Amazon News

Agricultural expansion in two Brazilian states has cleared a U.K -sized area of jaguar habitat, nearly a fifth of which occurred in the last decade alone, a new report shows.…

Grassroots organizations are settling new areas in the Brazilian Amazon amid disappointment that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been slow to jump-start the stalled land reform agenda.

Deep in the rainforest, the monkeys are yodeling. Their wild calls echo across the foliage, sending signals of sex and survival. For decades, scientists have studied why they make these…

Scientists have known for some time now that tropical birds are falling in number. In general, the cause has been attributed to forest degradation and fragmentation. But a 2020 study…

Researchers are analyzing the bug oil’s bioactive properties, aiming to validate its safety and expand its promising applications in medicine, cosmetics and biotechnology.

This is the last of three interviews with Indigenous representatives at the United Nations about the latest issues in their country's Amazon forests. Read the interview about the Peruvian Amazon…

In the space of six months, Xamã the jaguar had crisscrossed more than 14,000 hectares of the Amazon Rainforest, or about 35,000 acres — an area a tenth the size…

Across the Pan-Amazon region, communities who developed the bioeconomy concept centuries ago and practice it today still have a hard time accessing its benefits.

The Madeira River, the largest tributary of the Amazon, has been losing water flow over the last 20 years while facing severe droughts.

This is the second of three interviews with Indigenous representatives at the United Nations about the latest issues in their country's Amazon forests. Read the interview about the Peruvian Amazon…

This is the first of three interviews with Indigenous representatives at the United Nations about the latest issues in their country's Amazon forests. Read the interview about the Colombian Amazon…

A new report adds to the already overwhelming case that protected areas and Indigenous territories in the Amazon Rainforest serve as a critical carbon sink. The report, based on satellite…

In the heart of the Colombian Amazon, the towering mountains of the Serranía del Chiribiquete harbor secrets including South America’s oldest rock art. The remote site was off-limits and poorly…

Mongabay followed the steps of Adriano Aguiar de Castro, who, according to authorities, jumped from one gold laundering scheme to another and now is also involved with gold smuggling into Venezuela.

Illegal gold miners have been moving into Amapá in the wake of federal raids on mining hotspots in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon, including the Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories.

A Mongabay investigation that revealed an illegal cattle boom amid a record-high number of killings of Indigenous Guajajara has been cited by Brazilian authorities to remove thousands of head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Rainforest.

The large leaves of the aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in the peatlands and other seasonal wetland areas in tropical South America, form a rounded crown on its…

As REDD projects around the world face setbacks, restoration projects in the Amazon are flourishing as a means of reviving market confidence in forest-based carbon credits.

Brazil is facing an alarming surge in forest fires. Last year, the country registered 237,000 fires and over 30.8 million hectares of vegetation were consumed by flames—an area the size of Italy. This represented a 79% increase in…

For members of the Sani Warmi collective in Amazonian Ecuador, the day begins before sunrise. They tend to the chacra — their agroforestry garden — and harvest plantain, yuca, palm…

Brazil’s plans to build ports and roads to help move grains, beef and iron ore from the rainforest echo a development vision that dates back to the military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s.

Colombia has created a first-of-its-kind territory meant to protect a group of Indigenous people living away from regular contact with the rest of the world. Located in the southern department…

Hidden within the Amazon Rainforest are rare, carbon-rich ecosystems known as peatlands, a type of swamp forest that’s key to combatting climate change through its capacity to absorb and store…

"They're curious about us, and we're curious about them." That’s how Daniel Cangussu describes the recent interaction with a small Indigenous group that had just contacted non-Indigenous society in the…

An international court published its ruling this month that the Ecuadorian government was responsible for a long list of human rights violations against uncontacted Indigenous communities in the Amazon Rainforest.…

Presented in February by Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes, a draft bill violates Indigenous people's constitutional rights by stripping their veto power against impactful activities on their ancestral lands and adding further obstacles to an already long land demarcation process.

Mongabay went to Pará state’s southwest and found examples of people struggling to keep sustainable initiatives in a region dominated by soy, cattle, gold and logging.

The situation is worse than previously thought In February 2025, three scientific papers were published showing that the climate situation is much worse than the scientific community thought, much less…

In 2003, Indigenous organizations petitioned the Peruvian government to create Yavarí Mirim, an Indigenous reserve on the Amazon border with Brazil and Colombia, spanning 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres),…

Journalist Alex Cuadros’s latest book, “When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon” tells the story of how an Indigenous group in Brazil was forced to reckon with Western culture.

“It’s amazing, it’s amazing! I have no other word to describe it.” That’s how biologist Marcos Roberto de Brito defines the thrill of seeing a jaguar up close for the…

I’ve learned to speak some spider monkey over the years. As a conservationist working out of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, I’ve spent years of my life in the jungle. I…