More than a year late, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation has finally submitted its response to an investigation that found evidence of grave human rights violations at the Salala…
KATHMANDU, Nepal — Wildlife crime continues to plague Nepal, even as the law enforcement strives at the forefront. The country functions both as a source and transit hub for wildlife…
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.
JAKARTA — Prominent Indonesian environmental forensic expert Bambang Hero Saharjo faces yet another potential lawsuit for serving as a state witness against alleged violators, this time in a high-profile tin…
NIEUWOUDTVILLE, South Africa — It is the devil’s breath, this wind, blowing dry and mercilessly across a plain left threadbare by decades of overgrazing. With this wind at their backs,…
KATHMANDU — Nepal’s Supreme Court has concluded hearings in a petition filed against controversial measures to open up protected areas to development. A ruling in the case, dubbed as one…
Nov. 1 marked the five-year anniversary of the killing of Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara and the attempted killing of fellow guardian Laércio Guajajara in an alleged ambush by loggers in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon; the suspects haven’t been tried yet.
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — While music played in Bogotá's streets and a sense of victory filled the air after a long protest, Ana Graciela received a new appointment on her calendar: the…
Labor abuses on foreign-flagged fishing vessels in Indonesia's remote eastern seas continue to claim lives, with Indonesian crew members bearing the brunt of exploitation amid weak law enforcement, a new…
JAKARTA — Indonesian prosecutors have launched an investigation into the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, as there are indications of corruption related to the palm oil industry. The attorney general’s…
In a surprise move, the well-known environmental advocate Hoàng Thị Minh Hồng was released from prison in Vietnam on Saturday. Hồng was sentenced on Sept. 28, 2023, to three years…
After years of delays, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) will soon meet for the first time to discuss Kenya’s failure to implement rulings recognizing the Ogiek…
Ten years ago, four Indigenous Asháninka environmental defenders were murdered in the forests near their community of Saweto in Peru’s Amazon Ucayali region. In 2023, a court in Pucallpa found…
Until recently, the Hanoi-based nonprofit where Hưng works as a legal advocate distributed its research online, freely circulating information it intended to support policies on climate change and other environment…
LOLIONDO, Tanzania — Whistleblowers speaking to Mongabay have reported instances of poaching over decades in Tanzania linked to a luxury hunting firm catering to the United Arab Emirates’ elites and…
In Bolivia’s Madidi National Park, the Andes and the Amazon meet. Their landscapes gaze upon each other, converge and embrace with the full force of their diverse and vast vegetation.…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — A law enforcement crackdown against widespread opportunist oil extraction has shuttered at least 95 illegal wells following a spate of deaths in Indonesia’s South Sumatra province, police…
KATHMANDU — The list of alleged crimes and lies is long: accusations of forging local signatures, signing children's names on contracts, creating false reports, bulldozing through farmlands under the cover…
According to a report from Brazilian think tank the Escolhas Institute, up to 73% of all mercury used in Brazil's gold mines is of unknown origin; the country’s environmental agency states practically all mines in Brazil use illegal mercury.
In 2023, Socfin hired a consultancy to investigate longstanding allegations of human rights violations and environmental damage raised by communities living around the Belgian transnational company’s oil palm and rubber…
A year-long Mongabay investigation tracked several dozen illegal or suspicious activities in and around Araroibia in the last few years, including logging, deforestation and cattle ranching, and found a clear rise in environmental crimes in the region in mid-2023, the deadliest year for Indigenous people in Arariboia since 2016.
Raids to remove these cattle herds are logistically challenging, involving long distances, many personnel, life threats and even traps left in the middle of dirt roads.
The raid occurred two weeks after Mongabay showed the links between the REDD+ projects and a suspected logging scam.
According to the investigators, the group was running land-grabbing and timber laundering crimes in the Amazon for more than a decade and profiting millions of dollars.
The Chinese distant-water fishing fleet is a formidable force. For one thing, it’s the largest in the world, with at least 2,500 vessels — but likely many more. These vessels,…
TAKALAR/EAST LOMBOK/JAKARTA, Indonesia — Mustam Daeng Beta exhaled slowly before he began describing his time as a young fisherman many years ago. “Fish bombing was regular, also using poison,” Daeng…
SANTIAGO — The recent screening of a Mongabay video before Chile’s Supreme Court has intensified international scrutiny of the killing of 26-year-old Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara in Brazil 2019 — a case for which no one has yet gone on trial in Brazil.
An analysis of two carbon credit projects in the Brazilian Amazon has found that they may be connected to illegal timber laundering.
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, where Philip Jacobson is a fellow. Four years of investigating jaguar parts trafficking rings in Latin America led Andrea…
A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon.
When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years, the Tanzanian government has systematically attacked Maasai…
Measures throughout 2023 to curb the illegal gold trade in Brazil led to a 20% drop in the country’s exports of the precious metal.