JAKARTA — The vast majority of orangutan habitat in Indonesia is located outside of protected areas. That can be bad news for orangutans living in corporate concessions, where a new…
JAKARTA — A new analysis warns of the potential for forest fires in Indonesia that could spread smoke to neighboring countries as this year’s dry season sets in, following two…
The Kerinci Seblat landscape, a highly biodiverse rainforest in western Sumatra, is one of the Indonesian island’s crown jewels. Anchored by the 14,000-square-kilometer (5,405-square-mile) Kerinci Seblat National Park, its mountainous…
JAKARTA — Activists have welcomed the Indonesian government’s announcement to carry out a nationwide audit of all palm oil companies operating here, in response to a shortage of cooking oil…
JAKARTA — Authorities in Indonesia’s Papua province have recommended the revocation of licenses for 35 out of the 54 oil palm concessions operating there. The move follows an evaluation of…
JAKARTA — For decades, oil palm farmers in Indonesia have drained — and destroyed — tropical peatlands on the basis that the crop doesn’t grow well in the boggy soil.…
Industrial logging, rubber, oil palm, then coal. The snowballing effects of these extractive industries have divided local communities and destroyed livelihoods in parts of Indonesian Borneo, a new study finds.…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Reportedly home to 3% of the planet's mammal species and one of the highest levels of lowland plant diversity known to science, Indonesia’s Tesso Nilo National Park…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia have charged three men, including a local political leader in Sumatra, with selling body parts from a Sumatran tiger, a critically endangered and…
JAKARTA — Indonesian and German scientists are collaborating on assisted reproductive technologies for critically endangered species, with a primary focus on pulling the Sumatran rhino from the brink of extinction.…
JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the…
JAKARTA — The office of the Indonesian ombudsman says it has found indications of maladministration in the government’s decision to revoke hundreds of logging, plantation and mining permits across the…
JAKARTA — An independent initiative in Indonesia has mapped Indigenous lands covering an area half the size of Germany since it began in 2010, nearly a third of it in…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia are pressing the government to uncover the true scale of illegal oil palm plantations in the country, following the revelation that the state missed out…
JAKARTA — A court in Jakarta has rejected a lawsuit by a remote island community against a gold-mining operation that overlaps onto their villages, in a ruling deemed “problematic” by…
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…
An international team of scientists studying the distribution and threats facing some of South and Southeast Asia’s most economically important tree species has confirmed that current environmental protections fail to…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to administratively split the country’s easternmost region of Papua into five provinces, from the current two, has raised concerns that its forests and natural…
JAKARTA — Indonesia, a top greenhouse gas emitter, will need far more than the international funding it has already been promised if it’s to achieve its carbon reduction goals, a…
(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) The Sundaland bioregion spans Borneo, Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsula and a myriad of smaller surrounding islands. Sundaland hosts one of the largest tracts of primary…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Upon his inauguration as governor of Riau in early 2019, Syamsuar promised to “protect the dignity of Indonesia” by ensuring that the vast Sumatran province, home to…
JAKARTA — A palm oil company whose permit was revoked at the start of the year and which was ordered to halt operations is allegedly continuing to clear forests in…
Over the past 20 years, more than $1 billion has been spent on orangutan conservation. Yet all three species of orangutan are currently classified as critically endangered and continue to…
Indonesia has reported the birth of a new Sumatran rhino calf in a captive-breeding program aimed at saving the critically endangered species from extinction. The female rhino was born March…
JAKARTA — An area of natural forest a tenth the size of Seoul has been cleared by a subsidiary of South Korean paper giant Moorim in Indonesia’s Papua region, a…
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with palm oil in the region covering Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea has declined for the second straight year, a new analysis shows, dropping to…
JAKARTA — A palm oil company responsible for clear-cutting forests in an Indonesian ecosystem that’s the only place on Earth where tigers, orangutans and rhinos roam appears to be doing…
In November 2018, Earthsight published an in-depth investigation in collaboration with Mongabay into the Tanah Merah oil palm project in Papua, on the Indonesian half of the island of New…
JAKARTA — An eight-year effort by Indonesia to protect its remaining forests contributed just 4% of its emissions reduction target, yet still yielded carbon savings worth far more than it…
BESITANG, Indonesia — Suwardi, a 51-year-old from Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, used to work as a laborer for a landlord who managed oil palm and rubber plantations in his home…