|
 |
|
FEATURED ARTICLES
|
|
|
PHOTOS
Recently updated sections.
All photos: country | topic
 Indonesia  Dominican Rep  Madagascar  Peru  Malaysia  Colombia |
RAINFORESTS
Rainforests of the world
What are tropical rainforests?
Rainforest biodiversity
The rainforest canopy
Rainforest waters
Rainforest people
Why are rainforests being destroyed?
Why are rainforests important?
How to save rainforests
FOR KIDS
About rainforests
Rainforest animals
Rainforest people
Why are rainforests important?
Why are rainforests disappearing?
How can we save rainforests?
Mongy's Adventures
MADAGASCAR
About Madagascar
Madagascar photos
Madagascar news
Madagascar people
Madagascar parks
Madagascar wildlife
FISH
Fish conservation
Fish anatomy
Aquarium
Water chemistry
Fish species
Biotopes
DATA
Deforestation rates
Population estimates
Carbon emissions
Demography (ranks)
Commodity price series (data)
Commodity production data (rank | crops)
Zip codes
PHOTOBLOG
For Valentine's Day: Heart-shaped lichen in Madagascar (02/14/2013)
Happy Holidays from Mongabay (12/25/2012)
Best of 2012 - Colorful tiger beetle in Java (12/21/2012)
Best of 2012 - Voracious insect-killing machine in Borneo (12/20/2012)
Best of 2012 - Borneo rainforest (12/20/2012)
Best of 2012 - Where rainforest meets the sea in Madagascar (12/19/2012)
Best of 2012 - Conversion of lowland rainforest in Borneo for palm oil production (12/19/2012)
SLIDESHOWS
Amazon
Congo
Indonesian rainforests
New Guinea
Sulawesi
MONGABAY INTERNATIONAL
Mongabay in non-English languages
Translators for Forests on Facebook
TOPICS
450 more topics
SEARCH MONGABAY
|
|
FEATURED VIDEO
Mongabay's Rhett Butler speaks at TEDxYouth
FREE NEWSLETTER
RECENT NEWS
Cobra bust in Vietnam
(04/23/2013) Authorities in Vietnam arrested a man who they say was transporting 53 king cobras — a protected snake species — in his car, reports the Associated Press.
Low carbon prices may spur deforestation
(04/23/2013) Low carbon prices may spur deforestation in New Zealand according to a survey by a researcher at Canterbury University.
Letting nature do the talking this Earth Day (pictures)(04/22/2013) Instead of writing a special article for this Earth Day, we are instead letting nature's beauty do the talking. The photos below were taken by the Mongabay.com team — Rhett Butler, Jeremy Hance, and Tiffany Roufs — in the twelve months since Earth Day 2012. Countries in this set include the United States (California and Hawaii), Dominican Republic, Brazil, Malaysia (Sabah), and Indonesia (Kalimantan and Sumatra).
Rhino horn madness: over two rhinos killed a day in South Africa
(04/22/2013) Rhino poachers have killed 232 rhinos during 2013 so far in South Africa, reports Annamiticus, which averages out to 2.1 a day. The country has become a flashpoint for rhino poaching as it holds more rhinos than any other country on Earth. Rhinos are being slaughter for their horns, which are believed to be a curative in Chinese traditional medicine, although there is no evidence this is so.
Two new frog genera discovered in India's Western Ghats, but restricted to threatened swamp-ecosystems(04/22/2013) The misty mountains of the Western Ghats seem to unravel new secrets the more you explore it. Researchers have discovered two new frog genera, possibly restricted to rare and threatened freshwater swamps in the southern Western Ghats of India. The discoveries, described in the open-access journal Zootaxa, prove once again the importance of the mountain range as a biodiversity hotspot.
The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors - book review
(04/22/2013) Richard Crossley, Jerry Liguori, and Brian Sullivan have produced a unique and much needed bird book in The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors. The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors is a book you study at home so you can easily recognize North American raptors.
'Carbon bubble' could cause next global financial crisis
(04/22/2013) The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists. "The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed," said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was "very big indeed" and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it.
Despite unseasonable cold in EU and U.S., March was tenth warmest on record
(04/22/2013) While the month of March saw colder-than-average temperatures across a wide-swath of the northern hemisphere—including the U.S., southern Canada, Europe, and northern Asia—globally, it was the tenth warmest March on record in the last 134 years, putting it in the top 7 percent.
A new tool against illegal logging: tree DNA technology goes mainstream(04/22/2013) Modern DNA technology offers a unique opportunity: you could pinpoint the origin of your table at home and track down if the trees it was made from were illegally obtained. Each wooden piece of furniture comes with a hidden natural barcode that can tell its story from a sapling in a forest all the way to your living room.
Last 30 years were the warmest in the last 1,400 years
(04/21/2013) From 1971 to 2000, the world's land areas were the warmest they have been in at least 1,400 years, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. The massive new study, involving 80 researchers from around the world with the Past Global Changes (PAGES) group, is the first to look at continental temperature changes over two thousand years, providing insights into regional climatic changes from the Roman Empire to the modern day. According to the data, Earth's land masses were generally cooling until anthropogenic climate change reversed the long-term pattern in the late-19th Century.
Indonesian palm oil industry would support land swaps to protect forest, while expanding production(04/19/2013) Indonesian palm oil companies would support land swaps as a means to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation while simultaneously expanding production, representatives from the country's largest association of palm oil producers told mongabay.com in an interview last month.
