Old Growth Forests News

The straight, strong trunk of a quebracho tree twisted mid-air as it fell to the ground, its crash the last sound in a cacophony of axe blows that increasingly wounded…

Torrential rain creates a deafening roar as it strikes the metal roof of community leader Ubence Zelaya’s two-bedroom home on the southern border of the Mayagna indigenous territory. Zelaya lives…

CAMPECHE, Mexico —When a fire broke out in June in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in southern Mexico, more than 200 volunteer firefighters and specialists were deployed to help keep it…

This story is a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay’s Latin America (Latam) team and the Bolivian newspaper Página Siete “Fire is a monster and is threatening us. Everything is ashes and…

KUMASI, Ghana — The West African country of Ghana is known for having rich natural resources including vast tracts of rainforest. But its primary forest has all but vanished, with…

Powerful drug-traffickers and landless farmers continue to push cattle ranching and illegal logging operations deeper into the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in eastern Honduras. The…

Rafael Orjuela, a community leader in Cartagena de Chairá, Colombia, moved to the Amazonian department of Caquetá in 1979 to escape severe economic hardship in the interior Andes region. At…

This is the second story in a two-part series on logging in the Solomon Islands. The first article, which focuses on the country at large and how its governance is…

This is the first story in a two-part series on logging in the Solomon Islands. The second article, which focuses on the island of Nende and how residents of one…

Forests store vast quantities of carbon and play a huge role in the world’s carbon cycle – as well as in human hopes of mitigating global warming. Tropical rainforests, the…

From the air one can observe the destruction wrought by an open-pit mining project in Cerro Petaquilla and on the ground people talk about its environmental consequences. A security checkpoint…

But for the rumble of frogs or the song of a bluethroat, Bialowieza Forest in Poland has become quiet again after two years of heavy machinery, chainsaws and falling trees.…

Dotted by historic cities nestled in a patchwork countryside of fields and pasture, today’s Europe is at once urban and bucolic. But where sheep range over grassy knolls, bison used…

Droughts aren’t usually a problem for rainforests, which, as their name implies, are generally typified by lots of precipitation. But in the past few years, there’s been a noticeable drying…

The world's largest forests can help solve some of the biggest problems facing humanity, but only if we move to safeguard them, argue two experts in a New York Times…

Saproxylic beetles live in and eat dead and decaying wood, and play important ecological roles in nutrient recycling and pollination, and as an important food source for birds and other…

When it comes to habitat quality and ecosystem services, research has shown that natural landscapes do it best. A new study, published today in Nature, adds fodder to this argument,…

With their long “necks” and sharp, fang-like mouthparts, assassin spiders hunt a strange prey – other spiders. Now, thanks to a study published recently in ZooKeys, there are 18 more…

When the last of the Russian troops pulled out of Estonia in 1994, for many their departure was bittersweet. While most Estonians were eager to join the Western world and…

The Australian state of Queensland is losing tree cover at the fastest rate in more than a decade, according to a government study released in September. “It’s even worse than…