Only 13 of some 60 men implicated in a human trafficking case in which Indonesian drug users were imprisoned under the guise of a rehabilitation program and forced to work…
Harvard-trained ethnobotanist and host of the popular podcast Plants of the Gods, Mark Plotkin is no stranger to psychedelic plants. But many people across the world, particularly in countries where…
JAKARTA — Indonesian prosecutors have charged three major palm oil companies in connection with a cooking oil shortage that rocked the world’s top producer of palm oil. The Attorney General’s…
A tropical rainforest is composed of thousands of species of long-lived trees, each with a natural history characterized by unique morphological, physiological and reproductive attributes. Very little was known about…
Macarena Martinic wasn’t surprised earlier this year when the Chilean government said yes to extending the life of Los Bronces, a large, centuries-old open-pit copper mine in the Andes, an…
“Thanks to the oil palm, I have money in my pocket.” He boasts it without modesty. He says his 11 planted hectares (27 acres), with 145 plants in each, give…
In recent years, the state-run company made bold pledges about combating deforestation and received billions of dollars in reduced-interest loans to carry out these promises.
An afro-descendent community in northern Ecuador is fighting to retake its land from a palm oil company that has allegedly used questionable permits and expensive lawsuits to maintain a hold…
Land legally designated or owned by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities increased by 102.9 million hectares (254 million acres), larger than the size of Egypt, between 2015 and 2020, according…
Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by extractive industries and mining for clean-energy minerals is linked to a myriad of abuses, according to new research. Indigenous peoples are affected in just…
On the eastern edge of Victoria, British Columbia, abutting the Salish Sea, sits Uplands Park, spanning about 30 hectares, or 74 acres, amid the bustling municipality of Oak Bay. Although…
Considering the importance of hilsa fish in the country’s dietary needs, economy, and the livelihood of fishermen, Bangladesh has long made several conservation attempts to increase the population of the…
Planting clusters of native trees in oil palm plantations can boost biodiversity without sacrificing yields, according to a new study. Researchers say the findings from an experimental project on the…
When Pablo Garcia Borboroglu first laid eyes on a wild penguin colony in Patagonia, Argentina, he experienced two things at once: a sense of extraordinary wonder for these wild animals,…
DHAKA — Authorities in Bangladesh have rolled out two schemes to combat air pollution in the capital Dhaka, one of the world’s fastest growing mega cities and one of the…
In western Mexico, a forest was cleared in a couple of days. It was the early morning of a spring day in 2020. A dozen workers arrived in two trucks…
Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.
Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of brief stories from the extractives industry in Africa.
New research has found that five key shark species found in reef habitats are at higher risk of extinction than previously thought, mainly due to overfishing. Published in Science, the…
Climate change will severely reduce the distribution of a caterpillar that’s harvested, sold and eaten by millions of people across Southern Africa, with some regions projected to lose nearly 100%…
Looking from above, the Nuevo Progreso Mennonite camp is a patch of brown hues that spreads irregularly on a green carpet. You can only see uniform crops that seem to…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s largest coal miner, PT Adaro Energy, faces claims of greenwashing over its plan to build coal-fired power plants on the island of Borneo to provide electricity for…
SINGAPORE — Macaques look on from trees as a round of applause breaks out. After repeated attempts, a team has managed to fly a drone and drop a sensor platform…
BATANGHARI, Indonesia — In a sweltering oil palm field in Batanghari village, Rokani fixes a sickle to an 11-meter (36-foot) pole and begins cutting down bunches of fruit from the…
This investigation is a collaboration between the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), NBC News, Mongabay and El Espectador, with support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. Conservation…
Sustainable liquid biofuels are needed to reduce the carbon footprint of fossil fuel-powered planes, ships, trucks and cars. Grass feedstock has shown promise in biofuel labs, but commercial scaling up may be an insurmountable hurdle.
JAKARTA — Reports of human rights violations continue to mount around a major tourism development on the Indonesian island of Lombok, two years since the United Nations first flagged problems…
Beneath the luxurious foliage and the majestic trees of the Amazon Rainforest lies a counterintuitive reality: a mostly infertile soil that becomes swiftly depleted once its plant coverage is stripped…
Satellite images give us a dimension of forest cover loss. From one year to the next, and sometimes in just a few weeks, a forest can be wiped off the…
In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, scientists affiliated with institutions in the Northern Hemisphere organized most expeditions into the Amazon. These botanists, zoologists and anthropologists were…
