topic: Slash-and-burn

topic: Slash-and-burn

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Video: For farmer imprisoned over wildfires, fear and poverty linger
- Sarijan, a farmer in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, spent seven months in jail for setting a controlled fire on his land in 2019.
- Throughout the ordeal, he says he experienced violence in jail and extortion by the authorities.
- Sarijan is one of at least 200 farmers in Indonesian Borneo prosecuted for this offense since 2016, amid a crackdown by the government on land burning.
- To this day, Sarijan hasn’t resumed farming his land; as a result, he now has to buy food instead of growing it, driving an increase in his living costs.

Traditional small farmers burned by Indonesia’s war on wildfires
- An investigation by Mongabay based on court records and interviews shows police in Indonesia are increasingly charging small farmers for slash-and-burn practices.
- Prosecutions surged following a particularly catastrophic fire season in 2015, in response to which Indonesia’s president threatened to fire local law enforcement chiefs for not preventing burning in their jurisdictions.
- Most of those prosecuted were small farmers cultivating less than 2 hectares, and many were of old age and/or illiterate; several alleged they suffered extortion and abuse during their legal ordeal.
- Experts say law enforcers should be more judicious about the charges they bring, noting that a “targeted fire policy” should differentiate between various kinds of actors, such as traditional farmers, land speculators, and people hired to clear land by plantation firms.

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.

The great Koh Kong land rush: Areas stripped of protection by Cambodian gov’t being bought up
- A regulation issued earlier this year in Cambodia’s Koh Kong province purported to take land from protected areas and grant the land titles to families living in the area.
- But developments since then, and interviews with residents and brokers, paint the scheme as a massive land grab orchestrated by the country’s political elite.
- Politicians and companies have been snapping up the newly degazetted land, among them a firm suspected of being a front for pulpwood giant APP.
- Among those said to be profiting from the land grab is Ly Yong Phat, dubbed “The King of Koh Kong,” a politician and businessman with a long history of quashing the rights of those who occupy land he desires.

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.

Carving up the Cardamoms: Conservationists fear massive land grab in Cambodia
- Conservationists have expressed concern over a recently published regulation that makes nearly 127,000 hectares (313,800 acres) of previously protected land potentially available for sale or rent to politically connected businesses.
- Known as Sub-decree No. 30, the order is ostensibly meant to redistribute land to communities that had previously lost control of it after it was taken over by the Ministry of Environment and conservation NGOs to manage as protected areas.
- But activists and experts point to several features of the regulation — the proximity of some of the requisitioned land to concessions held by powerful magnates; the inclusion of uninhabited primary forest; the opacity of the land-titling process promised to local communities — that suggest it’s another form of land grabbing.

Slash-and-burn farming eats away at a Madagascar haven for endangered lemurs, frogs
- The Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor (CAZ), a protected area in Madagascar, has experienced a surge in deforestation in the past five months, driven largely by slash-and-burn agriculture.
- The loss of forest threatens rare and endangered wildlife found nowhere else, including lemurs and frogs and geckos, conservationists say.
- Other factors fueling the deforestation include mining for gemstones and cutting of trees to make charcoal.
- The problem in CAZ is emblematic of a wider trend throughout the central eastern region of Madagascar, in both protected and unprotected areas, where 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of tree cover has been lost since 2001.

A Madagascar forest long protected by its remoteness is now threatened by it
- Satellite data show an increase in deforestation in Tsaratanana Reserve and the neighboring COMATSA protected area in northern Madagascar in recent years, and an uptick in the last few months.
- Though many of the island’s forests have been extensively cleared, these northern forests were relatively well protected until recently.
- The loss of these forests to make way for the illegal cultivation of marijuana, vanilla and rice threatens the region’s rich biodiversity and high endemism, conservationists say.
- Some experts argue that the legalization of marijuana would make it less likely that people would grow the crop in the remote forests of Tsaratanana.

Money to burn: Study finds fire-prevention incentives in Indonesia don’t work
- Villages in Indonesian Borneo that were offered financial incentives to not burn their land for farming were just as likely to continue setting fires as villages that received no financial assistance.
- That’s the finding in a new study that concludes that without an alternative land-clearing method that’s as cost-effective as burning, rural communities will continue to set fire to forests to make way for agricultural land.
- The researchers suggested several factors might explain the findings, including the size of the incentive, individual villagers’ wariness that the money would trickle down to them, and the perception that burning is still the cheapest way to add value to the land.
- The researchers also say there’s a poor understanding of the fire problem among policymakers in Indonesia, who tend to overlook the economic drivers of the practice and think that tougher penalties and bans will suffice to end it.

