TANJUNG GUSTA, Indonesia — Today marks the finale of the fifth congress of the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN). In a grand caucus that happens only twice a…
TANJUNG GUSTA, Indonesia — Presidential Chief of Staff Teten Masduki was the object of a forceful gesture yesterday when a Papuan man approached the stage on which he was sitting…
TANJUNG GUSTA, Indonesia — Abdon Nababan, head of the world’s largest indigenous peoples alliance, was telling reporters today why it had supported Joko Widodo’s bid for the nation’s top job in…
MEDAN, Indonesia — Sumatra is haunted by a raft of environmental problems. There are the annual fires that burn across the island’s vast peat swamp zones, which have been widely…
BUKIT LAWANG, Indonesia — About a dozen foreign tourists clamored around an orangutan and her young child. “Can I take a photo with her?” a tanktop-clad backpacker asked. “Of course,”…
No roads shall pass through Mount Leuser National Park. So said the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry in response to just such a proposal from the governor of North Sumatra…
BINJAI, Indonesia — A man on the Southeast Asian country's main western island of Sumatra said goodbye to his pet crocodile this week, handing it over to authorities after learning…
Driving down a winding road here in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, one finally arrives at the sweeping vista of Lake Toba. Ringed with pine-studded hills, the volcanic lake was thronged…
It was a sunny afternoon in North Sumatra when Muhamad Syahrial, a worker on a rubber estate in the Indonesian province, spotted a slithering snake among the children at play in…
Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem lost 4,097 hectares of forest cover in the first six months of 2016, according to Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh (HAkA), an NGO. At the same…
Another mass fish death has hit Indonesia’s main western island of Sumatra. Four months after millions of carp and tilapia died suddenly in Lake Toba, the archipelagic country’s biggest lake,…
n the morning of May 4, the fish farmers of Haranggaol were waking up to feed the tilapia and carp they raise in floating cages here on Indonesia’s Lake Toba.…
After an Indonesian district deployed the military and police to enforce a controversial program to dismantle fish farms in a Lake Toba village, chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan said that…
From the shore, the fish farmers looked on as soldiers dismantled their floating cages. These community-owned tilapia farms had been the main source of income in Sualan — a village…
An Indonesian soldier was arrested for wildlife trafficking in Sumatra on Saturday in the latest indication of military involvement in organized crime. The man and a civilian were intercepted in…
When the sun rose over Indonesia's giant Lake Toba on Wednesday last week, fish farmers saw that death in the night had visited their floating cages, and taken everything. By…
Almost half of the forests in Indonesia’s Sumatra are within reach of the average bird trapper, finds a new study published in Conservation Biology. Based on interviews with 49 trappers…
[This article has been updated to reflect Wilmar's November 19 response to a Mongabay inquiry of November 16.] Lowland forests and carbon-rich peat bogs, the most vital landscapes in Southeast…
Ongoing haze pollution on Tuesday led Riau's acting governor to extend the province’s state of emergency until October 20, as Indonesia’s home affairs minister called on local politicians to review…
Out over the corrugated roofs and laundry lines dotted about Kinangkung village, forest canopy begins to fade into the foothills of Sumatra’s most active volcano. Here around 30 kilometers west…
