A new wave of land conflicts between a major palm oil company and local communities has recently broken out in the Brazilian Amazon, raising concerns about escalating violence in the…
Engineers and realtors from southern Pará take advantage of their knowledge to abet land grabbers.
SANTA CATARINA, BRASIL — A serene orange hue cuts across the horizon with the first rays of sunlight as dawn breaks in the mountainous countryside of Brazil’s second-most southerly state,…
MEXICO CITY — Protecting the environment is no easy task. But in Mexico, it can often be deadly. The country is seeing a rise in violence against environmental defenders, who…
JAKARTA — The rampant deforestation for monoculture plantation and logging in western Indonesian Borneo has exacerbated the extinction risks of three plant species endemic to the island’s riparian lowland rainforests,…
The European Union is one step closer to adopting landmark regulations that hold companies accountable for ensuring their products don’t contribute to deforestation. A new law, passed with an overwhelming…
As bison, lynx and other wildlife return to European forests, conservationists debate whether biodiversity-enhancing reintroductions add to carbon storage and ecosystem resilience against climate change.
EBURU, Kenya — The twin peaks of Mount Eburu are draped with 87 square kilometers, about 34 square miles, of montane forest. They’re home to more than 40 species of…
A carbon credit program in a prominent national park in Peru appears to have failed at preventing significant deforestation, raising questions about whether officials in charge of the program inflated…
Revisions to the long-debated European Union Renewable Energy Directive (RED) have been approved. Those policies still support the burning of wood pellets to make energy, despite evidence of harm to forests and climate, say NGOs.
A wave of violence against Indigenous people in Nicaragua this month has drawn international outcry over the government’s lack of action against land invaders committing human rights violations and destroying…
A new legislative proposal, criticized by opponents as a step backwards in recognizing the rights and protections of uncontacted and recently contacted Indigenous people, is currently under debate in Peru’s…
As biomass burning to make energy surges, nations are setting standards that fail to count carbon emissions at power plant smokestacks, worsening climate change even as those same countries dub biomass “carbon neutral.”
Scientists and activists have tirelessly campaigned for the protection of forests to mitigate rising global temperatures and preserve humanity’s future. For some local Amazonian communities, who depend on logging, mining…
Colombia and Ecuador are implementing a new joint alert system along their shared border in an effort to increase protections for Indigenous communities suffering violent attacks from organized crime groups.…
Over the past 15 years, First Nations in Haida Gwaii and central and northern coastal British Columbia, Canada, have turned the tables around: once subjected to massive economic, social and…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow. SIEM PANG, Cambodia — “Us locals cannot source benefits from the forest…
Between May 2021 and November 2022, more than 200,000 deforestation alerts covering a total of 2,700 hectares (6,670 acres) were recorded around Ouesso, the administrative seat of Sangha province, in…
MEDAN, Indonesia — An investigation into the violent death of an orangutan in northern Sumatra in January has shone a light on the persistent problem of human-wildlife conflict and illegal…
At a conference on herpetology — the branch of zoology studying reptiles and amphibians — at the end of the 1980s, researchers from numerous countries began to tell of disappearing…
XINGU RIVER, Brazil — Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, our motorboat slides past an emerald canopy of rainforest, cascading down to the banks of the Xingu River. Beyond, in the…
This story was produced with the funding support of the Pulitzer Center. Janne Hirvasvuopio got his first Valentine’s Day card early this year. But the message that came through his…
There was hope, back in 2014, that the world would be able to halve deforestation rates within the following five years. The New York Declaration of Forests, a list of…
ALTAMIRA, Brazil — The warehouse donated to house the Castelo dos Sonhos farmers’ market for local growers has stood empty for nearly 15 years. Opened in 2008 and spanning 480…
Throughout 2022, Colombian authorities identified the presence of 40 dredgers on the Colombian side of the Puré River, with another 200 operating on the Brazilian side, where it is known…
Subsistence communities, those who live off the forest and lead largely sustainable lifestyles, can actually become drivers of forest loss and degradation under certain circumstances, according to a new study.…
It’s hard to know exactly what’s happening to the environment in Nicaragua. Data on everything from mining to deforestation to biodiversity loss is nearly impossible to get from the government.…
Last week, a timber company won a controversial lawsuit against Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority when a court ordered the agency to allow a shipment of illegal logs to be exported…
Large trees in older forests that hold significant amounts of carbon located within U.S. national forests are vulnerable to logging, according to a new study published Jan. 6 in the…
The tree kangaroos inhabiting a forested mountain range in Papua New Guinea have made an unlikely comeback in the past 40 years, but old dangers now jeopardize that rebound. Three…
