Can a new era of ecosystem restoration truly be financed by one of humanity’s oldest tree-clearing behaviours? Can we pay for new trees by cutting others down?
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How water rather than conservation is helping endangered spider monkeys in Panama
We begin our mission to spot an endangered monkey not at the gates of a National Park but by a corrugated iron shed that pongs of cow manure…
Nigeria’s last savannah elephants
Purple starlings flit overhead. Verdant tumbles of vegetation whisper in the mid-afternoon breeze. As our rifle-toting convoy snakes along a game trail through Yankari National Park in North-eastern Nigeria, it’s a picture of tranquillity. Until we’re flanked by a stampeding herd of cattle…
Capturing the world’s rarest gorilla on camera
Three hop-like steps and a leap, and suddenly Jacob Osang, an eco-guard with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), appears to be levitating above the rainforest floor. With nimble-footed ease, he darts across a moss-covered trunk that bridges a rock-strewn gorge like a fractured bone.
Tracking the plight of Nigeria’s beleaguered pangolins
t wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and become fodder for army ants beneath torrential skies — all to no avail.
Wallowing on the past
In defence of wallowing on the past…
How much should tree plantations count towards global reforestation commitments?
It’s as if a professional cleaner has been let loose in the rainforest. The whistles of birds and croaks of frogs have been vacuumed up, the messy understory cleared away. Where once chaotic tangles of vines and saplings wrestled over flecks of sunlight beneath a shady canopy, now trees of the same height stand tidy and organized in neatly spaced rows beneath the scorching sun.
forestation project. But something has gone very wrong.
A black and white Anthropocene
What can we learn from black and white photos?
The curious case of the Cambridge pangolin
The creature scuttles ahead, nearly losing me in the undergrowth. It’s fast. It’s scaly. And as I pull back a branch and catch a sight of the animal in clear view, I realise something spectacular. This species is new to science.
Human footfall: the new environmental calamity.
Beautiful, gnarled trunks. Cushiony moss underfoot. Epiphytes and lichens clinging on the branches. It’s the literal definition of a fairytale forest…At least within the 3.5 hectare area inside its borders.