Mongabay

As one of the world’s most widely traded food and beverage commodities, palm oil is used in everything from baked goods to biofuels. It is produced in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America and sold to customers around the globe. Because no single…

Below are summaries of the most popular stories by our Spanish language service, Mongabay Latam, from the week of May 14 -20. Among the top articles: an environmental court seeks to stop environmental crimes in the most deforested region of Peru. In other…

New technologies are generating far more information than ever before to help scientists assess and predict the health and behavior of species and ecosystems, as well as the threats they face. These include cryptic cameras, acoustic sensors, satellite imagery…

Here are a few stories published this week by other news outlets. Tropical forests Scientists find that plants make up most of the world’s biomass (The Economist, New Scientist). Efforts to increase food security with a green revolution in Africa hit a…

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have been implemented around the world as a means of delivering environmental conservation outcomes while also allowing for socioeconomic development in communities that live in and rely on the landscapes being…

Brazilian loggers have faked forest inventories and issued phony timber credits to harvest Ipê trees exported to U.S. and Europe. Importers often turn a blind eye: report.

WEST POKOT, Kenya — The Cherangani people, an indigenous community in Kenya’s Rift Valley, have always called the Cherangani Hills Forest their ancestral home. Also known locally as the Sengwer, they were traditionally reliant on the forest for hunting and…

This is the second article in a two-part series on poaching in Jaldapara National Park. In Part One, interviews with former poachers revealed the inner workings of wildlife trafficking in West Bengal state. JALDAPARA NATIONAL PARK, India — Poachers killed a…

The world’s largest amphibian has become vanishingly rare in the wild, a new study has found. The Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) can reach lengths of more than 1.8 meters (6 feet), taller than many humans, making them hard to miss. Yet…

On April 9, suspected members of an armed militia gunned down five wildlife rangers and their driver in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was the worst attack in Virunga’s bloody history, and the latest in a long line of tragic…

Imagine you are the head of a small NGO trying to conserve vultures. You have limited funds, and have to choose your actions carefully. Would supplementary feeding increase the population? Could you artificially incubate eggs and hand-rear some chicks to…

Hunting for meat consumption and the bushmeat trade is threatening several species of hornbills in Ghana, in some cases leading to their complete disappearance, according to a recent study. Ecologist Lars H. Holbech of the University of Ghana said hunters had…

­Natural forests across India are slowly disappearing, a set of new studies shows, contradicting recent government claims about increasing forest cover. The three studies, published over the past seven months, use a mix of satellite data, ground vegetation…

Southeast Asia is a global biodiversity hotspot, and Indonesia and Malaysia are no exception, harboring some of the highest levels of species diversity in the world. Yet those two countries also supply more than 80 percent of the world’s palm oil, and it’s…

Fishing nets and lines kill more young white sharks living near Mexico and southern California than any other cause of death, a new study has found. A team of researchers led by ecologist John Benson used a relatively “untapped” but ubiquitous storehouse…

Interviews with former poachers reveal the inner workings of wildlife trafficking in West Bengal state.

Lead bullet fragments in animal carcasses left behind by game hunters could be poisoning vultures in Botswana, according to a new study that echoes similar findings from elsewhere around the world. The African white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus) is already…

Developing countries worldwide are expanding their protected area networks, and a recent paper that examines how Madagascar greatly expanded its own protected area system over the past decade and a half may have valuable lessons for how they should proceed.…

The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has become a crisis for wildlife and zoo animals too, as a hungry, desperate population hunts wild species for food.

Five countries that are home to some of the most iconic and threatened animal species in the world have joined forces in a high-tech collaboration to improve wildlife law enforcement. Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and…