JAKARTA — Forests in parts of Indonesia regions that have remained largely untouched are now fast disappearing as deforestation driven by agribusiness and infrastructure development moves east, according to a…
JAKARTA — Illegal loggers in Indonesia’s remote Papua region have largely evaded any meaningful kind of punishment and continue to operate unimpeded, in what a new report calls a failure…
JAKARTA — An area of natural forest the size of 1,500 football fields has been cleared since January in an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua by…
JAKARTA — Indigenous rights activists have welcomed the cancellation of an oil palm plantation permit on Indigenous land in Indonesia’s Papua region. They say the case is a prime example…
New Guinea's diversity of life, cultures and landscapes has long inspired prominent scientists, from Alfred Russel Wallace to Jared Diamond. Sitting just below the equator at the nexus of Asia…
My name is Arkilaus Kladit. I’m from the Knasaimos-Tehit tribe in South Sorong Regency, West Papua Province, Indonesia. For decades my tribe has been fighting to protect our forests from…
Thousands of workers at the world’s largest copper and gold mine, run by U.S.-based Freeport McMoRan in the Indonesian province of Papua, have been instructed to remain on the company’s…
BINTUNI BAY, Indonesia — Residents of this part of the island of New Guinea have long known they live atop a coal deposit. Some local people recall hearing traditional stories…
Local authorities and indigenous communities in Indonesia’s Papua region have imposed a sweeping lockdown to minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus. The region, which comprises the provinces of West…
JAKARTA — A top Indonesian official has declared a halt to new oil palm plantations in the country’s heavily forested Papua region in favor of other, “greener,” crops, apparently contradicting…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has ordered the government to publish detailed maps of oil palm plantations in the country’s easternmost Papua region, an area increasingly targeted by the…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. When Indonesian government officials received a credible allegation that the permits underpinning a giant oil palm plantation project in Papua province had…
ARFAK MOUNTAINS, Indonesia — Seblon Mandacan scampers with ease up the slippery footpath through the forest in the Arfak Mountains. I follow slowly. It’s about 4 a.m. and the sky’s…
JAKARTA — A massive series of seizures of timber from rare tree species has thrown into question the effectiveness of Indonesia’s existing mechanisms to tackle illegal logging. Officials have in…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is racing to certify its world-leading tuna fisheries as sustainable, drawn by the lucrative global market for eco-labeled seafood. The government has since 2014 rolled out a…
AYAPOKIAR, Indonesia — Mince and Atafia Momo make light work of the rocky terrain as they press toward higher ground deep in the Tambrauw forest. The pair move with a…
Violence in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua has stalled a massive infrastructure project that researchers have separately warned may threaten the island's ecological health and the livelihood of its residents.…
A palm oil supplier to PepsiCo, Mars, Hershey and Johnson & Johnson has resumed clearing intact forest in West Papua, Indonesia, despite pressure by other major companies, many of which…
MANOKWARI, Indonesia — High in the northwestern mountains of Indonesia’s West Papua province, the newly established Pegunungan Arfak district has a bold idea: Its leaders hope to achieve economic prosperity…
Large landscapes of intact tropical forests will figure prominently in global strategies to avert catastrophic climate change and conserve biodiversity. In this context, the extensive forests of Papua and West…
JAKARTA — Pledges by major brands to stop buying palm oil from companies known to destroy rainforests have failed to stop the clearance of a total area of forest the…
JAKARTA — Environmental officials have warned of the potentially catastrophic impact of a planned gold mine in a conservation zone in eastern Indonesia, amid mixed signals from the district chief…
As it seeks to diversify its sources of fuel, India is looking to get in on the ground floor of coal mining in previously unexploited deposits in Indonesian Papua. In…
Scientists in Indonesia may have found nine stunning new reef fish species in the protected waters off the country’s largely untouched province of West Papua. They collected samples of the…
Birds-of-paradise have some of the world’s strangest and most elaborate courtship displays. In the rainforests of New Guinea, for instance, the male superb bird-of-paradise (Lophorina superba) puts on the now-famous bouncing…
JAKARTA — Zely Ariane, an editor at the Tabloid Jubi newspaper in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua, gets frustrated each time an acquaintance travels there and asks to meet up…
JAKARTA – The clearing of Indonesia’s last untouched swath of pristine forest has begun in earnest, with an area the size of Washington, D.C., razed for just a single oil…
TAMBRAUW, Indonesia — It took more than two hours by boat, through a driving rain, to reach the village of Saubeba from the nearest large town of Sausapor in Indonesia’s…
When Indonesian President Joko Widodo took office in October 2014, he made it clear that one of his key domestic policies was to develop and upgrade infrastructure across the archipelago.…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government can’t restore one of the country’s best coral reefs until it strikes a compensation deal with the insurer of the cruise line that wrecked it,…