Tag: asia-pacific

For more than two decades, professors Bambang Hero Saharjo and Basuki Wasis of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture have stood where science meets power, testifying against companies accused of torching forests and draining peatlands. Their measurements of ash and carbon and their calculations of hectares lost have given judges a way to translate ecological ruin into the dry language of liability. For that service to the public, they have been repaid with lawsuits, harassment, and danger, reports Rendy Tisna.

Last October a court in Bogor, west of Jakarta, offered a rare reversal: it dismissed a civil suit brought by PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri, a palm-oil firm once fined for fires that scorched more than 800 hectares of Borneo peat. The company had sought billions of rupiah in damages from the very experts whose testimony helped convict it years earlier. The judges ruled for the scientists. “Hopefully this will set a good precedent to protect environmental defenders,” Bambang told Mongabay Indonesia after the verdict.

It was the fourth such case he has endured. Each time, the aim has been less to win than to exhaust—one more strategic lawsuit against public participation, designed to make truth-telling unbearably costly. “If we keep getting sued like this,” he warned, “the environment will become increasingly neglected.”

Their victory was cheered by activists and the environment minister alike, who called the suit a “form of SLAPP” and praised the decision as proof that Indonesia’s judiciary could still defend its defenders. Yet it is a fragile shield. Dozens of scientists, journalists, and campaigners have faced similar tactics, and enforcement of environmental judgments remains weak. The fires continue to burn.

Both men might have chosen easier paths. Their expertise in forestry and soil science could have earned them corporate consultancies or quiet academic lives. Instead they have lent credibility to the state’s most controversial prosecutions—often at personal cost, under threat, sometimes alone. In 2019 Bambang received the John Maddox Prize for standing up for science; the honor did little to stop the attacks.

What sustains them is a conviction that evidence matters, even when power denies it. They keep returning to court, peat samples in hand, as if proof itself were an act of faith.

“The environment,” Bambang once said, “is the lifeblood of the planet, and we must protect it together.”

A remarkable discovery has redrawn the map of one of the world’s rarest great apes. For years, scientists believed the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan lived only in the Batang Toru forest of North Sumatra. Now, researchers have confirmed the species’ presence some 20 miles away, in a peat swamp forest near Lumut Maju village—a finding that could reshape conservation strategies for the world’s most threatened ape, reports Junaidi Hanafiah who saw and photographed a mother and infant Tapanuli orangutan firsthand on assignment for Mongabay-Indonesia Indonesia.

The team from the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme and the Orangutan Information Centre (YOSL-OIC) first heard local reports of orangutans in 2022. After years of monitoring and DNA testing, they verified that the apes were indeed Pongo tapanuliensis. “We found new nests that we categorized as class one nests, which we can confirm to have orangutans,” said YOSL-OIC’s Rio ardi.

The discovery brings both excitement and alarm. Lumut Maju’s forest is unprotected and shrinking fast, cleared for oil palm plantations until less than 1,000 hectares remain. With the local population likely under 100 individuals, isolation poses a severe survival risk. For conservationists, the finding underscores both the species’ resilience and the urgency of protecting the few forests they have left.

From the misty forests of Arunachal Pradesh, India, comes a discovery that has surprised even veteran mycologists, reports Divya Kilikar for Mongabay India. Researchers from the Botanical Survey of India have described Bridgeoporus kanadii, a fungus so large that “I could sit on it, and it remained firmly attached to the tree,” said lead author Arvind Parihar.

The species, named for Indian mycologist Kanad Das, grows on old fir trees and can reach over three meters across—twice the size of its North American relative, B. nobilissimus.

Though new to science, locals have long known the inedible fungus. Like others in its genus, B. kanadii performs quiet ecological labor, breaking down dead wood and recycling nutrients.

“The lens with which we look at fungi is far too limited,” Parihar observed. “Without fungi, forests will be full of debris, logs and leaf litter left undecomposed.”

In a world defined by extraction, Denica Riadini-Flesch is showing that creation can heal instead. The Indonesian economist-turned-entrepreneur has won UCLA’s 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award for building a “farm-to-closet” supply chain—a system that regenerates land, restores heritage craft, and empowers rural women.

Riadini-Flesch founded SukkhaCitta after witnessing the hidden cost of modern progress. As a young economist from Jakarta, she once equated development with endless growth—until she met women dyeing textiles with chemicals that scarred their skin and lungs. “It burns my hands, my eyes, my lungs,” one told her. The remark revealed what Riadini-Flesch calls “the true cost of convenience.”

