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…
EL ÁNGEL, Ecuador — The view outside from this eco-hotel in northern Ecuador reveals vast hillsides still scarred by fires. In late January 2024, large flames roared past the wooden…
CORUMBAÍBA, Brazil — They appeared at dusk. The day was ending in a pink-and-yellow sky when a cub moved in the grass. Its mother appeared next, red as the earth,…
JALAPÃO, Brazil — The buritis, or moriche palms, are fighting for their lives in the streambed now lined with scorched earth. For two years now, drought has advanced a barrier…
Brazilian Amazon states are leading an offensive against environmental regulations in the Amazon and beyond.
Jaguar have always disregarded national borders, but some threats are keeping the big cats contained within the territories that they inhabits. The spread of extensive monoculture plantations, illegal ranches, forest…
The Pan Amazon has a legacy of both violent and non-violent protest that dates from the onset of European colonization, through the Brazilian Empire and the Andean Republics of the…
Comuna da Terra Irmã Alberta, a small oasis of green fields and trees, sits on the outskirts of São Paulo and is home to 65 small farmers who help supply…
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.
Scientists and Indigenous community members documented 27 new-to-science species in Peru's Alto Mayo region, including four new mammals and a bizarre "blob-headed" fish that was already well-known to local people.…
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…
BRASÍLIA — The European Union’s new antideforestation law banning the import of products linked to recently deforested land has triggered opposing reactions from Brazil’s environmental and agribusiness authorities. The country’s…
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.
One of the main social and economic challenges facing Amazonian countries is inequality. Although the standard of living of the lower economic strata is better now than at any time…
GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS — Marco Andres Vizcaino Garcia is probably the most qualified naturalist guide a person could hire during their visit to Galápagos National Park and its adjacent marine reserve.…
Intense protests flared up last December in communities opposed to Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s plans to build two maximum-security prisons in sensitive ecosystems and Indigenous territories without consulting local populations.…
As forests continue to be cleared and forested landscapes degraded by human activity, their loss can significantly affect the trees left standing, potentially changing the structure of forests, a recent…
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,…
In the quiet Swiss town of Davos, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain unfolds as young Hans Castorp’s brief visit to a sanatorium turns into a seven-year exploration of ideas, intrigue,…
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…
The private sector is the largest single promoter of conventional development. Its lobbying organizations tend to be well-funded and staffed with competent individuals grounded in the analytical abilities of traditional…
Across South America, Indigenous communities have often considered territorial protection to be the main responsibility of men, while women typically assume roles as caretakers of the household, family, and community.…
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.
MOCOA, Colombia — A bonfire crackles in the center of an Indigenous open-air pavilion atop a hill in the Putumayo jungle, adding warmth to the already sweltering Amazonian heat. The…
Throughout a year in which Latin America saw elections in six countries and prepared for the biodiversity COP16 in Colombia, the region continued its struggle with extreme weather events, criminal…
The constituency for the conservation of the Pan Amazon is broad-based and diverse. Academics and civil society organizations have been successful in framing conservation of the Amazon as an issue…
Traditional people need more financing, better access to energy and improved roads to get their products into the market.
The jaguar moves between patches of forest in the Mesoamerican Corridor across Central America. Meanwhile, the majestic Colombian Massif still serves as a refuge for the oncilla, while the puma…