In Bolivia, more than 25% of major fires this year burned in protected areas
- More than 120 major fires have been detected in Bolivia since March, more than a quarter of them in protected areas, including Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Copaibo Municipal Protected Area, where an area of forest half the size of New York City has burned this year.
- Most of this year’s major blazes, 54%, were detected in savanna in the department of Beni, while more than 38% burned in forests, both in the Amazon rainforest and the dry forests of Chiquitano, according to the nonprofit MAAP.
- This year, there have been more fires detected but they have burned less area compared to last year’s devastating blazes. Nevertheless, the fires have been severe enough for Bolivia’s interim president to declare a state of emergency in mid-September.
- “We have some weeks (maybe more) when more fires might occur and it is difficult to predict the final impact for this year,” researchers from Bolivian nonprofit ACEAA say.

In Brazil’s Pantanal, a desperate struggle to save a hyacinth macaw refuge from fire
- Firefighters are working around the clock to protect a forested ranch in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state that’s an important refuge of the threatened hyacinth macaw.
- The Pantanal wetlands in which the ranch is located are experiencing severe wildfires, sparked by human activity and exacerbated by drought and climate change.
- The São Francisco do Perigara ranch is home to around 1,000 hyacinth macaws — 15% of the total population of the species in the wild, and 20% of its population in the Pantanal.

Ex-Wall Street ‘quant’ wields data to replant charred Madagascar rainforests
- After retiring early from a career as a quantitative analyst for stock portfolios worth billions of dollars, Matt Hill started a nonprofit to restore rainforest in eastern Madagascar.
- Applying the data skills he honed in his former career, Hill is working out better ways to regrow rainforest burned accidentally or for agriculture.
- Although few projects have adopted that kind of approach, it is gaining approval among reforestation experts internationally.
- They say reforestation can have far greater success if practitioners develop an evidence base to guide which tree species to plant, where and when to plant them, and how to grow them.

Rangers protecting Philippine tamaraws go hungry as pandemic bites
- Rangers tasked to protect the critically endangered Philippine tamaraw (Bubalus mindorensis) are facing a different kind of threat: hunger, as budget cuts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic bite into their already meager salaries.
- The tamaraw, also known as the dwarf buffalo, is a critically endangered species found only on the island of Mindoro, with an estimated population of just 480.
- The tamaraw’s island stronghold is Mounts Iglit-Baco Natural Park, which is protected by 24 rangers and Indigenous volunteers.
- But the tamaraw program has been chronically underfunded, and diversion of funds to help fight the pandemic has left some of the rangers unemployed and the rest going hungry, even as they continue to do their jobs.

Brazilian Amazon protected areas ‘in flames’ as land-grabbers invade
- The Área de Proteção Ambiental (APA) Triunfo do Xingu spans some 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres). Its dense forests boast a rich diversity of plant and animal species, and it is also home to Indigenous groups and traditional peoples who rely on the forest to survive.
- But the area has come under pressure, becoming one of the most deforested regions in the Amazon in recent years. Overall, the territory has lost nearly 30% of its forest cover, with some 5% cleared in 2019 alone.
- The number of fires has soared in Triunfo do Xingu too. Over the last two months, NASA satellites picked up 3,842 fire alerts in the territory. August and September – when Brazil’s fire season is normally at its peak – are expected to bring even more intense burning.
- The area has emerged as an epicenter of land-grabbing and illegal mining, amid a surge in invaders who are betting that the Bolsonaro administration will eventually loosen or scrap protections of the land they are occupying.

Fires in the Pantanal: ‘We are facing a scenario now that is catastrophic’
- Devastating wildfires that burned out of control in late 2019 and early 2020 in Brazil’s Pantanal wetland are back. Around 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) in the region have been burned so far.
- The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland and straddles the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia – with Brazil containing the lion’s share.
- The Brazilian Pantanal has seen the number of fires more than double so far in 2020, up some 200% over the same period in 2019. Sources say the fires were started by human activity – likely to clear land for agriculture – and are difficult to control due to a lack of access to the region and because the fires are burning underground, fueled by highly combustible peat and exacerbated by drought.
- Faced with the surging number of fires in June and July, state and federal authorities moved to reinforce bans on burning. However, early signs suggest these measures are doing little to mitigate fires.

