8 July 2016 (IUCN) – New IUCN Red List assessments reveal that growing human pressures on whale sharks, winghead sharks and Bornean orangutans are putting these species at an increasing risk of extinction. Whale sharks and winghead sharks are now listed as Endangered and Bornean orangutans as Critically Endangered – only one step from going […]
[Translation by Google.] 9 April 2016 (Imazon) – Creating Protected Areas (PAs) has been one of the most effective strategies to protect the Amazon rainforest, its benefits and the rights of use of the region’s people. Currently, PAs total approximately 112 million hectares, or 27%, of the territory of the Brazilian Amazon. However, in 2013, […]
By Aurelie Marrier d’Unienville10 April 2016 GOLA FOREST, Sierra Leone (Al Jazeera) – Beneath the dense forest canopy, Vandi Konneh carefully picks his way along the rocky footpath. Beads of sweat gather at his temples as he scans the undergrowth for signs of the poachers who roam here. Working as a park ranger in the […]
By Joe Cochrane5 April 2016 NYARU MENTENG, Indonesia (The New York Times) – Katty, a docile, orange-haired preschooler, fell from a tree with a thump. Her teacher quickly picked her up, dusted off her bottom, refastened her white disposable diaper and placed her back on a branch more than seven feet off the ground. Katty […]
By Morgan Erickson-Davis4 March 2016 (mongabay.com) – The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the world’s biggest remaining tracts of rainforest (second only to the Amazon in size), home to unique and threatened species like okapis and bonobos. In effort to protect its forests, the DRC implemented a moratorium in 2002 that […]
By Shreya Dasgupta 8 February 2016 (mongabay.com) – In Where Have All the Animals Gone?: My Travels with Karl Ammann, author and natural historian Dale Peterson recounts his adventures with Karl Ammann, an eccentric award-winning wildlife photographer, as they travel across several countries in Africa and Asia. Peterson’s book is a witty, humorous, and sometimes […]
By John C. Cannon 11 February 2016 (mongabay.com) – The Republic of the Congo announced the allocation of 6 timber concessions on 8 January 2016 covering 2 million hectares (7,722 square miles), an area about the size of Israel. Two of the concessions were awarded ahead of government-established bid deadlines, an apparent breach of protocol, […]
By John R. Platt22 October 2015 (takepart.com) – Indonesia is on fire. Right now, tens of thousands of small forest fires are burning across the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, the only habitats for orangutans and other rare species. Many of the fires appear to have been intentionally set by palm oil companies, which employ […]
9 October 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – 2015 is likely to be among the worst years for forest fires on record. A lot of this destruction is caused by fires that are intentionally set to clear forests for agriculture. In Sumatra and southern Borneo, rainforest and peatlands are burned to make room for palm oil plantations. […]
By Damian Carrington 7 October 2015 (The Guardian) – Fires raging across the forests and peatlands of Indonesia are on track to pump out more carbon emissions than the UK’s entire annual output, Greenpeace has warned. As well as fuelling global warming, the thick smoke choking cities in the region is likely to cause the […]
