WORLD RAINFOREST

By Rhett A. Butler  Last updated Aug 14, 2020

The Tropical Rainforest - information on tropical forests, deforestation, and biodiversity

 

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The Latest News on Rainforests

Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities (Feb 18 2025)
- In January and February 2025, Goma, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province, and Bukavu, the second-largest city in the country, fell to the rebel armed group M23 (the March 23 Movement). The group also captured the town of Minova.
- Human rights and environmental activists who were among the few to denounce illegal extractive activities and protect natural resources in the mineral-rich region are now hiding out of fear for their lives due to the nature of their work. Some conservationists have also lost their salaries as the U.S. government suspends USAID foreign aid.
- The spread of the armed conflict is accentuating the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the entire region by multiple actors, environmentalists say, contributing to deforestation and erosion of biodiversity.
- It’s also documented that the M23 is earning a substantial amount of money by illegally smuggling and laundering minerals, like tantalum, from the DRC.

Volunteer radio station brings old media to remote Sumatran tiger habitat (Feb 18 2025)
- A volunteer radio station established by environmental nonprofits and staffed by local community members is bringing news and entertainment to villages around Bukit Rimbang Baling Wildlife Sanctuary, a Sumatran tiger habitat in Indonesia’s Riau province.
- Young volunteers at the station interned at a radio station on Java Island, where they learned to broadcast and repair transmitters in the remote Sumatran forest, which is inaccessible by road and has almost no cellphone service.
- The radio station offers a means for young people in disparate communities to share ideas and information on the economy and environment.

Short-term air pollution exposure impairs focus & cognitive function: Study (Feb 17 2025)
A growing body of research suggests that air pollution affects our brains. Lifetime exposure to poor air quality has been associated with disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. A new study finds even short-term exposure to polluted air can cause challenges for cognitive functioning, including selective attention and emotional regulation. Specifically, researchers […]

Amid bombs and chaos, Goma’s displaced residents share their fears and hopes (Feb 17 2025)
- Fighting between the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the M23 armed group around Goma has displaced and upended life for hundreds of thousands of people.
- Many have fled camps for internally displaced people and taken refuge in host families’ homes, schools and churches amid widespread looting and killing.
- Still, many residents in and around Goma say they maintain hope for a peaceful future.

Conservation groups look for new strategies, tech to halt vaquita decline (Feb 17 2025)
- Experts believe fewer than 10 vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, survive in Mexico’s Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, the only place the species lives.
- Illegal fishing has decimated their population, forcing environmental groups to come up with innovative conservation solutions.
- Vaquitas get caught in illegal gillnets that fishermen use to target totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder can go for tens of thousands of dollars per kilo on the international black market.
- Some environmental groups have focused on patrolling vaquita habitats with ships, sonar, radar and drones, while others maintain that dismantling the organized crime groups behind the totoaba trade is a better use of resources.

Indonesia’s militarized crackdown on illegal forest use sparks human rights concerns (Feb 17 2025)
- Indonesia’s president has tasked the military with combating illegal forest activities, raising concerns about human rights violations and evictions of Indigenous and local communities.
- The regulation risks criminalizing Indigenous communities while favoring large-scale corporations that exploit forests.
- Activists warn of systemic corruption allowing corporations to evade penalties while smaller actors face harsher consequences.
- The militarized approach marks a regression to authoritarian-era practices, undermining democracy and environmental justice, activists say.

After LA, fire crisis reaches Latin America — from Mexico to Argentina (Feb 17 2025)
- As the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, Latin American countries are facing complex circumstances when it comes to defending themselves against forest fires — and urban fires.
- In Argentinian Patagonia, fires have destroyed more than 10,100 hectares (24,958 acres) of native forests, including areas of Nahuel Huapi National Park. There are also active fires in Chile that have killed three firefighters.
- Mongabay Latam talked to specialists in order to understand what is happening in some of the territories that have been hit hardest by the fires.
- Experts agree that it is urgent for Latin American governments, which often have limited capacity, to double down on their prevention efforts and allocate sufficient resources to fire management strategies, taking timely action against forest fires.

Wave of arrests as Madagascar shuts down tortoise trafficking network (Feb 17 2025)
- A crackdown on the illegal trade in Malagasy tortoises has led to a series of recent arrests.
- Following the arrest of a Tanzanian national with 800 tortoises in December 2024, officials said a major investigation had uncovered a major international trafficking network that led to the arrests of more than 20 people in Madagascar and Tanzania.
- Wildlife trade monitoring watchdog TRAFFIC says more than 30,000 trafficked radiated tortoises were seized between 2000 and 2021; the critically endangered Malagasy tortoises are in demand internationally.

