Timber barons are illegally exploiting Indonesia's increasingly threatened lowland rainforests on the island of New Guinea for merbau wood, found an undercover investigation conducted by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)…
Tropical forest degradation progresses in a series of "waves", with forests initially exploited for high value products like hardwoods and then eventually used for successively lower value goods like firewood…
Everyone knows the tiger, the panda, the blue whale, but what about the other five to thirty million species estimated to inhabit our Earth? Many of these marvelous, stunning, and…
Myanmar has announced that Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve will be nearly tripled in size, making the protected area the largest tiger reserve in the world. Spanning 17,477 square kilometers (6,748…
The stunning blue and turquoise Eupholus bennetti weevil in West Papua (Indonesia) on the island of New Guinea. Photo taken last week by Rhett A. Butler. This beetle's coloration serves…
A new study in Ecological Management & Restoration has found that reforesting rainforest captures more carbon than monoculture plantation and even mixed species plantations. The research tested three projects in…
In what may amount to a historic moment in the quest to save the world's rainforests and mitigate climate change, Ecuador and the United Nations Development Fund (UNDF) have created…
The Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) for a proposed coal plant in Sabah is full of holes, according to activists with the organization Green SURF (Sabah Unite to Re-Power the…
From July 23-25, Taiwanese undergraduates held a camp in Bukit Lawang, Sumatra, that taught local high school students to use technology as a conservation tool. The Taiwanese volunteers aimed to…
A cheetah rests on a termite mound in Kenya. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A three year study has found that cheetahs and African wild dogs have vanished from Cameroon.…
BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster is officially the worst accidental oil spill on record, U.S. authorities said Monday. Scientists appointed by the Department of Energy now estimate that some 4.9…
The San Diego Zoo Offers 10 Reasons for Hope and Steps Out with the Global Action Team Earlier last month the Zoological Society of San Diego launched two far reaching…
Investments in protecting and managing biodiversity are key to helping the world slow and adapt to climate change, said a World Bank ecologist speaking last month at the Association for…
Scientists with the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) have released a resolution opposing the current development plan for a road and bridge crossing Balikpapan Bay in the Indonesian…
One should be forgiven for thinking that the most under-explored ecosystem in the world is tropical rainforests or cave systems since new species are frequently uncovered in such places. But…
Two Vezo children dance on a sand dune in Tulear Arovana (Ankorohoke), Madagascar. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler, 2009. The Vezo are a semi-nomadic people who live on the west…
UNESCO's World Heritage committee has added Madagascar's unique tropical forests to its Danger List of threatened ecosystems. The move comes following a drawn-out illegal logging crisis that has seen loggers…
Unidentified red-eyed fly on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. If you have any information on this species please contact me. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Often despised at best…
Agriculture giant Cargill has announced an agreement to supply Unilever with 10,000 metric tons of palm oil sustainably-certified from the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Cargill has often…
With 18,000 islands spanning two major bigeographic realms (and a curious outlier in Sulawesi) across an area of nearly 2 million square kilometers, Indonesia is one of the world's most…
Given that the last six months have been the warmest on record worldwide, here's an alpine forest in Brian's Head Utah to remember cold weather by. Consider it visual air-conditioning.…
"President Obama called it 'the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.' So I thought I should face it and head to the Gulf"—these are the opening words on the…
Usually announcements of new species come from biodiverse rainforests or unexplored marine depths, but researchers have announced the discovery of nearly a dozen new species in one of Earth's most…
Researchers have confirmed that cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) and African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) have become essentially extinct in Cameroon. A three year study by the Institute of Environmental Sciences at…
We watched this wily gray-footed chacma baboon (Papio ursinus griseipes) for a good fifteen minutes as it posed for us in the Okavango Delta. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs, 2009. Photo…
Given the epidemic of rhino poaching across Africa and Asia, which has placed four out of five species in jeopardy of extinction, one fed-up game manager wants to take the…
Tiny marine algae, known as phytoplankton, are the backbone of the marine food chain, yet a new study in Nature has found that this backbone is disintegrating. Researchers discovered that…
For the past few months, the mainstream media has focused on the environmental and technical dimensions of the Gulf mess. While that’s certainly important, reporters have ignored a crucial aspect…
An indigenous group in Brazil has taken over a hydroelectric dam, which they state has polluted vital fishing grounds and destroyed sacred burial ground. They are demanding reparations for the…
Moscow and parts of Russia have been hit by record high temperatures and forest fires. Ashen fog from peat forests burning near Moscow has prompted officials to warn elderly and…
