On a late night in December, I arrived in the village of Lunjuk on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. A warm breeze welcomed me as I sat down with 30…

Social anthropologist Liana Chua leads a project, POKOK, that aims to reduce the killing of orangutans in Indonesian Borneo through deeper engagement with local people. The project came about as…

2018 wasn't a great year for tropical rainforests, with major conservation setbacks in Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and the United States coming on top of back-to-back years of…

2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…

Small farmers feel the pressure as Ecuador’s palm oil sector expands The first commercial oil palm trees were planted in Ecuador in 1953. Since then, the country has become Latin…

A Christmas advertisement deemed too political to air in the U.K. but that has been viewed more than 70 million times online has rekindled the debate about how to save…

A 14-country jaguar conservation plan, efforts to protect the last 7 female southern right whales in Peru and Chile, and unexpected biodiversity discovered along Chile’s north coast were among the…

Dutch banks ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank are failing to inform their customers that investment funds they offer include shares in palm oil companies damaging the environment in Indonesia, according…

The world’s biggest palm oil trader has updated its sustainability policy, as its self-imposed deadline to stop buying palm oil linked to a variety of environmental and social ills draws…

JAKARTA — An Indonesian court has thrown out a lawsuit against an environmental expert whose testimony led to the conviction of a governor in a mining scandal. Basuki Wasis, an…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has published a long-awaited map that, for the first time, unifies all land-use data from a host of disparate sources. The fractured nature of the…

Peruvian palm oil, orca attacks on humpback whales, and mining in an Amazon national park are among the recent top stories from Mongabay Latam, our Spanish-language service. Orcas attack young…

The Indonesian government must put an immediate halt to land clearing in the Tanah Merah project, a vast stretch of land earmarked to become the world’s biggest oil palm plantation,…

Prologue: Johor Baru, 2012 In December 2012, at a press conference on the sidelines of an Islamic business forum in Malaysia, a man named Chairul Anhar made a bold claim.…

JAKARTA — The world’s leading certification body for ethically sourced palm oil has ordered a total ban on deforestation by its members, amid growing pressure from both companies and consumers.…

A palm oil supplier to PepsiCo, Mars, Hershey and Johnson & Johnson has resumed clearing intact forest in West Papua, Indonesia, despite pressure by other major companies, many of which…

JAKARTA — A new report has linked Mondelēz International, the food giant behind such iconic snacks as Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers, to large-scale deforestation in Indonesia. The investigation by…

JAKARTA — Its name in Indonesian means “hope,” but there seems to be little of that remaining for the Harapan rainforest, a tropical woodland oasis in an ever-expanding desert of…

On Sept. 19, Indonesian President Joko Widodo slapped a three-year moratorium on the issuance of new licenses for oil palm plantations. The moratorium was introduced to “improve governance of sustainable…

BOVEN DIGOEL, Indonesia — It’s a hot and humid morning, and birds and insects are chirping deep in a lush rainforest in the eastern Indonesian province of Papua. All of…