Wild Targets (Feb 17 2025)
The illicit wildlife trade is one of the most lucrative black-market industries in the world, behind only drug trafficking, counterfeit goods, and human trafficking. Wild Targets is a Mongabay video series that explores the cultural beliefs behind the pervasiveness of poaching, as well as the innovative and inspiring solutions that aim to combat the trade. […]

Rice fields of India host valuable, but disappearing, wild edibles (Feb 17 2025)
Rice fields across India host a variety of wild, edible plants that Indigenous communities value for their nutritional and medicinal properties. But these “weeds” are rapidly disappearing. To revive them, some individuals and organizations in the country are making efforts to document and preserve their diversity, reports contributor Sharmila Vaidyanathan for Mongabay India. For instance, […]

How a Philippine town is dealing with the fallout of its own popularity (Feb 17 2025)
El Nido in the Philippines was once a small fishing town, but promotion on social media over the last decade led to a dramatic influx of tourists. Tourism has helped the local economy, but also resulted in coastal water contamination, Mongabay’s Keith Anthony Fabro reports. Home to 50,000 residents, El Nido welcomed 10 times that […]

Order restored in Indonesia as fishers recapture scores of farmed crocodiles (Feb 17 2025)
- On Jan. 13, several hours of extreme rain over Indonesia’s Batam archipelago, a one-hour ferry from Singapore, caused a breach in the perimeter of a large saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) farm on the east of Bulan Island.
- More than 100 of the stir-crazy predators reportedly escaped in the storm, causing panic among the population while halting local fishing activities.
- Elected representatives in Batam have since called for the farm to be closed, citing tax irregularities.
- The global supply of reptile skins remains concentrated in northern Australia for the fashion industry, which claims to operate high animal welfare standards despite allegations of extensive suffering on farms.

China’s pangolin scale trade declines, study shows, but smuggling persists (Feb 14 2025)
- A study of Chinese court records from 2010 to 2023 found that pangolin scale seizures peaked in 2018 and have since declined; while the authors attribute this to increased enforcement and public awareness in China, independent observers cite global factors like COVID-19 and stricter regulations in source and transit countries.
- The study identified six key cities in China — Bozhou, Chongzuo, Dehong, Beijing, Hong Kong and Kunming — as major transit hubs for the illegal pangolin scale trade, with most scales originating from Africa, particularly Nigeria, and smuggled via seaports and overland routes.
- The clandestine nature of the trade, weak enforcement in rural and border regions, and underreporting mean the true scale of the trade is likely far greater than reported, with corruption and advanced smuggling techniques enabling illegal activities to persist.
- Researchers call for strengthened law enforcement, community engagement, outreach to traditional medicine practitioners, and international cooperation, alongside legislative reforms to ban the domestic use of pangolin scales in traditional Chinese medicine and close wildlife trafficking loopholes.

Climate change made LA fires more likely amid hot, dry conditions: Report (Feb 14 2025)
The devastating fires that swept through parts of Los Angeles, U.S., in January raged for more than three weeks before being fully contained. In that time, they burned through more than 20,200 hectares (50,000 acres) of forests and homes, killing at least 29 people. A recent report from World Weather Attribution (WWA) finds that climate […]

Conservation education is about people too: Interview with Gabon’s Léa Moussavou (Feb 14 2025)
- With nearly 90% forest cover, Gabon is home to a biodiverse landscape that prompts the need for both conservation and environmental education among young generations.
- Environmental educator Léa Coralie Moussavou stresses that conservation is not just about protecting wildlife and forests; it’s also about helping local communities.
- Moussavou spoke to Mongabay about her role as the head of community education and environmental awareness at the NGO Conservation Justice.
- “We need to make people understand that everything is linked, that we are all in the same boat, and that our project is not about protecting animals at the expense of human beings,” Moussavou said.

The culture of corruption across the Amazon Basin  (Feb 14 2025)
- Across countries in the Amazon Basin corruption remains a deeply entrenched phenomenon as society has a higher tolerance of fraudulent behavior.
- Corruption encompasses many types of behavior, which can subvert multiple publicly funded activities, while spanning multiple sectors and jurisdictions (national, regional, local).
- Non-elite corruption is more acute in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador and less in Colombia, Brazil, Guyana and Suriname, while elite corruption is widespread and flagrant, with wrongdoers enjoying high levels of impunity.

Deforestation boom in Gran Chaco raises alarm over Argentina’s forest law (Feb 14 2025)
- The Gran Chaco was hit by a rise in deforestation in 2024, damaging the dry forest ecosystem that spans an area more than one and a half times the size of California across Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil.
- In 2024, Argentina lost 149,649 hectares (369,791 acres) of its approximately 52.6 million hectares (130 million acres) of Gran Chaco forest — most of it from agriculture and fires, according to a Greenpeace report.
- The problem may stem from a flawed categorization system in which provincial governments are supposed to rate the rigor of forest protections in different areas.
- Critics of the system say it’s out of date and easily manipulated to allow development in forested areas that should otherwise be protected or exploited sustainably.

