Hollow eye sockets glared at me from the dark tropical leaf litter. Not expecting to be watched from below, I rested on my haunches, searching with the image recognition software…
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia — For 20 years, Redansyah has awakened every day at 5 a.m. to plant trees here in the Pesalat forest area of Central Kalimantan province. The Indigenous…
MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Andi Fadly Arifuddin is known to millions of Indonesians simply as Fadly, the vocalist for the alt-rock band Padi that shot to fame in the early 2000s.…
PALAWAN, Philippines — In the middle of the brackish water of Malampaya Sound in the Philippines’ Palawan province, Panchito Calamare stands on an outrigger fishing boat one drizzling May morning,…
Tony Rinaudo is an Australian agronomist who was given the Right Livelihood Award in 2018 for demonstrating how drylands can be re-greened on a large scale at minimal cost, making…
Aziil Anwar, a prolific planter of mangroves on coral damaged by blast fishing in Indonesia’s West Sulawesi province, rallying many children to his cause, died in hospital on May 6.…
MEDAN, Indonesia — On a recent morning in Kampung Nelayan, a village on the northeastern coast of the island of Sumatra, fisherman Heri Gunawan returned home frustrated and dissatisfied. Heri…
For years, seabird ecologist Jennifer Lavers longed to survey the colonies of short-tailed shearwaters on Figure of Eight Island off the coast of Western Australia. She’d identified this remote island…
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,…
KATHMANDU — Throughout much of their range, Asian elephants are regarded as incarnations of the Hindu god Ganesh, the elephant-headed deity of wisdom. But in Nepal, as in neighboring India…
MINAWAO, Cameroon — The refugee camp comes to life soon after dawn, some residents shouldering tools and exchanging greetings as they head out to the small farms they've established on…
Reforestation initiatives are more popular than ever, with thousands of projects across the globe led by private companies, nonprofits, institutions, governments and communities. So how can an investor or donor…
CHELEM, Mexico — In Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, a few words describe the most common occupations: fisher, merchant, mother. Over the past decade, the port town of Chelem has seen the…
KIRKWOOD, South Africa — About 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, inland from the coastal city of Gqeberha, a brilliant patch of green stands out against a landscape recovering from six…
AMMAN, Jordan — It’s a quiet day in Omar al-Faisal Park, in the impoverished industrial outskirts of Jordan’s capital, Amman. Sandwiched between the runway of a military airport and residential…
In the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean lies a remote tropical island known as Saint Helena. It is a United Kingdom territory that is 1,200 miles (1,950 km) west…
Tanzania’s Rufiji Delta is arguably the mangrove capital of East Africa, home to around 55,000 hectares (135,900 acres) of mangrove forest. In the face of the climate crisis, mangroves like…
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…
PALAWAN, Philippines — On a dreary April day, agroforestry worker Jimmy Tablason frowns in the sweltering heat as he trudges through the ruins of forests protected for decades by his…
RIPÁ, Brazil — One muggy morning last December, eight women and their chief drove out of the Indigenous Xavante village of Ripá across a forested savanna in the Brazilian state…
In February 2020, lightning struck Figure of Eight Island in Western Australia’s Recherche Archipelago, igniting a fire that burned through most of its vegetation in just a few days. While…
Land degradation – the deterioration or loss of the productive capacity of land – is progressing at an alarming rate. Globally, over a fifth of the total land area has…
Food systems are responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation, 70% of freshwater use and contribute to 40% of the planet’s land degradation says a recently published report by the…
An international team of scientists studying the distribution and threats facing some of South and Southeast Asia’s most economically important tree species has confirmed that current environmental protections fail to…
In 1993, the democratically elected president of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated in a coup. At the time, the country’s democratic institutions were still only three months old. The incident…
Mongabay looked into three inspiring landscape restoration efforts in three different countries. In Lebanon, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, residents have taken things into their own hands and…
Traditional and Indigenous peoples in the Arctic are joining with scientists to successfully rewild mining-degraded peatlands and other sites.
Each morning as the sun rises into the sky, ranger Donovan Wright stands on the outskirts of Blean Woods in the United Kingdom. The ancient woodland in southern England covers…
SHOUF BIOSPHERE RESERVE, Lebanon — Late afternoon light falls across Talal Riman’s weathered face as he stands under the ancient cedars he’s tended for almost three decades in Lebanon’s Shouf…
