TOKYO — The train to the farm rose from Tokyo’s labyrinthine subway network, revealing a hodgepodge of gray and tan buildings stretched on either side. The world’s largest metropolitan area,…
The Cao-vit gibbon is one of the most critically endangered apes in the world, with its entire population living in a single patch of protected forest on the border between…
TOKYO — Japan is actively exploring pathways to mine the deep sea of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), in an effort to lessen reliance on imported mineral resources needed for…
Kamy Yeung said she wanted to do more scuba diving. So in 2014, she signed up to be a volunteer diver for a newly launched reef fish survey project in…
The world’s two worst nuclear accidents, in Ukraine and Japan, along with the human exclusion zones around them, are informing scientists about radiation effects, and how ecosystems evolve with less pressure from people.
IIJIMA, Japan – Since the last ice age, a butterfly species called the Reverdin’s blue (Plebejus argyrognomon, known as miyamashijimi in Japanese), has survived in the nation’s grasslands maintained by…
TATEYAMA, Japan — The late summer heat was no concern for University of Tokyo professor Nina Yasuda and her student research team, who descended on Tateyama, an aging resort town…
In 2020 a report titled “Wildlife-snaring crisis in Asian Forests” was published by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), estimating that over 12 million snares engulf Indochinese forests (Cambodia, Laos,…
Drones flying above the treetops of a limestone forest on the border of Vietnam and China are helping conservationists develop plans to recover one of the world’s rarest primates: the…
In April, the National People's Congress, China's legislative branch, passed the "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) Ecosystem Protection Act" (hereafter referred to as the QTP Act). The QTP Act is China's first…
Sometimes, our current mass extinction crisis can be represented by the loss of a single individual. On April 21, locals spotted a 93-kilogram (205-pound) body in the waters of Dong…
Reliant on its fisheries, Japan has long known the importance of maintaining healthy forest watersheds so as to protect coastal fisheries. It’s a lesson other nations could benefit from as the global environmental crisis worsens.
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, and Native News Online. NEW YORK — In…
Emmanuel Dufourq had a gargantuan task at hand in mid-2019. He had the job of listening to 6,000 hours of audio data collected from Bawangling National Nature Reserve in the…
HONG KONG — Thousands of grayish, oval-shaped oysters pepper the mudflats of far northern Hong Kong, clustering together on fragments of rock lining the shoreline or clamping onto abandoned concrete…
The answer is, it depends. A multitude of conditions must be analyzed, and forests properly managed long-term, if they’re to curb climate change-intensified flooding, landslides, and even stand up to a tsunami.
On April 10, 2019, a fishing vessel known as Da Wang left Taiwan to sail out into distant waters in search of tuna. Two months into the voyage, a disturbance…
The death knell of coal has been proclaimed, but policy loopholes in Asia allow for cofired power plants, where coal and wood are combined as fuel. Both fuels produce lots of carbon emissions, but those from wood aren’t counted.
In deep waters off the coast of Japan, a hermit crab is wearing haute couture. On its shell is the new-to-science anemone species Stylobates calcifer, named after the fire demon…
In 2010, in the Lunar Year of the Tiger, the governments of 13 Tiger Range Countries met in St Petersburg, Russia and agreed to work together to double global tiger…
In the eastern waters off Hong Kong, a group of scientists searching for coral-eating nudibranchs stumbled upon a colorful surprise: three new species of sun corals. These orange, purple and…
JAKARTA — Major coal-fired power plant projects in Indonesia and Bangladesh have effectively been cancelled after the Japanese government, their main funder, recently announced it would stop providing loans to…
The UK and EU were the primary users of woody biomass for energy. But Japan and South Korea have drastically stepped up their burning of wood pellets — potentially threatening forests, biodiversity, and the climate.
Lower incomes and loss of employment were among the most urgent issues faced by fishing and seafood-processing workers in Asia and the Pacific during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an…
Japan and South Korea are increasingly burning biomass, such as wood pellets, to make energy, with potentially adverse impacts on the global climate, deforestation and biodiversity.
Have you heard the Taiwanese Indigenous folklore about the island’s clouded leopard species — Lrikulaw — who led two human brothers to a heavenly place 600 years ago? While biologists…
Industrial agriculture feeds billions of people and created the modern world. But the nitrogen and phosphorus it’s fertilized with is putting the biosphere, and humanity, at risk.
This story won an Excellence in Investigative Reporting award from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) in 2022. (Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia | 阅读中文版 | 日本語で読む) When Sepri was…
At a glance, Japan’s seafood sector is a financial success story. Indeed, between 2010 and 2019, the 70 publicly-listed companies exposed to the sector on the Tokyo Stock Exchange enjoyed…
Vast terrains dominated by grasses, shrubs or sparse trees, rangelands are more than unproductive places where reticent herders graze their livestock and wildlife browse dry — or green, if lucky…