Rhett Butler News

Dec 8, 2012 update: Tim Killeen of WWF says that the analysis highlighted below appears to exclude extensive deforestation in part of Bolivia. See the comments for more details. It's…

Dec 8, 2012 update: APP says it did not hire Covington & Burling to help with sustainability issues. Industrial timber plantation in Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Indonesian forestry…

Sharks are among the most feared of all the world's predators, yet humans kill tens of millions of sharks for every person who falls victim to shark attack. Part of…

Two prominent groups of researchers have reached a consensus estimate for emissions from tropical deforestation between 2000 and 2005. The groups, led by Winrock International and Woods Hole Research Center,…

Conversion of forest to oil palm plantations in Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation could have been reduced by hundreds of millions of tons…

OIC’s Human Orangutan Conflict Response Unit (HOCRU) with the assistance of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SCOP), the Leuser Ecosystem Management Authority (BPKEL), and the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA)…

Rainforest logging. Photo by Rhett Butler. An initiative that aims to slow global warming by paying developing countries to protect and better manage their forests is expected to be an…

Palm fruit. Photo by Rhett Butler. The European Commission has approved palm oil-based biodiesel for the renewable fuels standard provided it is certified under the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil…

27% less forest chopped down in the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to the lowest rate since annual record-keeping began in 1988 according to provisional data released…

Rainforest in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Forests worldwide are at "equally high risk" to die-off from drought conditions, warns a new study published this week in the…

Rainforest in the Chocó-Darién Conservation Corridor REDD+ Project area. The Choco-Darien is the first community-owned REDD project in the world to have completed both VCS validation and verification. The project…

A coalition of more than 60 civil society groups has warned bankers and insurers not to invest in a massive new mill slated for construction on the island of Sumatra.…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues to rise off historic lows according to satellite data released this week by Imazon, a Brazil-based NGO. Imazon's Deforestation Alert System, which tracks deforestation…

Treefrog in Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Safeguarding biodiversity is a critical component in any plan to mitigate climate change through forest protection, argues a comprehensive new assessment published…

Future hanging in balance? Borneo orang-utan. Photo by Rhett Butler. Borneo will likely lose half of its orangutans if current deforestation and forest conversion trends continue, warns a comprehensive new…

GloF-DAS Q3 2012 signals from northwestern South America. Click image to enlarge. NASA satellites picked up signals of potential deforestation across extensive parts of Latin America, West and Central Africa,…

Deforestation for an oil palm plantation in Central Kalimantan. Photo by Rhett A Butler. On Monday Indonesia's House of Representatives moved to establish "North Kalimantan", a new province in Indonesian…

Drainage canals cut into deep peat to clear tropical forest to supply mixed tropical hardwood (MTH) to a pulp mill owned by APP/Sinar Mas. Photo taken by Eyes on the…

Industrial timber plantation in Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Indonesia's ambitious targets for boosting pulp and paper production to make it the world's lowest-cost producer are at odds with…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by more than a fifth for the 12-month period ending July 31, 2012, according to preliminary data released by Brazil's National Institute for Space…

This is an expanded version of an article, titled A Desperate Effort to Save the Rainforest of Borneo, that appeared last month on Yale e360. Rainforest in Sabah. All photo…

Indigenous protest in Sarawak. Image courtesy of The Borneo Project. In the 1980s images of loincloth-clad tribesmen blockading blockading logging roads in Malaysian Borneo shocked the world. But while their…

Borneo rainforest. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. In late May I had the opportunity to fly from Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo to Imbak Canyon and back. These are some…

Trekking through deep mud and sawgrass we find a stinking wallow. The elite rangers, dressed completely in black despite the tropical heat, mark the site with the GPS unit, measure…

Three jaguars on Hato la Aurora. Courtesy of Nelson and Jorge Barragan. Images of several jaguars, including cubs, have been captured by camera traps on a Colombian ranch that is…

Beach on Peucang Island, West Java. Photo taken by Rhett A. Butler in March 2012. One of the things that makes my job enjoyable despite the hours are the opportunities…

Overflights of remote Colombian rainforest yield first photographic evidence of two uncontacted tribes. Aerial surveys of a remote area of rainforest along the Colombia-Brazil border have produced the first photographic…

150 new dams may destroy connectivity of the Amazon River to the Andes and drive deforestation. Construction of a canal for the Belo Monte Dam project, near Altamira taken by…

Long seen as a pariah for its high rate of deforestation, the world is starting to look to the Brazilian state of Pará for ideas to protect rainforests. Brazil can…