COVID-19 and rainforest fires set up potential public health crisis
- Peaking fires in the world’s rainforests combined with the global COVID-19 pandemic threaten to create a devastating public health crisis, experts warn.
- The fires typically follow recent deforestation, as farmers and ranchers burn brush and trees to make way for crops and livestock.
- Soot from the fires causes severe respiratory problems and exacerbates existing conditions, health researchers say. The uptick in the need for treatment could overwhelm already-strained hospitals in the Amazon and Southeast Asia.
- Researchers say that solutions exist, involving government enforcement, consumer demand for deforestation-free products, and company commitments to halt the destruction of forests. Now what’s needed is political will.

Marijuana cultivation whittling away Madagascar’s largest connected forest
- Northern Madagascar contains the largest block of connected forest left in the country.
- Tsaratanana Reserve is supposed to protect a large portion of this forest. However, satellite data and imagery show Tsaratanana is being cleared at a rapid rate.
- Local officials say slash-and-burn agriculture for marijuana cultivation is to blame. The Madagascar National Parks agency helped organize military deployments to the Tsaratanana area in 2014 and 2017, and is planning another intervention this year.
- Scientists say that if this deforestation continues, it will fragment the reserve’s well-connected forests and threaten the animals that live there — many of which are found nowhere else in the world.

‘They never intended to conserve it’: Outcry as loggers gut Cambodian reserve
- Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, which stretches across five provinces in northern Cambodia, contains one of the region’s last remaining large areas of old growth rainforest.
- But Prey Lang’s forests are under attack, with satellite data and imagery showing a recent surge in deforestation.
- Sources say the reserve is being illegally logged by politically connected timber companies, with Angkor Plywood and its subsidiaries, Think Biotech and Thy Nga, the “biggest immediate threat to Prey Lang forest.”
- Prey Lang is not included on the U.N.’s World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) — an omission researchers say is deliberate on the part of the Cambodian government, which must voluntarily submit protected area information to the WDPA.

Healing the world through ‘radical listening’: Q&A with Dr. Kinari Webb
- Kinari Webb is a medical doctor and founder of Health in Harmony, a nonprofit aimed at curbing global warming by protecting rainforests and empowering the human communities that live within them.
- Over the past 10 years, Health in Harmony has helped lift communities in Indonesian Borneo from poverty by providing sustainable, local livelihoods that have dramatically reduced their reliance on logging.
- Webb says she and her colleagues were able to accomplish this by listening to what communities really needed and to their ideas about possible solutions; she says Health in Harmony’s model could be applied to other communities around the world, even those in developed countries.
- On a larger scale, Webb says governments need to stop prioritizing economic growth; she says the COVID-19 crisis highlights the danger of reliance on global supply chains, and that working together and moving toward a “regenerative economy” would help humanity weather future pandemics — as well as prevent them from happening in the first place.

‘A crisis situation’: Extinctions loom as forests are erased in Mozambique
- Small mountains called “inselbergs” are scattered widely across the central and northern Mozambique landscape. They are crowned by rainforests, which are homes to species that have evolved in isolation for millennia.
- Inselberg forests are Mozambique’s last inland primary forests. But they’re getting smaller and smaller as humans burn them for agriculture and to flush out game animals, and chop them down for lumber and charcoal.
- One such inselberg is Mount Nallume, which researchers recently surveyed during a November expedition. While there, they found chameleons that they suspect may be a new species
- However, Nallume’s forest is disappearing quickly, with the researchers estimating it may be gone in five to 15 years if deforestation continues at its current rate. They urge the government of Mozambique to do more to protect these “islands in the sky” before they, and the unique animals that live in them, disappear forever.

Fires and greenhouse gases fuel drying of the Amazon
- New research reveals that fires in the Amazon rainforest, used primarily to clear land for agriculture and ranching, are contributing to drier conditions caused by the emissions of climate-warming gases into the atmosphere.
- Fires release “black carbon,” which absorbs energy and causes temperatures to rise, as well as blocking the formation of clouds, creating drier conditions.
- The researchers caution that the rising demand for water combined with scarcer supplies could threaten the forest’s survival.

Colombian town faces earthquakes, pollution, water shortage as industry expands
- Residents of the town of Puerto Gaitán say their water sources are being used for the cultivation of oil palm plantations and the extraction of crude oil.
- Studies have found water quality near the town qualifies as “poor” and water reserves have dropped off for many areas, forcing residents to import water from elsewhere.
- Locals say seismic tremors induced for oil extraction have damaged houses and soil.
- Researchers say wildlife populations have been harmed by agricultural chemicals used for palm oil production and habitat loss caused by expanding plantations.

