LABASA, Fiji — Jerry Lotawa knows his forest. He was raised in the tiny settlement of Drawa, a village of 11 brightly painted houses tucked high in the mountains of…
LABASA, Fiji — No one finds their way to the village of Drawa by accident. To get there, you must first board a tiny plane to Labasa, the biggest town…
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — A moratorium on deep-sea mining established by a group of Pacific island nations has struck a blow to the Solwara 1 project in Papua…
“There is no Planet B,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared to an audience of officials and Indigenous landowners at a conservation event in Papua New Guinea on July 28. Macron's…
A recent study found that locally managed marine areas in Fiji strengthened the mechanisms believed to advance conservation efforts but ultimately led to few social, economic or even ecological benefits.…
Dan Ilic’s comedic podcast, “A Rational Fear,” has been hosting journalists, comedians, and politicians that dissect issues and policy related to climate change and the environment for a decade. Over…
When I lived on the remote island of Beqa, in Fiji, I watched as foreign-based NGOs entered villages and told Fijians how to live their lives, saying things like “no…
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, and Native News Online. NEW YORK—In February, Cyclone…
Emmanuel Peni’s first response to a list of questions about his role in a campaign against a proposed copper and gold mine is to send back an idyllic photo of…
With two-thirds of the country draped in dense, tropical rainforests, Papua New Guinea is home to diverse wildlife, including several marsupial species, flightless cassowaries, and vibrant birds-of-paradise. Just as diverse…
The tree kangaroos inhabiting a forested mountain range in Papua New Guinea have made an unlikely comeback in the past 40 years, but old dangers now jeopardize that rebound. Three…
The black-and-white motion-triggered video looks like an outtake from a cheap horror movie: A handful of rats circle a smooth, platter-sized mound of sand. Suddenly a sea turtle hatchling appears,…
When Niueans are babies, their parents traditionally take them down to the seashore and throw them in the water so they learn to swim, Mona Ainu’u told Mongabay. That’s more…
Over the past two decades, fewer vessels have trawled the South Pacific’s high seas. Companies from only one country have kept at it, an island nation with a green reputation:…
A previously unknown genus of primitive giant kangaroo that once roamed the rainforests of New Guinea has been described by a team of paleontologists from Flinders University in Australia. The…
In late June, New Zealand parliamentarian and Māori activist Debbie Ngarewa-Packer boarded an international flight to begin a 40-hour journey to Lisbon to attend the U.N. Ocean Conference. At various…
RAROTONGA, Cook Islands – Every Saturday, a group of Cook Islands Māori youth slide into scuba gear, grab sticks from the ironwood trees (Casuarina equisetifolia) growing along Rarotonga’s beachfront, and…
GORO, New Caledonia – Known widely as the “Madagascar of the Pacific,” New Caledonia is coated in remnant Gondwana rainforest and surrounded by reefs rich in marine life that constitute one…
GORO, New Caledonia — On the south side of Grand Terre, the largest and principal island of New Caledonia in the south Pacific, mountains rise like a spine out of a…
The Sepik River takes an unhurried 1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles, to snake from the lush highland rainforests of western Papua New Guinea, swerving momentarily across the border into Indonesia’s…
There’s no one way to describe Noah Idechong. Born in the small Pacific island country of Palau, Idechong has donned different hats over the past 40 years. He’s been a…
The seventh and final episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast series about New Guinea examines the growing galip nut industry and the many social, economic and environmental benefits this agricultural…
The sixth episode of Mongabay Explores New Guinea shares what was learned from almost two years of investigative reporting by Mongabay, Malaysiakini, Tempo, Earthsight and The Gecko Project, plus what…
With a four-page letter, the Pacific island nation of Nauru pushed the world closer to a reality in which large-scale mining doesn’t just take place on land, but also in…
Papua New Guinea’s environment minister has imposed a moratorium on new voluntary carbon credit schemes to give the government time to create a regulatory framework for future and existing deals.…
At low tide, on many a craggy corner of Aotearoa New Zealand’s coastline, you can find clusters of large, oval, emerald-and-gold bivalves, encrusted with barnacles and sucked tightly onto the…
The fifth episode in the New Guinea series of Mongabay Explores looks at the various tree kangaroo species of New Guinea and their potential to drive conservation and income streams…
The fourth episode in the New Guinea series of Mongabay Explores uncovers the massive Trans-Papua Highway, the potential it has to deforest the largest protected area in Southeast Asia, and…
Small islands, big seascapes: that’s how many Pacific Ocean nations are characterized. Aotearoa New Zealand, a country about the size of the U.K. but with the world’s fourth-largest maritime area,…
The third episode in the New Guinea series of Mongabay Explores covers the island’s unique birds-of-paradise, and their symbolism as ambassadors for both the island’s beautiful landscape, and also the…
