"Everywhere you look, it's the infrastructure that's very often the first stage in complete profound change," explains William Laurance. Laurance is a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in…
Massive forest fires in the Congo and Amazon, surging deforestation in Brazil, and tentative steps toward reform in Indonesia and Myanmar: there were no shortage of major happenings in tropical…
Remote-controlled vehicles will soon begin churning up the ocean floor off the cost of Papua New Guinea, searching for millions of tons of copper and gold. In 2011, Canada-based Nautilus…
Indonesia’s cash-strapped environment ministry is looking into establishing a trust fund to support conservation in the heavily forested Southeast Asian nation, using money from foreign donors. The move would bolster…
housands of sometimes argumentative pages have been written about conservation priorities, advocating that the more threatened or ecologically important a species is, the more it deserves immediate protection and a…
In the fight to protect the extraordinary biodiversity of Papua New Guinea’s rainforests, some conservationists are collecting a unique set of data: the sounds of the forest. Scientists with The…
While fires in Borneo and Sumatra are garnering most of the headlines for the choking air pollution they are causing across Southeast Asia, New Guinea is also experiencing widespread fire…
Global Forest Watch image showing the region in West Papua where the clearing took place Agribusiness giants Cargill and Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) are pledging to investigate a palm oil supplier…
Palm oil fresh fruit bunches in Indonesia. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Last summer, an Indonesian NGO published research showing that an oil palm developer controlled by one of the country's…
Global forest loss drops in 2013, but still tops 18M ha Forest loss in Malaysia and Indonesia, 2001-2013. Click to enlarge. Russia and Canada led the world in forest loss,…
Lowland rainforest in West Papua. An Indonesian police official busted for illegal logging in West Papua has been missing from jail for nearly a year after being granted permission to…
Community leader in Aceh, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Public hearings into alleged violations of indigenous peoples' land rights will open next week in Palu on the island of…
Palm fruit in Indonesia An Indonesian Stock Exchange-listed company whose commissioner is a member of The Nature Conservancy-Indonesia's board has been clearing dense rainforest in New Guinea, finds a new…
Satellite image of PNG. Courtesy of Google Earth The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), the world's largest group of tropical researchers, is calling on the government of Papua…
Peat swamp in Malaysian Borneo Long considered an unproductive hindrance to growth and development, peat swamp forests in Southeast Asia have been systematically cleared, drained and burned away to make…
Indonesia now has the highest deforestation rate in the world, topping even Brazil which has more than five times the natural forest cover. Background photo: rainforest in Sumatra. Despite a…
Oil palm tree. Papua New Guinea's National Court has declared two leases held by Malaysia-based Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad (KLK) null and void, and ordered the government to cancel the…
Plans to rapidly expand palm oil production in Indonesian New Guinea are unlikely to boost livelihoods for local communities since most investors are outsiders and the bulk of workers will…
Aerial view of jungle river on the island of New Guinea. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Corruption, weak governance, and powerful timber barons are illegally stripping the forests of Papua…
Aru Islands. Courtesy of Global Forest Watch. An Indonesian plantation company may be preparing to destroy up to half of the natural forests on Indonesia's remote Aru Islands, reports Forest…
A solitary rainforest tree remains standing in a recently planted palm oil plantation on former orang-utan habitat inside the PT Karya Makmur Abadi Estate II palm oil concession. PT KMA…
Background image courtesy of Bing Maps. The Indonesian government has rejected nearly 932,000 hectares (2.3 million acres) of oil palm, timber, and logging concessions due to its moratorium on new…
Across New Guinea, deforestation is occurring at increasing levels. Whether it be industrial logging, monoculture plantations, hunters felling trees in pursuit of arboreal wildlife, or other forms of forest conversion,…
Palm plantations expanding at 7% per year across Malaysia and Indonesia Some 3.5 million hectares (8.7 million acres) of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea was converted for…
Palm oil giant Golden-Agri Resources (GAR) will forgo development of an oil palm plantation in an area of rainforest in Indonesian New Guinea in order to comply with its forest…
Loss of forest cover increased sharply in Bolivia, Madagascar, and Ecuador during the third quarter of 2013, according to an update from NASA scientists. NASA's Quarterly Indicator of Cover Change…
MIFEE project site in Papua, Indonesian New Guinea. Map courtesy of Google Earth. Land grabs and environmental destruction linked to an agricultural megaproject in Indonesia’s Papua province are devastating indigenous…
Palm oil being used to perpetuate fraud, land-grabbing in Papua New Guinea Developers are seeking palm oil concessions to as a means to circumvent restrictions on industrial logging in Papua…
Labora Sitorus, a former police officer accused of running a nearly $150 million illegal logging ring in Indonesian New Guinea, faces charges of money laundering, illegal logging and fuel smuggling,…
