deforestation

By Hans Nicholas Jong An Indonesian forestry company with possible links to pulpwood and palm oil powerhouse Royal Golden Eagle has cleared forests the size of 500,000 basketball courts since 2016, some of them home to critically endangered orangutans, according to a new report. Nusantara Fiber controls 242,000 hectares (598,000 acres) of industrial tree plantations […]

The Amazon rainforest likely emits more greenhouse gases than it absorbs, a first-of-its-kind study has found. The study, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change on Thursday, is the first to consider emissions other than carbon dioxide, such as methane from floods and cattle, and black carbon from forest-clearing fires. “Cutting the forest is […]

Aiming to preserve 30 percent of the world’s land and water by 2030, dozens of countries will take part in a UN biodiversity conference later this year – but Indigenous people won’t have a seat at the table. Indigenous communities have repeatedly mobilized to block logging, mining and overfishing, with great success. More than a […]

By Jack McGovan In 1931, Soviet scientists were on the hunt for a natural source of rubber that would help the USSR become self-sufficient in key materials. They scoured the vast and various territories of the Soviet Union and tested over 1,000 different species looking for an alternative to the South American rubber tree, Hevea […]

By Thomas Hertel Growing food in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way – while also producing enough of it – is among the most important challenges facing the U.S. and the world today. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that food security can’t be taken for granted. Putting affordable food on the table requires both […]

Over the past 40 years, about 50 percent of lowland rainforests in Southeast Asia have been converted for palm oil and other plantations, and remaining forests in the region are heavily logged, according to new research. Yet while the impacts of fragmentation on old-growth forests are well understood, how fragmentation impacts regenerating logged forests isn’t. […]

By Jessica Corbett New data from a Norwegian nonprofit is generating fresh concerns about humanity’s destruction of the natural world, revealing Monday that people have ravaged about two-thirds of original tropical rainforest cover globally. The Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN) analysis found that human activities including logging and land-use changes—often for farming—have destroyed 34% of old-growth […]

Australia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. It is home to more than 7% of all the world’s plant and animal species, many of which are endemic. One such species, the Pharohylaeus lactiferus bee, was recently rediscovered after spending nearly 100 years out of sight from humans. James B. Dorey, a […]