Nearly 100 underground tunnels, running a combined length of more than 84 kilometers, or 52 miles, crisscross and plunge into the depths of the mountain that hosts the Zijin gold…
In Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, Paul Raad crouched in the undergrowth, scanning the ground for signs of jaguar activity. He wasn’t looking for the big cats themselves;…
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.
Earlier this year, commodity-trading giant Cargill exported a shipment of soy from Brazil to Europe, aiming to test whether it would comply with the European Union’s new regulation on deforestation-free…
SILVANIA, Colombia — On a warm but overcast afternoon, hundreds of Indigenous representatives and spiritual leaders gathered to witness a remarkable convergence of native nations from across the Americas. Serving…
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…
The modern history of internal migration in Colombia began in a manner that was not unlike the processes organized by the governments in Brazil and the other Andean countries in…
A giant anaconda, a vampire hedgehog, a dwarf squirrel, and a tiger cat were among the new species named by science in 2024. Found from the depths of the Pacific…
One of the main observers of the art of the Kadiwéu, an Indigenous people from South America, was French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. In the early 20th century, he visited Indigenous…
Over the last two decades, about 130,000 hectares, or 3,210,000 acres, of forest have been lost annually for coffee cultivation. Pressure on areas suitable for coffee growing, usually forest-rich habitats,…
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…
A massive gap is forming in the race to comply with the European Union’s antideforestation rules, as smallholder farmers and suppliers struggle to meet the new requirements while agribusiness giants…
On one Saturday in August 2023, news of a jaguar (Panthera onca) death shook the small streets of the Amazonian town of Ixiamas in Bolivia. It was all community members…
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…
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil — When President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva walked up the ramp of the Presidential Palace arm in arm with Cacique Raoni, one of Brazil's most prominent…
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center Rainforest Reporting Grant. YURIMAGUAS, Alto Amazonas, Peru — The boat sets sail early in the morning. The plan is to…
At last month’s COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, oil-trading giant Trafigura announced that it was injecting $100 million into the company’s Brújula Verde tree-planting project in Colombia. Working in…
Twelve countries, including Brazil, are currently discussing the Tropical Forest Finance Facility (TFFF) framework, which is expected to be concluded by next January.
This year marks the second full year of Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellowships. Participants, selected from a pool of hundreds of applicants around the world, spend six months…
Throughout most of the twentieth century, the Ecuadorian authorities pursued a geopolitical strategy that reflected a long-held conviction that they were cheated out of large territories in the Western Amazon.…
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…
You could be forgiven for thinking there’s no water in the Atacama Desert. In fact, the driest desert on Earth has underground springs that feed the Chaxa, Cejar and Tebenquiche…
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…
The European Union's deforestation-free products regulation (EUDR) won't affect the operations of Brazil's paper and pulp industry, which has already traced its supply chains "from farm to factory" for more…
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.
Foreign investors in Honduras enjoy “extraordinary privileges” that hinder the government’s ability to implement reforms that could benefit human rights and the environment, a report has found. These advantages allow…
Policies designed to occupy and populate the Peruvian Amazon began about seventy years ago with the construction of a trunk highway connecting Pucallpa on the Ucayali River with Lima. Named…