Forest loss is increasing south of the Orinoco River due to lack of Venezuelan official oversight, a growing Colombian insurgency, fires set to create mining camps, and new agricultural lands cleared to feed miners.
In a failed state, environmental NGOs endure restrictive government policies; shortages of cash, personnel, water and other resources — surviving via creative monetary policies, volunteerism, and sheer grit.
The Chávez and Maduro administrations have concealed vast amounts of vital scientific data on climate change, deforestation, pollution, mining, water quality and much more, as far back as 2011.
After two years of severe drought, lacking electricity and water, with a $500 annual budget, the Botanical Garden of Caracas struggles valiantly to protect its precious collection.
This month’s nationwide blackout forced citizens to deforest parks for firewood, to pull water from polluted rivers, and resulted in the death of hospitalized babies and endangered wildlife.
Caura National Park is under pressure from gold miners, but Afro-Venezuelan and indigenous groups have teamed with NGOs and companies to do sustainable agroforestry and safeguard forests.
The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has become a crisis for wildlife and zoo animals too, as a hungry, desperate population hunts wild species for food.
Venezuela’s ongoing economic crisis has helped trigger an illegal invasion by squatters into a University of the Andes research forest, a refuge of the Critically Endangered brown spider monkey.
A small community, far from Venezula’s Orinoco Mining Arc, discovers gold, leading to an incursion by illegal miners, environmental devastation and an allegedly deadly army raid.
The price of oil controls much of what happens in Venezuela, determining the nation’s economic health, policies and politics. In 1995, when that price fell to just 16 dollars per…
n July 1914 oil drilling activities were formally initiated in the state of Zulia, in western Venezuela, with the opening of the historic Zumaque I oil well on the east…
The Nineties were a decade that stood out for Venezuelans, because they discovered that the were garimpeiros in the south of the country. These traditional miners from Brazil, drawn by the gold rush,…
The hunters ransack the vulnerable nests of tropical birds in richly biodiverse but poorly patrolled Venezuelan rainforests. Wildlife merchants brazenly display young fledglings, monkeys and other animals, right next to…
