Primary Forests News

The straight, strong trunk of a quebracho tree twisted mid-air as it fell to the ground, its crash the last sound in a cacophony of axe blows that increasingly wounded…

Torrential rain creates a deafening roar as it strikes the metal roof of community leader Ubence Zelaya’s two-bedroom home on the southern border of the Mayagna indigenous territory. Zelaya lives…

CAMPECHE, Mexico —When a fire broke out in June in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in southern Mexico, more than 200 volunteer firefighters and specialists were deployed to help keep it…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  When a string of palm oil companies arrived in the village of Anggai, in a heavily forested corner of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua…

This story is a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay’s Latin America (Latam) team and the Bolivian newspaper Página Siete “Fire is a monster and is threatening us. Everything is ashes and…

KUMASI, Ghana — The West African country of Ghana is known for having rich natural resources including vast tracts of rainforest. But its primary forest has all but vanished, with…

KUALA KOH, Malaysia — On a daytime flight into Kuala Lumpur airport, it’s hard not to feel a certain sense of despair. The land, at times adorned by jungle-clad mountains,…

Powerful drug-traffickers and landless farmers continue to push cattle ranching and illegal logging operations deeper into the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in eastern Honduras. The…

PUERTO MALDONADO, Peru — Luis Hidalgo Okimura, the new governor of Peru’s Madre de Dios region, entered his conference room in the regional government building here carrying a half-empty bottle…

A unique island ecosystem and culture lying 270 kilometers (170 miles) off Papua New Guinea is once more in the crosshairs. Over the past decade, Woodlark Islanders have defended their…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) holds 60 percent of the Congo rainforest, the second-largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon. Because of this, the country serves as…

Colombia has registered its first drop in deforestation since the country’s historic 2016 peace deal with former FARC guerrillas closed a chapter on a half-century of armed conflict but also…

Laguna del Tigre National Park sits in the northwest corner of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, encompassing about 3,367 square kilometers (1,300 square miles) of jungle, lagoons and ancient ruins. But…

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…

A patrol of eleven men is hiking along a rough jungle trail spotted with the blackened foliage of several small brush fires. Nearby trees, smoke-stained at their bottoms but still…

Globally, the land we use for pasture is contracting, according to a new report from the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank based in Oakland, California. The technical know-how also…

BUKIT BAKA BUKIT RAYA NATIONAL PARK, Indonesia -- In the heart of Indonesian Borneo, a dwindling population of orangutans is getting a new lease on life thanks to a group of…

Following the end of its civil war in the summer of 2003, Liberia became a test case for how foreign investment in extracting natural resources could quickly improve people’s lives.…

The homegrown banks that back the flood of soy into China have with little knowledge of the deforestation their funding is potentially supporting, according to the nonprofit CDP, an international…

Rafael Orjuela, a community leader in Cartagena de Chairá, Colombia, moved to the Amazonian department of Caquetá in 1979 to escape severe economic hardship in the interior Andes region. At…