In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic consumed humanity’s attention, our species ran through 4.5 trillion doses of myriad pharmaceuticals. In India alone, one drug, paracetamol — a pain reliever used to treat…
Nearly a decade ago, poachers used cyanide to slaughter more than 135 elephants for their ivory in and around Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. In the wake of these poisonings, the…
An environmental think tank in Cameroon has raised the alarm over the pollution of rivers in the country’s east and north. The Centre for Environment and Development (CED) says two…
DHAKA — Muzammel Hoque, 40, lives in the village of Konda, near the largest landfill that services the city of Dhaka, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) away. “The landfill has…
BANDUNG, Indonesia — In a valley downstream from the source of the Citarum River, retired army general Doni Monardo approaches a magnolia tree planted in 2018 by President Joko Widodo…
Four species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the…
Rodents gnawing on oil palm crops can be a costly business. One study estimated that they can reduce yields by as much as 10%. Among the means used to tackle…
Since February of this year, a tailings dam at the QMM mine in Madagascar has failed at least twice. Hazardous mine wastewater overflowed and contaminated the surrounding lagoon system relied…
Thirty years ago, Brazil issued a decree officially recognizing the ancestral land of the Yanomami people as an Indigenous territory. The new designation made the area, located deep in the…
A recent study confirms alarming declines in raptor populations in Kenya. Incidental poisoning is a major problem for vultures in particular, depriving ecosystems of the birds' vital role as scavengers.…
Ban Khao Mo, THAILAND — Standing in the house where she has lived since she was born 45 years ago, Premsinee Suntornthammathat points to the temple where her grandparents took…
Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…
Modeling shows microplastics can be trapped in river sediments for up to 7 years posing unknown and unstudied risks to biodiversity and human health.
On Oct. 23, 2021, the bulk carrier NS Qingdao, carrying 1,500 metric tons of fertilizers and industrial reagents, docked in South Africa’s Indian Ocean port of Durban. During offloading, rainwater…
Three years after the collapse of a mining dam forced them from their homes in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, a small community of Pataxó and Pataxó Hãhãhãe Indigenous peoples face…
MEDAN, Indonesia — At the corner of Sei Batanghari Road in Medan, the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, kindergarten students run around a building in their school uniforms. The…
Our pollution of the planet with heavy metals, plastics, industrial chemicals, pesticides and more is pushing Earth systems to the limit, and us closer to crossing a dangerous planetary boundary we don’t understand.
A dam holding back mining waste from Brazilian miner Vale is at risk of collapsing, a government audit says. The same company was responsible for two tailings dam collapses since…
Three critically endangered African white-backed vultures saved from poisoning last year have been released back into the wild in Zululand, South Africa. Those involved in local vulture conservation have welcomed…
Continued deregulation and fast tracking of new products under President Bolsonaro have helped secure Brazil’s place as the world’s largest user of very toxic pesticides.
Around 1,000 vultures have been found dead in Guinea-Bissau in the last two weeks, believed to have been poisoned. The birds, almost all critically endangered hooded vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus) were…
DURBAN, South Africa — Another mass vulture poisoning incident has ended the year on a sour note for Wildlife ACT rangers in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Soon after…
Howick, SOUTH AFRICA – The first of at least five new “vulture safe zones” in Southern Africa are about to take off as private landowners and other partners join the…
New research finds that one-third of critical jaguar habitat in the Gran Chaco, South America’s largest tropical dry forest, has been lost since the mid-1980s. According to the study, led…
A spate of mass toxic poisonings in the Cambodian provinces of Kratie and Mondulkiri have hospitalized hundreds and killed at least 16 people since May. Although the causes of the…
Authorities in Indonesia have arrested two of four suspects alleged to have killed a rare Sumatran elephant and hacked off one of its tusks last month. Police in East Aceh…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia have blamed poachers for the death of an elephant found with one of its tusks hacked off, in one of the world’s most…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia -- Wildlife activists in Indonesia suspect poachers poisoned an elephant found with its tusks hacked off in a protected forest in southern Sumatra. The body of the male…
Poisoned by cattle carcasses treated with Diclofenac, India’s vultures died by the millions in the 1990s. A captive breeding program is helping to save the once-ubiquitous birds, but the very…
In 1956, in the quiet seaside town of Minamata on the southwestern coast of Japan's Kyushu Island, cats began to behave very strangely. They convulsed, displayed excessive salivation, and gradually…
