Environmental headlines

The U.K. styles itself as a leader on environmental concerns, but when it comes to dealing with waste, it's got a ways to go in tackling the mountains of rubbish…

The tiny droplets of condensation in the canopies of the world’s cloud forests are just the first link in a life-giving chain. That water replenishes rivers, streams and reservoirs, filters…

The dents and dings on the surfaces of rocks used by chimpanzees to crack open nuts preserve a history of how the animals used the tools and how those patterns…

Once covering an expanse of more than 2,140 square kilometers (826 square miles) of the Colombian Amazon Rainforest, Tinigua National Natural Park has lost 29% of its forests over the…

The Bolivian government is set this month to choose companies that would turn the lithium in reservoirs below its salt flats into economic resources exported to the world market. Launched…

As the Philippines travel and tourism industry bounces back from the coronavirus pandemic, wildlife trade analysts are anticipating a resurgence in the poaching of the country's endemic pangolin. The enigmatic…

At the recent G20 summit in Bali, Indonesian President Joko Widodo brought world leaders to the Ngurah Rai Grand Forest Park, a former fish-farming site being converted into a conservation…

COLCHANI, Bolivia — Bolivia is taking another shot at lithium investment. After decades of stalled projects and soured relationships with international investors, the central government, under left-wing President Luis Arce,…

Whether a source of curiosity or annoyance, ants are central to life on Earth. Their microscopic world may seem foreign to us, but without them our world would be just…

Deforestation in Earth's largest rainforest accelerated sharply during the month of November when U.N. climate talks were underway in Egypt, according to data released today by Brazil. Via its satellite-based…

FLORES — One of Guatemala’s most under-threat protected areas may face future oil and gas development, as lawmakers consider whether to expand extractive activities in the region and the construction…

In the years leading-up to the outbreak of genocide in Darfur, in 2003, median rainfall plummeted by a third. Already precarious pasture and grazing corridors shrank faster than communal land…

We are peoples of place — our relationship with our lands and waters have sustained us for millennia. What happens to one species or ecosystem has immeasurable impacts on our…

Climate change-induced higher temperatures, shifting seasons, extreme drought and precipitation events, extended heat waves and fires are all impacting insects, with resonating effects on habitats, other wildlife and humanity.

In a rare triumph in amphibian conservation, researchers found that creating hundreds of new ponds in the midst of a bustling Switzerland landscape strengthened amphibian populations there. The effort, in…

NOVA CALIFÓRNIA, Brazil —  Hamilton Condack smiles and points to a towering ipê tree rooted in the plot of land where he lives and produces food. “When I first got…

JAKARTA — Indonesian academics have called out the government for banning five foreign scientists after they questioned official claims of an increase in the country’s orangutan population, warning that the…

Hopefully, the recent implosion of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, and the backlash against crypto investors like Sam Bankman-Fried, will prompt the city of Miami to reconsider its economic priorities. FTX, whose…

UCAYALI, Peru — Mennonites, an ultra-conservative religious group, are illegally converting pristine forests in the Peruvian Amazon into agricultural land. They are not only threatening biodiversity but also encroaching on Indigenous…

On Dec. 6, legislators in Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego approved a law to permanently protect the land and sea of the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of…

Officials and NGOs have hailed the European Union's agreement on a law banning the import of commodities associated with deforestation, but say it falls short of protecting areas typically not…

Wildlife — as big as elephants and as small as spiders — are important players in the carbon cycle, and scientists say that supercharging ecosystems with animals could enhance terrestrial and marine carbon sinks.

DA NANG, Vietnam — Industrial-scale fishers will no longer be able to use two types of shark-fishing gear in the western and central Pacific Ocean after the international body in…

In 2016, Bangkok opened its first waste-to-energy incinerator in the district of Nong Khaem, turning up to 500 metric tons of solid waste into electricity every day. The 9.8 megawatt…

Policymakers could finalize revisions to the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive by year end, even as forest activists offer new evidence denouncing wood pellets as an energy source, and calling for an end to subsidies.

Melting sea ice may evoke images of polar bears stranded on shrinking floes or dramatically collapsing ice shelves. But according to a study published recently in the journal Science, ice…

JAKARTA — The European Union has finalized a law that will ban the trade of commodities associated with deforestation and forest degradation. On Dec. 6, the European Council, Parliament and Commission struck…

JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities have cracked down on a private developer’s bid to carve out foreign tourism enclaves within a marine reserve in the country’s eastern Widi Islands. The country’s…

“As a boy, my father killed pumas,” says Vincente Navarra, whose family has been raising sheep against the backdrop of Argentina’s Patagonian wilderness for generations. Navarra, a 71-year-old rancher who…

A group of researchers from more than a dozen countries are calling for worldwide peatland protection and restoration. In a signed statement released Dec. 1, more than 40 scientists say…