topic: Primary Forests

topic: Primary Forests

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Reforesting Malawi’s ‘Island in the Sky’ to save its vanishing woodlands
- Malawi’s Mount Mulanje harbors unique biodiversity and numerous endemic species, protects vital watersheds, and is of high cultural value to local communities
- The mountain has experienced significant deforestation over the past few decades, both in both the miombo woodlands on the lower slopes and in the higher-elevation forests.
- For the past two decades, the Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust and other partners have been working to bring back the Mulanje cedar (Widdringtonia whytei), an endemic species and Malawi’s national tree
- Conservation groups are also working on reforestation and income generation projects in the miombo woodlands, to alleviate poverty and reduce pressure on the upper mountain.

Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Tesso Nilo National Park was created to protect one of the largest remaining tracts of lowland forest on the island of Sumatra, and as a refuge for threatened wildlife such as critically endangered Sumatran tigers and elephants.
- Despite being declared a National Park in 2004 and expanded in 2009, Tesso Nilo has experienced continued deforestation in recent years, largely driven by the proliferation of oil palm plantations.
- Satellite data show Tesso Nilo lost 78% of its old growth rainforest between 2009 and 2023.
- Preliminary data for 2024, coupled with satellite imagery, show continued forest loss this year.

Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
- Xingu Indigenous Park and Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory in Brazil cover an area larger than Belgium.
- The Indigenous territories are still largely covered in primary forest, and a haven for wildlife in a region considered an agricultural powerhouse.
- Satellite data show Xingu Indigenous Park lost 15% of its primary forest cover, and Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory lost 8.3% of its forest cover, between 2002 and 2023.
- Indigenous groups fear proposed transportation projects will bring a fresh wave of deforestation and open up their territories to invaders.

Monitoring group cracks down on deforestation in Cameroon gorilla sanctuary
- Mengame Gorilla Sanctuary was created to protect some 26,780 hectares in southern Cameroon, and is the only large functional protected area in the region.
- In addition to critically endangered western lowland gorillas, Mengame is a refuge for an abundance of wildlife, including forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) — also critically endangered — and endangered chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).
- Logging concessions and villages surround Mengame, and satellite data show forest loss encroaching on the sanctuary and trickling into it.
- Cameroonian civil society organization Action for Sustainable Development investigated encroachment into the reserve after noticing deforestation alerts via satellite data.

Kenya blames and evicts Ogiek people for deforestation, but forest loss persists
- Long-running evictions of Indigenous Ogiek communities from Kenya’s Mau Forest, whom the government blames for deforestation, haven’t led to any letup in rates of forest loss, satellite data show.
- A human rights court ruling in 2017 recognized the Ogiek as ancestral owners of the Mau Forest and ordered the Kenyan government to compensate them, but it’s done little since then.
- Preliminary satellite data and imagery for 2024 indicate the Mau Forest will suffer extensive losses this year, even after the government evicted more than 700 Ogiek in November 2023.
- The country’s chief conservator of forests has cast doubt on the findings of increased deforestation, while a top official responsible for minorities and marginalized peoples says forest communities can be destructive.

Western Kenya’s most important water-capturing forest is disappearing, satellites show
- Mau Forest is one of the largest forests in East Africa, and the most important water catchment in western Kenya, providing water for millions of people.
- Mau is also home to a plethora of wildlife, including endangered species such as African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana), African golden cats (Caracal aurata) and bongo antelopes (Tragelaphus eurycerus).
- But Mau lost some 25% of its tree cover between 1984 and 2020, and satellites show continuing loss.
- The primary drivers of deforestation are agricultural expansion, including slash-and-burn farming for cattle grazing and crop cultivation.

Reserve in Brazilian Amazon struggles as ‘aggressive’ deforestation spreads
- Triunfo Do Xingu Environmental Protected Area was created to protect rich Amazonian forest and shield adjacent reserves.
- But deforestation has been rampant within the reserve and is spreading to nearby areas
- From 2006 to 2023, the reserve lost 41% of its primary forest cover.
- Preliminary satellite data for 2024 from show deforestation picking up even further, and spreading into nearby areas including Terra do Meio Ecological Station and Serra do Pardo National Park

Deforestation around Mennonite colonies continues in Peruvian Amazon: Report

Satellite data and imagery confirm ongoing deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon around colonies of Mennonites, a group of highly conservative Christian communities. Mennonites, whose early history can be traced to Europe in the 16th century, are known for their large-scale industrialized agriculture. By the late 19th century, they migrated to Canada, from where they have […]
A Nigerian reserve, once a stronghold for chimps, is steadily losing its forest to farming
- Oluwa Forest Reserve once protected an island of old growth forest in southwestern Nigerian.
- But satellite data show only about half of its intact forest remained at the turn of the century — and it’s only dwindled further since then.
- Poverty-driven smallholder farms and profit-driven industrial plantations are the main causes of deforestation in the reserve.
- Researchers worry that habitat loss in Oluwa is driving endangered species — such as the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee — to local extinction.

Communities band together to save besieged reserve in Bolivia
- Bolivia’s Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve has been beset by clearing and fires over the past several years.
- Now, mining, infrastructure development and land trafficking are adding to the pressure faced by the reserve.
- Residents of nearby communities have formed an association called Movement in Defense of the Tucabaca Valley.
- In June, a delegation from the Movement visited the Tucabaca reserve to assess the damage.

Satellite data detect appearance of new roads in primary forests in Borneo

Recent satellite data and imagery have detected the construction of what appear to be new roads cutting across primary forest in the Barito River watershed and near a protected area in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. Areas in the Barito watershed, which covers numerous districts in Central and South Kalimantan provinces, […]
Conservationists mobilize to save Sierra Leone national park and its chimpanzees
- Sierra Leone’s Loma Mountains National Park (LMNP) encompasses the highest mountain peak in West Africa, along with valuable habitat for many threatened animals — including critically endangered western chimpanzees.
- However, satellite data show the park lost 6% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2023.
- Clearing in the park is being driven by farmers and ranchers who say there is not enough agricultural land in their communities and no other livelihood options; illegal marijuana cultivation is also an issue in the park.
- Conservationists, park officials, international agencies and local residents are working together to protect the park through efforts such as planting trees, training rangers, implementing educational programs in schools and promoting alternative livelihoods for surrounding communities.

Raw materials become high-value bioeconomy goods at an Amazon science park
- Ahead of hosting 2025’s COP30 climate summit, Belém is betting on the development of products such as honey-based spirits, digital glasses from local wood and jambu-infused medicine at a local tech park.
- The Guamá Science and Technology Park (PCT), operating since 2010 and the first of its kind in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, uses technology to transform forest-based resources into high-value products.
- It’s a step toward building a sustainable and thriving billion-dollar bioeconomy that provides local populations with alternatives to deforestation and increases the appeal of sustainably harvesting the region’s resources.
- Future plans include expanding the park for further innovation and to build more science and technology parks in the Amazon as well as fostering networks with other Pan Amazonian countries with similar hubs such as Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

In Brazil’s Amazon, land invasions — and fires — threaten a protected reserve
- In Brazil’s state of Maranhão, one of the last slices of remaining rainforest is under threat from invasions and fires, which has complicated efforts to protect this area of rich biodiversity from the advance of agriculture and cattle ranching.
- Over the last 12 months, satellites detected 122,083 high-confidence deforestation alerts within the Gurupi Biological Reserve, home to species such as the Kaapori capuchin (Cebus kaapori), one of the world’s most critically endangered primates.
- Authorities have struggled to gain control over the region, which has been marked by a complex history of illegal logging and land settlement. More than 6,000 people still live within the conservation area.
- As deforestation advances, the climate is changing and leaving this region of the Amazon Rainforest drier and more prone to wildfires, which pose a risk to neighboring Indigenous territories like the Carú reserve.

Bangladesh wildlife sanctuary continues to lose primary forest

Primary forests inside Pablakhali Wildlife Sanctuary, one of Bangladesh’s largest protected areas, continue to get cleared, recent satellite data show. The tropical evergreen and semi-evergreen forests of Pablakhali have historically been home to rare and threatened species such as Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa), sloth bears (Melursus ursinus), western hoolock gibbons (Hylobates […]
Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is?
- Burning wood to generate electricity — “biomass energy” — is increasingly being pursued as a renewable replacement for burning coal in nations like the U.K., Japan, and South Korea — even though its emissions aren’t carbon neutral in practice.
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, reporter Justin Catanoso speaks with Rachel Donald about the single largest emitter of CO2 in the U.K., biomass firm Drax, which is trying to open two wood pellet plants in the state of California.
- Catanoso explains how years of investigation helped him uncover a complicated web of public relations messaging that obscures the fact that replanting trees after cutting them down and burning them is not in practice carbon neutral or renewable and severely harms global biodiversity and forests.
- “When those trees get ripped out, that carbon gets released. And that comes before we process this wood and ship it … then we burn it and don't count those emissions. This is just [an] imponderable policy,” he says on this episode.

Narco activity takes heavy toll on Colombia’s protected forests, satellite data show
- Deforestation inside protected areas in central Colombia appears to be picking up pace this year, suggesting the steep drop-off from 2022-2023 was just a blip, according to satellite data.
- The most affected areas include Llanos del Yarí Yaguara II Indigenous Reserve, two national natural parks — Sierra de la Macarena and Tinigua — and the surrounding La Macarena Special Management Area.
- Threats to the region and its protected areas include agricultural expansion, along with the cultivation of illegal crops such as coca and marijuana, and illegal gold mining.
- The region’s protected areas are increasingly falling under the control of armed groups emboldened and funded by the drug industry, according to monitoring agencies and local residents interviewed by Mongabay.

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.

Forest and climate scientists fear Biden delay on mature forest protection
- More than 200 forest ecologists and top climate scientists, including Jim Hansen and Michael Mann, have written the Biden administration urging it to quickly move forward on the president’s commitment to protect old-growth and mature forests on federal lands.
- The scientists made an urgent plea for an immediate moratorium on logging federal forests with trees 100 years old or older, many of which remain vulnerable to logging and dozens of timber sales nationally. They also asked for the establishment of substantive federal management standards to protect those forests.
- Federally owned old-growth and mature forests play an outsized role in storing carbon, offering a vital hedge against escalating climate change.
- At stake are 112.8 million acres (45.6 million hectares) of old-growth and mature forest on federal lands, according to a 2023 U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management inventory — an area larger than California. Less than a quarter of those forests are currently protected against logging.

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.

Sanctioned timber baron wins new mining concessions in Cambodia’s Prey Lang
- A freeze announced late last year on new mining operations in Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary comes with a massive loophole that benefits one of the country’s highest-profile deforesters.
- Try Pheap, a powerful tycoon and adviser to the previous prime minister, controls a company that was last year granted 28,000 hectares (69,000 acres) inside the sanctuary to mine iron ore.
- The name Try Pheap is synonymous with illegal logging in Cambodia, including the trafficking of high-value Siamese rosewood trees that drove the species almost to extinction in the country.
- While Try Pheap was hit by U.S. sanctions in 2019, his company that holds the mining concessions in Prey Lang, Global Green, isn’t on the sanctions list and appears to be ramping up its operations.

Poverty and plantations: Nigerian reserve struggles against the odds
- Located in southern Nigeria, Oluwa Forest Reserve is supposed to be a bastion for the region’s wildlife – which includes critically endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- But the influx of thousands of settlers into the reserve is coming at the cost of its rainforests, with satellite data and imagery showing ongoing clearing into primary forest.
- Palm oil companies are also establishing industrial plantations in the reserve.
- Conservationists and officials warn that vulnerable wildlife populations may be wiped out if forest loss and bushmeat hunting continues at its current rate.

Smallholders and loggers push deeper into Sumatra’s largest park
- Kerinci Seblat National Park on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has lost more than 4% of its primary forest cover over the past 20 years, satellite data from Global Forest Watch show.
- Much of the deforestation is driven by nearby communities logging and farming, in particular potatoes, and possibly also illegal gold mining.
- The park hosts a diversity of wildlife like nowhere else — tigers, elephants, helmeted hornbills and barking deer, among others — but these are now threatened by loss of habitat and poaching.
- Kerinci Seblat was at one point a stronghold of the Sumatran rhino, but this critically endangered species has since gone extinct from the park.

‘We just want to be left in peace’: In Brazil’s Amazon, soy ambitions loom over Indigenous land
- Deforestation is surging around Indigenous reserves in Brazil’s agricultural heartland, threatening one of the last stretches of preserved rainforest in the region.
- The destruction is trickling into protected areas too, including Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory, home to Brazil’s most famous Indigenous leader.
- Indigenous advocates blame land speculation on the back of plans to pave a stretch of the MT-322 highway, which runs across the Capoto/Jarina and Xingu Indigenous Park.
- Indigenous people worry the road will ease access into their territories, opening them up to land-grabbers, wildcat miners and organized crime groups.

Forest conservation ‘off-track’ to halt deforestation by 2030: New report
- The world lost 6.6 million hectares (16.3 million acres) of forest, an area larger than Sri Lanka, and deforestation rates increased by 4% in 2022, according to a report published Oct. 24 that tracks commitments to forest conservation.
- The Forest Declaration Assessment is an annual evaluation of deforestation rates against a 2018-2020 deforestation and forest degradation baseline compiled by civil society and research organizations.
- Much of the forest loss occurred in the tropics, and nearly two-thirds of it was in relatively undisturbed primary forests, while forest degradation, more than deforestation, remains a serious problem in temperate and boreal forests.
- Despite being far off the pace to achieve an end to deforestation by 2030, a goal that 145 countries pledged to pursue in 2021, more than 50 countries have cut their deforestation rates and are on track to end deforestation within their borders by the end of the century.

Protected areas a boon for vertebrate diversity in wider landscape, study shows
- A new study reveals that protected areas in Southeast Asia not only boost bird and mammal diversity within their confines, but they also elevate numbers of species in nearby unprotected habitats.
- The researchers say their findings back up the U.N.’s 30×30 target to protect 30% of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030.
- The findings indicate that larger reserves result in more spillover of biodiversity benefits into surrounding landscapes. The authors call on governments to invest in expanding larger reserves over the proliferation of smaller ones.
- Conservationists say that while expanding protected area coverage is part of the solution, serious investment in management and resourcing for existing protected areas is a matter of urgency to ensure they are not simply “paper parks.”

Elephants invade as habitat loss soars in Nigerian forest reserve
- Elephants straying out of Afi River Forest Reserve in the Nigerian state of Cross River are reportedly damaging surrounding farms.
- This uptick in human-wildlife conflict comes as satellite data show continuing and increasing deforestation in the Afi River reserve and other protected areas.
- The habitat in Afi River Forest Reserve provides a crucial corridor that connects critically endangered Cross River gorilla populations in adjacent protected areas.
- As in other Nigerian forest reserves, agriculture, poverty and a lack of monitoring and enforcement resources are driving deforestation in the Afi River reserve.

Cameroon government again opens way for logging in Ebo Forest
- Cameroon’s government is again planning to open a portion of Ebo Forest to logging, despite its status as a refuge for numerous endangered species including gorillas and chimpanzees.
- A local leader of the Indigenous Banen community, who have a claim to the territory they were expelled from in the 1950s and 60s, says most Munen are opposed to the move.
- The same portion of Ebo was briefly opened for logging in 2020, but the government reversed course. Local politicians have remained intent on reclassifying parts of the forest.
- Activists say the latest reclassification failed to meet legal requirements, particularly regarding consultation of local communities.

In Brazil’s Amazon, a ‘new agricultural frontier’ threatens protected lands
- Deforestation in the southern region of Amazonas state, long one of the best-preserved slices of the Brazilian Amazon, is spreading rapidly as illegal gold miners, farmers, ranchers and land grabbers advance in the region.
- The four municipalities leading destruction in this region – Apuí, Novo Aripuanã, Manicoré and Humaitá – together accounted for nearly 60% of deforestation alerts detected in Amazonas in the first six months of the year.
- Environmental advocates and Indigenous leaders say the destruction is threatening the way of life of communities that depend on the forest for survival and splintering an important ecological mosaic brimming with plant and animal species

Poverty-fueled deforestation of Nigerian reserve slashes hope for rare chimps
- Less than 20 year ago, Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve was regarded as a potential conservation site for endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- But between 2001 and 2022, the reserve lost nearly half of its old growth forest cover, a trend that shows no sign of stopping.
- Akure-Ofosu’s forest is being lost due to the proliferation small-scale farms within the reserve.
- Facing an unemployment rate surpassing 50% and a soaring level of poverty, many Nigerians have few options other than to settle in the country’s protected areas and hew farms from forest.

Nearly 85% of Indonesian peatlands aren’t protected, study shows
- This article has been withdrawn from publication by Mongabay.

Report: Forest-razing biomass plant in Indonesia got millions in green funds
- An Indonesian oil and gas company is using government money to clear rainforest for a biomass power plant, according to a new report.
- The project has received a total of $9.4 million from two Ministry of Finance agencies, including one tasked with managing environmental protection funds from international donors.
- Criticism of Medco’s activities reflects a broader debate over whether clear-cutting rainforest can ever be considered sustainable, even when done in the name of transitioning a major coal-producing country away from fossil fuels.

The U.S. has cataloged its forests. Now comes the hard part: Protecting them
- In April 2022, President Biden instructed the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to do a thorough inventory of forested public lands as a part of his climate mitigation strategies to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.
- The new study, released April 20, identifies a total of 112.8 million acres of mature and old-growth forests on federal lands across all 50 states, an area larger than the state of California.
- Forest advocates largely heralded the new inventory, so long as it serves as a road map for putting those millions of acres off-limits to logging so the forests and their biodiversity can remain intact to fight climate change.
- The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have long supported logging for timber and other wood products on the majority of lands they oversee. During a 60-day public comment period, forest advocates will argue that all forests in the inventory be fully protected from logging.

In central Brazil, mining company ignores Quilombola concerns over gold project
- Canadian mining company Aura Minerals plans to establish a major gold extraction project in Brazil’s Tocantins state without hearing the Quilombola (slave descendant) community that will be affected by the operations, thus violating their right to free, prior and informed consultation.
- So far, the company has not been transparent toward the community and has not described the potential impacts.
- Meanwhile, Aura Minerals has seen its value rise nearly 700% on the Toronto Stock Exchange between 2019 and 2022 — the best performance among 3,500 listed companies.
- The Quilombola estimate that, in the event of an accident with the company’s dam, the Baião community would be instantly engulfed and would disappear completely, with no chance to react.

Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation
- A Mongabay investigation indicates that a three-star military general who also serves as a top interior ministry official appears to be the notorious illegal logger known as Oknha Chey.
- Family and business ties link Meuk Saphannareth to logging operations in northern Cambodia that satellite imagery shows are clearing forest well outside their concession boundaries.
- Officials at the provincial level could not give a clear answer as to why the concession had seemingly been awarded to Oknha Chey, while the interior ministry ignored Mongabay’s questions about the allegations against Saphannareth.
- Some names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

Deforestation threatens local populations in Republic of Congo’s Sangha
- Between May 2021 and November 2022, more than 200,000 deforestation alerts were recorded around Ouesso, in the northwestern Republic of the Congo.
- Logging has drastically impacted the country’s forest cover.
- In 2016, the Congolese authorities awarded 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of logging concessions to businesses, the majority of which had broken environmental and social standards.
- More recently, mining by Chinese companies (the land in north-west Congo is rich in iron and gold) has accelerated the destruction of ecosystems.

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.

In Brazil’s Amazon, land grabbers scramble to claim disputed Indigenous reserve
- The Apyterewa Indigenous Territory has been under federal protection since 2007, but in recent years has become one of the most deforested reserves in Brazil, as loggers, ranchers and miners have invaded and razed swaths of forest.
- As President Jair Bolsonaro prepares to leave office, land grabbers are rushing to “deforest while there is still time,” advocates say, with forest clearing in Apyterewa on track to hit new highs this year.
- The surge in invasions has aggravated a decades-long tussle for land between Indigenous people and settlers, who first started trickling into Apyterewa in the 1980s and have since built villages, schools and churches within the reserve.
- The Parakanã people say the outsiders, new and old, are polluting their water sources, depleting forest resources, and threatening their traditional way of life.

Gold mining invades remote protected area in Ecuador
- Due to its isolation in far-northern Ecuador, Cofán Bermejo Ecological Reserve, much of which also functions as an Indigenous territory, has been comparatively spared from the oil-driven deforestation that has affected other nearby protected areas.
- However, satellite data and imagery show clearings proliferating along rivers that form the northern and southern borders of the reserve.
- Conservation organizations, scientists and residents of local communities say illegal gold mining is behind this wave of incursions.
- Legal mining may also be on the horizon in Cofán Bermejo, with several mining concessions within the reserve pending approval by authorities.

Element Africa: Mines take their toll on nature and communities
- Civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo are demanding the revocation of the license for a Chinese-owned gold miner operating inside a wildlife reserve that’s also home to nomadic Indigenous groups.
- Up to 90% of mines in South Africa aren’t publishing their social commitments to the communities in which they operate, in violation of the law, activists say.
- A major Nigerian conglomerate that was granted a major concession for industrial developments in 2012 has still not compensated displaced residents, it was revealed after the company announced it’s abandoning the project.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Beef is still coming from protected areas in the Amazon, study shows
- According to a new study, 1.1 million cattle were bought directly from protected areas and another 2.2 million spent at least a portion of their lives grazing in protected areas and Indigenous territories.
- Researchers compiled public records on cattle transit, property boundaries and protected area boundaries between 2013 and 2018. The study period ended in 2018 because, “at the start of 2019, this critical information became less available,” the lead author said.
- Under Brazil’s current President Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected at the start of 2019, the country has seen policies weakening various environmental protections and monitoring agencies, and deforestation has reached its highest levels in 15 years.
- Around 70% of deforestation in the Amazon has been linked to cattle ranching. Meat producers have made commitments to stop sourcing from illegally deforested lands, but a lack of information about where cattle are grazing has allowed many companies to escape accountability.

New oil refinery ‘a huge disaster’ for Nigerian forest reserve
- Stubbs Creek Forest Reserve comprises nearly 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) in southern Nigeria, and is home to threatened wildlife and economically valuable tree species.
- Despite its official protected status as a forest reserve, much of Stubbs Creek Forest Reserve’s tree cover has been lost due to human activities like logging and farming.
- Area residents say the construction of this new refinery has exacerbated deforestation in Stubbs Creek Forest Reserve, and a government official calls the development of the reserve “a huge disaster for the forest.”
- Residents are also concerned that the refinery will exacerbate conflicts between Local Government Areas.

New tech aims to track carbon in every tree, boost carbon market integrity
- Climate scientists and data engineers have developed a new digital platform billed as the first-ever global tool for accurately calculating the carbon stored in every tree on the planet.
- Founded on two decades of research and development, the new platform from nonprofit CTrees leverages artificial intelligence-enabled satellite datasets to give users a near-real-time picture of forest carbon storage and emissions around the world.
- With forest protection and restoration at the center of international climate mitigation efforts, CTrees is set to officially launch at COP27 in November, with the overall aim of bringing an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability to climate policy initiatives that rely on forests to offset carbon emissions.
- Forest experts broadly welcome the new platform, but also underscore the risk of assessing forest restoration and conservation projects solely by the amount of carbon sequestered, which can sometimes be a red herring in achieving truly sustainable and equitable forest management.

British Columbia delays promised protections as old growth keeps falling
- Two years after British Columbia’s majority party promised a logging “paradigm shift” to conserve what’s left of the province’s tall old growth forests, Mongabay observed dramatic clear cutting on Vancouver Island in forests slated for protection. Old growth harvesting continues across British Columbia (BC) today.
- The BC minister of land management told Mongabay that the government, in partnership with First Nations, has deferred logging on 1.7 million hectares of old growth forests. But critics contest those numbers and note that much of these deferrals are for scubby alpine forests that aren’t in danger of being logged.
- First Nation leaders have been tasked by the government to determine which old growth forests to protect. This presents Indigenous communities with an economic conundrum, as many tribes will lose much-needed logging revenue if they choose conservation.
- Today, BC has many second-growth tree plantations that give the appearance of vast wooded expanses. But as Mongabay observed in July, these tree farms are “ecological deserts” that store less carbon than tall tree old growth and harbor little biodiversity as BC experiences intensifying climate impacts partly due to decades of overlogging.

In Congo, a carbon sink like no other risks being carved up for oil
- New research has revealed that the peatlands of the Congo Basin are 15% larger than originally thought.
- This area of swampy forest holds an estimated 29 billion metric tons of carbon, which is the amount emitted globally through the burning of fossil fuels in three years.
- Beginning July 28, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where two-thirds of these peatlands lie, will auction off the rights to explore for oil in 27 blocks across the country.
- Scientists and conservationists have criticized the move, which the government says is necessary to fund its operations. Opponents say the blocks overlap with parts of the peatlands, mature rainforest, protected areas, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Authorities and Yobin communities clash as deforestation spikes in Indian national park
- Namdapha National Park is India’s third-largest national park and is home to thousands of species, including tigers, clouded leopards and an endemic species of flying squirrel that has only been observed once by scientists.
- Satellite data show deforestation has increased in the park over the last two decades.
- Members of an Indigenous group called the Yobin have been living in portions of the park for generations, but park authorities consider Yobin settlements to be “encroachments” and the main driver of deforestation and poaching in Namdapha National Park
- In the last few months, authorities have destroyed at least eight Yobin settlements inside the park.

Opaque infrastructure project ‘a death sentence’ for Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary
- In November 2021, the Cambodian government approved the development of 299 kilometers (186 miles) of 500-kilovolt power lines through Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary by Schneitec Northern to link Phnom Penh’s electrical grid to two coal-fired power plants in Laos, following a power purchase agreement signed in October 2019. The power lines are planned to transect the largest tract of lowland evergreen forest remaining in Southeast Asia, and critics say the project puts at risk at risk one of the country’s largest carbon stocks as well as poses a threat to Prey Lang’s Indigenous residents and two watersheds vital to Tonle Sap Lake, which sustains millions of Cambodians.
- Leaked documents from April 2021 show that the consulting firm that conducted the environmental impact assessment had suggested three possible routes for Schneitec’s power lines, with two alternative routes that skirted the already-deforested eastern and western edges of the protected area respectively. Industry experts have suggested that building power lines through forested terrain can cost between 1.5 and three times as much as through scrubland or flat terrain.
- The power line plans come as satellite data reveal 2021 was the worst year on record for deforestation in Prey Lang and international institutions condemn widespread illegal logging in the protected area.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow

Fossil evidence confirms persistence of prehistoric forests in Brunei
- A recent study published in the journal PeerJ reports the excavation of fossilized leaves from ancient forests at least 4 million years old in Brunei on the island of Borneo.
- More than 80% of the leaves the team found were from the Dipterocarpaceae family, trees that remain dominant today, confirming their long-standing role in anchoring Borneo’s species-rich ecosystems.
- The discovery adds to the urgency to protect these forests from logging or development for agriculture because once they’re gone, they will be difficult to get back, the authors say.

Large-scale logging in Cambodia’s Prey Lang linked to politically-connected mining operation
- Illegal logging appears to be taking place openly inside a swath of protected forest that authorities in Cambodia have only authorized for a feasibility study for limestone mining. Locals and conservationists say the wood leaves the concession awarded to KP Cement in the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary and is laundered through sawmills owned by Think Biotech.
- It’s not clear why the Cambodian authorities would award a concession in the middle of one of the last remaining swaths of primary forest left in the country, or why they would give it to a company linked to a tycoon with a long history of environmentally destructive activities.
- New data from Global Forest Watch show that 2021 was the worst year on record for deforestation in Prey Lang, with more than 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of primary forest lost in what appears to be a trend of increasing destruction.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow

2021 tropical forest loss figures put zero-deforestation goal by 2030 out of reach
- The world lost a Cuba-sized area of tropical forest in 2021, putting it far off track from meeting the no-deforestation goal by 2030 that governments and companies committed to at last year’s COP26 climate summit.
- Deforestation rates remained persistently high in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the world’s two biggest expanses of tropical forest, negating the decline in deforestation seen in places like Indonesia and Gabon.
- The diverging trends in the different countries show that “it’s the domestic politics of forests that often really make a key difference,” says leading forest governance expert Frances Seymour.
- The boreal forests of Eurasia and North America also experienced a spike in deforestation last year, driven mainly by massive fires in Russia, which could set off a feedback loop of more heating and more burning.

President Biden signs order aimed at protecting old-growth forests across U.S.
- U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order today aimed at protecting old-growth forests on federal lands across the United States.
- Federal agencies are directed to define, inventory and better protect the nation’s oldest trees by leaning into reforestation commitments and employing nature-based solutions to reduce emissions.
- The order is part of the Biden administration’s pledge to end natural forest loss by 2030, while restoring at least an additional 200 million hectares [494 million acres] of forests and other ecosystems.
- The order does not ban the logging of old-growth trees which scientists say is necessary to address deforestation and emissions from the logging industry which emits comparable levels of CO2 to the emissions from coal-burning.

Deforestation on the rise as poverty soars in Nigeria
- Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve was established to help protect what is now one of largest remaining tracts of rainforest in Nigeria, and is home to many species.
- But fire and logging is rampant in the reserve, with satellite data showing it lost 44% of its primary forest cover in just two decades; preliminary data indicate deforestation may be increasing further in 2022.
- Sources say poverty is the driving force behind the deforestation of Akure-Ofosu and other protected areas in Nigeria.
- According to the World Bank, 4 in 10 Nigerians – about 80 million people – were living below in poverty in 2019, with the COVID-19 pandemic pushing another 5 million people below the poverty line by 2022.

Researchers turn to drones for that big-picture view of the forest canopy
- Scientists need to collect data fast to understand how forests are changing due to climate change and deforestation.
- In a recent study, scientists flew drones over the forest canopy to learn more about tree mortality. The drones revealed new patterns because of the large areas they can cover. According to one researcher, a single drone can cover an area in a few days that would take a team a year on foot.
- Drones are also helping local and Indigenous communities monitor forest fires and deforestation as well as harvest resources more sustainably.
- Yet experts say that the useful tool should complement, and not replace, fieldwork done on the ground.

Can ecotourism save Cambodia’s ‘ghost parks’?
- Cambodia’s 2021 signing into law of Sub-decree No. 30, which removed official protection from some 127,000 hectares of land formerly included in national parks, reserves and wildlife sanctuaries in Koh Kong province, has conservationists concerned about the ecological integrity of southern Cambodia.
- But experts caution that other protected areas in the country are hardly faring better, claiming that “a lack of commitment and vision, systemic corruption at varies levels and competing interests by state and private actors” is contributing to the rapid degradation of Cambodia’s remaining protected forest.
- There is some agreement between conservationists and government officials that the country does not have the resources to effectively manage its protected areas.
- As a solution, some point to Africa, where public-private ecotourism partnerships have been successful at preserving habitat. But others disagree.

Endangered wildlife face perilous future as vital habitat loses protection in Cambodia
- In March 2021, this imbalance has widened into a chasm as Cambodia’s government signed Sub-decree No. 30 into law, effectively revoking protection from some 127,000 hectares of land in reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the southern province of Koh Kong province.
- One of the protected areas affected is Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary, which lost almost a third of its total land area to the sub-decree — meaning these habitats are now for sale.
- Peam Krasop is home to species threatened with extinction, such as the hairy-nosed otter — the world’s rarest otter species — and the fishing cat.
- Researchers say the degradation of these habitats could result in “trophic cascades“ in which the loss of key species destabilizes entire ecosystems , which in turn may lead to further loss.

How a ‘dirty gambling company’ may have set the standard for habitat destruction in Cambodia
- Union Development Group (UDG) is a Chinese company that was granted a 36,000-hectare concession in Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park in 2008, followed by an additional 9,100-hectare concession granted in 2011. Much of Botum Sakor National Park’s forests have been cleared by UDG and other companies.
- On Sep. 15, 2020, the United States Treasury Department, sanctioned UDG for “serious human rights abuses and corruption,” noting that UDG had enlisted the support of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces to evict and harass residents, and also managed to skirt the 10,000-hectare limit on land concessions by “falsely registering as a Cambodian-owned entity.”
- In 2021, the Cambodian government signed into law Sub-decree No. 30, which transformed some 127,000 hectares of protected land in Koh Kong province into state-private land.
- Conservationists, researchers and local residents interviewed by Mongabay worry that the sub-decree will mean that many other parts of Koh Kong province will follow in the destruction of Botum Sakor.

Even degraded forests are more ecologically valuable than none, study shows
- From providing clean air and water to temperature regulation, degraded tropical forests provide ecosystem services valued by Indigenous communities in Malaysia, according to new research.
- Researchers found the ecosystem services most highly prioritized by communities also tended to be ecologically valuable ones, highlighting common interests between Indigenous groups and conservation that can be tapped through community-based projects.
- The study comes amid a government-led push to convert hundreds of thousands of hectares of degraded forests in Sabah into timber plantations.
- Forests, even logged ones, provide unique services tied to Indigenous culture, such as hunting activities, that cannot be replaced by timber plantations, researchers said.

The 411 on forests and reforestation for 2022
- On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast we look at the major forest and conservation trends coming out of 2021 and take a look ahead to 2022.
- We speak with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler, who discusses the year in rainforests that was 2021, the storylines to watch in 2022, and Mongabay's expanding coverage of environmental science news around the world.
- We also speak with Swati Hingorani, a senior program officer at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Global Coordinator for the Bonn Challenge Secretariat. Hingorani tells us about the Bonn Challenge’s newly revamped and relaunched Restoration Barometer and how it tracks ecosystem restoration progress being made by countries around the world.

Despite sanctions, U.S. companies still importing Myanmar teak, report says
- U.S. timber companies undercut sanctions to import nearly 1,600 metric tons of teak from Myanmar last year, according to a new report.
- Advocacy group Justice for Myanmar said in its report that firms have been buying timber from private companies acting as brokers in Myanmar, instead of directly from the state-owned Myanma Timber Enterprise, which is subject to U.S. sanctions.
- With MTE under military control, Myanmar’s timber auctions have become more opaque, making it difficult to take action against companies circumventing sanctions.

In Madagascar, beekeepers persist in the face of fires and forest loss
- The Anjozorobe Angavo forest corridor is one of the few remaining primary forests in the Central Highlands of Madagascar.
- Home to a number of rare and endemic species, this primary forest is undergoing a rapid decline, driven primarily by fires.
- In hopes of alleviating the problem, an NGO and a honey company are collaborating to train farmers in apiculture, with the aim of providing them with a stable income and an alternative livelihood that does not involve destroying the forest.
- However, this beekeeping project is threatened by the rapid decline of trees that are vital for the survival of bees.

Endangered chimps ‘on the brink’ as Nigerian reserve is razed for agriculture, timber
- As rainforest throughout much of the country has disappeared, Nigeria’s Oluwa Forest Reserve has been a sanctuary for many species, including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees – the rarest chimpanzee subspecies.
- But Oluwa itself has come under increasing deforestation pressure in recent years, losing 14% of its remaining primary forest between 2002 and 2020.
- Oluwa’s deforestation rate appears to be increasing, with several large areas of forest loss occurring in 2021– including in one of the last portions of the reserve known to harbor chimps.
- Agriculture and timber extraction are the main drivers of deforestation in Oluwa; smallholders looking to eke out an existence continue to move into the reserve and illegally clear forest and hunt animals for bushmeat, while plantation companies are staking claims to government-granted concessions.

Agricultural frontier advances in Nicaraguan biosphere reserve
- The Río San Juan Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua encompasses some 1.8 million hectares, as well as smaller protected areas such as Indio Maíz Biological Reserve, Los Guatuzos Wildlife Refuge, the Fortress of the Immaculate Conception, Bartola Nature Reserve, and the Solentiname Islands.
- The Río San Juan Biosphere Reserve lost around 600,000 hectares of forest between 2011 and 2018.
- Satellite data show forest loss has intensified in the northern and central parts of the reserve since 2018, and only fragmented portions of primary forest remain.
- Sources said that the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and the National Forestry Institute are responsible for ensuring the effective conservation of the country’s protected areas, but that they are not currently fulfilling their monitoring duties.

How can illegal timber trade in the Greater Mekong be stopped?
- Over the past decade, the European Union has been entering into voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime.
- These bilateral trade agreements legally bind both sides to trade only in verified legal timber products.
- There is evidence VPAs help countries decrease illegal logging rates, especially illegal industrial timber destined for export markets.
- Within the Greater Mekong region, only Vietnam has signed a VPA.

How does political instability in the Mekong affect deforestation?
- Myanmar’s return to military dictatorship earlier this year has sparked worries among Indigenous communities of possible land grabs.
- It has also ignited concerns about a return to large-scale natural resource extraction, which has historically been an important source of funding for the junta.
- In the months since the coup, many of the country’s environmental and land rights activists have either been arrested or gone into hiding.
- The military has bombed forests and burned down Indigenous villages in Karen state, forcing minorities to flee to neighboring Thailand.

