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…
A Mongabay story featuring a whistleblower who debunked the green claims of Enviva — the world’s largest wood pellet maker — has prompted the Dutch to ban subsidies to biomass firms who make false sustainability claims.
A biomass industry insider tells Mongabay in exclusive interviews that Enviva, the world’s largest maker of wood pellets for energy, is disingenuous in its green, eco-friendly claims to the public and stockholders.
Mount Mantalingahan, PHILIPPINES —Ubre Tiblak can vividly remember the day he fell coming down the mountain. It was a rainy afternoon in June 2015, and the 66-kilogram (145-pound) pack on…
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…
BRUSSELS — Indonesia's timber industry is known for having the only legality system in the world that's robust enough to be recognized by the European Union. And now, the country…
BERLIN — Indonesian officials have slammed the European Union’s proposal of a regulation that they say negates more than a decade of progress by the Southeast Asian country to comply…
The world is waking up to the climate crisis. But time is short. It is a problem, then, that populations of rich countries responsible for this looming disaster are kept…
JAKARTA —Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas, which has a long history of deforestation and conflicts with local Indigenous communities, secretly controls Canadian paper and packaging company Paper Excellence, which could soon…
JAKARTA — Environmental activists have slammed a rule change by the Forest Stewardship Council that will allow some loggers who couldn’t qualify over the past 30 years to now be…
Asian companies made their entry in force in the 1990s, in Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. In Southeast Asia, companies intensively and unsustainably logged the dipterocarp forests, the tall, straight-trunked…
A yearlong investigation by Mongabay and Earthsight has uncovered new evidence of corrupt deals and illegal practices used by Brazil’s largest flooring exporter, Indusparquet, and its suppliers. From its headquarters…
Critics say that “the white rhinos of old-growth forests” in British Columbia are rapidly being felled by timber companies, even as the provincial government largely postpones its 2020 pledge to protect the remaining ancient forests.
The last logging period granted by the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampis Nation (GTANW) ended on May 30, 2022, yet timber has continued to be indiscriminately extracted in the…
A new analysis of satellite data finds the Western Indian Ocean region lost around 4% its mangrove forests over the past quarter-century. In a report that discusses the state of…
BODO, Nigeria — Christian Kpandei is a man of many memories. Still, the vital incidents of his life, like the death of his childhood hero, environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, grow…
PHNOM TAMAO, Cambodia — Prime Minister Hun Sen has stepped in to cancel all development projects slated for the Phnom Tamao forest, near the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, following…
Frustrated with watching agribusiness and eucalyptus plantations destroy their territory, members of several Indigenous Pataxó communities in the Brazilian state of Bahia took over a plantation, set fire to it,…
A growing number of companies are committing to net-zero emission goals in an effort to lower their carbon footprint and prevent climate change. But they’ll likely fall short if their…
Mahogany is everything you would want in a tree: tall and majestic, with leaves up to half a meter wide that cast cooling shade on the forest floor below. It…
The Tongass National Forest in the U.S. state of Alaska is a special place for conservation biologist Dominick DellaSala, even after decades of traveling the world to study temperate rainforests.…
Activists and an opposition lawmaker in the Malaysian state of Pahang have demanded government accountability after reports that just 5% of forest reserves cleared to make way for plantations have…
The sixth episode of Mongabay Explores New Guinea shares what was learned from almost two years of investigative reporting by Mongabay, Malaysiakini, Tempo, Earthsight and The Gecko Project, plus what…
MAKOKOU, Gabon — In August 2020, the Massaha community in northeastern Gabon made a formal request to the government to declassify a logging concession allocated to a Chinese company, Transport…
Myanmar’s military-led regime exported more than $190 million worth of timber in 2021, including to countries with active sanctions on the country’s state-controlled timber monopoly, according to a recent report…
Two decades ago, the inhabitants of four communities in the northern Mexican state of Durango put together a proposal: to make sustainable forest management a means of living. Over the…
Madagascar is the custodian of some of the world’s most valuable contraband: seized rosewood worth millions of dollars on the international market. Since 2013, global trade in Malagasy rosewood has…
This is the third article in a three-part series. Read Part One and Part Two. PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — In March 2021, Cambodia signed into law Sub-decree No. 30, which…
This is the second article in a three-part series. Read Part One and Part Three. PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — In 2017, an elephant in Cambodia’s Kirium National Park was electrocuted…
This is the first article in a three-part series. Read Part Two and Part Three. PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — “I was detained for a night, the authorities had come to…
