(Rainforest Rescue) – Perched atop the remains of the last tree, an orangutan looks helplessly on what was until recently the forest he was living in but is now only ruins. Armed with chainsaws and bulldozers, workers of Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA), a palm oil company, have completely destroyed the rainforest for miles. Three other […]
By Jeffrey Kluger (TIME) – Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. Of all the cosmic bodies studied in the long history of astronomy and space travel, the one that got the least attention was […]
By Lucy Jordan 7 May 2013 BRASÍLIA, BRAZIL (The Rio Times) – The federal government said Monday it would not negotiate with indigenous groups which on Tuesday entered their sixth day of occupying the controversial Belo Monte dam construction site. In the inflammatory statement, the Secretariat General of the Presidency accused some indigenous leaders of […]
By Jeremy Hance 6 May 2013 (mongabay.com) – In the last four years, invading land speculators and peasants have destroyed 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres) of rainforest in Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, according to the Mayangna and Miskito indigenous peoples who call this forest home. Although Nicaragua recognized the land rights of the indigenous people in […]
3 May 2013 (mongabay.com) – The Greater Mekong region of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Vietnam will lose a third of its remaining forest cover by 2030 unless regional governments improve management of natural resources and transition toward a greener growth model, warns a new report issued by WWF. The report lays out two […]
By ANDREW JACOBS4 May 2013 BINGZHONGLUO, China (The New York Times) – From its crystalline beginnings as a rivulet seeping from a glacier on the Tibetan Himalayas to its broad, muddy amble through the jungles of Myanmar, the Nu River is one of Asia’s wildest waterways, its 1,700-mile course unimpeded as it rolls toward the […]
3 May 2013 (mongabay.com) – On Thursday roughly 200 indigenous people launched an occupation of a key construction site for the controversial Belo Monte dam in the Brazilian Amazon. The protestors, who represent communities that will be affected by the massive dam, are demanding immediate suspension of all work on hydroelectric projects on the Xingu, […]
Australia’s iconic marsupial is at risk from shrinking habitats, road traffic and dog attacks – and increasingly, global warming By Neena Bhandari for IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network 30 April 2013 SYDNEY (guardian.co.uk) – Australia’s iconic marsupial is under threat. Formerly hunted almost to extinction for their woolly coats, koalas are now struggling […]
24 April 2013 (mongabay.com) – Rainforests that have been affected by even low-intensity fires are far more vulnerable to invasion by grasses, finds a new study published in special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The findings are significant because they suggest that burned forests may be more susceptible to […]
25 April 2013 (mongabay.com) – Mobile device giant Samsung has admitted to using tin sourced from a controversial mining operation on the Indonesian island of Bangka, where unregulated mining kills 150 miners a year and causes substantial environmental damage, reports the Guardian and Mongabay-Indonesia. Samsung’s admission came after a campaign by Friends of the Earth, […]