Congo Peatlands

In 2017 a team of Congolese and British scientists discover that a sprawling wetland known as the Cuvette Centrale spanning the border between the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) actually contains a massive amount of peat. Their research revealed that these peatlands are the largest and most intact across the world’s […]
The past, present and future of the Congo peatlands: 10 takeaways from our series

This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay published a four-part series on the peatlands of the Congo Basin. Only in 2017 did a team of Congolese and British scientists discover that a […]
Indonesian peat restoration has more benefits than it costs, study finds
- The benefits of effective Indonesian peatland restoration — blocking drainage canals to restore water levels and reestablishing vegetation cover — will outweigh the cost of restoration, according to a new study.
- Following the severe fire season of 2015 that destroyed vast swaths of peatland, the administration of President Joko Widodo has targeted restoring 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) of degraded peatland across the archipelago.
- The authors of the new study used satellite data and models to estimate that, if completed, peatland restoration would have contributed significant reductions for 2004-2015 in fire losses and damages, CO2 emissions, PM2.5 particle emissions, health-related losses, and land-cover losses.
- Indonesia has 21 million hectares of peatland that stores an estimated 57 million metric tons of carbon, roughly 55% of the world’s tropical peatland carbon.

Carbon and communities: The future of the Congo Basin peatlands
- Scientific mapping in 2017 revealed that the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale in the Congo Basin are the largest and most intact in the world’s tropics.
- That initial work, first published in the journal Nature, was just the first step, scientists say, as work continues to understand how the peatlands formed, what threats they face from the climate and industrial uses like agriculture and logging, and how the communities of the region appear to be coexisting sustainably.
- Researchers say investing in studying and protecting the peatlands will benefit the global community as well as people living in the region because the Cuvette Centrale holds a vast repository of carbon.
- Congolese researchers and leaders say they are eager to safeguard the peatlands for the benefit of everyone, but they also say they need support from abroad to do so.

Conservation and food production must work in tandem, new study says
- Confining conservation efforts to only 30% of Earth’s land may render a fifth of mammals and a third of birds at high risk of extinction, according to a new study.
- If that 30% were to be strictly protected without accounting for food production activities, it could also result in substantial local or regional food production shortfalls, the researchers said.
- Instead, they propose an integrated land-use planning strategy where conservation and food production goals are considered in tandem, including through mixed approaches like agroforestry.
- Such a model would not only generate less food production shortfalls, but also leave just 2.7% of mammal and 1.2% of bird species at risk of extinction.

Holding agriculture and logging at bay in the Congo peatlands
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin are perhaps the most intact in the tropics, but threats from logging, agriculture and extractive industries could cause their rapid degradation, scientists say.
- In 2021, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced that it was planning to end a moratorium on the issuance of logging concessions that had been in place for nearly two decades.
- The move raised concerns among conservation groups, who say the moratorium should remain in place to protect the DRC’s portion of the world’s second-largest rainforest.
- Today, timber concession boundaries overlap with the peatlands, and though some companies say they won’t cut trees growing on peat, environmental advocates say that any further issuance of logging concessions in the DRC would be irresponsible.

Layers of carbon: The Congo Basin peatlands and oil
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin may be sitting on top of a pool of oil, though exploration has yet to confirm just how big it may be.
- Conservationists and scientists argue that the carbon contained in this England-size area of peat, the largest in the tropics, makes keeping them intact more valuable, not to mention the habitat and resources they provide for the region’s wildlife and people.
- Researchers calculate that the peatlands contain 30 billion metric tons of carbon, or about the amount humans produce in three years.
- As the governments of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo work to develop their economies, they, along with many policymakers worldwide, argue that the global community has a responsibility to help fund the protection of the peatlands to keep that climate-warming carbon locked away.

The ‘idea’: Uncovering the peatlands of the Congo Basin
- In 2017, a team of scientists from the U.K. and the Republic of Congo announced the discovery of a massive peatland the size of England in the Congo Basin.
- Sometimes called the Cuvette Centrale, this peatland covers 145,529 square kilometers (56,189 square miles) in the northern Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and holds about 20 times as much carbon as the U.S. releases from burning fossil fuels in a year.
- Today, the Congo Basin peatlands are relatively intact while supporting nearby human communities and a variety of wildlife species, but threats in the form of agriculture, oil and gas exploration and logging loom on the horizon.
- That has led scientists, conservationists and governments to look for ways to protect and better understand the peatlands for the benefit of the people and animals they support and the future of the global climate.

Young forests can help heal tropical aquatic ecosystems: Study
- Microbial communities are important indicators of ecological degradation in the tropics, often reflecting levels of disturbance and contamination in rivers and streams.
- In an attempt to monitor the ecological condition of various streams in central Panama, researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) assessed the impact of various land usages, such as cattle pasture and secondary forest, on microbial diversity and community structure.
- In less than a decade, researchers say, reforested land allows bacterial communities to recover, highlighting the importance of reforestation for overall ecosystem recovery.

You can move an elephant to the jungle, but it won’t stay there, study says
- Despite evidence that translocating “problem elephants” into protected forests to avoid conflict with humans can in fact exacerbate problems, it is still commonly practiced.
- A study published earlier this year revealed that elephants in Peninsular Malaysia prefer open, human-dominated landscapes over primary forests, casting further doubt over translocations, since relocated elephants will tend to gravitate back toward these “prime” habitats where conflict recurs.
- The study sparked renewed discussion among researchers on effective, long-term solutions to human-elephant conflict, the leading threat to Asian elephants, that avoid translocations.
- Experts say that people’s willingness to co-exist with elephants will be the most influential factor in the long-term survival of the species.

What countries are leaders in reducing deforestation? Which are not?
- On Tuesday, 127 countries signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, pledging to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation” by 2030. The declaration was endorsed outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and is therefore legally non-binding.
- The 127 signatories account for about 90% of global tree cover and 85% of the world’s primary tropical forests. The Glasgow Declaration thus represents a much larger constituency than the 39 countries which signed the New York Declaration on Forests in 2014. That latter effort failed badly in its ambition to halve deforestation by 2020 — forest loss rose substantially in signatories’ territories.
- Given the extent to which the New York Declaration missed its near-term numeric target on a national level basis, it’s worth breaking down the aggregate data to look at countries on an individual basis to see where forest loss declined and increased.
- Indonesia experienced the biggest decline in primary tropical forest loss, while Brazil saw its primary forest loss more than double from 4.65 million ha to 9.4 million ha. Canada experienced the biggest decline in the extent of tree cover loss, while Brazil also led the world in terms of increase in tree cover loss.

Deforestation soars in Nigeria’s gorilla habitat: ‘We are running out of time’
- Afi River Forest Reserve (ARFR), in eastern Nigeria’s Cross River state, is an important habitat corridor that connects imperiled populations of critically endangered Cross River gorillas.
- But deforestation has been rising both in ARFR and elsewhere in Cross River; satellite data show 2020 was the biggest year for forest loss both in the state and in the reserve since around the turn of the century – and preliminary data for 2021 suggest this year is on track to exceed even 2020.
- Poverty-fueled illegal logging and farming is behind much of the deforestation in ARFR. Resource wars have broken out between communities that have claimed the lives of more than 100, local sources say.
- Authorities say a lack of financial support and threats of violence are limiting their ability to adequately protect what forest remains.

NGOs say FSC label offers little protection for forests, Indigenous people
- The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a widely recognized ethical wood label, came under fire from NGOs this week for systematic flaws that allow deforestation and companies with questionable human rights records to benefit from certification.
- Forest certification allows timber suppliers to attract discerning, high-paying customers, adopt an eco-friendly image, and meet requirements to access lucrative markets, like the EU.
- Earlier this year, Greenpeace International published a report arguing that the FSC had “greenwashed” forest destruction, highlighting a trend of increasing deforestation and degradation despite the expansion of certification.
- In the Congo Basin, which hosts the second-largest tract of rainforest after the Amazon, the area under FSC certification has, in fact, shrunk, and even in certified concessions, experts say, valuable intact forestland is under threat.

Green groups call for scrapping of $300m loan offer for Borneo road project
- The Asian Development Bank is considering a $300 million loan proposal from the Indonesian government to fund a road project in Borneo.
- The 280-kilometer (170-mile) project across North and East Kalimantan provinces are designed to boost economic growth and further the integration of the Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil industries.
- Environmental groups around the world have urged the ADB to impose stricter environmental and social requirements for the project to reduce its expected impacts on the environment and the Indigenous communities living in the region.
- Indigenous peoples like the Dayak rely on the forests staying intact, as do critically endangered species such as Bornean orangutans.

Fate of Malaysian forests stripped of protection points to conservation stakes
- In the seven years since Jemaluang and Tenggaroh were struck from Malaysia’s list of permanent forest reserves, the two forests in Johor state have experienced large-scale deforestation.
- The clearance is reportedly happening on land privately owned by the sultan of Johor, the head of the state, calling into question the effectiveness of the Central Forest Spine (CFS) Master Plan, a nationwide conservation initiative the two reserves had originally been part of.
- The CFS Master Plan is currently being revised, with experts seeing the review as a chance to change what has been a largely toothless program, beset by conflicts of interest between federal and state authorities.
- As the revision nears completion, Jemaluang and Tenggaroh highlight how much has been lost, but also what’s at stake for Malaysia’s forests, wildlife and residents.

To predict forest loss in protected areas, look at nearby unprotected forest
- To predict deforestation risk in a protected area, look at the condition of its surrounding forests, according to a new study.
- The study, which analyzed satellite images of protected forests worldwide, found nearby forest loss to be a consistent early warning signal of future deforestation in protected areas.
- Researchers said national park agencies can use their proposed model to predict how vulnerable protected areas in their countries are to deforestation, and prioritize conservation efforts accordingly.
- But even as these agencies work to protect forests, they should take into account the needs of local communities living in the area, the researchers said.

Fire and forest loss ignite concern for Brazilian Amazon’s jaguars
- More than 1,400 jaguars died or were displaced in the Brazilian Amazon due to deforestation and fires over a recent three-year period, according to a recent study.
- The authors recommend “real-time satellite monitoring” of the Brazilian Amazon jaguar population to enable experts to monitor jaguar displacement due to habitat loss and help them to better target conservation efforts on the ground and to prioritize areas for enforcement action.
- Spatial monitoring will also enable identification of wildlife corridors to keep jaguar populations connected to ensure their long-term survival.

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.

‘Acts of poaching and other crimes’: Cameroon plans a new road in Lobéké National Park
- Cameroon has notified UNESCO of plans to build a road in Lobéké National Park, part of the World Heritage listed Sangha Tri-National protected area.
- The country’s Minister for Forestry and Wildlife says the road will help to secure the area against cross-border poachers and others engaged in criminal activities, but conservationists are concerned it could facilitate deforestation.
- A study of Gabon’s Minkébé National Park linked heavy poaching in the north of the park to easy access via a highway just across its border with Cameroon.

On islands that inspired theory of evolution, deforestation cuts uneven path
- The Wallacea region spans Indonesia’s central islands where the biota of Asia and Australasia meet, making it one of the world’s most valuable centers of endemism, home to scores of species found nowhere else on Earth.
- With development pressure expected to escalate over the coming decades, identifying which of the region’s tracts of forest are most at risk is key to preserving its unique biodiversity.
- A new study that models future deforestation risk across the region has found that coastal, small and unprotected biodiversity sites are most at risk, with North Maluku and Central Sulawesi projected to lose significant tracts of forest by 2053.
- The researchers say their results can be used to target programs, such as social forestry, to sites where they will have optimal impact for biodiversity and communities.

Look beyond carbon credits to put a price on nature’s services, experts say
- Valuing nature as a “new asset class” could be the key to getting trillions of dollars in investments to flow to nature-based solutions, experts said at a recent sustainability conference in Singapore.
- Because policymakers and investors haven’t been able to properly value nature, the finance industry has been using carbon markets as a proxy for investing in it.
- Governments should account for the ecosystem benefits of nature beyond carbon capture, the experts said.
- Proper valuation of nature’s benefits requires inputs from not only investors, but also scientists, communities and NGOs.

For companies eyeing net-zero carbon emissions, ‘no clue how to get there’
- Voluntary carbon markets have become the go-to for companies trying to achieve net-zero carbon, but curbing emissions is still most important, executives said at a recent sustainability conference in Singapore.
- Voluntary carbon markets can drive huge amounts of finance into developing countries for conservation, serve as a price indicator for carbon, and help companies offset emissions, but must play a secondary role to decarbonization, they said.
- The business leaders added that companies recognize the need to curb emissions, but are struggling with choosing and implementing effective decarbonization solutions.
- The root of the problem is a lack of robust carbon measurement technology and methods, they said.

When a tree falls in the forest, you can still hear the birdsong
- Recovering forests in Malaysia that were once selectively logged are an important habitat for tropical forest birds, a new study has found.
- The study surveyed bird biodiversity in Kenaboi State Park, which was last logged in the 1980s and declared as a protected area in 2008.
- Unlike the state park, other selectively logged forests across Malaysia are commonly turned into oil palm plantations and agricultural land rather than being allowed to recover, the researchers said.
- They recommend foresters make use of post-harvest management techniques to speed up recovery for selectively logged forests, and for state governments to declare these forests as protected areas.

Environmental activist ‘well-hated’ by Myanmar junta is latest to be arrested
- As demonstrations and deadly crackdowns continue in Myanmar, land and environmental defenders are increasingly under threat.
- On Sept. 6, environmental and democracy activist Kyaw Minn Htut became one of the latest political prisoners; authorities had detained his wife and 2-year-old son a day earlier.
- He had openly challenged the military and reported on illegal environmental activities, making him a “well-known and well-hated” target, fellow activists said.
- Some 20 environmental organizations across the world have signed a statement calling for Kyaw Minn Htut’s release.

Borneo’s bearded pigs and traditional hunters adapted to oil palms. Then came swine fever
- Oil palm expansion and urbanization have altered the traditional hunting of bearded pigs by the Indigenous Kadazandusun-Murut (KDM) community in Sabah, Malaysia, a new study has found.
- Researchers interviewed 38 hunters on changes in pig behavior and hunting practices before the African swine fever (ASF) epidemic hit Sabah in 2021.
- They found that even though pig hunting patterns have changed dramatically, the activity remains a cornerstone of KDM communal culture for food, sport, gift-giving, festivals and celebrations.
- As ASF devastates wild pig populations, the researchers’ findings highlight a need for long-term hunting management that conserves both the bearded pig and Indigenous cultural traditions.

Drug trafficking threatens Indigenous Shipibo communities in Peru
- The Flor de Ucayali municipality belongs to Indigenous Shipibo-Conibo communities and has been the site of intense deforestation, according to local sources and satellite data.
- Community members say the driver of forest loss is illicit coca cultivation. Coca is used to make cocaine.
- Shipibo-Conibo residents say they have been threatened by armed drug traffickers.
- Authorities have intervened, but residents say the threats continue. Satellite data and imagery show continuing deforestation in the area.

Old-growth forests of Pacific Northwest could be key to climate action
- Coastal temperate rainforests are among the rarest ecosystems on Earth, with more than a third of their total remaining global area located in a narrow band in the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest. These are some of the most biodiverse, carbon-dense forests outside the tropics, thus crucial to carbon sequestration.
- “The diversity of life that is all around us is incredibly rare,” a forest ecologist tells Mongabay on a hike in Olympic National Park. “It’s all working together. And there’s not much left here on the Olympic Peninsula or just north of us in British Columbia.”
- British Columbia did the unexpected in 2016 by establishing the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, protecting 6.4 million hectares (15.8 million acres) of coastal old-growth forest. But elsewhere in the province, 97% of all tall, old-growth forest has been felled for timber and wood pellets. In the U.S., protection outside Olympic National Park is scant.
- New protections are promised, but old-growth logging continues apace. The U.N. says the world must aggressively reduce carbon emissions now, as scientists press the Biden administration to create a national Strategic Carbon Reserve to protect a further 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of mature forested federal lands from logging to help meet U.S. carbon-reduction goals by 2030.

Next to India’s capital, a village looks to the past for its forest’s future
- For generations, a community outside India’s capital has worked to protect their sacred grove from outside interests like mining and real estate.
- Despite being a biodiversity hotspot, the protection status of this grove under India’s Forest Conservation Act remains in limbo.
- But conservationists and experts say they hope new archaeological findings will help the community get more secure legal protection for their grove.

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.

L.A.-sized tract of primary forest went up in flames in DRC province in 2020
- In 2020, more than 1,500 square kilometers (580 square miles) of old-growth forest burned in Sankuru province, including extensive tracts in a nature reserve.
- Overall, the DRC recorded its second-biggest decline in primary forest cover last year, according to data from Global Forest Watch (GFW), a platform developed by World Resources Institute.
- Forests in the country face increasing pressure from a constellation of factors: a growing population, climatic shifts like shorter rainy seasons, and, more recently, COVID-19-linked turmoil.
- In the past two years alone, more than 1,000 km2 (390 mi2) of land in Sankuru Nature Reserve was set alight.

Drug trafficking and illegal logging threaten Indigenous communities in Peru
- Indigenous Kichwa communities in northern Peru say outsiders are illegally invading their land and cutting down rainforest to plant coca and sell timber. Coca is used to make cocaine.
- Sources say Kichwa communities are struggling to gain land titles for their territory and have experienced confrontations with outsiders that include threats to their leaders, and have requested state intervention.
- Regional authorities say they cannot intervene in the area because they do not have the necessary security force to contend with armed criminal groups in the area.

Highway cutting through Heart of Borneo poised to be ‘very, very bad’
- With Indonesia planning to shift its capital from Jakarta to the Bornean province of East Kalimantan, infrastructure development pressures on the island have intensified.
- Neighboring Malaysia is adding new stretches to the Pan Borneo Highway to capitalize on spillover economic benefits; within Indonesia, East Kalimantan’s developmental gains are also expected to trickle to other provinces through the transboundary highway.
- While the new roads could spur economic development in remote villages, they also carve into protected areas in the Heart of Borneo, opening them up for resource extraction.
- In particular, the roads could fast-track development of a new “oil palm belt,” with disastrous consequences for the wildlife and Indigenous peoples of Borneo, and for global climate, experts say.

Indigenous Amazonian communities bear the burden of Ecuador’s balsa boom
- Ecuador is the world’s biggest exporter of balsa wood, most of it shipped to China.
- Indigenous communities in Ecuador’s Pastaza River Basin say balsa is being logged illegally in their territories.
- Sources say balsa logging is damaging the ecological integrity of the region and hurting Indigenous communities.
- The problem has reportedly spread to neighboring Peru, where Indigenous communities accuse Ecuadoran balsa loggers of felling commercially valuable trees and even kidnapping a child.

