Concern is mounting for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) vast forests and rich wildlife as logging concessions and licenses to explore for oil in protected areas are prepared ahead of presidential elections later this year. A moratorium on industrial logging, in place since 2002, has been broken with three concessions reportedly handed out by …

Peru is one of 17 "megadiverse" countries on Earth, which together contain 70 percent of the world's biodiversity, according to the UN's environmental agency. The Peruvian Amazon lost nearly two million hectares of forest between 2001 and 2016, or more than 123,000 hectares a year, figures made public Tuesday by the ministry of the environment.

A palm oil supplier to Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever is destroying rainforests in Papua, Indonesia, a new investigation by Greenpeace International has revealed. Satellite analysis suggests that around 4,000 hectare of rainforest were cleared in PT Megakarya Jaya Raya concession between May 2015 and April 2017—an area almost half the size of Paris.

Mature trees at Ziarat in Balochistan are often thousands of years old, but many end up as firewood.

Poland's rightwing government broke the law by logging in one of Europe's last primeval forests, a UNESCO world heritage site, the European Union's top court ruled Tuesday. Logging in the Bialowieza Forest began in May 2016 but the European Commission took Poland to court last year arguing that it was destroying a forest that boasts unique plant and animal life. "The forest management operations concerning the Puszcza Bialowieska Natura 2000 site that have been undertaken by Poland infringe EU law," the European Court of Justice said in a statement.

Indigenous communities that depend on Colombia's Amazon rainforest for their survival will have more say over their ancestral lands, as Colombia adds 8 million hectares to its protected areas in an effort to stem forest loss. The new measures announced by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday aim to create a buffer zone for the country's southern Amazon region. Farmers are pushing deeper into forests, cutting down more trees to clear land for cattle-grazing and agriculture.

This story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. From Plato to Polyphemus, caves have long been literary symbols of the mysterious and the unknown. And in the real world, they often live up to that reputation: underground rivers, weirdly preserved skeletons, rare bacteria that make them shine like gold.

Forest and tree cover in India has increased by nearly 1% since 2015 to 802,088 sq.km or about 24.39% of the country’s total geographical area (GA), shows a report released by the environment ministry on Monday. In a worrying trend, however, the report shows that forests in most of the biodiversity-rich north-eastern part of the country have been contracting continuously over the last few years.

Drones could fight deforestation by planting 1 billion trees a year.

A couple of ecologists named Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs had an idea for a local orange juice company in Costa Rica — little did they know, their idea would lead to a discovery of a lifetime. In 1997, the pair approached the orange juice company and had a proposition for them. If they donated a piece of completely unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste, then they could dump their discarded peels and pulp free of charge.

Darius Kinsey documented turn of the century tree cutters in all their gritty glory

The plan is for 50 million new trees to repopulate one of the least wooded parts of the country—and offer a natural escape from several cities in the north.

The plan is for 50 million new trees to repopulate one of the least wooded parts of the country—and offer a natural escape from several cities in the north.

he Polish environment minister has claimed Poland is fully compliant with the EU over controversial logging in one of Europe’s last areas of primeval forest after it was threatened with fines of at least €100,000 a day if it refused to end the practice. At a press conference on Tuesday Jan Szyszko, Poland’s environment minister, insisted Poland was in “100 per cent compliance with European Commission recommendations” over management of the Bialowieza Forest.

The world’s forests are being criss-crossed by roads and clearings, and as a result many backboned animals are becoming less abundant.

Rita Leistner’s latest exhibition captures the intensity of tree planting.

The urgent question: Can government agents finally prove that enough trees come from illegal logging sites in Peru to stop shipments into the US?

The country lost most of its trees long ago. Despite years of replanting, it isn’t making much progress.

The world’s tropical forests are so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions, according to a new study that highlights the urgent need to protect and restore the Amazon and similar regions. Researchers found that forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a key role in absorbing greenhouse gases – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, which is more than all the traffic in the United States.

A palm oil company is continuing to clear forest in a fast-diminishing elephant habitat in Indonesia’s Leuser ecosystem despite being the subject of two reports into illegal deforestation, according to a prominent environmental organisation.