JAKARTA — A million-dollar bribery case in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s palm oil heartland, has prompted calls for a wider investigation into corruption between business players and the local…
JAKARTA — A quota-based fisheries management system that the Indonesian government introduced earlier this year has already run up against opposition for undermining the role of local authorities and fishing…
SERAM ISLAND, Indonesia — Zainudin Kelsaba traversed across the eastern Seram highland and stopped at an ancient outcrop grown over by trees and scrub. “The mountain is our home,” Zainudin…
WEST SERAM, Indonesia — It’s a sunny day off the coast of Piru village on the island district of West Seram, in Indonesia’s Maluku province. La Samiun and his wife…
ARU ISLANDS, Indonesia — More than 10 years have passed since a young official in Indonesia’s eastern Aru Islands saved his archipelago from becoming a monoculture plantation. Today, Mika Ganobal…
JAKARTA — Small-scale and traditional fishers make the greatest contribution to Indonesia’s total fish production, driving the country’s rise as one of the world’s top fishing nations. In an effort…
AMBON, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia’s Maluku province say they will establish new marine protected areas this year, following from five created last year alone, as part of wider efforts…
In April, Indonesia’s fisheries minister, Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, announced there would be no funding from the 2022 national budget to develop the National Fish Bank in Maluku province, or a…
TERNATE, Indonesia — At the inauguration of the Guraping Mangrove Tourism Forest last month in Sofifi, a sleepy coastal town and capital of one of Indonesia’s remotest provinces, North Maluku…
AMBON, Indonesia — Conservation officials in Indonesia have deplored the cutting up of a dugong that had died in a stranding incident this week, with its body parts reportedly destined…
GORONTALO, Indonesia — Camera traps have confirmed the presence of babirusa on Indonesia’s Buru Island for the first time in 26 years, the country’s environment ministry announced earlier this month.…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Images by Nanang Sujana. When the people of Aru discovered that most of the land in their islands was to be converted…
AMBON, Indonesia — Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry has charged a director of a plantation firm on the eastern Indonesian island of Seram with illegal logging in a dispute…
AMBON, Indonesia — Activists in Indonesia have called on police to drop criminal charges against two indigenous men who took part in a confrontation against a company accused of illegally…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. In late 2013, during a hearing convened by the local legislature of Indonesia’s Maluku province, a…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. When the politician in charge of Indonesia’s Aru Islands signed permits for a vast sugar plantation,…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. This month Mongabay and The Gecko Project published “Saving Aru,” an article chronicling how the people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands thwarted a…
This story was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. (Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) I. The movement begins Late one rainy night in August 2013, a…
The coral reefs of the lesser Sunda-Banda seascape in southeastern Indonesia host some of the planet’s most biodiverse marine ecosystems, which remain relatively untouched even as overfishing ravages sea life…
ARU ISLANDS, Indonesia — In one of this country’s most isolated places, Ipus Apalem believes he has finally found a way for his village of 400 to improve its lot.…
AMBON, Indonesia — Last February, a crocodile in eastern Indonesia crawled right into a trap. The animal, a 2-meter-long (6.6-foot) saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), was suspected to have preyed on…
DENPASAR/BURU ISLAND, Indonesia — Illegal online mercury sales are booming in Indonesia, and activists have had enough. "Nearly all the mercury players in Indonesia do their business illegally,” says Yuyun…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is racing to certify its world-leading tuna fisheries as sustainable, drawn by the lucrative global market for eco-labeled seafood. The government has since 2014 rolled out a…
JAKARTA — In May 2015, a wildlife smuggler was arrested at an Indonesian port. He had attempted to transport nearly two dozen yellow-crested cockatoos, stuffed in plastic water bottles, aboard…
MARAFENFEN/LORANG, Indonesia — Benedictus has to go out just after dark to check his traps. If he goes any earlier, the palm cockatoos will still be awake and hear him…
(Read the first article in the series, "The palm oil fiefdom.") Indonesia, a nation of thousands of islands draped across the equator, is in the grips of a social and…
Indonesian police arrested five fishermen last week for trafficking 38 sea turtles from an important nesting site in the archipelago country’s eastern waters. Six of the turtles were dead. The…
Made by human hands, thousands of floating structures that attract fish speckle Indonesian waters throughout the archipelago. Some drift. Some stand anchored to the ocean bottom. These fish aggregating devices —…
The Indonesian fisheries ministry has reopened a probe into Pusaka Benjina Resources, a company at the center of last year’s slavery and human trafficking scandal that is thought to have…
Twenty-hour work days, savage beatings with stingray tails, years at sea with no way home. Until the release of a thunderbolt Associated Press report in March 2015, these brutal features…