USAID redirects funding in Cambodia as future of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary hangs in the balance
- In June, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced it would be ending its assistance to Cambodian government entities through the USAID Greening Prey Lang project.
- In its statement, the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh said the decision is due to continued and unprosecuted illegal logging and wildlife crimes in the protected area, along with efforts by the Cambodian government to “silence and target local communities” and activists. The Cambodian government, however, maintains that the cessation of funding from USAID was due to the ministry having reached capacity to protect Prey Lang without foreign funding.
- Satellite data show Prey Lang has lost nearly 9% of its forest cover over the past five years, and researchers and activists say its remaining forest is being eyed by logging companies.
- While USAID’s decision to stop funding the Cambodian government has been well-received by many academics and environmentalists, there is fear that the move could give the green light to government-supported logging operations.

As soy frenzy grips Brazil, deforestation closes in on Indigenous lands
- A large swath of rainforest has been cleared and was burned on the edge of the Wawi Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The fire is one of many being set to clear land for soy cultivation, much of it legally mandated, as demand for the crop sees growers push deeper into the rainforest and even into Indigenous and protected areas.
- Enforcement against forest destruction has been undermined at the federal level, thanks to budget cuts and loosened restrictions by the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro.
- The burning threatens to compound health problems in Indigenous communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while the use of agrochemicals on the soy plantations poses longer-term hazards.

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.

Deforestation of endangered wildlife habitat continues to surge in southern Myanmar
- The Tanintharyi region of Myanmar is home to unique and endangered species, but its forests are being cleared.
- Tanintharyi’s Kawthoung district lost 14% of its primary forest between 2002 and 2020.
- New satellite data show deforestation activity spiking in many parts of Kawthoung, including in some of the last known habitat of critically endangered Gurney’s pittas.

Outrage as Cambodian court convicts activists for inciting ‘social chaos’
- On May 5, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted and sentenced five activists from the environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia: Long Kunthea, Phuon Keoraksmey, Thun Ratha, Chea Kunthin and Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson.
- The activists have been convicted of intending to cause “social chaos” by planning a protest of the government-sanctioned destruction of Phnom Penh’s lakes, which are being filled in for development. The planned one-person march never actually took place.
- Kunthea and Keoraksmey were sentenced to 18 months in prison and Ratha received a 20-month sentence while Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson and Chea Kunthin were sentenced in absentia; each activist was also fined $1,000.
- Observers are crying foul at the convictions and incarceration of the activists and say that the health and lives of Kunthea, Keoraksmey and Ratha – who have been incarcerated since their arrest in September – are at risk due to Cambodia’s crowded prisons and a recent surge in COVID-19 infection rates.

Drugs and agriculture cause deforestation to skyrocket at Honduran UNESCO site
- Honduras’ Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve occupies a large portion of the country’s eastern region.
- However, despite official protection and recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Río Plátano is plagued by deforestation; satellite data show the biosphere reserve lost 13% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2020.
- Deforestation shot up in 2020, nearly doubling the amount of forest loss over 2019. 2021 may be another rocky year for the biosphere reserve, with satellite data showing several “unusually high” spikes of clearing activity so far this year.
- Sources say deforestation in the reserve is being driven by logging, agriculture and the drug trade.

Cattle-driven clearing continues in Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu protected area
- Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area lies in the ecologically rich Xingu Basin in the Brazilian Amazon and spans some 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) — an area more than half the size of Belgium.
- Despite its protected status, the area has been heavily deforested, losing 476,000 hectares (1.18 million acres) of humid primary forest between 2006 and 2020, according to satellite data from the University of Maryland (UMD), a 32% decrease in total forest cover.
- 2020 saw the highest amount of forest loss since the creation of the protected area, nearly 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) — an area nearly the size of New York City; preliminary data show clearing of Triunfo do Xingu’s forests has continued into 2021, with “unusually high” levels of deforestation detected the week of March 15.
- Deforestation in the region is largely driven by cattle ranching, and sources say the invasions of Triunfo do Xingu are aided by its remoteness as well as lax enforcement of environmental regulations.

New palm oil frontier sparks scramble for land in the Brazilian Amazon
- Cultivation of oil palm has surged in Brazil’s northern state of Roraima over the last decade, fueled by an ambitious push towards biofuels.
- While palm oil companies operating in the area claim they do not deforest, critics say they are contributing to a surge in demand for cleared land in this region, driving cattle ranchers, soy farmers and land speculators deeper into the forest.
- As the demand for land increases, incursions near and into Indigenous lands that neighbor palm oil plantations are also on the rise.
- Indigenous rights activists say that in addition to the loss of forest, they’re worried about the pesticides that palm oil plantations are doused with and the runoff from processing mills, which frequently end up in soil and water sources, and that encroaching outsiders may introduce COVID-19 to vulnerable communities.

‘What other country would do this to its people?’ Cambodian land grab victims seek int’l justice
- The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in 2014 estimated that at least 770,000 people had been affected by land grabs that cover some 4 million hectares of land. Sources say Indigenous communities are more adversely affected by land grabs because the land is often central to their animist beliefs and their livelihoods, and they are even less likely to be afforded justice than ethnically Khmer victims.
- FIDH, along with Global Witness and Climate Counsel, submitted an open letter dated March 16 to Fatou Bensouda, the current prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), urging her to open a preliminary examination into land-grabbing in Cambodia.
- International lawyer Philippe Sands and Florence Mumba – a judge at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – announced they were drafting a definition of ecocide to be included on the list of international crimes that includes such atrocities as genocide and crimes against humanity. Their definition is expected early this year and could mean perpetrators of environmental destruction could be brought to international justice.
- As recently as June last year, the World Bank announced another $93 million would go to fund the third phase of its land tenure project in Cambodia, despite mounting allegations of abuse within the system that has led critics to accuse the World Bank of being complicit in land grabbing and the environmental damage it has caused.

Global forest loss increased in 2020
- The planet lost an area of tree cover larger than the United Kingdom in 2020, including more than 4.2 million hectares of primary tropical forests, according to data released today by the University of Maryland.
- Tree cover loss rose in both the tropics and temperate regions, but the rate of increase in loss was greatest in primary tropical forests, led by rising deforestation and incidence of fire in the Amazon, Earth’s largest rainforest.
- The data, which is now available on World Resource Institute’s Global Forest Watch, indicate that forest loss remained persistently high in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, but “does not show obvious, systemic shifts in forest loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to WRI.
- Destruction of primary tropical forests, the world’s most biologically diverse ecosystems, released 2.64 billion tons of carbon, an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of 570 million cars.

Deforestation surge threatens endangered species in Tanintharyi, Myanmar
- The Tanintharyi region of Myanmar boasts remote, unique forests that provide vital habitat for endangered species found nowhere else in the world.
- But deforestation is mounting in the region, with satellite data showing a surge in tree cover loss so far in 2021.
- Research suggests plantation expansion and small farms have been increasingly eating into native forest over the past couple decades.
- The recent surge in forest loss also coincides with military attacks on Tanintharyi Karen communities, which reportedly have displaced thousands of people who have nowhere to go but into the forest.

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 disgrace’: Luxury housing plans threaten Cambodia’s Bokor National Park
- Bokor National Park, also known as Preah Monivong Bokor National Park, sits on the southern coast of Cambodia and is a refuge for many threatened plants and animals, as well as a popular tourist site.
- But conservationists warn Bokor’s habitat is under threat from the development of luxury residential estates that are planned to occupy 19,000 hectares inside the park.
- The park gained official protected status in 1993, yet was awarded to Cambodian tycoon Sok Kong in 2007 as a 99-year concession for $1 billion. In the intervening years, Kong’s company has developed an access road, luxury hotels and condominiums in Bokor.
- Meanwhile sources say international and local NGOs, which ordinarily play a meaningful role in preventing widespread forest loss in Cambodia, have been muzzled in the country.

The Amazon lost an area of primary forest larger than Israel in 2020, new analysis finds
- The Amazon basin lost more than 2 million hectares of primary forest cover in 2020, according to a new report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP).
- This number is higher than the area lost in 2019 and the authors say it may be an underestimation.
- Brazil lost the most primary forest, with Bolivia experiencing high levels of fire-related deforestation of its unique Chiquitano dry forests.
- While Peru saw continuing deforestation in its midsection, MAAP found reductions in forest loss in the southern part of the country.

How the pandemic impacted rainforests in 2020: a year in review
- 2020 was supposed to be a make-or-break year for tropical forests. It was the year when global leaders were scheduled to come together to assess the past decade’s progress and set the climate and biodiversity agendas for the next decade. These included emissions reductions targets, government procurement policies and corporate zero-deforestation commitments, and goals to set aside protected areas and restore degraded lands.
- COVID-19 upended everything: Nowhere — not even tropical rainforests — escaped the effects of the global pandemic. Conservation was particularly hard in tropical countries.
- 2019’s worst trends for forests mostly continued through the pandemic including widespread forest fires, rising commodity prices, increasing repression and violence against environmental defenders, and new laws and policies in Brazil and Indonesia that undermine forest conservation.
- We don’t yet have numbers on the degree to which the pandemic affected deforestation, because it generally takes several months to process that data. That being said, there are reasons to suspect that 2020’s forest loss will again be substantial.

‘Devastating’ fires engulf Brazilian Pantanal wetlands – again
- Wildfires erupting in August have ravaged much of Brazil’s Pantanal Matogrossense National Park, which is a part of the Pantanal region, the world’s largest tropical wetland.
- Fires have so far consumed nearly 4.5 million hectares across the Pantanal, totaling about 30% of the biome and nearly 22 times the area lost between 2000 and 2018.
- This year’s intense fires added to damage already done in 2019, when flames engulfed hundreds of thousands of hectares across the Pantanal.
- Sources say most of the fires started from slash-and-burn farming, which is becoming more prevalent due to the weakening of environmental agencies under the Bolsonaro administration.

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.

Alleged gov’t-linked land grabs threaten Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains
- The Cardamom Mountains sit off the Gulf of Thailand in southern Cambodia and provide important habitat for a multitude of plant and animal species, many of them already threatened with extinction.
- Due to Cardamoms’ remoteness, they had largely been spared the human encroachment that has razed much of the rainforest across the country – until infrastructure development in 2020 opened up the area to loggers, poachers, and others seeking to exploit the region’s forests.
- Satellite data show deforestation is continuing to surge in the Cardamoms despite most of the range being formally demarcated as protected land.
- Sources familiar with the issues say the Hun Sen government is encouraging land-grabbing in protected areas in a bid to build public support ahead of the 2022 election season, and that Cambodia’s systemic corruption is enabling timber and plantation companies to move in and clear forest.

Fueled by impunity, invasions surge in Brazil’s Indigenous lands
- After a decade-long struggle, Apyterewa was officially demarcated as a protected Indigenous territory in 2007, exclusively for the use of the Paracanã people who’ve called it home for generations.
- But despite these protections, Apyterewa has lost about 5% of its forest cover since 2007 as outsiders continue to move in and clear land for pasture, mines and timber.
- Deforestation seems to have picked up pace in recent months: satellites detected 83,445 deforestation alerts between Aug. 24 and Nov. 16, with several weeks registering “unusually high” levels of forest loss.
- Civil society advocates blame the Bolsonaro administration for the surging deforestation in Apyterewa and other protected areas: “We have a scenario of a weakening of the environmental agencies, which has been really profound,” said Danicley de Aguiar, an Amazon campaigner with Greenpeace. “It’s as if we threw a knife in the heart of Brazil’s environmental policy.”

For Amazon’s harpy eagle, nesting trees are also coveted for timber
- A new study finds that nesting trees for the harpy eagle in the Amazon are almost all targeted by the commercial timber industry.
- The eagles were found to select trees with specific architecture to support their nests and young.
- Tightening legal logging regulations and enforcement could help with the problem, but stamping out illegal logging is a more pressing challenge.

Land grab, logging, mining threaten biodiversity haven of Woodlark Island
- Woodlark Island lies off the coast of Papua New Guinea and is home to dozens of unique species and a more than 2,000-year-old human culture.
- A recent court ruling has seen the land rights granted to Woodlark islanders in 2016 revoked and returned to an agricultural company that in 2007 planned to transform 70% of the island into oil palm plantations.
- Meanwhile, the status of an application submitted to the PNG Forest Authority by a logging company to clear 40% of the island under the guise of an agricultural project remains unknown, despite an ongoing petition signed by more than 184,00 people.
- A mining company has also started expanding infrastructure and clearing forest in preparation for a long-planned open-pit gold mine, but has faced backlash from villagers unhappy with the replacement housing offered as part of a relocation project to make way for the mine. The company also intends to dispose of mining waste via a controversial pipeline into a nearby bay.

Solomon Islands environmental defender faces life sentence for arson charge
- Accused of burning logging machinery belonging to Malaysia-based firm Xiang Lin SI Ltd, the “Nende Five” were taken into custody in 2018.
- In June 2020, three of the five were acquitted based on lack of evidence. However, in July the magistrate decided to uphold charges against the two remaining defendants.
- Jerry Meioko was convicted on charges of larceny and unlawful damage while Clement Tauto became the only defendant to be convicted of arson, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. Their convictions were based on confessions, which advocates say were made under duress.
- Meanwhile, logging continues to spread in the Solomon Islands in areas that are home to local communities and claimed as ancestral land, and in forest inhabited by unique, endangered species found nowhere else in the world.

Under cover of COVID-19, loggers plunder Cambodian wildlife sanctuary
- Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia has lost almost a fifth of its forest cover since 2010, largely to agricultural expansion, illegal logging, and land grabbing.
- The sanctuary hosts some of the last known populations of threatened primates like the black-shanked douc langur and southern yellow-cheeked crested gibbon, and is also considered the ancestral home of the Bunong ethnic minority.
- Cambodia has laws in place to protect sanctuaries and crack down on violators, but environmental watchdogs say enforcement is lacking because the authorities are largely complicit in the plunder of natural resources.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem by locking out international conservation NGOs that would otherwise maintain a presence on the ground.

Cameroon halts logging plans in Ebo Forest, home to tool-using chimps
- The Cameroon government announced that a logging concession for Ebo Forest, which was approved three weeks ago, has been cancelled.
- Ebo Forest is a large, intact forest system in southwestern Cameroon that is a refuge for a number of endangered and critically endangered species, including a population of Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees with a unique repertoire of tool use.
- While conservationists are optimistic about this news, they are also concerned that the future of the forest still remains uncertain.

Illegal plant trade, tourism threaten new Philippine flowering herbs
- Scientists have described a new ornamental plant species in the biodiverse region of Palawan, a province in the western Philippines.
- The new species, Begonia cabanillasii, is the 25th begonia species found on the island and the 133rd recorded in the Philippines.
- Begonias are flowering perennial herbs popular in the ornamental plant trade. The new species grows in a shady and rocky undergrowth habitat in Palawan and is assessed to be critically endangered.
- The illegal plant trade and tourism, a driver of deforestation in the province, pose the biggest threat to this new plant species and other Palawan-endemic flora, researchers say.

Understaffed and under threat: Paraguay’s park rangers pay the ultimate price
- Protected areas in eastern Paraguay are beset by illegal marijuana cultivation and logging. Government interventions have had limited success, with clearing resuming shortly after agents leave an area.
- Park rangers tasked with monitoring the country’s reserves and parks say they routinely encounter hostile criminal groups when on patrol. These encounters can take a violent turn – several rangers have been murdered over the past decade while patrolling protected areas for illegal activity.
- According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the ideal number of park rangers is one for every 1,000 hectares. However, in Paraguay, there is just one park ranger for more than 38,000 hectares.
- Rangers say they need more resources and support to do their job safely and effectively.

Helping the poor can protect forests too, Indonesian welfare program shows
- A study has found that a poverty-alleviation program in Indonesia was just as successful as dedicated conservation programs in reducing deforestation.
- The researchers attribute this to the program serving as a sort of insurance against harvest failures, by guaranteeing rural communities cash transfers and making it less likely they will cut down forests as a source of income.
- The study calculates that the economic benefit from the avoided carbon emissions alone could be (at maximum) 10 times greater than the cost of administering the program.
- The researchers have called for similar studies to be done in other tropical rainforest countries, and insist that poverty alleviation and forest conservation aren’t mutually exclusive goals.

In California, forest fires spark a babel of birdsong, study shows
- In California, a group of researchers mapped the sounds of the hermit warbler (Setophaga occidentalis) and analyzed the impacts caused by forest fire on the birds’ songs.
- The researchers found that the diversity of sounds increased in areas that had been affected by forest fires. Three factors impacted the songs: the fires; the massive effect of bird dispersion, which makes room for individuals from other groups to insert their “dialects”; and the time interval due to migration.
- “The result was that some areas have birds singing in more than one dialect, resulting in a complex diversity of sounds in California,” says the study’s lead author.

No choice: Why communities in Paraguay are cutting down forests to survive
- Illegal deforestation for marijuana cultivation is a growing problem for eastern Paraguay’s protected areas.
- Sources say much of the clearing is done by indigenous community members and small farmers who are beset by poverty and have no other options.
- A joint project between the Paraguayan government and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations seeks to provide more opportunities for rural communities, but has been stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For tool-wielding chimps of Ebo Forest, logging plan is a ‘death sentence’
- Ebo Forest is the largest intact forest system in southwestern Cameroon, spanning more than 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres), and providing refuge to a multitude of rare species, including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, drills, and a tiny and enigmatic population of western gorillas.
- The Cameroon government recently approved a logging concession for Ebo Forest, which would allow trees in 68,385 hectares (169,000 acres) of the region to be harvested, despite opposition from conservationists and local communities.
- Ebo Forest was previously slated to be transformed into a national park, an effort spearheaded by WWF, but plans were dashed in 2013, reportedly because of lack of funding.
- Conservationists worry that logging, and any concomitant activities, such as illegal forest destruction and poaching, will place considerable pressure on endangered and critically endangered species, and that the biodiversity of the forest would be compromised.

Marijuana farms expand in Paraguay reserve despite gov’t crackdowns
- Approximately 600 metric tons of marijuana was seized by agents of Paraguay’s National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD) in an operation in the heart of the forests of Morombí Reserve, between the departments of Canindeyú and Caaguazú.
- Over eight days, some 70 officers destroyed 202 hectares of marijuana and dismantled 23 camps set up by drug traffickers.
- But sources say this is just the tip of the iceberg and many more illegal marijuana farms are pockmarked throughout Morombí, increasing by the day. Satellite data support this, showing the reserve’s deforestation rate skyrocketed in 2019 and continues to climb into 2020.

Protected areas in Paraguay hit hard by illegal marijuana farming
- Agriculture has deforested much of eastern Paraguay’s Upper Parana Atlantic Forest, an endangered ecoregion of which less 10% remains today.
- More recently, illegal marijuana cultivation has become a driving force of deforestation in the region. Even protected areas are not immune from destruction, with satellite data and drone footage confirming large swaths of protected primary forest have been cleared for marijuana cropland over the past year. Sources say timber and charcoal are also being produced as by-products of clearing for marijuana and are illegally transported out of protected areas.
- Four protected areas have been particularly affected: Mbaracayú Reserve, San Rafael National Park/Proposed National Reserve, Morombí Reserve and Caazapá National Park.
- Forest rangers working in the protected areas say there aren’t enough enforcement staff to combat the illegal encroachment.

