Rainforests News

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is off to its fastest pace to start a year since at least 2008 reveals data published on Friday by Brazil's national space research institute,…

Since 2013, the Ka'apor expelled the Federal Brazilian Indigenous Agency from their territory in the state of Maranhão, creating a new government council, adopting their own education system and establishing permanent settlements along their borders to contain the illegal advance of loggers, land grabbers and miners.

During the pandemic, as researchers looked to wet markets and the animal trade in search of the source of COVID-19, there was a renewed concern for how the natural world…

To support ongoing conservation efforts in the Amazon rainforest, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is putting an additional $300 million toward its Andes-Amazon Initiative, which is the largest private…

When commodity prices spiked in the late 2000s, multinational agribusiness giants smelled profits. Eager to branch out of crowded Southeast Asian rainforests, some palm oil companies set their sights on…

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…

“When we caught it, we all just looked at it and said, ‘You look ridiculous. Look how big your nose leaf is,’” Jon Flanders, director of endangered species interventions at…

Conservation needs to adopt a human-rights based approach to deal effectively and equitably with the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, according to a new report co-authored by…

Restoration initiatives are slowly making a mark on the Atlantic Forest, a Brazilian biome that has been reduced to about a quarter of its original area. Brazil has made global commitments to restore tens of millions of hectares of forest by 2030, but the much smaller programs underway in the Atlantic Forest show country is still unable to monitor restoration efforts effectively.

The transition zone between the Amazon and the Cerrado, where the world’s greatest rainforest melds into its largest tropical savanna, is heating up, posing severe threats to both biomes, a…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government says it will finalize this month the revocation of hundreds of permits for logging, plantations and mines that it announced at the start of the…

PALAWAN, Philippines — On a fine day at the onset of the dry season, Sublito Tiblak wakes up very early to the sounds of birds. They’re perched on trees surrounding…

JAKARTA — Pulpwood and palm oil companies were among the biggest contributors to the loss of a Manhattan-size area of forest in Indonesia’s Papua region in 2021, a new report…

KISANGANI, Congo — A major European logging firm may have illegally converted more than a dozen of its timber concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo into so-called conservation…

Autazes in the heart of Brazil’s Amazonas state is a municipality that’s six times the size of Rio de Janeiro. This corner of the rainforest is so remote that the…

On the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo, fewer than 80 Sumatran rhinos are all that’s left of this critically endangered species. Tremendous conservation efforts are striving to keep these…

JAKARTA — A plan to clear forests in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua for food crops will release as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as Australia emits in an…

MANAUS, Brazil — As she walks through the rubble, Yawaratsuni Kokama steps over loose bricks and piles of broken tiles, her eyes welling up. From time to time, she stops…

A photo of an odd-looking amphibian drew attention on Twitter last week, where it was described as a “smooth lil fella”, compared to a melted tootsie roll candy, and likened…

Climate change is endangering the health of the planet, humanity, and the species and ecosystems that anchor life on Earth, according to a report released Feb. 28 by the Intergovernmental…

Years of artisanal mining along the Madre de Dios River and its tributaries have left their marks, both seen and unseen. Miners, swarming to the region in a modern-day goldrush,…

The fire season in Chiang Rai, Thailand’s northernmost province, lasts from February to April every year. During these months, dry weather causes ordinarily green vegetation to turn dry and flammable.…

Perched in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) near the borders of Uganda and South Sudan, Okapi Wildlife Reserve quietly encompasses some 14,000 square kilometers (5,405 square miles) of rainforest…

BANGKA BELITUNG, Indonesia — A conflict that flared up at the start of the year between traditional fishers and illegal miners in Indonesia’s Bangka-Belitung Islands has once again highlighted the…

LINGE, Indonesia — Indonesian coffee farmers on the island of Sumatra have spoken out against a plan to mine for gold in an area that overlaps with one of the…

On February 11, 2022, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro published a decree establishing the Program for Supporting the Development of Artisanal Mining (Pró-Mape), which aims to “stimulate” this type of mining…

Major investment managers including BlackRock and Capital Group are among more than a dozen U.S. and Brazilian institutions heavily financing mining companies that are destroying Indigenous reserves and their inhabitants’…

JAYAPURA, Indonesia, and NEW YORK — A palm oil firm that was among more than 100 companies targeted in a mass cancellation of permits for plantations by Indonesia’s environment ministry…

In 2021, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s biggest province, Tshopo, lost 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of intact forests to fires. Researchers based in the provincial capital, Kisangani, suspect the record-breaking…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has opened itself up to litigation by unilaterally revoking hundreds of permits for logging concessions, plantations and mines, according to environmental law experts. The revocations…