As rainforests hit the headlines with Prince Charles underlining his commitment to fighting deforestation, the Rainforest Foundation UK's Director is arguing that any bid to save rainforests must put local people first.

Determined to hault the police brutality and repression faced by campaigning organisations in Gabon, Rainforest Foundation UK partner Brainforest is at the forefront of a coalition to confront the government there.

This month the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is starting work in the Central African Republic. The country’s massive rainforest is seriously threatened by logging, yet its forest communities have practically no rights to stop their homes being destroyed. RFUK's Samuel Dieval explains how a new project aims to strengthen local communities and protect the rainforests they live in.

For those worried about global warming, getting hot and sweaty taking part in a triathlon might not seem an obvious way to cool things down.

But the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is giving people the chance to do just that by joining its 2008 triathlon team, and helping fight climate change by protecting rainforests.

RFUK has 10 places left on its team for the event, which takes place on 9-10 August 2008 at the Excel Centre, London Docklands.

Congratulations and thank you to everyone who was part of The Rainforest Foundation UK London Marathon team 2008.

We thoroughly enjoyed being part of the crowd to cheer you to the finish line, through both the glorious sunshine and torrential rain. We are extremely proud to have had such a fantastic team, thank you all for taking up the challenge and helping us to protect rainforests and the people and animals that call them home.

Rainforests are home to an estimated 50 million indigenous forest peoples,more species of plants and animals than all of the earth’s other ecosystems combined, and they play an essential role in fighting climate change. So it’s not surprising that everyone wants a piece of them.

A new book by John Hemming, former director of the Royal Geographic Society, describes the passionate struggles that have taken place in order to utilise, protect and understand the word’s greatest expanse of tropical rainforest.

The Rainforest Foundation UK has one copy to give away.

Rice growers facing eviction from fragile rainforest lands in Northern Brazil are terrorising indigenous rainforest communities who successfully waged a 30-year battle to protect their homelands.

Rice farmers and their allies are blockading roads, dynamiting bridges, taking hostages, launching homemade bombs and invading schools, according to reports from the Rainforest Foundation US.

In a letter published in the Independent on Wednesday 9 April Rainforest Foundation UK Director Simon Counsell argues the best way to protect the earth's rapidly disappearing rainforests is to let the indigenous people who have inhabited the areas for centuries manage the land.

One of the biggest community-based rainforest mapping projects in Africa will begin today (Wednesday 9 April) as the Rainforest Foundation UK bids to help indigenous people protect six million acres of endangered rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

66 Congolese ‘Master Mappers’ – trained by RFUK – are travelling by canoe and motorbike to the remote Inongo territory in centre-west of the country to work with nearly 100 villages in the world’s second largest rainforest.

Ignore the weather forecasts: Rainforest Foundation UK will be ensuring that a least one corner of the London Marathon is a little bit tropical.

RFUK has designated Mile 14 as its cheering point. And hopefully you won’t be able to miss it because everyone at the cheering point will be clad in bright yellow t-shirts and will be waving inflatable palm trees.

If we lose rainforests, we lose the race against climate change. Help us win the race by competing for the Rainforest Foundation in the London Triathlon.

Swim, bike and run for the Rainforest Foundation on your own or with a team on 9-10 August. If you haven’t got a place, join the Rainforest Foundation team now. If you’ve already registered, make RFUK your charity.

The headquarters of Rainforest Foundation UK partner Brainforest in Gabon were ransacked this week stripping the environmental organisation of key documents and computers.

Brainforest director Marc Ona believes the vandalism was a planned attack by factions opposed to the work his organisation does to protect rainforests and safeguard the rights of indigenous forest peoples.

Classroom doors are opening for the first time to children struggling to get an education in the rainforests of Cameroon. RFUK has launched a pioneering project to help ‘Pygmy’ children overcome the barriers they face when going to school.

Bringing forest-based carbon credits into the carbon market could backfire on the planet, according to a new report from the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK).

‘Carbon Sunk?’ warns that inclusion of ‘avoided deforestation’ credits could be at best too little, too late to avert deforestation, the second largest contributor to global climate change. At worst, it could flood carbon markets and devalue the price of carbon to the point that real emissions reduction projects were financially unviable.

As a carving knife dangles over the Congo rainforest, indigenous peoples are racing against time to protect their traditional lands from industrial-scale logging.

Forest peoples have for centuries safeguarded this Central African frontier – the second largest rainforest after the Amazon. Now they are producing maps to gain land rights so they can defend their territories against logging. With the maps, they are demonstrating what governments and the international community are ignoring –their presence on the land and the vital role they play in protecting rainforests.

The Rainforest Foundation (RFUK) has condemned the massive increase in the Amazon’s deforestation rate following the Brazilian government’s announcement yesterday that an estimated 3,235 square kilometres have been lost in the last five months.

“This is devastating for a country which already has the highest tree loss on the planet,” said Simon Counsell, RFUK Director. “This announcement comes despite global recognition that deforestation is the second largest cause of global warming.”

Environmental and indigenous rights groups claimed victory when a law exploiting forests and the people safeguarding them was axed by the Constitutional Court of Columbia yesterday.

The controversial forest law that favoured logging companies and violated the rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-Columbian communities was dropped following an intensive campaign by a coalition of organisations.

Britvic is embarking on a new cause-related partnership for its 100% natural school-focussed brand, Really Wild Drinks Co, which will see a donation of £25K going to the Rainforest Foundation for the development of a school programme in the Cameroon rainforest.

A petition urging passage of Africa’s first-ever law safeguarding the basic human rights of indigenous peoples has been delivered to the President of the Republic of Congo.

More than 1,500 people signed the petition launched by the Rainforest Foundation UK to press for the law guarding against the discrimination, exploitation and violence endured by indigenous peoples. The ‘Make it a first for Africa’ campaign continues to garner support for this landmark law from across the UK and Europe.

The Rainforest Foundation UK invites you to an evening to celebrate the second largest rainforest on the planet - the Congo rainforest -- on Thursday 13 December at University College of London (UCL). Come and meet representatives from our partner organisations in the Congo who are working to safeguard the last great rainforest frontier before it’s too late.