Malaria surges in deforested parts of the Amazon, study finds
- A recent study found that deforestation significantly increases the transmission of malaria, about three times more than previously thought.
- The analysis showed that a 10 percent increase in deforestation caused a 3.3 percent rise in malaria cases.
- The study’s authors analyzed more than a decade of data showing the occurrences of malaria in nearly 800 villages, towns and cities across the Brazilian Amazon.
- They also controlled for the “feedback” from malaria, by which a rise in the incidence of the disease actually slows deforestation down.

Madagascar calls for assistance as fires imperil its protected areas
- Between August and September 1,300 hectares (3212 acres) of forest land in Ankarafantsika National Park in northwestern Madagascar was burnt.
- Bush fires from slash-and-burn cultivation, in which forestland is burnt and cleared to plant crops, caused the most damage.
- The fires impacted forests not just in the buffer zone of the park but also the core area.
- The Malagasy government has called on the international community to aid its fire-fighting efforts.

Mexican officials battle a tide of fire eating away at a protected reserve
- Fires raged in the Mexican state of Campeche this summer, with NASA satellites picking up nearly 10,000 fire alerts the state so far this year — around twice the number recorded in 2018. This puts 2019 in third place (behind 2003 and barely behind 2013) for the highest incidence of fires in the state since data collection began in 2001.
- Of these fires, 15 percent occurred in protected areas. Several afflicted Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, one of which burned through 3,087 hectares (7,628 acres) before being extinguished.
- Stretching across the central Yucatan Peninsula to the Guatemalan border, the Calakmul Reserve, as well as the Balamku and Balamkin state reserves that sit contiguous with it, comprise more than 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of jungle. The reserves are home to some of the country’s most impressive biodiversity and provide vital habitat to threatened animals and plants.
- The main driver of fires in Campeche is slash-and-burn agriculture. Officials worry that fire seasons will only intensify as more people set up farms in the region, and as state funding to fight fires continues to dwindle.

Small-scale farming is a big threat to biodiversity in the western Amazon: Study
- Smallholder farming poses a significant threat to biodiversity in the western Amazonian forests of northeastern Peru, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, a study led by researchers at Princeton University has found.
- Small-scale agricultural operations are generally considered to be much less harmful to wildlife than the wholesale clearance and conversion of forests to pasture or cropland, but the study, published in the journal Conservation Biology in May, shows that small-scale farmers’ activities are having a substantially negative impact on wildlife and plant life all the same.
- Plans to build more roads in the northern Peru could exacerbate the situation, but the researchers say their findings have important implications for conservation policy in the western Amazon region and could help point a way towards mitigating the impact of future development.

Fire, cattle, cocaine: Deforestation spikes in Guatemalan national park
- Laguna del Tigre, Guatemala’s largest national park, provides habitat for an estimated 219 bird species, 97 butterflies, 38 reptiles and 120 mammals, and is also home to ancient Mayan ruins. But conservationists and archeologists say this biological and cultural wealth is threatened by high levels of deforestation in the park.
- Between 2001 and 2018, Laguna del Tigre lost nearly 30 percent of its tree cover, and preliminary data for 2019 indicate the rate of loss is set to rise dramatically this year. Fire is the dominant driver of deforestation in the park, and is used to clear the land of forest and make it more farmable. Satellite imagery shows vast swaths of recently burned land where old growth rainforest stood less than 20 years ago.
- Authorities blame residents within the park for much of the destruction, as well as industrial cattle operations and cocaine traffickers who set up airstrips on cleared land within the park. But community members have defended what they say is their right to live on the land and to use its resources, in some cases even resorting to violence.
- Wildlife Conservation Society, along with the National Council for Protected Areas, have begun working on peace-building initiatives for the area with international agencies and organizations in the hopes of bridging the gap between environmental protection and human rights. But a lot of work remains.

Stunting, loss of earning potential linked to Indonesia’s 1997 wildfires
- Fires raged out of control in Indonesia in 1997, spreading across 110,000 square kilometers (42,500 square miles) of forest.
- Researchers have found that people who were prenatal or 6 months old at the time did not grow to the expected average height by the time they were 17.
- Relative height has been found to have an impact on a person’s ability to earn an income, providing a new glimpse into the intergenerational cost of exposure to fire and haze.

