Islands News

MAUMERE, Indonesia — A newly inaugurated governor in Indonesia has called a time-out on mining in his province, citing a lack of benefits for residents from the extractive industry. “We…

More isolated oceanic islands harbor fewer native species due to the fact that plants and animals are less capable of naturally dispersing to and colonizing those islands. This is known…

JAKARTA — Locals and activists have denounced plans to build tourism infrastructure in Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, a string of sun-kissed islands best known for their resident giant lizards. Developers…

The world’s largest colony of king penguins has declined drastically by nearly 90 percent, a new study has found. The massive king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) colony on the remote island…

GEORGE TOWN, Malaysia — Muddy carpets and soaked furniture lay in moldering piles on the streets of this state capital. It was Sunday morning, Oct. 29, 2017. Eight days earlier,…

Plant numbers have surged in a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean following the eradication of invasive rats that gobbled up seeds and gnawed away at vegetation, a new…

Evolution takes time and space. Enough time needs to pass for genetic differences to crop up in a population of animals and make them distinct from their forebears. And enough…

The remote island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean has finally been declared free of invasive rats and mice in the world’s largest-ever rodent eradication effort. A monitoring…

For logging on islands to be sustainable, it must adhere to clearly defined parameters that limit the impact on water quality and soil erosion, according to new research in the…

The tropical Caribbean island of Haiti is a paradise with a rich, fascinating history, natural wonders, and diverse cultural offerings. It has also been named by some as the next big…

Though the approximately 465,000 islands on planet Earth represent just over five percent of total global land area, they are disproportionately rich in threatened biodiversity — and researchers have now…

On the island of Makira, in the eastern Solomon Islands, bat teeth are more valuable than paper money. But their use as a currency has contributed to widespread hunting of…

For years, sovereign rights in the South China Sea have been an object of fierce contention among the states that border it: the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam (all…

Zanzibar is home to many more individuals of an endemic monkey species than biologists previously believed, according to a recent study. “Scientists have known about the Zanzibar red colobus monkey…

A team of scientists from Seychelles, the United States and the United Kingdom has found a new caecilian, perhaps the smallest species of the legless amphibian on Earth. "As soon…

From the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, scientists have described two new species of Pisonia trees — a group of notorious "birdcatcher trees" known to produce sticky seeds that can…

For a long time, people living on the Vangunu Island in the Solomons spoke about the "vika", a giant rat on the island that lives in trees and cracks open…

High tide keeps getting higher on the islands of the Republic of Kiribati – 33 coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean that rest only a few feet above sea level.…

This is the first in a two-part series on logging in the Solomon Islands. Read the second part for more discussion on the topic. The Solomon Islands is a country that’s…

This is the second in a two-part series on logging in the Solomon Islands. Read the first part for more discussion on the topic. Several companies are vying for the rights to harvest timber in…