In the southern Peruvian Andes, Efraín Samochuallpa Solis can often be found working with the residents of the Cordillera de Vilcanota region, near his birthplace, to preserve its natural resources.

In the waters beyond the breaking surf, the sea pulses with some of the richest marine life on the planet, ranging from spiny lobsters and sea urchins to yellowfin tuna and sardines.

The gentle bonobo —a primate of west central Democratic Republic of Congo that is known for its peaceful ways—is a fitting symbol for this area that has become a bastion of tranquility in a country better known for conflict.

Chris Stone is the grant director for the Global Conservation Fund (GCF). Julie Shaw talks with him about the fund’s unique focus on securing financing to cover the management costs of protected areas in the long term.

Named for the three rivers that flow through it – the Yopno, Uruwa and Som – the reserve is the first national conservation area declared by Papua New Guinea under a law passed in 1978.

Namibians have made it to the end of the long journey to establish the Sperrgebiet National Park, a 2.6 million-hectare protected area that is the largest single-area proclamation in Africa in the past 20 years.

“We need to take drastic, immediate and comprehensive steps to save the oceans.”

“Already we are suffering things that we never experienced before,” Kiribati President Anote Tong says, citing prolonged drought, destruction of the coast and coral bleaching.

Greg Stone, vice president of Global Marine Programs at the New England Aquarium, helped initiate the drive to establish the Phoenix Islands Protected Area.

Conservation International (CI) and McDonald’s Europe have launched a program that will help protect some of the world’s most endangered species and the tropical forests where they make their home.

Growing up in the concrete jungle of New York City, Lisa Dabek learned of nature by playing with ants in Dixie cups and visiting the Bronx Zoo with her mother.

Forest fires broke out in and around Georgia’s Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, part of the Caucasus biodiversity hotspot, during the hostilities sparked by a dispute over the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia.

Randy Borman was born only months before his parents, missionaries and linguists, ventured into the Ecuadorian rainforest to live among the Cofán Indians.

Eastern lowland, or Grauer’s, gorillas number between 5,000 and 10,000, down from a pre-war estimate of 17,000. They live on 25 percent less habitat than they did just a few decades ago.

The new Phoenix Island Protected Area covers 158,453 square miles (410,500 square kilometers) of the Central Pacific that is home to one of the richest marine feeding and spawning areas in the world.