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I'm not a big fan of going to the dentist so imagine my dismay when the first thing in my diary for 2 January was a dreaded appointment. Not the way I'd choose to start the new year! One thing my dentist is always trying to convince me of is the importance of flossing to maintain healthy gums...

Here’s an early Christmas present for you all from the camera traps hidden deep within the Gola Rainforest National Park – a rare glimpse of the elusive chimpanzees that call this magical place home. It’s thought that the forest is home to around 300 chimps and the fact that these...

I have the best office on earth. Lush green rainforest, filled with life – no grey walls, no cubicles, no artifical white lights. The only downside of working here is ironically one of its best attributes – the sheer size of it. I can imagine it takes most people no more than 5 minutes to...

Guest blogger: Sarah Sanders, Head of Partner Development Unit - Africa, Asia and UK Overseas Territories At the beginning of October, my boss had to give a presentation at Kew on the tropical rainforest work we’re supporting around the world. He wanted to speak about the Uluguru mountains because...

I’ve been working in Harapan Rainforest for three years. I’m a biodiversity officer, which means I keep an eye out for and monitor the wide variety of amazing species that call this rainforest home. From sun bears and hornbills to gibbons and pangolins, I keep an eye out for all of them,...

I love Fridays – it’s the end of the working week, the start of the weekend, and there’s even a chocolate bar dedicated to that wonderful Friday feeling. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to channel that feeling and make it do something for nature? Well this week you can! FSC Friday...

Rainforest Alliance have produced a brilliant film showing that "you don't have to go to the ends of the earth to protect the planet - just follow the frog". It's well worth a watch, so click here .

It feels like an age ago that we launched the search for the first ever Rainforest Reporter as part of Together For Trees – our partnership with Tesco that aims to protect rainforests around the world. We were looking for someone with a passion for conservation, a flair for communications and good...

Guest blogger: Heather G I loved reading Annika’s pygmy hippo diary from Gola last week. From the outset I was hooked. It had everything that’s needed for a great story. First, there’s the setting. It really is another world, one of adventure and wonder (and somewhere I’d...

27 May I’m starting to think that I’m just not meant to see a pygmy hippo in the wild. I came back to Kenema today, promising some new colleagues a lift back with me as they had spent the night on the island. When I arrived at the campsite where they’ve been staying on the island...

23 May Another close call over the weekend, but still no pygmy hippo. I wish they could understand it’s for their own good! It’s become worryingly quiet over the last couple of days and frustration levels amongst the team are growing. What are we doing wrong? It started so well, but we...

18 May Quite an exciting day today. Ok so we didn’t actually catch a hippo, but we’re getting closer! Kenewa heard hippo noises whilst out checking his traps this morning. The locals think it’s a pregnant female looking for somewhere to give birth, but Michele thinks it’s...

8 May No luck so far. There haven’t been many signs of hippos around the traps, but a couple of them have feeding sites nearby. The team are busy improving their radio telemetry skills ready so that if we do catch a hippo we’ll be able to track where it goes. Unfortunately, I have to...

5 May The whole team have been on Tiwai for two days now and yesterday we started opening the traps. We’ve removed the strong cover materials that, for the last month, have allowed the pygmy hippos to walk over the traps without falling in and replaced them with partly broken rattan mats on...

2 May 2012 The team are starting to assemble in Tiwai. Michele, the vet from Palm Beach Zoo who is an expert in wildlife immobilisation (or anaesthetics to you and me) arrived yesterday after travelling from South Africa where she’s working on another project involved rhinos and lions. Today...

31 March Success! We now have 20 finished traps. I may be biased, but I’m sure these are the most beautiful pitfall traps I’ve ever seen. I’m really proud of the team – it was hard work, but we got there in the end. We’ve covered the traps in strong material so that...

24 March 2012 I arrived on Tiwai Island last night along with Mohammed, one of my assistants from Gola . It’s just a couple of hours drive from our HQ in Kenema and luckily, since it’s the end of the dry season, the mud roads are still ok to drive on. The journey may have been a little...

When people think of hippos they tend to think of the big kind, frequently seen patrolling African rivers in natural history programmes on the TV(or perhaps the brightly coloured, rather hungry plastic variety from a well known children’s game?). What about the little guy? Who thinks about the...

(Written on Saturday) If you've seen the film by the same name, then you’ll know it’s about the catastrophic consequences of climate change, and they're depicted as spectacularly and fatally catastrophic. As I write this, at 31000 feet over the Atlantic, the day after tomorrow...

(Written on Friday) The Rio conference is over. Tim and I are sitting in the tropical heat of our little flat overlooking the conference centre with the noise of the 20 diesel generators powering the vast halls coming through the door. Since yesterday’s rain, a new range of mountains has been...

To tune into the live webchat on the Guardian website from 1 to 2 pm today where RSPB's Tim Stowe and Tearfund's Laura Taylor and Serguem Jessui Machado de Silva will be answering your questions on Rio+20.

Walking into the aircraft hangar-sized food hall on Wednesday morning the giant screen was relaying, live from the main Rio chamber, the speech from a Prime Minister. He was talking about the development and environmental problems of his country. When we left the conference centre last night, a strikingly...

The last few days have seen Tim Stowe and Sacha Cleminson updating us on what's happening from the heart of Rio+20, but now it's your chance to dig a little deeper. Between 1 and 2 pm tomorrow, the Guardian is hosting a live web chat with an expert panel from Stop Climate Chaos including Tim...

The last few days have seen Tim Stowe and Sacha Cleminson updating us on what's happening from the heart of Rio+20, but now it's your chance to dig a little deeper. Between 1 and 2 pm tomorrow, the Guardian is hosting a live web chat with an expert panel from Stop Climate Chaos including Tim...

Throughout Tuesday night and yesterday morning, police outriders' sirens could be heard regularly from the streets below our apartment and at least 3 helicopters were patrolling the skies. The Heads of State were arriving and traffic chaos ensued. The formal part of the Rio+20 conference was opened...