topic: Dry Forests

topic: Dry Forests

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Bolivia’s El Curichi Las Garzas protected area taken over by land-grabbers
- Curichi Las Garzas is a natural refuge where thousands of wood storks (Mycteria americana) arrive each year to reproduce before continuing their journey.
- Land grabbers have destroyed 300 of the protected area’s 1,247 hectares in the municipality of San Carlos, planting rice and soybean crops.
- The encroachers claim to have endorsement from the INRA (Bolivia’s National Institute of Agrarian Reform), but the INRA has denied this and has asked the mayor to intervene. In the last three months, more than 4,500 deforestation alerts have been recorded along with a peak of 42 fire alerts, the highest number for the last 10 years.

Authorities struggle to protect Bolivian national park from drug-fueled deforestation
- Amboró National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area is located in the Santa Cruz department of central Bolivia, at the confluence of three different ecosystems: the Amazon, the northern Bolivian Chaco and the Andes.
- Amboró has been losing forest cover to illicit activities such as the cultivation of coca crops for the production of cocaine.
- National and departmental officials say Amboró authorities aren’t doing enough to keep encroachers out of the park.
- But rangers in Amboró say they don’t have enough resources to effectively enforce regulation.

Why has deforestation reached record levels in Bolivia? (commentary)
- “While food insecurity and a wavering economy require immediate action, the economic over-reliance on the extraction, or cutting down, of natural resources is pushing Bolivia’s forests towards a potential tipping point,” the writer of a new op-ed argues.
- Last year for example, Bolivia lost more primary forest than any previous year on record, almost double the amount during the Morales presidency.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘Wasn’t us,’ fire-hit Indonesia claims as Malaysia chokes on poor air quality
- Malaysia has blamed forest fires in neighboring Indonesia of causing smoke that has sent air quality levels to unhealthy levels across much of the country.
- Air quality in Kuala Lumpur and other parts of Malaysia have worsened in recent days, with more than a dozen regions recording unhealthy air quality.
- Indonesian officials have denied that fires in their jurisdiction are to blame, and accused their Malaysian counterparts of misreading the data.
- Indonesia dismissed that same source of data in 2019, however, when fires in Sumatra and Borneo also spread to Malaysia and Singapore.

Indonesian children locked out of school as El Niño haze chokes parts of Sumatra & Kalimantan
- Poor air quality over several Indonesian cities and outlying rural areas has forced local authorities to cut class times or close schools altogether.
- Air pollution on Oct. 5 in one area of Palangkaraya far exceeded the level at which air quality is classified dangerous to human health.
- The government of Jambi province has closed schools until Oct. 7, after which it will review whether to reopen for in-person teaching.

Road upgrade through remote Tanzanian park threatens wildlife (commentary)
- After a pause of more than 10 years, road upgrading through Katavi National Park has restarted.
- Critics worry about the possible effects on long term conservation of protected wildlife populations in the park, the loss of thousands of trees, and a decline in tourist revenue.
- “Once the road is paved, it will never be unpaved. Instead, a compromise solution lies in sensitive thinking of where the large mammals collect,” a wildlife biologist argues in this commentary.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Projects in Brazil’s Caatinga biome combine conservation and climate adaptation
- The Serra das Almas reserve in northeastern Brazil has benefited from sustained conservation measures that have turned cropland and pasture back into native Caatinga vegetation and allowed the return of wildlife.
- More than 800 animal and plant species are known to occur in the reserve, including the rare three-banded armadillo, a species that, until its sighting here last year, hadn’t been seen in Ceará state since 2008.
- The Caatinga Association, which owns and manages the Serra das Almas reserve, has encouraged the creation of more protected areas throughout the biome, providing support for 26 private reserves and three public conservation units, covering a combined 103,600 hectares (256,000 acres).
- Maintaining the Caatinga’s vegetation is crucial for securing water supplies for neighboring communities, and the association is supplementing that role in the face of a changing climate by providing water storage solutions to communities.

Indigenous communities in Argentina’s Chaco fear another heavy fire season in 2023
- Fires affected some 1.8 million hectares in Argentina in 2022.
- Many of the country’s 2022 fires occurred in the country’s northern Chaco region and were largely caused by industrial agriculture coupled with drought conditions, according to Indigenous residents and researchers.
- The arid Gran Chaco is the second-largest forest in South America after the Amazon, and extends across 110 million hectares and portions of four countries—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia
- Experts said deforestation of Argentina’s Chaco is affecting Indigenous communities’ access to resources.

Expansion of Mennonite farmland in Bolivia encroaches on Indigenous land
- Mennonites first began settling in Bolivia in the 1950s, primarily in the department of Santa Cruz.
- Today, Bolivia’s Mennonite population numbers around 150,000, most of whom are involved in mechanized, industrial agriculture.
- As Mennonite colonies continue to expand, so too are their massive crop fields, which are putting pressure on Santa Cruz’s Indigenous Territories and other protected areas.

Mennonite colonies linked to deforestation of Indigenous territories and protected areas in Paraguay
- Satellite data and imagery show the expansion of large agricultural fields whittling away at already-fragmented tracts of primary forest in eastern Paraguay’s Pindo’I Indigenous Territory over the past several years.
- Deforestation in Indigenous territories is illegal in Paraguay.
- Indigenous residents and advocates told Mongabay that the clearing is being done by one of the region’s Mennonite colonies; a representative from the colony refuted these claims.
- Deforestation for large-scale agriculture is also expanding in western Paraguay, which sources attribute to other Mennonite colonies.

Paraguay weighs natural gas drilling in Médanos del Chaco National Park
- Congress is considering opening up natural gas exploration and extraction in Médanos del Chaco National Park, a protected area in Paraguay’s Gran Chaco, a savannah and dry forest ecosystem along the northwest border.
- The 605,075-hectare (1,495,172-acre) national park has unique ecosystems and endemic flora and fauna, and is home to several Indigenous communities who rely on freshwater reserves that could be compromised by future drilling.
- Modifications to a key law were approved by the country’s chamber of deputies last year then rejected by the senate this week. But it has another opportunity to pass later this year.

Scientists map nearly 10 billion trees, stored carbon, in Africa’s drylands
- A recent study has mapped the locations of 9.9 billion trees across Africa’s drylands, a region below the Sahara Desert and north of the equator.
- The research, which combined satellite mapping, machine learning and field measurements, led to an estimate of 840 million metric tons of carbon contained in the trees.
- This figure is much lower than the amount of carbon held in Africa’s tropical rainforests.
- However, these trees provide critical biodiversity habitat and help boost agricultural productivity, and this method provides a tool to track both degradation and tree-planting efforts in the region.

Bolivian national park hit hard by forest fires in 2022, satellite data show
- Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Bolivia’s largest parks, encompasses a variety of ecosystems and provides habitat for more than 1,100 vertebrate species.
- According to satellite data, fires burned across a region comprising an estimated 18% of the park’s total area between August and November 2022, and damaged around 200 km2 (77 mi2) of its forests.
- When adding in other forest loss in 2022, the data suggest Noel Kempff Mercado lost a total of 250 km2 (97 mi2) of its tree cover last year, marking a new deforestation record since measurements began at the turn of the century.
- The fires in Noel Kempff Mercado National Park coincide with fire activity outside of the park, where Intentional burning is commonplace as farmers clear land and reinvigorate soil ahead of planting.

Zero-deforestation commitments can push agriculture to other rich biomes, study warns
- Zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) made by the palm oil industry and adopted by producers of other crops as well focus on preserving rainforests, while leaving other biomes unprotected.
- New research by the University of York shows that even if current ZDCs are fully met, around 167 million hectares of mostly tropical grassy and dry forest would remain open for agricultural expansion.
- Often confused with degraded areas that emerge after clearing the rainforest, those biomes are actually rich and biodiverse and also play a role in storing and capturing carbon.
- New EU legislation approved in December adds extra protection for rainforests, but could push even more agricultural production to other biomes, most of them in Africa and Latin America.

Bolivian protected areas hit hard by forest fires
- Nearly 9,000 square kilometers (3,475 square miles) had been burned across Bolivia by mid-September, according to government figures.
- Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife and Otuquis National Park, both in the semi-arid Chiquitania region of southern Bolivia, have been among the protected areas most affected by fire in 2022.
- Satellite data show fires burned across some 130 square kilometers (50 square miles)—or 5%— of Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife in September, and reignited in early November. In Otuquis, a fire that began Aug. 31 had spread across around 80 kilometers (50 miles), mostly along a road, by Sept. 3.
- In addition to habitat loss for the region’s wildlife, smoke from the fires reportedly has resulted in vision and respiratory problems for residents of nearby communities.

The protected area that isn’t: Bolivia’s Ñembi Guasu beset by fires, farms, roads
- The Ñembi Guasu Area of Conservation and Ecological Importance is the second-largest protected area in southern Bolivia’s Gran Chaco ecoregion, and an important area for Indigenous communities.
- Despite gaining official recognition as a protected area in 2019, dozens of rural settlements have appeared in Ñembi Guasu over the past three years.
- Research indicates these settlements contributed to severe forest fires in 2019 and 2021; satellite data and imagery show roads and clearings proliferating within Ñembi Guasu over the past several years.
- Meanwhile, officials are planning for another road that would transect Ñembi Guasu aimed at connecting agricultural producers in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Forests & Finance: Sit-ins, seeds over seedlings, and fuel-saving cookstoves
- Liberian communities affected by logging have staged a sit-in protest in front of the country’s ministry of finance, demanding unpaid royalties.
- Cookstoves and woodlots are the first step in a plan to halt deforestation in southern Zimbabwe.
- And a reforestation initiative experiments with providing Zimbabwean farmers seeds from indigenous trees rather than seedlings.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

In Indonesia’s forest fire capital, the dry season brings yet more burning
- The onset of the dry season in Indonesia’s Riau province has seen flare up and multiply, some of them believed to have been set deliberately.
- More than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of land has burned so far this year, a sharp increase from the 169 hectares (417 acres) in the first three months of 2022.
- The number of fires has prompted the provincial government to declare an emergency status and call for urgent measures, including cloud seeding to induce rainfall.
- Police have arrested nine people for suspected arson; although the practice is banned by law, farmers and plantation operators often use fire as a cheap tool to clear their concessions of vegetation ahead of planting.

