Every year since 1993, Fabio de Oliveira Roque, one of the authors of this piece, has returned to his hometown of São Paulo, a big city inside a biodiversity hotspot…
Sefwi Wiawso doesn’t feature in Ghana’s tourist guides. Its main town, Wiawso, is little more than a single road — albeit one bursting with vitality and color, with hawkers selling…
Human beings evolved among trees. Even today, hundreds of millions of people live in and around forests, and depend upon them directly for their food, fuel, and livelihoods. Many of…
Of the 32 hornbill species found in Asia, three are currently considered Critically Endangered with global extinction, according to IUCN criteria. One of those, the helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil), is…
An Indonesian palm oil trader sees its share price drop as major clients take their orders elsewhere. Investors lose $42 million as a growing cocoa company in Peru collapses. A…
In China, where most rivers are deprived of large mammals due to habitat destruction and over-exploitation, a healthy population of Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra) was recently found to thrive right…
If aviation emissions were counted as those of a separate country, that country would be ranked as a top ten emitter. The aviation industry’s activities currently contribute between 3.5 and…
As a conservation scientist, people often ask me, “What can I do to help save vanishing species?” In the U.S., you already do something when you pay your taxes. The…
I sit huddled in the hide, the sharp winter air stinging my cheeks and making my eyes tear up. Blinking, I catch sight of movement in the reeds. Out steps…
The global poaching crisis has induced large segments of the conservation community to call for far tougher law enforcement. Many look to policing lessons from decades of counter-narcotics efforts for…
The peace deal last year in Colombia has elicited a variety of opinions. One of the loudest comes from some environmental conservation advocates who fear that it will exacerbate deforestation…
Primates are our family. From tiny, delicate golden lion tamarins to impressively muscular gorillas, we are part of the same evolutionary lineage; a tree of life stretching back about 65…
The sun bear (Helarctos malayanus), a charismatic tropical Ursid, occurs throughout Southeast Asia, where rapid deforestation and land-use change driven by human activities is threatening the future of this extraordinary…
In a recent article, Niall McCann attacks critiques of the “militarization” of conservation by academics such as Professor Rosaleen Duffy of the University of Sheffield in the UK. McCann’s position…
Sitting on the banks of the Mekong River repairing his fishing net, 60-year-old Saron recalls a story from the time of his grandfather: “One cool November morning, Uncle Somnang was…
In early 2017, the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) decided that it was going to stop working with certification in agriculture. It was actually a fairly easy and straightforward decision: After…
The lungs of the planet let out a long sigh of relief when given their own special place in the Paris Agreement in 2015. It’s not every day the trees…
Peru’s megadiversity has placed the country under an international spotlight, as its many ecosystems have become a global conservation priority. However, Peru has suffered from high deforestation rates in recent…
Held every three years, the General Assembly (GA) is supposed to be the top Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) platform for decision-making. The idea is that members of the three FSC…
Can you answer important questions about conservation by playing a game? Yes, and it works. In August, ForDev, the research team I lead, was invited by the Forest Stewardship Council…
In 1913, former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt visited a remote part of Brazil, where he shot dead a wild jaguar. Posing for a photograph, he pulled back…
Constructive engagement with concerns about the rise in militarized forms of conservation are very welcome. I currently run a four-year project funded by the European Research Council, BIOSEC, which explores…
Over the past few months, a few academics have released a tide of articles (for example here, here, and here) criticizing what they call the “militarization of conservation,” but their…
“We are going to a place where the reef shouldn’t be there,” Dr. Valeria Pizarro enticed us. The mysterious coral reef, Varadero, lies tucked away in the entrance to the…
On one of our business trips to the city of Madison, in the U.S., we visited Graze, a restaurant that is proud to show the origin of the ingredients it…
Tougou village in northern Burkina Faso has a challenging climate for farming. During the dry season, which lasts from November to May, the Harmattan blows — a dry, dusty wind…
Prof. Simon Lewis, a co-author of an article on peatlands in the Congo Basin published in Nature, recently proposed to scientists working on tropical forests that they sign an open…
Last month, over 100 senior academics and researchers signed on to a knee-jerk letter from an industry lobby group criticising a Chatham House report that highlighted the serious damage industrial…
Indigenous territories and nature reserves in Nicaragua have undergone precipitous declines in forest cover since 2001. The remote Indio Maíz Biological Reserve (IMBR) has, fortunately, escaped most of the onslaught…
Marine conservation interventions are increasingly using improved food security in developing countries as a justification and an objective for their work. By improving the supply of fish through interventions such…