YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Two male chimps, Avi and Max, take turns inside an electric-fenced compound where eight Central chimpanzees are housed at the Mefou Primate Sanctuary not far from Cameroon’s…
On today’s program we speak with Crystal Davis, the director of Global Forest Watch, a near-real-time forest monitoring system created by the World Resources Institute. Mongabay has partnered with Global…
Critically Endangered orangutans live in a part of the world where pristine forest is rapidly disappearing under human cultivation. From 1973–2010, Borneo lost 39 percent of its forests, and estimates…
Boxing orangutans at Safari World in Bangkok, Thailand. Video courtesy of PEGAS fter 146 years of operation, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey is closing its circus, citing dwindling…
Great apes should be humanity’s best bet for conservation — charismatic, intelligent, strikingly familiar, with big emoting eyes. It’s hard to think of creatures with whom the public empathizes more…
Ekwoge Abwe’s fight drags on. As the manager of the Ebo Forest Research Centre (EFRP), he’s been part of a long running battle to set-up a national park conserving Cameroon’s…
KABANJAHE, Indonesia — Zulbaidah used to take her family’s pet orangutan on road trips. He’d ride in the back with the kids. “He was like my own son,” the 55-year-old…
“I’m a dentist by training,” says Monica Nirmala, executive director of Indonesian non-profit Alam Sehat Lestari. The name translates to “Healthy Nature Everlasting,” and the organization, known by its acronym…
Switzerland is home to CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. But that doesn’t mean it is immune from wildlife trafficking, or that…
On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we welcome Mongabay contributing editor Glenn Scherer to the program. Glenn is responsible for Mongabay’s “Almost Famous Animals” series, which just wrapped up…
Ever since the palm oil industry started its industrial-scale expansion in South-East Asia it has been under pressure from environmental activists and NGOs for its negative impacts. Much of that…
For weeks, the primatologists had followed a group of Grauer’s gorillas over rugged terrain — hacking through dense rainforest; following knife-edged ravines; and crossing a nearly impenetrable mountainous landscape in…
The world’s most peace-loving apes will be getting a little love themselves this Valentine’s Day, as the California Senate recently passed a resolution to create the first World Bonobo Day…
The Lebialem Highlands, located in Cameroon’s southwest, is a global biodiversity hotspot, a place long protected from development by its ruggedness and small human populations, though that is no longer…
Continued from part III. After four days of sailing up the fast-flowing Mahakam we arrive in the village of Laham, not far from the end point of Raven’s trip. In…
Great apes need intact, safe habitat to thrive. But deforestation and hunting have imperiled that safety, with four out of six species now Critically Endangered, including Eastern and Western gorillas,…
Gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans -- our great ape cousins teeter on the precipice of extinction. And it’s not much of a secret that we humans have had a lot to do…
Nests, footprints and dung have been leading primatologists to new gorilla populations in the Congo Basin nation of Cameroon for over a decade. In 2002, researchers discovered nearly 100 Western…
Thailand’s Pileated gibbons (Hylobates pileatus) face a new, still largely undocumented threat: illegal loggers are penetrating deep into the forests of the nation’s national parks to cut down Endangered Siamese…
Ghaa’s life changed with the sound of a gunshot. The bullet likely killed his mother and shrapnel from the exploding shell struck Ghaa on the side of the head; a…
Five years ago, there were likely very few people outside of Indonesia who'd ever heard of a place called the Leuser ecosystem. Today, this enormous and besieged tropical rainforest on…
It’s not every day that a wild animal, held captive for years, makes it home. But two Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) — an eight-year-old male called Johnny and a ten-year-old…
Thailand is failing to control illegal trade in apes because of inadequate legislation, according to two new reports by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. The numbers of apes in Thailand’s…
BUKIT LAWANG, Indonesia — About a dozen foreign tourists clamored around an orangutan and her young child. “Can I take a photo with her?” a tanktop-clad backpacker asked. “Of course,”…
The clearing of a corridor for the Cross River Superhighway in Nigeria, which would cut through the southern half of the country, has been temporarily halted as a result of…
Try to get your head around this one. There is this beautiful natural forest area in West Kalimantan, called Sungai Putri, which roughly translates as the River of the Princess.…
The world’s largest ape, the Grauer’s gorilla or the eastern lowland gorilla, is now on the verge of extinction. The gorilla subspecies (Gorilla beringei graueri), found only in eastern Democratic…
In 2007, Indonesia launched its Strategy and Action Plan for National Conservation of Orangutans, with the goal of stabilizing all wild populations — and their dwindling rainforest habitats — by…
he oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is quite an appealing crop to growers, investors and consumers. It produces not just one but two types of oil, with a vast number of…
For more than two decades, a violent civil war and its aftermath raged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), leading to the deaths of millions of people. Forests…