Ecosystem Services News

As Indonesia’s forests go up in smoke, the world may be losing a lot more than we currently understand.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro likes to assert that foreigners deserve no say over the fate of the Amazon because it is a national sovereignty issue. His logic: Brazilian Amazon is…

Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…

A blessed country of spectacular landscapes and the most diverse array of cultures on Earth, Papua New Guinea is also a global hotspot for biodiversity. Just in terms of species,…

“I once asked a Matapí elder if he could spare an hour or two to tell me about what palms he knew, and how he used them,” says Rodrigo Cámara-Leret,…

The way humans have changed the forests of Central and South America may be making it impossible for subsistence hunters to continue their way of life, according to two conservation…

The World Health Organization (WHO) approved the inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine in the revision of its influential International Classification of Diseases for the first time on May 25, touching…

Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…

In the East African savanna landscape, hippos and their poop play a critical role. By chomping on large amounts of silica-rich grass at night, then defecating into the Mara River…

The elephant poaching epidemic continues to tear across the African continent. It’s even reached remote refuges in recent years, like the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, where poaching deaths began surging…

Deforestation can reduce communities’ access to clean drinking water, according to a recent study conducted in Malawi. A lot of prior research on how deforestation impacts water dynamics has shown…

The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah has called on construction crews working on the multi-billion-dollar Pan Borneo Highway project to avoid breaking up the region’s forests and…

As the “Green New Deal” (GND) takes shape to decarbonize the economy, promote economic growth, and address environmental injustice, it is crucial to incorporate the key sectors of the blue economy…

Giraffes have to search a wider area for food and water when people live nearby, according to a recent study. “Giraffes are huge browsing animals that live in African savanna…

Ecologists know that when we humans start tugging at the threads of a food web, the unraveling that results is often catastrophic to the connected species, paving the way for…

Ecosystems in their natural state are disappearing quickly around the globe. On that most scientists agree. But how to stem those losses through conservation is hotly debated. Many believe that…

Thirteen conservation organizations have banded together to ask policymakers to protect the world’s last wilderness areas by setting aside nearly one-third of the Earth for conservation. “The planet is losing…

Stretching from the historic Chesapeake Bay, down along the Atlantic coastline, across the Gulf of Mexico, into the mysterious bayou swamps of Louisiana, then into eastern Texas and up the…

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…

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, the true story of how 96 critically endangered sea turtles survived a New York City beach — with a little help from some dedicated conservationists and scientists.…

New research published in the journal Nature Sustainability this month attempts to establish the monetary value of the ecosystem services provided by the world’s largest tropical forest, the Amazon. A…

In 2017, the world lost 39 million acres (nearly 16 million hectares) of tropical forests — an area equivalent in size to Bangladesh — at a near-record rate of 40…

Traveling through the jungles of Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon, it is difficult not to feel stunned by the amount of biological diversity in these forests. Writing about…

Scientists seeking the tools necessary to tackle climate change need to better understand both the current interplay between carbon and tropical forests and how those forests will respond as temperatures…

Local and indigenous communities seem to hold the key to protecting both forests and the massive amounts of carbon that they contain — and on which we all depend. But…

A recent article in Science reports that, while the portion of the world’s terrestrial surface allocated to protected areas has grown to around one-sixth of the area available, a significant…

Mangroves, the dense tangled forests that buffer land from sea in many coastal areas of the tropics, are renowned for their ability to store carbon and help fight climate change.…

Is it time to completely rethink how we design the goals of conservation programs? Some scientists say it is. In a paper published last week in the journal Nature Ecology…

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…