By Rhett A. Butler 26 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Video of illegal gold mining operations that have turned a portion of the Amazon rainforest into a moonscape went viral on YouTube after a popular radio and TV journalist in Peru highlighted the story. Last week Peruvian journalist and politician Güido Lombardi directed his audience to […]
By Jeremy Hance18 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – One of the richest ecosystems on the planet may not survive a hotter climate without human help, according to a sobering new paper in the open source journal PLoS ONE. Although little-studied compared to lowland rainforests, the cloud forests of the Andes are known to harbor explosions of […]
12 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Climate change may push canopy-dwelling plants and animals out of the tree-tops due to rising temperatures and drier conditions, argues a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The development may be akin to “flattening” the tiered vegetation structure that characterizes the rainforest ecosystem. The conclusion is […]
By Rhett A. Butler10 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Harrison Ford sparked a complaint from Indonesia’s top forest official after the actor asked a series of tough questions about ongoing rainforest destruction in the Southeast Asian nation, reports Indonesian state media. Ford is in Indonesia filming a segment for Years of Living Dangerously, a Showtime documentary […]
By KATE GALBRAITH4 September 2013 SAN FRANCISCO (The New York Times) – The huge wildfire scorching one of America’s most beloved national parks, Yosemite, has rained ash on San Francisco’s water supply and jolted the nation. Experts say this is just a foretaste of major fires to come, in the United States and much of […]
By Rhett A. Butler4 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Data released this week by Terra-i, a collaborative mapping initiative, shows that deforestation in Ecuador for the first three months of 2013 was pacing more than 300 percent ahead of last year’s rate. The report comes shortly after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa killed off a proposed plan […]
29 August 2013 (mongabay.com) – Nearly 500 fires are burning across the Indonesian island of Sumatra, raising fears that choking air pollution could return to Singapore and Malaysia. The fires, set to clear land for agriculture, are concentrated in Riau, Jambi, and South Sumatra provinces. Like the fires that charred the region two months ago, […]
By Rhett A. Butler3 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Conversion of forests for palm oil production now appears to be the single largest driver of deforestation in Indonesia, accounting for roughly a quarter of forest loss between 2009 and 2011, asserts a new Greenpeace report that accuses the sector’s main certification standard of failing to stop […]
By Frank Bajak20 August 2013 LIMA, Peru (AP) – Members of an Indian tribe that has long lived in voluntary isolation in Peru’s southeastern Amazon attempted to make contact with outsiders for a second time since 2011, leading to a tense standoff at a river hamlet. Authorities are unsure what provoked the three-day encounter, but […]
QUITO, 15 August 2013 (Associated Press) – Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has abandoned a unique and ambitious plan to persuade rich countries to pay his country not to drill for oil in a pristine Amazon rainforest preserve. Environmentalists had hailed the initiative when Correa first proposed it in 2007, saying he was setting a precedent […]
