JAKARTA — An Indonesian palm oil company that dropped a lawsuit against a fire expert whose testimony led to its being fined is suing a second time, in what observers…
JAKARTA — Fires razed nearly 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) of lands and forests in Indonesia in 2023, as the country suffered from unusually scorching weather due to El…
Intact forests play a vital role in tackling the climate crisis by absorbing and storing carbon. Still, there’s uncertainty around their true carbon-capturing potential, and previous efforts to quantify it…
JAKARTA — A palm oil company in Indonesia has finally started paying off a $23 million fine for burning an important Sumatran orangutan habitat more than a decade ago, highlighting…
JAKARTA — Activists have reported four companies — two industrial forest firms and two palm oil firms — to the local police over fires in their concessions in Central Kalimantan…
A strange fire on the top of a unique geological formation in Venezuela has baffled scientists, park guards and local community leaders, who have never seen a fire in the…
JAKARTA — A decade after Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, launched its landmark no-deforestation policy, the company continues to clear forests to feed…
After a scorching heat wave fueled a month of wildfires blazing across a wild jaguar haven, the rains of Oct. 24 brought welcome relief to Brazil’s northern Pantanal wetlands. Now,…
JAKARTA — A diplomatic spat has once again flared up between Southeast Asian neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia, sparked by smoke from forest fires in the former that have reportedly crossed…
JAKARTA — Swaths of tropical peatland that were supposed to have been restored and protected from burning are among the fire-hit areas in Indonesia’s ongoing dry season, raising questions about…
JAKARTA — Experts have slammed a court ruling that significantly slashes the fines imposed on Indonesian palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi, even as it increased his jail sentence, in the…
JAKARTA — Parts of Indonesia are covered with toxic air pollutants from burning lands and forests as this year’s fire season is intensifying amid the El Niño weather phenomenon, which brings drier…
JAKARTA — A new analysis has found a Switzerland-sized area of tropical peatland in Indonesia is at high risk of fire. More than half of the 3.8 million hectares (9.4…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a $61 million fine against an oil palm company over massive fires on its plantation that razed an area seven times the size…
JAKARTA — Most peatlands in Indonesia that need protection are currently not protected, a new study has found. It identifies 5.65 million hectares (13.96 million acres) of peatlands — an…
Ancient forest fires seem to have played a role in enhancing resistance to drought in the Amazon, a recent study suggests. The research, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global…
Mennonites, often searching for new land to expand their simple, rural lifestyles, have founded hundreds of communities across Latin America over the last century. In forested areas, particularly the Amazon,…
The fight to save the Amazon has continued in 2022, as tragedy and political hope are shaping the region. Violence against environmental defenders ran rampant Indigenous people have continued to…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Intensive efforts in recent years to prevent fires in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s perennial epicenter of forest and land fires, will be put to the test…
JAKARTA — Indonesia's Supreme Court has ruled President Joko Widodo not liable in the disastrous fires in 2015 that devastate large swathes of rainforests and peatlands in the country, despite…
Some of the world’s largest beef exporters are still buying cattle that grazed in protected areas of the Amazon rainforest, despite commitments to stop this practice, according to a new…
Scientists warn that the Amazon is hurtling toward a tipping point, beyond which it would begin to transition from lush tropical forest into a dry, degraded savanna, unable to support…
JAKARTA — An ambitious and long-anticipated plan by Indonesian lawmakers to revise the country’s criminal code, inherited from the Dutch colonial era, could make it much more difficult to prosecute…
Across Russia, Europe, Indonesia, the Amazon Basin, North America, Australia, and beyond, we have watched fires blaze across landscapes, causing immense damage to life and land. Now, a new analysis…
JAKARTA — Fires are flaring up in Indonesia’s Riau province, the perennial epicenter of the burning season in Sumatra, as the dry season sets in. At the end of March,…
Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at…
Deforestation is rising in a vulnerable part of the Amazon rainforest due to increased activity by industrial agricultural producers, who are burning down large pieces of territory to create new…
JAKARTA — A new analysis warns of the potential for forest fires in Indonesia that could spread smoke to neighboring countries as this year’s dry season sets in, following two…
JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the…
A new analysis of satellite data of the Amazon published in late May provides the most detailed analysis yet of year-to-year deforestation in the region, revealing exactly where and why…