A new video by Alianza Arkana includes an Earth Day message from the indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon who are facing the existential threats of logging and fossil fuel…
On Wednesday, in the Brazilian state of Pará, the trial begins of three men accused of murdering José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo, who…
In a new video ethnobotanist, Mark Plotkin, talks about recent—and historical—efforts to preserve the Amazon rainforest through map-making and technology. Today scientists like Plotkin are teaching indigenous people how to…
Pini Pini River in Manu National Park. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Pluspetrol, an Argentine oil and gas company, is eyeing a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Amazon rainforest…
Dan Childs filming in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo courtesy of Nick Werber. A new series of short films is celebrating the innovation of rural farmers in the Manu region of…
River and forest abuts vast soy field in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Illegal loggers beware: trees will soon be calling—literally—for backup. The Brazilian government has begun…
Camera trap image of tapir in Madidi-Tambopata Landscape. Photo by: WCS. Over 14,000 lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris), also known as Brazilian tapirs, roam an Amazonian landscape across Bolivia and Peru,…
Limonade River in French Guiana. The French government has approved a new gold mine near the river, which locals depend on. Photo by: Sébastien Brosse. Tensions have risen in the…
An interview with Karimeh Moukaddem, a part of our on-going Interviews with Young Scientists series. Typical farmhouse outside of Parauapebas. Photo by: Karimeh Moukaddem. The city of Parauapebas, Brazil is…
Black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) with fly near its eye in an ox-bow lake in Yasuni National Park. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. The Yasuni-ITT Initiative has been called many things: controversial,…
A female blue crowned manakin (Lepidothrix coronata) is one of over a thousand known bird species in Madidi National Park. Photo by: Mileniusz Spanowicz/WCS. With over 90 species of bat,…
Aerial view of Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Photo © Conservation International/John Martin. The nation of Guyana sports some of South America's most intact and least-imperiled rainforests, and a new $8.5 million…
Logging in Gabon, Central Africa. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Industrial logging in primary tropical forests that is both sustainable and profitable is impossible, argues a new study in Bioscience,…
Burnt forest in the Amazon. Photo by: Alexander Lees. Once habitat is lost or degraded, a species doesn't just wink out of existence: it takes time, often several generations, before…
The Amazon forest along the Tambopata River in Peru. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A study last month in the journal Science argued that pre-Columbian peoples had little impact on…
José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva speaking at a TEDx Amazon in 2010, just a few months before he and his wife were assassinated for their activism. On May 24th, 2011,…
Sawmill in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last year researchers took the first ever publicly-released video of an African golden cat (Profelis aurata) in a Gabon rainforest. This beautiful,…
A Perenco boat in the Amazon. Photo courtesy of David Hill. The company hoping to exploit the oil deposits slated to transform Peru’s economy has been declared to be endangering…
The past ten years have seen unprecedented progress in fighting deforestation in the Amazon. Indigenous rights, payments for ecosystem services, government enforcement, satellite imagery, and a spirit of cooperation amongst…
A view of Puerto Esperanza. Photo by: David Hill. A grassroots indigenous organization in Peru is calling for the removal of an Italian Catholic priest from the remote Amazon in…
Forest fire in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The combined impacts of deforestation and climate change will bring a host of new troubles for the world's tropical…
Crowd rallies for President Dilma Rousseff to veto changes to Brazil's forest code. Photo by: WWF-Brasil. A coalition of 200 organizations, known as the Comitê Brasil in Defense of Forests…
An interview with Arbio Left bank: Arbio's concession area. Photo by: Arbio. Arbio was begun by Michel Saini and Tatiana Espinosa Q. in the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de…
Map, Bahuaja Sonene National Park, Grasshopper Mimicking a Wasp. Photo by: David Johnston. Research and exploration in the Neotropics are extraordinary, life-changing experiences. In the past two decades, a new…
WARNING: Graphic photos below. Hunter in the Colombian rainforest. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Protected areas in the world's tropical rainforests are absolutely essential, but one cannot simply set up…
Aerial photo of Peruvian Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. On February 4th, the Peruvian government and a small indigenous group created a new Amazon reserve, dubbed the Maijuna Reserve.…
Overlooking rainforest in Guyana. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. In a bid to gain legal recognition of their land, the indigenous Wapichan people have digitally mapped their customary rainforest land in…
The Amazon rainforest meets cleared area for cattle pasture. A radical meteorology theory argues that loss of forest, both in temperate and tropical regions, will lead to less precipitation over…
The giant river otter. Photo by: Frank Hajek. Behavior and conservation of the Amazon's giant river otter. Charismatic, vocal, unpredictable, domestic, and playful are all adjectives that aptly describe the…
A brown-spider monkey in Selva de Florencia National Park. Photo courtesy of WCS. Researchers with The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Colombia’s National Parks Unit have located at least two…
A possibly ground-breaking idea has been kept on life support after Ecuador revealed its Yasuni-ITT Initiative had raked in $116 million before the end of the year, breaking the $100…
Victories won by activists around the world tops our list of the big environmental stories of the year. In this photo: a young woman is placed in handcuffs and arrested…
