Fragmentation News

Giraffes have to search a wider area for food and water when people live nearby, according to a recent study. “Giraffes are huge browsing animals that live in African savanna…

DJOUM, Cameroon — “This right there used to be hell.” It’s early February 2019, deep in the tropical rainforest in southeastern Cameroon, the day after a night of heavy downpour.…

Ecologists know that when we humans start tugging at the threads of a food web, the unraveling that results is often catastrophic to the connected species, paving the way for…

Illegal gold mining is on the verge of wiping out an iconic wetland forest in the heart of Madagascar’s flagship national park, according to a new paper. Forest loss due…

JAKARTA — Road projects throughout Indonesian Borneo threaten to fragment a third of the forest habitat currently accessible to the island’s wildlife, according to a new study. Completion of ongoing…

Its cement wings spanning over 20 feet, the effigy of the Philippine eagle was sculpted in Davao City’s People’s Park to commemorate the country’s national bird and celebrate a time…

Very few tropical forests around the world enjoy uninterrupted contiguity. Most are divided into uneven, small fragments, cut off from each other, their boundaries marked by roads or farms. But as…

On this episode we welcome the godfather of biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, to discuss some of the most important environmental issues we’re currently facing and why he believes the next…

Armed bandits attacked a village on the edge of Ranomafana National Park in southeastern Madagascar in late July. They robbed residents and killed an employee of the Centre ValBio (CVB)…

When Chinese President Xi Jinping extolls China’s Belt & Road Initiative, he uses words like “green”, “low carbon” and “sustainable”. Is this reality or just ‘greenwashing’—vague and flimsy promises that…

According to a recent report, mining companies currently have claims on 11 percent of all intact rainforests left in the world, meaning 590,000 square kilometers (227,800 square miles) of pristine…

Rising human populations and widespread industrial agriculture have hemmed one of the least-understood cats on the planet into ever-smaller patches of forest on the island of Borneo, a recent study…

Brazil's Atlantic Forest is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. However, over the last 500 years its extension has been dramatically decreasing, and today it occupies roughly 15 percent of…

Carving up rainforests to make room for farming, ranching and other uses induces a host of changes into the ecosystem, many of which scientists are only just beginning to understand.…

How effective is environmental restoration? On today’s episode, we seek answers to that question through the lens of a much needed new project at the University of Cambridge collecting restoration…

Deforestation in the tropics is caused by many different human activities that vary in intensity depending on location. In South America, industrial agriculture is the big driver of deforestation while…

Forest fires are no longer driven mainly by deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with climate change induced drought now taking a major role.

When a farmer cuts down a tree in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there’s often a reason for it. She’s most likely clearing the land to plant crops — the…

The smallest wild cat species in the Americas faces big problems as its habitat dwindles and it’s targeted as a farm pest. But a new study shows it may be…

While surveying the rainforests of eastern Ghana’s Atewa mountain range, scientists stumbled upon a surprise as they were checking footage from their camera traps: monkeys with long tails and distinctive,…

Over the past 10 years many areas of once-forested land degraded by cattle in the Amazon have been converted to oil palm. To measure how the oil palm plantations may…

Habitat fragmentation and biomass reduction on isolated forest islands at the Balbina dam – with trees replaced by lianas – resulted in increased carbon emissions.

The sustainability and legality claims of the largest plywood importer in the US have come under question after it was found to have received shipments of Malaysian plywood worth more…

ANKAFOBE, Madagascar — When he first told colleagues at the Missouri Botanical Garden that lemurs still lived in the forest in Ankafobe, Jean Jacques Rasolofonirina said he was met with…

RANOMAFANA NATIONAL PARK, Madagascar — Late in the afternoon on June third of this year, Pierette Razafiandravao was at home getting ready for a church outing the following day when…

Large forest carnivores rely on expanses of natural vegetation and enough prey to survive. Misiones province of northeastern Argentina has some of the larger remaining tracts of Atlantic Forest, but…

Experts gathered last week in Malaysia’s capital to explore ways to maximize the benefits of road projects without severely impacting the environment.

ANOSY REGION, Madagascar — The land in the Mandrare River Basin, in southeastern Madagascar, does not seem like the kind of place that could support an economy based on wood.…

To travel in Madagascar is to be reminded of just how small we are relative to our pale blue dot of a planet, or even its fourth largest island. Travel…

Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are known for their elusive ways. Even people who share the mountains with the silvery felines seldom spot them. In spring 2014 a crew of filmmakers…