A community in the Brazilian Amazon is transforming fallen trunks and dead trees into everyday items and art pieces.
The last time Ecuador held elections, in 2023, the country’s national assembly had been dissolved and then-President Guillermo Lasso had faced potential impeachment for a corruption scandal involving embezzlement of…
Brazilian Amazon states are leading an offensive against environmental regulations in the Amazon and beyond.
Once estimated as 20,000 in the territory, hundreds of illegal miners still remain and may expand business at the slightest sign of the security forces withdrawing.
Unprecedented images of uncontacted Indigenous people in Brazil’s Massaco Indigenous Territory, in the Amazon region, have prompted a push for greater enforcement to protect the land of these vulnerable populations.
Three Indigenous communities in Peru’s Amazon are no longer engaging in unsustainable or illegal forest activities to make ends meet as they complete one year of a conservation basic income…
Rodrigo Agostinho, head of IBAMA, Brazil's federal environmental agency, for two years now, spoke with Mongabay about the progress of his agency and the challenges it faces in protecting the country's biomes after four years of regression under former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Several years ago, I took a solo trip to the Huánuco region of the central Peruvian Amazon. After traveling five hours from the nearest town by car, boat and tuk-tuk,…
According to the Brazilian Federal Police, Bruno Heller is one of Amazon's largest deforesters and relied on legal and technical advice, including a fake contract, bribing police officers, and near-real-time monitoring of deforestation work through satellite imagery, investigators said.
Plans for a major mining project in western Suriname have sounded alarms in nearby Indigenous communities, who say that the project will destroy local ecosystems, violate their land rights and…
Humanity achieved a fateful milestone last year. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service has officially declared 2024 the hottest year on record, and the first year in history with…
South America recorded the highest number of fire outbreaks in 14 years in 2024, with Brazil at the epicenter of the crisis.
Traditional people need more financing, better access to energy and improved roads to get their products into the market.
The Amazon Rainforest, where next year’s COP30 climate summit will be hosted, is reeling from two consecutive years of severe drought, with major rivers at record lows, leading to water shortages and transportation disruptions for local communities.
As 2025 dawns, here is a look at some of the storylines that could shape the fate of tropical forests this year. More reading: The year in tropical rainforests: 2024…
In the late 1990s, the Kichwa community of Sani Isla, in northern Ecuador's Amazon region, learned that the oil company Occidental (Oxy) had plans to conduct exploration on their communal…
The year 2024 saw significant developments in tropical rainforest conservation, deforestation, and degradation. While progress in some regions provided glimmers of hope, systemic challenges and emerging threats highlighted the fragility…
Brazil is poised to invest tens of billions reais to build more than 2,000 km (1,240 miles) of new shipping channels in shrinking rivers – a dramatic, costly, damaging channelization…
Twelve countries, including Brazil, are currently discussing the Tropical Forest Finance Facility (TFFF) framework, which is expected to be concluded by next January.
In 15 conservation units, illegal gold miners destroyed 330 hectares (815 acres) — an area close to the size of Central Park in New York City — in only two months.
"You're engulfed in waves of steam and sweating buckets and there's no cool water anywhere," Kenneth Feeley, a professor at the University of Miami, tells Mongabay. He’s describing the Boiling…
Major banks, including Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, are still failing to implement the full scope of U.N. human rights principles, a new report has found. The report by finance watchdog…
The frog’s loud croaking turned out to be a call to its own demise. The researchers walking along the steep muddy bank on a rainy November day in 2022 in…
Zooming in on the Peruvian jungle, many hectares of deforestation can be seen amid the thick vegetation, like huge scars hidden among the foliage. They’re dispersed between the forests in…
Most of the exported timber belongs to the almost-extinct ipê species and was sent to a company in Portugal.
Researchers suggest that recycling gold could dramatically reduce harmful emissions, along with other solutions such as formalizing mining, adopting clean technologies, and improving gold supply chain transparency.
The ice loss in the Andes could reduce the water flow to the Amazon rivers by up to 20%.
The boat comes to a halt, shuddering against the dirt bank that rises from the edge of the Ucayali River. Sixto, tanned and with a frown cutting deep furrows across…
Mongabay examined four REDD+ projects in Pará state and found that all were developed in partnership with sawmill owners with a long history of environmental fines.
In the mountains of Peru, where ancient cloud forests meet the Amazon Rainforest, an Andean bear made scientific history. For four months, a camera collar captured the wild male’s daily…
The hum of a small plane is heard overhead during a community assembly, but no one looks up. Conversation rises naturally over the sound as the engine’s intense roar fades…
The international community is struggling to come up with enough funding to adequately address climate change, especially for developing countries that are impacted the most. At the latest climate change…