MEDAN, Indonesia — An investigation into the violent death of an orangutan in northern Sumatra in January has shone a light on the persistent problem of human-wildlife conflict and illegal…
Pedro Brancalion is used to the roar of chainsaws. For years, he’s heard loggers tearing down rainforest giants in the Brazilian Amazon, and listened as ancient trees were toppled and…
There were some hopeful developments for tropical rainforest conservation in 2022, including declines in the deforestation rate in Indonesia and the Brazilian Amazon, new high-level policy commitments supporting forest protection,…
JAKARTA — “Remarkably lax” and “laissez-faire” law enforcement efforts by conservation authorities in Indonesia have allowed the killing, capture and trade of scores of orangutans to persist, according to a…
Congo Basin impact of new FSC rule will depend on governance YAOUNDÉ — Until recently, forestry companies that had cleared natural forests for plantations since the Forest Stewardship Council was…
Logging near Cameroon national park raises red flags over permits YAOUNDE — Agroindustrial company Cameroun Vert S.A., or Camvert, is again clearing forest near Campo Ma'an National Park, raising questions…
DAKAR — The construction of a highway linking the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to Saint Louis, the principal city in the north of the country, will encroach heavily on forest reserves,…
The Gura Ferda forest in southwest Ethiopia is a beautiful example of a forest and local people living in harmony, says biodiversity and protected area specialist Julian Bayliss. Bayliss, who…
At the heart of Brazil’s “arc of deforestation,” the São Nicolau Farm has become a demonstration reforestation project, designing and refining tropical reforestation techniques on 2,000 hectares of degraded pastureland.
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia — For 20 years, Redansyah has awakened every day at 5 a.m. to plant trees here in the Pesalat forest area of Central Kalimantan province. The Indigenous…
JAMBI, Indonesia — Rahmad Saleh Simbolon, who died of a heart attack on Aug. 9 at age 47, is remembered by both civil society and government officers as a dedicated…
National protests overwhelmed Ecuador in June, with Indigenous groups mobilizing in nearly every province of the country and President Guillermo Lasso announcing a state of emergency that restricted travel and…
The world’s largest bank of the partially decomposed plant matter known as peat in the tropics is even more extensive than initially thought, according to a new study. The peatlands…
Smoke from fires in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are getting closer to cities. The combination of the highest number of forest fires in 15 years and highest ever deforestation…
The Kerinci Seblat landscape, a highly biodiverse rainforest in western Sumatra, is one of the Indonesian island’s crown jewels. Anchored by the 14,000-square-kilometer (5,405-square-mile) Kerinci Seblat National Park, its mountainous…
Alexandra Narváez and Alex Lucitante, two young Indigenous leaders from the A’i Cofán community of Sinangoe, located in the Ecuadoran Amazon, have been awarded the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize for their…
Our footsteps intermingled with the sounds of rain dripping through the canopy as my eyes examined the surrounding green vegetation, which was usually so vibrant, but was now subdued as…
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to administratively split the country’s easternmost region of Papua into five provinces, from the current two, has raised concerns that its forests and natural…
The Amazon Rainforest is resilient: the largest rainforest on the planet has been around for at least 55 million years, surviving repeated ice ages and warming. But human impacts, combined…
Conservation needs to adopt a human-rights based approach to deal effectively and equitably with the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, according to a new report co-authored by…
The fire season in Chiang Rai, Thailand’s northernmost province, lasts from February to April every year. During these months, dry weather causes ordinarily green vegetation to turn dry and flammable.…
The article has been significantly amended in light of challenges to both the research itself and Mongabay's coverage of the journal article. If you get yourself a map of Peninsular…
They may be labeled “degraded,” but forests that have been logged, or are otherwise no longer pristine due to human activity, can still provide immense value. According to new research…
Today we review how the world’s forests fared in 2021 and take a look at the major forest and conservation storylines to watch in 2022. Listen here: The UN’s Food…
U.S. timber companies imported nearly 1,600 metric tons of teak from Myanmar last year, circumventing sanctions and channeling millions of dollars in revenue to the country’s junta, according to a…
Update 2/2022: In late January, correspondence found among the late E.O. Wilson's papers connected him with J. Phillipe Rushton, whose research in the 1980s and 1990s has been linked with…
Over the past decade, the European Union entered into collaborative agreements with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime and verify the legality of wood imported into the EU. Within…
The tooth-billed bowerbird gave itself away with a not-quite-right call. Suspicious, I’d panned my binoculars toward the sound and there he was, the mimic, high in the canopy of a…
Myanmar’s rainforests, home to the endangered Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), critically endangered Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and endangered lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), are some of the most biodiverse in the…