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…
Environmental headlines
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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…
Environment and rights founder in the wake of Chinese funding in Bolivia
For Adamo Diego Cusi, a search for oil in the Bolivian Amazon by the Chinese-backed company BGP Bolivia has been a terrible ordeal. His work as coordinator of environmental and…
In India, indigenous youths are filming their own forests and communities
Read the other stories in this four-part series on the indigenous groups living around Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, India: From a new bird to a new community reserve:…
Māori community reconnects youth with their ancestral forests
Read other stories in this three-part profile of the Ruatāhuna community’s stewardship of its forest. A Māori community leans on tradition to restore its forest What makes a forest healthy?…
Japan leaving IWC, to resume commercial whaling
The government of Japan confirmed today that it is withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and will resume commercial whaling operations in the North Pacific. The IWC, an inter-governmental…
Gardens with too many nonnative plants threaten populations of insect-eating birds, study finds
When homeowners decide between planting native trees or exotic ginkgos, they also may be deciding the fate of insect-eating birds in their neighborhood, a new study finds. The research, published…
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
- In West Papua, a development plan that doesn’t require clearing forest
- Smartphone app helps indigenous communities fight deforestation
- Papuan chef Charles Toto serves up sustainability and environmental protection in a platter
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
- Rhinos or roads? Nepal deals with a tricky balancing act
- Deadly tsunami leaves Javan rhinos untouched, but peril persists
- The long journey to saving the Sumatran rhino, via Borneo (commentary)
