Several Cambodian journalists contributed to this report, but have requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the story. STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — Rare timber species likely logged from Cambodia’s…
PHNOM PENH — In a rare move to combat forest crimes, Cambodian Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth on Sept. 2 banned all forest clearance at the site of a dam project in…
Honduras this year launched a plan to eliminate deforestation by 2029, with a special focus on recovering land used by criminal groups for timber trafficking. Officials have already carried out…
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…
STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — Rain poured down in torrential sheets as Ouk Mao guided reporters through the winding dirt tracks that were, in August, rutted with deep trenches of mud and…
JAKARTA — Indonesian conservationist Farwiza Farhan says she couldn’t contain her tears when she learned that the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation had selected her as a recipient of its Emergent…
ARU ISLANDS, Indonesia — When the ship with “J7Explorer” embossed across its hull approached the shoreline on May 13, some on the Aru Islands assumed the greenish hulk was an…
This is the second of a two-part Mongabay series about hydropower dams in the Cardamom Mountains. Read Part One. PURSAT/KOH KONG, Cambodia — “Fifteen years ago, this whole village was…
This is the first of a two-part Mongabay series about hydropower dams in the Cardamom Mountains. Read Part Two. PURSAT/KOH KONG, Cambodia — Rumbling south down a rutted dirt track…
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.
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.
PHNOM PENH — A rights group in Cambodia has accused a United Nations project of promoting private sector actors tied to human rights and environmental abuses. The U.N. Development Programme’s…
PHNOM PENH — The trial against Mother Nature Cambodia, one of the country’s last environmental activism groups, kicked off at the Phnom Penh Court of First Instance on the morning…
An analysis of two carbon credit projects in the Brazilian Amazon has found that they may be connected to illegal timber laundering.
A wide strip of land cuts through the dense Amazon canopy in Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Reserve as shown by a photograph taken during a flyover on March 15, 2024. The…
MONROVIA — Chainsaw-milled timber is emerging as a damaging new form of illegal logging in Liberia. Chainsaw milling is legally permitted only for small-scale production of boards for the country’s…
SOUTH PESISIR, Indonesia — Bendri lived with his wife and child just 80 meters, or 260 feet, back from the Surantih Mudiak Dalam River, which flows from Sumatra’s Barisan Mountains…
PHNOM PENH — New data published by the University of Maryland on April 4 and available through satellite monitoring platform Global Forest Watch show continued forest loss across Cambodia last…
Roads are being built at an unprecedented rate across the globe. Some 25 million kilometers (15.5 million miles) of paved roads are expected to be built in just the four…
This story is part of a Mongabay series on female environmental defenders in the Amazon. Read about the lives and work of Soraida Chindoy, Maydany Salcedo, and Etelvina Ramos. “Don’t…
For years, detecting illegal roads in remote areas has remained a challenging and labor-intensive task. More often than not, it requires poring over satellite images to identify thin lines cut…
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia — Vegetation lurches over a concrete wall that runs alongside a quiet road in the northern Cambodian province of Preah Vihear. Behind the wall, and the rusty…
Several palm oil and cacao companies operating in the Peruvian Amazon have systematically contributed to clearing at least 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) between 2012 and 2021 in the country’s most…
The 2022 documentary “The Territory” won an Emmy award this January, shining a light on the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous people and the invasions, conflicts and threats from land grabbers in their territory in the Brazilian Amazon from 2018 to 2021.
Southeast Asia is home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, making it a pivotal region for global efforts to address the biodiversity crisis and climate change.…
Kichwa leader Quinto Inuma Alvarado, president the Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu community, was murdered last Wednesday, November 29, in the San Martín region of the Peruvian Amazon. The crime took…
Verra, the world’s largest certifier of carbon credits, has released an update for calculating the climate benefits of the REDD forest conservation projects it certifies. The U.S.-based nonprofit said the…
The makeshift road tears through the emerald canopy, splintering one of the Amazon’s most pristine corridors of rainforest. Along the edges of the road, running through the heart of the…
Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in November 2019 in the Brazilian Amazon. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, who interviewed Paulo nine months before his death, returned to the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in August 2023 to talk with his family and the other guardian who survived the attack, Laércio Guajajara, and shine a light on a case that still hasn’t gone to trial after four years.
PHNOM PENH — “Make the bosses rich in Cambodia,” then-prime minister Hun Sen said at the 2012 inauguration of a sugar refinery in Kampong Speu province. “If a country has…
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia — Sometime after 10 a.m. on Friday, April 21, sweat poured down the face of veteran environmental activist San Mala as he crawled through the forest undergrowth,…
