JAKARTA — A major palm oil company supplying to global brands like Nestlé and PepsiCo continues to source the raw commodity from plantations responsible for deforesting prime orangutan habitat in…
Rudi Putra is well-known in Indonesia’s conservation world. Born in 1977 in Aceh Tamiang district, in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra, Rudi has been working on preserving…
JAKARTA — The world’s leading palm oil sustainability certification scheme may have helped reduce deforestation and pollution in areas where it’s applied, but has had a limited impact on rural…
MEDAN, Indonesia — A recent clash between Indigenous community members in Sumatra and workers from a pulpwood plantation company has marred ongoing efforts to resolve a decades-long land conflict. At…
BANGKA, Indonesia — In the lore of Bangka Island, one of the world’s main tin-producing centers, the rocky, white-sand beach of Tuing holds a special place. Tuing Beach is one…
Indonesia has more mangrove forests than anywhere else on Earth. The country's 17,500 islands house around 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) of mangrove, or one-fifth of the world's remaining…
The Bornean subspecies of the Rajah scops-owl (Otus brookii) was first described from the montane forests of the Malaysian state of Sabah in 1892. Since then, however, its whereabouts have…
SOUTH TAPANULI, Indonesia — The death toll from a landslide at the site of a hydropower plant being built in Indonesia’s Batang Toru forest has risen to 10, with three…
JAKARTA — Three people are reportedly dead and nine are missing after a landslide hit the site of a planned hydropower plant in the only known habitat of the critically…
The outlook is bleak for Sumatran rhinos. Decades of poaching and habitat loss have precipitated a steep population decline. Once found across Southeast Asia, from the Himalayan foothills to the…
SAWAHLUNTO, Indonesia — Manap says he’s worried about his garden. What he thought would be a nice retirement project after years of working in coal mines is quickly turning into…
So far, the Sumatran serow has eluded Pungky Nanda Pratama. Some villagers tell him the animal, a type of goat-antelope, sleeps in the trees hanging by its horns, or scales…
This is the story of how Indonesia is losing its spots. In a recent paper published in Nature Conservation, researchers found that the archipelagic nation has a significant illegal trade…
'I'm amazed how resilient, adaptable and optimistic the people of Sumatra are,' conservationist and HAkA Sumatra founder Farwiza Farhan says in the first moments of this podcast episode about the…
In a little more than 20 years, Indonesia has gone from being a minor player in the global coal industry to playing a central role as a key consumer and…
JAKARTA — Fires have flared up in at least 10 provinces in Indonesia, with some of the burning occurring in peatlands. The burning, including in protected forests, marks the start…
JAKARTA — Hundreds of mining concessions across Indonesia lie in areas prone to earthquakes, landslides and floods, making them ticking time bombs for local communities, according to a new report.…
When over a million hectares of carbon-rich peatlands burned in Indonesia in 2019, a public health crisis followed – the haze that results causes serious respiratory issues for humans and…
When people think about apes in the connection with Sumatra, they will mainly picture the charismatic orangutans that are capturing international attention as well as conservation efforts. The attention for…
Conservationists trying to save the Sumatran rhino from extinction face a critical dilemma: In seeking to build a robust captive-breeding program, should the healthiest, most fertile rhinos be left in…
The Sumatran rhino is a cute but cryptic species that teeters on the brink: with an estimated 80 individuals left in the wilds of its super dense rainforest home, experts…
JAKARTA — Conflicts over land flared up across Indonesia in 2020, as Indigenous and rural communities tried to hold off pulpwood, palm oil and logging companies ramping up their expansion…
Since the 2018 emergence of African swine fever in China, the viral disease has torn through Asia, leaving behind a trail of economic devastation. It’s witheringly fatal to pigs but…
The Sumatran orangutan is in a difficult position, heavily dependent as it is on the Indonesian island's Leuser and Batang Toru ecosystems. This formerly lowland species has now adapted to…
BANDAR LAMPUNG, Indonesia — A brief clip recorded in October last year by a camera trap deep in the forest of Way Kambas National Park in Sumatra piqued the interest…
JAMBI, Indonesia — Armed with a flashlight, 43-year-old Musadat walks slowly through the thick and dense Harapan forest, one of the last remaining expanses of lowland tropical rainforest on the…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting one of the world’s largest pheasants: the…
BANDAR LAMPUNG, Indonesia — In a two-week survey of the thick forest of Sumatra’s Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in the 1990s, Indonesian conservationist Agus Setiawan says he found signs…
The Sumatran elephant is a small Asian elephant whose numbers are dwindling as their lowland forest habitats are converted to uses like oil palm plantations. Experts say that Indonesia has…
JAKARTA — An upgrade to a road that cuts through one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest is driving deeper encroachment by humans into blocks of forest…