Illegal corn farming menaces a Madagascar protected area
- Deforestation within Menabe Antimena Protected Area, a large swath of unique dry forest ecosystem on Madagascar’s west coast, has increased dramatically in recent years.
- Slash-and-burn agriculture is the primary driver. Unlike in most places in Madagascar, it isn’t done for subsistence farming but to plant corn, a cash crop traded by a powerful local elite.
- Conservation groups have teamed up to organize raids that have resulted in a number of arrests, and are making inroads into the corn distribution networks.
- So far, however, only impoverished laborers have been held to account, many of them new arrivals to the area who have fled drought in southern Madagascar; none of the well-connected backers of the deforestation have been touched.

Borneo study explores links between farm expansion and deforestation
- A nearly two-decade study of land-cover change in Borneo has identified a positive correlation between the loss of forests and the expansion of plantations, primarily for oil palms.
- The findings undermine the long-held position of industry and government representatives that plantation expansion doesn’t contribute to deforestation and that it makes use of already cleared land.
- The study also highlighted a slowdown in rates of both deforestation and plantation expansion, which the researchers attributed to declining process of crude palm oil, more stringent regulations on forest clearing, and wetter weather in 2017.
- While the expansion of plantations hit a new low in 2017, activists say the possible illegal clearing of peat forests continues unabated in Indonesian Borneo, despite repeated calls to the government for action.

Saving the forests of the Congo Basin: Q&A with author Meindert Brouwer
- Central African Forests Forever, first published in 2017, takes readers to the heart of the continent, introducing them to the people and wildlife of this region.
- Its author, independent communications consultant Meindert Brouwer, says the book also functions as a tool for sharing information about efforts to address poverty and environmental issues in the region.
- Mongabay spoke with Brouwer to learn more about his motivations and the reception of his work in Central Africa.

Fire fundamentally alters carbon dynamics in the Amazon
- With higher temperatures and increasingly severe droughts resulting from climate change, fires are becoming a more frequent phenomenon in the Amazon.
- New research finds that fires fundamentally change the structure of the forest, leading it to stockpile less carbon even decades after a burn.
- The research also shows that the burning of dead organic matter in the understory can release far more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought.

95 percent of all lemur species face high risk of extinction, experts say
- More than 50 experts in primate conservation from around the world recently convened in Antananarivo to review the conservation status of the 111 species and subspecies of lemurs, all endemic to Madagascar, and provide updated threat assessments for the IUCN Red List.
- They found that 105 lemurs — 95 percent of all known lemur species and subspecies — might qualify as critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable to extinction in the wild.
- The updated assessments produced by the IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group must still undergo a review process before they are fully validated, but the group’s findings would increase the number of lemurs listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List from 24 to 38.

Forest communities pay the price for conservation in Madagascar
- In a two-year investigation of a REDD+ pilot project, a team of researchers spoke with more than 450 households affected by the establishment of a large protected area called the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor, a 3,820-square-kilometer (1,475-square-mile) tract of rainforest in eastern Madagascar.
- The REDD+ project, supported by Conservation International and the World Bank, was aimed at supporting communities by providing support for alternative livelihoods to those communities near the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor protected area.
- They found that the REDD+ project’s preliminary studies identified less than half of those negatively affected by the Corridor’s designation.
- The team also discovered that the value of the one-off compensation, in the form of support to pursue other livelihoods, fell far short of the opportunity costs that the communities are likely to face as a result of losing access to the forest in the coming decades.

Angry farmers set fire to offices of Madagascar eco group, gov’t agency
- Large swaths of forest inside northwestern Madagascar’s Bongolava Forest Corridor, a protected area, have been burned to make way for commercial corn farming, raising the fortunes of many residents accustomed to living on the edge of subsistence.
- Last month, angry farmers armed with sticks and machetes stormed into the northwestern city of Boriziny, also known as Port–Bergé, to demand the release of people arrested for illegally clearing farmland inside the protected area.
- The group destroyed the offices of the local nonprofit that manages the protected area and set fire to the building it shares with an outpost of the environment ministry, as well as to the homes of the group’s coordinator and the government administrator for the area.
- The episode highlights the difficulty of achieving meaningful conservation in an area where the populace largely views ecological goals as conflicting with an important source of income.

More than 40 percent of Madagascar’s freshwater life sliding toward extinction, IUCN finds
- In an assessment of 653 freshwater plant and animal species living on Madagascar and nearby islands, biologists found that 43 percent are threatened with extinction or there isn’t enough information to assess how well they’re doing.
- Nearly 80 percent of endemic plants examined in the study face extinction.
- The team lists unsustainable farming practices, deforestation, dam construction, mining and the overuse of natural resources, such as overfishing, as causes for the widespread declines.