Photos: In southern Papua, navigating an alien world built on palm oil
- In June 2019, photographer Albertus Vembrianto spent three weeks on assignment in the southern lowlands of Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province, for Mongabay and The Gecko Project. He traveled through the villages of Indigenous Papuans whose land had been taken over by palm oil conglomerates.
- A decade ago, the Indonesian government promoted investment by plantation firms in this region with a vision of turning it into a major agribusiness hub. Today, Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil, but many Papuans have lost their land and are struggling to acclimatize to a very new world, with their traditional food sources dwindling.
- Albertus’s photos were featured in an investigation into the operations of one of the these companies, the Korindo Group, recently published by The Gecko Project and Mongabay in collaboration with the Korean Center for Investigative Journalism-Newstapa and 101 East, Al Jazeera’s Asia-Pacific current affairs program.
- In this photo essay, Albertus, who is Indonesian, writes about his experience reporting in Papua.

‘On the edge’: Endangered forest cleared for marijuana in Paraguay
- The Upper Parana is also one of the world’s most endangered forests. The ecoregion has been almost entirely cleared in Brazil, and Argentina holds the largest remaining areas of connected habitat. In Paraguay, studies estimate less than 10% remains, mostly as fragmented forest islands scatted across a largely unprotected, denuded landscape.
- Agriculture is the driving force of deforestation in Paraguay, with much of the country’s forests cleared legally to make way for cattle, soy, corn and sugar cane fields over the past half-century.
- But clearing for illicit marijuana cultivation is also taking a toll on the eastern Paraguay’s forests. According to the National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD), 81,871 kilos (180,494 pounds) of marijuana were seized and 797 parcels were destroyed in Paraguay’s portion of the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest between 2015 and 2020. Investigation by Mongabay and La Nación found marijuana farms carved out of several national parks and reserves in eastern Paraguay.
- Government officials and NGO representatives say to more enforcement is needed on the ground, and that those found guilty of environmental crimes should be given harsher sentences.

‘They took it over by force’: Corruption and palm oil in Sierra Leone
- Sierra Leone is among the poorest countries in the world. In the 1990s, when other African countries were privatizing key industries in order to attract foreign investment and become eligible for international loans, a civil war was raging in Sierra Leone that prevented the country from taking part in the controversial structural adjustment programs initiated by the World Bank and the Inter-national Monetary Fund.
- Sources say that the country, eager to catch up, has been rushing into deals with foreign investors without first enacting legislation to protect the interests of local landowners. In 2011, Socfin entered into a 50-year land lease agreement with the Sierra Leonean government and local authorities, which was soon followed by two more agreements. In less than 10 years, the forest and farmland around the chiefdom of Sahn Malen was transformed into thousands of hectares of monoculture oil palm fields.
- Reception to the plantation has been divided. Some area residents say they welcome the jobs and income the company provides. But others allege the deal with Socfin was exploitative and corrupt.
- A leaked government report from 2019 found several irregularities surrounding Socfin’s Sahn Malen operations, including a concession area on the ground that’s larger than what is stipulated in the lease agreements and evidence of financial mismanagement by local authorities.

How we calculated Korindo’s revenues from clearing Papuan rainforest
- A panel convened by the Forest Stewardship Council calculated that Korindo had deprived indigenous communities in Indonesia’s Papua province of $300 million by underpaying for the timber harvested from their lands in the decade from 2007.
- Korindo dismissed the figure as “pure fantasy” on the grounds that the panel had based its calculations on global market prices, when Korindo actually sold the timber locally. Korindo claimed it had made a loss on the logging operations as it cleared land for plantations.
- Based on our own calculation, we estimate that since the turn of the century, Korindo exported products worth $320 million using timber harvested as it cleared the rainforest for plantations in Papua.

‘If they take our lands, we’ll be dead’: Cameroon village battles palm oil giant
- Mbonjo sits in the heart of Cameroon’s country’s largest oil palm and rubber-producing region. In 2000, state-owned oil palm plantations around the village were acquired by Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin), a Belgian holding company that operates palm oil and rubber plantations through dozens of subsidiaries across Africa and Southeast Asia. Today, the company owns some 58,000 hectares of oil palm and rubber plantations in the region, which are managed Socfin’s local subsidiary Socapalm.
- In 2012, Socapalm attempted to expand the plantation into new areas. However, efforts to do so were met with opposition from the community, according to local residents who said they were living in the places the company wanted to take over.
- Socapalm ultimately withdrew from the area. But the fear that someday the company will return and try again to take their land persists in Mbonjo as issues surrounding the concession boundaries have remained unresolved. NGOs who have visited Mbonjo have documented several problems with the plantation operations, including unresolved issues surrounding land rights, poor housing conditions for workers and a low integration of the local population into the workforce.
- Socfin CEO Luc Boedt refutes claims that Socfin has harmed communities, saying instead that the company has helped them by training residents in modern agriculture practices, supplying nutrients to improve soil fertility, ensuring the availability of water and electricity, providing opportunities for education and jobs, and creating a market for smallholder crops.

How the legacy of colonialism built a palm oil empire
- Due to the legacy of decades of colonial rule and the subsequent lack of local expertise and capital needed to meet the requirements of the World Bank’s economic incentive programs, newly independent governments drew on foreign capital during decolonization in the mid-20th to keep businesses and exports running. As a result, some of the biggest tropical commodity companies were founded during colonial times and still operate in countries once occupied by colonial powers.
- One of these is Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin), a Belgian holding company that operates palm oil and rubber plantations through dozens of subsidiaries across Africa and Southeast Asia.
- For years, Socfin has been rebuked by civil society organizations for alleged human rights violations at its plantations. Several lawsuits and complaints have been submitted over alleged misconduct including irregularities in land acquisition processes, poor working and housing conditions and the absence of the sustainable inclusion of local farmers.
- Socfin, meanwhile, refutes criticism of its operations, saying its aim is to further development in Africa and ensure that local communities and their workers are the beneficiaries of their operations.

The Consultant: Why did a palm oil conglomerate pay $22m to an unnamed ‘expert’ in Papua?
- In a year-long investigation with The Gecko Project, the Korean Center for Investigative Journalism-Newstapa and Al Jazeera, Mongabay traced a $22 million “consultancy” payment connected to a major land deal in Indonesia’s Papua province.
- It took us from South Korea and Singapore to the heart of the largest rainforest left in Asia, to find out how the payment helped make the Korindo Group one of the largest oil palm producers in the region.
- Photography by Albertus Vembrianto.

‘Betting on impunity’: Brazilian Amazon under attack despite logging crackdown
- In mid-May, government agents raided 700 hectares of land being deforested illegally in the Querência municipality of Mato Grosso. However, local sources say that deforestation resumed shortly after the intervention. Satellite imagery shows tree cover loss continuing between late May and early June.
- The affected area lies right across the river from the Wawi Indigenous Territory. Human rights advocates say the deforestation could have a big impact on communities inside the reserve by affecting water sources and introducing COVID-19 to vulnerable populations.
- Brazil’s Ministry of Defense touted what it described as the “extensive results” of the government’s various crackdowns around the Amazon during a one-month effort against illegal logging in May.
- However, critics say occasional interventions like the May raid in Querência aren’t an effective deterrent against illegal logging and that the Bolsonaro government’s stripping of environmental protections is making it easy for loggers to continue deforesting.

Indonesia struggles to restore peatlands as fires strangle national parks
- More than a million hectares across Indonesia burned in 2019, according to the government’s numbers. The fires released an estimated 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere, costing the country more than $5 billion in economic losses that year, according to the World Bank.
- Sumatra was particularly affected, with fires consuming large swaths of primary forest in protected areas like Berbak-Sembilang National Park, which is home to endangered wildlife like Sumatran tigers and elephants, and false gharials.
- Illegal logging and the expansion of plantations in the region area over the past decades has rapidly transformed the park and the surrounding area, draining peat swamps and turning them into degraded, easily flammable patches of land. Following Indonesia’s peatland destruction-fueled fire crisis of 2015 President Joko Widodo established the Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) in Jakarta in 2016. The agency planned to restore over 2.6 million hectares of degraded peatlands, including those in concession areas and in protected areas like Berbak-Sembilang.
- However, BRG president Nazir Foed acknowledged that restoration “progress has not been optimal.” Critics say the effort has been stymied by a lack of collaboration between stakeholders and a lack of consensus on what even constitutes a restored peatland.

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.

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.

Illegal logging ‘mafia’ stripping hornbill habitat in Northeast India
- Illegal logging is driving the loss of forest that poses the biggest threat to rare hornbill species in the Eastern Himalayan forests of India’s Arunachal Pradesh state.
- Hunting of the hornbills for their casques and meat was previously a major threat, but has been largely defused through a conservation program that engages the indigenous Nyishi community.
- The Papum Reserve Forest in which the birds are found doesn’t have the same protections as India’s national parks, and suffers from logging activity that goes largely unchecked by authorities.
- Indigenous activists working to protect the forest and its wildlife have come under attack from illegal loggers.

Tech made to find galaxies sets its sights on wildfires
- Satellite technology used to hunt the night skies for exploding supernovae will be turning inwards to search for wildfires on earth.
- A geosynchronous satellite can compare large areas of land with previous images to detect minuscule changes in light that might signal a new fire, moments after its ignition.
- The full project utilizes multiple layers of technology to improve early detection, response, and monitoring of wildfires. Cameras, drones, air tankers, low earth orbit satellites, and geosynchronous satellites make up the entire system, called FUEGO.
- A wildfire detection company, Fireball International, is aiming to bring the FUEGO system to Australia as soon as possible to help reduce the chances of another destructive bushfire season.

Australia’s logging ‘madness’ fuels more fires, hastens ecosystem collapse
- In the aftermath of the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires, logging has recommenced in the Australian state of Victoria, despite intense criticism from scientists and conservationists.
- The Victorian government announced that logging in native forests will be discontinued by 2030, but conservationists say that 10 more years of logging could lead to ecosystem collapse.
- Scientists argue that logging makes a forest more vulnerable to catching fire, and they’ve drawn a direct correlation between the logging industry and the last bushfire season.
- Plantation logging offers a possible solution to native forest logging, and loggers can also be retrained to be full-time firefighters, experts say.

‘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.

Takeover of Nigerian reserve highlights uphill battle to save forests
- Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve in southwestern Nigeria, home to rare primates and valuable timber trees, has some of the highest deforestation rates in the country.
- Logging is ostensibly prohibited, but sawmills thrive here, while farmers who clear land inside the reserve often have their actions legitimized by the authorities.
- Researchers say poverty and a lack of jobs are at the root of the problem, with communities compelled to farm, log and hunt in the absence of other forms of livelihoods.
- With Nigeria’s forest reserves among the few areas left unfarmed, population pressure threatens to drive an influx of newcomers from all around the country into these reserve areas in the competition for arable land.

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.

Colombian indigenous groups rush to protect elders, leaders from COVID-19
- To lower the risk of COVID-19 infection, indigenous communities in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta – the world’s highest coastal mountain range – have decided to temporarily close off the area to outsiders until the threat subsides.
- However, sources say this means that it will be more difficult for communities to obtain basic goods and services. A crowdfunding campaign is underway to help support 2,000 families in isolation.
- The pandemic adds another layer of stress to communities that have been beset with violence and hardship for decades. A brief reprieve in 2016 when the FARC rebel group demobilized looks to be ending as locals report a heightened presence of armed groups in the Santa Marta region since late 2019.
- Indigenous leaders say the outside world should consider the COVID-19 crisis to be an opportunity for humanity to change direction and be less destructive to the surrounding world.

A tale of two Nigerian reserves underscores importance of community
- Differing levels of deforestation in two neighboring forest reserves in Nigeria, Ekenwan and Gele-Gele, have highlighted the importance of a community-led conservation approach.
- The Ekenwan reserve is managed by the government, but illegal activities such as farming, logging and hunting are rampant.
- In Gele-Gele, local communities working with NGOs and funded by an oil company are in charge of ensuring sustainable forest use and wildlife protection, resulting in a much lower rate of deforestation.
- However, community leaders say they’re under-resourced to tackle incursions by outsiders, while some community members complain they haven’t seen the benefits of the conservation program.

Palm oil gains ground in Chiapas, Mexico
- Mexico’s Lacandon Jungle has been whittled away as farmers clear land for cattle and crops.
- Sources say palm oil expansion in the region is exacerbating the threat. In 2017, the Secretariat for the Countryside of Chiapas estimated that there were around 64,000 hectares of oil palm planted in the state (approximately 158,000 acres), with a goal of 100,000 hectares (approximately 247,000 acres).
- While the Chiapas state government maintains oil palm plantations may only be grown on degraded land, farmers and researchers say this is not always the case.
- The processed oil is sold both domestically and exported to other countries where it’s used in the manufacture of food, cosmetics, biofuel and a host of other products.

National parks pay the price as land conflicts intensify in Colombia
- Last month, authorities extinguished a fire in Sierra de la Macarena National Park that nearly reached the banks of the Caño Cristales river. A well-known tourist attraction, the Caño Cristales provides habitat to a sensitive species of underwater plant called Macarenia clavigera, which explodes into a living rainbow of gold, olive green, blue, black and red for a few months every year.
- The Colombian Ministry of Defense and Reuters reported the blaze was set by FARC guerrillas who have rejected the peace process, known by the government as “FARC dissidents,” as they attempted to expand coca cultivation in the region. However, local sources suspect small farmers called campesinos or cattle ranchers set the fires to protest the government’s recent anti-deforestation operations that have been blamed for the displacement of families residing within the country’s national parks.
- Satellite data show deforestation is intensifying in Sierra de la Macarena, as well as in two adjacent national parks: Tinigua and Cordillera de los Picachos. This trend is not limited to these parks, with a new study finding dramatic increase in deforestation in the majority of Colombia’s protected areas and buffer zones following the demobilization of the FARC in 2016. The study said armed groups, especially FARC dissidents, are consolidating within national parks such as Tinigua, assigning land to farmers and promoting livestock and coca crops as an economic engine of the colonization process. Local sources say areas without FARC presence are being invaded by large-scale landowners.
- Meanwhile, the Colombian government has reportedly given the go-ahead to petroleum exploration projects in and around Tinigua and Cordillera de los Picachos national parks, attracting criticism for launching offensives against small farmers while greenlighting extractivist industries.

Fallout: Threatened species in Australia continue to struggle after fires
- A devastating bushfire season in Australia has led to significant forest loss in tropical and subtropical regions of Australia’s east coast.
- One of the areas most affected is the border region straddling the states of New South Wales and Queensland, which includes significant sections of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area.
- Early findings from the Queensland State Government’s Department of Environment and Science indicate the habitat of 648 threatened species in Queensland has been damaged to some extent by the fires.
- As ecologists travel back into the regions to determine the extent of the damage, questions are being raised about the status of affected species, and the additional threats posed by feral animals, weed infestation and sediment pollution.

‘Out of control’: Unprecedented fires ravage Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands
- Stretching 210,000 sq km across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, the Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland. In Brazil, it stretches across the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. The Pantanal is home to many different species of plants and animals, some of them threatened with extinction.
- Fueled by a toxic combination of searing temperatures and high winds, the Brazilian Pantanal was hit by unprecedented fires that engulfed at least 2.4 million hectares across the region in October and November 2019.
- Then in January, just two months after the first bout and during what is supposed to be the rainy season, fires erupted once again. Both times, fires invaded well into Pantanal Matogrossense National Park.
- Local sources say the fires were primarily the result of burning by farmers that spread out of control over an El Niño-dried landscape. Firefighters were caught largely unprepared for the unseasonal fires, as the state normally disassembles its response forces in December and enters a phase of planning for the next fire season. After burning for over a month, the fires were extinguished when rains finally fell in mid-February.

Abraham Khouw, the professor who joined the Save Aru movement
- Professor Abraham Khouw is one of dozens of academics in the Indonesian city of Ambon who lent his expertise to the Save Aru movement in the mid-2010s.
- The movement formed after a company called the Menara Group got permits to clear nearly two-thirds of the Aru Islands’ rainforest for a giant sugar plantation.
- The academics lent extra firepower to the fight against the plantation, which was mainly driven by local indigenous communities.

Massacre in Nicaragua: Four indigenous community members killed for their land
- On Jan. 29, dozens of armed men stormed the indigenous Alal community. Four people are reported dead, two were injured, and 16 houses were burned. The UN Human Rights Office and indigenous advocacy organizations say the armed group was connected to land grabbers engaged in illegal logging and cattle ranching on protected indigenous land.
- Police have reportedly captured the leader of the group.
- Alal is located in Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO site in northern Nicaragua that hosts the largest remaining tract of rainforest in Central America. The deforestation rate in Bosawás is climbing as people migrate from southern Nicaragua and illegally clear forest for cropland, cattle pasture, and mining. Satellite imagery shows deforestation around Alal increased significantly between December and January.
- The Center for Justice and Human Rights of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua reports 40 people have been killed over land conflict in the region in the past five years. The UN condemned the Nicaraguan government for allowing impunity for crimes committed against Nicaragua’s indigenous communities.

Mika Ganobal, the civil servant who risked his job to save his homeland
- Several years ago, a plantation company nearly broke ground on a plan to clear more than half of the rainforest in Indonesia's Aru Islands.
- Local residents organized against the project. One of the leaders of the effort to stop it was a local bureaucrat named Mika Ganobal.
- Watch our video profile of Mika below.

Carbon uptake slower than expected in Amazon secondary forest: Study
- A secondary forest in a portion of the Brazilian Amazon takes up carbon at only about twice the rate of primary forest, as compared to carbon accumulation at up to 11 times in other parts of the world; that could be bad news if similar findings are confirmed elsewhere in the Amazon and the tropics, according to scientists.
- The Bragantina region of Pará state where the study occurred has been used agriculturally for hundreds of years, until today, almost no primary forest remains. It is unlikely these degraded forests will return to their original levels of carbon storage and biodiversity on “politically meaningful timescales,” the researchers said.
- The results indicate that future researchers should be more cautious in estimating the absorption capacity of atmospheric carbon by regenerating tropical forests to mitigate the impacts of climate change, as that capacity is variable depending on multiple factors and may be overestimated.
- The findings could also put in doubt Brazil’s plan to meet its Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction pledges by replanting forest. The nation promises to restore 12 million hectares of forest by 2030. But the actual carbon storage value of these new secondary forests, including tree plantations, could be far lower than expected.