Mennonite colony builds bridge, clears forest in Bolivian protected areas
- In 2018, a Mennonite colony purchased 14,400 hectares (35,500 acres) of land in the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz. Colonists have since built a bridge and developed a network of roads, and are in the process of clearing vast swaths of forest.
- The construction of the bridge appears to have been done without authorization from the government, and without an environmental impact assessment.
- Portions of the property lie within two protected areas: Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area, and the Bañados de Izozogy el río Parapetí wetland of international importance.
- Members of a local Indigenous community voiced support for the clearing activities, saying that the new roads and bridge will help connect them to medical facilities. However, scientists and conservationists are concerned about the impact of deforestation on water sources, wildlife and isolated Indigenous groups.

Common goals ensure forest restoration success in northern Thailand
- Twenty-five years ago, the Hmong community of Ban Mae Sa Mai village in northern Thailand began a collaboration with researchers and national park authorities to restore agricultural fields to natural forest.
- Between 1997 and 2013, they honed methods of assisted regeneration while restoring 33 hectares (82 acres) of upland evergreen tropical forest in Doi Suthep-Pui National Park.
- Monitoring teams documented the return of biodiversity and ecosystem services to the restored land, and participants founded a tree nursery that continues to supply thousands of native tree seedlings each year to nearby initiatives inspired by the Ban Mae Sa Mai model.
- However, the Hmong community face the prospect of eviction from their ancestral land, which lies within a protected area. Experts warn that disputes between authorities and the community, coupled with an increasing risk of fire due to climate change, could jeopardize the survival of the recovering forest.

Wild release marks return of giant forest tortoises to Bangladesh hills
- Researchers and villagers last month released 10 captive-bred Asian giant tortoises into Bangladesh’s Chattogram Hill Tracts to boost numbers of the threatened species in the wild, once thought to be extinct in the country.
- Asian giant tortoises are critically endangered throughout their range in South and Southeast Asia due to heavy hunting pressure and habitat loss.
- The rewilding of the batch of juvenile tortoises is the first wild release of offspring reared at a dedicated turtle conservation breeding center that was set up in the Chattogram Hills in 2017 to safeguard the future of several rare and threatened species.
- Through tortoise conservation, researchers are working with local hill tribes to monitor local wildlife, curb hunting, and protect community-managed forests.

‘Unprecedented’ fires in Madagascar national park threaten livelihoods and lemurs
- Ankarafantsika National Park protects an oasis of dry forest in northern Madagascar, providing vital habitat to critically endangered lemurs and other wildlife.
- In September and October, fires raged across the southern portion of the park, burning more than 40 square kilometers (15 square miles).
- While fire is a natural part of Ankarafantsika’s ecosystems, researchers say fire on this scale is “unprecedented” and amounting to a “conservation crisis.”
- The fires are also drying out the landscape and reducing neighboring communities’ crop yields, which conservationists warn could have knock-on effects for nearby forests as people turn to natural resources to survive.

2019 fires in Indonesia were twice as bad as the government claimed, study shows
- Independent researchers have identified 3.11 million hectares (7.68 million acres) of areas that were burned during Indonesia’s 2019 fires, nearly double the official government estimate.
- The new analysis used satellite imagery that was less constrained by cloud cover and smoke, and the Google Earth Engine to more efficiently identify burn scars.
- Activists have welcomed the new methodology to more accurately map burned areas, but say that government officials are likely to push back against findings that contradict the official narrative.
- David Gaveau, a co-author of the new study, was deported from Indonesia last year after publishing preliminary findings of a larger burned area than the government claimed, although officials denied the deportation was linked to the findings.

Forests for sale: How land traffickers profit by slicing up Bolivia’s protected areas
- Shortly after Bolivia’s Bajo Paraguá Municipal Protected Area was established in February 2021, authorities began receiving reports of invasions and deforestation in and around the new protected area.
- Local sources say land traffickers are illegally buying up plots of protected land to resell, often repeatedly, to third parties.
- Mongabay spoke with one of these third parties, a man who said he purchased access to land in Bajo Paraguá from land traffickers before being evicted by the same traffickers so that they could sell the land to someone else.
- The man said traffickers have resorted to threats of violence to intimidate local communities from reporting incursions.

Indigenous groups call for gov’t intervention as land grabbers invade Bolivian protected area
- Bajo Paraguá – San Ignacio de Velasco Municipal Protected Area was created on February 12, 2021, to protect 983,000 hectares (about 2,429,045 acres) of primary forest in the Chiquitania region of Bolivia.
- But despite its new protected status, residents are reporting invasions and human settlements in Bajo Paraguá, claiming the colonizers were land traffickers.
- On-site investigation and satellite data and imagery show ongoing deforestation.
- Local leaders, including those of Indigenous groups that live in Bajo Paraguá, are calling for government intervention – while also alleging connections between land grabbers and government officials.

Forests falling for cashew monocultures: A ‘repeated mistake’ in Côte d’Ivoire (commentary)
- Savannas and dry forests in vast parts of Côte d’Ivoire are being transformed into orchards of cashew trees, just as large areas of its rainforest have fallen for cocoa.
- Grown in extensive monocultures, cashew has raised incomes but led to deforestation and incursions into protected forests, as major stakeholders overlook the loss of trees and agro-biodiversity.
- Pollination and human diets are suffering, too: nature-based approaches like agroforestry are needed to create a diversified landscape that can make cashew sustainable in the long run.
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Timmermans vs. Bolsonaro: Will the EU get deforestation off our dinner plates? (commentary)
- The European Commission is drafting a plan to address deforestation linked with commodity supply chains.
- But Nico Muzi, Europe Director of global environmental group Mighty Earth and member of the EU Commission Expert Group on protecting and restoring the world’s forests, argues the measure has a significant loophole for soy-based animal feed and leather from Brazil.
- “The leaked plan has several major loopholes that would substantially and unnecessarily weaken its impact even as deforestation in Brazil surges,” Muzi writes. “Even while the law would protect parts of the Amazon rainforest, it would still allow big agriculture companies like Cargill to continue to drive large-scale deforestation right next door in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna and Pantanal wetlands and export the products of that destruction to Europe.”
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Fires rage in Bolivia’s Chiquitania region
- Authorities are battling an outbreak of wildfires in eastern Bolivia’s Chiquitania region.
- Satellite data show fires have intensified over the past two weeks and are invading protected areas.
- The fires are destroying habitat spared by Bolivia’s extreme fire season of 2019.
- Wildfires in Bolivia are often associated with burning for agriculture, and satellite data and imagery show recent fires on agricultural land that directly preceded nearby blazes that have spread into protected forest.

Half of burned forests across Latin America don’t survive, study finds
- Researchers monitored the forests of 22 Latin American countries from 2003 to 2018, and analyzed their resistance to fires.
- According to the researchers, 48% of these ecosystems that suffered burning in 2003 were wiped out in subsequent years.
- The study found that all forests in Latin America are susceptible to fires, with severe implications for greenhouse gas emissions, particulate matter, and biodiversity.

Green peafowl flourish in Thailand’s northern forests, but conflict looms
- Green peafowl (Pavo muticus) are thought to occur across 16% of their former range in mainland Southeast Asia, confined to a handful of isolated forests by a legacy of forest habitat loss, overhunting, and conflict with humans.
- A new study documents a thriving population in a network of four protected areas in Phayao province in northern Thailand; it is the largest population yet recorded in mainland Southeast Asia.
- While the green peafowl population in Phayao’s protected forests appears to be thriving, the new study spotlights growing conflict with farmers as peafowl venture into adjacent cropland to raid rice and maize.
- Local partners are leveraging the green peafowl’s popularity with bird-watchers to improve local perceptions of the birds.

The secret bears of Bolivia’s lost dry forests
- Researchers have discovered a secret population of spectacled bears in a remnant, endangered forest in the highlands of Bolivia.
- The forest is one of the last surviving patches of the highly imperilled inter-Andean dry forest.
- While the spectacled bear population is small and has many threats, researchers say they hope to connect it with other populations.

A novel tree nursery gives the Caatinga a fighting chance against desertification
- Nearly half of the Caatinga, the only exclusively Brazilian biome, has been destroyed and 13% of its territory has already been lost to desertification.
- A project at Rio Grande do Norte Federal University is using PVC pipes to lengthen and accelerate root growth in native plant species that have trouble drawing water from degraded soil.
- Previous restoration methods in the Caatinga resulted in mortality rates near 70% after transplant, but this new method reverses that figure, raising survival rates to 70%.

Rallying the public to save Bolivia’s forests: Q&A with Gina Méndez
- After Brazil, the South American country that lost the greatest area of primary forest over the past twenty years is Bolivia. The past few years, the land-locked nation has experienced vast forest fires that have affected millions of hectares.
- In response to this trend, in 2017 a group of citizens led by Gina Méndez, established an NGO called the El Llamado del Bosque and launched a campaign on behalf of Bolivia’s forests, wildlife, and forest-dependent communities
- Méndez, who previously served as mayor of Bolivia’s largest city, a member of the national congress, and the country’s Minister of Justice and Human Rights, says she was moved to start the movement by the “heartbreaking” loss of forests.
- Méndez spoke about her work, the challenges facing grassroots conservation in Bolivia, and more during a recent interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

‘Bad science’: Planting frenzy misses the grasslands for the trees
- Planting trees by the millions has come to be considered one of the main ways of reining in runaway carbon emissions and tackling climate change.
- But experts say many tree-planting campaigns are based on flawed science: planting in grasslands and other non-forest areas, and prioritizing invasive trees over native ones.
- Experts point out that not all land is meant to be forested, and that planting trees in savannas and grasslands runs the risk of actually reducing carbon sequestration and increasing air temperature.
- The rush to reforest has also led to fast-growing eucalyptus and acacia becoming the choice of tree for planting, despite the fact they’re not native in most planting areas, and are both water-intensive and fire-prone.

Can ‘Slow Food’ save Brazil’s fast-vanishing Cerrado savanna?
- The incredibly biodiverse Cerrado is Brazil’s second-largest biome after the Amazon. However, half of the savanna’s native vegetation has already been lost to industrial agribusiness, which produces beef, soy, cotton, corn, eucalyptus and palm oil for export.
- Those wishing to save the Cerrado today are challenged by the lack of protected lands. One response by traditional communities and conservationists is to help the rest of Brazil and the rest of the planet value the Cerrado’s cornucopia of endemic fruits, nuts and vegetables that thrive across South America’s greatest savanna.
- These include the baru nut, the babassu and macaúba coconut, the sweet gabiroba (looking like a small guava), the cagaita (resembling a shiny green tomato), the large, scaly-looking marolo (with creamy pulp and strong flavor), the berry-shaped mangaba, which means “good fruit for eating,” the egg-shaped, emerald-green pequi, and more.
- Small family farmers, beekeepers, traditional and Indigenous communities, Afro-Brazilian quilombolas (runaway slave descendants), socioenvironmental activists, and celebrity chefs have become allies in a fast-expanding slow food network, declaring: “We want to see the Cerrado on the plate of the Brazilian and the world!”

