Forest Fires News

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…

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…

This year’s Amazon fire season was milder than the previous two years, but there were still nearly 1,000 major fires, many of them in recently cleared areas in the Brazilian…

ROBORÉ, Bolivia — Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve comprises around 2,644 square kilometers (1,021 square miles) of semi-arid forest and scrubland in the heart of southern Bolivia’s Chiquitania region. But…

ORLEANS, California—An elemental smell wafts through the Klamath mountains in early autumn—woodsmoke. Despite the U.S. Forest Service’s intermittent bans on lighting fires in the forest, the Karuk Tribe is maintaining…

Some of the world’s largest beef exporters are still buying cattle that grazed in protected areas of the Amazon rainforest, despite commitments to stop this practice, according to a new…

This report is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam, La Región and Red Ambiental de Información. ROBORÉ, Bolivia—The Ñembi Guasu region is referred to as the “great refuge”…

Tropical deforestation is predominantly driven by agriculture, but vast tracts of cleared forest do not become productive land. That’s according to a global review of tropical deforestation published in Science.…

Rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon exploded in August with deforestation reaching 1,661 square kilometers (641 square miles) — an area more than 28 times the size of Manhattan —…

Towns in the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Pará have experienced a recent bout of skies overcast with thick clouds of smoke, the result of fires raging in the Amazon…

JAKARTA — An ambitious and long-anticipated plan by Indonesian lawmakers to revise the country’s criminal code, inherited from the Dutch colonial era, could make it much more difficult to prosecute…

Forest loss is increasing south of the Orinoco River due to lack of Venezuelan official oversight, a growing Colombian insurgency, fires set to create mining camps, and new agricultural lands cleared to feed miners.

Across Russia, Europe, Indonesia, the Amazon Basin, North America, Australia, and beyond, we have watched fires blaze across landscapes, causing immense damage to life and land. Now, a new analysis…

The fires started small, charring a handful of areas scattered across a southern stretch of Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands. Fueled by searing temperatures and months of drought, the flames quickly spread…

Morocco fire forces evacuation of 15 villages and sparks fears that hundreds of endangered Barbary macaques may have been killed.

JAKARTA — Fires are flaring up in Indonesia’s Riau province, the perennial epicenter of the burning season in Sumatra, as the dry season sets in. At the end of March,…

Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at…

BENGKALIS, Indonesia — On the east coast of the island of Sumatra lies a grove of timber, fruit and native trees known as the Marsawa Peat Arboretum. This shady grove,…

PREK TABAEK, Cambodia — The roots of the forests surrounding Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake spend half the year submerged in water. But in the past five years, they’ve been catching…

Smoke from fires in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are getting closer to cities. The combination of the highest number of forest fires in 15 years and highest ever deforestation…

This past June, scientists and researchers gathered outside the office of INPE, Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, in the municipality of São José dos Campos. They were there to…

CUESTA DEL TERNERO, ARGENTINA – On a brisk spring day in September 2021, an Indigenous Mapuche community known as Lof Quemquemtrew announced it had reclaimed a piece of ancestral territory…

JAKARTA — A new analysis warns of the potential for forest fires in Indonesia that could spread smoke to neighboring countries as this year’s dry season sets in, following two…