Small-scale fishers’ role in feeding the planet goes overlooked: Study (Feb 14 2025)
- A new study found that small-scale fishing accounts for at least 40% of catch worldwide and provides employment for 60 million people, more than a third of whom are women.
- Small-scale fishing could provide a significant proportion of the micronutrient intake for the 2.3 billion people on Earth who live near coastlines or inland bodies of water, the study found.
- More than 60% of small-scale fishing catch in the studied countries came from places where small-scale fishers had no formal rights to participate in management and decision-making processes.
- “We wanted to have a paper that provided key findings at the global level for each of these dimensions, so that it will be clear for governments that small-scale fishing cannot continue to be overlooked in terms of policymaking,” one of the study authors told Mongabay.

The key factors fueling conflict in eastern DRC (Feb 14 2025)
- The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has witnessed armed conflicts running for decades, with a recent onslaught by M23, a Rwanda-backed rebel force, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
- Conflicts in eastern DRC stem from ethnic tensions linked to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, political and corporate corruption, and the lingering effects of Western colonialism, exacerbated by natural resource extraction.
- Experts say that minerals are a significant factor in violence, but not the sole cause, even as armed groups like M23 have used their trade for financing operations.
- The ongoing instability in the eastern DRC necessitates a comprehensive approach beyond addressing conflict minerals and delving into the historical roots of the conflict, says an expert.

Ecology vs. development in Karachi: Interview with photographer Salman Baloch (Feb 14 2025)
- Malir, the largest district in Karachi, has long been home to Indigenous Sindhi and Baloch tribes that lived for centuries as communal agrarian societies, dependent on the environment; now, rapid urbanization and development projects threaten the land, water and wildlife.
- Wildlife photographer, activist and writer Salman Baloch has fought against development projects such as the 39-kilometer (24-mile) Malir Expressway and Bahria Town, a 19,000-hectare (46,000-acre) gated suburb of Karachi, both of which pose dire consequences for the region’s wildlife.
- Baloch is also photographically documenting hundreds of bird species that have historically lived in the area.
- Baloch recently spoke to Mongabay about his activism, photography, fears and hopes for the future of Karachi’s wildlife and ecosystems.

In the high Andes, a dream to restore a special forest takes root (Feb 14 2025)
- In 2024, the United Nations recognized seven landmark projects worldwide as outstanding examples of success under its ongoing Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030).
- One of them was Acción Andina (Andean Action), an initiative that has launched 23 restoration and conservation projects focused on the high-altitude Polylepis forests of Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador.
- More than 25,000 people from 200 communities have restored nearly 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of these forest and protected more than 11,250 hectares (27,800 acres) of existing woodland.
- The initiative next aims to expand into Colombia and Venezuela.

Across the world, conservation projects reel after abrupt US funding cuts (Feb 14 2025)
- Along with humanitarian and other forms of aid, the U.S. government is one of the world’s biggest funders of nature conservation projects.
- In 2023 alone, USAID provided $375.4 million to such projects across the world.
- U.S. funding has been spent on a wide range of conservation activities, such as support for wildlife rangers, community conservancies, and forest mapping.
- Sources told Mongabay that the shuttering of USAID and abrupt aid pause has left conservation groups worldwide in a state of uncertainty, with some scaling back their activities and planning to lay off staff.

Two South American scientists win ‘environmental Nobel’ on human-nature divide (Feb 14 2025)
Two scientists from South America won the 2025 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement on Feb. 11 for their work on the often-overlooked connection between human societies and the natural world. The winners, Argentinian ecologist Sandra Díaz and Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Brondízio, will share a $250,000 award, marking the first time individuals from South America have […]

Science aside, we need art & philosophy for global change: Epidemiologist (Feb 14 2025)
Banner image of a rainforest in Borneo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.With deforestation and declining biodiversity linked to emerging infectious diseases, one would think the world should look to science for answers. But Dr. Neil Vora, a former epidemic intelligence service officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says art and philosophy are just as important. In an episode of Mongabay’s weekly […]

Cargill weakens Amazon no-deforestation vow, raising concerns about wider backslide (Feb 13 2025)
Commodity-trading giant Cargill recently signaled that it will weaken its no-deforestation commitments in the Amazon Rainforest, an investigation by Repórter Brasil has revealed. In its latest sustainability report, released in December 2024, Cargill changed how it measures deforestation in its soy supply chain. It had initially committed to following the guidelines of the Amazon Soy […]