The Kalunga digitally map traditional lands to save Cerrado way of life
- The Kalunga represents a grouping of 39 traditional quilombola communities — the descendants of runaway slaves — living on a territory covering 262,000 hectares (647,000 acres) in Goiás state in central Brazil, within the Cerrado savanna biome.
- This territory has been under heavy assault by illegal invaders, including small-scale wildcat gold miners, and large-scale mining operations, as well as land grabbers who have destroyed native vegetation to grow soy and other agribusiness crops.
- To defend their lands, the Kalunga received a grant from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), supported by Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, EU, the Global Environment Facility, Japan and the World Bank. With their funding, the Kalunga georeferenced the territory, pinpointing homes, crops, soils, 879 springs, and vital natural resources.
- In February 2020, the U.N. Environment Programme and World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) recognized the Kalunga Historical and Cultural Heritage Site as the first TICCA (Territories and Areas Conserved by Indigenous and Local Communities) in Brazil, making it what UNEP-WCMC calls a “Territory for Life.”

Cat corridors between protected areas is key to survival of Cerrado’s jaguars
- Only 4% of the jaguar’s critical habitat is effectively protected across the Americas, and in Brazil’s Cerrado biome it’s just 2%.
- A survey in Emas National Park in the Cerrado biome concludes that the protected area isn’t large enough to sustain a viable jaguar population, and that jaguars moving in and out could be exposed to substantial extinction risk in the future.
- The study suggests that improving net immigration may be more important than increasing population sizes in small isolated populations, including by creating dispersal corridors.
- To ensure the corridors’ effectiveness, conservation efforts should focus on resolving the conflict between the jaguars and human communities.

Industrial agriculture threatens a wetland oasis in Bolivia
- An oasis within dry Chiquitano forest in eastern Bolivia, Concepción Lake and its surrounding wetland provide valuable habitat for 253 bird, 48 mammal and 54 fish species.
- However, despite being officially listed as a protected area, cultivation of commodity crops like soy and sorghum is expanding and supplanting habitat.
- Agricultural activity is also linked to phosphate pollution in Concepción Lake, and some think it may also be contributing to the lake’s dramatic drop in water level.
- While the clearing is illegal, local government sources say those responsible are simply paying fines and refusing to stop.

Top environment stories from Madagascar in 2020
- Madagascar witnessed a convergence of calamities this year, from the pandemic to surging forest fires to an unprecedented drought.
- Despite growing pressures on its forests, new species continue to be uncovered from the island, with the description of a mouse lemur, several chameleons, and even the world’s ugliest orchid.
- Protected Area management has emerged as a bone of contention between the government and NGOs that manage them, underscoring the challenges of doing conservation in a poor country.
- Here are ten key stories and trends from Madagascar in 2020.

Restaura Cerrado: Saving Brazil’s savanna by reseeding and restoring it
- The Cerrado is Brazil’s second largest biome, and the most biodiverse tropical savanna in the world. It is of vital importance for Brazil’s watersheds, for global biodiversity, and is an important but undervalued carbon stock.
- But in recent decades, half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has been destroyed to make way for cattle, soy, and other agricultural commodities. In the southern Cerrado, scientists are now shifting their focus to restoring the native vegetation
- However, scientific knowledge on savanna restoration is scarce. So one collaborative network, Restaura Cerrado, is bringing together scientists, seed collectors, and the public to advance practical knowledge about restoration. The group’s goal is to achieve the means for ongoing effective Cerrado restoration.
- Restaura Cerrado is a collaboration between ICMBio, the University of Brasília, the Cerrado Seeds Network, and Embrapa (the Brazilian Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Research Enterprise); together they hope to use restoration to bring sustainable development to the savanna region.

France falls short in ending deforestation linked to imported soy
- A new agreement signed by eight grocery store chains in France is aimed at ending the importation of soybeans grown on deforested lands.
- France introduced a national strategy to address deforestation in supply chains in 2018.
- But environmental and watchdog NGOs say the country must go beyond voluntary commitments from companies and mandate an end to trade with producers linked to deforestation.

At-risk Cerrado mammals need fully-protected parks to survive: Researchers
- A newly published camera trap study tracked 21 species of large mammal in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna biome from 2012-2017.
- The cameras were deployed in both fully protected state and federal parks and less protected mixed-use areas known as APAs where humans live, farm and ranch.
- The probability of finding large, threatened species in true reserves was 5 to 10 times higher than in the APAs for pumas, tapirs, giant anteaters, maned wolves, white-lipped and collared peccaries, and other Neotropical mammals.
- With half the Cerrado biome’s two million square kilometers of native vegetation already converted to cattle ranches, soy plantations and other croplands, conserving remaining habitat is urgent if large mammals are to survive there. The new study will help land managers better preserve biodiversity.

Brazilian dry forests are chronically degraded even in non-deforested areas
- Authors call the effect chronic anthropogenic disturbance and modeled it for areas with human settlements, infrastructure construction, grazing, logging, and fire in 47,100 remaining fragments of the biome.
- The Caatinga is the only biome exclusively Brazilian, and is home to more than 900 species of animals and plants.
- But with more than 27 million people, it is also one of the most degraded biomes in the country, although the study highlights areas that can still be conserved, including wildlife corridors.

The lost forests of the Argentine Gran Chaco
- Data from Argentina’s environment ministry show that Argentina’s section of the Gran Chaco, a dry forest in South America that’s about twice the size of California, has lost around 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) of native forest in the past two decades.
- Scientists and environmentalists say that administrative irregularities and noncompliance with regulations have allowed the constant expansion of the agricultural and livestock frontier into the Chaco.
- These incursions impact biodiversity, poverty and the frequency of droughts and floods.

Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances
- Agroforestry is an ancient agricultural technique being rediscovered all over the world as limitations of the globe’s highly industrialized agriculture become obvious.
- On the old and exhausted soils of Africa, trees’ power to nourish life is potentially integral to a reboot of the continent’s agriculture.
- Agroforestry is the intentional combination of woody perennials like trees and shrubs with crops and also livestock to create a resilient “food ecosystem” that benefits farmers, biodiversity and the climate.
- In an analysis for Mongabay, agroforestry expert Patrick Worms suggests that while news reports show forests burning in many places, one can take heart from the fact that trees are busily taking root upon the world’s vast swaths of farmland.

Corn growers in Brazil’s Cerrado reap a hostile climate of their own making
- Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.
- That’s the finding of a new study that shows the loss of native vegetation has led to more warm nights and changes in rainfall patterns, affecting corn crops that require moderate temperatures and reliable rainfall.
- The study’s authors say everyone loses from this scenario, and call for keeping the native vegetation in place as much as possible.
- International pressure and a serious commitment from agribusiness, which is largely resistant to efforts to preserve the Cerrado, might be the way to stop deforestation, they suggest.

In Madagascar’s dry forests, COVID-19 sparks an intense, early fire season
- Though Madagascar officially has just under 1,800 reported infections and 16 deaths from COVID-19, the pandemic’s socioeconomic effects will be catastrophic for the country, the U.N. has warned.
- One tangible impact has been the fire season, which has started early and is likely to be fiercer this year as rural residents deprived of tourism revenue, employment opportunities and access to food markets turn to the forest to survive.
- The environment ministry registered 52,000 forest fire incidents from January until the start of June, with the western flank of the country, which hosts its unique dry forests, being the worst-affected.
- A reduction in NGOs’ and state agencies’ field activities has made forest patrols more challenging and affected the critical task of creating fire breaks.

New data show world lost a Switzerland-size area of primary rainforest in 2019
- Last year the world lost around 119,000 square kilometers (45,946 square miles) of tree cover, according to satellite data collated by the University of Maryland (UMD) released today by World Resources Institute (WRI). Almost a third of that loss came from primary humid tropical forests.
- Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia took the top three spots in terms of absolute primary forest loss, followed by Bolivia, Peru and Malaysia. The data also show some success stories, with deforestation trending down in several countries, including Colombia, Madagascar, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
- In order to stop deforestation, researchers say emphasis must be placed on changing the incentives driving forest loss on a domestic, local level.
- Researchers are also worried about how the COVID-19 crisis could affect forests in 2020.

They survived centuries of elephant onslaught. Now climate change is killing these iconic baobabs
- A years-long drought across Southern Africa, exacerbated by climate change and over-use of water by industry, has driven elephants into South Africa’s Mapungubwe National Park.
- Here, they tear into the park’s centuries-old babobab trees to get at the moist interior.
- While the babobabs have evolved to tolerate occasional elephant damage and benefit from elephants eating their fruit and dispersing the seeds, the damage done during times of drought is extensive and often deadly for the trees.
- The elephants, for their part, no longer have room to maneuver: they’re trapped between climate change, habitat destruction and poaching.

Green alert: How indigenous people are experiencing climate change in the Amazon
- Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Brazilian Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.
- Indigenous people believe that climate change has even affected their physical health: previously controlled diseases like measles and yellow fever, they say, have inexplicably reappeared in the rainforest, and even indigenous women’s menstrual cycles are beginning at an earlier age.
- Indigenous people have found many ways to take action and lessen the harm. These approaches include selecting and growing seeds that are more resistant to drought and heat, investing in frontline firefighters and even a smartphone app that offers information about climatic variations.

Soy made the Cerrado a breadbasket; climate change may end that
- The Brazilian Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna covering over 20% of the nation’s landmass. More than half the Cerrado’s native vegetation — much of it biodiverse dry forest — has been converted to agribusiness, turning it into a breadbasket for Brazil and a key source of soy for China, the EU and other international markets.
- Brazilian soy cultivation is set to expand by 12 million hectares between 2021 and 2050, with the vast majority of that expansion happening in the Cerrado and especially on its agricultural frontier — a four-state region known as Matopiba.
- However, the Matopiba region (consisting of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states) is more vulnerable to climate change than other parts of Brazil. Researchers say global warming on the savanna is also worsened by the conversion of native vegetation to croplands and pastures.
- Extensive conversion of native vegetation (which holds moisture in roots deep underground) into a soy monocrop (which stores little water) is becoming a major problem, as little Cerrado soy is currently irrigated. Scientists argue that the conservation of native vegetation must be actively pursued to save the Cerrado agricultural frontier.

