Rangers in Indonesia’s Aceh to get guns as officials flex on violators
JAKARTA — Forest rangers in Indonesia’s Aceh province will this year be allowed to carry firearms for the first time in decades, in the latest move by local authorities toward…
Sri Lanka’s Sinharaja rainforest reserve to be quadrupled in size
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka plans to quadruple the size of the protected area inside its last viable rainforest, in a nod to the ecological significance of the region. The Sinharaja…
FSC complaint filed against pulpwood firms tied to Indonesia’s richest man
JAKARTA — An Indonesian NGO has filed a complaint with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), alleging deforestation carried out by pulpwood firms linked to Indonesia’s wealthiest individual and supplying two…
Indonesia’s fires burned mostly abandoned and degraded land, not forests
JAKARTA — It was large swaths of degraded and idle land, and not forested land, that accounted for much of the burned area during this year’s fire season in Indonesia,…
Saving a Philippine tree last seen a century ago
MANILA — In 1915, a taxonomist recorded the existence of a tree known locally as kaladis narig (Vatica elliptica) in the forests of Zamboanga Sibugay, a province in the Philippines’…
It takes a school, and a community, to save this rare Philippine hornbill
The school bell rings for recess and as the students prepare to leave their rooms, a screeching bird call blares through the rooms and hallways of Sebaste National High School,…
Illegal logging persists in Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary: Report
Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia continues to be illegally cleared, according to a new report by the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN). Located in the central plains of Cambodia, Prey…
Indigenous-wildlife ranger collaboration conserves rare Australian rainforests
Behind the sand dunes of the Dampier Peninsula, in the far west of the Kimberley region of Australia, the landscape is alive, the air filled with the sound of great…
FSC report on palm giant Korindo lists litany of violations, even with redactions
JAKARTA — The Forest Stewardship Council has released a batch of heavily redacted reports into its probe of violations by a palm oil company operating in Indonesia, after it was…
Democratic values that protected Indonesian rainforests now need saving, too
This article was produced in partnership with The Gecko Project. When Mika Ganobal, a 35-year-old civil servant, mounted the top of a van in the ramshackle town of Dobo to…
10 takeaways from Indonesia’s grassroots #SaveAru success
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. This month Mongabay and The Gecko Project published “Saving Aru,” an article chronicling how the people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands thwarted a…
Combining negotiation, legal backing and orchids to create ecotourism reserve
On the 650-hectare (1,600-acre) El Pahuma Orchid Reserve in Andean cloud forest, you can find over 300 species of orchids, and even a handful of endangered spectacled bears. If you…
Toxic river: Mining, mercury and murder continue to plague Colombia’s Atrato
Snaking its way through Colombia’s northwestern department of Choco, for centuries the Atrato River has been the lifeblood for Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities living along its banks. But decades of…
Saving Aru: The epic battle to save the islands that inspired the theory of evolution
This story was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. I. The movement begins Late one rainy night in August 2013, a college student named Collin…
The sink and the safeguard: Benefits of protecting and restoring intact forests for people and planet (commentary)
What I remember most from that summer, ten years ago, are the juxtapositions: bumpy dirt roads and freshly paved highways, expansive cattle ranches and squatters waiting for land rights, dense…
Interfaith leaders step up to protect the world’s ‘sacred’ rainforests
During Climate Week, starting September 22 at the UN in New York City, interfaith leaders will unveil the Faiths for Forests Declaration, with a call to political action by global congregations.
DiCaprio joins $5M effort to combat Amazon fires
In response to rising deforestation and fires in the Amazon, on Sunday actor Leonardo DiCaprio and philanthropists Laurene Powell Jobs and Brian Sheth announced the establishment of a $5 million…
The Pan Borneo Highway could divide threatened wildlife populations
This is the fourth article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. BATU PUTEH, Malaysia — They call it the…
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…
Venezuelan crisis: Caring for priceless botanical treasures in a failed state
After two years of severe drought, lacking electricity and water, with a $500 annual budget, the Botanical Garden of Caracas struggles valiantly to protect its precious collection.
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- Fighting to save an endangered ape, Indonesian activists fear for their lives
- Iran sentences eight conservationists convicted of spying
- Watchdog denounces arrests of four anti-mining activists in Indonesia
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
- Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
- Amazon’s Munduruku stage daring Christmas raid to recover sacred urns
- Belo Monte boondoggle: Brazil’s biggest, costliest dam may be unviable
Asian rhinos
- Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
- Indonesia to capture 3 wild Sumatran rhinos to add to breeding population
