COLOMBO — The leaf litter and other decaying plant matter that carpet Sri Lanka’s lowland rainforests are potential lurking points for numerous blood-sucking leeches and hideouts of some venomous snakes.…
JAKARTA — Most forest trees that persist in areas dominated by oil palm plantations die before they can mature, a new study shows, emphasizing the urgency of conserving or restoring…
Our pollution of the planet with heavy metals, plastics, industrial chemicals, pesticides and more is pushing Earth systems to the limit, and us closer to crossing a dangerous planetary boundary we don’t understand.
Nearing the end of her undergraduate studies in ecology, Drea Darby sat frustrated at her desk, searching for jobs in conservation. She had envisioned a career out in the field,…
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.
On a cold and humid morning in March, two bird surveyors stood in the dim forests of Kenaboi State Park in Malaysia, straining their ears for birdsong. From where they…
Hours after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro painted a rosy picture of his administration's environmental record during a United Nations speech, Greenpeace and other environmental groups released a set of photos…
Next spring, California condors will soar in northern California for the first time in a century. Four young condors will be released in Redwood National and State Parks, reintroducing this…
New study addresses the effects of fires on biodiversity loss in the world’s largest forest during the last two decades. Researchers measured the impacts on the habitats of 14,000 species of plants and animals, finding that 93 to 95% suffered some consequence of the fires.
Planting trees seems to be a simple solution to the climate crisis. As trees photosynthesize, they capture carbon dioxide and lower the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, cooling…
Most people are familiar with the world's "big cats": Lions, tigers, leopards, jaguar, puma, and cheetah. But far fewer people know about the much larger number of small cat species,…
They were once considered the most threatened bird in the world: with just four remaining individuals on the island in 1974, the Mauritius kestrel (Falco punctatus) seemed doomed to extinction.…
All seven sea turtle species are already endangered. Now humanity’s overshoot of planetary boundaries — climate change, ocean acidification, pollution and more — is upping the ante. Can turtles, people and conservation adapt?
Every October, at least 10 million straw-colored fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) arrive in Kasanka National Park in Zambia from the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Besides its spectacular…
Efforts to protect wildlife and landscapes have generally been shifting away from "fortress conservation" — where local people are excluded from the lands they've traditionally managed — toward more inclusive…
As deforestation and the violation of Indigenous land rights continue to be an ever-present part of the global supply chain, many consumers (and even investors) are calling for transparency on…
Though September sea ice extent appeared to offer a short-term recovery this fall, “that’s not the full story,” says one Arctic scientist, with low ice concentration seen in 2021, and lack of multiyear ice setting a new record.
JAKARTA — When the STS-50 was seized in Indonesian waters for illegal fishing in April 2018, it became the poster child for global efforts to reveal the true identity behind…
It happened eight years ago: Elicarlos Ferreira da Silva and his family were returning home one afternoon from the town of Caetité in Brazil’s Bahia state when they were stopped…
Peering back over the last 120,000 years, scientists have uncovered where chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) rode out past periods of global change, providing insights into how they might be affected by…
JAKARTA — A long-delayed bill on Indigenous rights continues to languish in parliament because most lawmakers have business interests that are threatened by the acknowledgement of Indigenous land rights, activists…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we are meeting the common hippo. Common hippos (Hippopotamus…
The fires that tore through South America’s Pantanal region in 2020, destroying 30% of its area, are still scorched in memory. And now, the world’s largest wetland that fans out…
What happens when an environmental catastrophe takes place in an isolated area at the periphery of the world’s attention? The last six weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and…
JAKARTA — A court in Jakarta has found the Indonesian government, including President Joko Widodo, negligent in a citizen lawsuit filed against the poor air quality in the capital. In…
In early July, the ephemeral promise of a new life blinked into existence. Not in the usual way, but on a clear microscope slide in a sterile lab in Cremona,…
One of the main fears about the Brazilian Amazon is beginning to materialize: logging is starting to move from the periphery of the rainforest toward the core of the biome,…
Today we take a look at some of the key outcomes of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress, a global gathering of governments, scientists, NGOs,…
We see disposable masks everywhere these days. Littered on the street and sidewalks, hanging out of garbage cans, floating through the neighborhood on a windy day. Unfortunately, the ubiquitous face…
In the wake of COVID-19, transformative change away from the unsustainable status-quo to effectively address the roots of the climate and biodiversity crises is perhaps more urgent than ever. One…