Indonesia braces for return of fire season as hotspots flare up
- Indonesia’s annual forest fire season has started, with reports of blazes in four peat-rich provinces, all of which have declared a state of emergency.
- The stake is high for Indonesia to prevent the fires and resultant haze this year, as it prepares to host tens of thousands of athletes and visitors for the Asian Games. One of the host cities is in South Sumatra province, a perennial tinderbox.
- The Indonesian government rolled out extensive measures to prevent fires in the wake of the 2015 blazes, focusing on restoring drained peatland, but questions remain over the effectiveness of those efforts.

Saving Sumatran orchids from deforestation, one plant at a time
- Conversion of forest for agriculture is an ever-present threat in Sumatra, even in protected areas like Kerinci Seblat National Park. Palm oil, acacia, rubber and other plantation crops pressure the park from the outside, while poaching endangers the fauna within.
- Scientists estimate there are between 25,000 and 30,000 species of orchid in the world, with many yet to be discovered. Around 1,000 species are listed as threatened by the IUCN. Sumatra is one of the world’s orchid hot spots.
- Conservationist Pungky Nanda Pratama is trying to save at-risk orchids by transplanting them from threatened areas in and around Kerinci Seblat to a nursery where he is aiming propagate them and re-plant them in nearby protected areas.
- Pratama is also hoping to start an educational center where people can learn about Sumatra’s native plants.

Abandoned by their sponsors, Madagascar’s orphaned parks struggle on
- A dozen protected areas that were created amid the rapid buildup of Madagascar’s conservation sector in the aughts were later abandoned by their NGO sponsors after the political crisis of 2009.
- Among these so-called orphan protected areas is the 606-square-kilometer (234-square-mile) Bongolava Forest Corridor in the country’s northwest. The U.S.-based NGO Conservation International spent 15 years spearheading Bongolava’s creation, then abandoned the project in 2012.
- A year ago, a scrappy group of locals returned to Bongolava to resuscitate the protected area. Working with a slim budget, they are confronting both intense pressure for farmland inside the protected area and widespread corruption.
- This is the eighth story in Mongabay’s multi-part series “Conservation in Madagascar.”

Carbon dreams: Can REDD+ save a Yosemite-size forest in Madagascar?
- When Makira Natural Park launched in 2005, it seemed to present a solution to one of the most intractable problems in conservation: finding a source of funding that could be counted on year after year.
- The sale of carbon offset credits would fund the park itself as well as development projects aimed at helping nearby communities improve their standard of living and curtail deforestation.
- But more than a decade later, carbon buyers are scarce and much of the funding for community development has been held up. And although deforestation has slowed considerably in and around Makira, it is falling well short of deforestation targets set at the outset of the project.
- This is the seventh story in Mongabay’s multi-part series “Conservation in Madagascar.”

To feed a growing population, farms chew away at Madagascar’s forests
- In Madagascar, farmers are cutting down forests and burning them to make way for rice cultivation.
- The practice is traditional but now illegal because of the harm it causes to natural areas. Many species are already threatened with extinction due to forest loss.
- With the country’s population expected to double by 2060, the pressure is likely to intensify.

New leaf-nosed bat uncovered amidst burning habitat in Venezuela
- Using genetic and morphologic comparisons, scientists uncovered a new leaf-nosed bat species they named Sturnia adrianae. The species inhabits montane forest in northern Venezuela and Colombia.
- The species is comprised of two subspecies, one of which is restricted to an isolated mountain range in northeastern Venezuela where human-caused fires are common.
- The study’s lead author recommends increasing conservation and scientific attention for the area to preserve bat habitat, safeguard water supplies, and help prevent landslides like those that recently killed at least 250 people in Mocoa, Colombia.

‘Out of control’ wildfires damage protected areas in northern Peru
- A new analysis of satellite data describes dozens of fires that invaded protected areas throughout northern Peru in the last few months of 2016.
- The rainy season has since extinguished the fires, but not before they burned through an estimated 2,668 hectares of protected habitat
- Representatives from Peru’s National Protected Areas Service (SERNANP) say they met the fires head-on and are working on ways to mitigate similarly severe fire seasons in the future, but critics say their efforts were lacking in 2016.

Despite conservation efforts, Tanzania’s forests still under pressure
- Tanzania boasts one of the world’s largest tree covers.
- Deforestation could cost the country’s economy up to $3.5 billion dollars by 2033.
- Reforestation work is linked to sustainable environmental management, community development and poverty alleviation.

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.

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