Forests

Seen in 2012, an excavator works on a road near an Indonesian oil palm plantation built on disputed lands once home to a rainforest.

The Best and Worst Places to Build More Roads

Road works today are “basically chaos”—but a new global road map could be key to protecting agriculture and nature

The Forest Service Is Running Out of Money to Fight Fires

Firefighting and prevention costs now blaze through 51 percent of the U.S. Forest Service budget, compared to 17 percent in 1995

This hardware innovation will make it easier for conservationists to identify where illegal deforestation efforts are happening and stop them before the trees have been taken down.

How Solar-Powered Recycled Smartphones Could Save the Rainforest

A Silicon Valley non-profit is ready to give the forests of Africa and the Amazon ears to listen for loggers—and the ability to phone the authorities

Tropical regions are home to many unique species, such as this tiny frog belonging to the genus Dendrophryniscus that lives in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. A new study finds that removing just a few trees can quickly cause biodiversity in these tropical forests to fall.

Removing Just a Few Trees Can Lower Tropical Animal Biodiversity

Selective logging can halve the number of species of mammals and amphibians in a forest

Borneo Has Lost 30 Percent of Its Forest in the Past 40 Years

Borneo's tropical forests have fallen at twice the rate as the rest of the world's felled rainforests

Leaves of the plant Plantago lanceolata infected with powdery mildew.

What the Spread Of A Plant Mildew Tells Us About Forests

Fragmenting habitats into smaller pieces may let diseases spread more easily, a new study finds

Forest in British Columbia that has borne both fire and beetle infestations

Beetles Have Destroyed 38,000 Square Miles of Forest

As part of this year’s farm bill, the United States Forest Service will try to rehabilitate beetle-infested forests

Crawling bare ivy on wall.

How to Bring a Devastated Forest Back to Life

Humans have damaged the world’s forests, but not irreparably

Restoring Cut Rainforests Might Not Work Well If There’s Light Pollution Nearby

Fruit-eating bats can't do their job distributing seeds around the new jungle patch if they're blinded by lights

The Remnants of Prehistoric Plant Pollen Reveal that Humans Shaped Forests 11,000 Years Ago

The discoveries could boost indigenous populations' claims to ancestral lands long thought to be untouched by human activity

Congo's second civil war ended in 2003, but ongoing conflict has left millions displaced. Two million were forced from their homes in 2012, for instance, due to violence in the eastern part of the country.

Congo’s Civil Wars Took A Toll On Its Forests

Conflicts drove the human population deep into protected areas, satellite maps reveal

Narcotics operators are responsible for this stretch of deforestation, locating in a protected areas in Honduras.

As Drug Traffickers Move In, Tropical Forests Fall

Deforestation in Central America goes hand-in-hand with narcotics operations, which replace forests with airstrips, roads and money-laundering farms

This hive of the stingless honey-making bee Melipona triplaridis is one of a handful of tropical hives bee expert David Roubik keeps at his home in Panama City. Note the waffle-like honeycomb in the background

Smithsonian's Bee Man Delivers Up Some Advice for Dealing with Colony Collapse Disorder

David Roubik, who pioneered the field of tropical bee studies, says what will save them is a better understanding of their natural state

The forest fire of 1910 ripped through the town of Wallace, Idaho leaving it in complete shambles.

The Legacy of America’s Largest Forest Fire

A 1910 wildfire that raged across three Western states helped advance the nation’s conservation efforts

On Baranof Island, the town of Sitka (its harbor, set against a backdrop of the Coast Mountains) is reachable only by boat or plane. Says local artist Teri Rofkar: "Our isolation—it's a gift"

Sitka

A tradition-rich village lies at the doorstep of a vast Alaskan wilderness

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World View

Panama offers an ideal vantage point for scientists to see the big picture of life on earth

Italian primatologist Andrea Camperio Ciani says macaques are "scapegoats" for other thigns that are damaging the forest: cutting; overgrazing; and charcoal production.

Monkey in the Middle

Blamed for destroying one of North Africa's most important forests, Morocco's Barbary macaques struggle to survive

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The Object at Hand

From a forest that flourished 207 million years ago, the Sherman Logs bear stony witness to a general's curiosity--and life in an age gone by

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The Deep-Sea Floor Rivals Rain Forests in Diversity of Life

Blue luminescence and marine snow define a world where millions of species of worms and other invertebrates live out their lives

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