Forests | featured news

National parks, forests and wildlife refuges are to receive $12.5 million in grants to improve access to them while supporting greener travel.

They're better known as stealthy killing machines to take out suspected terrorists with pinpoint accuracy. But drones are also being put to more benign use in skies across several continents to track endangered wildlife, spot poachers and chart forest loss. Although it's still the "dawn of drone ecology," as one innovator calls it, these unmanned aerial vehicles are already skimming over Indonesia's jungle canopy to photograph orangutans, protecting rhinos in Nepal and studying invasive aquatic plants in Florida.

These are the first photos of some of the countless treasures found in the extraordinary 298-million-year-old forest discovered under coal mine in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, China.

Surveying the biodiversity of the world's last wild areas is often a depressing business, due to the effects of deforestation and development, but in a roadless region of the South American country of Suriname, scientists have come upon a good-news story.

An Oregon hiker who survived a 50-foot fall, broken bones and three nights in a national forest says a strong drive to live led her to keep moving, eat bugs and even try a bite of a “plump and juicy” slug. Pamela Salant told reporters Monday that the snail-like forest mollusk “looked really tasty, but it was not” and she spat it out after giving it a chew. “I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this, but it’s what’s happening,’” she said.

The Brazilian Government is the largest single buyer of condoms in the world, importing around a billion of them every year. In 2008, the Government announced the start of a new programme to produce condoms using environmentally sustainable rubber, which will curb its dependence on imported contraceptives, provide jobs for local people and help preserve the world's largest rainforest.

In the rain forests of Central America grows the nutrient-rich Maya nut. The marble-sized seed can be prepared to taste like mashed potatoes, chocolate or coffee.