Local forestry groups have reported increased illegal logging in the weeks before Cambodia’s July 29 election, according to reporting by the Phnom Penh Post. “[Our] community is very worried about the…
Southern Cameroon is home to some of the most biodiverse areas of African rainforest. It’s also home to a massive area of deforestation destined for rubber cultivation – right across…
New research comparing the carbon costs of oil palm plantations with those of rubber production finds that while oil palm cultivation is the more efficient process in terms of land…
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…
On today’s episode, we discuss humanity’s deep connection to water and hear sounds of one of the most ancient animal migrations on Earth, that of the Sandhill crane. Listen here:…
LONG LAMAI, Malaysia — The tallest tajem trees have slash marks clear up to the canopy. Each diagonal cut released some of the tree’s heart-stopping sap to tip someone’s darts,…
Thousands of square kilometers of the world’s second-largest rainforest, the Congo Basin, sit on the verge of destruction, according to a new report released today by Earthsight, the London-based non-profit…
Rubber plantations cover around 86,000 square kilometers (33,200 square miles) in Southeast Asia and conservationists worry they are posing an increasingly major threat to the region’s rainforests. A new study…
The world’s largest tire manufacturer has pledged to develop a fully sustainable supply chain by 2050. Bridgestone announced on Feb. 6 an overhauled sustainability policy for its suppliers, which pulls…
When tropical forests are felled and converted into land for oil palm or rubber plantations, it’s easy to think of the orangutans or the tigers that may lose their lives…
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…
The wholesale destruction of rainforests across parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island to make way for cash-crop plantations has not just devastated animal and plant biodiversity in the region, but may…
MUNICIPALITY OF ALTAMIRA , Brazil – Brazil has made headlines recently for almost entirely negative reasons — whether it is the on-going corruption scandal known as Operation Car Wash, which has…
GUA MUSANG, Malaysia – In their fight for the rights of peninsular Malaysia’s native people, the Orang Asli, an alliance of women are making waves in the country's highly conservative…
YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Two male chimps, Avi and Max, take turns inside an electric-fenced compound where eight Central chimpanzees are housed at the Mefou Primate Sanctuary not far from Cameroon’s…
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” So said US baseball legend Yogi Berra, on the importance of having a goal in sight and a…
Cambodia has one of the world's highest rates of deforestation, losing a Connecticut-size area of tree cover in just 14 years. This week, NASA released before-and-after satellite images of plantation…
Massive forest fires in the Congo and Amazon, surging deforestation in Brazil, and tentative steps toward reform in Indonesia and Myanmar: there were no shortage of major happenings in tropical…
It was a sunny afternoon in North Sumatra when Muhamad Syahrial, a worker on a rubber estate in the Indonesian province, spotted a slithering snake among the children at play in…
Michelin Group, one of the world's three largest tire companies, has just adopted a zero deforestation policy for its rubber sourcing. The move is significant because rubber is a major…
"Hell for people and paradise for orangutans,” is how Ian Singleton, director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP), describes intact Indonesian peat swamp forests. With their high daily temperatures…
frica is similar to other developing regions of the world in that agriculture is central to the continent’s economy, composing almost one quarter of its GNP and employing nearly two-thirds…
If demand for palm oil keeps growing the way it has been in Indonesia's eastern Kalimantan region, there might not be enough degraded land available in 2020 to prevent further deforestation…
he countries of Gabon, Liberia, Indonesia and Myanmar may not seem to hold much in common, but each of these countries — two in West Africa and two in East…
he adolescent orangutan was captured in the forests of Sumatra by a soldier at the height of the Aceh province civil war for independence. By February of 2004, this orangutan…
s global markets increasingly clamor for palm oil, used in everything from soap to processed foods, companies are actively scouting out prime places to produce that oil, and governments are…
Indonesian government investigators have uncovered widespread profiteering by state-backed retailers, who are selling millions of dollars worth of subsidized fertilizers meant for small farmers to big plantations. Nearly a third of…
he long-limbed, canopy-swinging, duet-singing gibbons of Southeast Asia are under threat as industrial agriculture eats into their forest habitat. Palm oil plantation expansion is famously bad news for all sorts…
Frustrated by what they say has been seven years of intransigence and injustice, farmers from Cambodia’s ethnic Bunong community are taking their quest for compensation and the return of their…
In what conservationists are hailing as a major breakthrough in efforts to protect Sumatra's fast-dwindling lowland rainforests, the Indonesian government on Wednesday finally approved an ecosystem restoration license for more…