SukkhaCitta set out to invert that logic. Production takes place not in factories but in courtyards and small farms across Java, Bali, Flores, and West Timor. Cotton is grown in polycultures that replenish soil; dyes come from indigo and mahogany leaves; fabrics are woven on handlooms. The enterprise has restored 120 acres of degraded land, kept five million liters of toxic dye wastewater out of rivers, and raised women’s incomes by 60 percent.

The environmental gains are measurable, but the social ones may matter more. Through decentralized Rumah SukkhaCitta Foundation schools, women learn ecological literacy and entrepreneurship alongside heritage techniques. “Artisans and farmers are the missing link to solving the climate crisis,” Riadini-Flesch said. “When rural artisans lead, we lay the blueprint for a regenerative future.”

Her husband and co-founder, Bertram F., accepted the award in Los Angeles; Riadini-Flesch, seven months pregnant, joined remotely from Indonesia. He described the Indigenous practice of tumpang sari—a polyculture where cotton grows beside twenty other crops—as the model for their business. “We’ve made a business case for regeneration,” he said. “It shows you can run a supply chain that restores the environment instead of depleting it.”

Her aim is to regenerate 2.5 million acres of land and create livelihoods for 10,000 women by 2050. “We cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet,” she said. “I believe in an economy where growth is measured by how well we repair what’s been broken: soil, rivers, dignity, trust.”

Anthony Waddle, who is working to protect amphibians in the wild from chytrid, and Seema Lokhandwala, who uses bioacoustics to reduce human-elephant conflict, were the other finalists.

Ari and Junianto once spread sticky sap to trap songbirds flitting through the mist drifting through the forests on Mount Slamet in Java. By their teens, they had graduated to trading slow lorises, sugar gliders, and even Javan hawk-eagles, Indonesia’s national bird. At the height of their careers, hundreds of white-eyes could be caught in a single outing.

But the flocks dwindled. “The number of birds went down because they were always being caught,” Junianto, now in his mid-30s, told L. Darmawan for Mongabay-Indonesia.

Ari, who had begun selling through social media, drew the attention of the conservation agency. “It felt like I was being hunted. So I quit entirely,” he recalled.

Their story reflects a wider crisis. The IUCN estimates that only 600–900 Javan hawk-eagles remain in the wild, half of them mature adults. Fewer than 2,500 rufous-fronted laughingthrushes survive. The Javan pied starling has likely vanished altogether. Trappers supplying the caged-bird trade are largely to blame.

That trade is among the largest in the world. Across Java and Sumatra, sprawling bird markets, or pasar burung, openly sell millions of wild-caught birds each year. Many are destined for the popular “kicau mania” songbird competitions, where prized species fetch high prices. The demand is so great that researchers warn entire populations of native birds are being emptied from forests to fill cages in urban homes. Academic studies to investigations published on Mongabay describe stalls stocked with species already listed as endangered, and enforcement has often been lax or inconsistent.

Yet these hunters have turned. Ari joined the Biodiversity Society, a local conservation group, in 2013. He began mapping bird nests and persuading others to abandon their snares.

“If they’re doing good, we’ll support them — a lot of hunters have now become forest guardians,” he said.

Junianto, once an expert in finding raptors, picked up a camera to photograph the species he once pursued.

For Ari, the rewards are not only moral. He has won provincial and national conservation prizes.

“I used to think hunting was cool, it was easy money,” he said. “Now I realize protecting [the birds] is worth a lot more.”

Key lessons:
☑️ Declining returns made hunting less viable: Overexploitation itself can push hunters to reconsider, especially when economic incentives weaken.
☑️ Pressure from authorities created personal risk: Even limited enforcement can act as a deterrent when it becomes personal and visible.
☑️ Alternative identities and roles were made available: Offering alternative livelihoods or identities that build on existing expertise rather than replacing it.
☑️ Recognition and rewards reinforced the shift. Awards provided social and moral validation, confirming that his new path carried prestige as well as purpose.

In the dense rainforest of southern Sumatra, a handful of dog tracks may have unsettled a long-held assumption. For years, conservationists believed the Sumatran rhinoceros had vanished from Way Kambas National Park. Then Yagi and Quinn, dogs trained by Working Dogs for Conservation to detect wildlife, uncovered scat that early tests suggest belongs to the world’s most endangered rhino. For a species whose total wild population is thought to number fewer than 50, even the possibility of survival here feels momentous, reports Jeremy Hance.

“With fewer than 50 [Sumatran rhinos] in the entire global population, even a single individual is a big deal,” said Peter Coppolillo, who led the dog teams.

