GUASSA COMMUNITY CONSERVATION AREA, Ethiopia — On an early misty morning in July, Worku Mekonen, 39, one of the scouts at the Guassa Community Conservation Area in Ethiopia’s central highlands,…
MORONDAVA, Madagascar — As the director of Kirindy Mite National Park and Andranomena Special Reserve near Madagascar’s southwestern coast, Diamondra Andriambololona oversees the protection of nearly 162,770 hectares (402,213 acres)…
JAKARTA — The tropics lost 10% more primary rainforest in 2022 than in 2021, as forest loss in deforestation hotspots like Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continued…
Pico de Orizaba National Park is one of the most important protected areas in central Mexico. The park spans 19,000 hectares (47,000 acres), is home to a pine forest with…
BELO-SUR-MER, Madagascar — The situation was dire in Kirindy Mite National Park during a visit in November 2022. The previous year, a huge tract of forest had been ravaged by…
A court in northern Thailand has agreed to hear a citizen-led lawsuit filed against the government for inaction to address air pollution that experts say reduces people’s life expectancy and…
JAKARTA — Most peatlands in Indonesia that need protection are currently not protected, a new study has found. It identifies 5.65 million hectares (13.96 million acres) of peatlands — an…
Imagine a burned forest in California. The charred remains of trees, the soot on the forest floor and the smoke in the air might make it seem like all is…
“We couldn’t see the sun for a whole month because of the clouds of smoke. For an entire month, between October and November (2022), we didn’t see the sun,” said…
Afromontane forests occur at high altitudes across Africa. They’re thought to be relics of former glacial periods in Africa. Studying genetic data from birds living in these moist temperate forests,…
Smoke from the catastrophic 2019-20 Australian bushfires may have tipped the planet into a La Niña climate phenomenon lasting almost three years, according to new research published May 10 in…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — After 14 years in Madagascar, it was the last straw for Graine de Vie, a Belgian NGO dedicated to reforestation. In October, 50,000 saplings in the Ambohitantely…
As a field biologist, Keith Perchemlides has often watched flames dance around tiny ponds that mark the remains of a vast wetland that once covered a large part of southwestern…
More than 7% of all mountain forests have been destroyed during the past two decades, according to a new study published in the journal One Earth. Using high-resolution satellite data…
SÃO PAULO—A new study published in Nature estimates that forests in Indigenous lands in Brazil’s Amazon have the potential to absorb over 7,000 tons of noxious fumes from forest fires…
KATHMANDU — On an early spring afternoon on the fringes of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, smoke fills the air and the smell of burning grass is overpowering. As flames rage…
Life goes at its own pace in the town of Chihuahua, where the modern mixes with Mennonite traditions. To one side, horse-drawn carts pull up at a plot of land…
The dry season of 2015 was a devastating one for Indonesia, with around 100,000 fires engulfing thousands of hectares of tropical rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands on the islands of Sumatra,…
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — In the middle of the Paraguayan portion of the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest, a paved road leads to the Mbya Indigenous community of Pindo’i. Roads in the…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi to 15 years in prison for his role in the biggest corruption case in the country’s history.…
When we speak about destruction of the Amazon, deforestation data are often the reference. Over the last few decades, it is the rates of clear cutting that are best documented,…
Temperate peatlands sequester tremendous amounts of carbon, but many have experienced extensive harm. Now, as climate change worsens, land managers are urgently moving to restore these vital ecosystems.
On Aug. 28, 2022, NASA satellites picked up a small, isolated cluster of fire alerts in the southwestern corner of Bolivia’s Noel Kempff Mercado National Park. By Sept. 5, the…
TRIUNFO DO XINGU, Brazil — Lenice Divina Ramos weaves through knee-high weeds and scorched shrubs before halting abruptly near the slice of jungle where, not long ago, she found the…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Intensive efforts in recent years to prevent fires in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s perennial epicenter of forest and land fires, will be put to the test…
Record fires, climate change, large-scale agriculture, deforestation and a proposed industrial waterway collectively threaten the world’s largest tropical wetland — a biodiversity hotspot and home to jaguars.
In the western United States, natural periods of fire and snow are cyclical. The summer brings wildfire season, and the winter brings ski season. But as the globe warms, these…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has passed into law a sweeping set of amendments to the country’s Criminal Code, which experts have warned will weaken environmental protections. The House of Representatives…
Since time immemorial, the Karuk tribe of northern California have managed their ancestral lands, over 400,000 hectares of open oak woodlands, meadows, and forested mountains along the middle section of…
JAKARTA — Indonesia's Supreme Court has ruled President Joko Widodo not liable in the disastrous fires in 2015 that devastate large swathes of rainforests and peatlands in the country, despite…
