Biodiversity
Ecosystems
Meet the activists risking life and limb to protect rivers
In late March of this year, an unusual group of activists gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia for a four-day conference to strategize around stopping destructive hydropower projects across the globe. Hailing from countries as diverse as Chile, Congo, Albania, Mongolia, China, Thailand, and Colombia, they had ...
Deep-sea fishing banned in Formosa spill area
Fishermen from the central provinces, which saw the Formosa spill, have been warned not to catch species living in the deepest levels of the ocean for 20 nautical miles offshore. Deputy Prime Minister Trương Hòa Bình issued this advisory on Wednesday during a meeting with ...
Outrage over Mekong EIA process
Local activists and academics are angry that Chinese officials and companies working on the Mekong River Navigation Channel Improvement Project will be the decision maker on an Environmental Impact Assessment of the project. The TEAM Group of Companies, a Thai consultancy hired by the Chinese state-owned company, met ...
Rare Ayeyarwady dolphin death cause for concern
A rare Ayeyarwady dolphin has died after sustaining serious injuries, including losing its tail, during the last week of April. According to U Maung Lay, a spokesperson for the Ayeyarwady Dolphin Conservation and Cooperative Fishermen Association, officials are trying to determine the cause of death. Speaking ...
Inquiry afoot after sand shipping video goes viral
The Ministry of Mines and Energy on May 2 said it was investigating potential irregularities in the export of sand after a video from the NGO Mother Nature claiming that banned exports continued unabated went viral yesterday, racking up hundreds of thousands of “likes”. While the ...
Overestimated range maps used for endemic birds in India’s Western Ghats lead to underestimated threats, study finds
New research suggests that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature is overestimating the ranges of several bird species endemic to the Western Ghats mountain range in India, which can have major implications for determining the extinction threat faced by those species. The IUCN ...
Forest conservation might be an even more important climate solution than we realize: study
It’s estimated that deforestation is responsible for about 10 percent of global carbon emissions. Of course, in addition to the direct emissions created, the destruction of a forest means the removal of a valuable carbon sink, as well, which is why deforestation represents a “double ...
Scientists launch global search for 25 ‘lost’ species
Unseen for decades in the wild, many species are now feared extinct. Some exist only as museum specimens, others are only known from old drawings or photographs. But some of these missing species may still be out there, lurking in remote, unexplored regions of our planet. And to ...
Documenting the fight to save Borneo’s animals
After graduating from school, Aaron “Bertie” Gekoski was on a fairly conventional career path for a young businessman, starting out in copyediting for a magazine before launching a modeling agency in London. But the more successful his agency became, the more Gekoski felt like something ...
Nepal tests fencing approach to protect farms and elephants
“We are not angry with the elephant and know that we need to protect it, but we also need to protect ourselves”. This is a brave statement by Kaushala Budha, a Nepali farmer in the Patabhar hamlet, whose house had been nearly destroyed by a ...
