Activists and an opposition lawmaker in the Malaysian state of Pahang have demanded government accountability after reports that just 5% of forest reserves cleared to make way for plantations have…
(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) The Sundaland bioregion spans Borneo, Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsula and a myriad of smaller surrounding islands. Sundaland hosts one of the largest tracts of primary…
Over the past 20 years, more than $1 billion has been spent on orangutan conservation. Yet all three species of orangutan are currently classified as critically endangered and continue to…
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with palm oil in the region covering Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea has declined for the second straight year, a new analysis shows, dropping to…
Organizations in the Malaysian state of Sabah have filed a complaint with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples about a once-secretive deal aimed at locking up…
On the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo, fewer than 80 Sumatran rhinos are all that’s left of this critically endangered species. Tremendous conservation efforts are striving to keep these…
An agreement for the rights to the natural capital covering 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) in Malaysian Borneo for the next 100 years “in its present form is legally…
The article has been significantly amended in light of challenges to both the research itself and Mongabay's coverage of the journal article. If you get yourself a map of Peninsular…
The concept of "biocultural diversity" has gained wider prominence in recent decades as academics, institutions, and practitioners have expanded cross-disciplinary work at the intersection of human culture and biological diversity.…
They may be labeled “degraded,” but forests that have been logged, or are otherwise no longer pristine due to human activity, can still provide immense value. According to new research…
The price of palm oil has doubled since the early weeks of the pandemic. In May 2020, the price of palm oil contracts sold on the Bursa Malaysia, the main…
JAKARTA — Malaysia and Indonesia, whose fisheries have long suffered from illegal fishing, have agreed to carry out on joint patrols against poaching vessels in waters that connect the two…
A senior Malaysian forestry official faces serious public backlash after claiming logging is beneficial for tigers. The claim, made by Abdul Khalim Abu Samah, director of the Kelantan state forestry…
Activists in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, say they fear logging will ramp up following the state government's decision to overturn a ban on exporting unprocessed timber. The ban was imposed by…
2021 was a year where tropical forests featured more prominently in global headlines than normal thanks to rising recognition of the role they play in addressing climate change and biodiversity…
Update Feb. 10, 2022: Sabah's attorney general says the consent of Indigenous communities is required for this agreement to move forward. Read the update here. Adrian Lasimbang, an Indigenous leader in…
Today we take a look at two stories that Mongabay has been reporting out of Southeast Asia. Both stories involve the land rights of local and Indigenous communities in or…
Ambitious targets by Asian countries to restore tens of millions of hectares of degraded land by 2030 could be foiled by one fundamental problem: a lack of good-quality and genetically…
“Bornean communities locked into 2-million-hectare carbon deal they don’t know about” - 9 Nov 2021, Mongabay This was the headline Sabah woke up to on the morning of November 10th.…
Update Feb. 10, 2022: Sabah's attorney general says the consent of Indigenous communities is required for this agreement to move forward. Read the update here. Leaders in the Malaysian state of…
When Elisa Panjang was 10 years old, playing outside her home in Sandakan, a small town in Malaysian Borneo, she heard a snuffling sound near the forest’s edge. As she…
In 2012, researchers in Sri Lanka tracked the movements of a dozen “problem elephants” that had been translocated into protected areas due to conflict with humans. Their findings were worrying:…
Nestled on the ocean floor in Southeast Asia are five sensor-filled boxes that will reveal the future of coral reefs. For the past year, from their secret location, the Bluboxx…
Update Feb. 10, 2022: Sabah's attorney general says the consent of Indigenous communities is required for this agreement to move forward. Read the update here. Leaders in Sabah, a Malaysian state…
The Glasgow climate summit is failing to address the danger of burning forests to make energy — a practice classified as carbon neutral, though science shows that its emissions exceed that of coal per unit of energy produced.
BENGKULU, Indonesia — Scientists have recently described a new species of gecko from Borneo, highlighting the undiscovered rich biodiversity of the world’s third-largest island. Cyrtodactylus hamidyi, or the Hamidy bent-toed…
JAKARTA — A new web monitoring platform aims to achieve full traceability in palm oil supply chains and help companies to meet their zero-deforestation commitments — a goal that continues…
Indigenous Penan tribespeople have set up road blocks to stop a timber company from logging on land in Malaysian Borneo that they consider part of their ancestral heritage. The Penan…
Before the clearing and excavators and bulldozers, before plans to build a gold mine and oil palm plantations, the Jemaluang and Tenggaroh forest reserves in Johor, Malaysia, were wildlife-rich jungles…
The Kinabatangan River rises in the beating heart of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, where ancient primary forest cloaks the slopes of steep-sided mountains. As it meanders east toward the Sulu Sea,…