Rainforests News

PUTUMAYO, Colombia - Yehimi Fajardo only had to hear the shriek of the common potoo (Nyctibius griseus) once to understand why this night bird is accused — so unfairly —…

A little-known provision in a sweeping deregulation package now before the Indonesian parliament could make it easier for plantation firms to preserve forests within the areas they have been licensed…

Despite the global economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon appears to be continuing largely unabated with forest clearing over the past 12 months reaching…

UDUDUMBARA, Sri Lanka — Twelve years ago, as a young undergraduate, Kanishka Ukuwela was trekking with his colleagues in the Ududumbara area along the 18 Hairpin Bends, a 6-kilometer (4-mile)…

A sweeping policy change by the Bolsonaro government opens unregistered ancestral indigenous lands to landgrabbers, loggers, ranchers, and soy growers, with huge risk for the Amazon.

The world has lost 178 million hectares (439 million acres) of forest cover over the past 20 years, which the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) equated to as “about…

PUCARÁ ALTO, Ecuador — Bellowing winds thrashed the farmers’ corn stocks and the wild patches of eucalyptus cropping up the largest hill in Pucará Alto. Then there was a crack,…

Applications to mine on indigenous lands in the Amazon have increased by 91% under the Bolsonaro administration. Among the applicants are mining giant Anglo American, small-scale cooperatives whose members are embroiled in a range of environmental violations, and even a São Paulo-based architect.

In the rural Indonesian village of Hongoi*, indigenous Dayak Modang women like Lina* have had to come up with creative ways to continue their long-held tradition of weaving. Some Dayak…

As Earth's largest rainforest, the Amazon is the planet's single greatest repository of biodiversity, houses the largest number of uncontacted indigenous tribes, and is home to the world's mightiest river.…

Two environmental agency coordinators with a record of deeply reducing illegal mining and deforestation in the Amazon’s Xingu basin were sacked after they led a recent successful raid.

For the past five years, the indigenous Matsés people of the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto ventured deep into their territory to draw up a complete map of everything that…

The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is the most widespread species of bear ranging from North America to Europe and Asia. Due to this, they live in all sorts of habitats:…

There is a saying in Malaysia, “Kais pagi, makan pagi. Kais petang, makan petang.” Loosely translated, it means, “What you scrape together in the morning is just enough for the…

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…

An area half the size of Switzerland in Brazil’s Cerrado biome could see its biodiversity plummet as sugarcane farms expand to meet global demand for bioethanol, a new study says. Researchers calculated that some parts of the Cerrado could see up to 100% loss of mammalian species richness; endangered animals like the maned wolf and the giant anteater will be the most affected.

Extreme flooding in the Ecuadoran Amazon has caused widespread disarray along the banks of the Bobonaza River, all amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past couple of weeks, the surging…

COLOMBO — A rare new orchid described from a tropical lowland rainforest in Sri Lanka now bears the name of two of the island’s pioneering forest ecologists. A new paper…

Dr. Kinari Webb believes this because she has witnessed it — up close: Amid this global pandemic, the health of the planet is intricately connected to public health around the…

One of the Amazon’s most deforested regions, Lábrea, in Brazil, is remote, poorly policed and suffering from a land tenure crisis. As a result, land grabbing, illegal logging and murder are routine.