Rare trees are disappearing as ‘wood pirates’ log Bolivian national parks
- Mara (Swietenia macrophylla), also known as big-leaf mahogany, is a threatened tree species found in western South America. Growing up to 50 meters (165 feet) tall, mara trees can live for more than a century. Its wood is sought-after for the production of high-end furniture and can sell for high prices at the country’s black markets.
- Lured by profit, gangs of armed loggers routine infiltrate Madidi and Amboro national parks and harvest mara trees from deep within their forests. They transport the timber down waterways to cities in Bolivia and across the border to Peru.
- After mara and other trees are cut down, coca crops – from which cocaine is made – are often planted illegally in the new clearings.
- Spread too thin and threatened with violence, park authorities say they’re powerless to stop the onslaught.

Colombia’s ‘Heart of the World’: Mining, megaprojects overrun indigenous land
- The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is an isolated group of mountains situated along Colombia’s northern coast, which has the unique distinction of harboring more threatened endemic species than anywhere else in the world.
- Agricultural expansion has come at the expense of vital habitat over the past several decades. Now, resource exploitation and infrastructure projects planned for the region are further threatening the mountains’ ecosystems, according to scientists and local activists.
- Four indigenous groups inhabit the region: the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa, and Kankuamo. Since 1973, the Colombian government has recognized a ring of sacred sites extending around the base of the mountain range. Collectively known as the “Black Line,” indigenous communities claim them as their ancestral territory.
- Three years ago, the indigenous councils filed a legal action with the Constitutional Court, arguing that their constitutional rights were violated by legal and illegal mining taking place inside the Black Line. In addition to the mining, the councils denounced large-scale infrastructure projects such as the development of a coal-shipping port, hydroelectric dam, and hotel that had been carried out inside the Black Line without indigenous consent. The court has yet to issue a ruling.

Communities in Ecuador fight back against palm oil
- Residents of the communities of La Chiquita and Awá Guadalito say their drinking water has been contaminated by pollution from oil palm plantations.
- A court ruling ordered two oil palm companies and the state to pay reparations for social and environmental impacts caused by the oil palm cultivation.
- However, in the two years since the ruling was issued, two communities in San Lorenzo say they have yet to see any changes.

Illegal tin mining leaves trail of ruin in protected Brazilian rainforest
- Floresta Nacional de Altamira (Flona de Altamira) spans some 724,965 hectares in the state of Pará, and is home to a rich diversity of plants and animals, including several species threatened with extinction.
- Recently, an influx of illegal mining has led to rampant deforestation and the sullying of rivers. The miners are targeting the mineral cassiterite, the main ore of tin. Illegal ranching and road construction are also causing deforestation in Flona de Altamira.
- The government intervened earlier this year to put a stop to the mining, but satellite imagery shows deforestation around mining sites has picked back up since October.
- Conservationists and activists worry the rhetoric and policy changes of the Bolsonaro administration are encouraging the invasions of Flona de Altamira and other protected areas that provide important refuges for Brazil’s wildlife and indigenous communities.

Palm oil, fire pushing protected areas in Honduras to the ‘point of no return’
- According to the Honduran Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (SAG), 190,000 hectares of oil palm are being cultivated in Honduras. They extend from the Cortés department to the Colón department along the country’s Atlantic coast.
- African oil palm has taken over 20 and 30 percent of the land in Punta Izopo National Park and Jeanette Kawas National Park, respectively.
- In 2016, a fire in Jeanette Kawas National Park consumed 412 hectares of land. Fire also damaged Punta Izopo National Park in August 2019.

2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.

Illegal gold rush causing ‘irreversible damage’ to rivers in the Brazilian Amazon
- A surge in illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará is causing a dramatic rise in water pollution and deforestation, as speculators clear swaths of forest along the riverbanks to make way for makeshift mines known as garimpos. These mines have invaded well into Kayapó indigenous territory, a vast region home to several indigenous groups, including some that live in voluntary isolation from the outside world.
- Deforestation has more than doubled in the Kayapó protected area since 2000, with nonprofit groups pointing to gold mining as the key driver. FUNAI, the government agency tasked with protecting the interests of indigenous people in Brazil, has identified almost 3,000 people contaminated by mining residue in the territory.
- In Brazil, it is illegal to mine on indigenous lands – but local sources claim this isn’t stopping illegal miners from encroaching on the Kayapó territory. Some indigenous people who live on this land have been battling to expel the invaders in recent years. Others have reluctantly tolerated the illegal mining in exchange for a cut of the profits, which they say brings badly-needed funds to their communities.
- Many point to the rhetoric of Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro as a key factor that has emboldened illegal miners. The controversial far-right leader – who has his own past as a miner – has repeatedly railed against land protections as an “obstacle” to mining and development. Bolsonaro’s government is now pushing forward a controversial bill that would permit mining in indigenous territories.

Tropical forests’ lost decade: the 2010s
- The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. The world looked like it was on track to significantly reduce tropical deforestation by 2020.
- By the end of the 2019 however, it was clear that progress on protecting tropical forests stalled in the 2010s. The decade closed with rising deforestation and increased incidence of fire in tropical forests.
- According to the U.N., in 2015 global forest cover fell below four billion hectares of forest for the first time in human history.

Coca farms close in on protected areas, isolated tribes in Peruvian Amazon
- A remote region of the Peruvian Amazon is being invaded by farmers who are rapidly clearing mature forests for farms to grow coca.
- The invasions are occurring in the buffer zone of Alto Purús National Park and two reserves for isolated tribes, seriously threatening the Mashco-Piro, Peru’s largest isolated tribe.
- The farmers are from VRAEM, Peru’s largest cocaine-producing region, and are part of a growing movement of coca farmers from the Andean foothills to biologically and culturally sensitive lowlands near protected areas.
- The invasions are occurring in timber concessions and exemplify the problem with Peru’s reliance on timber companies to properly manage remote forests lacking state presence.

‘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.

Guyana refutes findings that deforestation skyrocketed after REDD+ payments stopped
- The South American country of Guyana is one of a handful of high-forest/low-deforestation countries, with around 85 percent of its biodiverse rainforest still intact.
- In 2010, Guyana entered into a partnership with Norway, which agreed to pay the heavily forested country $250 million if it kept deforestation low for five years. The project was part of a scheme called “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD+), which aims to curtail global warming by channeling funds from wealthy countries to tropical forest countries in exchange for lowering their deforestation rates.
- Guyana’s REDD+ project has been lauded as a success, with rates of forest loss between 2011 and 2015 registering below a 2010 benchmark. However, a new study analyzed satellite data between 2000 and 2017, finding tree cover loss more than doubled after Norway’s payments ended in 2015. The study’s authors say their findings point to a need for continuous forest protection payments.
- But Guyana’s government says the country’s higher levels of tree cover loss in 2016 and 2017 revealed in the study were likely due to tree death from El Nino climate events and not active deforestation. When the Guyana Forestry Commission conducted its own analysis using another, higher-resolution satellite dataset, it found instead that deforestation remained low in 2016 and 2017. Both datasets agree that deforestation stayed low in 2018.

Researchers urge sustainability as palm oil tightens its grip on Latin America
- Hindered by deforestation restrictions in Southeast Asia, palm oil producers are looking farther afield to West and Central Africa, and Latin America, where conditions are conducive to oil palm cultivation and land is easier to come by.
- Four Latin American countries already fill out the list of the world’s top 10 palm oil producers, with Colombia coming in at number four, and Ecuador, Brazil and Honduras placing seventh, ninth and tenth, respectively. Mexico may soon join the list, with a plan to cultivate an additional 100,000 hectares of the crop in the coming years.
- While these countries have vast areas of land that have previously been deforested for agriculture and are suitable for growing oil palm, plantation expansion is still coming at the expense of rainforest. Researchers and the residents of areas that have been turned into plantations also allege human rights violations at the hands of palm oil producers.
- Researchers and conservationists call for tighter regulation of the industry and more study of how oil palm production may impact the surrounding environment.

Illegal logging persists in Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary: Report
- Cambodia’s Prey Lang forest was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2016, but illegal land clearing within the protected area continues, a new report has found.
- Members of the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN), who recently patrolled 1,761 hectares (4,352 acres) of forest in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, found that several hundred hectares of dense, evergreen forest had been cleared, and hundreds of trees had been marked for logging in the near future.
- CYN worries that if the clearing continues, the government could grant economic land concessions on those lands in the future.
- CYN has called on the Cambodian government to crack down on the illegal encroachment and stop any more forest from being cleared.

‘Timebomb’: Fires devastate tiger and elephant habitat in Sumatra
- Another heavy fire season in Indonesia has taken a toll on the country’s remaining forest. In Sembilang National Park, on the island of Sumatra, fires raged into primary forest that provides vital habitat for critically endangered Sumatran tigers and elephants.
- Satellite data and imagery indicate the fires may have had a big impact on tigers in the park. In total, around 30 percent of tiger habitat in Sembilang burned between August and September. The fires also encroached into the park’s elephant habitat.
- Fires have also reportedly ravaged elephant habitat in Padang Sugihan Sebokor Wildlife Reserve, which lies southeast of Sembilang and serves as a corridor for wild elephants in South Sumatra. One report estimates that half of the reserve has suffered fire damage.
- Researchers say slash-and-burn clearing techniques likely started most of fires in the area, which were then exacerbated by drier-than-usual conditions and underground peat stores left unprotected by policy rollbacks.s

Mexico plans huge increase in palm oil production in sensitive ecosystems
- The government seeks to plant an additional 100,000 hectares (almost 250,000 acres) in the state of Campeche, half of which is under conservation protection.
- Scientists, conservationists, and residents say existing oil palm plantations have already damaged important wildlife habitat and water sources, and worry what may come from an influx of many more.
- Local organizations have filed a complaint before the Latin American Water Tribunal, saying the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food is promoting the program to plant 100,000 hectares of oil palm, “without consideration for the researchers, academics, environmentalists, indigenous people, and communities who live in the area where they intend to impose this crop as a development alternative.”

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.

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.

Carbon emissions from loss of intact tropical forest a ‘ticking time bomb’
- When undisturbed tropical forests are lost the long-term impact on carbon emissions is dramatically higher than earlier estimates suggest, according to a new study.
- Between 2000 and 2013, about 7 percent of the world’s intact tropical forests were destroyed, leading not just to direct carbon emissions but also “hidden” emissions from logging, fragmentation and wildlife loss.
- Another key difference between the old and new estimates is that the latter take into account the diminished carbon sequestration potential of these forests.
- The authors write that the indigenous communities who live in and protect about 35 percent of these forests will have a bigger role to play in the fight against climate change.

Indigenous communities ‘robbed’ as land grabbers lay waste to Brazilian rainforest
- Terra Indígena Ituna/Itatá in northern Brazil is home to several groups of uncontacted peoples who are dependent on the surrounding forest for survival.
- But outsiders have been increasingly moving in and clearing land for agriculture and mining. Brazilian authorities estimate that about 10 percent of the territory has been illegally invaded and destroyed this year alone, and satellite data show deforestation is still ramping up. Because of the scale of these incursions, Ituna/Itatá is now believed to be the most deforested indigenous territory in Brazil.
- While assaults on indigenous territories in Brazil have been happening for decades, activists say the sharp rise in deforestation and land-grabbing in Ituna/Itatá this year has been closely linked to the country’s controversial new president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has also launched an open attack on Funai, the government agency tasked with protecting indigenous interests in Brazil. The president signed a decree curbing Funai’s powers earlier this year, dealing a further blow to an agency already weakened by the previous government’s move to slash its funding in half.
- Ibama, Brazil’s environment agency, has responded to the assault on Ituna/Itatá with at least five operations in the area in 2018 and 2019. Yet the long-term impact appears to be limited: just weeks after the latest crackdown, activists and local sources report that land-grabbers have gone back to clearing the forest.

10 takeaways from Indonesia’s grassroots #SaveAru success
- The Save Aru campaign is one of Indonesia’s most successful grassroots movements in recent years.
- The people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands managed to defeat a plan to turn more than half of their archipelago into a massive sugar plantation.
- This month, Mongabay and The Gecko Project published a narrative article about the movement. Here are 10 takeaways from the article.

Bonobo conservation stymied by deforestation, human rights abuses
- The bonobo is a relative of the chimpanzee, and is found only in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) south of the Congo River. They are endangered, with habitat loss and the bushmeat trade their primary threats. The Sankuru Nature Reserve is the DRC’s largest nature reserve that is focused on bonobo conservation. However, deforestation rates have only increased in Sankuru since it was created in 2007. Meanwhile nearby Lomami National Park is experiencing almost no deforestation.
- Researchers attribute the disparity in deforestation rates between Sankuru Nature Reserve and Lomami National Park to the lack of human settlements and clearer managerial strategy in the latter. They claim that Sankuru lacked buy-in from the local communities, and that conflicting land claims made conservation efforts more difficult to achieve.
- However, there may be a dark side to Lomami’s success. Sources claim that the military, which is tasked with protecting DRC’s national parks, have engaged in torture of people suspected of poaching. There are also reports that a community within Lomami was displaced without proper consultation or a suitable alternative location.
- Researchers say that to ensure effective engagement, indigenous forest-dwelling communities should be granted proper security of tenure over their lands, and community-managed forests should be set up and funded around the perimeter of the park.

Peru: Gold mine operating without license destroys primary forest in protected area
- A recent inspection conducted by the regional forest authority of Huánuco found a large area of forest has been cleared by gold mining in Puerto Inca Province in Peru.
- The mine is located in the buffer zone around the El Sira Communal Reserve, affecting indigenous land and the basins of the Pintuyacu and Quimpichari rivers.
- In response to these issues, the Regional Directorate of Energy and Mines ordered the suspension of activities in the Inca Dorado 2 mining concession in August. However, those who live nearby claim that the miners continue to mine gold at night.

‘Witnessing extinction in the flames’ as the Amazon burns for agribusiness
- The vast and biodiverse Triunfo do Xingu protected area in the Brazilian Amazon lost 22 percent of its forest cover between 2007 and 2018, with figures this year indicating the rate of deforestation is accelerating.
- The surge in deforestation, driven largely by cattle ranching, is part of a wider trend of encroachment into protected areas across the Brazilian Amazon under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, according to conservationists.
- With the widespread clearing slicing up the larger protected area into smaller fragments of forest, human rights advocates worry that it will become increasingly difficult for forest-dependent indigenous communities to survive within it.
- The deforestation is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the biodiversity of the region, which is home to countless species of plants and animals not adapted to living in areas with higher temperatures and less vegetation.

Saving Aru: The epic battle to save the islands that inspired the theory of evolution
- In the mid-1800s, the extraordinary biodiversity of the Aru Islands helped inspire the theory of evolution by natural selection.
- Several years ago, however, a corrupt politician granted a single company permission to convert most of the islands’ rainforests into a vast sugar plantation.
- The people of Aru fought back. Today, the story of their grassroots campaign resonates across the world as a growing global movement seeks to force governments to act on climate change.

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.

Indigenous communities, wildlife under threat as farms invade Nicaraguan reserve
- Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve straddles the country’s border with Honduras and was declared a UNESCO site in 1997. It comprises one of the largest contiguous rainforest regions in Latin America north of the Amazon Basin and includes 21 ecosystems and six types of forest that are home to a multitude of species, several of which are threatened with extinction.
- According to a report by the Nicaraguan environmental agency MARENA, a little more than 15 percent of the Bosawás reserve had been cleared and converted for agricultural use in 2000. But today, that number stands at nearly 31 percent. Satellite data show deforestation reached the heart of the reserve’s core zone earlier this year.
- Deforestation in Bosawás stems mainly from migration, as people in other parts of the country move to the region looking for fertile land and space to raise cattle and grow crops.
- Indigenous communities are allowed to own land within Bosawás. But sources say land traffickers are selling plots of land to non-indigenous farmers and ranchers, creating conflicts that have caused death on both sides.

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.

A Papuan village finds its forest caught in a web of corporate secrecy
- Indonesian companies were given until March this year to disclose their “beneficial owners” under a 2018 presidential regulation, but less than 1 percent have complied.
- In the easternmost corner of the country, investors hidden by layers of corporate secrecy continue to bulldoze an intact rainforest and have nearly finished building a giant sawmill.
- The government is drafting new regulations to close loopholes in the rules governing anonymous companies, which could yet open a new front in the fight against deforestation and land grabs.

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.

‘We have cut them all’: Ghana struggles to protect its last old-growth forests
- Deforestation of Ghana’s primary forests jumped 60 percent between 2017 and 2018 – the biggest jump of any tropical country. Most of this occurred in the country’s protected areas, including its forest reserves.
- A Mongabay investigation revealed that illegal logging in forest reserves is commonplace, with sources claiming officers from Ghana’s Forestry Commission often turn a blind eye and even participate in the activity.
- The technical director of forestry at Ghana’s Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources said attempts at intervention have met with limited success, and are often thwarted by loggers who know how to game the system.
- A representative of a conservation NGO operating in the country says a community-based monitoring project has helped curtail illegal logging in some reserves, but additional buy-in from other communities is needed to scale up its results. Meanwhile, the Ghanaian government is reportedly starting its own public outreach program, as well as coordinating with the EU on an agreement that would allow only legal wood from Ghana to enter the EU market.

Indigenous communities, nat’l parks suffer as Malaysia razes its reserves
- Forest loss appears to be accelerating in peninsular Malaysia in 2019. Much of this deforestation is happening in “permanent forest reserves,” which are supposed to be under official protection. However, Malaysian state governments have the authority to spontaneously degazette forest reserves for development. Sources say this has created a free-for-all, with loggers rushing to clear forest and sell timber.
- Satellite imagery shows logging happening right up to the border of Taman Negara National Park, which lacks the buffer zone typical around national parks in other countries. Researchers say this is likely to have detrimental impacts on the parks’ wildlife.
- Sources on the ground say deforestation is also affecting forest-dependent indigenous communities. Residents of one such community say mining – which often follows on the heels of logging in Malaysia – is also harming them.
- Earlier this year, 15 Batek residents of the village of Kuala Koh died and more than 100 others were hospitalized due to mysterious illnesses. The government claims the deaths were caused by a measles outbreak, but outside experts say extremely high and unhealthy levels of manganese in their drinking water due to nearby mining may also be to blame. Advocates say the loss of their forests make indigenous communities more vulnerable to disease and illness, referring to the deforestation of their homes as “structural genocide.”

Rainforest destruction accelerates in Honduras UNESCO site
- Powerful drug-traffickers and landless farmers continue to push cattle ranching and illegal logging operations deeper into the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in eastern Honduras.
- Satellite data show the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve lost more than 10 percent of its tree cover between 2001 and 2017, more than a third of which happened within the last three years of that time period. Preliminary data for 2019 indicate Río Plátano is experiencing another heavy round of forest loss this year, with UMD recording around 160,000 deforestation alerts in the reserve between January and August, which appears to be an uptick from the same period in 2018.
- Local sources claim the government participates in drug trafficking, and those involved in the drug business are allegedly the same people who are involved in illegal exploitation of the land for cattle ranching and illegal logging of mahogany and cedar.
- Deforestation in Río Plátano means a loss of habitat for wildlife and a loss of forest resources for indigenous communities that depend on them. But another threat is emerging: water resources are becoming increasingly scarce as forests are converted into grasslands.

