It’s not uncommon to find ecologist Greg Asner flying transects over the rainforests of the Amazon or Borneo. His specially outfitted plane has helped map out the three-dimensional structure of…
Donald Trump has proposed reducing U.S. foreign aid and U.N. support for climate change programs to zero, with possible repercussions in Africa.
Scientists know that the carbon released by large-scale deforestation in the tropics inevitably helps boost global temperatures. Now, new research indicates that this conversion of land, often to farms and…
Logged tropical forests have a bit of a bad reputation in the conservation community. They’re often seen as sub-standard habitats for animals, especially when compared with the robust and varied…
Planet Earth is barreling through its sixth mass extinction right now, and there’s little doubt among scientists that we humans are responsible. Despite the challenges we face, the encouraging twist…
Scientists and conservationists have long believed that the rapid loss of Southeast Asia’s old-growth, “primary” rainforests in recent decades would leave one of its most iconic inhabitants, the orangutan, with…
Brazil’s Forest Code, a set of laws passed in 2012 to protect the country’s vast wooded landscapes, carried with it the promise of stopping illegal deforestation and continuing the country’s…
Researchers have compiled the first-ever carbon map of rainforests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The DRC is home to 60 percent of the Congo rainforest, the second-largest…
The West Kalimantan governor wants to exempt timber firms in the Indonesian province from a national ban on peatland drainage, drawing the ire of green groups who say such a…
New research has, for the first time, made use of very high resolution images of Earth’s drylands, revealing that they hold a much larger portion of the world’s forests than…
New maps of forest biodiversity in Peru illustrate the importance of lands held by indigenous peoples in safeguarding a wide variety of forest types, even as more formal protections such…
It’s estimated that deforestation is responsible for about 10 percent of global carbon emissions. Of course, in addition to the direct emissions created, the destruction of a forest means the…
New research provides yet more evidence that granting indigenous and other local communities formal title to their traditional lands can be a boon to efforts to conserve forests. Deforestation is…
During the UN climate talks in December 2015 that would ultimately produce the Paris Climate Agreement, indigenous leaders from Africa, Asia and Latin America presented a fairly simple proposition: give…
A report released today, on the International Day of Forests, finds that forest protection in the United States must be drastically increased in order to mitigate the climate crisis and…
Americans living in the continental United States looking to get out into nature have a longer drive ahead of them than they would have had in the early 20th Century.…
As the planet warms, the soil underfoot could release more carbon than previously thought, a new study has found. “Previously, I think people thought that the surface is what matters,”…
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s extensive forests seem like a bright spot in an otherwise-troubled country. With forests covering an area larger than Colombia, DRC has managed to sidestep the…
It’s no secret that natural wealth in many African countries often sparks conflict and precipitates decades of the suffering of local populations. Liberia’s ‘resource curse’ is no different. With more…
Evidence continues to mount for the toll climate change is taking on the ecosystems of the United States’ national parks and forests from coast to coast. The latest study, published…
