I find it hard to believe Jane Goodall is gone. She was more than an icon to me. She was a friend, a mentor, and someone whose presence—whether with presidents, students, or my own children—felt like both a gift and a lesson. Our friendship began in the most Jane way possible: an email that opened, […]
In 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted a new resolution laying the first groundwork toward a new legally binding international agreement to end plastic pollution. The treaty will contain ambitious targets covering every stage of the plastic life cycle, including introducing restrictive measures against the production and consumption of single-use plastics, the development of […]
This series, Voices from the Land, brings together opinion pieces led and written by Indigenous peoples from around the world. Through these commentaries, we share our lived realities and reflections on urgent issues shaping our time — environmental destruction, our relationship with nature, and systemic injustice. We write from the heart of our communities, where […]
Call it a crossroads. Ecological decline is accelerating in too many places at once; institutions that once limited the damage are wobbling; the information channels we rely on to coordinate action are clogged. In tropical forests alone, annual primary forest loss has climbed by 50% in the 2020s relative to the 2000s. Fires, drought and fragmentation have […]
A journey into Nepal’s Limi Valley is always profound. We at the Himalayan Wolves Project first visited the area more than a decade ago and were immediately struck by its high-altitude, wind-sculpted landscapes, and the extraordinary diversity of wildlife inhabiting them: Himalayan wolf (Canis lupus chanco), snow leopard (Panthera uncia), wild yak (Bos mutus), kiang […]
The sun is already sharp against the terraced slopes, the scent of thyme and rosemary rising from the rocky ground. Dry wind whistles through esparto grass, and somewhere in the distance is the soft clang of goat bells. A partridge erupts from the scrub. No roads. No fields. No fences. Just the land, as it […]
The forest in northern Gabon didn’t look like a battleground. It was a patchwork of hunting trails and village paths, home to fruit trees and ancestral graves. When a logging concession encroached and the community of Massaha protested, their pleas traveled poorly through official channels. Then the story was reported, documented and read by […]
The gorilla should have vanished. In the late 1980s, the mountain gorilla clung to survival in the misted borderlands of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Poaching, snares, and civil conflict made extinction feel like a timetable. What changed was not a miracle but a grind: rangers risking their lives to keep […]
“Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people’s property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert […]
I write this while waiting for my tablet to die. Tomorrow, I’ll return to air-conditioning, stable WiFi and refrigeration, but here in Long Moh, deep in the remote Upper Baram region of Sarawak, there has been no electricity for two weeks. The fans sit useless and mocking in the corners, and a sudden downpour is […]
Recently, a listener to Mongabay’s podcast sent us an email thanking us for our work and asking, “how can you keep going?” amid all the systems at play that are destroying nature. They wondered how to do even more to save our planet and feel less helpless and depressed. These are good questions. I take […]
Having receded by 350 million hectares (almost 865 million acres) since 1850, trends in Latin American forests are now inflecting away from further losses of tree-covered habitats and toward their recovery. As we explain in our book Reversing Deforestation, published by Stanford University Press in December 2024, this change stems from reduced population growth and […]
Cambodia’s Indigenous peoples have a deep relationship to forests, land and natural resources, which they traditionally manage in their cultural practices and everyday lives. There are 22 distinct Indigenous communities with an estimated 172,980 people, accounting for 1.11% of Cambodia’s total population. Indigenous peoples are well-known for being forest caretakers and passing down forest care […]
For millennia, Indigenous peoples have cultivated diverse, adaptive and evolving food systems, rooted in deep relationships with land, water and ecosystems. Their traditional knowledge embeds agroecological principles, emphasizing balance with nature, circularity and intergenerational equity. Beyond managing and preserving some of the world’s richest ecosystems, Indigenous peoples are custodians of countless landraces and ancient species […]
Despite being the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal — more than elephants, rhinos and tigers combined — pangolins remain virtually unknown to the public. These shy, scaly creatures are primarily hunted for their scales, which are frequently used in traditional Asian medicines. Despite international protections, illegal trafficking of these animals continues, and with it, the […]
If tropical rainforests are the lungs of the Earth, then 2024 was a year of respiratory failure. Fires, fueled by climate extremes and human recklessness, tore through vast stretches of forest at an unprecedented pace. According to satellite data from the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute, 6.7 million hectares of tropical primary […]
Tropical forests help regulate the global climate, host irreplaceable biodiversity and provide fresh water resources. Plus forests in general are the source of livelihoods for more than a billion people — so our very existence depends on them. However, because their value is not reflected in markets, these areas are often converted to other uses. Conserving our tropical forests […]
I’m in Nice, France, this week attending the U.N. Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. If my Tiaki Moana colleagues have any say over it, stars and lighthouses are going to be a main topic of conversation here […]
In 2024, the world lost almost 6.7 million hectares (16.5 million acres) of primary tropical forest, the fastest rate ever recorded. The world’s forests are still falling prey to mining, logging and agriculture, but as the climate crisis intensifies, for the first time on record, the leading cause of tropical primary forest loss is fire. […]
The “blue economy” emerged as a popular vision for sustainable ocean development during the 2010s, as communities across the world grappled with challenges of declining ocean health, economic crises and stalling development outcomes. Today, it is a centerpiece of many global sustainable ocean agendas, including those of the World Bank, U.N. Environment Programme and Asian […]