Gov’t takedown of illegal gold mining in Peru shows promise, but at a cost
- Peru’s Madre de Dios region has become a global poster child for deforestation and environmental devastation from an unchecked gold rush. More than 1,000 square kilometers of lowland rainforest has been deforested since 1985, two-thirds of which — an area roughly the size of New York City — has been cleared since 2009. Much of that destruction and gold production has been centered in La Pampa, a makeshift city of more than 25,000 people.
- On Feb. 19, hundreds of army commandos and 1,200 police officers raided La Pampa, expelled most of the miners, arrested suspected criminals, and established three military bases to ensure, for now, that the miners don’t return. That said, illegal gold mining elsewhere in Madre de Dios continues as usual.
- Luis Hidalgo Okimura, the newly elected governor of Madre de Dios, has pledged his support to the continued battle against illegal gold mining in the region. His plan is to legalize and regulate mining to better control it, as well as incorporate its profits into the tax base. He said he also wants existing mining sites to be mined deeper for missed gold to reduce further tree loss.
- However, others say that focusing on reducing mining in the region is just shifting the problem to other areas. Walter Quertehuari Dariquebe, a leader with the indigenous Huachipaire tribe that resides within the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve just west of La Pampa. He told Mongabay that new gold mining and deforestation “have now shown up on our doorstep. The government has simply kicked an ants’ nest. Now ants are running all over, making trouble elsewhere — especially for us.”

Logging, mining companies lock eyes on a biodiverse island like no other
- Woodlark Island sits far off the coast of Papua New Guinea and is swathed in old growth forests home to animals found nowhere else on the planet. However, the island and its unique inhabitants have an uncertain future. Lured by high-value timber, a logging company is planning to clear 40 percent of Woodlark’s forests. Researchers say this could drive many species to extinction.
- The company says logging will be followed by the planting of tree and cocoa plantations, and it has submitted to the government a permit application to clear forests as an agricultural development project. However, an independent investigation found this application process “riddled with errors, inconsistencies and false information” and that the company did not properly obtain the consent of landowners who have lived on the island for generations.
- It is unclear if the application has been approved, but there are signs that the company may be moving forward with its plans.
- Meanwhile, a mining company is pushing forward with its own plans to develop an open-pit gold mine on the island. The mine is expected to result in increased road construction and discharge nearly 13 metric tons of mining waste into a nearby bay.

Agriculture, mining, hunting push critically endangered gorillas to the brink
- Maiko National Park is one of the most logistically challenging parks in the DRC and one of the most biodiverse. It is one of just two national parks in the world known to contain Grauer’s gorilla, a highly endangered and poorly understood eastern gorilla subspecies, and is also home to the endemic okapi and Congo peafowl, as well as forest elephants, leopards, chimpanzees, and giant pangolins.
- The most major threat to gorillas and other wildlife in Maiko is the bushmeat trade, but this is significantly exacerbated by another threat: artisanal mining. The Second Congo War coincided with a demand spike for a mineral called coltan that forms an essential component of all phones, computers, solar panels, and other electronics.
- Outside of the park, however, there is another threat to wildlife: increasing pressure from rising populations. As villages expand, they require more resources and begin to cut into primary forest to make way for subsistence crops. Satellite imagery show that trees are being cut down near Maiko. As the population expands, such habitat degradation will edge closer to the park itself—bringing even more pressure from the bushmeat trade.
- Villages can be a major threat to wildlife, but they also serve as essential allies to conservation work in the DRC. NGOs working to protect wildlife near Maiko are working closely with local communities to help achieve local buy-in and ensure the long-term sustainable development of the region.

Colombia registers first drop in deforestation since 2016 FARC peace deal
- Colombia lost 198,000 hectares (489,269 acres) of forest in 2018, according to a report released by the country’s meteorological institute IDEAM. This reduction represents a 10 percent drop compared to 2017 when 220,000 hectares (543,632 acres) were lost.
- Despite slight annual progress, rates of deforestation in Colombia remain stubbornly high, with a sustained increase compared to the low rates the country boasted five years ago.
- While the landmark 2016 FARC peace agreement has opened up parts of Colombia’s remote areas formerly off limits to science, exploration and tourism, it also created a power vacuum exploited by illegal armed groups and wealthy landowners.
- The report points to extensive cattle ranching, coca cultivation related to cocaine production, illegal mining and timber harvesting, unpermitted road construction, burns and extension of the agricultural frontier as the greatest contributors to tropical forest loss in the South American country.

Saving Guatemala’s vanishing macaws: Q&A with veterinarian Luis Fernando Guerra
- The northern subspecies of the scarlet macaw (Ara macao cyanoptera) has disappeared from much of its former range in Mexico and Central America due to habitat loss and wildlife trafficking. Researchers estimate there are between 150 and 200 scarlet macaws remaining in Guatemala.
- Fire, used to clear land for agriculture, is the biggest driver of habitat loss in Guatemala. So far this year, NASA satellites have detected more than 40,000 fires in Guatemala, many occurring in scarlet macaw habitat.
- The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is trying to protect Guatemala’s macaws through a program that monitors nest sites and places lab-hatched chicks in adoptive nests.
- Mongabay caught up with WCS Lead Medical Veterinarian Luis Fernando Guerra as he was working in the field in Laguna del Tigre National Park to chat about his work and the outlook for scarlet macaws.

Logging road construction has surged in the Congo Basin since 2003
- Logging road networks have expanded widely in the Congo Basin since 2003, according to a new study.
- The authors calculated that the length of logging roads doubled within concessions and rose by 40 percent outside of concessions in that time period, growing by 87,000 kilometers (54,000 miles).
- Combined with rising deforestation in the region since 2000, the increase in roads is concerning because road building is often followed by a pulse of settlement leading to deforestation, hunting and mining in forest ecosystems.

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.

’Livestock revolution’ triggered decline in global pasture: Report
- Since 2000, the area of land dedicated for livestock pasture around the world has declined by 1.4 million square kilometers (540,500 square miles) — an area about the size of Peru.
- A new report attributes the contraction to more productive breeds, better animal health and higher densities of animals on similar amounts of land.
- The report’s authors say that technological solutions could help meet rising demand for meat and milk in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, without reversing the downward trend.

Out on a limb: Unlikely collaboration boosts orangutans in Borneo
- Logging and hunting have decimated a population of Bornean orangutans in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park in Indonesia.
- Help has recently come from a pair of unlikely allies: an animal welfare group and a human health care nonprofit.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration to meet the needs of ecosystems and humans is becoming an important tool for overcoming seemingly intractable obstacles in conservation.

‘We come from the earth’: Q&A with Goldman Prize winner Alfred Brownell
- In the early 2000s, Liberia’s government signed contracts worth tens of billions of dollars with resource extraction companies from across the world.
- ‘There was nobody in the government who really understood what value the forest has to the communities there,’ Brownell told Mongabay
- He argues that it’s time to invest in innovation and business models created by communities, to engage in extractive processes in forests without destroying them.

Chinese banks risk supporting soy-related deforestation, report finds
- Chinese financial institutions have little awareness about the risks of deforestation in the soy supply chain, according to a report released May 31 from the nonprofit disclosure platform CDP.
- China imports more than 60 percent of the world’s soy, meaning that the country could play a major role in halting deforestation and slowing climate change if companies and banks focus on stopping deforestation to grow the crop.
- Around 490 square kilometers (189 square miles) of land in Brazil was cleared for soy headed for China in 2017 — about 40 percent of all “converted” land in Brazil that year.
- As the trade war between the U.S. and China continues, China may increasingly look to Latin America for its soy, potentially increasing the chances that land will be cleared to make way for the crop.

Land grabbing, cattle ranching ravage Colombian Amazon after FARC demobilization
- In 2017, the first year following the disarmament of the FARC rebel group, deforestation in the Colombian Amazon region exploded, more than doubling from 70,074 hectares (173,000 acres) the year before to 144,147 hectares (356,000 acres), according to climate monitoring agency IDEAM.
- The rampaging devastation shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Satellite data show nearly 267,000 deforestation alerts were recorded in the departments of Caquetá, Guaviare and Meta in a single week in February.
- Absent the threat of the FARC, land values have skyrocketed by as much as 300 percent in San Vicente del Caguán since the peace deal was signed. The capital infusion has helped to improve the economy, which is based primarily on cattle ranching for milk and cheese production, but has created a booming speculative market that rewards land grabbing. Colonizers are also displacing indigenous groups from their ancestral land.
- While Colombian authorities have targeted small farmers in and around national parks, large-scale deforesters have yet to face serious consequences.

Altered forests threaten sustainability of subsistence hunting
- In a commentary, two conservation scientists say that changes to the forests of Central and South America may mean that subsistence hunting there is no longer sustainable.
- Habitat loss and commercial hunting have put increasing pressure on species, leading to the loss of both biodiversity and a critical source of protein for these communities.
- The authors suggest that allowing the hunting of only certain species, strengthening parks and reserves, and helping communities find alternative livelihoods and sources of food could help address the problem, though they acknowledge the difficult nature of these solutions.

Solomon Islanders imprisoned for trying to stop the logging of their forests
- A group of residents of Nende Island in the Solomon Islands claim corrupt government practices allowed a logging company to get a license to log the island’s primary forests, as well as cropland. Activists also allege the company, Malaysia-based Xiang Lin SI Ltd, logged outside of its concession area.
- The “Nende Five,” as they’ve become known, say they were never given an opportunity to object to the logging of their land, and Xiang Lin proceeded without obtaining the consent of the majority of residents.
- The protesters say they tried to stop the logging through legal processes. When heavy equipment was destroyed last year, the Nende Five were taken into custody. However, they say they’re innocent of the charges against them.
- Their trial has been adjourned 29 times for lack of evidence, and was recently vacated after two days in court due to allegations that the police had not followed due process in obtaining evidence from one of the defendants. The trial is expected to resume in June. Meanwhile, deforestation is ramping up on Nende as logging roads multiply and displace the island’s old growth rainforest.

A new election brings little hope for Solomon Islands’ vanishing forests
- Longstanding allegations of corruption plague forest governance in the Solomon Islands, with residents and NGOs claiming government officials are allowing logging to illegally penetrate primary forests on community and ancestral land.
- Satellite data show several surges in deforestation across the country since the beginning of the year.
- Many were hoping the Solomon Islands’ recent national election would bring needed change. However, Manasseh Sogavare was elected Prime Minster last month, a move observers say is, at best, an extension of the status quo.
- In the meantime, mining companies appear to be moving in to extract mineral resources from areas that have been logged.

’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.

Illegal logging poised to wipe Cambodian wildlife sanctuary off the map
- Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary has lost more than 60 percent of its forest cover since it was established in 1993, with most of the loss occurring since 2010.
- A big driver behind the deforestation in Beng Per and in many other Cambodian protected areas was Economic Land Concessions (ELCs), which are areas of land – often in protected areas – allocated by the government to corporations aiming to invest in agriculture for short-term financial gains. Large areas of Beng Per were carved out for ELCs in 2011.
- While the Cambodian government stopped officially allocating ELCs in 2012, deforestation is still hitting the park hard as small-scale illegal logging gobbles up remaining forest outside ELC areas. And once the land is denuded, it’s considered fair game for new plantation development.
- Experts working on the ground say corruption is fuelling the widespread destruction of Cambodia’s forests, and is deeply entrenched in many different sectors including the federal government and local forest protection agencies.

Huge rubber plantation in Cameroon halts deforestation following rebuke
- A massive rubber plantation operated by rubber supply group Halcyon Agri through its subsidiary Sudcam has come under fire in recent years for what many say are unsustainable environmental practices, lack of transparency, and negative impacts on local communities. Reports document the displacement of indigenous communities to make way for development, and felling has occurred right up against the intact rainforest of Cameroon’s Dja Faunal Reserve.
- Initially silent about the rebuke of Sudcam, Halcyon unveiled a number of sustainability measures late last year and has actively sought to open a dialogue with NGOs. In response to criticisms, the company issued a “cease and desist” order on logging in Sudcam, developed a Sustainable Natural Rubber Supply Chain Policy, and created an independent Sustainability Council.
- Satellite imagery indicates no further clearing has happened since the deforestation ban was issued in Dec. 2018.
- Representatives of conservation NGOs that have been critical of the plantation in the past say they are pleased with Halcyon Agri’s response, and hope that the company will continue to improve conditions at its Sudcam plantation.

The world lost a Belgium-size area of old growth rainforest in 2018
- Newly released data indicate the tropics lost around 120,000 square kilometers (around 46,300 square miles) of tree cover last year – or an area of forest the size of Nicaragua.
- The data indicate 36,400 square kilometers of this loss – an area the size of Belgium – occurred in primary forest. This number is an increase over the annual average, and the third-highest amount since data collection began.
- Indonesia primary forest loss dropped to the lowest level recorded since 2002. Brazil’s numbers are also down compared to the last two years, but still higher than the 18-year average.
- Meanwhile, primary rainforest deforestation appears to be on the rise elsewhere. Colombia recorded the highest level since measurement began at the beginning of the century. Madagascar had the highest proportion of its tropical forest lost in 2018; Ghana experienced the biggest proportional change over 2017.

Peru’s first autonomous indigenous gov’t strikes back against deforestation
- The Wampis is an indigenous group comprised of thousands of members whose ancestors have lived in the Amazon rainforest of northern Peru for centuries.
- Mounting incursions by loggers, miners and oil prospectors, as well as governance changes that favored industrial exploitation, left the Wampis increasingly worried about the future of their home. Representatives said they realized that only by developing a strong, legal organizational structure would they have a voice to defend their people and the survival of their forest.
- After numerous meetings among their leaders, representatives of 27 Wampis communities, with a combined population of 15,000 people, came together in 2015. They invoked international recognition of the rights of indigenous people and on Nov. 29 declared the creation of an autonomous territorial government called the Wampis Nation to defend its territory and resources from the growing pressures of extractive industries.
- Wampis Nation territory covers an area of rainforest one-third the size of the Netherlands along northern Peru’s border with Ecuador. Leaders say their newfound autonomy and authority has allowed them to directly expel illegal deforestation activities from their land.

Deforestation diminishes access to clean water, study finds
- A recent study compared deforestation data and information on household access to clean water in Malawi.
- The scientists found that the country lost 14 percent of its forest between 2000 and 2010, which had the same effect on access to safe drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall.
- With higher rainfall variability expected in today’s changing climate, the authors suggest that a larger area of forest in countries like Malawi could be a buffer against the impacts of climate change.

‘It’s getting worse’: National parks in Honduras hit hard by palm oil
- Production of oil palm has risen by nearly 560 percent in Honduras over the past two decades, making the country the eighth-largest producer worldwide and number three in the Americas.
- By 2010, Jeanette Kawas National Park, which sits along the coast in northern Honduras, had lost approximately 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) to oil palm plantations. Nearby Punta Izopo National Park and Cuero y Salado National Park lost more than 8 percent and 4 percent of their tree cover, respectively, between 2001 and 2017.
- Small-scale farmers, some living legally within park borders, are clearing deeper and deeper sections of forest. A growing number of residents are cultivating small-scale oil palm plantations and have become off-the-books suppliers for companies operating in the area, which has become a source of serious concern for conservation organizations.
- Local officials say that due to bureaucratic red tape, cutting down even illegally planted oil palm trees can put them at risk of legal repercussions, making it difficult to restore forest after it’s been converted to oil palm plantations.

Climb confirms that the world’s tallest tropical tree tops 100 meters
- A team of scientists has found and mapped the tallest tree on record in the tropics, standing at more than 100 meters (328 feet).
- Climber Unding Jami with the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership scaled the tree and verified its height.
- The structure of the tree, determined from airborne lidar surveys as well as laser scans from the ground and drone photographs, provides insight into why these trees grow so high.

Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Tapirs could be key in helping degraded rainforests bounce back
- A new study has found that lowland tapirs spend more time in degraded forests than in pristine Amazon rainforest.
- They also defecate and deposit three times more seeds in these degraded areas.
- The results indicate that tapirs may help human-affected forests recover and grow back.

New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
- A new study maps out how disruptive human changes to the environment affect the individual ranges of more than 5,400 mammal, bird and amphibian species around the world.
- Almost a quarter of the species are threatened by human impacts in more than 90 percent of their range, and at least one human impact occurred in an average of 38 percent of the range of a given species.
- The study also identified “cool” spots, where concentrations of species aren’t negatively impacted by humans.
- The researchers say these “refugia” are good targets for conservation efforts.

European Parliament to vote on timber legality agreement with Vietnam
- The European Parliament begins debate March 11 on a resolution to consent to the recently signed Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with Vietnam on the trade of timber and timber products from the Southeast Asian country.
- The VPA is the result of nearly eight years of negotiations aimed at stopping the flow of illegally harvested timber into the EU.
- Members of parliament are expected to vote in favor of the resolution on March 12, though officials in the EU and outside observers have voiced concerns about the legality of the wood imported into Vietnam from other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Proximity to towns stretches giraffe home ranges
- A recent study found that female giraffes that live close to towns have larger home ranges than those living further afield.
- The study’s authors believe that large human settlements reduce giraffes’ access to food and water.
- The team cites the importance of understanding the size of the area that giraffe populations need to survive to address the precipitous decline in the animal’s numbers across Africa in the past 30 years.

Brazil to receive first-ever results-based REDD+ payment, but concerns remain
- The U.N.’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved the first proposal for REDD+ emissions reductions payments, totaling $96 million for around 19 million tons of emissions reductions.
- However, GFC board members and observer NGOs expressed concern over how the emissions reductions are calculated.
- A study published last month sheds light on the difficulty of accurately calculating changes in forest cover and calls for a more standardized approach.

New study finds young forests have a huge climate impact
- A recent study finds young forests sequester more carbon per year than old-growth forests. In total, it estimates that intact, old-growth forests sequestered 950 million to 1.11 billion metric tons of carbon per year while younger forests – those that have been growing less than 140 years – stored between 1.17 and 1.66 billion metric tons per year.
- The study also estimates that the world’s regenerating forests stand to uptake a further 50 billion metric tons of carbon as they grow.
- These findings upend conventional wisdom that old-growth tropical rainforests are the planet’s biggest carbon sinks.
- The authors say their research could be used to improve forest management and help mitigate climate change.

