Papua New Guinea News

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) government is actively pursuing the potential of developing a coal mining industry for the first time in the country’s history. Two years ago, it channeled…

On an island in Papua New Guinea, scientists say they have rediscovered a species of monitor lizard thought to be "lost" to science since the 1800s. The medium-sized lizard was…

British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto was for 45 years the majority-owner of the Panguna copper mine in Bougainville, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea (PNG). But now it has…

"Everywhere you look, it's the infrastructure that's very often the first stage in complete profound change," explains William Laurance. Laurance is a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in…

Papua New Guinea announced last week that it is deploying its military to quell violence in Hela Province, home to the country's largest oil and gas project.  Tribal conflict in…

Remote-controlled vehicles will soon begin churning up the ocean floor off the cost of Papua New Guinea, searching for millions of tons of copper and gold. In 2011, Canada-based Nautilus…

Paul Palosualrea Pavol of New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has won the Alexander Soros Foundation’s Award for Environmental and Human Rights Activism. In a statement, the Alexander Soros…

r. Andrew Mack studies the close living relatives of the dinosaur, the cassowaries, giant flightless birds that can knock you out with a single kick. Though, as Dr. Mack will…

Author's note: The data that underpins this post is updated on a regular basis on Mongabay's rainforest site: Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Mammals, Reptiles, Vascular Plants. September 26, 2021 update: this…

This year’s Whitley Awards -- often referred to as the “Green Oscars” -- has been given to seven conservationists chosen from a pool of over 120 applicants from 53 countries…

Papua New Guinea and Tanzania are both REDD+ countries, meaning they’re participating in the UN program officially enshrined in the Paris climate agreement that aims to channel international finance to…

On Mussau, a remote island of the country of Papua New Guinea, biologists have discovered a new species of monitor lizard with a turquoise or blue-pigmented tail. The lizard also…

housands of sometimes argumentative pages have been written about conservation priorities, advocating that the more threatened or ecologically important a species is, the more it deserves immediate protection and a…

Focus on potentially fatal smog from Indonesia’s wildfires shifted eastward on Monday as meteorologists registered light haze reaching as far as Micronesia. Burning in Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost region, has become…

In the fight to protect the extraordinary biodiversity of Papua New Guinea’s rainforests, some conservationists are collecting a unique set of data: the sounds of the forest. Scientists with The…

While fires in Borneo and Sumatra are garnering most of the headlines for the choking air pollution they are causing across Southeast Asia, New Guinea is also experiencing widespread fire…

There’s an echidna baby boom in Australia. In the last five years, an echidna captive breeding partnership between the University of Queensland and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in Australia has produced 14…

The United Nations today announced 21 winners of the 2015 Equator Prize, a prestigious award that recognizes community-led environmental initiatives. The winners, selected from a pool of 1,461 nominations across…

hrough years of effort, scientists have assessed the conservation status of some 77,000 species of plants and animals via the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species. Scientific records on the…

Global Forest Watch map showing forest loss between 2001 and 2013 in Peru's Alto Nanay Pintuyacu Chambira conservation area and Alto Purus National Park New NASA data shows a jump…

Oil palm plantation and rainforest in Sabah, Malaysia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby Plantation Bhd has completed its acquisition New Britain Palm Oil Ltd,…

Editor's note: KLK issued a response to Chain Reaction Research's report on March 13, 2015. Deforestation for oil palm in Sabah, Malaysia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Malaysian palm oil…

Click charts to enlarge Loss of tropical forests accelerated roughly 60 percent during the 2000s, argues a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The findings contradict previous research…

2014 could be classified as "The Year of the Zero Deforestation Commitment". During 2014, nearly two dozen major companies, ranging from palm oil producers to fast food chains to toothpaste…

Oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysia. Malaysian palm oil giant Kuala Lumpur Kepong (KLK) has joined a growing list of companies committing to zero deforestation for commodity production. On Monday,…

Screenshot of the mapping function of the Sustainable Palm Oil Transparency Toolkit, powered by ESRI. Click image to enlarge. A new initiative ranks the world's 25 largest publicly listed palm…

This article is the second in a three-part series that will examine the global impact of oil palm agriculture on local communities. Read the first part here. As the lands…

This article is the first in a three-part series that will examine the global impact of oil palm agriculture on local communities. There’s little doubt that the use of palm…

Four commodities produced in just eight countries are responsible for a third of the world's forest loss, according to a new report. Those familiar with the long-standing effort to stop…

Little-known 'biological-jewel' faces commercial logging A number of the world's top conservation scientists have raised concerns about plans for commercial logging on Woodlark Island, a hugely biodiverse rainforest island off…