JAKARTA — The framework for resolving land disputes involving palm oil companies in Indonesian Borneo has largely failed, allowing conflicts to fester for a decade or more, with very few…
Wild pigs have reputation as a destructive lot. Farmers and scientists alike know that, when they’re too numerous, their constant rooting and wallowing can run roughshod over crops and regenerating…
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…
A Portuguese language version of this report is published on Mongabay Brasil TOMÉ-AÇU, Brazil — Guided by an Indigenous leader, we drove down dusty roads in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve, a…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s deforestation rate hit a historic low in 2020, with the government crediting its various policies prohibiting forest-clearing, and experts attributing the trend to more rains, falling oil…
JAKARTA — “Birds might fall as they’re not strong since there’s no more trees standing.” This is how Jemris Nikolas characterizes the response of many in Sorong, a district in…
Sonia Castro says her family stayed in self-isolation for two months in the Jambuaçu Territory in Brazil’s Pará state. She recounts how they eventually fell ill, their condition worsening bit…
In another blow to the Liberia-based palm oil company Golden Veroleum, an investigation by an independent grievance panel has found that it bulldozed rainforests and ignored community rights as it…
JAKARTA — Palm oil giants Indonesia and Malaysia are teaming up to fight what they call a smear campaign targeted at the commodity. The move sets the stage for what…
JAKARTA — Forests in parts of Indonesia regions that have remained largely untouched are now fast disappearing as deforestation driven by agribusiness and infrastructure development moves east, according to a…
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…
JAKARTA — Conflicts over land flared up across Indonesia in 2020, as Indigenous and rural communities tried to hold off pulpwood, palm oil and logging companies ramping up their expansion…
JAKARTA — Palm oil-driven deforestation is slowing down in Southeast Asia in 2020 but a handful of low-profile companies continue to drive the majority of the destruction, according to a…
Over the past century, researchers have discovered an average of two novel viruses per year with the ability to infect humans. Many of these viruses come from animals, and as…
Mongabay editor Philip Jacobson has been awarded the 2020 Oktovianus Pogau Award for Courage in Journalism. The award, announced Jan. 31, recognizes Jacobson's dedication to environmental reporting in Indonesia, work…
fExchange-traded funds, or ETFs, have swept through the financial world, building to a collective worth of $6.7 trillion by the second half of 2020. An ETF is a sort of…
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…
Covering around 13% of Earth’s surface and harboring an estimated 83% of its endangered wildlife, protected areas are tasked with an outsize responsibility to safeguard vulnerable species, as well as…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has denied that deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines contributed to a recent deadly flood in southern Borneo. At least 21 people died…
The Sumatran elephant is a small Asian elephant whose numbers are dwindling as their lowland forest habitats are converted to uses like oil palm plantations. Experts say that Indonesia has…
This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. JAKARTA — Indigenous people in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province are protesting against a company that’s preparing to raze their ancestral forest for…
JAKARTA — Recent floods that inundated large areas of the southern part of Indonesian Borneo might have been exacerbated by massive deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines, activists…
Though other stories might have dominated the headlines, 2020 was a year of tremendous change in land use and land cover. Massive fires burned across Australia, the Amazon, and the…
The Siona are a binational people, their territory straddling two countries: Sucumbíos province in northeastern Ecuador and in the Putumayo department in southeastern Colombia. But the forest they depend on…
The Catatumbo River originates in northeastern Colombia’s Norte de Santander Department and flows to Venezuelan Lake Maracaibo. For generations, it has provided passage for fishermen and small farmers; but increasingly,…
JAKARTA — U.S. agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge are buying palm oil from mills in Indonesia that have been publicly linked to land and human rights violations and…
2020 was a rough year for tropical rainforest conservation efforts, as explained in Mongabay's year-end wrap-up on rainforests. So what's in store for 2021? Here are 11 things to watch.…
Over the course of 2020, Mongabay published more than 5,200 stories, which collectively had on-site readership of 140 million pageviews. The reach of this content was further amplified by readership…
In Indonesia, the year 2020 has been marked by a number of events and decisions with significant, and likely long-lasting, environmental impacts. Here, we review five of the key stories…
Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.
