees, like humans, have long been known to get infected with malaria. But evidence of the parasite's effects on bonobos, one of humankind's closest genetic relatives, has been…