MANILA — When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020 in Southeast Asia, its governments took rapid containment actions: lockdowns, travel restrictions and trade suspensions, alerting the public about the virus. The…
A solitary whale frequently spotted in the Bohol Sea in the southern Philippines has long had a nickname: Bughaw, or "blue." Now, thanks to recently published research, the whale also…
MANILA — As the climate crisis bites, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has unveiled its ambitious plan to scrap funding for coal mining and power plants, and ban support for…
PALAWAN, Philippines — Nicole Tayag, 30, learned to snorkel at 5 when her father took her to the teeming waters of Coron to scout for potential tourist destinations back in…
Filipino fishers call it the “secret island” — a group of three sandbars that emerge when the tide’s low enough, located a mile or so away from Pag-asa Island, known…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Rising 2,064 meters, or nearly 6,800 feet, above sea level, Mount Busa is the tallest peak in the Philippines’ Sarangani province and home to one of the…
MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte has issued an order to lift a nine-year moratorium on granting new mining permits in the Philippines. The order is expected to ease the entry…
AKLAN, Philippines — Although it lies less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the globally famous resort island of Boracay, the province of Antique in the central Philippines remains primarily…
MISAMIS ORIENTAL, Philippines — The southern Philippines is home to the world's rarest and most endangered crocodile species: the freshwater Philippine crocodile (Crocodylus mindorensis). After decades of sliding toward extinction,…
PALAWAN, Philippines — In a span of six months, Philippine environmental authorities have seized 150 tons of giant clam shells from a string of operations across the island province of…
MANILA — The Philippines is protesting the presence of more than 200 Chinese fishing vessels anchored at Whitsun Reef, a shallow coral region located 175 nautical miles (324 kilometers) west…
MANILA — Palawan is an outlier in the Philippine archipelago, its topography and habitat closer to that of Borneo than the rest of the country’s major islands. This so-called last…
MANILA — For the Philippines, the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the only disaster to hit the country in 2020. The year started out with a volcanic eruption and closed with two…
In 1993, a lone stream frog was discovered once but never found again in the wild. Herpetologists thought the frog species went extinct before it could be studied. Then, last…
KALINGA, Philippines — On Nov. 12, 2020, Typhoon Vamco cut across the northern Philippines, flooding more than 60 cities and towns in the Cagayan Valley. Millions of dollars’ worth of…
MANILA — The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 spewed enough volcanic ash into the atmosphere to cool the world. In the immediate vicinity of the volcano,…
ALBAY, Philippines — When Typhoon Goni made landfall in the Philippines on Nov. 1, 2020, experts predicted disaster. A day earlier, the national volcanology institute, PHIVOLCS, had warned that heavy…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Four years ago, villagers in the town of Labason in the southern Philippines’ Zamboanga Peninsula woke up to a spectacle they never thought could happen in these…
AKLAN, Philippines — At dawn on Dec. 30, 2020, police officers raided Indigenous villages within a military reservation camp in the central Philippines in search of alleged members of the…
MANILA — Knowledge of the Philippine pangolin, the only pangolin species in the country, is scant. Sightings of the animal are rarer still. But unlike other pangolin species around the…
MANILA — Indigenous youths harboring from a military-led counterinsurgency in the Philippines may soon lose the only safe space they have known for the past two years. Under a nearly…
The old adage of "money talks" is being given a modern data analysis stress test and applied to the assassinations of civil society activists in the global mining sector. In…
Though other stories might have dominated the headlines, 2020 was a year of tremendous change in land use and land cover. Massive fires burned across Australia, the Amazon, and the…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Efforts to conserve the critically endangered Philippine eagle, one of the rarest raptors in the world, soared high even amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the global havoc…
MANILA — In 2017, a group of researchers surveying mollusks in a popular ecotourism site east of the Philippine capital stumbled upon a tiny land snail with a unique “upside…
ALBAY, Philippines — Spotting false geckos in the wild can be hard. They can easily disappear into their environment thanks to their cryptic colors and markings and their use of…
SARANGANI, Philippines — Half a decade ago, the curiosity of a 10-year-old boy helped ignite a love affair with birds that have swept up his village and helped bolster support…
AKLAN, Philippines — In December 1989, Elizabeth Ramos, now 63, heard from a neighbor that a mangrove reforestation project was underway near her home in the province of Aklan in…
AKLAN, Philippines — Authorities in the Philippines have arrested a resort owner on the island of Boracay for allegedly violating the country’s forestry and marine resources management laws. The investigation…
MANILA — The Philippines’ energy department has declared a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, following a reassessment of the country’s energy system. But while the ban halts applications for…
