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Forests

Tropical hardwoods wait to be milled into boards near the coastal city of Miri.

In Borneo’s Ruined Forests, Nomads Have Nowhere to Go

The island’s hunter-gatherers are losing their home to the unquenchable global demand for timber and palm oil

Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of oil palm trees.

Giving Up Palm Oil Might Actually Be Bad for the Environment

The trouble with the maligned crop isn’t its popularity, but where it’s planted

Listen to Nature Through These Gigantic Wooden Megaphones in Estonia’s Forests

You know, in case a tree falls and there’s no one there to hear it

Baby tree saplings, cloned from giant redwoods in California, chill out in the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive's propagation area.

Age of Humans

The Race to Save the World’s Great Trees By Cloning Them

A nonprofit dedicated to preserving old, iconic trees is cloning them in hopes of preserving them for the future

The Kirtland's warbler needs humans to cut and replant the trees it nests in. Without this work, the species' painstaking recovery from less than 1,000 males to over 2,000 could be erased.

Age of Humans

This Bird Didn’t Start the Fires, But It May Need Them to Survive

An endangered bird once threatened by humans now relies on us for its survival

Salgado has documented many indigenous tribes and their traditions. Here, men are decorated with feathers and paint for a reahu funerary ceremony.

Sebastião Salgado Has Seen the Forest, Now He’s Seeing the Trees

He documented human suffering around the world. But now, back in his native Brazil, the renowned photographer is healing the devastated landscape

Ten years on, some of the scars that Katrina tore into coastal ecosystems persist, while others have healed. NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of the swamps and marshes that buffer New Orleans in August 2015.

Age of Humans

How Hurricane Katrina Redrew the Gulf Coast

While storms here are nothing new, human influence helped Katrina make Louisiana’s ecological problems worse

Doomsday mushrooms?

Anthropocene

Death By Fungus, and Other Fun Facts About Fungal Friends and Foes

This Generation Anthropocene episode highlights oft overlooked organisms that may help us better understand human impacts

The white Kermode bear, a rare ursa sacred to local tribes, is now the center of a fierce battle to protect British Columbia’s rainforest.

Canada

This Rare, White Bear May Be the Key to Saving a Canadian Rainforest

The white Kermode bear of British Columbia is galvanizing First Nations people fighting to protect their homeland

"Flatties" might be more aptly nicknamed "fliers" for their ability to glide to safety should they lose their grip in tree canopies.

New Research

Gliding Spiders Found Falling From Tropical Trees

Flat-bodied spiders that live in the rainforest strike a Superman pose to take control of their free-falls

The remains of slash-and-burn land clearing in Rondônia in 1985.

Age of Humans

How a Farming Project in Brazil Turned Into a Social and Ecological Tragedy

This week’s Generation Anthropocene podcast looks at Rondônia, a textbook tale of how not to set up sustainable land use

Visit the World’s Most Amazing Old-Growth Forests

Here are some of the best places to hug centuries-old trees

A village nestled inside the Brazilian Amazon.

Anthropocene

Protecting Land in Brazil Reduces Malaria and Other Diseases

Areas under strict protection see the most benefit in shielding people from illness and infection

Yasuní National Park with the sun just under the horizon.

This Park in Ecuador is One of the Most Biodiverse Places on Earth

Yasuní National Park in the Amazon rainforest may have more species of life than anywhere else in the world

A worker puts finishing paint touches on the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory in January

Cool Finds

This New Tower Gives Scientists a Bird’s Eye View of the Amazon

It pairs with a similar tower in Siberia to observe changes in the Earth’s atmosphere

A female specimen of the newly discovered Alto Tambo woodlizard.

New Research

New Dwarf Dragons Have Been Found in the Andes

It seems that every time herpetologists wander into the Andean cloud forests, they emerge with colorful lizard species in tow

Scientists looked for the black-and-white colubus monkey in protected areas across the Ivory Coast but only found one population of the animals still living in a sacred grove.

Anthropocene

Illegal Cocoa Farms Are Driving Out Primates In Ivory Coast

Thirteen national parks and reserves have lost all their primates as people move in to protected regions to farm cacao

A barn owl by the light of the moon.

American South

Best Places to See Nature After Dark

The sun may power most of our world—but some things come alive only at night

These coppery titi monkeys have a red beards similar to those sported by the newly discovered Milton’s titi monkey. The new species can be further identified by a light gray stripe across their foreheads and a bright orange tail.

New Research

Adorable Monkey New to Science Identified in Threatened Rainforest

Researchers in the Brazilian rainforest describe a previously undocumented species of titi monkey whose habitat faces man-made threats

At the Batadomba-lena rock shelter in Sri Lanka, scientists found evidence that humans were living off rainforest resources as early as 20,000 years ago.

Anthropocene

Humans Relied on Rainforest Riches 12,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

Fossil remains suggest that prehistoric people in Sri Lanka may have eaten monkeys and other forest species

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