Environmental Services News

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) collecting pollen. Photo by: Jon Sullivan. Following a flood of damning research on the longterm impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on bee colonies, the EU is proposing…

Mangroves are among the most important ecosystems in the world: they provide nurseries for fish, protect coastlines against dangerous tropical storms, mitigate marine erosion, store massive amounts of carbon, and…

According to a controversial theory, forests—such as this one in Borneo—drive winds bringing rain from the coasts to continental interiors. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. It took over two-and-a-half-years for…

How a sample payment for ecosystem services project works. Click to enlarge. Unlike cars, hamburgers, and computers, clean drinking water is a requirement for human survival. In a bid to…

Loita hills forest in Kenya. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Kenya's forests provide greater services and wealth to the nation when they are left standing. A landmark report by The…

Caterpillars infected with Cordyceps sinensis, mostly whole. Photo by William Rafti of the William Rafti Institute. Cordyceps sinensis, commonly known as caterpillar fungus, may be a groundbreaking new treatment for…

A cow stands in Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetland which is threatened by cattle ranching and agriculture. In 2006 it was announced that 17 percent of the Pantanal had…

Deforestation for a palm oil plantation in Malaysia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Environmental damage poses a long-ignored risk to sovereign bonds, according to a new report by the UNEP…

Stream and forest in the Tongass National Forest, the world largest temperate rainforest located in Southeast Alaska. Photo by: Matthew Dolkas. Although unlikely to pass anytime in the near term,…

Gaysay Grasslands in Bale Mountains National Park. Photo courtesy of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). There is a place in the world where wolves live almost entirely off mountain rodents,…

Stream in the Tongass National Forest. Photo by: Ian Majszak. The Parnell administration's Timber Task Force recently unveiled a proposal to carve out two million acres of the Tongass National…

A black buck in Mahavir Harini Vanasthali National Park near Hyderabad, India. The black buck is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List. Habitat loss and poaching remain…

The mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz) is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. If the world is to conserve its wealth of life—species great…

Frozen stream in Minnesota. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. Keeping forests standing would lessen both the number and size of spring floods in temperate regions, according to a new study in…

Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks fitting a GPS-collar to study the movements of a wild elephant. Photo courtesy of Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz. Humans and elephants have…

The accidental introduction of the brown tree snake on Guam has resulted in a loss of birds and a subsequent explosion of spiders. Photo by: Isaac Chellman. The island of…

Çağan Şekercioğlu uses radio equipment to track an orange-billed nightingale-thrush in the Costa Rican countryside. A new study by Şekercioğlu indicates that wooded 'shade' plantations where coffee and cacao are…

Extent of mangroves in Southeast Asia. Image courtesy of NASA and the US Geological Society. Click to enlarge. Mangroves reduce wave height by as much as 66 percent over 100…

Study reveals the effects of deforestation on rainfall. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation could cause rainfall across the Amazon rainforest to drop precipitously, warns a new study published in…

Salt compounds released by fungi and plants in the Amazon rainforest have an important role in the formation of rain clouds, reports research published in the journal Science. Scientists in…

The Las Gralarias glass frog is the world's newest glass frog. It was discovered by Carl Hutter on the Reserva las Gralarias, after which the researcher subsequently named the new…

Deforestation for oil palm plantations in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. As of today, August 22nd, humanity has overshot the world's annual ecological…

Mangroves in Honduras Mangroves are under-appreciated assets in the effort to slow climate change, argues a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper which makes a argument for…

Aerial view of Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Photo © Conservation International/John Martin. The nation of Guyana sports some of South America's most intact and least-imperiled rainforests, and a new $8.5 million…

This has become Watt's most popular and widely viewed photo to date. It was taken on a foggy February day in a haunting clearcut near the Avatar Grove. It has…

Logging in Gabon, Central Africa. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Industrial logging in primary tropical forests that is both sustainable and profitable is impossible, argues a new study in Bioscience,…

Purple coral off the coast of Maui, Hawaii. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In an unprecedented show of concern, 2,600 (and rising) of the world's top marine scientists have released…

Professor Baboko teaching a geography class at the Djolu Technical College of Rural Development. Photo courtesy of: Ingrid Schulze. This summer, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is expected to…

This month, momentous events will occur on the global scene that will set the tone for whether 2012 will be a hopeful year or one in which dislocations and disconnects…

Meandering river in the lowlands of Gabon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau once said, "In wilderness is the preservation of the world." Anyone…