Forest elephant in Gabon More than 60 percent of Africa's forest elephants have been killed in the past decade due to the ivory trade, reports a new study published in…
Yesterday, the EU joined the U.S. and Australia in banning all timber that was illegally harvested abroad. The new regulation could have a major impact on where the EU sources…
Roger Peet (in blue shirt) posing with Forest Rangers. Photo courtesy of Roger Peet. Last year, Roger Peet, an American artist, traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to…
Recent forest clearance for oil palm by Olam, Kango, Gabon. Photo by: Alexander De Marcq. Industrial oil palm plantations are spreading from Malaysia and Indonesia to the Congo raising fears…
Forest and river in Herakles' concession area. Photo: © Greenpeace/Alex Yallop. Satellite mapping and aerial surveys have revealed that a controversial palm oil concession in Cameroon is almost entirely covered…
Rainforest in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler 2012 was another year of mixed news for the world's tropical forests. This is a look at some of the…
Deforestation by forest type/classification in DRC, 2000-2005 and 2005-2010. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has its first Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) project validated and verified…
Logs smuggled across the border from Myanmar to China. Photo © : EIA. Runaway economic growth comes with costs: in the case of China's economic engine, one of them has…
Raw logs cut with artisanal permits at Kinkole port near Kinshasa. Photo courtesy of Global Witness. In 2002 the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced a moratorium on commercial logging…
Two satellite images by NASA, one from February 13, 1999 and the other from September 1, 2008 (see below), show that Virunga National Park is under assault from deforestation. Located…
Illegal logging accounts for 15-30 percent of forestry in the tropics and is worth $30-100 billion worldwide, alleges a new report published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and…
Close up of new species: lesula (Cercopithecus lomamiensis). This is a captive adult male. Photo courtesy of Hart et al. In a massive, wildlife-rich, and largely unexplored rainforest of the…
Forest clearing for palm oil production in Cameroon. Photo courtesy of Greenpeace Herakles Farm, a U.S.-based agricultural developer, will no longer seek eco-certification of its 70,000-hectare oil palm plantation in…
African slender-snouted crocodile caught by hunters. Photo courtesy of ESI. Although founded only four years ago, Endangered Species International-Congo, has ambitious plans to protect dwindling Western gorilla populations and aid…
The okapi was only discovered by scientists in 1901 and today is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List. Officials have pointed to an infamous elephant poacher known…
Infant lowland gorilla in the Congo basin rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Central Africa has the newest World Heritage site. On Tuesday, the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural…
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,…
Deforestation by forest type/classification in DRC, 2000-2005 and 2005-2010. Click image to enlarge. Danzer, a Swiss-German forestry company that has been heavily criticized by environmentalists for its logging practices in…
Deforestation in the Congo Basin. Click image to enlarge. Deforestation in the Congo Basin has increased sharply since the 1990s, reports an extensive new assessment of forests in the six-nation…
A portion of Virunga National Park swaddled in clouds as seen by Google Earth. Permits for controversial oil exploration in Virunga National Park have been released after request by NGO…
A young "naive" chimp from the Goualougo Triangle. Photo by: Michael Nichols, National Geographic. The Republic of the Congo has expanded its Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park by 37,295 hectares (144 square…
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…
WARNING: Graphic photos below. Hunter in the Colombian rainforest. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Protected areas in the world's tropical rainforests are absolutely essential, but one cannot simply set up…
2011 was designated as "Year of the Forests" by the United Nations. While there was relatively little progress on intergovernmental forest protection programs during the year, a lot happened elsewhere.…
Bunda Bokitsi. Photo by: Zoological Society of Milwaukee (ZSM). The effort to save wildlife from destruction worldwide has many heroes. Some receive accolades for their work, but others live in…
An interview with Laila Bahaa-el-din, a part of our on-going Interviews with Young Scientists series. African golden cat in Precious Woods Gabon logging concession. Photo by: Laila Bahaa-el-din/Panthera. Africa is…
Map of the Herakles/SGSO plantation in Cameroon. Courtesy of SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund Industrial palm oil production is coming to Africa, its ancestral home. And like other places where expansion…
The Republic of the Congo has announced a new program to create plantations across one million hectares (2.47 million acres) of degraded forest lands. The program, known as the national…
Forests in sub-Saharan Africa account for roughly a quarter of total tropical forest carbon, according to a comprehensive assessment of the world's carbon stocks published in the journal Proceedings of…