‘We are invisible’: Brazilian Cerrado quilombos fight for land and lives
- Thousands of quilombos — communities formed by descendants of runaway slaves — exist in Brazil, but lack of resources, structural racism, and a lethargic bureaucracy prevents them from gaining official title and control over their traditional lands, despite guarantees under the 1988 Constitution.
- The Brazilian government’s Quilombola Program has mapped more than 3,000 communities, but less than 200 have had their lands officially demarcated, and even fewer have been given full title.
- In the Brazilian Cerrado, on the nation’s agricultural frontier, rapid deforestation by expanding agribusiness, depletion of water resources, and an unsympathetic government are further complicating the resolution of the long-time struggle over land rights.
- The Baião quilombo, visited by Mongabay last year, is just one such community. Located in Tocantins state, its members say its demarcation rights have been long denied by the Brazilian government, while the adjacent Ipiranga farm has steadily expanded to encroach on traditional community lands.

Cattle put Paraguay’s Chaco biome at high risk, but report offers hope
- Cattle production is the largest driver of tropical forest loss worldwide, with devastating impacts for climate, biodiversity and people.
- Paraguay has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, largely due to the rapid expansion of cattle ranching, especially in the western Gran Chaco region — a highly biodiverse and sparsely populated dry forest ecosystem.
- Experts predict that if the current rate of expansion continues in the Chaco, the forest and other native vegetation there could disappear within decades.
- As Paraguay considers new global markets into which to expand, and implements a new forest monitoring platform, a new report suggests that the country has a unique opportunity to shift towards large-scale sustainable cattle production, greatly reducing deforestation.

Conservationists urge reforms in Bolivia after environmental, political crises
- Bolivia lost 50,000 sq km of forest during an unusually destructive fire season in 2019. Researchers say policies enacted in July 2019 that encouraged agricultural expansion contributed to the fires.
- In November 2019, Evo Morales resigned from presidency after a fraught and contested election. The coronavirus pandemic has delayed a planned repeat of the election process in 2020. Meanwhile, the Bolivian government under interim president Jeanine Áñez is trying to deal with the aftermath of the fires and policies set under the Morales administration.
- Conservationists say some progress has been made under the Áñez government on the environmental front, but caution much more needs to happen to stem the harmful impacts of Morales’ legacy.

Conservationists cautiously optimistic after Bolivian government changes hands
- Forest fires burned across more than 5 million hectares of Bolivia’s forests and savannas last year.
- Sources say policy changes that encouraged more burning and clearing for agriculture contributed to the 2019 surge in fire activity.
- Following a contentious election, Evo Morales resigned the presidency in November.
- Conservationists say the new interim government has reversed some of the Morales administration’s decisions – but caution there’s more left to do.

Painting with fire: Cerrado land managers learn from traditional peoples
- Fire is a disturbance that has occurred naturally in Brazil’s tropical savanna — known as the Cerrado biome — for thousands of years. Indigenous and traditional people living in the Cerrado taught themselves to work successfully with fire, using it as an environment-enhancing land management tool.
- However, modern land managers, influenced by techniques practiced in European and U.S. forests, imposed a non-alteration “zero-fire” conservation policy for decades in the Cerrado.
- That practice allowed the steady buildup of combustible organic material, which frequently led to late dry season wildfires or even mega-fires, ecosystem harm, and conflicts with traditional peoples. But in fact, a new study shows prescribed burns in the Cerrado cause no net loss in species diversity, and even enhance some species.
- Starting in 2014, pilot projects launched by the government on conserved lands in the Cerrado have successfully utilized Integrated Fire Management (IFM), including prescribed burns — approaches learned in part from traditional communities. The result is a decrease in wildfire size, intensity and ecosystem damage.

Bolivia and Paraguay unite to protect critically endangered guanacos
- Guanacos (Lama guanicoe) are considered critically endangered in Bolivia and Paraguay. Fewer than 200 exist in Bolivia and as few as 20 in Paraguay.
- Guanacos in Bolivia and Paraguay are threatened by habitat loss and poaching. They live in the Chaco, a dry-forest ecoregion that’s one of the most heavily deforested areas on the planet.
- A camera trapping project spearheaded by Bolivian and Paraguayan NGOs uncovered a population of guanacos living in a national park in Paraguay.
- Meanwhile, across the border in Bolivia, an autonomous indigenous government is in the process of creating a new reserve, which, if established, would create an extensive habitat corridor for guanacos and other Chaco wildlife.

As 2020 fire season nears, Indonesian president blasts officials for 2019
- President Joko Widodo has chided his top officials for failing to anticipate the severity of the land and forest fires that hit Indonesia last year, saying they must do better as the 2020 dry season approaches.
- The fires are set annually to clear land for planting, and there had been ample warning that an intense dry season and El Niño weather system would exacerbate the problem in 2019.
- The president threatened again to fire officials for failing to prevent or control fires in their jurisdictions this year, and quashed their excuses that last year’s burning wasn’t as bad as in other countries.
- A key weapon in the government’s fight against future fires is a program to restore degraded peatlands; but activists say the program is opaque and flawed, with little public accountability of the progress made.

A national park takes shape in Argentina as the forest disappears
- Officially established in October 2014, Argentina’s Impenetrable National Park partially opened to the public in early 2018.
- The park is home to an estimated 600 species of vertebrates including jaguars and giant anteaters. Conservation organizations and Argentina’s National Parks Administration are planning on reintroducing marsh deer to the park, which have been driven to local extinction in most of their Argentinian range.
- Impenetrable National Park is located in the largely semiarid Gran Chaco ecoregion. The Chaco is one of the most deforested areas on the planet, losing more than 2.9 million hectares (7.2 million acres) of its forest between 2010 and 2018. Argentina is home to 60% of the Chaco – but it’s the site of 80% of Chaco deforestation as farmers clear more and more land for cattle and soy.
- Park officials say hunting is also taking a toll on wildlife, and satellite imagery reveals wildfire burned through more than 1,000 hectares of park forest in late 2019.

Indonesian palm oil firm hit with $1.8m fine for 2015 fires
- Indonesia’s environment ministry has won a long-awaited court judgment and $1.8 million fine from a palm oil company that experienced fires on its concession in 2015.
- The company, PT Kaswari Unggul, had challenged the initial administrative sanctions issued in the wake of the burning, and continued to stonewall against the ministry’s efforts to hold it responsible for the burning.
- Ironically, the company’s resistance to the sanctions, which would have compelled it to introduce fire-prevention measures on its land, may have contributed to fires flaring up on the same concession again this year.
- The ministry has welcomed the recent judgment, but has yet to collect on any of the combined $224 million it’s been awarded in similar cases, thanks to legal stonewalling and a Byzantine court bureaucracy.

Indonesia fires cost nation $5 billion this year: World Bank
- Land and forest fires in Indonesia cost the country $5.2 billion in damage and economic losses this year, equivalent to 0.5% of its economy, according to a new analysis from the World Bank.
- Half of the estimated economic loss came from the agriculture and environmental sectors, as fires damaged valuable estate crops and released significant greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, estimated at 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
- The actual economic loss could be higher as the World Bank hasn’t taken into account the impacts of the fires on the public health and on the image of Indonesia’s palm oil industry.

Paper and fast fashion fan the flames burning Indonesia’s peat: Report
- Pulp and paper giants APP and APRIL continue to source their raw material from plantations located on carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia.
- The burning of these peat forests prior to planting accounts for much of the fires that have made Indonesia one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, and of the toxic haze that spreads out to neighboring countries.
- A report by a coalition of NGOs warns that these problems could get worse under the companies’ current peat-intensive business model and a relaxing of peat-protection regulations by the government.
- The companies have disputed the scale of the fires attributed to their suppliers’ plantations, and say they already carry out peat conservation initiatives.

Indonesia fires emitted double the carbon of Amazon fires, research shows
- Forest fires that swept across Indonesia this year emitted nearly twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the fires that razed parts of the Brazilian Amazon, new research shows.
- The Indonesian fires pumped at least 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere, largely as a result of burning of carbon-rich peatlands.
- The fires were the most intense since 2015 and threaten to set back Indonesia’s commitments to reduce its carbon emissions and contribute to global efforts to slow climate change.

Mozambique’s newly empowered rangers, courts catch up with poachers, loggers
- Mozambique has recorded a measure of success recently against wildlife poachers and illegal loggers, thanks to stronger enforcement.
- Nearly a quarter of the country’s area has been designated as conservation space, helping wildlife numbers recover after a 15-year civil war that decimated animal populations.
- One of the remaining threats to the country’s protected areas is illegal logging.
- In addition to better training and equipment for rangers, the recent introduction of new conservation laws and extensive training of prosecutors and judges is helping deliver swift and heavier sentences for poaching and illegal logging.

New honeyeater species described from Indonesia’s Alor Island
- Scientists have described a new bird species found only on the island of Alor in eastern Indonesia.
- The Alor myzomela is easily distinguished from other known members of the Myzomela genus of honeyeater birds thanks to its unique call and paler upper wings.
- A growing human population on the island is already fragmenting the species’ only known habitat, prompting the researchers to recommend it be considered endangered on the IUCN Red List.
- The bird’s scientific name, Myzomela prawiradilagae, is a tribute to prominent ornithologist Dewi Malia Prawiradilaga from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

Saving the Gran Chaco: Conservationists demand protection before it’s too late
- The Gran Chaco is South America’s second-largest forest biome, and is home to thousands of species.
- The Chaco has lost around 20 percent of its forest cover since 1985 as land is cleared for agriculture. The Argentine portion has lost 30 percent.
- In response, a project called the Argentine Gran Chaco 2030 Commitment was created to demand more be done to protect the Chaco. As of Nov. 7, 80 organizations and institutions around the world had signed on in support.

Photos: Peatland fires rage through Indonesia’s Sumatra Island
- Aerial images taken last month in the southern part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island show fires raging through peatlands and generating massive clouds of haze.
- The fires this year are the worst since 2015, exacerbated by an unusually intense dry season and an El Niño weather pattern.
- The fires are set deliberately to clear land for oil palm and pulpwood plantations, and the smoke they generate has sickened hundreds of thousands of people and spread as far as neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.

Indonesian court fines palm oil firm $18.5m over forest fires in 2015
- An Indonesian court has fined a palm oil company $18.5 million for fires that destroyed 970 hectares (2,400 acres) of forest on its concession in Borneo in 2015.
- The judgment is the latest in a growing number of cases where courts have taken a zero-tolerance approach that makes concession holders liable for any fires that occur on their land, regardless of whether or not they can be proven to have started the fires.
- Observers have welcomed the verdict, but say the challenge now will be to compel the company to pay up. Since 2015 the government has won $223 million in judgments in similar cases, but collected just $5.5 million.
- The company in the latest case, PT Arjuna Utama Sawit, is a supplier to Singapore-based Musim Mas Group, a major oil palm trader whose customers include consumer brands such Unilever. Musim Mas said it was seeking an explanation from PT Arjuna Utama Sawit.

