Healthy and productive ecosystems sustain life on Earth, but face accelerating threats from human behavior, including habitat destruction, pollution, species loss, and unsustainable resource extraction. The result is humanity is…
The president of Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency has decided to ignore the recommendations of his own environmental team and authorize the auction of seven oil blocks located in highly sensitive…
It’s hard to imagine how the oceans might operate without the sway of human activity. The recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found…
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
In Niger, where agriculture is the main source of income, the message is simple: Losing your soil means losing your livelihood. The ability to grow food is inextricably linked to…
For more than three months, penguins living off the coast of Namibia have been battling an outbreak of bird flu. The worst of the disease seems to have passed, but…
Deforestation can reduce communities’ access to clean drinking water, according to a recent study conducted in Malawi. A lot of prior research on how deforestation impacts water dynamics has shown…
A recent attempt to induce rain amid a prolonged drought in Sri Lanka has fallen short, but that hasn’t stopped the government from embracing the project, to the dismay of…
Countries should concentrate on outcomes instead of actions when they set aside areas for parks and reserves to shore up the loss of biodiversity, according to a group of scientists.…
A large mineral sands mine in southeastern Madagascar has trespassed into a “sensitive zone,” violating national law and raising the possibility that radionuclide-enriched tailings could enter a lake that local…
Island-dwelling animals around the globe often face a common threat: alien species that compete with them for food, kill them and their young, and otherwise hamper their ability to survive.…
With India just a few weeks away from the general elections, a new survey has shed light on what the country's voters want. The survey, released by the NGO Association…
Whales and sea turtles off the coast of California will have less time to contend with possible entanglements in crab fishing gear in 2019, after a one-and-a-half-year lawsuit settlement shortened…
Whales can behave quite differently in response to sonar depending on where they live and what they’re doing, new research has found. The pair of studies, on different species and…
The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah has called on construction crews working on the multi-billion-dollar Pan Borneo Highway project to avoid breaking up the region’s forests and…
This month’s nationwide blackout forced citizens to deforest parks for firewood, to pull water from polluted rivers, and resulted in the death of hospitalized babies and endangered wildlife.
On March 13, scientists announced that around 10 vaquitas (Phocoena sinus) are left on Earth, just as the environmental group Sea Shepherd said it had found one of the porpoises…
There’s another world beneath the soil of Central Texas, one that is dark, wet, and mysterious. It’s an isolated kingdom ruled by a unique group of underground salamanders. Now, new…
Giraffes have to search a wider area for food and water when people live nearby, according to a recent study. “Giraffes are huge browsing animals that live in African savanna…
Hyperbolic headlines can be like catnip for newspaper editors. So when a local fisher hauls in what looks like a record-breaking catch, it often makes news. But a recent study…
