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.…
Many Indigenous communities in northern Nicaragua are struggling with hunger and malnutrition as increasing land invasions force them from ancestral forests that they once sustainably managed for crop cultivation. Residents…
For the Amazon, 2021 was yet another year under the pandemic where the onslaught against nature never seemed to end. Deforestation continues, surging at year’s end Deforestation continued in the…
Northern Guatemala is covered in more than 3,000 square miles of rainforest. Some parts of it have been burned down by cattle ranchers and drug traffickers. Other parts remain pristine,…
In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into the…
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…
TLALPAN, Mexico — Mexico City is, by some counts, one of the largest cities in the world. Its 9 million citizens occupy 1,485 square kilometers (573 square miles) of sprawling…
JAKARTA — For decades, illegal logging and timber trafficking have destroyed forests across Indonesia, and with them the source of livelihoods of millions of Indigenous peoples. Now, Indigenous peoples and…
The Xingu River Basin, one of the most biodiverse regions of the Brazilian Amazon, is reeling from an explosion of illegal deforestation that has coincided with the rise and presidency…
MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Illegal logging of rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi surged by 70% in 2020, according to findings by local NGO JURnal Celebes. The group attributes the…
On Monday, French energy giant Total declared force majeure on its multibillion-dollar light natural gas (LNG) project in northern Mozambique, formally withdrawing all of its employees from the region and…
JAKARTA — Illegal loggers in Indonesia’s remote Papua region have largely evaded any meaningful kind of punishment and continue to operate unimpeded, in what a new report calls a failure…
More than a hundred candidates who ran in municipal elections last November in cities across Brazil’s Amazonian states are on the environmental regulator’s "dirty list" for violations committed over the…
JAKARTA — An upgrade to a road that cuts through one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest is driving deeper encroachment by humans into blocks of forest…
The Brazilian Amazon is home to public lands that span an area the size of Spain — undesignated forests that are at growing risk of land grabbing encouraged by the…
When Celso Silva Junior, a Ph.D. candidate at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE), stepped back from his recently completed map of Brazil’s secondary forests, he was surprised by…
Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…
JAKARTA — An evolutionary crucible in Indonesia that’s given rise to a unique array of primates found nowhere else on Earth is at risk of disappearing due to rapid deforestation,…
Using the customizable app ForestLink, traditional forest guardians (people living within and around the forest) can send near-real-time, geo-tagged alerts about illegal logging and mining activities to authorities and other…
The global furniture giant Ikea used illegal timber from Ukraine in its supply chain and one of the world’s preeminent forestry certification organizations failed to stop it from happening, a…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has backed down from a decision to scrap its timber legality verification process for wood export, amid criticism from activists and the prospect of being…
The Bukit Tigapuluh landscape in Indonesia has been sliced and diced by roads, opening its forests to threats from the outside. As forest vanishes in the region, so too does…
In Brazil, indigenous lands make up 13.5% of the national territory and are home to half a million indigenous peoples speaking 280 distinct languages. New research, published in the journal…
Satellites are an excellent tool for monitoring forests. Those who work in the areas of forest management, policy development and environmental conservation are increasingly making use of these eyes in…
JAKARTA — The European Union is seeking an explanation for Indonesia’s decision to scrap a highly regarded timber legality verification system, which the bloc uses to ensure it imports only…
JAKARTA — Environmental experts have warned of a resurgence in illegal logging in Indonesia after the government declared that wood exports would no longer have to comply with a stringent…
Across the globe, tree cover loss hit record highs from 2016-2018, with roughly the size of a soccer field lost each second. In 2018 alone, the area of tree cover…
MANILA — The Philippine government has condemned the killing of an environmental official by unknown assailants last month — the fifth such incident this year, all of them related to…
International wildlife trade regulators have issued an advisory drawing attention to $50 million worth of Malagasy rosewood logs seized in 2014 in Singapore that could potentially end up in the…
Areas cleared of forests bleed heat to neighboring forests, and this fuels increases in temperatures there, new research has found. Average temperatures in forests around the world are already rising…