Area the size of Puerto Rico burned in Indonesia’s fire crisis
- A spike in fires in September has contributed to the razing of 8,578 square kilometers (3,304 square miles) of land across Indonesia this year, or an area the size of Puerto Rico.
- More areas are expected to continue burning through to the end of the year, but the fire season this year isn’t expected to be as bad as in 2015, when 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) of land was burned.
- The onset of rains has also reduced the incidence of transboundary haze that previously sparked protests from neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
- Almost all the fires this year occurred on deforested land that had previously been burned, where the vegetation has not had sufficient time to regenerate after the last fires.

Indonesian enforcement questioned as fires flare up on the same concessions
- Indonesia says it plans to impose stricter punishment for plantation companies with recurring instances of fire on their concessions, including permanently revoking their permits.
- Several of the companies whose concessions have been burning this year were also at the heart of the 2015 fires.
- Activists say the fact that the problem is recurring on the same concessions highlights the government’s failure to adequately punish the companies.
- A Greenpeace report has found no meaningful action taken against palm oil companies guilty of burning since 2015, and inconsistent enforcement against pulpwood companies during that same period.

Fires still being set in blazing Bolivia (commentary)
- Firefighters in Bolivia are tackling conflagrations that have burned an area larger than Costa Rica. Several national parks and Indigenous territories have been affected.
- Many Indigenous and civil society groups are calling for an end to laws that allow burning.
- I spoke to ecologists and biologists about what is being lost, and what the chances of recovery are for affected areas. Some did not want to be named, as the political situation is tense right now in the run up to Bolivia’s October elections.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New app tracks down forest fires in Bolivia
- A new app uses aerosol data and recent satellite images to find fires in the forests of Bolivia in real time.
- The application’s creators, from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, say the novel use of the aerosol data, originally intended to monitor air quality, represents a significant advance over traditional, temperature-related alerts.
- According to the NGO Friends of Nature Foundation, more than 41,000 square kilometers (15,800 square miles) of Bolivia has burned in 2019.

Top Madagascar beer maker supports investigation into its corn supply chain
- Madagascar brewer STAR, owned by the French Castel group, is under pressure for allegedly sourcing maize from a rapidly deforesting area in the country’s west.
- It has agreed to support an independent study led by Malagasy NGO Association Fanamby to investigate whether the maize in its supply chain is linked to deforestation in the Menabe Antimena protected area.
- The protected area hosts endangered and endemic species like the Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae) and the Malagasy giant rat (Hypogeomys antimena).
- More than one-fifth of the dry deciduous forest in Menabe Antimena was lost between 2006 and 2016, and there are no signs of the deforestation abating.

Gran Chaco: South America’s second-largest forest at risk of collapsing
- Distributed between Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, the Gran Chaco is a collection of more than 50 different ecosystems typified by dry forest.
- The Gran Chaco is one of the most deforested areas on the planet. Every month, an area twice the size of Buenos Aires is cut down.
- Chaco deforestation is driven by the expansion of the agricultural frontier and hunting, as well as climate change.

‘We’ve been negligent,’ Indonesia’s president says as fire crisis deepens
- Indonesia’s government has been negligent in anticipating and preparing for this year’s fire season, the country’s president says.
- The fires, set mostly to clear land for planting, have razed huge swaths of forest and generated toxic haze that has spread as far as Malaysia and Singapore.
- The president’s acknowledgement of the government’s lack of preparation comes in the wake of his own ministers apportioning blame for the fires to other parties.
- Activists say the government has little moral standing to go after the companies that have set their concessions ablaze, noting that the government itself has refused to take responsibility for failing to do enough to tackle similar fires in 2015.

Indonesian minister draws fire for denial of transboundary haze problem
- Indonesia’s environment minister continues to deny that fires in the country are sending toxic haze to neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
- An environmental activist warns that this stance, which goes against the data presented by Malaysia, risks undermining Indonesia’s credibility.
- The haze is an annual irritant in diplomatic ties between Indonesia and its neighbors, with much of the burning taking place to clear land for oil palm and pulpwood plantations.
- Malaysia has offered to help Indonesia fight the fires, which have sickened tens of thousands of people in Sumatra and Borneo, threatened an elephant reserve, and churned more than 100 millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Photos: Forest fires rage on Sumatra oil palm concessions
- As Indonesia’s annual fire season gets underway, swaths of carbon-rich peat forests are being razed, and the subsequent toxic smoke has blanketed parts of Jambi province on the island of Sumatra.
- Dozens of hotspots have been detected on farmland, oi palm concessions, and even inside a protected peat forest in the province, according to the local disaster management agency.
- Mongabay visited one of the burning concessions, where minimally equipped workers are fighting to put out fires that have been burning for days without end.
- The workers deny that the oil palm company set the fire on the concession, claiming it started in a neighboring village. In 2015, three company employees were charged with setting fires on the same concession, though none were ever convicted.

Diplomatic row heats up as haze from Indonesian fires threatens Malaysia
- The number of fire hotspots in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra has increased nearly sevenfold in a four-day period in early September.
- The surge has prompted calls from Malaysia, which has historically been affected by haze from fires in Indonesia, for its Southeast Asian neighbor to get the burning under control.
- The Indonesian government has refuted complaints that the recent increase in hotspots has resulted in transboundary haze.
- Indonesia faces what could be the worst fire season since 2015, fanned by an El Niño weather pattern.

Disaster strikes in Bolivia as fires lay waste to unique forests
- Fires are raging in Bolivia, hitting particularly hard the Chiquitano dry forests of the country’s southern Santa Cruz region.
- Officials say the fires are largely the result of intentional burning to convert forest to farmland. Sources say this practice has recently intensified after Bolivian president Evo Morales signed a decree in July expanding land demarcated for livestock production and the agribusiness sector to include Permanent Forest Production Lands in the regions of Beni and Santa Cruz.
- Satellite data indicate 2019 may be a banner year for forest loss, with tree cover loss alerts spiking in late August to levels more than double the average of previous years. Most of these alerts are occurring in areas with high fire activity, with data from NASA showing August fire activity in Santa Cruz was around three times higher than in years past.
- Human communities are suffering due to the fires, with reports of smoke-caused illnesses and drinking water shortages. Meanwhile, biologists are worried about the plants and animals of the Chiquitano dry forests, many of which are unique, isolated and found nowhere else in the world.

Europe-bred rhinos join South African cousins to repopulate Rwanda park
- Five critically endangered eastern black rhinos have been flown from Europe to Akagera National Park in Rwanda.
- Eastern black rhino populations across the region are small and isolated, with the risk of inbreeding damaging long-term genetic viability.
- The rhinos come from the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) breeding program and will add vitally needed fresh genetics into Rwanda’s fledgling population, made up of rhinos bred in South Africa.

Indonesia forest-clearing ban is made permanent, but labeled ‘propaganda’
- A temporary moratorium first issued in 2011 on granting permits to clear primary forests and peatlands for plantations or logging has been made permanent by Indonesia’s president.
- The government says the policy has been effective in slowing deforestation, but environmental activists blast those claims as “propaganda,” saying that forest loss and fires have actually increased in areas that qualify for the moratorium.
- They’ve highlighted several loopholes in the moratorium that allow developers to continue exploiting forest areas without consequence.
- Activists are also skeptical that a newer moratorium, on granting permits for oil palm cultivation, will do much to help slow the rate of deforestation.

Photo essay: Madagascar’s disappearing dry forests (insider)
- Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler writes about his visit to the dry forests of western Madagascar last month.
- The dry forest of western Madagascar is famous for its wildlife and baobab trees, including the tourist destinations of Baobab Alley, Tsingy de Bemaraha, and Kirindy Forest.
- Rhett traveled to Madagascar for the annual Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) meeting. Ahead of the conference, he used the opportunity to visit the Menabe region of western Madagascar to investigate some GPS points identified via Global Forest Watch’s GLAD alert system as potential recent deforestation.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.

Haze from fires, Indonesia’s national ‘embarrassment,’ are back
- Indonesia is experiencing its worst annual fire season since 2015, with the cross-border spread of haze once again threatening to spark a diplomatic row with neighbors Malaysia and Singapore.
- The government has acknowledged that measures adopted in the wake of the 2015 fires to prevent a repeat of that disaster may have fallen short, including efforts to restore drained peatlands and drill wells to provide water for firefighters.
- President Joko Widodo, scheduled to visit Malaysia and Singapore later this week, says he feels embarrassed by the return of the fires and haze, and has ordered the firing of officials found to have failed to tackle the problem.
- At the local level, however, governors of the affected provinces appear to be taking the matter lightly: saying the haze isn’t at a worrying level, offering a reward for shamans who can summon rain, and proposing questionable theories about the causes of the fires.

Indonesian ban on clearing new swaths of forest to be made permanent
- A temporary moratorium that prohibits the issuance of new permits to clear primary and peat forests is set to be made permanent later this year.
- Though largely ineffective in stemming deforestation in the first few years after its introduction in 2011, the moratorium has since 2016 been shored up by peat-protection regulations that have helped slow the loss of forest cover.
- Environmental activists have welcomed the move to make the moratorium permanent, but say there’s room to strengthen it, such as by extending it to include secondary forests.
- They’ve also called for the closing of a loophole that allows primary and peat forests to be razed for plantations of rice, sugarcane and other crops deemed important to national food security.

Peat protection rule may be a double-edged sword for Indonesia’s forests
- A government regulation issued in 2016 requires logging companies to restore peat with protected status in their concessions, mostly in Sumatra, and prohibits them from developing on it.
- But activists say this prohibition threatens a massive supply shortfall for two of the world’s biggest paper producers, which they warn could push the companies to source wood from unprotected forests in other parts of Indonesia.
- Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) face a supply crunch of up to 30 percent and 25 percent respectively, according to an analysis by NGOs.
- Both companies dispute this finding, saying their supplies remain secure even as they seek to boost their output.

