Mongabay

CAMPECHE, Mexico —When a fire broke out in June in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in southern Mexico, more than 200 volunteer firefighters and specialists were deployed to help keep it contained. Faced with limited road access and marshy terrain, the team…

The Amazon is a rich, beautiful, and magical place. I’ve visited this vast region on several occasions to learn about the indigenous communities who live there and protect it, and to raise awareness of their struggle, as part of the organization I…

A popular group of pesticides linked to huge declines in bees around the globe could be adversely affecting migratory birds making pit stops on farmlands, according to new research. In the study, wild white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) exposed to…

One fine day in late November in 1998, while standing on a knife-edged, precipitous ridge some 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) above sea level in Bolivia’s Cordillera Apolobamba, I came across a veritable latrine of sweet-smelling bear scat. I took out a couple…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  When a string of palm oil companies arrived in the village of Anggai, in a heavily forested corner of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province, Robertus Meyanggi hoped they would help his community…

Subsidizing burning wood for energy as having zero emissions puts us at risk of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.

Widely sought for its scales and flesh, which are channeled into the illegal trade to buyers in Asia, pangolins are said to be the world’s most trafficked animal. They face an uncertain future despite a complete ban on trade in any of the eight pangolin…

As oil palm plantations expand across the world, razing swaths of tropical rainforests in their path, fears about their impact on the environment have also grown. In the plantations of Colombia, a new study has found yet another way they are altering global…

As a torrent of demoralizing disasters and doomsday climate studies pour forth, how do we resist despair, where can we find hope – and most important of all – how should we live?

There are now three recognized species of electric eel after two new species were described to science in a paper published in Nature Communications this week. One of the new eel species is capable of generating a shock of as much as 860 volts, the most…

COLOMBO — For nearly five decades he’s helped introduce stunning new species of reptiles and amphibians found only in Sri Lanka to the rest of the world. He’s also inspired a new generation of scientists eager to showcase and conserve their country’s…

Tropical forests Indigenous hunting could help the sustainability of forests (The Revelator). Experts say that climate change has played a part in the exodus of people from Central America (Undark). Companies and scientists are working together toward…

New research finds that, for a given rise in global food production, the negative impact on biodiversity of cropland expansion is many times greater than of cropland intensification.

A landmark pledge known as the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) aimed at stopping the loss and degradation of forests is falling short of its goals, according to a new report released Sept. 12. “Since the NYDF was launched five years ago, deforestation…

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — “Growing up in the country, I never knew about coffee and Milo. I grew up on lime leaf tea, pear leaf tea, fever grass, sweet broom, all these things,” Ubraj Narine says. He remembers the days when tea came not in packets from the…

SUMBERKIMA, Indonesia — In the waters off Bali’s northern coast, three men stand atop a floating cage that holds thousands of pearl oysters. In 2016, they were hired by the oyster fisheries agency in Bali’s Karangasem district to cultivate Pinctada…

ROKO-ROKO, Indonesia — Residents of this village on the island of Wawonii look like they’re preparing for a battle. Men with chainsaws guard four jerry-rigged huts they’ve built to protect their land against a mining company owned by one of Indonesia’s…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s environment minister risks undermining the country’s credibility if she continues denying, in the face of overwhelming data, that haze from Indonesian forest fires is affecting neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, an activist says.…

The plant Roussea simplex, usually referred to by its scientific name, is one of a kind. It grows only in the mountains of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius; it’s the only species in the genus Roussea; and the only species in the entire subfamily…

The world is in a slow-moving, persistent water crisis. Rapidly rising water usage, increasingly uncertain rainfall, and widespread water pollution push more of our world into water stress and intensify competition for water — a competition that tends to be…