As Indonesia retakes land from developers, conservation is an afterthought

Rainforest in Sumatra. Photo credit: Rhett A. Butler / MongabayJAKARTA — Environmental activists have cautiously welcomed the Indonesian government’s move to revoke hundreds of permits for logging, plantations and mines, calling it an opportunity to conserve vast swaths of forest. The affected concessions include Ministry of Environment and Forestry permits for 192 logging, plantation, mining and ecotourism operations, totaling 3.13 million hectares (7.73 million […]

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Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2021

Fire line moves through a degraded forest area in an undesignated public forest area in Porto Velho, Rondônia on July 29, 2021. Photo © Christian Braga / GreenpeaceThe world’s greatest tropical rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever. But the rainforest as a […]

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European supermarkets say Brazilian beef is off the menu

Cattle in BrazilA group of supermarket chains that includes Sainsbury’s in the U.K. and Lidl in the Netherlands said this week that they will either reduce or outright halt sales of Brazilian beef in the coming months. The move comes in the wake of an investigation published by the environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth and Repórter Brasil […]

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Mongabay reporter sued in what appears to be a pattern of legal intimidation by Peruvian cacao company

Global Forest Watch tree cover loss 2001-2021 set on Planet imagery from Jun-Sep 2020.In November 2020, Peruvian cacao company Tamshi filed a lawsuit against Mongabay Latam staff reporter Yvette Sierra Praeli for “aggravated defamation” over her reporting of a government investigation into the firm’s activities in the Peruvian Amazon. While the case was formally dismissed by a Peruvian court last month, it wasn’t the first time that Tamshi […]

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U.K. conglomerate Jardines ‘caught red-handed’ clearing orangutan habitat in Sumatra

BALI, Indonesia — Satellite imagery has detected deforestation in a gold mining concession in Indonesia that overlaps with the habitat of the most threatened great ape in the world. U.S.-based environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth said it had detected 13 hectares (32 acres) of forest loss within the Martabe gold mining concession in North Sumatra province […]

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‘Forests will disappear again,’ activists warn as Indonesia ends plantation freeze

BALI, Indonesia — Palm oil industry watchdogs are warning of a possible surge in deforestation across Indonesia, after the government ended a three-year freeze on issuing permits for new plantations. The moratorium had been imposed in 2018, ostensibly to allow the industry to address the problems of deforestation, land conflicts and labor abuses long associated […]

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