Oceania News

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…

The second episode in the New Guinea series of Mongabay Explores covers the struggles faced by Indigenous communities in Papua New Guinea to protect their customary land rights, and one…

For four days last November, Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, was on fire. Four people died during violent riots, and the city’s Chinatown was torched, leaving hundreds homeless.…

It's difficult to overstate the enormity of biodiversity on the island of New Guinea.  It contains over 13,000 endemic plant species (meaning these plants grow nowhere else in the world).…

The tooth-billed bowerbird gave itself away with a not-quite-right call. Suspicious, I’d panned my binoculars toward the sound and there he was, the mimic, high in the canopy of a…

WEST KIMBERLEY, Australia — November marks the end of the dry season in the Kimberley, the northernmost region of Western Australia, the country’s largest state. As the monsoonal rains start to…

Papua New Guinea’s forests are under attack, and the international community must join forces to fight the illegal loggers destroying one of the world’s largest rainforests. This was the message…

The loss of forest in an island province in Papua New Guinea (PNG) surged in August, according to satellite data. The target of these forays is likely timber, at least…

The forests of northwestern Papua New Guinea are home to a group of wide-eyed and reclusive marsupials known as tree kangaroos. As their name suggests, they spend a lot of…

The iTaukei, an Indigenous people of the Fiji Islands’ Ra province, have strong cultural ties to both land and sea. With their unparalleled knowledge of their home, these traditional Fijians…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we are meeting the most widespread pig species and…