To win concessions in Aceh, mining company hires official being investigated for graft (04/18/2013) A Toronto Stock Exchange-listed mining company has hired an official being investigated for corruption under its effort to convince the Aceh provincial government to re-zone protected forest areas for a gold mine on Indonesia's Sumatra island, according to an alliance of Indonesian environmentalists. The official, former Golkar Deputy Chairman Fadel Muhammad, has been retained by East Asia Minerals to help it win a carve-out for its Miwah project, a 30,000-hectare concession atop a forested mountain in Aceh.
Bison return to Germany after 300 year absence
(04/18/2013) Earlier this month, officials took down a fence allowing the first herd of European bison (Bison bonasus) to enter the forests freely in Germany in over 300 years, reports Wildlife Extra. The small herd, consisting of just eight animals (one male, five females and two calves) will now be allowed to roam unhindered in the Rothaar Mountains as their ancestors did long ago.
Unidentified toxin caused the deaths of Borneo elephants
(04/18/2013) After three months, officials still don't know for certain what killed at least 14 Bornean elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis) in the Malaysian state of Sabah. However tests do indicate that the herd perished from a "caustic intoxicant," possibly ingested accidentally or just as easily intentionally poisoned. A distinct subspecies, Bornean elephants are the world's smallest with a population that has fallen to around 2,000 on the island.
Up for grabs: how foreign investments are redistributing land and water across the globe(04/18/2013) In 2007, the increased human population, increased prices in fuel and transportation costs, and an increased demand for a diversity of food products prompted a Global Food Crisis. Agricultural producers and government leaders world-wide struggled to procure stable food sources for their countries. But the crisis had impacts beyond 2007: it was also the impetus for what we now know as the global land-grabbing phenomenon.
Lions for sale: big game hunting combines with lion bone trade to threaten endangered cats(04/18/2013) Koos Hermanus would rather not give names to the lions he breeds. So here, behind a 2.4-meter high electric fence, is 1R, a three-and-a-half-year-old male, who consumes 5kg of meat a day and weighs almost 200kg. It will only leave its enclosure once it has been "booked"' by a hunter, most of whom are from the United States. At that point the big cat will be set loose in the wild for the first time in its life, 96 hours before the hunt begins. It usually takes about four days to track down the prey, with the trophy hunter following its trail on foot, accompanied by big-game professionals including Hermanus. He currently has 14 lions at his property near Groot Marico, about two and a half hours by road west of Johannesburg.
Brazil threatens $282m in fines for beef linked to Amazon deforestation
(04/17/2013) Federal prosecutors in Brazil are threatening to fine 26 beef producers $282 million for buying cattle raised in illegally deforested areas and on Indian reservations, reports Reuters.
Madagascar swamped by locust invasion
(04/17/2013) More than 60 percent of Madagascar is suffering from a massive locust infestation that is threatening crops and livestock, potentially increasing risks to native wildlife and forests from hungry farmers, warns the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Judge halts military-backed dam assessment in Brazil's Amazon
(04/17/2013) A federal court in Brazil has suspended the use of military and police personnel during technical research on the controversial São Luíz do Tapajós Dam in the Brazilian Amazon. The military and police were brought in to stamp down protests from indigenous people living along the Tapajós River, but the judge decreed that impacted indigenous groups must give free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) before any furter studies can be done on the proposed dam. However, the decision is expected to be appealed.
Featured video: local communities successfully conserve forests in Ethiopia
(04/17/2013) A participatory forest management (PFM) program in Ethiopia has made good on forest preservation and expansion, according a recent article and video interview (below) from the Guardian. After 15 years, the program has aided one community in expanding its forest by 9.2 percent in the last decade, while still allowing community access to forest for smallscale logging in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains.
At top of the world, activists say exploiting Arctic is 'utter madness'
(04/17/2013) Four young explorers including American actor Ezra Miller have planted a flag on the seabed at the north pole and demanded the region is declared a global sanctuary. The expedition, organized by Greenpeace, saw the flag lowered in a time capsule that contained the signatures of nearly 3 million people who are calling for a ban on exploitation in the region.
Conservation policies that boost farm yields may ultimately undermine forest protection, argues study
(04/17/2013) Rising agricultural profitability due to higher prices, improved crop productivity, and forest conservation itself could make it increasingly difficult for conservation programs tied to payments for ecosystem services to succeed, warns a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mining company working with Indonesian govt to strip forest of protected status(04/16/2013) A Toronto-listed mining company says it is working closely with the Indonesian government to strip the protected status of some 1.2 million hectares of forest on the island of Sumatra. In a statement issued Tuesday, East Asia Minerals Corporation (TSX:EAS) claimed it is actively involved in the process of devising a new spatial plan for Aceh province, Sumatra's western-most province. The proposed changes to the spatial plan, which governs land use in the province, would re-zone large areas of protected forest in Aceh for industrial activities.
Civet poop coffee may be threatening wild species(04/16/2013) Popularization of the world's strangest coffee may be imperiling a a suite of small mammals in Indonesia, according to a new study in Small Carnivore Conservation. The coffee, known as kopi luwak (kopi for coffee and luwak for the civet), is made from whole coffee beans that have passed through the guts of the animal and out the other side. The coffee is apparently noted for its distinct taste, though some have argued it is little more than novelty.
more
MISSION
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more | contact)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
SUPPORT
Help support mongabay.com when you buy from Amazon.com
Green Design
Rainforests
Nature & Ecology
Climate
Health
Society & History
BOOKS BY MONGABAY
STORE
SHIRTS
CALENDARS
HIGH RESOLUTION
PHOTOS / PRINTS
ALSO NOTED
|
About | Privacy Copyright Rhett Butler 2012 |
