JAKARTA — An Indonesian forestry company with possible links to pulpwood and palm oil powerhouse Royal Golden Eagle has cleared forests the size of 500,000 basketball courts since 2016, some…
For decades, Indonesia has been blighted by some of the highest levels of deforestation on earth. It also provides more than half the world’s palm oil. The two things are directly related. Palm…
Over the past two decades, orangutan researcher Marc Ancrenaz watched as a tidal wave of oil palm has engulfed his once-forested research sites in northern Borneo. When he would find…
The Sumatran orangutan is in a difficult position, heavily dependent as it is on the Indonesian island's Leuser and Batang Toru ecosystems. This formerly lowland species has now adapted to…
An intergovernmental organization representing countries that produce the bulk of the world’s timber has thrown its support behind a decade-long effort to protect the last remaining primary forest in the…
JAKARTA — An upgrade to a road that cuts through one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest is driving deeper encroachment by humans into blocks of forest…
JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had…
JAKARTA — One person is missing and feared dead following a series of landslides near the site of a planned hydropower plant in the only known habitat of the critically…
North Sumatra is home to 1 of only 8 known great ape species in the world, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, first classified in 2017 after its habits and DNA…
Noormala Anwar’s frustration comes through in an Aug. 4 video she posted on Facebook. She swings her phone’s camera back and forth, revealing a bulldozer sitting right next to her…
Although the exact source of the coronavirus outbreak is unknown, it has been widely reported to have originated with wildlife. Since then, animals infected with COVID-19 include a small number…
"Sumatra is like a fossil relic of rare species...a giant, rhino horn-shaped island blanketed in the richest rainforest you can imagine...there's just nothing like it," biologist Greg McCann says on…
JAKARTA — Developers of a hydropower dam that threatens the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan say they will push on despite calls from the IUCN for an…
To some humans, the idea of treating an orangutan as a person is absurd. For Leif Cocks, spending billions of dollars to find life on Mars while living beings are…
JAKARTA — A new study on certified oil palm plantations and their links to past deforestation has sparked a debate over whether they can be considered sustainable if they’re established…
JAKARTA — Construction of a hydropower plant in the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan species on the Indonesian island of Sumatra might be delayed for up to…
JAKARTA — The COVID-19 pandemic has become the latest threat to the Tapanuli orangutan in Indonesia, the rarest great ape species of all and one already under severe pressure from…
Dramatic images of orangutans being rescued from clear-cut forests are ubiquitous on the web and in nature magazines, but new research suggests that rather than being a crucial tool for…
In the 23 years since founding Volcanoes Safaris, Praveen Moman has weathered a range of crises in the region around Rwanda and Uganda: Ebola outbreaks, economic strife, kidnappings, political unrest.…
Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo shut its doors to tourists this week in an attempt to protect its great apes from possibly being infected by the…
JAKARTA — Critics and supporters of a dam that threatens the only known population of Tapanuli orangutans are at loggerheads over whether to carry out an independent scientific study of…
Logging for timber by definition reduces tree cover. But what happens when logging stops? A new study has found that in concessions where timber firms have stopped operating, deforestation actually…
MEDAN, Indonesia — Conservation and wildlife activists have called on Indonesian authorities to press criminal charges against a local politician found to have kept a threatened baby orangutan as a…
JAKARTA — The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction,…
A ceaselessly growing human population and an ever-expanding world economy based on the unsustainable demands of a few over-consuming nations, have already caused habitat degradation, forest fragmentation, and forest loss…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), has proven to be a precarious place for the ape. Just 800 individuals survive…
A company attending the COP25 climate summit says its dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions, but current science says tropical dams are greenhouse gas emitters.
When the Tapanuli orangutan was discovered in 2017 in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, it became the eighth known species of great ape in the world (including humans). The last…
JAKARTA — Major consumer brands including Nestlé, Kellogg’s and Hershey have been getting some of their palm oil from an illegal plantation inside a protected forest that holds the highest…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with our adventurous Middle East-based staff writer John Cannon, who recently traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway to assess…
