The critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra are a step closer to extinction, scientists found, after landslides last year that were fueled by climate change. More than 50 of the rare animals were estimated to have died in the landslides, out of a population of around 800. The findings, published…
The Trump administration is preparing to allow off-road vehicles on millions of acres of national forest land, according to a draft order prepared for Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary. The move is a companion to President Trump’s decision on May 29 to repeal two executive orders that for decades had protected other public lands, including…
If deforestation and global warming continue unchecked, the Amazon rainforest could begin a gradual transition to a degraded, grassland-like ecosystem in just a few decades, according to new research published on Wednesday. The study, published in the journal Nature, provides new insight into when the forest might start to slip over a so-called tipping point…
For the past week, diplomats from nearly 60 countries gathered in Colombia to discuss one of the most urgent and confounding questions of our day: how to move beyond fossil fuels. The issue is urgent because emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas are rapidly warming the planet, leading to increasingly dire consequences….
Inside a low-slung building on the outskirts of this town in north-central Washington State, federal scientists are examining how tree seedlings are responding to a drier, hotter climate, collecting important data as officials brace for what is expected to be an intense wildfire season. But this federal research station and 56 others in 31 states…
Peter H. Raven, a renowned botanist and author who remade the Missouri Botanical Garden into a premier research institution and became one of science’s most influential voices on threats posed by climate change, deforestation, overpopulation and unchecked development, died on Saturday in St. Louis. He was 89. His death, in a hospital, was from congestive…
Global tree loss fell 14 percent in 2025 from the year before, according to a report published on Wednesday by World Resources Institute, with the decline largely driven by progress in protecting tropical forests. The total area destroyed worldwide was roughly 63 million acres, or 25.5 million hectares, the institute’s annual analysis found. But less…
For the artist Antti Laitinen, his childhood playground among the trees and streams of central Finland has become an experiment in how the world can survive. He only has to look at the lichen sprinkled around the region’s landscape. Yes, that colorful symbiotic mishmash of fungus and algae may offer hope for our future. It…
Scientists once thought it would take a century or more for animals to return to deforested land in the tropics. Now, new research has found ecosystems can recover in mere decades. “It’s been a huge surprise for all of us,” said Timo Metz, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, and first…
The Senate voted on Thursday to allow mining upstream from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the largest and most visited expanses of federally protected lakes and forests in the United States. By a vote of 50 to 49, senators passed a resolution that would repeal a moratorium on new mining across more…
