Environmental headlines

PRADO, Bahia — Eliane de Oliveira Conceição heard the roar of gunfire before she could see who was firing. In the early hours of daylight, she could make out three…

Picture yourself driving down a local highway, passing familiar street signs and encountering typical traffic. Then, without warning, you find a cow standing in the middle of the road. You…

COLOMBO — The Sinharaja Biosphere Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site is a large complex of lowland wilderness that is largely fragmented due to human activity. Walankanda and Viharakanda are…

When it comes to climate solutions, your first thought may not be the wildebeest. But in the Serengeti, these buffalo-looking antelopes are the key to carbon capture. Wildebeest eat large…

In 2007, an NGO began linking up forest fragments in Brazil’s most at-risk biome. Today, Saving Nature has forest corridor projects underway on three continents. Part three of a three-part Mongabay mini-series on island habitat restoration.

This is the second article in a Mongabay series focused on changes to the ecology and hydrology of the Mekong River. Read Part One. Niwat Roykaew, an environmental activist based…

KATHMANDU — In 2012, when wildlife biologist Kanchan Thapa visited Chitwan National Park, a stronghold of the Bengal tiger in Nepal, a colleague asked him a question: “How much carbon…

An independent governance body has released a set of rules aimed at boosting the “integrity” of the global carbon market for the exchange of credits meant to address the climate…

Mr. Sobhan, a wealthy retired lawyer, decides he wants to do something to improve society. Realizing that the new aquaculture revolution has driven out local fish species, he compiles a…

While in some corners of the world, the clean energy revolution conjures up images of electric vehicles and expansive wind farms, in countries with mineral reserves critical for producing that…

Canadian mining company Aura Minerals plans to establish a major gold extraction project in Brazil’s Tocantins state without hearing the Quilombola (slave descendant) community that will be affected by the operations, thus violating their right to free, prior and informed consultation.

In 2002, a couple vacationing in Costa Rica, stunned by deforestation there, bought land and regrew a transitional cloud forest — a grassroots model worth emulating: Part two of a three-part Mongabay mini-series on island habitat restoration.

This is the first article in a Mongabay series focused on changes to the ecology and hydrology of the Mekong River. Read Part Two. The Mekong River carves a vast…

MEXICO CITY — The sudden, unexpected construction of a hotel in the middle of a protected reserve in southern Mexico has surprised residents and left many conservationists scrambling to figure…

A Mongabay investigation into land-grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon has led to the suspension of the sustainability certificate of the country's second top palm oil exporter, as shown in email correspondence…

Coastal ecosystems are very good at pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. But, as new research in the Baltic Sea shows, we also need to look at what they’re putting…

“Please tell me how I can make companies obey the law,” the official said. He was exasperated by the companies whose oil palm plantations saturated the subdistrict he headed in…

In the first half of the 20th century, Mennonite communities fled Europe for South America and, over the intervening decades, established large colonies in Latin American countries such as Mexico,…

David Suzuki was one of the first voices to call for action to curb climate change, but he is probably best known as a broadcaster and prolific author of 52…

Illegal deforestation, wildcat mining, drug trafficking, and lethal violence: Name your scourge and the Amazon Basin seldom disappoints. But as an unusual compact between police officers, prosecutors, environmental protectors, and…

Two musical instrument makers wanted to save Hawai‘i’s rare koa tree. In the process, they restored a tropical forest on the slopes of the Big Island’s Mauna Loa volcano. Part one of a three-part Mongabay mini-series on island habitat restoration.

When Teresa Chang first saw the plot of land that now makes up the Amotape Dry Forest Private Conservation Area in the Tumbes municipality of northern Peru, she was horrified.…

Technology entrepreneur and conservation philanthropist Gordon Moore has died, as reported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation on Friday. He was 94. While most widely known for his career…

KATHMANDU — The B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Nepal’s central Bharatpur city, Chitwan District, bustles as patients, most of them from the country’s northern hilly areas, line up for…

For half a century, industrial tuna fishing vessels have borne scrutiny for catching animals they haven’t meant to: “bycatch,” in fisheries lingo. Purse seiner vessels, which provide most of the…

Ancient forest fires seem to have played a role in enhancing resistance to drought in the Amazon, a recent study suggests. The research, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global…

Emmanuel Dufourq had a gargantuan task at hand in mid-2019. He had the job of listening to 6,000 hours of audio data collected from Bawangling National Nature Reserve in the…

The dry season of 2015 was a devastating one for Indonesia, with around 100,000 fires engulfing thousands of hectares of tropical rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands on the islands of Sumatra,…

Marine heat waves have led to widespread population declines of Australian shallow reef species, particularly those associated with temperate reefs, new research suggests. In a new study published in Nature,…

In South Los Angeles — right in the heart of the 10-million-person metro area — sits a sprawling 1,000-acre zone from another era: It’s the Inglewood Oil Field, a rolling scrubland…