Ecosystem Services News

On this episode, we welcome Gemma Tillack, agribusiness campaign director of the Rainforest Action Network, an NGO based in San Francisco and a group that has been very active in…

Sometimes small changes in the right place can make a big difference. That’s what a team of scientists found when they looked at how parks, sanctuaries and reserves might better…

Scientists have uncovered a new species of bat in the mountains of Venezuela and Colombia. But its forest habitat is under big threat from slash-and-burn agriculture, and its discoverers are…

The morning after a rainy night, mist enshrouds the lush canopy of the forest at Bawan village. This 1,453-hectare hillock packed with high-value timber sits on the edge of the…

It’s estimated that about 10 percent of global emissions comes from deforestation — meaning we could make considerable progress toward halting climate change simply by keeping what remains of the…

A protest of a planned coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh turned sour on Thursday, when police reportedly confronted marchers with tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons in the capital…

Five years ago, there were likely very few people outside of Indonesia who'd ever heard of a place called the Leuser ecosystem. Today, this enormous and besieged tropical rainforest on…

The fate of a forest tract in Malaysia may have shifted dramatically in just the last few months. For three years, a group of conservation NGOs in Sabah, a Malaysian…

Most of the attention paid to oil palm in Southeast Asia centers on big plantations set up by big companies, and it’s almost uniformly bad for the environment. But less…

A few years back, Jingjing Liang started to notice a pattern in his work as a forest ecologist who spends a lot of time studying the complex relationships within forests. Whether…

The world's 230 watersheds have critical functions in providing water to ecosystems and human communities. But like any natural resource, they are susceptible to degradation from a wide variety of…

Yosemite National Park in California was officially designated in 1890, but the land was first protected in 1864 when President Abraham Lincoln signed an act of Congress transferring ownership of…

In the waning days of President Ollanta Humala’s administration, Peru’s National Congress approved a set of innovative climate change-related policies designed to reduce deforestation, protect watersheds and biodiversity, and provide…

This World Mangrove Day, the tropical island-nation of Sri Lanka is getting its own mangrove museum. The museum, inaugurated by the Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena today, will showcase how mangroves…

Veteran Mongabay reporter Jeremy Hance’s hard-hitting series investigating recent changes in the field of conservation drew tens of thousands of readers and sparked intense conversation. Catch all four parts of…

It's easy to be pessimistic about the state of the world's forests. Rates of forest loss remain persistently high, especially in the tropics and boreal regions. Drought, fragmentation, degradation via…

Other stories in Mongabay's Conservation, Divided series: Part 1: Has big conservation gone astray? Part 2: How big donors and corporations shape conservation goals Part 3: Conservation today, the old-fashioned…

Other stories in Mongabay's Conservation, Divided series: Part 1: Has big conservation gone astray? Part 2: How big donors and corporations shape conservation goals Part 3: Conservation today, the old-fashioned…

Other stories in Mongabay's Conservation, Divided series: Part 1: Has big conservation gone astray? Part 2: How big donors and corporations shape conservation goals Part 4: Conservation's people problem Epilogue: Conservation still…

Other stories in Mongabay's Conservation, Divided series: Part 1: Has big conservation gone astray? Part 3: Conservation today, the old-fashioned way Part 4: Conservation's people problem Epilogue: Conservation still divided, looking…

Other stories in Mongabay's Conservation, Divided series: Part 2: How big donors and corporations shape conservation goals Part 3: Conservation today, the old-fashioned way Part 4: Conservation's people problem Epilogue: Conservation…

onservation is messy. Conservation is complicated. Conservation is really, really difficult. But if we are to avoid mass extinction, conservation, most of all, is necessary. Beginning next Tuesday, Mongabay will…

More than a decade ago, China enacted one of the largest forest conservation programs in the world. But has it worked? It has, according to an analysis published recently in…

A coalition of indigenous leaders and NGOs from Indonesia's Aceh province is demanding that the governor revoke a plantation company’s license to operate in an important water catchment area. The forest in question is said to be…

If a tree falls in the forest, what does it cost? From the perspective of federal disaster assistance, the answer traditionally has been “not much.” But now — thanks to…

Researchers at Michigan State University wanted to determine whether or not programs that compensate local communities monetarily for their active participation in conservation efforts really works. Their study, the results…

Recent research by the U.S. Forest Service finds that the world lost interior forest at three times the rate of forest loss as a whole. They write that this fragmentation…

In the 1990s, researchers in India began noticing something strange in the skies. South Asian Gyps vultures, once numbering several millions, were dropping dead rapidly. In less than a decade, populations of…

Between Indonesia's massive forest fires, the official approval of REDD+ at climate talks in Paris, and the establishment of several major national parks, there was plenty to get excited about…

Over-hunting contributes to forest carbon loss, claims a study published this week in the AAAS journal Science Advances. After looking at data from 31 sites from the Atlantic Forest --…