Fires

CARACAS, Venezuela — In early March, a series of wildfires ravaged the savannas of Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the southeastern state of Bolivar, bordering the Venezuelan Amazon, and reached the Auyantepui, one of the park’s iconic, billion-year-old tabletop mountains, or tepuis, known for their unique mountain ecosystems. For days, the […]

JAKARTA — 2023 saw the worst fire season in Indonesia since 2019, with an area the size of Qatar going up in flames, according to official government data. A total of 1.16 million hectares (2.87 million acres) of land and forest were burned last year, with an intense El Niño weather pattern a major factor. […]

JAKARTA — A diplomatic spat has once again flared up between Southeast Asian neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia, sparked by smoke from forest fires in the former that have reportedly crossed over into the latter. Air quality in parts of Malaysia have worsened in recent days, with the national environmental department recording unhealthy air quality in […]

JAKARTA — Swaths of tropical peatland that were supposed to have been restored and protected from burning are among the fire-hit areas in Indonesia’s ongoing dry season, raising questions about the government’s claims of success in peat restoration. The Ministry of Environment and Forestry said more than 300 companies had restored some 3.7 million hectares […]

JAKARTA — Experts have slammed a court ruling that significantly slashes the fines imposed on Indonesian palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi, even as it increased his jail sentence, in the biggest corruption case in the country’s history. The Supreme Court, Indonesia’s highest court of appeals, ruled in a Sept. 14 decision to uphold Surya’s earlier conviction […]

The 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 […]

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s land and forest fires burned a greater area this year than in 2020, with most of the fires occurring in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, two provinces that were until recently not major sites of burning. As of the end of November, fires had burned 353,222 hectares (872,831 acres) of […]

JAKARTA — In 2019, fires raged through Indonesia’s rainforests and peatlands, sparked by the deliberate burning of land for agriculture, and fanned by an El Niño system bringing drier-than-usual weather conditions. Ultimately, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry would put the total affected area at 1.64 million hectares (4.05 million acres), an area half […]

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a ruling declaring a palm oil company not responsible for fires in its concession, in a verdict that boils down to the company not being liable simply because it had put up “no burning” signs. Environmental experts say the Nov. 8 ruling by the Supreme Court in favor […]

Satellite imagery reveals several areas of primary rainforest were cleared alongside agricultural fields in the Brazilian Amazon, all in close proximity to Indigenous and protected lands. In March, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab at the University of Maryland detected areas of newly cleared forest in Lábrea municipality, in the state of Amazonas. […]