JAMBI, Indonesia — A biodiverse patch of forest in Sumatra threatened by encroaching oil palm plantations and illegal logging could soon be carved up by a road for coal trucks.…
JAKARTA — Inspired by an article on Mongabay, a documentary film on the world’s rarest and most threatened great ape species is now racking up awards on the international film…
Traffic is a decades-old problem in Penang, a common complaint shared across class, race and political lines in this Malaysian state. When it’s brought up, Siti Fadhilah, a 31-year-old selling…
JAKARTA — Citizens of countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, strongly prefer clean energy over the coal projects that have become Beijing’s calling card, a new…
JAKARTA — The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has called for a halt to all projects that threaten the world’s rarest great ape species, the Tapanuli orangutan. “IUCN…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced the governor of the Sumatran province of Aceh to seven years in jail after finding him guilty of corruption in connection with…
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…
JAYAPURA/JAKARTA — Rain-triggered flash floods and landslides that struck Indonesia’s easternmost province this past weekend have killed nearly 90 people and driven thousands from their homes. The country’s disaster mitigation…
JAKARTA — Bank of China has promised to evaluate a hydroelectric project it is helping fund in Indonesia, which activists say threatens the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan,…
Politicians in Papua New Guinea are ratcheting up their support for a new foray into coal mining and power generation, even as neighboring states call for a global reduction in…
Environmentalists in Indonesia have vowed to “never stop” in their fight to halt the construction of a hydroelectric project they say threatens the world’s rarest great ape species with extinction,…
JAKARTA — Construction and commercial activities have quietly resumed on a land reclamation project that was ordered stopped by the Jakarta governor last year, prompting criticism of the authorities’ lack…
JAKARTA — Activists in Indonesia and abroad staged a coordinated protest on March 1 to draw attention to a controversial hydroelectric project in Sumatra funded by China that threatens the…
On February 20, Nature published a comment on hydropower claiming that dams are good for the climate and should be subsidized through the Climate Bonds initiative, a proposal that is…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian scientist says his signature was forged to obtain a key permit underlying a $1.6 billion hydropower project in an orangutan habitat on the island of Sumatra.…
More young birds survived near a road through a Thai forest than those living deeper in the forest where more predators lurked, researchers found during a recent study. The disruptive…
While scientists worked to confirm Tapanuli orangutans were a distinct species, pressure was mounting on the apes' habitat.
Geneticists, morphologists and behavioral scientists reveal the inside story of how their research led to the description of the Tapanuli orangutan.
JAKARTA — Usman’s been glued to the TV news lately. A young fisherman living in Batang, along the northeastern coast of Indonesia’s main island of Java, Usman is closely following…
Papua New Guinea is a canopy-covered country, with a substantial chunk of the world's third-largest rainforest and some 7 percent of global biodiversity. It is home to many endemic species,…
China’s ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative could introduce alien invasive species into several countries, threatening their native biodiversity, warns a new study. Announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in…
MADANG, Papua New Guinea — On the banks of the Banab River in Papua New Guinea’s northern province of Madang, rows of makeshift wooden shops, eateries and huts have popped…
JAKARTA — Road projects throughout Indonesian Borneo threaten to fragment a third of the forest habitat currently accessible to the island’s wildlife, according to a new study. Completion of ongoing…
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…
An ambitious plan to mine precious minerals from the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea looks to have run aground due to the developer's financial problems. In…
JAKARTA — Four months after activists in Bali celebrated what they believed was the end of a controversial plan to develop part of the island’s mangrove-rich Benoa Bay, the scheme…
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.…
The construction of a hydroelectric dam in Thailand in the 1980s devastated the area’s wild birds, leaving behind just a few of the many species that once inhabited the region,…
The general public knows about the precarious situation of the world’s mostly recently identified great ape — the Tapanuli orangutan — within the Batang Toru Ecosystem. There, the construction of…
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit that opens in Port Moresby this week is supposed to be a showcase of Papua New Guinea’s hosting, but the run-up to the…
