forest

During the pandemic, as researchers looked to wet markets and the animal trade in search of the source of COVID-19, there was a renewed concern for how the natural world…

When commodity prices spiked in the late 2000s, multinational agribusiness giants smelled profits. Eager to branch out of crowded Southeast Asian rainforests, some palm oil companies set their sights on…

“When we caught it, we all just looked at it and said, ‘You look ridiculous. Look how big your nose leaf is,’” Jon Flanders, director of endangered species interventions at…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government says it will finalize this month the revocation of hundreds of permits for logging, plantations and mines that it announced at the start of the…

JAKARTA — Pulpwood and palm oil companies were among the biggest contributors to the loss of a Manhattan-size area of forest in Indonesia’s Papua region in 2021, a new report…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government says it has no plans to reclassify oil palms as a forest crop rather than an agricultural one, following a controversial proposal made by the…

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation along with a number of prominent U.S. university endowments are among the top investors in a troubled set of oil palm plantations in the…

A forest fire that has been spreading for weeks in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego is threatening the ancestral land of an Indigenous group and destroying some of the world’s highest…

The ongoing drought in Paraguay, now moving into its third year, has put increasing pressure on conservation efforts throughout the country to support local communities and protect wildlife. Record-breaking heat…

JAKARTA — Indonesia has recorded mixed progress in its dual programs of restoring tropical peatlands and mangroves, acknowledging that achieving the latter goal will be far more challenging than for…

Botanist Álvaro Pérez didn’t expect to discover a new species of magnolia while hiking through Ecuador’s Canandé Reserve. He said it was the enormous, unique fruit that tipped him off.…

In late 2021, the Mexican government made a controversial announcement that many of the country’s major infrastructure projects, most notably the Tren Maya project being built across the Yucatán Peninsula,…

JAKARTA — Deforestation for new oil palm plantations in Indonesia has decreased over the past decade, strengthening the case that palm oil doesn’t have to be associated with the destruction…

JAKARTA — Palm oil companies in Indonesia’s West Papua province are suing a local district head for revoking their permits, the second such case filed since authorities last year rescinded…

JAKARTA — Environmental activists have cautiously welcomed the Indonesian government’s move to revoke hundreds of permits for logging, plantations and mines, calling it an opportunity to conserve vast swaths of…

When researchers found a begonia plant twice as tall as a person, they knew they had something extraordinary. Of the more than 2,000 known begonia species, most are the size…

Update, 2/10/2022: The Indonesian government has now clarified that it will not seek to reclassify palm plantations as forests, read about it here. JAKARTA — Across large swaths of Indonesia, forests…

JAKARTA — A “social forestry” program administered by the Indonesian government to grant land rights to communities has not been effective in preventing deforestation, and in some cases has even…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s land and forest fires burned a greater area this year than in 2020, with most of the fires occurring in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara,…

BALI, Indonesia — Satellite imagery has detected deforestation in a gold mining concession in Indonesia that overlaps with the habitat of the most threatened great ape in the world. U.S.-based…

At the very southern tip of Colombia, Indigenous communities practice a sustainable food system that involves artisanal fishing and rotating crop structures within cycles of flooding periods. This has allowed…

BALI, Indonesia — Palm oil industry watchdogs are warning of a possible surge in deforestation across Indonesia, after the government ended a three-year freeze on issuing permits for new plantations.…

A group of women in rural El Salvador is standing up against a major infrastructure project that threatens to clear hundreds of hectares of forest and cut off access to…

In the dark, early morning hours, Magali Salinas trails a troop of howler monkeys through the Amazon rainforest. Magali is particularly invested in this troop. She rehabilitated each monkey, brought…

SORONG, Indonesia — An Indigenous clan in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua has had its rights to its ancestral lands and forests recognized by the local government, a key step…

A one-minute audio clip made the rounds on Venezuelan Twitter last year, in which a state official being interviewed on a radio show tells citizens that, because of ongoing national…

Mount Mulanje’s bare granite face looms above the lush surrounding landscape. Said to be the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lonely Mountain (home to Smaug the dragon), Malawi’s highest mountain also…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a ruling declaring a palm oil company not responsible for fires in its concession, in a verdict that boils down to the company…

JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, owes a substantial slice of that output to criminal deforestation, according to a new report showing that a fifth of…

JAKARTA — UNESCO has renewed its call for the closure of a road running through Indonesia’s Lorentz National Park after the nation’s environment minister said shutting it down would be…