According to a new study, the survival rate of rainforest seedlings is higher in natural forests than those that have been logged — even three decades following tree restoration projects. An international team of researchers led by the United Kingdom’s University of Exeter tracked more than 5,000 seedlings in the Danum Valley Conservation Area and […]
The Trump administration has finalized yet another environmental rollback that would allow more logging in national forests without environmental review. The new rule, finalized Wednesday, would allow the U.S. Forest Service to log or manage 2,800 acres of national forest in the Western U.S. without first conducting an environmental review, The Washington Post explained. However, […]
The Trump administration formalized its intention to open up Alaska’s pristine Tongass National Forest, an intact temperate rainforest, to logging and development, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) first announced its intention to lift the forest’s Roadless Rule last month, but it had to wait 30 days before entering […]
America’s largest national forest, Tongass National Forest in Alaska, will be opened up to logging and road construction after the Trump administration finalizes its plans to open up the forest on Friday, according to The New York Times. The plans to open up the forest to logging have been in the works for years. In […]
By Ajit Niranjan Civil society groups and public prosecutors in Brazil are taking President Jair Bolsonaro’s government to court for failing to protect the Amazon rainforest, adding pressure to an administration already under fire for mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic. Lawsuits filed last week challenge the government on two fronts: reducing inspections of exported timber — […]
By Hans Nicholas Jong The Indonesian government has backed down from a decision to scrap its timber legality verification process for wood export, amid criticism from activists and the prospect of being shut out of the lucrative European market. On May 11, the Ministry of Trade issued a regulation revoking its decision from February to […]
By Lamfu Fabrice Yengong and Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue Biodiversity loss is a global crisis. In May last year, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that over 1,000,000 species are threatened with extinction worldwide. On May 22, the International Day of Biodiversity, it is important to recall the silent victims of […]
Australia’s unprecedented wildfires that raged for months and destroyed millions of acres were likely made worse by industrial logging of native forests, according to a new commentary from five scientists published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The group of five senior Australian scientists from the Australian National University, Macquarie University and the University of Queensland […]
A federal judge in Alaska ruled late Wednesday against a Trump administration plan to open 1.8 million acres of America’s largest national forest to logging. The Forest Service plan targeted part of the Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island. It would have been the largest sale of national forest timber in 30 years, […]