Environmental headlines

Scientists have been counting tiger populations for decades, using a variety of methods including camera traps and DNA collected from tissue or blood after darting and sedating the world’s largest…

Gum trees dot the hills and valleys of south-eastern Australia, a vivid fixture of the rolling landscape. But despite the seeming health of these iconic trees, they have earned the…

Researchers interview villagers in Yorkshire to prove the unreliability of people’s perception of nature The theory of shifting baselines was first elucidated by scientists exploring urban children’s perception of nature…

A Scottish firm has been implicated in funding a plan that would destroy the rainforest habitat of critically endangered orangutans in Sumatra. Jardine Matheson Holdings is the majority shareholder of…

A lot of time, effort, and funds have been spent on programs evaluating the threat of extinction to species around the world. Yet insects have not benefited from these programs,…

Wind power may be the key to a clean energy revolution: a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science finds that wind power could provide for…

Twenty leading scientists have called on President Obama “to exercise maximum personal leadership” in tackling the threat posed by climate change. In a letter composed by some of the world’s…

Eight Chinese environmentalists and scientists have composed a letter warning that a new dam under consideration for the Yangtze River could lead to the extinction of several endangered species. The…

Tiong Hiew King, founder and chairman of the Rimbunan Hijau Group, a Malaysian logging firm notorious for large-scale destruction of rainforests, has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth, a move which…

Global economic downturn drives slowing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell below 10,000 square kilometers for the first time since record-keeping began, reported Brazil's…

Brazil will pay small farmers to plant trees in deforested parts of the Amazon under a plan unveiled Friday by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The Green Arch initiative…

Evolution is often thought of being a slow-process, taking thousands, if not millions, of years. However a new study in The American Naturalist found that Trinidadian guppies underwent evolution in…

A new estimate by the UN FAO estimates that one billion people are currently going hungry: the highest number in history. Largely exacerbated by the global economic crisis, the number…

The decades-long conflict in Cambodia devastated not only the human population of the Southeast Asian country but its biodiversity as well. The conflict led to widespread declines of species in…

To celebrate Father's Day, the Wildlife Conservation Society released this photo of the lion, "M’wasi", and his daughter Moxie taken at the Bronx Zoo by photographer Julie Larsen Maher. The…

Peru's Congress revoked two controversial land laws that sparked violent conflicts between indigenous protesters and police in the country's Amazon region. The move temporarily defuses a two-week crisis, with protesters…

Despite violent protests that have left more than 100 dead and led to the ouster of a democratically-elected president, Daewoo Logistics Corp. continues to hold 218,000 hectares of cropland in…

The fate of millions of hectares of tropical forests will probably be sealed this year and next year, reports a new set of policy papers detailing an emerging climate change…

Leaders in business, government, advocacy, conservation, global development, science and national security have formed a commission to "provide bipartisan recommendations to Congress and the President about how to reduce tropical…

A wolverine has been recorded in Colorado for the first time since 1919, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The wolverine, a young male labeled M56, has been radio-tracked by…

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than any point in the last 2.1 million years, report researchers writing in the journal Science. Analyzing the shells of single-celled plankton buried under…

While the use of synthetic fertilizer has greatly increased agricultural production globally—helping to feed a global population that is not slowing down—it has brought with it high environmental costs. Fertilizer…

Dr. Yusof Basiron, CEO of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, the government-backed marketing arm of the Malaysian palm oil industry, claims on his blog that endangered orangutans benefit from living…

An 830,000-hectare tract of rainforest in Cameroon has been granted a 30-day reprieve from logging following a 4-week exploratory expedition that turned up large populations of lowland gorillas, forest elephants,…

JBS, the world's largest beef processor, is under investigation by Brazil's federal prosecutor's office for corruption, reports Reuters. The firm, along with other meatpackers and leather companies including Bihl, Margen…

In a paper that shows just how strange our modern world has become, Robert P. Friedland, neurologist from the University of Louisville, warns that farmed fish could be at risk…

Sobering report is the most comprehensive to date. Government officials and scientists released a 196 page report detailing the impact of global warming on the U.S. yesterday. The study, commissioned…

Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish business school professor and author who has riled environmentalists by arguing that addressing climate change should be a lesser priority than global health and nutrition initiatives,…

A group of 17 orphaned bonobos are being released into the wild for the first time this month. Set free by the world’s only bonobo sanctuary, Lola ya Bonobo in…

Brazil's setting aside of more than 500,000 square miles (1.25 million square kilometers) of rainforest in protected areas over the past decade may effectively buffer the Amazon from the effects…