rainforest

“BC’s inland rainforest — which once totaled over 1.3 million hectares — is endangered, according to International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria, and could experience ecological collapse within a decade if current logging rates continue,” as Brian Barth reports in …

In remote northwestern Brazil, a group of farmers has set up a co-op that plants native fruit trees on exhausted former ranchland. In the process, the farmers are not only reforesting the area in a way that mimics the natural habitat, they’re earning about five times more per acre from their agroforestry plots annually than local ranchers are earning by clearing the forest to graze their cattle, says FERN's latest story, produced with National Geographic. (No paywall)

In an effort to save money and better serve their brand image, some major companies are breaking from third-party certifiers, such as FairTrade and the Rainforest Alliance, and developing their own schemes for certifying which products meet standards of sustainability and ethics, reports Reuters. 

Ralph Lauren Corp. joins a growing number of fashion companies that have pledged to not use products derived from cleared forests or that required grabbing land from indigenous people, says Reuters. The company says it has new plans to track its sourcing and avoid parts of the world that practice extreme deforestation and human rights abuses.

The rampant destruction of rainforest by the Indonesian palm-oil industry is leaving villagers with few options but to poach species like the Helmeted Hornbill to extinction, says Jocelyn Zuckerman in FERN’s latest story, published with Audubon Magazine.