West Sumatra News

SOUTH PAGAI, Indonesia — A white coastal beacon stood in place against the surf as gales hurtled across the Indian Ocean here off South Pagai, one of the Mentawai Islands…

A known breeding Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) has made its way to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington state, in hopes it will produce more cubs of…

WEST PASAMAN, Indonesia — Eren says he can’t forget the day in 2000 when he fled from the plantation security guards. He had joined fellow residents of Nagari Aia Gadang…

The Kerinci Seblat landscape, a highly biodiverse rainforest in western Sumatra, is one of the Indonesian island’s crown jewels. Anchored by the 14,000-square-kilometer (5,405-square-mile) Kerinci Seblat National Park, its mountainous…

JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the…

JAKARTA — Indonesia has no effective mechanism for resolving its epidemic of land conflicts between rural communities and palm oil companies, according to a new study. Indonesia is the world’s…

MEDAN, Indonesia — At the corner of Sei Batanghari Road in Medan, the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, kindergarten students run around a building in their school uniforms. The…

SAWAHLUNTO, Indonesia — Manap says he’s worried about his garden. What he thought would be a nice retirement project after years of working in coal mines is quickly turning into…

The Trans-Sumatran Highway is a $1.1 billion dollar project spanning 2,700 kilometers – from Banda Aceh in the north to Bandar Lampung in the south – and is designed to…

Sumatra contains some of the largest tracts of intact rainforest left in the world, and is also at the center of a complicated web of deforestation drivers, many of which…

"Sumatra is like a fossil relic of rare species...a giant, rhino horn-shaped island blanketed in the richest rainforest you can imagine...there's just nothing like it," biologist Greg McCann says on…

Authorities in Indonesia have expanded their efforts to shut down illegal gold mining in Sumatra, where they practice has grown in recent years. Officials in West Sumatra province pledged last…

The rainforests that once carpeted Indonesia's Sumatra Island are among the world's most biodiverse ecosystems, home to iconic species like the Sumatran tiger, rhino and orangutan. They are also among…

"We need to keep this river clean,” says Muhammad Yusuf, a fisheries official from Padang, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. “We’ve got to keep people from…

The indigenous inhabitants of Indonesia’s Mentawai district, a cluster of islands off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, are a step closer to reclaiming their ancestral rights to their land from…

PADANG, Indonesia — Two soldiers were caught trying to smuggle dozens of Malayan porcupines (Hystrix brachyura) across provincial borders, the latest arrest of a military officer for wildlife trafficking. The…

On Jan. 1, the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production found that Wilmar International had violated the rights of the indigenous Kapa community of West Sumatra, Indonesia, when…

TIK SIRONG, Indonesia — It is often said in this archipelago country that the best solutions come through consensus. The phrase typically refers to people. But sometimes a compromise is…

On Jan. 1, 2017, the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production came to a decision that, if implemented, will allow the Kapa community of West Sumatra, Indonesia, to…

In a country where much of the rural population lives off the grid, villages on the Indonesian island of Flores boast their own renewable energy sources — all built by…

Another mass fish death has hit Indonesia’s main western island of Sumatra. Four months after millions of carp and tilapia died suddenly in Lake Toba, the archipelagic country’s biggest lake,…

The Mentawai peoples, who live on Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands, off the western coast of Sumatra, have faced numerous attempts to develop their traditional lands. In 2014, the Mentawai communities convinced…

The government of Riau province will drop its official state of emergency at the end of the month in the latest evidence that local governments are winding down their anti-haze…

Indonesian vice president Jusuf Kalla again blamed the wind for the regional haze crisis during an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Tuesday in the Philippines. Kalla’s comments come months after…

The number of wildfires across Indonesia continued to decline on Tuesday following the arrival of rain in Sumatra and Kalimantan last week. Data for the last 24 hours from Global…

Environmental groups have welcomed new technical guidelines issued by Indonesia’s forestry ministry which, if implemented correctly, could prohibit new development in Indonesia’s peatlands, keeping them moist to prevent wildfires. “This…

After months spent focusing on wildfires across Sumatra and Kalimantan, some Indonesian disaster management officials were on Tuesday turning their attention to preventing floods in several parts of the archipelago.…

A human rights watchdog in Indonesia intervened in this year’s haze crisis on Monday to criticize the government for failing to do enough to protect the human rights of citizens…

Air quality in Singapore threatened to seep into unhealthy levels again on Friday as Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo instructed ministers to form a specialist haze task force to stave…

A day after the government of Singapore issued its strongest rebuke yet on Southeast Asia’s pollution crisis, the largest pulpwood concession holder in Sumatra, Asia Pulp & Paper, announced it…