INTAG VALLEY, Ecuador — In Ecuador's lush tropical Andes, Silvia Vetancourt multitasks, her hands maneuvering crochet needles with swift precision as she navigates the rocky path to the old town…
As dawn began to break in the Peruvian Amazon on March 5, an oil slick spread across the Puinahua River in the district of the same name, engulfing clumps of…
All three legacy-oil pipelines in the Andean Amazon system are old. The Oleoducto Transandino Colombiano (OTC) has been operating for 53 years, followed by the Sistema de Oleoducto Transecuatoriano (SOTE)…
A recent report has revealed a spike in deforestation in the buffer zone of one of the world’s best-protected areas, Peru’s Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. Between 2001 and 2023, 19,978 hectares…
CANCÚN, Mexico — The Mexican government finally opened its huge, controversial train project last December, connecting Cancún and Tulum with the rest of the Yucatán Peninsula. And yet, despite all…
CONCEIÇÃO DA BARRA, Espírito Santo — Beatriz Cassiano was working in her vegetable garden when she suddenly heard her grandson yelling, “Grandma, get out of there, get out, come in…
Yuturi ants are peaceful until their territory is threatened. This species, also known as the ‘conga ant,’ is considered a warrior in Amazonian Kichwa Indigenous culture, as these bugs don’t…
The number of fires shows no signs of easing as Brazil’s Roraima faces unprecedented blazes, and several Amazonian countries, including Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela, registered record-high outbreaks in the first quarter this year.
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.
Monarch butterflies are returning to gardens across the United States, but a few months ago, I stood in a mountain forest in Mexico where the monarchs spend the winter. They…
The new extractive reserves allow resident populations to engage in traditional and sustainable extractive practices such as fishing and hunting, while keeping out big businesses, such as commercial aquaculture or logging.
Forest clearing detected by Brazil's deforestation alert system fell to the lowest level in nearly five years, according to data released last week by the country's space agency, INPE. INPE's…
Indigenous organizations from Peru and Brazil are joining forces to push their respective governments to safeguard a 16-million-hectare (39.5-million-acre) territorial corridor in the Amazon that stretches from the Tapiche River…
The US food and drink giant PepsiCo has been linked through its supply chain to Amazon deforestation and the invasion of Indigenous lands in Peru, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism…
When he was a teenager at the end of the 1980s, Evanildo Sena would come back from a day of fishing dragging 5 or 6 tons of fish with his…
Clothing giants H&M and Zara have been linked to large-scale illegal deforestation, land-grabbing, violence and corruption in the Brazilian Cerrado, according to an investigation by Earthsight. Using satellite images, court…
The petroleum industry has a long history of operational calamities, large and small, that has created an equally long history of efforts to manage the environmental and social liabilities that…
Living deep in the Peruvian Amazon, the Kukama Kukamiria Indigenous community have spent generations with their feet in the Marañón, the river emerging from the Andes that provides the main…
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.
Even if everything goes well and the targets set by the Paris Agreement are met, average temperatures are expected to rise by 2.7° Celsius (4.86° Fahrenheit) this century, according to…
No one on the Colombian island of Providencia was prepared for what happened on the night of Nov. 16, 2020. Not even Josefina Huffington, who had survived four hurricanes. That…
PORTEIRINHA, Minas Gerais — Beneath the shade of the umbu tree, Maria Neves tells Maria José that ripe umbu fruit is like a woman on the brink of giving birth:…
Environmental crime slows climate action, deters investment in nature-based solutions, and undermines the green transition. Around the world, land grabbing, illegal deforestation, illicit mining, poaching and a rash of other crimes are…
Roosevelt said the recent hype regarding the “garden cities” in Ecuador is “annoying”, as it is not a new discovery and it ignores older research from Latin American archaeologists.
When the last Rabbs' fringe-limbed treefrog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum) died in 2016 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, its extinction garnered little media attention. Environmental journalist Jeremy Hance, a longtime Mongabay reporter…
The cattle ranching industry in Brazil is one of the largest in the world, but it could see huge financial losses if it doesn’t adapt to climate change and increasingly…
It was in 2015 when researchers were attempting to capture tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) in the Brazilian Cerrado to install monitoring collars so they could study the species. While trying to…
NUEVA VENECIA, Colombia — Sandra Milena Manjarez puts two plates of bright yellow rice topped with liza — a finger-sized mullet fish similar to a sardine — on the white…
Floodplains are extraordinarily productive because they are the interface between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are remarkably diverse because they integrate a mosaic of lakes, marshes, palm swamps and inundated…
“Don’t go to Zabaleta because they’re going to kill you.” “Why are they going to kill me if I haven’t done anything?” “They’re going to kill you, please don’t go…