In October 2006, I was supposed to be starting my dissertation research on tropical reforestation in Indonesia. Instead, I found myself in the forests of Tanjung Puting National Park in…
HONG KONG — “Spiderman … Tom Holland,” two secondary school boys repeated to each other as they watched conservationist Harry Wong nimbly climb a tall tree at their school, St.…
Indonesia’s government is imposing new restrictions on access to geospatial data, raising concerns among researchers and activists that it will suppress environmental science and advocacy work in one of the…
The government in Suriname this year said it planned to evict illegal settlers in the Amazon Rainforest, and possibly send many of them back to their home countries. But eviction…
JAKARTA — Fires burning within rainforests that contain more than half of the world’s critically endangered Bornean orangutan population have prompted scientists and experts to call for urgent action in…
QUANG NGAI, Vietnam — When diesel prices in Vietnam hit an all-time high in March, Vo Huu Viet, a fisherman with more than 30 years at sea in Quang Ngai province…
As a heat wave settled on the Red Sea in 2022, a patch of corals in a reef 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) off the coast of Saudi Arabia reacted differently…
As frozen ground thaws in the Arctic, dead plants and animals locked in soils for thousands of years start to decay, releasing methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases trap heat…
UNGUJA, Tanzania — Decades before they would partner to build a marine conservation organization together, Ali Thani and Lorna Slade crossed paths in Tanzania. Years later, Slade returned to the…
HONG KONG — On a mid-September day, Wong Ping-kuong, 74, and his colleagues worked quickly to spray clean an outdoor staircase and elevator landing. It was only mid-morning, but already…
Maleos, black-and-white birds that stand 60 centimeters (2 feet) tall with a distinctive splash of blue, orange and yellow on their faces, roam Sulawesi’s thick tropical jungles. But when it's…
PENUKAL ABAB LEMATANG ILIR, Indonesia — Sumanti raced her motorcycle past the rubber trees as flames spread through the dry brush. No one had picked up the phone as the…
Existing at the junction of land and sea, mangrove forests have long been heralded for their ecosystem services, including their ability to buffer coastal areas against storm surges and rising…
On a Wednesday in July, deep in a coastal restinga area of Brazil’s Paraná state, muffled footsteps broke through the chirping of manakins. Three field researchers from the conservation NGO…
A new initiative between the U.S. and Argentina is meant to bolster investment opportunities and strengthen supply chains for critical minerals that could be used in the clean energy transition,…
LIBREVILLE — In the traditional-medicine corner of La Peyrie Market in Libreville, iboga comes in a repurposed clear rum bottle packed to the neck with pale bark powder, set among…
Dolphins, it turns out, don’t like to mix business and pleasure. Scientists have found that the marine mammals keep their feeding and hunting areas separate from the places where they…
This is an abridged version of a piece I wrote shortly after her death a year today. I find it hard to believe Jane Goodall is gone. She was…
NEW YORK — Long before Dickson Kaelo became one of the leading voices for community conservancies in Kenya, conservation was something much more personal. He grew up with livestock. His…
Vantara, the billionaire-run Indian private zoo that houses more than 150,000 animals, discussed a “strategic conservation partnership” with authorities in Brazil, the world’s most biodiverse country, according to documents obtained…
JAKARTA — In 2016, following the most devastating land and forest fires in its recorded history the previous year, the Indonesian government set up an agency to restore peatlands, among…
UMPHANG, Thailand — At 8 a.m. on June 26, at least 13 double-trailer trucks were lined up at the Pheung Khleung border crossing in northern Thailand — one of the…
Frog release days always start early, at about 4 a.m., so that staff can get up to the site before the day gets too hot, said Erin Lundy, manager of…
A new study mapping the likely nesting habitats of the iconic Philippine eagle in its main stronghold warns that the threat of habitat loss — a key driver of its…
It is far easier than one might expect to access the illegal wildlife trade in Canada. Chris Shepherd, a senior conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, knows this…
Along a freshly repaved stretch of the BR-317 highway in Acre, a Brazilian state bordering Bolivia and Peru in the Western Amazon, pasture stretches out as far as the eye…
As a potentially historic El Niño builds in the Pacific, evidence suggests that climate change is ratcheting up the intensity of such events. And as temperatures rise in the future,…
NYANGOMBE, Zimbabwe — In the first six months of 2026, the local council in Chiredzi recorded 317 cases of human-wildlife conflict in this district of southeastern Zimbabwe. In villages like…
For decades, the global outlook for food and agriculture has brought heightened concerns as climate patterns create a mix of droughts and floods across the world. Consequently, fears of diminishing…
Between 2014 and 2015, a marine heatwave known as “The Blob” warmed an area of the Pacific Ocean larger than the United States and Mexico combined. The massive event fueled…
BANGKOK — Over the course of 2025, the Mekong countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam lost a combined 746,168 hectares (1.8 million acres) of tree cover, an area…
COLOMBO – For generations, the sight was familiar in towns and villages across Sri Lanka of a man playing a flute sitting on his haunches next to a woven basket,…
