Study reveals high percentage of illegal timber exported from Peruvian Amazon – “There is a status quo that does not care about the legal status of the exported wood”

By Yvette Sierra Praeli; Translated By Romina Castagnino 13 February 2018 LIMA, Peru (Mongabay) – More than two years after a massive seizure of illegal timber sent from Peru to international markets in the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the United States, much of Peru’s exported wood is still illegal according to a new report. The […]

Cambodia forest protectors slain after confronting loggers – “The three were killed not by robbers or a guerrilla group but they were shot by government armed forces who backed the illegal timber cutting”

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, 31 January 2018 (AP) – Soldiers in northeastern Cambodia, an area where illicit logging and smuggling are rife, killed a forest protection ranger, a military police officer and a conservation worker in apparent retaliation for their seizure of equipment from illegal loggers, officials said Wednesday. Keo Sopheak, a senior environmental official in […]

Indigenous Amazon forest defender Sairá Ka’apor murdered

By Jonathan Watts 20 January 2018 Mananhão, Brazil (The Guardian) – Sairá Ka’apor patrolled one of the most murderous frontiers in the world, a remote and largely lawless region of the Brazilian Amazon where his indigenous community has fought for generations to protect their forest land.Armed with clubs, bows and arrows, GPS trackers and crude […]

The Republican tax bill could forever alter Alaska’s indigenous tribes: By authorizing oil drilling in Alaska’s vast Arctic wilderness, the bill could enrich Native tribes, or destroy their way of life

By Robinson Meyer 2 December 2017 (The Atlantic) – When Bernadette Demientieff was in high school, she gave up her heritage. Demientieff is a member of the Gwich’in, an indigenous tribe of roughly 9,000 people that spans north-central Alaska and northern Canada. “The ways of living in this world that are being pushed on our […]

Number of natural World Heritage sites affected by climate change nearly doubles in three years

Bonn, Germany, 13 November 2017 (IUCN) – The number of natural World Heritage sites threatened by climate change has grown from 35 to 62 in just three years, with climate change being the fastest growing threat they face, according to a report released today by IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature, at the UN […]

Thousands of scientists issue bleak “second notice” to humanity – “Humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse”

By Sarah Kaplan 13 November 2017 (The Washington Post) – In late 1992, 1,700 scientists from around the world issued a dire “warning to humanity.” They said humans had pushed Earth’s ecosystems to their breaking point and were well on the way to ruining the planet. The letter listed environmental impacts like they were biblical […]

Photo of baby elephant on fire after being attacked by mob wins international award – “The calf screams in confusion and fear as the fire licks at her feet”

By May Bulman 8 November 2017 (The Independent) – An image of a baby elephant fleeing a mob that has just set it on fire has won top entry in a pan-Asian wildlife photography competition, the Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards 2017. It shows the calf and its mother running across a road close to a […]

Sumatra region heats up as rainforests are razed for palm oil plantations – “The land use change does not only impact biodiversity and stored carbon, but also has a surface warming effect, adding to climate change”

By Hans Nicholas Jong 29 October 2017(Mongabay) – The wholesale destruction of rainforests across parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island to make way for cash-crop plantations has not just devastated animal and plant biodiversity in the region, but may also be driving an alarming rise in temperatures on the ground, a new study suggests. Average temperatures […]

“Decimated”: Germany’s birds disappear as insect abundance plummets 76 percent

By Morgan Erickson-Davis 27 October 2017 (Mongabay) – A new study in PLOS ONE reveals a 76 percent reduction in Germany’s flying insect biomass over the past 27 years while another reports the country’s bird abundance has declined 15 percent in just over a decade. While the causes behind the insect decline haven’t yet been […]

Forest fires stoke record loss in world tree cover – Wildfires contributed to global tree cover loss equivalent to the size of New Zealand in 2016

By Alister Doyle 23 October 2017 OSLO (Reuters) – Forest fires in Brazil and Indonesia contributed to a record loss in global tree cover in 2016, equivalent to the size of New Zealand, that could accelerate deforestation blamed for climate change, an independent forest monitoring network said on Monday.Man-made global warming increased the risks of […]

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