Motorbikes carrying coffee bags out of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. Photo courtesy of Patrice Levang. Sumatra's Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park—home to the Critically Endangered Sumatran rhinos, tigers, and…
A female Polypedates ranwellai. Photo courtesy of Mendis Wickramasinghe. Sri Lanka, an island country lying off the southeast coast of India, has long been noted for its vast array of…
Oil palm plantations and rainforest in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A campaign by the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo hopes to raise awareness about the link between Halloween candy…
Peatland forest being drained in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. From 1990 to 2010 almost all palm oil expansion in Kalimantan came at the expense of forest…
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is holding its tenth annual meeting later this month. The initiative, which aims to improve the social and environmental performance of palm oil…
Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks fitting a GPS-collar to study the movements of a wild elephant. Photo courtesy of Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz. Humans and elephants have…
The Bornean elephant (Elephas maximus borneensis), a prospective subspecies of the Asian elephant, is the world's smallest. Photo by: Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) and the Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC).…
View from Varandha Pass in the Western Ghats. A massive expert panel report on the conservation of the Western Ghats has caused a political stir in India. The report, headed…
Fires in Tesso Nilo National Park denoted by orange dots. From June to July, hundreds of fires spread in Tesso Nilo National Park in Indonesia. Based on the data from…
Forest in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Forest cover in East Africa has dropped by 9.3 percent from 2001-2009, according to a new paper published…
The beginnings of a palm oil plantation on newly deforested area in Pomio District. Photo by: Paul Hilton/Greenpeace. Eleven percent of Papua New Guinea's land area has been handed over…
The Amazon forest along the Tambopata River in Peru. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A study last month in the journal Science argued that pre-Columbian peoples had little impact on…
Professor Baboko teaching a geography class at the Djolu Technical College of Rural Development. Photo courtesy of: Ingrid Schulze. This summer, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is expected to…
José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva speaking at a TEDx Amazon in 2010, just a few months before he and his wife were assassinated for their activism. On May 24th, 2011,…
Jaguar cub approaches camera trap in palm oil plantation in Colombia. Mother looks on from behind. Photo by: Panthera. As the highly-lucrative palm oil plantation moves from Southeast Asia to…
Aerial view of jungle and delta in Indonesian Papua. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A palm oil company has paid indigenous Moi landowners in Indonesian Papua a paltry $0.65 per…
The past ten years have seen unprecedented progress in fighting deforestation in the Amazon. Indigenous rights, payments for ecosystem services, government enforcement, satellite imagery, and a spirit of cooperation amongst…
A bulldozer rumbles over a recently deforested area in Pomio District, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Photo by: Paul Hilton/Greenpeace. Locals protesting the destruction of their forest in Papua…
Aerial photographs of Talangaye oil palm nursery in Nguti subdivision of Herakles Farms planned oil palm plantation. Photographs taken in February 2012. Photographer wishes to remain anonymous. Eleven top scientists…
Forest fire in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The combined impacts of deforestation and climate change will bring a host of new troubles for the world's tropical…
Crowd rallies for President Dilma Rousseff to veto changes to Brazil's forest code. Photo by: WWF-Brasil. A coalition of 200 organizations, known as the Comitê Brasil in Defense of Forests…
An interview with Arbio Left bank: Arbio's concession area. Photo by: Arbio. Arbio was begun by Michel Saini and Tatiana Espinosa Q. in the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de…
Map, Bahuaja Sonene National Park, Grasshopper Mimicking a Wasp. Photo by: David Johnston. Research and exploration in the Neotropics are extraordinary, life-changing experiences. In the past two decades, a new…
The Congo rainforest today in Gabon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Three thousand years ago (around 1000 BCE) several large sections of the Congo rainforest in central Africa suddenly vanished…
Pristine coastal vegetation: Misool island, Raja Ampat. Photo by: Dimtry Telnov, 2009. Entomologist Dmitry Telnov hopes his new pet project will inspire and disseminate research about one of the world's…
The new species Paedophryne amauensis is the world's smallest vertebrate...so far. Photo from: Rittmeyer EN et al. (2012) Ecological Guild Evolution and the Discovery of the World's Smallest Vertebrate. PLoS…
New study associates sharp decline in Amazon deforestation with increase in food production. Soy and forest in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. A sharp drop in deforestation…
The Maya city of Tulum. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Researchers have garnered further evidence for a smoking gun behind the fall of the great Maya civilization: deforestation. At the…
Forest destruction for cattle ranching in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Recognizing the global importance of the world's vanishing forests, a 10-year-long research program will focus on…
Young proboscis monkey. Photo courtesy of Rudi Delvaux/Danau Girang Field Center (DGFC)/Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD). The practice of palm oil plantations planting along rivers is leading to a decline in…
