Environmental headlines

The Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka has faced many maritime disasters over the years, but none as bad as the recent incident with the MV X-Press Pearl, a freighter…

Gold mining activities in a region of the Brazilian Amazon ravaged by illegal operations could be suspended after prosecutors filed a lawsuit this week. In its lawsuit, the Federal Public…

JAKARTA — Palm oil giant Korindo Group has had its membership in the Forest Stewardship Council terminated, a move that activists say sends a signal to other companies that they…

Ikea has allegedly been sourcing timber for its products from Russian companies engaged in illegal logging of pine trees in Russia’s protected Siberian boreal forests, a new investigation has revealed.…

Drifting down the Dubo River through Sapo National Park in Liberia, Shadrach Kerwillain, a project manager for Fauna & Flora International (FFI), takes a sample of fresh river water. It’s…

BOGOTÁ — Andrea Padilla is a 42-year-old Bogotá city councilwoman. She has a Ph.D. in law, two master’s degrees in criminology and philosophy, and an undergraduate degree in psychology. Her…

The Mexican government will no longer protect the habitat of the critically endangered vaquita in the Upper Gulf of California, but has opened the area up to fishing, according to…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the only species of bear in South…

Israel’s “energy gateway” between East and West looks set to take off thanks to a new oil transport deal struck with the U.A.E. But locals, NGOs, scientists and Israeli government…

Naryan-Mar is a sea and river port town on the Arctic coast of Russia with a population of 22,000. It is a tundra ecosystem, with shallow peat soils. The local…

The heat wave that swept parts of the U.S. and Canada this June provoked disbelief globally, with temperatures breaching 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit). Some see it as a preview of extreme…

A recent spate of violence related to land conflicts in northeastern Brazil has targeted Indigenous people and small-scale farmers, raising concerns from activists about impunity in the region. On July…

Researchers are seeking to pinpoint climate change “tipping points,” but defining what that means exactly, when it will come, and what makes it happen, is unimaginably difficult when faced with the chaotic complexities of a vast Earth biome.

PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Nine districts in Indonesia have pledged to protect 50% of forests, peatlands and other “important ecosystems” in their jurisdictions by 2030, local leaders announced last week. Spread…

Deep-rooted mistrust in the Malaysian federal and state governments is preventing many Indigenous Penan people from accepting the COVID-19 vaccine. While there have been reports of some individuals traveling up…

The Amazon has long done its part to balance the global carbon budget, but new evidence suggests the climate scales are tipping in the world’s largest rainforest.  Now, according to…

GORONTALO, Indonesia — Merlin Tahir says she doesn’t like to dwell on how much money her family lost after they were forced in 2014 to give up their land for…

U.S. and European banks are invested in oil extraction that threatens the Amazon biome, and their environmental and social risk (ESR) policies aren’t strong enough to prevent its worst impacts,…

On this episode of the podcast, we discuss numerous examples of reforestation projects around the world that prioritize communities as well as the environment. Listen here: This is a part…

MIAMI — Along the Miami shoreline, luxury high-rises and condominiums run parallel to Biscayne Bay, one of South Florida’s most biodiverse ecosystems, characterized by its once abundant coral reefs, seagrass…

Determining the success of a conservation project is rarely as simple as measuring how well forest cover has been maintained or the headcount of an endangered species. The multifaceted nature…

Demand for manganese in China is having a huge impact on the other side of the world: for the Indigenous Kayapó people in the Brazilian Amazon. The metal is essential…

The Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands, supporting an extraordinary number of species that occur nowhere else on the planet. Eighty-six new endemic bird species have been…

When the Okhchuchay River runs milky white, it means there has been another dangerous incident. The waterway begins in Armenia, passing through lands rich for mining, then flowing into Azerbaijan, where it…

JAKARTA — Human rights abuses continue to fester in the Indonesian palm oil industry as global brands and financial institutions and investors turn a blind eye to the problem, a…

JAKARTA — Hundreds of Indonesian fishers protesting against an offshore tin mining operation in Sumatra have seized a dredging vessel they deemed to be operating within their fishing zone. The…

Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos face a bleak future thanks to a perfect storm of human-driven factors, a recent study shows. The triple whammy of the climate crisis, growing human population,…

Teaching Indigenous communities in the Amazon to tap on remote-monitoring technologies during forest patrols can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found. Researchers, whose work was published July 12…

The biomass industry says that burning wood to make energy is carbon neutral. Environmentalists say biomass is a disaster for forests, biodiversity and the climate. Mongabay reviews independent scientific evidence on both sides.

An Australian mining company hoping to build a vast open-cut rare earths and uranium mine on a mountain in southern Greenland has told shareholders it will persist with the project…