DRC’s Virunga to welcome visitors again after 8-month closure
- Escalating violence in mid-2018, resulting in the deaths of seven park rangers, forced the closure of Virunga National Park to visitors.
- The park is known for its diverse wildlife, especially its mountain gorillas, as well as its active volcano, but its location in eastern DRC is one of the most volatile regions on earth.
- After assessing the security of the park, officials will reopen stable areas for visitors on Feb. 15 interested in trekking to see the gorillas and to visit the rim of the volcano.

Copper mine destroying forests in Panama’s Mesoamerican Biological Corridor
- A copper mine owned by Minera Panama is being developed in part of Panama’s portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which connects wildlife habitat in seven countries of Central America and southern Mexico.
- Conservationists say forest has been severely affected by mining-caused deforestation that began 10 years ago. Community members say mine development has affected their crops and water supplies.
- The Environmental Advocacy Center of Panama, an environmental non-governmental organization, alleges that the company operates under an illegal contract. Panama’s Supreme Court of Justice ruled in favor of the Center’s complaint in September 2018.
- Despite the ruling, construction is continuing and the mine is expected to begin operation in early 2019. Satellite images taken between September 8 and November 24 show recent expansion of deforestation in the mine’s area of influence.

Critically endangered Philippine eagle hangs on despite horde of threats
- Once inhabiting every island in the Philippines, the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) – the world’s longest eagle – now occupies a fraction of its former range and is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN.
- Habitat loss is the eagle’s biggest threat. More than 70 percent of the Philippine’s forests have been cleared since the 1970s to make room for urban and agricultural expansion, pushing the eagles higher into the mountains and fragmenting their available habitat.
- Satellite data show recent encroachment into primary forest in several areas of remaining eagle habitat. Conservationists say one of these areas – a protected watershed area on the island of Mindanao – is controlled by armed groups, which reap profits from illegal logging enterprises. Eagle habitat further north on the island of Luzon was recently affected a strong typhoon, which hit the east coast of the island in September and which the World Meteorological Association attributed to human-caused climate change.
- Conservationists worry a national ban on open-pit mining will be overturned, leading to more habitat loss as mining companies rush to exploit gold and copper deposits, and that hydroelectric projects will further reduce nesting sites for the eagles.

Brazil could lose Nepal-size area of rainforest due to policy revision
- Brazil’s Forest Act requires landowners living in the country’s Amazon region set aside 80 percent of their private land for native vegetation. But when the law was revised in 2012, a paragraph was added that says this 80 percent requirement can be relaxed to 50 percent if a state protects more than 65 percent of its public land.
- A new study finds that this revision means that an area of the Brazilian Amazon between 65,000 and 154,000 square kilometers in size could lose its protected status.
- Most of the area under threat is comprised of primary forest with high levels of biodiversity and massive stores of carbon. Researchers warn the legal deforestation of these private forest reserves could stand in the way of the country’s emissions reduction targets.
- The study’s authors recommend the paragraph be revised, adjusted or removed before it has a chance to take effect and result in deforestation.

Haiti may lose all primary forest by 2035, mass extinction underway
- Analysis of satellite imagery and aerial photographs indicate that all of Haiti’s remaining primary forest will disappear in less than two decades if current deforestation rates continue. Results indicate primary forest cover in Haiti shrank from 4.4 percent in 1988 to just 0.32 percent in 2016, and that 42 of Haiti’s 50 largest mountains have lost all of their primary forest cover.
- These forests are home to endangered animals found nowhere else in the world; researchers say the country is already experiencing a mass extinction event due to habitat loss.
- Deforestation-intensified flooding has also been implicated in thousands of human deaths.
- Researchers say Haiti’s forest loss is driven largely by charcoal production and agriculture.

Congo Basin rainforest may be gone by 2100, study finds
- Satellite data indicate the Congo Basin lost an area of forest larger than Bangladesh between 2000 and 2014.
- Researchers found that small-scale farming was the biggest driver, contributing to around 84 percent of deforestation.
- This kind of farming is primarily done for subsistence by families that have no other livelihood options.
- The study finds that at current trends, all primary rainforest in the Congo Basin could be cleared by the end of the century.

Peru seizes plane with 30kg of cocaine in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park
- Last month, an aircraft was intercepted in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park by the Anti-Drug Directorate of the National Police of Peru. It was carrying multiple passengers, who engaged in gunfire with police.
- A bag containing 30 kilograms of alkaloid cocaine found inside the plane.
- Cocaine is produced from the leaves of coca plants. Bahuaja-Sonene has the largest area of illegal coca cultivation of any protected area, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with at least 118 hectares (292 acres) of coca grown within the park.

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.

Scientists urge greater protection of Brazil’s secondary forests
- New research indicates that even after 40 years of recovery, fast-growing tropical forests in Brazil house far fewer species and sequester less carbon than their primary counterparts.
- The study finds the most-recovered secondary forests surveyed had around 80 percent the biodiversity and carbon of nearby primary forests.
- To allow greater recovery of secondary forests and the wildlife and carbon they house, the researchers say policies should be put in place to better protect these forests and give them the time they need to mature properly.
- However, they caution that enacting policy is only one part of the solution, and urge more funding and attention be given to monitoring and enforcement of forest protection regulations.

What’s causing deforestation? New study reveals global drivers
- Recent advances in satellite-based forest monitoring technology have helped conservationists locate where deforestation may be happening. However, limitations in knowing the causes behind canopy loss have hindered efforts to stop it.
- A new study released this week provides a step forward toward this goal, identifying the major drivers of tree cover loss around the world.
- Overall, it finds 27 percent of all forest loss — 50,000 square kilometers per year — is caused by permanent commodity-driven deforestation. In other words, an area of forest a quarter of the size of India was felled to grow commodity crops over 15 years. The next-biggest driver of forest loss worldwide is forestry at 26 percent; wildfire and shifting agriculture amounting to 23 percent and 24 percent, respectively. The study finds less than 1 percent of global forest loss was attributable to urbanization.
- The study’s authors found commodity-driven deforestation remained constant throughout their 15-year study period, which they say indicates corporate zero-deforestation agreements may not be working in many places. They hope their findings will help increase accountability and transparency in global supply chains.

Colombia: Govt rushes to save national park from rampant deforestation
- Reports find more than 3 percent of Tinigua’s forest cover was cleared between February and April 2018. Officials worry the situation will worsen in the near future.
- The Secretary of Environment of the Colombian region of Meta says that the government and other entities are preparing combat deforestation.
- Tinigua Park is the only place in Colombia that connects the Orinoquía, the Andes and the Amazon. The park serves as a corridor for animals such as jaguars, mountain lions and brown woolly monkeys.

After logging, activists hope to extend protections for Bialowieza Forest
- Bialoweiza Forest straddles Poland and Belarus and is Europe’s largest remaining lowland old growth forest, home to wildlife that has disappeared from much of the rest of Europe. In March 2016, the government approved a plan to triple industrial logging in Poland’s Bialoweiza forest. The government argued it was the only way to combat a spruce bark beetle outbreak, but environmentalists believed that was largely an excuse to give access to the state-run logging regime.
- According to watchdog organizations, loggers cut 190,000 cubic meters of wood in 2017. This amounts to around 160,000-180,000 trees and affects an area of about 1,900 hectares. It also represents the most trees cut in the forest in any one year since 1987 when Poland was under a communist government.
- In May 2018, Europe’s highest court ruled the logging illegal, noting that the government’s own documents showed that logging was a bigger threat than the beetles, which are a part of natural, cyclical process that is likely exacerbated by climate change. Poland, threatened with high fines, backed down—and the logging stopped.
- Activists and environmentalists are calling for expanding national park status – which currently applies to just a small portion of Poland’s portion of the forest – over its entirety. But they worry a government panel of experts will once again push to open Bialoweiza to logging.

Orangutan forest school in Indonesia takes on its first eight students
- A forest school in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, funded by the Vienna-based animal welfare organization Four Paws and run by the local organization Jejak Pulang, has just started training its first eight orangutan orphans to learn the skills they need to live independently in the forest.
- Borneo’s orangutans are in crisis, with more than 100,000 lost since 1999 through direct killings and loss of habitat, particularly to oil palm and pulpwood plantations.
- Security forces often confiscate juvenile orangutans under 7 years of age, and without their mothers to teach them the skills they need, they cannot be released back into the forest.
- Jejak Pulang’s team of 15 orangutan caretakers, a biologist, two veterinarians and the center’s director aim to prepare the orphaned orangutans for independence.

The diversity of biodiversity: Connecting shrews, ants and slime molds with carbon storage
- Research has shown that, in some cases, high-carbon forests support high levels of biodiversity.
- But a recent study, which looked at a wide variety of species groups, demonstrates that regrowth forests can support a greater number of representatives of some species groups.
- The findings support the conclusion that recovering forests should be included in conservation planning alongside old-growth forests.

Scientists find Europe’s last primary forests
- A study finds 3.4 million acres (13,760 square kilometers or 5,313 square miles) in Europe fit the definition of primary forest set by the FAO.
- These forests are scattered around Europe and provide important habitat for wildlife.
- But the researchers warn that less than half are strictly protected, meaning that logging is legal in the majority.
- They urge the EU to increase the official level of protection granted to these forests.

Taller, older trees fare better during Amazon droughts, study finds
- A new study finds that droughts will likely be harder on shorter, younger trees than on taller, older ones. But, conversely, smaller trees seem to be better at coping with higher temperatures.
- They discovered that photosynthesis in forests comprised of trees that are shorter than 20 meters is three times more sensitive to rainfall inconsistency than forests where trees average 30 meters or more. The researchers think this is because taller trees are older, and older trees have deeper roots that allow them to tap into moister soil.
- In the past few years, there’s been a noticeable drying trend in parts of the Amazon, one that scientists fear will only intensify as climate change ramps up.

Save intact forests for humanity’s sake, urge experts
- The world’s largest forests can help solve some of the biggest problems facing humanity, but only if we move to safeguard them, argues a New York Times op-ed by Tom Lovejoy and John Reid.
- Lovejoy and Reid make a case for protecting the planet’s last “intact forest landscapes” for the role they can play in addressing critical social and environmental challenges.
- They argue that while the extent of intact forests have declined by 7 percent so far this century, there are “practical and affordable” options for protecting them.
- “aving forests more than just a nice thing to do; it’s a survival skill we’re going to need over the next hundred years or more,” Reid told Mongabay in an interview.

Rubber plantation in Cameroon edges closer to UNESCO World Heritage Site
- Satellite data indicate the rubber plantation, operated by China-owned Sud Cameroun Hévéa (Sudcam), is currently less than one kilometer away from intact primary forest habitat. Development is ongoing amidst concerns about threats to endangered species within and outside the park, as well as alleged violations of community land rights and political affiliations with the Cameroonian government.
- The expansion of this rubber plantation is “by far the most devastating new clearing of forest for industrial agriculture in the Congo Basin,” according to Greenpeace.
- Rubber expansion also stands to affect the 9,500 people who live in villages on the reserve’s periphery. According to Greenpeace Africa, Sudcam did not obtain Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) from these communities before acquiring the land and residents have claimed that subsistence farmland has been taken away with little or no compensation.
- Members of the conservation community say that in order for rubber development to happen sustainably in Cameroon, companies need to collaborate with conservation NGOs to create robust buffers around wetlands and streams, develop wildlife corridors, establish areas to filter the runoff of toxins and sediment, and create bushmeat alternatives. They also recommend regulatory actions be taken in the U.S. and EU, which are major buyers of rubber.

Sarawak makes 80% forest preservation commitment, but some have doubts
- The Malaysian state of Sarawak is committing to the preservation of 80 percent of its land area as primary and secondary forest, according to an announcement by Sarawak Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg.
- According to data, concession boundaries for oil palm and other kinds of tree plantations covered 32.7 percent of Sarawak’s land area as of 2010/11, suggesting that if Sarawak is to fulfill its commitment to preserve 80 percent of its land as primary and secondary forest, then it may need to cancel some of these concessions.
- The director of environmental and human rights watchdog organization Earthsight expressed doubts that Sarawak will follow through on the commitment, and recommends the state increase transparency and crack down on illegal logging.

Oil palm, rubber could trigger ‘storm’ of deforestation in the Congo Basin
- Earthsight documented approximately 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of deforestation to clear the way for new rubber and oil palm plantations in Central Africa’s rainforest countries in the past five years.
- The team also found that companies in five Central African countries hold licenses for industrial agriculture on another 8,400 square kilometers (3,243 square miles) of land.
- The investigators warn that thousands of hectares of forest could fall to industrial agriculture in the COngo Basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest, if governance of the forest doesn’t improve.

Why intact forests are important
- Overall, the world lost more than 7 percent of its intact forest landscapes in just over a decade, a trend that appears to be accelerating.
- A new study discusses how intact forests are critically important for mitigating climate change, maintaining water supplies, safeguarding biodiversity and even protecting human health.
- However, it warns that global policies aimed at reducing deforestation are not putting enough emphasis on the preservation of the world’s dwindling intact forests, instead relying on a one-size-fits-all approach that may end up doing more harm than good.
- The researchers urge more inclusion and prioritization of intact forests in global commitments and policies aimed at curbing deforestation.

Tropical forest fragmentation nearing ‘critical point,’ study finds
- In addition to having severe repercussions for animals like jaguars and tigers that require vast tracts of connected habitat, forest fragmentation has a big carbon footprint.
- A new physics-based study finds fragmentation of tropical forests may be reaching a threshold past which fragmentation will shoot up sharply. At this threshold, even a relatively small amount of deforestation could lead to dramatic fragmentation – and significant habitat loss and greenhouse gas emissions.
- The team calculated that at current deforestation rates, the number of fragments will increase 33-fold in Central and South America by 2050, and their average size will drop from 17 hectares to 0.25 hectares.

Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon dropped 13 percent in 2017
- A new analysis of satellite imagery and data finds 143,425 hectares of forest were lost in the Peruvian Amazon in 2017, down 13 percent from 2016.
- The analysis identified newly deforestation hotspots in the San Martín and Amazonas regions.
- The main causes of the loss of forest in the Amazon appear to be cultivation of crops, small- and medium-scale ranching, large oil palm plantations and gold mining.

Cattle invade Colombian national park
- An analysis of satellite data shows incursions into La Paya National Park in southern Colombia.
- The data indicate La Paya lost around 9,500 hectares of rainforest between 2001 and 2016.
- Researchers say satellite imagery show evidence that these clearings are being used for cattle pasture.
- Conservationists worry deforestation will continue to rise with the demobilization of Colombia’s FARC rebel group, whose presence in the country’s forests kept logging and agriculture at bay for decades.

Study: RSPO certification prunes deforestation in Indonesia — but not by much
- Oil palm plantations certified as sustainable by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil had less deforestation than non-certified plantations, according to a new analysis.
- Certification’s effect on the incidence of fires and the clearing of forest from peatlands was not statistically significant.
- The research demonstrates that while certification does reduce deforestation, it has not protected very much standing forest from being cut down.

‘They want to occupy and take our land’: Land conflicts increase in Brazil
- Rondônia is one of the most-deforested states in the Brazilian Amazon, with vast tracts cleared for agriculture.
- An investigation reveals that as deforestation of protected areas has risen in the state, so have allegations of attacks against the Indigenous communities.
- As budget cuts deplete resources aimed at protecting these communities, many are worried this violence stands to worsen in the months and years to come.

‘Much deeper than we expected’: Huge peatland offers up more surprises
- Scientists recently discovered the world’s biggest tropical peatland in the Congo Basin rainforest of Central Africa. The peatland straddles the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.
- Roughly the size of England, the massive peatland is estimated to contain more than 30 billion metric tons of carbon — equivalent to three years of global fossil fuel emissions.
- When the scientists went back to investigate the peatland further, they discovered the peat along its edges is deeper than they thought. This means it may contain more peat — and, thus, more carbon — than they originally thought.
- The scientists are racing to learn more about the peatland as loggers move to fell and drain the forests above it to make way for roads and developments like palm oil plantations. Meanwhile, local communities are hoping for greater protection of the region as government officials try to drum up more support for conservation initiatives at this week’s UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

Indonesia races against time to save new orangutan species
- With an estimated population of less than 800, the newly described Tapanuli orangutan is already at risk of extinction due to habitat destruction and fragmentation.
- The Indonesian government will come up with a strategy to protect the orangutan, including the establishment of protected forest areas and wildlife sanctuaries.
- The government will also review a plan to build a hydroelectric plant in an area with the highest known density of Tapanuli orangutans.

The Eighth Great Ape: New orangutan species discovered in Sumatra
- A study indicates what was once assumed to be an isolated population of the Sumatran orangutan is in fact a distinct species.
- The Batang Toru orangutan differs from the Sumatran orangutan in morphology, behavior and genetics. Genomic analysis suggests it diverged from other orangutan species 3.4 million years ago.
- There are fewer than 800 Batang Toru orangutans in existence, making it the rarest of all the great apes.
- It is highly threatened by habitat loss. The study says a hydropower plant planned for the area could affect 8 percent of the species’ remaining forest habitat.

Estonia’s trees: Valued resource or squandered second chance?
- Soviet rule in the early 20th century led to the regrowth of many of the country’s forests. Today, Estonia is Europe’s fourth-most forested country.
- As private land ownership and industry expand in the country, however, so are the pressures to log.
- Estonia’s Ministry of Environment claims that Estonia’s forests are currently expanding in size, but conservation scientists say the opposite is true. Satellite data indicate the country gained 90,000 hectares of tree cover while losing 285,000.
- Local conservation organizations are pressing the government to adopt more sustainable practices, including a ban on logging during part of the year and the cessation of a new logging amendment that would lower the felling age of spruce trees.

Is Norwegian money funding Congo deforestation?
- A recent report by conservation NGO Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is decrying what they say is Norwegian government complicity in funding a project they allege could result in the clearance of vast tracts of Congo rainforest and the release of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
- RFUK’s report spotlights a project funded through Norway’s Central Africa Forest Initiative (CAFI) that would increase the area comprised by logging concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by 20 million hectares. Its analysis found the concessions stand to include 10,000 square kilometers of peat swamp, and if actively logged, could release as much as 3.8 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
- Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment says the report is overblown and the situation more complicated than RFUK contends.
- Per F. I. Pharo, director of the Government of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, said an amended project proposal is under review and will not be accepted unless various conditions are met: “Among the key recommendations Norway has made to the program document is the importance that the program document should not conclude on important policy choices that should be the product of a thorough and inclusive process at country level.”

Conserving the World’s Remaining Intact Forests (commentary)
- Intact forests are among the few places on earth where native trees and animals can fulfill their ecological roles outside the influence of industrial humankind.
- Some interpret “intact” to mean absent the influence of people, but people have lived within forests the world over for millennia and we are only beginning to understand how they have – and continue to – influence them.
- We cannot solve our most pressing environmental and development problems by compromising the few areas that remain whole.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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