Mongabay
In Cambodia, a rare acquittal in a climate of danger for green activists
In a rare ruling, a court in Cambodia has decided to acquit a Spanish environmental activist charged with incitement, the state’s default accusation against most forms of protest. Alejandro-Gonzalez Davidson, the founder of the NGO Mother Nature Cambodia (MNC), stood accused of acting as an accomplice ...
Andrew Nachemson
Asian elephant footprints serve as safe spaces for frog nurseries
While wandering through northwestern Myanmar in 2016, a group of scientists stumbled on hundreds of huge tracks in the ground. According to a new paper in the journal Mammalia, these footprints, made by Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), have a lasting impact. Even when the giants that made ...
Nanticha Ocharoenchai
The challenges of campaigning against wildlife trafficking in Vietnam
In late January, WildAid and the Ho Chi Minh City-based Center of Hands-on Actions and Networking for Growth and Environment (CHANGE) launched a graphic anti-wildlife trafficking campaign focused on three animals: pangolins, elephants and rhinos. In a bold move, the organizers brought a group of bloodied, weakened statues ...
Michael Tatarski
Survey: Less coal, more solar, say citizens of Belt & Road countries
Citizens of countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, strongly prefer clean energy over the coal projects that have become Beijing’s calling card, a new survey shows. The findings, from a multi-country survey, commissioned by environmental group E3G, were published ahead of an international forum hosted in ...
Hans Nicholas Jong
Controversial aquaculture projects threaten Myanmar’s remaining mangroves
Most of the waterways surrounding the islands of the Mergui archipelago in the Andaman Sea are lined with mangroves, and the one leading into the island of Kala from the east was no different. But as our speedboat rounded a corner, we came up against ...
Wudan Yan
Current threats and future hopes for the greater Mekong’s mangroves
Critical to the health of rivers, shorelines and forests globally, today only 150,000 square kilometers (57,900 square miles) of mangroves remain, down from 320,000 square kilometers (123,550 square miles) 50 years ago. Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar are home to the largest mangrove forests in the Greater ...
How wasps saved Asia’s forests
In our recent study, we combined field observations and satellite imagery to show how the tiny pest-killing lopezi wasp (Anagyrus lopezi) helped combat deforestation in Thailand, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam by controlling a pest that was devastating cassava crops across the region. Keep reading ...
Meet the winners of the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize
The Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activism, has announced seven winners this year. Six of the winners are women. Dubbed the Green Nobel Prize, the annual award honors grassroots environmental heroes from Europe, Asia, North America, Central and South ...
Mongabay Reporter
App combines computer vision and crowdsourcing to explore Earth’s biodiversity, one photo at a time
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was developed in large part from the observations and collections of plants, animals and fossils that he made in the Galapagos islands and other stops during his voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. However, Darwin was an amateur ...
Colleen O'Brien
Re-peeling the effects of degradation: low-tech application of orange crop waste shows potential to restore tropical forests
Researchers have come upon a new low-tech tropical forest restoration strategy, beginning with agricultural waste. They studied the effects on soil and forest health of the purposeful deposition of tons of processed orange peels and pulp on centuries-old rangeland remaining inside Guanacaste National Park in ...