Palm oil, logging firms the usual suspects as Indonesia fires flare anew
- Fires have flared up once again on concessions held by palm oil and logging companies in Riau province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
- For many of the companies involved, this isn’t the first time fires have sprung up on their land, prompting activists to question the government’s ability to enforce its own regulations against slash-and-burn forest clearing.
- Much of the affected area is peat forest, some of it being developed in violation of a ban on exploiting deep peatland, whose burning releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- A failure by the government to collect on fines levied against the few companies prosecuted for setting fires on their concessions means there’s little deterrent effect for other companies that see slash-and-burn as the cheapest way to raze forests for plantations.

Indonesia’s threat to exit Paris accord over palm oil seen as cynical ploy
- A top Indonesian minister says the country may consider pulling out of the Paris climate agreement in retaliation for a European policy to phase out palm oil from biofuels by 2030.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs, says Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, can follow in the footsteps of the United States, which has declared its withdrawal from the climate pact, and Brazil, which is considering doing the same.
- The threat is the latest escalation in a diplomatic spat that has also seen Indonesia and Malaysia, the No. 2 palm oil producer, threaten retaliatory trade measures against the European Union.
- The EU says its policy is driven by growing consumer concerns about the sustainability of palm oil, which in Indonesia is often grown on plantations for which vast swaths of rainforest have had to be cleared.

No more fires in Indonesia? Blazes on Sumatran peatland say otherwise
- Forest fires have flared up in Sumatra again this dry season, belying the government’s claims that it has brought the annual problem under control.
- All of the fires recorded so far have been on peat forests, a carbon-rich terrain that a slew of government policies have specifically targeted for restoration and protection since the disastrous fire season of 2015.
- Environmental activists say there’s no transparency to gauge how well peat restoration efforts are progressing, and little engagement with NGOs on the ground.
- They warn of a continuation of the “business-as-usual” approach that sees the government typically only respond to fires after they’ve broken out.

Can jaguar tourism save Bolivia’s fast dwindling forests?
- Few countries in the tropics have seen trees chopped down as quickly as Bolivia did between 2001 and 2017.
- Within Bolivia, nearly two-thirds of that loss occurred in just a single state—Santa Cruz—as agribusiness activity, namely cattle ranching and soy farming, ramped up.
- This loss has greatly reduced the extent of habitat for some of Bolivia’s best known species, including the largest land predator in the Americas, the jaguar. On top of habitat loss, jaguars in Santa Cruz are both persecuted by landowners who see them as a danger to livestock, and targeted in a lucrative new trade in their parts, including teeth and bones.
- Duston Larsen, the owner of San Miguelito Ranch, is working to reverse that trend by upending the perception that jaguars necessarily need be the enemy of ranchers.

Conservation groups press world leaders to protect 30% of the planet
- Thirteen nature conservation organizations are urging world leaders to back a plan to protect 30 percent of the world’s surface and oceans by 2030.
- Recent research has shown that less than a quarter of the world’s wilderness still remains.
- The group released a statement as negotiators were meeting in Japan to begin drafting a plan to meet that goal.

Investigation reveals illegal cattle ranching in Paraguay’s vanishing Chaco
- In the buffer zone around the Defensores del Chaco National Park– the largest forest reserve in the country – new areas have been cleared to make way for livestock, while long-established cattle ranches are operating without environmental licenses.
- According to official data from the Ministry of the Environment, more than a million hectares (10,000 square kilometers) were cleared in Paraguay’s Chaco ecosystem between January 2014 and January 2018.
- The Ministry of the Environment has just 12 inspectors to deal with all the environmental complaints across the country.

Peccary’s disappearance foreboding for other Mesoamerican wildlife
- A multinational team of scientists met to discuss the current status and future of the white-lipped peccary, a pig-like mammal that lives in Central and South America.
- White-lipped peccaries no longer live in 87 percent of their former range, driven out largely by hunting and habitat loss.
- The scientists say the disappearance of this species, which requires large tracts of unbroken forest, could portend the extinction of other wildlife.

Deforested, degraded land restoration a top priority for African leaders
- African leaders met at a summit to discuss land restoration across the continent on Nov. 13, ahead of the U.N. Biodiversity Conference in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt.
- Representatives from several African countries shared their countries’ pledges to restore hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of degraded and deforested land in the coming decades.
- The summit’s leaders said they hoped the deliberations during the day-long summit would help African countries in both their contributions to international targets and to the improvement of their natural ecosystems for the benefit of their citizens.

Radar helps Kenya map mangroves and other cloud-covered forests
- Using Sentinel-1 radar imagery from the European Space Agency, the Forest2020 project has mapped a part of Kenya’s previously hard-to-assess coastal forests.
- The project’s findings show that 45 percent of the 83.5 square kilometers (32 square miles) of mangrove forest in a pilot county is highly degraded and in need of rehabilitation.
- These initial micro-scale maps of Kenya’s mangrove forests will help local forest officers and communities in areas with receding or recovering mangroves to take necessary coastal protection measures.

Satellite technology unites Kenyans against bush fires
- The Eastern and Southern Africa Fire Information System (ESAFIS), an online application developed in Kenya, uses MODIS satellite information to detect bush fires in eastern Africa.
- The freely available app maps and categorizes bush fires in near-real time and shows details of each fire , including the time it was detected, its location with respect to towns and protected areas, and its relative intensity.
- By providing an early fire warning system, the system helps forest management authorities respond to fires in their early stages and prioritize limited resources to fire hotspots.

Kenyan charcoal businesses trying to nip invasive tree in the bud
- An invasive species of mesquite named Prosopis juliflora, and known in Kenya as mathenge was introduced to the region to restore degraded drylands.
- Residents describe mixed feelings about whether to keep the mathenge tree or try to eradicate it. Some termed it a “dryland demon” — since it can inflict injuries in both people and livestock, while blocking paths where it formed canopies.
- Using charcoal production to both curb the spread of the prolifically invasive plant and reduce demand on native species is consistently described as a positive development by proponents.

Bird-rich Indonesian island yields up new songbird species
- Researchers have described a new species of songbird found only on the Indonesian island of Rote — the second new avian discovery there in less than a year.
- The Rote leaf-warbler (Phylloscopus rotiensis) was initially assumed to be the same species as the Timor leaf-warbler from a neighboring island, but closer studies of its physical characteristics and genetic analyses have distinguished it as its own species.
- Rote is home to a large number of species found only there or on neighboring islands, but lacks any major terrestrial protected area.

Absent for decades, zebras reintroduced to park in southern Tanzania
- Staff from the Wildlife Conservation Society and its partners in Tanzania released 24 zebras into Kitulo National Park on Oct. 12 and 13.
- The Kitulo Plateau in Tanzania’s southern highlands includes high-elevation grasslands, a unique habitat that requires fire and grazing animals to maintain its plant diversity.
- The reintroduction, with plains zebras from Mikumi National Park, is part of a broader effort to “rewild” the southern highlands after decades of wildlife hunting and livestock grazing.

Why keep Africa’s dryland forests alive?
- Small holder farmers from 6,000 Malian households have restored 320 hectares of land through a combination of on-farm natural tree regeneration, water harvesting, moisture retention technologies, improved soil filtration, and enhanced soil humus.
- This is just one of many efforts currently underway to restore Africa’s dryland forests. There are many obstacles left to overcome, but as the Mali example clearly shows, there are successes to celebrate and build upon, as well.
- In sub-Saharan Africa, 80 percent of charcoal and firewood used by about 2.4 million people is harvested in woodlands found in the dryland areas. Experts say it’s time to start packaging these fragile yet rich and highly adaptive ecosystems into investment opportunities.

Study finds widespread degradation, deforestation in African woodlands
- New research has found that deforestation rates between 2007 and 2010 in the woodlands of southern Africa were five times greater than previously thought.
- Similarly, carbon losses from the region during that time period were three to six times higher.
- The study used radar data, as opposed to visual satellite imagery, to measure the biomass found in southern Africa’s woodlands.
- Around 17 percent of the region’s area was degraded during the time period, the researchers found.

Earth has more trees now than 35 years ago
- Tree cover increased globally over the past 35 years, finds a paper published in the journal Nature.
- The study, led by Xiao-Peng Song and Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland, is based on analysis of satellite data from 1982 to 2016.
- The research found that tree cover loss on the tropics was outweighed by tree cover gain in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions.
- However all the tree cover data comes with an important caveat: tree cover is not necessarily forest cover.

Millipedes might soothe itchy lemurs, research finds
- Scientists have observed red-fronted lemurs in Madagascar biting millipedes and then rubbing themselves with the secretions.
- A team of researchers published their observations in the journal Primates, along with their hypothesis that the lemurs were using the millipede secretions to treat worm infections.
- The study’s lead author also observed lemurs eating the millipedes, which may slow the growth of parasites living in the primates’ intestines.

Peru: Marañón dry forests protected as a regional conservation area
- Peru has formalized the creation of the Regional Conservation Area of Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests of the Marañón through a Supreme Decree.
- The new regional conservation area will ensure the conservation of a representative sample of this ecosystem, which is home to 143 plant species, 22 bird species and 14 reptile species that live nowhere else in the world.
- A second Supreme Decree, passed on the same day, has formalized the creation of the Regional Conservation Area of the Vista Alegre Omia. These conservation areas are the first of their kind in the Amazonas region.

Scientists find new snail-eating snakes, auction naming rights to save them
- An expedition in Ecuador has uncovered five new species of snail-eating snakes.
- Four out of the five species are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss.
- The researchers who conducted the expedition auctioned off their naming rights and used the funds to purchase and protect an area of forest where two of the most threatened new species are known to live.

Climate change could be killing Africa’s giant baobabs
- More than half of the oldest and largest trees in a recent study died — or had significant parts of their structures die — between 2005 and 2017.
- Nearly all of these trees were at least 1,000 years old, and one was nearly 2,500 years old.
- The researchers believe that higher temperatures and more than a decade of drought in southern Africa, likely due to climate change, may have killed these baobabs.

Audio: How soundscapes are helping us better understand animal behavior and landscape ecology
- On today’s episode, we take a look at soundscape phenology and the emerging role it’s playing in the study of animal behavior and landscape ecology.
- The Mongabay Newscast previously looked at how soundscapes are being used in phenological studies when we talked about the great Sandhill crane migration on the Platte River in the US state of Nebraska. Today, we take a deeper dive into soundscape phenology with researcher Anne Axel, a landscape ecologist and professor at Marshall University in the US state of West Virginia.
- Axel tells us all about this new field of study and plays a few of the recordings that have informed her research in this Field Notes segment.

