Rainforest Logging News

Ricardo Salles publicly sided with suspected illegal loggers following a record timber seizure, but claims his interference in the police operation wasn’t a crime

A timber company operating in Malaysia's Sarawak state has threatened to take legal action against Penan and Kenyah Indigenous communities that are campaigning against the company's certified-sustainable production plantations. For…

MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Illegal logging of rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi surged by 70% in 2020, according to findings by local NGO JURnal Celebes. The group attributes the…

Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado traveled the Amazon for six years to capture nature and the people of the world’s largest rainforest, now depicted in his new book, Amazônia.

A week after Brazil’s Lower House of Congress approved a bill that exempts environmental impact assessments and licensing for development projects, Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has been named in a probe for alleged illegal exports of Amazon timber, following a Federal Supreme Court ruling on May 19.

An unprecedented lawsuit by an Indigenous group that was once nearly wiped out seeks $8.2 million in damages for continued invasions and destruction of their territory

JAKARTA — Authorities should go after illegal loggers with financial charges like money laundering, Indonesian officials said last week at an online panel. Officials from the Attorney General’s Office and…

The climate and environmental crisis the world has long been experiencing is embedded in concern for future generations. But research shows that consequences are already affecting the world's population and…

In the midst of political chaos fomented by a Feb. 1 military coup of the government in Myanmar, the country's forestry sector is seeking legitimization from the international community. A…

JAKARTA — Illegal loggers in Indonesia’s remote Papua region have largely evaded any meaningful kind of punishment and continue to operate unimpeded, in what a new report calls a failure…

This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. JAKARTA — Indigenous people in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province are protesting against a company that’s preparing to raze their ancestral forest for…

Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Edelstam Prize. As a civil rights defender, and at great risk to herself, Osvalinda is resisting criminals illegally harvesting Amazon timber.

JAKARTA — A major sawmill operation linked to widespread deforestation and corruption in Indonesia has had its legality certification revoked by the licensing authority over allegations of a forged permit,…

Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park is at risk from a BR-364 branch road running from Acre state to Peru. Brazil’s Congress is about to strip away the park’s protections, risking wholesale deforestation.

This article is a one year follow up to the award-winning series, The Great Insect Dying published in June, 2019 on Mongabay. The original series documents insect losses in Europe, the U.S. and the tropics — here’s what we know today.

Some of the world’s biggest banks have invested US$153.2 billion in forest-risk companies in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and Central and West Africa since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2016.

Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Conservationists are calling for a Sumatran rhino habitat at the northern tip of the Indonesian island to be fully protected from planned road-construction projects. Officials in…

OGAN KOMERING ILIR, Indonesia — Officials in Sumatra plan to build a billion-dollar bridge to the Bangka-Belitung archipelago off the island’s east coast, but conservationists warn it threatens a key…

OGAN KOMERING ILIR, Indonesia — Over the past two decades, much of the forests in Ogan Komering Ilir district in southern Sumatra, Indonesia, have been cleared to make way for…

An area nearly 5 times that of New York City’s land area has burned so far in 2020, most of it recently deforested, and now illegally burned over, to make way for new cattle pastures and croplands.

The historical record shows that Indigenous reserves are only safe from invasion by illegal deforesters once fully protected by government — protections rapidly eroding in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

As the 2020 Amazon fire season moves toward its August peak, hundreds of blazes — almost all in Brazil, mostly illegal, and some on conserved lands — have been detected: Report.

MANILA — As a rare species of endemic hornbills disappeared from island after island in the Philippines, ornithologists pinned their hopes on Negros: a little-surveyed island in the center of…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Paskalina called to me by waving her hand and asked me to come to her house in a whisper. It was my…

BATANGHARI, Indonesia — On a sunny day in March, six teenagers have their hands full planting seedlings in a patch of burned forest in Sumatra. “This was our first time…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  This post details the analysis we carried out to estimate the revenues generated by the Korindo Group from harvesting timber as it…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Part 1: ‘Maybe they didn’t expect us to find it’ In April 2019, an Indonesian delegate stepped onto the stage at a…

An exclusive study shows that 114 properties have been certified inside indigenous territories awaiting demarcation in the Brazilian Amazon, spurred in large part by a recent statute that leaves these reserves unprotected from such illegal land grabs.

In an attempt to derail the onslaught of anti-environmental policies put forward by Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, NGOs, prosecutors and opposition political parties are taking the government to court.