Rainforests: storylines to watch in 2019
2018 wasn't a great year for tropical rainforests, with major conservation setbacks in Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and the United States coming on top of back-to-back years of…
Environmental headlines
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Vietnam’s illegal ivory market continues to thrive, report finds
Vietnam’s illegal ivory markets are still thriving, according to a new report by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. Over two surveys conducted between November 2016 and June 2017, TRAFFIC’s…
Once bitten, Indonesia’s indigenous alliance won’t endorse 2019 candidates
JAKARTA — The 2014 presidential election was the closest in Indonesia’s democratic history, decided by a margin of just 6 percentage points, or 8.4 million votes. It’s difficult to pinpoint…
As a pandemic looms, researchers rush to test salamander vulnerability
It all started in 2008 when scientists started noticing fire salamanders in the Netherlands were disappearing. By 2011, nearly all salamanders in affected Dutch populations had been killed off, as…
Top camera trapping stories of 2018
Everyone loves camera trap photos. Remotely installed cameras triggered by motion or heat of a passing person or animal, have helped research projects document the occurrence of species or describe…
Top 10 happy environmental stories of 2018
“I like to envision the whole world as a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces of puzzle scattered all over the place. If you look at the whole picture it…
The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…
Cocaine blamed for rising deforestation in Peru’s Bahuaja-Sonene National Park
The burned forest and coca crops that have dominated the landscape along the road for the past two hours are gradually being transformed into coffee plantations. These are the last…
China seizes totoaba swim bladders worth $26 million, arrests 16
Chinese customs officials have confiscated 444 kilograms (980 pounds) of swim bladders harvested from totoaba, a critically endangered fish, estimated to be worth about $26 million. The totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) is…
Devastating Laos dam collapse leads to deforestation of protected forests
ATTAPEU PROVINCE, Laos – In July, a hydroelectric dam collapse in Laos released five billion cubic meters of water into surrounding countryside – the equivalent of two million Olympic swimming…
10 ways conservation tech shifted into auto in 2018
You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of…
An expanding frontier: Top 10 global palm oil stories of 2018
Small farmers feel the pressure as Ecuador’s palm oil sector expands The first commercial oil palm trees were planted in Ecuador in 1953. Since then, the country has become Latin…
‘Conservation never ends’: 40 years in the kingdom of gorillas
December 1978 A year into an 18-month research project on the critically endangered mountain gorilla in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, Amy Vedder and Bill Weber, newlywed graduate students from the…
In other news: Environmental stories from around the web, December 28, 2018
Tropical forests Communities in Malawi are replanting forests to save a tree threatened by deforestation (Nyasa Times). New research in South America finds that, with tree plantations, the bad outweighs…
Brazil: Bolsonaro supporter works to imprison Dorothy Stang’s successor
In 2018, logger Silvério Fernandes helped jail Father Amaro, land activist successor to slain U.S. nun Dorothy Stang. That logger may soon head a key Amazon land reform office.
Deadly tsunami leaves Javan rhinos untouched, but peril persists
JAKARTA — A devastating tsunami that killed more than 400 people in Indonesia has left the last surviving population of Javan rhinos unscathed — but has highlighted once again the…
Disappearing salamanders: New research aims to solve a decades-old mystery
Biologists Chace Holzheuser and Bruce Means are on their hands and knees in a Florida swamp, pawing through dark water, leaves and muck as cicadas hum unceasingly in the treetops…
Drone 3D models help assess risk of turtle nesting beaches to sea level rise
After months of fasting as she traveled hundreds of kilometers across the ocean, a female loggerhead sea turtle hauls herself up onto the sand: the shoreline she has returned to…
With no oil cleanup in sight, Amazon tribes harvest rain for clean water
LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador — Nemonte Nenquimo covers her face and squeezes her eyes shut as a pungent whiff of petroleum hits. She’s digging with a pole into an unmarked lagoon…
New roads for PNG: Path to progress or to environmental devastation?
GEMBOGL, Papua New Guinea — In Papua New Guinea’s central highland province of Simbu, residents of the mountainous Gembogl district eagerly await the completion of a long-overdue road upgrade that…
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- For embattled environmental defenders, a reprieve of sorts in 2018
- 7 convicted of killing Honduran indigenous activist Berta Cáceres
- Five wildlife conservationists held by Iran could face the death penalty
Indonesias forest guardians
- Smartphone app helps indigenous communities fight deforestation
- Papuan chef Charles Toto serves up sustainability and environmental protection in a platter
- In eastern Indonesia, a forest tribe pushes back against miners and loggers
Amazon infrastructure
- Bolsonaro acts; Brazil’s socio-environmental groups resist
- Brazil: Bolsonaro supporter works to imprison Dorothy Stang’s successor
- Amazon soy boom poses urgent existential threat to landless movement
Asian rhinos
- Deadly tsunami leaves Javan rhinos untouched, but peril persists
- The long journey to saving the Sumatran rhino, via Borneo (commentary)
- For elusive Javan rhinos, camera traps are a benevolent Big Brother
