Frank Glaw is no stranger to discovery. The German herpetologist has helped describe scores of new species from Madagascar, but the latest one is special: Brookesia nana is arguably the…
Three men are piling wood on a solitary truck parked along the only the road to Djendo, a small town in eastern Guinea-Bissau. They work in silence, throwing rosewood, a…
There’s nowhere on Earth quite like Madagascar when it comes to the sheer wealth and wonder of biodiversity. But along with its natural richness, the island nation is beset by…
There’s a saying in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that refers to “Article 15,” a nonexistent paragraph of the country’s constitution during the Mobutu Sese Seko dictatorship in the…
Two years ago, the villagers of Ambodifohara on the Masoala Peninsula in northeastern Madagascar knew nothing about sakondry, a small hopping insect, except that it was tasty. Locals would collect…
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.
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting our closest living relative: the chimpanzee. Chimps are…
KAMPALA, Uganda — Two sugarcane companies have begun clearing thousands of hectares in disputed sections of Uganda's Bugoma Forest. The National Forestry Authority (NFA) is challenging land titles granted to…
The rainforest of Lopé National Park in central Gabon is one of the last safe havens for the endangered forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). But in a new study in Science,…
Poaching for tusks, horns or other body parts is a well-recognized threat to Africa's wildlife, but the impact of hunting for bushmeat may pose a greater threat. Conservationists in Southern…
Just 6.5% of Earth’s best-quality and least-disturbed tropical forests are legally protected. Only 47% of remaining humid tropical forests globally have high ecological integrity.
On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast we’re discussing great ape conservation in Africa and how that goes hand-in-hand with efforts to protect the second-largest rainforest in the world. Listen…
For the past four years Marie-Cresence Ngobo has travelled between the scattered villages bordering the giant oil palm plantations run by Socapalm (Société Camerounaise des Palmeraies), which are located in Cameroon’s rural coastal…
In his previous life, Matt Hill worked on Wall Street as a quantitative analyst (a.k.a. a “quant”) for stock portfolios worth billions of dollars. Now, at the helm of a…
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is carrying out an investigation into whether Singapore-based agribusiness giant Olam deforested more than 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres), in contravention of sustainability criteria it had…
In September 2019, something significant happened in the world of forest conservation: Norway agreed to pay Gabon $10 per metric ton of carbon to reduce its emissions from deforestation. The…
The world’s tropical forests are in serious trouble, with deforestation worsening and the sixth mass extinction accelerating faster than scientists previously thought. This grim news comes more than a decade…
On May 15, authorities in the northeastern province of Si Sa Ket in Thailand arrested two Cambodians and six Thai workers for illegally removing a large Siamese rosewood tree from…
SAHN, Sierra Leone — The day they came, Margaret Fascia was in her forest garden of cocoa trees, pineapple plants, palms, ferns and cassavas. Like most days of the week,…
MBONJO, Cameroon — The first time Emmanuel Elong wrote a letter to Vincent Bolloré was in 2013. “The impact of the group that you are controlling on our lives is…
Between 1885 and 1908, Belgium’s King Leopold II exerted control over a vast area of Africa that would later become the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His rule was characterized…
Tropical rainforests have an outsized role in the world. Of the Earth’s ecosystems, rainforests support the largest variety of plants and animal species, house the majority of indigenous groups still…
Primary forests in the tropics are declining at an accelerating rate according to analysis of satellite data released last week by the University of Maryland (UMD) and World Resources Institute…
Dean Cycon spoke recently to students at Harvard Business School. A student asked him what his profit margin was at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee, a company he founded in 1993…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at a project that aims to preserve the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Central Africa and the biodiversity…
IJARE, Nigeria — The silver blade slides through the log laid over a metal bed beneath the sawmill machine. When the careful routine ends, one of the two operators pulls…
The first time Bugingo Gaspard illegally entered Akagera National Park in Rwanda, he was 10 years old. With no fence separating the now 112,200-hectare (277,300-acre) protected area from the agricultural…
Twelve rangers and five other people were killed in Virunga National Park in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday. It was the latest deadly incident…
Eating chocolate shouldn’t mean fueling environmental and social destruction. But, as a stream of news stories and reports make abundantly clear, too often it does. Cocoa production in Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s biggest cocoa producers…
A team of Ugandan herpetologists has just returned from near their country's border with Kenya. They were searching for a glimpse of a critically endangered frog that hasn't been recorded…