Sumatra News

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…

EAST LAMPUNG, Indonesia — It’s early December and Sujiono is busy trimming the branches of a ficus tree in his village in Sumatra’s Lampung province. It’s not your typical pruning…

An area of forest roughly the size of California was cleared across the tropics and subtropics between 2004 and 2017 largely for commercial agriculture, finds a new assessment published by…

JAKARTA — Activists have called on financiers and clients of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, to stop doing business with the company, citing…

JAKARTA — Onrizal Onrizal remembers hearing stories of human-like creatures living in the forest when he was growing up in Sungai Dareh, a town in western Sumatra, Indonesia. Legend had…

JAKARTA — The survival of critically endangered wildlife like Sumatran orangutans and tigers and the livelihoods of Indigenous communities might be in jeopardy as the Indonesian government plans to establish…

“Unless urgent and effective conservation action is taken, these magnificent animals are likely to go extinct within our lifetime.”- Dr. Carlos Drews, Director of WWF’s Global Species Program In 2011,…

JAKARTA — The songbird trade in Indonesia has battered the wild population of the Sunda laughingthrush, an important seed disperser in the primary forest ecosystem, a new study shows. Bird…

Editor's note: Widodo died of COVID-19 on December 24, 2020. BOGOR, Indonesia — Indonesian biologist Widodo Sukohadi Ramono is one of the longest-standing and most influential figures in the country’s…

JAKARTA — A coalition of NGOs has documented rampant labor abuses in five oil palm plantations in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the commodity. The palm oil…

The Trans-Sumatran Highway is a $1.1 billion dollar project spanning 2,700 kilometers – from Banda Aceh in the north to Bandar Lampung in the south – and is designed to…

The pungent stench of an elephant carcass filled the acacia plantation. Estimates placed its death at six days before it was found on Nov. 18, 2019. Maggots filled the base…

Jumar is no stranger to the presence of elephants. Having lived and farmed in the village of Pematang Pudu village in Bengkalis district, in Indonesia’s Riau province, for more than…

JAKARTA — One person is missing and feared dead following a series of landslides near the site of a planned hydropower plant in the only known habitat of the critically…

North Sumatra is home to 1 of only 8 known great ape species in the world, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, first classified in 2017 after its habits and DNA…

JAKARTA — Two major pulp and paper producers associated with widespread deforestation and land conflicts in Indonesia may also have skimped on $168 million in taxes through a web of…

While many look to sustainability certifications as a panacea for the issues surrounding oil palm plantations, a new study cautions that these programs may not be enough to prevent negative…

Along the banks of the Batanghari River on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, thick black coal dust billows from mountainous stockpiles belonging to the coal company PT Tegas Guna Mandari…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s dwindling forests may be cleared for farmland under a government-led program to boost domestic food production, raising fears of a surge in deforestation. The government’s “food estate”…

Sumatra contains some of the largest tracts of intact rainforest left in the world, and is also at the center of a complicated web of deforestation drivers, many of which…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — For the rhinos of Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, snare traps set by poachers are a key factor that threatens to drive them closer to extinction. The Leuser…