Escalating ocean temperatures stemming from climate change are devastating the world’s tropical coral reefs. In response to the stress, corals, which are animals, sometimes unceremoniously jettison the algae that live…
PUTUMAYO, Colombia — When Jonh Jairo Mueses-Cisneros was approached by leadership at Corpoamazonia about turning Colombia’s southwestern department of Putumayo into a bird-watching hotspot more than 10 years ago, he…
U.S. timber companies imported nearly 1,600 metric tons of teak from Myanmar last year, circumventing sanctions and channeling millions of dollars in revenue to the country’s junta, according to a…
The impacts of burning fossil fuels are not only being felt in the environment, but are also affecting human health. The most known and studied trends to date have been…
Scientists analyzed levels of chemical pollutants in native jataí bees across eight landscapes in Brazil’s São Paulo state. They found that in landscapes with more vegetation, the bees had fewer pollutants, at lower levels, indicating that the plants act as a filter and protective barrier
Over the past decade, the European Union entered into collaborative agreements with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime and verify the legality of wood imported into the EU. Within…
As deforestation and subsequent human expansion into natural areas continue, separating people from wildlife is unrealistic. Even in “pristine” landscapes, like national parks, humans and wildlife are always sharing the…
An initiative in the northern Brazilian Amazon is helping a group of rural women reclaim their riverine culture and traditions while also empowering them economically. The Sementes do Araguari Association,…
Myanmar’s rainforests, home to the endangered Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), critically endangered Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and endangered lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), are some of the most biodiverse in the…
The story of the American bison is both tragic and uplifting. Once dappling the prairies of North America in the tens of millions, hunting winnowed the number to perhaps a…
This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay…
Severe droughts over the past two decades have affected the resilience of the Amazon Rainforest, a new study shows, with stretches of affected forest taking between one and three years…
This is the fourth article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. The muddy cores that Ian Lawson and his colleagues…
Confining conservation efforts to only 30% of Earth's land may render a fifth of mammals and a third of birds at high risk of extinction by 2030, according to a…
This is the third article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Four. The logging concession moratorium signed in 2002 was supposed to shore…
Ambitious targets by Asian countries to restore tens of millions of hectares of degraded land by 2030 could be foiled by one fundamental problem: a lack of good-quality and genetically…
This is the second article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Three and Part Four. The announcement came in mid-2019: A pool of oil lay deep…
This is the first article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. The notion seemed straightforward: A massive swamp in the Congo Basin…
The canary in the coal mine for how climate change is affecting the treasure trove of biodiversity in the Amazon is … also a bird. Dozens of them, in fact,…
Extinction threatens nearly half of all primate species, largely due to human activities. But alongside them, a hidden world of biodiversity also could disappear: parasites. Using computer modeling, researchers discovered…
Defeat for Japan’s opposition party in last month’s national elections has dashed hopes for a quick resolution to the contentious relocation of a U.S. military base on the island of…
JAKARTA — Protecting all remaining orangutans and their forest habitat in Indonesia will provide a bastion for the survival of Asia’s only great ape, wildlife experts say in a new…
Watching the largest feline in the Americas in the wild has always been a rare and remarkable experience. In Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest continental floodplain and one of the…
Bears, wolves, and other carnivores in Michigan adjust their behavior to avoid active roadways, researchers reported recently in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. The study is part of the…
Since the first European naturalists arrived in the Amazon Rainforest at the end of the 18th century to catalog its copious natural wonders, one of the most intriguing questions has…
Despite living in a concrete jungle, London’s urban bees fly shorter distances to feast on nectar-rich flowers than their neighbors in the countryside—a counterintuitive discovery explained by the many lush…
SINGAPORE — On a vast plateau atop Jingmai Mountain in Yunnan, China, nearly a mile above sea level, grows a forest of ancient tea trees. During summer, silvery cobwebs line…
A new study has found that China’s coastal wetlands have undergone significant recovery within the last 10 years after several decades of loss and destruction. An international team of researchers…
How do you develop your economy and provide services in a sustainable manner? That’s a central theme of the U.N. climate summit underway in Glasgow, and in few places is…
Açaí has always been part of the Amazonian diet. Locals consume the round, purple fruit, which grows in bunches on the Euterpe oleracea palm tree, almost daily. In the mid-1990s,…
