Most oil palm production in Pará state has so far been on degraded lands, but researchers warn a coming Brazilian oil palm boom could result in large-scale Amazon deforestation.
Brazil’s bancada ruralista has attached a wave of riders to bills in Congress that could overthrow the nation’s environmental and indigenous protections. There is a high chance of passage.
Even as scientists introduced the world to a new species of orangutan in 2017 — one of only seven non-human great apes alive today — they were already working to…
Even as scientists introduced the world to a new species of orangutan in 2017 — one of only seven non-human great apes alive today — they were already working to…
LANGKAWI, Malaysia – In Kilim Karst Geoforest Park, part of Langkawi UNESCO Global Geopark, a man in T-shirt and shorts laughs with his friends as one of the long-tailed macaques…
KENDARI, Indonesia — Like most residents of the tiny island of Bungkutoko in Indonesia’s Southeast Sulawesi province, Mahrudin and Nurhaeti are a fishing family. But their boat has remained beached…
The $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative promises new ports, roads, railways, dams and an energy grid reaching from China across Asia to Africa, but at what environmental cost?
Brazil is reporting its CO2 emissions within U.N. guidelines, but the nation’s true carbon releases due to forest degradation, wildfires and other key sources could be far higher.
An industrial rubber plantation is currently developing land right on the edge of Cameroon’s Dja Faunal Reserve. And it's getting closer, according to an analysis of satellite data released by…
The city of Luís Eduardo Magalhães in Brazil’s Bahia state is built on soy profits, but it has grown randomly, with some parts poor, others wealthy, and all facing an uncertain future.
Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos declared earlier this month that a controversial highway project that would cut through the Amazon will not be completed. Santos pointed at rampant deforestation and…
UCAYALI REGION, Peru — Peru has passed a controversial law that makes highway construction in border areas and maintaining trucking roads in the Ucayali Region a national priority. On January…
When it comes to habitat quality and ecosystem services, research has shown that natural landscapes do it best. A new study, published today in Nature, adds fodder to this argument,…
Ahead of a housing development in Panama, an assessor tasked with figuring out how the plans might affect local forests reported that about a dozen species of birds lived in…
India’s growing network of roads and railway lines, often crisscrossing forests and wild lands, has turned deadly for wildlife. In December last year, for example, an 8-year-old male tiger died…
Late last year, the Peruvian government gave the go-ahead for the construction of new roads along its border with Brazil in the Ucayali and Madre de Dios regions. The main…
In 2018, expect more Amazon assaults by the Temer administration, as indigenous and environmental resistance builds, with court rulings and October elections adding uncertainty.
Mongabay published hundreds of stories on forests in 2017. Here are some of our favorites. 1. Rebel road expansion brings deforestation to remote Colombian Amazon With the demobilization of Colombia’s…
Around the world, there’s a push for rapid infrastructure development, and nowhere is that truer than in Southeast Asia. Roads, seen by the World Bank as a “blunt instrument” for…
Brazil is fast-tracking the Ferrogrão grain railway planned for the Tapajós Basin without prior environmental review, and despite protests from indigenous groups.
On the afternoon of November 6, while traveling through Deramakot Forest Reserve in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo, photographer Michael Gordon came across a sight…
Lokolama barely registers on atlases and maps. The small Pygmy village, home to a few hundred people, lies deep in the Congo Basin rainforest 48 kilometers (30 miles) south of…
With COP23 well underway, scientists warn that President Temer’s policies could doom the Amazon and Brazil’s Paris goals, while destabilizing the global climate.
The Indonesian government is rushing to protect the newly described Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), a species already regarded as the most endangered great ape on the planet. The discovery that…
A new study found that mining caused nearly 10 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015, not the 1-2 percent assumed by past assessments.
Yesterday, there were seven recognized great ape species in the world. Today there is an eighth, with the release of a study describing a new species of orangutan in Sumatra,…
IBERIA, Peru — Saturnino Cuchama is proud of the business he runs in the middle of a lush tropical rainforest. Every day at 4 a.m., the 42-year-old rubber gatherer walks…
Brazil’s Temer has forgiven 6o percent of $3.5 billion in fines for environmental crimes, so long as perpetrators pay other 40 percent. No new means of enforcement was announced.
When Indonesian President Joko Widodo took office in October 2014, he made it clear that one of his key domestic policies was to develop and upgrade infrastructure across the archipelago.…
Federal police arrest a gang of timber thieves who cut rare ipê trees on an Amazon indigenous reserve and used falsified records for export to U.S., Europe and Asia.