Isabel Esterman

Orchids are unsustainably plucked from the wild the world over to furnish private collections, driving many species to the brink of extinction.

Fishing of blue swimming crabs in Thailand has historically exceeded sustainable levels, leading to a decline in both the number and size of crabs that fishers were catching.

PHUM RIANG, Thailand — The sea is quiet except for the swish of the longtail boat cutting sharply through the waves. Fishermen Sutham Abmanee and Komsan Witan, from Phum Riang in Thailand’s Surat Thani province, set out at 7 a.m., just as they do every day. When they reach the right spot, Sutham starts to pull out the nets he’d set the night before. They’re strung with silvery sea bass, tiny golden starfish, and blue swimming crabs. The men expertly pluck them out, keeping the valuable catch and dropping the rest back into the ocean. Blue swimming crabs (Portunus pelagicus), instantly recognizable by their long blue pincers (green-brown in females), are at the top of the “valuable” list. But they won’t all be sold. Sutham holds a crab upside down in the palm of his hand. A female, her underside is covered with a spongy, bright orange substance: eggs, millions and millions of eggs. “When they are this color we know that they will take a few days to hatch,” he says, gently placing the crab in a bucket of water. “We need to take her to the bank.” Komsan Witan holds an egg-carrying female blue swimming crab. The orange color of her eggs signals they’re just days away from hatching. Image by Ana Norman Bermúdez for Mongabay. Blue swimming crab populations in Thailand Blue swimming crabs are found across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and their meat is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. But for…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Citizens in northern Thailand staged protests along the shore of the Mekong River in Chiang Rai province on Dec. 7 to highlight concerns about the Pak Beng hydroelectric project slated for construction on the mainstream of the pivotal watercourse in Laos. The project, spanning the river in Oudomxay province, Laos, is located 97 kilometers (60 […]

Free press advocates are demanding justice for environmental reporter Chhoeung Chheng after he was shot and killed by a suspected illegal logger on the outskirts of a protected area in northern Cambodia.

Many species of mammals, either extinct in the wild or teetering close to it, have been successfully restored to parts of their range: the scimitar-horned oryx in northern Africa, black-footed ferrets in the United States, and Arabian oryx in Oman, to name but a few. These species would have been doomed without one thing: captive, […]

Researchers and local nature enthusiasts described 234 new-to-science species across the Greater Mekong region in 2023.

Five years after government forces began shutting down their schools for alleged links to communist rebels, thousands of Indigenous Lumads remain dispersed and deprived of justice.

BALI, Indonesia — “We didn’t have electricity in our village of Taro, near Ubud, until I was 12 years old,” says conservationist Wayan Wardika. To find their way through the rice fields at night, Wardika and his schoolfriends would capture fireflies and put them in jam jars, so they could use them as lanterns. “We […]

For Thảo, a journalist based in Hanoi, online reports from Vietnamese internet users were key to her and her colleagues’ coverage of Typhoon Yagi and its aftermath. The storm, the biggest in Asia this year and the strongest to strike Vietnam in 70 years, made landfall in the country’s north on Sept. 7. Millions pf […]