Mongabay

Underneath the ground, hidden from view, there’s a massive network of fungi and bacteria hard at work in close partnership with tree roots. In exchange for food from the trees, the microbes help transfer nutrients from the atmosphere or soil to the trees and…

Conventional wisdom holds that marine protected areas don’t offer much in the way of protections to highly migratory species of marine life, given that those species are unaware of the imaginary borders humans draw on maps to delineate such areas. New…

Driving up the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco, you approach the world’s largest contiguous temperate rainforest. But don’t look for any markers or directions. There aren’t any. In fact, the rainforest, which stretches 2,500 miles from Northern…

Tropical forests A new investigation suggests that carbon assets aren’t helping to control climate change (ProPublica). More people in Asia than in Europe are aware of the diversity of life on Earth, according to a recent report (EnviroNews Nigeria). Bonobo…

This story originally appeared on Mongabay Latam as part of a special series on threats facing isolated indigenous peoples in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. Other stories in the series available in English: Mercury poisoning chief among health…

The last male Sumatran rhino in Malaysia may be on the verge of dying, leaving a lone female as the last of the species there, authorities reported. The rhino known affectionately as Tam, captured by a wildlife team in August 2008 when he was roughly 20 years…

This week, the Indonesian electoral commission confirmed the results of the April 17 election that gave President Joko Widodo a solid victory over his challenger, former army special forces general Prabowo Subianto. As in their 2014 showdown, Widodo portrayed…

In 2007, Richard Branson, the British business magnate, offered a $25 million prize to anyone who can invent a device capable of removing significant volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Andy Kerr, a noted Oregon environmentalist, drew a picture of a…

The discovery of a new species of gecko in Sri Lanka has highlighted the island’s rich biodiversity as well as the perilous state of its unique and shrinking habitats. The Nilgala day gecko (Cnemaspis nilgala) is named after the Nilgala savanna forest in Uva…

A new report examines the “unchecked development” in the Amazon that has driven deforestation rates to near-record levels throughout the world’s largest tropical forest. The main drivers of deforestation vary from country to country, according to the…

Thanks to human actions, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are soaring. But plants are thankfully removing some of that greenhouse gas. In fact, the amount of atmospheric carbon that plants absorb using photosynthesis to make organic matter has increased…

In the Guaraní language spoken in some parts of South America, the words “Ñembi Guasu” mean “the great hideout” or “the great refuge.” Ñembi Guasu is also the name of a new conservation area in Bolivia, covering more than 12,000 square…

Eight past environmental ministers assail policies. Amazon Fund and 334 Brazilian parks at risk; sweeping illegal deforestation amnesties head to approval.

Many hundreds of years ago, the first Polynesian boats arrived on the shores of what is now known as New Zealand.  In the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean, the existence of permanent land was anything but certain. The land gave these ancient travelers, who are…

JAKARTA — Inspired by an article on Mongabay, a documentary film on the world’s rarest and most threatened great ape species is now racking up awards on the international film festival circuit. Now Or Never is a 25-minute film directed and produced by…

A typical morning in the village of Phlangwanbroi starts with a melodious yet primitive-sounding song: drifting over from the nearby community forest, a series of whoops, hoots and tones rise in a crescendo. It’s hooleng jingrwai — the hoolock gibbon’s…

Laurel Chor is a Hong Kong-based photojournalist and filmmaker. A National Geographic Explorer, Ambassador for the Jane Goodall Institute-Hong Kong, and founder of Hong Kong Explorers Initiative, she will be speaking during Ecosperity Week at a special edition…

During a routine shark survey in the northern Gulf of Mexico in 2010, ecologist Marcus Drymon caught a small tiger shark. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about it. But when his team brought the fish to their boat to measure, weight and tag it,…

It’s hard to imagine how the oceans might operate without the sway of human activity. The recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found that we’ve impacted 66 percent of the ocean in…

COLOMBO — A month after a series of Easter Sunday bombings rocked Sri Lanka and claimed 258 lives, including those of 46 foreign nationals, a top U.N. conservation summit scheduled to take place in Colombo is now likely to be moved to Geneva. The Convention…