But a rediscovery, if confirmed, would not alter the species’ peril. The Sumatran rhino — hairy, small, and evolutionarily ancient — clings on in tiny fragments of forest. Its elusiveness has long confounded rangers; its biology, with long gestation periods and fragile calves, resists quick recovery. Eleven animals are safeguarded in captivity, a precarious lifeline against the losses in the wild.

The plight of Indonesia’s other surviving rhino is scarcely brighter. In Ujung Kulon National Park, the world’s last Javan rhinos have fallen from 76 to about 50 after poachers killed 26 animals, mostly males. Arrests have been made and new patrols deployed, but the damage is lasting: an already fragile population skewed further by sex.

“Poachers are creative and bold,” said Nina Fascione of the International Rhino Foundation.

Yet even against this backdrop of attrition, there are signs of resilience. Six Javan calves have been born in two years, reminders of the species’ persistence. In 1967, surveys found only 26 Javan rhinos. Against the odds, they rebounded once before.

Whether in Way Kambas or Ujung Kulon, survival now rests on whether such flickers of hope can outpace the forces that have driven Indonesia’s last rhinos to the brink.

Indonesia is defying the global trend in tropical deforestation. While forest loss in much of the tropics reached record highs in 2024, Indonesia’s rate fell by 14% compared with the previous year. Yet beneath this apparent success lies an inconvenient truth: Almost half of the deforestation recorded cannot be traced to a clear cause, reports Hans Nicholas Jong.

According to TheTreeMap, a technology consultancy that monitors forest change, logging accounted for 18% of primary forest loss in 2024, industrial oil palm for 13%, pulpwood plantations for 6%, mining for 5%, food-estate projects for 3%, and fires for just over 2%. Together these explain less than half of the total. The remainder falls into a shadow zone — forest that is cleared but remains unused, often for years.

Why is this the case?

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that nearly half of deforested land in Indonesia lies idle for at least five years before being converted, usually to agriculture. In Riau and Bengkulu, natural forests within selective logging concessions have been stripped and then abandoned, only for oil-palm investors to arrive years later.

Environmentalists see this as a symptom of weak governance. Permits are issued liberally; concession holders face few penalties for clearing and walking away. Boy Jerry Even Sembiring of Walhi calls it the result of “reckless issuance of permits.” The pattern is not new: since the 1990s, firms have cleared land, extracted timber, and left the rest as part of speculative land-banking strategies.

The government has begun to respond. This year the Ministry of Forestry revoked 18 inactive concessions covering 526,000 hectares. Minister Raja Juli Antoni described the move as a step toward reclaiming unproductive lands. But critics say the problem is far larger.

Solutions exist. Mapping idle lands and clarifying ownership could pave the way for rehabilitation or community management. Advocates propose expanding Indonesia’s social-forestry program, which grants local communities rights to manage state forest. Properly targeted, it could boost rural incomes, bolster food security, and reduce the risk of fires — a common hazard on abandoned land.

Yet the politics of land in Indonesia are fraught. Sixty-eight percent of the country’s land is controlled by just 1% of its population. Between 2015 and 2024, over 3,200 agrarian conflicts erupted, affecting 1.8 million households. Using idle land as a pretext to expand industrial agriculture, warns Auriga Nusantara’s Timer Manurung, risks deepening these disputes.

Indonesia’s declining deforestation rate may be encouraging. But unless the country tackles the murky drivers of idle land, today’s progress could mask tomorrow’s problems.

Who is clearing Indonesia’s forests — and why?

Thought extinct for over six decades, Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna—a spiny, egg-laying mammal known locally as payangko—has made a dramatic return to science.

Captured on camera traps deployed between 2022 and 2023 in Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains on the island of New Guinea, the elusive monotreme was last scientifically documented in 1961, when a lone specimen was collected.

A recent study confirms the findings, which stemmed from a collaboration between researchers, Indigenous communities, and local agencies, reports Kristine Sabillo Guerrero.

Named after the famed naturalist David Attenborough, Zaglossus attenboroughi is one of five extant monotreme species and is listed as critically endangered. The new evidence—110 photographs and 15 videos—includes signs of possible courtship behavior, a promising signal for its continued survival.

“Encouraging evidence that the population is breeding,” noted co-author James Kempton of the University of Oxford.

The study underscores the central role of Indigenous knowledge in the discovery.

“We would not have succeeded without their support and input,” said Malcolm Kobak of YAPPENDA, a local NGO.

With funding and research limited in Indonesian New Guinea, the authors hope this rediscovery spurs conservation action—and a deeper recognition of the value of local stewardship and knowledge.