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,…
KATHMANDU — Until a few months ago, residents of Geruwa, a rural municipality in western Nepal, used to rush to their homes before dusk and shut themselves indoors. That was…
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…
Brasília National Forest is a Paris-sized oasis of green surrounded on three sides by concrete satellite cities that serve Brazil’s capital city. Extensive trails and expanses of forest make it…
KATHMANDU — In 2012, when wildlife biologist Kanchan Thapa visited Chitwan National Park, a stronghold of the Bengal tiger in Nepal, a colleague asked him a question: “How much carbon…
Carbon offset certifier Verra has suspended issuance of credits from an award-winning project in Kenya, Mongabay has learned, after serious questions were raised about its validation and methodology. Indigenous rights…
Biofuels have long been held up as a viable high-tech climate solution, but in practice they’ve often not lived up to their promise, causing environmental harm and in some cases being more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels.
For the first time ever, researchers have plotted out the locations and tabulated the carbon stocks of more than 9.9 billion individual trees spread across the dry belt of land…
Between 2004 and 2012, Brazil was able to slash deforestation by nearly 84% with a series of policies known as PPCDAm, a major instrument in reducing environmental destruction in the…
KATHMANDU — If you were a grumpy cat, you’d probably want to avoid company. And if you were the world’s grumpiest, as David Attenborough once described the elusive manul, what…
Current zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) may have the unintended consequence of pushing agriculture to other biodiversity-rich biomes, a new study led by the University of York shows. Published in Nature Ecology…
In contrast to their reputation, big plant eaters such as elephants that disturb forest and grassland vegetation could help curb climate change.
The state of Mato Grosso has approved a bill that allows extensive ranching and tourism in protected areas of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. The move comes just…
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…
Google and the World Resources Institute (WRI) this week announced the launch of a new mapping tool touted as providing an unprecedented level of detail about how land is being…
KATHMANDU — Think of big cats in Nepal, and you’ll probably picture a Bengal tiger. And while the country is famous for the Panthera tigris that prowl its southern plains…
KATHMANDU — The monsoon season in Nepal is expected to begin in the second week of June, which means officials in the country's prime habitats for Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris…
How do you justify tearing down the world’s greatest rainforest for agribusiness? Pretend it’s not a rainforest. That appears to be the thinking behind a bill introduced into Brazil’s lower…
KATHMANDU — When Nepali ornithologist Hem Bahadur Katwal reviewed the existing literature to prepare a proposal for his Ph.D., he came across a subject barely explored, not just in Nepal,…
A nearly seven-decade-long experiment in South Africa’s largest national park is yielding surprising results about how fires mold savanna land. The analysis from Kruger National Park, published in the journal…
Lazarus Nwobegai, who holds a government permit to harvest timber around Mount Cameroon National Park, knows perfectly well it's illegal to hunt the chimpanzees and other threatened primates that live…
During last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, more than 140 countries committed to halting and reversing deforestation by 2030. The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use recognized…
A forest fire that has been spreading for weeks in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego is threatening the ancestral land of an Indigenous group and destroying some of the world’s highest…
Under threat since 2020, the 20-year satellite monitoring program for deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot, may end in April due to lack of funding. "Part of…
All across the arid and semi-arid landscapes of Africa, grasslands meet the eye. These ecosystems provide a wealth of environmental services, sequestering immense amounts of carbon (grazing lands store up…
The Río San Juan Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in Central America. It is also part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which extends from…
The story of the American bison is both tragic and uplifting. Once dappling the prairies of North America in the tens of millions, hunting winnowed the number to perhaps a…
A major fire has burned more than 1,000 hectares, or nearly 2,500 acres, of grassland in the Guassa Community Conservation Area of Ethiopia. While any long-term impacts are yet to…
The rhinos are long gone, as are other large mammals like the now-extinct quagga and bluebuck. Conservationists are now fighting to preserve what remains of the renosterveld, South Africa's most…
Cattle ranchers in the U.S. will soon have a systematic way of measuring the ecological impact that their industry has on rangeland ecosystems across the country. A new study published…