Cooperative agroforestry empowers indigenous women in Honduras
- The Lenca indigenous group in a dry region of Honduras has practiced agroforestry for millennia, planting timber and fruit trees over food and medicine crops to provide shade that increases soil humidity.
- Recently a group of women formed a cooperative to market their coffee grown in the shade of these trees as organic and fair trade, and they have enjoyed a sizable price increase.
- The Lencas’ agroforestry system also provides fruit and timber products that are ready for sale or trade during times of the year when the coffee crop is not ripe.
- Agroforestry is beneficial to the climate because it sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, and it also benefits biodiversity: the village has observed an increase in populations of animals like opossums, snakes, hares, armadillos, squirrels, birds and coyotes as the agroforestry plantings expand.

Cerrado: can the empire of soy coexist with savannah conservation?
- With new deforestation due to soy production markedly reduced in recent years by Brazilian laws and by the 2006 Amazon Soy Moratorium, agribusiness, transnational commodities companies like Bunge and Cargill, and investors have shifted their attention to the Cerrado, savannah.
- Four Cerrado states, Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, known collectively as Matopiba, are seeing a rapid reduction in native vegetation as soy, cotton, corn and cattle production rises. Over half of the Cerrado’s 2 million square kilometers has already been converted to croplands, with large-scale agribusiness owning most land.
- One reason for the focus on the Cerrado: Brazil’s Forest Code requires that inside Legal Amazonia 80 percent of forests on privately held lands be conserved as Legal Reserves. But in a large portion of the Cerrado, property owners are only required to protect 20 to 35 percent of native vegetation.
- With little help coming currently from government, conservationists are responding with creative approaches for protection – developing partnerships with local communities, seeking signers for the Cerrado Manifesto to curb new deforestation due to soy, and restoring degraded lands to market the Cerrado’s unique fruits and other produce.

Scorched earth: Colombia’s ‘refugee farmers’ returning to land
- Many of those returning are victims of a horrific, days-long massacre amid fighting between the Colombian military and FARC in 2000.
- Residents of Montes de Maria now face new threats of deforestation and the impacts of climate change, which has caused wide-scale desertification across the mountainous region.
- The region is part of Colombia’s dry forests, an important eco-system which acts as a buffer zone from floods and a nesting ground for many species.

Scientists find ‘surprising’ connections between tropical forests
- For a new study, researchers genetically analyzed the evolutionary relatedness of tree species that live in tropical and sub-tropical forests around the world.
- Their results indicate the world’s tropical forests are divided into two main “floristic regions,” one that comprises most of Africa and the Americas and another in the Indo-Pacific region.
- The analysis also indicates dry tropical forests around the world – from Madagascar and India to Africa and South America – are unexpectedly similar to one another.
- The findings go against traditional assumptions about the relationships between tropical forests, and the researchers believe they could aid the development of more region-appropriate responses to climate change.

Camera trap captures spotted hyena in Gabon national park, the first in 20 years
- The spotted hyena was thought to be extinct in Gabon’s Batéké Plateau National Park for 20 years as a result of wildlife poaching.
- But the camera trap image captured has given conservation groups hope that protection of the park is working and allowing wildlife to return.
- Camera traps have also recently snagged images of a lion, a serval and chimpanzees.

Lions deal blow to giraffe numbers by targeting young, study finds
- New research demonstrates that lions can diminish the number of young giraffes in a population by more than 80 percent.
- The giraffe species was recently listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, after its numbers dropped by nearly 40 percent in just three decades.
- A 2015 estimate puts numbers at 97,500, down from 157,000 in 1985.
- The findings could prompt the rethinking of conservation strategies aimed at protecting giraffes.

Meet Indonesia’s new honeyeater species from Rote Island
- A new bird species from Indonesia has been described by a group of scientists after it was first observed in 1990, a paper said.
- The bird, which belongs to the honeyeater family, has been named after Indonesia’s first lady, Iriana Joko Widodo, as a way to promote the protection of the species.
- The researchers said the newly described species’ population was primarily threatened by deforestation to clear land for residential and agricultural use.

Scientists predict tree death from drought in California’s Sierra Nevadas
- A study in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California shows that remotely-measured changes in the canopy water content (CWC) of conifers can be used to forecast tree mortality.
- Water content in tree canopies can be remotely monitored using laser-based images from aerial surveys.
- Changes in the CWC in conifer forests during droughts correlate well with tree mortality.
- After estimating canopy water content from past years using a deep learning model, researchers were able to accurately predict tree death during a recent drought.

Suite of free, open-source tools to help even non-experts monitor large-scale land use change
- Collect Earth is a free, open-source tool built on Google Earth that enables non-experts to assess deforestation and other land cover change through point sampling.
- The program combines spatial data with visual photo interpretation of a set of sample areas of high spatial and temporal resolution satellite imagery, generating statistics for a target area.
- The platform assembles thousands of high-resolution images in one place, enables the user to view and analyze current and historic land cover dynamics, produce graphic and tabular results, and share them with colleagues.
- A recent study that used Collect Earth to map the world’s dry forests demonstrates how the point sampling approach is suited to large-scale assessments.

Charcoal and cattle ranching tearing apart the Gran Chaco
- The year-long probe of Paraguay’s charcoal exports by the NGO Earthsight revealed that much of the product was coming from the Chaco, the world’s fastest-disappearing tropical forest.
- Suppliers appear to have reassured international supermarket chains that it was sustainable and that they had certification from international groups such as FSC and PEFC.
- But further digging by Earthsight revealed that the charcoal production methods used may not fit with the intent of certification.
- Several grocery store chains mentioned in the report have said they’ll take a closer look at their supply chains, and the certification body PEFC is reexamining how its own standards are applied.

Big mammals flourish as Cerrado park’s savanna comes back
- The study examined a state park in the Brazilian Cerrado, which contains land used in recent decades for eucalyptus plantations, cattle ranching and charcoal production.
- The researchers used camera traps, recording the dry season presence of 18 species of large mammals.
- In a subsequent analysis, they found that the number of large mammals found in the ‘secondary’ savanna was similar to numbers found in untouched regions of the Cerrado.

Conservation group African Parks to look after West African wildlife
- The 10-year agreement includes funding of $26 million.
- African Parks and the government of Benin aim to double wildlife populations in the park by training guards and shoring up protections from poaching.
- The effort will create some 400 jobs and benefit the overall economy, say representatives of the government and the NGO.

New soy-driven forest destruction exposed in South America
- Mighty Earth looked at updated satellite imagery from 28 sites in the Cerrado in Brazil and the Gran Chaco and the Amazon in Bolivia.
- They found evidence of 60 square kilometers of land clearing for soy production since their September 2016 investigation.
- Bunge and Cargill, the two companies that figure prominently in Mighty Earth’s latest report, argue that they are working to eradicate deforestation from their supply chains.

Drylands greener with forests than previously thought
- The new study, published Thursday in the journal Science, increases global forest cover estimates by 9 percent.
- Using very high resolution imagery, the team calculated that dryland forest cover was 40 to 47 percent higher above current totals.
- The researchers calculate that 1.1 million hectares (4,247 square miles) of forest covers the Earth’s drylands.

Rwanda welcomes 20 black rhinos to Akagera National Park
- The 20 black rhinos are of the eastern subspecies (Diceros bicornis michaeli).
- African Parks, the NGO that manages Akagera National Park in cooperation with the government of Rwanda, says that it has rhino trackers, canine patrols and a helicopter to protect the rhinos from poaching.
- Fewer than 5,000 black rhinos exist in Africa. Their numbers have been decimated by poaching for their horns, which fetch high prices for use in traditional Chinese medicine.
- Officials hope that the new rhino population will boost Akagera National Park’s visibility as a ecotourism destination.

‘We can save life on Earth’: study reveals how to stop mass extinction
- Researchers analyzed 846 regional ecosystem types in 14 biomes in respect to the “Nature Needs Half” scientific concept that states proper functioning of an ecosystem requires at least half of it to be there.
- They found 12 percent of ecoregions had half their land areas protected while 24 percent had protected areas and native vegetation that together covered less than 20 percent.
- The study indicates the tropical dry forest biome is the most endangered. Closely behind it are two others: the tropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, and the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. All are highly biodiverse, providing habitat for many species.
- The researchers say while many ecosystems have been highly degraded, achieving 50 percent protection is still possible – if current conservation goals are scaled up.

‘Racing against time’ to save the taguá and its vanishing Chaco home
- Taguá are one of three peccary species living in the Americas and are the only ones found nowhere else but the Gran Chaco.
- Scientists say that the Chaco is disappearing at an alarming rate – with nearly a million hectares of tree cover loss as recently as 2008 – due in large part to soy cultivation and cattle ranching.
- The destruction of the taguá’s habitat, along with hunting, have caused its numbers to drop, say scientists, far below the estimated 5,000 alive during the 1990s.

Smuggled to death: how loopholes and lax enforcement have sealed the fate of Siamese rosewood
- Thailand’s Thap Lan National Park is on the frontline of the deadly battle against the illegal rosewood trade, but the root cause of the problem lies outside the park’s borders.
- Siamese rosewood has been listed under CITES Appendix II since 2013, but loopholes in trade rules and poor oversight allowed the trade to persist.
- A key loophole was closed at last year’s CITES CoP17. Now, campaigners fear for the future of lookalike species like Burmese rosewood and padauk.

No let-up in Thailand’s relentless, violent Siamese rosewood poaching
- Rosewood, famed for its blood red hue, is the world’s most trafficked wildlife product. It accounts for a third of all seizures recorded by the UNODC from 2005-2014.
- Most of the valuable Siamese rosewood has already been logged out in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, leaving Thailand’s remaining stands prey to cross-border incursions by poaching gangs.
- Seven wildlife rangers died in 2015 in incidents related to the Siamese rosewood trade, along with an unknown number of poachers, but the trade continues unabated.

Study points to El Niño-like global connections between forests
- A team of scientists from the University of Washington, the University of Arizona, Michigan State University and the Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia modeled climate simulations comparing what would happen as the result of die-offs and deforestation in the Amazon and western North America to other forests.
- In isolation, a forest die-off in North America would lead to slower growth in northern Asia’s forests and a drier climate in the southeastern United States. However, the loss of forests in both North America and the Amazon could make the American Southeast’s forests more productive.
- The authors say that the ‘teleconnections’ between forests separated by huge distances revealed by their research indicates a need for globally coordinated forest management.

West African countries come together to stop the illegal rosewood trade
- Several species of rosewood, belonging to the genera Dalbergia and Pterocarpus and collectively known as hongmu, are highly sought after by Chinese furniture manufacturers, who use them to make products that are coveted status symbols.
- The majority of rosewood imports into China have traditionally come from Southeast Asian countries, but West Africa has become one of the largest exporting regions feeding China’s growing demand for rosewood in the past few years.
- In 2014, nearly half of China’s rosewood imports came from Nigeria, Ghana, and other African countries, which supplied just 10 percent of Chinese rosewood imports a decade ago.

