Qualified success: What’s next for Peru’s Operation Mercury?
More than a decade of illegal gold mining around the upstart town of La Pampa in the Peruvian Amazon has tainted local water supplies, razed forests adjacent to a world-class…
Western lowland gorillas may be territorial, a new study finds
Western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) may be avoiding their neighbors, according to a new study that presents evidence of territoriality among gorilla groups in the Republic of Congo. Using…
Painting with fire: Cerrado land managers learn from traditional peoples
After decades of suppressing fire, park managers in Brazil’s savanna are relying on indigenous and traditional fire knowledge and Integrated Fire Management as a conservation tool.
Early deforestation numbers for 2019 reveal trends in the Amazon
A new analysis based on estimated deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 pinpoints hotspots of forest loss and identifies several country-specific trends in the region. The figures project that deforestation…
Cost-effective conservation: Study identifies key ‘umbrella’ species
Governments could vastly improve the efficiency of money spent on conservation if they took a hard look at the species they prioritize, according to a recent study. The research probed…
2019: The year rainforests burned
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
Tropical forests’ lost decade: the 2010s
The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. Widely available satellite imagery via platforms like Google Earth brought new levels of accountability which, for the first time,…
Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers
The outlook for eastern Africa's mountain gorillas is growing brighter, as a recent census released on Dec. 16 shows that the subspecies’ numbers have risen since 2011. Scientists believe there…
Feral horses gallop to the rescue of butterflies in distress
In the Czech Republic, horses have become the knights in shining armor. A study published in the Journal for Nature Conservation suggests that returning feral horses to grasslands in Podyjí…
$65 million deal to protect Congo’s forests raises concerns
On Sept. 3, the Republic of Congo secured a stream of funding aimed at protecting forests and peatlands. The signatures of French President Emmanuel Macron and Congolese President Denis Sassou…
As the Amazon burns, Colombia’s forests decimated for cattle and coca
The last few weeks have been critical for the Amazon in Brazil and Bolivia. Fires in August razed thousands of hectares of forest and drew the attention of the international…
Aimed at linking communities, Malaysian highway may damage forests
This is the third article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One and Part Two. KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — When Baru Bian was a boy,…
The Pan Borneo Highway brings wildlife threats to nat’l park doorstep
This is the second article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One. TELOK SERABANG, Malaysia — At the westernmost tip of Borneo sits a dense…
Connecting an island: Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway
This is the first article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” MIRI, Malaysia — Tucked under the sweep of green that blankets parts of Malaysian Borneo is…
Europe-bred rhinos join South African cousins to repopulate Rwanda park
Five eastern black rhinos translocated from European zoos to Rwanda's Akagera National Park have successfully completed an initial period of acclimatization and been moved into larger, 1-hectare (2.5-acre) enclosures. They…
Congo government opens Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to oil exploration
The government of the Republic of Congo has, according to its own maps, opened up new areas for oil exploration in sections of the world’s largest peatlands and Nouabalé-Ndoki National…
Altered fish communities persist long after reefs bleach, study finds
The bleaching of coral reefs could permanently change the composition of the fish communities that inhabit them, a new study has found. The research, published online June 18 in the…
New film details wrenching impact of illegal rhino horn trade on families
Communities around the world often pay a hidden toll in the global wildlife trade. Across its 17 minutes, Sides of a Horn, a new film released June 25, aims to…
National parks: Serving humanity’s well-being as much as nature’s
This post is part of Saving Life on Earth: Words on the Wild, a monthly column by Jeremy Hance, one of Mongabay’s original staff writers. Imagine, for a moment,…
Logging road construction has surged in the Congo Basin since 2003
The length of roads in Congo Basin logging concessions has doubled since 2003, according to new research, raising concerns about the impacts of these incursions into the world’s second-largest bank…
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- On anniversary of nun’s murder Amazon land rights activists at high risk
- Iran upholds heavy sentences for conservationists convicted of spying
- Two deaths trigger alarm at Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve
Indonesias forest guardians
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
Amazon infrastructure
- BR-319 illegal side road threatens Amazon protected area, indigenous land (commentary)
- Barrage of mining requests targets Brazil’s isolated indigenous peoples
- Database offers new details on the dams that hold mining waste
Asian rhinos
- Indonesia-WWF split puts rhino breeding project in Borneo in limbo
- Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
