JAKARTA — An Indonesian government initiative that fell short of its goal to rehabilitate degraded peat forests will get another chance to do so — plus the added task of…
AKLAN, Philippines — In December 1989, Elizabeth Ramos, now 63, heard from a neighbor that a mangrove reforestation project was underway near her home in the province of Aklan in…
“In the years when logging was not happening, sometimes you did not see the sunlight in the bush because of the tree cover,” said Musa Mballo, a forest protection activist…
Five years ago – where the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea meet is the small South American country of Guyana – an offshore oil exploration struck black gold. At…
The vast tangled mangrove forests that sweep along so many tropical coasts are one of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems. They also play crucial roles in protecting coastlines from erosion…
SINGAPORE — Languishing in the soft, silty mud, the living fossil looked as if it didn’t have a care in the world as it feasted on the fish left stranded…
MANILA — On July 29, the San Miguel Corporation, the Philippines’ largest company by revenue, started planting 25,000 mangrove trees in a coastal area just north of the capital, Manila.…
A Japanese ship that wrecked off the coast of Mauritius in July and sparked one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history may have run aground because of…
On the morning of Aug.15, a wrecked ship, longer than the Titanic, broke in two in Mauritian waters. The Japanese-owned bulk carrier, M.V. Wakashio, had rammed into the island nation's…
Mauritius, envied the world over for its azure waters, alluring beaches and marine riches, is facing one of its worst environmental disasters after a ship ran aground on a coral…
BANGKA BELITUNG, Indonesia — Fishers in Sumatra have joined forces in opposition to a government plan to allow coastal mining that they say will destroy their fisheries. The government of…
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — A $9.3 billion residential and tourism development has been approved within the buffer zone of the Can Gio Mangrove Biosphere Reserve here in this…
“Twenty years ago, I collected between 600 to 800 a day – now I’m lucky if I can harvest 150.” Adrian Torres holds a black, shining, wrinkled mollusk (Anadara tuberculosa)…
AKLAN, Philippines — An oil spill on July 3 threatens a mangrove forest on the Philippine island of Guimaras, an area only just recovering from the country’s largest spill in…
MANNAR, Sri Lanka — The Vidattaltivu coastal belt in Sri Lanka’s north was once home to the marine unit of the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group, known as the “Sea Tigers.”…
The threshold beyond which the world’s mangrove forests can survive could be reached within the next 30 years if sea levels continue to rise at their current pace and greenhouse…
PALAWAN, Philippines — Lawyers have condemned police officers on the Philippine island of Palawan for holding at gunpoint and arresting environmental law enforcers who visited a coastal village on June…
JAKARTA — The Waladuna mosque is submerged in a meter of seawater, about 3 feet deep. It’s low tide in northern Jakarta. During high tide, the water creeps up to…
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — As the largest urban area in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City is known for its kinetic pace of life, rivers of motorbike traffic, and…
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,…
In the past, wetlands — marshes, fens, peatlands, flooded forests, mangroves — were widely considered unproductive wastelands full of disease and danger. In a world where the human instinct was…
JAKARTA — The oil palm processing industry has become the biggest threat to the iconic and endangered proboscis monkeys of Indonesian Borneo, a new study has found. The study, published…
KUTA, Indonesia — Indonesia plans to restore more than 300,000 hectares (741,300 acres) of idle shrimp-farming ponds to boost its fisheries and reduce deforestation of the country’s mangrove ecosystems, according…
Most of us have places where we feel safe — a tree in our backyard, a den in our house, a beach in our town. But these days, some “safe…
BENGKULU, Indonesia — Hearings in a lawsuit filed by residents over a newly built Chinese-funded coal-fired power plant in Sumatra have revealed a litany of irregularities behind the permit that…
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…
SAGAR ISLAND, India — Saktipada Bhuinya looks out over the ocean that surrounds Sagar Island. The Indian part of the Sundarbans, the vast mangrove forest in the Bay of Bengal,…
On August 11, 2006, the oil tanker M/T Solar 1, hired by Petron Corporation, sank off the coast of Guimaras, an island province in the Philippines, spilling more than 2.1…
JAKARTA — Bali’s mangrove-rich Benoa Bay is now legally off-limits for any reclamation or development activities, following the government’s designation of the area as a maritime conservation zone. Spanning some…