Amazon rainforests could transition to savannah-like states in response to climate change, new study predicts
- Scientists have developed a new model called the Ecosystem Demography Biosphere model that allows them to track the response of individual trees in forests to climate change.
- The researchers did not find any evidence supporting previous studies that the Amazon forests would either collapse, or be unresponsive, in a warmer, drier climate in the future. Instead, their results suggest that the Amazon would show varied, and gradual response to changes in the climate.
- The model found, for example, that as dry seasons become longer, high-biomass rainforests in the Amazon will transition to low-biomass dry forests and savannah-like states.

Big increase in little farms is whittling away Angola’s woodlands
- Dry tropical forests cover more than half of sub-Saharan Africa and are home to a many people who live below the poverty line and depend on these forests for their livelihoods, according to researchers.
- In southeastern Angola, islands of dense dry woodland are being cultivated much faster than the surrounding open woodland because they offer better soil for crops. With more people moving into the regions, cultivation rates more than quintupled between 2000 and 2013.
- The researchers worry some areas may be reaching a tipping point, past which soil and habitat could become severely compromised if farming continues apace.

Environmentalists win ‘landmark’ case against biofuel project in Sri Lanka
- Yala National Park, on the southern coastline of Sri Lanka, is one of the nation’s most popular parks, home to dense populations of both Asian elephants and leopards, as well as nearly 100 types of waterbirds and thousands of other species.
- In 2012, environmental groups were notified that a mysterious company had began clearing vegetation in the region for a biofuel monoculture plantation.
- Three of these groups took the company to court in late 2012, accusing it of illegally clearing land, building access roads and refusing to get the required permissions.

Industrial concessions causing massive deforestation in Cambodia
- By the end of 2013, 14 percent of Cambodia’s land had been allocated for commercial agriculture.
- Some of these ag concessions act as entry points for timber extraction, according to the report’s authors.
- Lack of legal clarity and enforcement has meant that the timber industry has remained largely unregulated in Cambodia.

Major expedition uncovers new species in Bolivia
- ID Madidi will explore 14 sites throughout Madidi National Park over the next year and a half.
- At their first study site, the researchers found a new species of frog.
- With two sites under their belt, they’ve recorded 60 vertebrates not known to inhabit the park.

Overcoming poverty through ‘regreening’
- Regreening is the regeneration of natural vegetation on previously cleared land.
- A recent report shows success in large-scale, farmer-managed regreening in parts of Africa.
- The authors say regreening could be used to improve local economies and even reduce refugee migration.

Tiny Brazilian opossum could be farmers’ friend

A gracile mouse opossum at the Botanic Garden of Brasília. Photo credit: Brendan Borrell André Mendonça pops open the spring-loaded door on the shoebox-sized trap and peeks inside. Two bulging, black eyes glare back at him. He pulls the trap off the tree limb and shakes the stunned, sopping wet creature into a clear plastic […]
New mapping technique sheds light on dry forests

Researchers map out poorly understood dry tropical forests in Southeast Asia; technique may help protect wildlife living within Trees of the family Dipterocarpaceae dominate the forests of Southeast Asia. These long-lived hardwood trees grow to impressive heights of more than 50 meters (164 feet), and have small seeds with conspicuous wings that aid in dispersal […]
Use of mammals still prevalent in Brazil’s Conservation Units

For as long as humans and animals have co-existed, people have utilized them as resources. Animals, and their parts, have been used for a variety of purposes, ranging from basic food to more esoteric practices such as in magical ceremonies or religion. A new study published in mongabay.com‘s open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science has found […]
New skeleton frog from Madagascar is already Critically Endangered

Ankarafa skeleton frog’s (Boophis ankarafensis) mating. Photo by: Gonçalo M. Rosa. Sometimes all it takes is fewer clicks. Scientists have discovered a new species of frog from Madagascar that stuck out in part because it “clicked” less during calls than similar species. Unfortunately the scientists believe the new species—dubbed the Ankarafa skeleton frog (Boophis ankarafensis)—is […]
Connecting forests, saving species: conservation group plans extensive wildlife corridor in Panama

Soon, hard rains will hit the steep hillsides of the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, sluicing soil into the rivers and out to the sea. Centuries of slash and burn agriculture have left fewer trees to stand against the annual deluge of water during the rainy season. The erosion makes it harder for ranchers to grow […]
Illegal logging surges in Mozambique

Illegal logging has spiked over the past five years in Mozambique, finds a new report by researchers at the University of Eduardo Mondlane. The report, published on the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s web site, assesses timber production, consumption, and exports, finding that nearly two-thirds of logging is currently illegal. The report notes that harvesting […]
Jaguars in Argentine Chaco on verge of local extinction

The majestic jaguar (Panthera onca), the largest of the New World cats, is found as far north as the southern states of the US, and as far south as northern Argentina. In the past jaguars ranged 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) further south, but their range has shrunk as habitat loss and human disturbance have increased. […]
Powered by Google, high resolution forest map reveals massive deforestation worldwide

Researchers today released a long-awaited tool that reveals the extent of forest cover loss and gain on a global scale. Powered by Google’s massive computing cloud, the interactive forest map establishes a new baseline for measuring deforestation and forest recovery across all of the world’s countries, biomes, and forest types. The map has far-reaching implications […]
U.S. company’s open pit gold mine in UNESCO reserve in Mexico raises concerns

An American mining company pushes plans for an open pit gold mine in a UNESCO biosphere reserve in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Endemic species and environmentally sustainable ranching practices are threatened. Engineers from Paredones Amarillos, a subsidiary of Vista Gold Mining, oversee mine exploration activities inside the Sierra la Laguna reserve in 2009 Sierra la […]
Dry forests disappearing faster than rainforests in Latin America

Latin American countries lose 4% of dry forests in 9 years Click image to enlarge Countries across Latin America lost 78,000 square kilometers of subtropical and tropical dry broadleaf forests between 2001 and 2010, according to a new satellite-based assessment [PDF] published in the journal Biotropica. The research — based on analysis of data from […]
Chart: Forest loss in Latin America

Change in vegetation cover by biome across Latin America, 2001-2010. Click image to enlarge. Latin America lost nearly 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) of forest — an area larger than the state of Oregon — between 2001 and 2010, finds a new study [PDF] that is the first to assess both net forest loss […]
New bird discovered in Colombia imperiled by hydroelectric project

Dry forest and canyons along the Cauca River. The forests in these photos will soon be submerged by the Pescadero-Ituango dam. Photo by: Carlos Esteban Lara. In a little-known dry forest in Colombia, scientists have discovered a new species of bird: the Antioquia wren (Thryophilus sernai). First seen in 2010, scientists photographed the new wren […]
Deforestation accounts for 10 percent of global carbon emissions, argues new study

Countries with the highest gross forest loss between 2000 and 2005 according to the new study and earlier work by the FAO. Click image to enlarge. Tropical deforestation accounted for 10 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions between 2000-2005 — a substantially smaller proportion than previously estimated — argues a new study published in Science. […]
Educating the next generation of conservation leaders in Colombia

Guardians of Nature students take a field trip to snorkel in coral reefs. Photo courtesy of: Miguel Hernandez. Colombia’s northern departments of Cordoba and Bolivar are home to an abundance of coral reefs, estuaries, mangroves forests, and forests. Rich in both marine and terrestrial wildlife, local communities depend on the sea and land for survival, […]
Animal picture of the day: rare photo of mother jaguar and cubs

Kaaiyana, a female jaguar photographed recently with two cubs near the Isoso Station of the Santa Cruz-Puerto Suarez Gas Pipeline in Kaa Iya National Park in Bolivia. Photo by: Daniel Alarcon. Click to enlarge. A mother jaguar, named Kaaiyana by scientists, and cubs were recently photographed in Kaa Iya National Park in Bolivia. “Kaaiyana’s tolerance […]
Caatinga ecosystem almost wholly ignored in Brazil
Tropical dry forests have received little conservation and research attention as compared to their rainforest cousins, leaving these ecosystems to become gravely threatened while still largely unknown to the public and scientists. A new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Science finds that the Caatinga, a seasonally dry tropical forest, is the least-known […]
Ant surprises on Murciélago Islands in Costa Rica

Murciélago Islands as seen by Google Earth. The Murciélago Islands are seven small islands off the northwest coast of Costa Rica in the Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG), home to one of the largest intact dry tropical forests in Central America. Despite this, few scientists have studied the biodiversity of these small uninhabited islands. A […]
Mexican environmental activist shot dead

La Morena Mexico in the Petatlán Mountains in the state of Guerroro as viewed by Google Earth. Javier Torres Cruz, 30, who fought illegal deforestation by drug traffickers in the Mexican state of Guerroro, was murdered a week ago. A member of the local NGO, Environmental Organization of the Coyuca and Petatlán Mountains, Torres Cruz […]
Satellite evidence of deforestation in uncontacted tribe’s territory sparks legal action

The destruction of 3,600 hectares (8,900 acres) of the Gran Chaco forest in Paraguay by large Brazilian cattle ranching companies has led to a legal complaint filed by a local indigenous-rights organization, since the land in question was one of the last refuges of a group of uncontacted indigenous people in the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode tribe. The […]
Image: new bird discovered in Madagascar

Artist’s view of the Mentocrex beankaensis. Illustration by: Velizar A. Simeonovski. CITATION: Steve M. Goodman, Marie Jeanne Raherilalao, and Nicholas L. Block. Patterns of morphological and genetic variation in the Mentocrex kioloides complex (Aves: Gruiformes: Rallidae) from Madagascar, with the description of a new species. Zootaxa. 2776: 49-60 (2011). The rich and unique biodiversity of […]
Chaco biodiversity expedition suspended

A joint expedition by the Natural History Museum (NHM), London and the Natural History Museum, Asuncion to the dwindling dry forest of the Gran Chaco in Paraguay to record biodiversity, and hopefully uncover ‘hundreds’ of new species, has been suspended by the Paraguayan government. The suspension comes after a local organization voiced concern that the […]
Chaco expedition working to “minimize the risk” of running into uncontacted natives

A joint expedition by the Natural History Museum (NHM), London and the Natural History Museum, Asuncion to study the biodiversity of the dwindling dry forests of Chaco in Paraguay have responded to recent concerns that they risk encountering uncontacted natives, which could potentially threaten the natives’ lives as well as their own. “We’ve sought a […]

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