JAKARTA — A major palm oil company supplying to global brands like Nestlé and PepsiCo continues to source the raw commodity from plantations responsible for deforesting prime orangutan habitat in…
Rudi Putra is well-known in Indonesia’s conservation world. Born in 1977 in Aceh Tamiang district, in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra, Rudi has been working on preserving…
BANGKA, Indonesia — In the lore of Bangka Island, one of the world’s main tin-producing centers, the rocky, white-sand beach of Tuing holds a special place. Tuing Beach is one…
The world’s 50 largest financial institutions increased their investments in deforestation-linked commodity companies by more than $8 billion since the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new report has…
Chinese banks and investors funneled billions of dollars into global agribusinesses driving deforestation in the past seven years, according to new analysis published by eco-watchdog Global Witness. The report, released…
JAKARTA — Palm oil licenses covering concessions twice the size of Los Angeles have been rescinded by the local government in Indonesia’s West Papua province due to violations by the…
JAKARTA — Massive deforestation for coal mines may have exacerbated floods that recently inundated the eastern part of Indonesian Borneo, the country’s coal heartland. Fourteen villages in Berau district, East…
A project by the EcoVision Lab at ETH Zurich expects to have every quarter of the tropics mapped and classified by carbon stock by the end of the year, providing…
JAKARTA — Orangutans in Borneo have been found to physically waste away when fruit is scarce — a finding with dire implications as human-driven climate change and the destruction of…
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…
Tropical forests around the world are being destroyed at an alarming rate, even in 2020 when the global economy slowed dramatically during the pandemic. A new report released this week…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian company with ties to Japanese conglomerates has cleared large swaths of rainforests, including habitat for critically endangered orangutans, according to a report. The company, Alas Kusuma,…
JAKARTA — To improve ecosystem management in Borneo, look at the population trends of key bird species on the island, researchers say. The scientists from the Center for International Forestry…
BANGKA, Indonesia — For more than two decades Ardianto has walked to the coastal mangrove trees from his village in Indonesia’s Bangka Island at sunrise with a triangular net, searching…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia have expressed shock — shock! — that a controversial bill they passed into law last year amid near-universal criticism legitimizes illegal deforestation for oil palm…
SOUTH TAPANULI, Indonesia — The death toll from a landslide at the site of a hydropower plant being built in Indonesia’s Batang Toru forest has risen to 10, with three…
JAKARTA — Indonesia could lose an area of tropical rainforest bigger than Belgium to oil palm plantations over the next three years without existing measures to slow this loss, activists…
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…
JAKARTA — Three people are reportedly dead and nine are missing after a landslide hit the site of a planned hydropower plant in the only known habitat of the critically…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. A court in the Indonesian city of Jayapura has ruled against a Malaysian logging and property conglomerate in its bid to retain…
JAKARTA — On March 10, Suande, a member of the Dayak Indigenous community in Indonesian Borneo, said goodbye to his family before leaving his village for the police station in…
JAKARTA — A litany of loopholes and violations have undercut the Indonesian government’s forest protection policies, allowing oil palm companies to continue obtaining licenses to clear rainforests for plantations, according…
With much of the accessible lowland primary forests in Sumatra and Borneo cleared and converted for agriculture and industrial plantations, the Indonesian half of New Guinea is the last stand…
Celine van Bijsterveldt and her team had traveled to Central Java’s mangrove forests to investigate efforts to restore them. But when the researchers saw plastic trash strewn throughout the swamps,…
No one was sure exactly what near-term impact the global pandemic would have the world’s forests in 2020. Some expected lockdowns and economic shocks to dampen deforestation rates; others thought…
JAKARTA — After halting forest-clearing operations in 2020, the Digoel Agri conglomerate has apparently restarted its activities in Indonesia’s Papua province, raising alarms among local Indigenous communities who say they…
JAKARTA — Plans for expansion by the pulp and paper industry in Indonesia threaten to reverse a declining rate of deforestation for pulpwood plantations, according to a NGO analysis. An…
Environmentalists in Indonesia's South Kalimantan province have emerged victorious after a three-year legal battle against a company that planned to displace thousands of people and mine coal in a rich,…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian forestry company with possible links to pulpwood and palm oil powerhouse Royal Golden Eagle has cleared forests the size of 500,000 basketball courts since 2016, some…
This Sunday is International Day of Forests as established by the U.N. in 2012. In recognition, here's an update on some of the topics from Mongabay's "Rainforests: 11 things to…
