The 41st session of the World Heritage Committee (WHC) is convening this week and next in Krakow, Poland, drawing participants from 21 member states, 170 observer nations and a multitude…
ULU MUDA, Malaysia — On a dusty roadside in northwestern Malaysia, the drivers of three trucks laden with logs are lounging beneath an open-sided hut while they wait for officials…
LAHAD DATU, Malaysia – The rhino breeding center near the entrance to Danum Valley Conservation Area sits like an oasis of calm against the cacophony of beeps, woots and zaps…
Planned since the 1950s, the Marginal de la Selva is a $1 billion highway project that would create a paved land passage through the Andean foothills in Colombia’s Amazon region.…
MIRAFLORES, Colombia – “We can’t move like we used to,” said Joaquin Dajada, a twenty-something displaced member of the Nukak indigenous community, the last contacted nomadic group in Colombia. “The…
GUA MUSANG, Malaysia – In their fight for the rights of peninsular Malaysia’s native people, the Orang Asli, an alliance of women are making waves in the country's highly conservative…
This is the first in a two-part series on logging in the Solomon Islands. Read the second part for more discussion on the topic. The Solomon Islands is a country that’s…
This is the second in a two-part series on logging in the Solomon Islands. Read the first part for more discussion on the topic. Several companies are vying for the rights to harvest timber in…
The earth's forests have been broken into around 50 million fragments, the edges of which add up to a length that would make it a third of the way to…
What’s in a definition? For some, too much. Nearly 200 organizations have signed an open letter to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), calling for the…
GALACIA, Mexico – On a Saturday afternoon in January, Julia Carabias, one of Mexico’s most respected biologists, was making herself useful – putting a fresh coat of blue paint on…
A proposal under review by the Brazilian government aims to shrink four protected areas in the Amazon and eliminate another area entirely, Greenpeace says. If approved, the bid would put…
It’s no secret that natural wealth in many African countries often sparks conflict and precipitates decades of the suffering of local populations. Liberia’s ‘resource curse’ is no different. With more…
Indonesian New Guinea holds some of the largest remnants of old-growth tropical forest on the planet. Yet the region faces increasing pressure to share its riches with the rest of…
On the surface, the Republic of Congo appears to be making strides toward both conservation and economic development. But the process of becoming an emerging economy is not without its…
The Forest Stewardship Council has formally disassociated from Austrian timber giant Holzindustrie Schweighofer. The announcement came last week, February 17, following a year-long investigation that uncovered the company persistently sourced…
Deforestation is a big source of atmospheric carbon, one that is increasingly targeted by climate change mitigation projects around the world. Now, even forests in protected areas can be “significant”…
Hugging the shores of a lake in a far-eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a strip of mountainous rainforest that has never been thoroughly surveyed…
The saki, or "flying monkey," a mid-sized South American primate, gets its nickname from its ability to quietly skim through the tops of trees. These rainforest inhabitants use their sharp…
The disappearance of birds may hamper tropical forests as they struggle to recover from the shock of intensive logging, agriculture and ranching, a team of ecologists reports. Birds play a vital…
Old and omnipresent, Guyana’s forests earn money for the country just by remaining standing. Boasting an intact forest landscape percentage that’s among the highest in the world, the country’s forests dominate…
Amidst Sumatra’s vast tracts of pulpwood plantations, thin slivers of remaining native forest can serve as corridors for large mammals, researchers say. The new study, published last month in Tropical…
Loans and credit from the British bank HSBC have helped support the unsustainable clearing of forests for oil palm plantations in Indonesia, Greenpeace said in a report published Tuesday. The…
Few places on Earth escape the reach of humankind, and those areas are dwindling, according to a new study. Between 2000 and 2013, the world lost a Venezuela-sized expanse of…
The illegal trade in Siamese rosewood (Dalbergia Cochinchinensis) is so well-oiled that when loggers don't have enough men in Thailand's forests to carry all their spoils over the Cambodian border,…
THAP LAN NATIONAL PARK, Thailand -- One fresh chain for a saw, around fifty cans of sardines, a plastic bag full of garlic, and a few empty rice sacks. Wildlife…
The fate of a forest tract in Malaysia may have shifted dramatically in just the last few months. For three years, a group of conservation NGOs in Sabah, a Malaysian…
A report released yesterday by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the world's most influential forest-products certification organization, describes the findings of a nearly year-long investigation into allegations of illegality on…
Human-wildlife conflict is an ongoing drama playing out all over the world, from southern India where plantations are forcing humans and elephants into closer proximity to the western U.S. where…
Gold mining in Peru has razed almost 62,500 hectares of forest – an area over ten times the size of Manhattan – in the southern Peruvian Amazon between October 2012…
