New app transforms data gathering for wildlife in Papua New Guinea
For 13 years, Caleb Bulu recorded the rich wildlife of the Torricelli Mountain Range in northwestern Papua New Guinea by walking up and down the slopes. When he observed animals,…
Articles by Maria Salazar
Maria Angeles lives in Spain. She started translating for Mongabay in 2013 after finishing her postgraduate studies. She is now helping the team as the Translation Coordinator. Apart from her work for Mongabay, she works part-time as a translator and interpreter. Before joining the team, she worked as an English teacher and volunteered her time translating for different non-profits. She wants to contribute to make the world a better place to live in with her work
In São Paulo, Indigenous Guarani unite over their reclaimed farming tradition
“I had never seen these colored types of corn until I was 22 years old,” says Jerá Poty Mirim. “I’d only seen Tupi corn, the yellow kind you find in…
Across Latin America, palm oil violations abound — with little accountability
Palm oil producers across several Latin American countries have been the subject of complaints about their environmental practices, an analysis of official records has found, but these complaints rarely result…
For species on the very brink of extinction, cloning is a loaded last resort
For many people, extinction is a term that refers to the past. It’s meant for dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and so many other species only found in textbooks or on display…
As temperatures rise, so does risk of kidney disease, study finds
The impacts of burning fossil fuels are not only being felt in the environment, but are also affecting human health. The most known and studied trends to date have been…
‘We scientists engage in soft diplomacy’: Q&A with Christine Wilkinson
As deforestation and subsequent human expansion into natural areas continue, separating people from wildlife is unrealistic. Even in “pristine” landscapes, like national parks, humans and wildlife are always sharing the…
Reclaiming tradition: Amazonian women ditch mining for biocosmetics
An initiative in the northern Brazilian Amazon is helping a group of rural women reclaim their riverine culture and traditions while also empowering them economically. The Sementes do Araguari Association,…
Barrage of droughts weakens Amazon’s capacity to bounce back, study finds
Severe droughts over the past two decades have affected the resilience of the Amazon Rainforest, a new study shows, with stretches of affected forest taking between one and three years…
In Latin America, the law is ‘a tool to silence’ environmental defenders
Wbeimar Cetina says he remembers with chilling clarity the 14 months he spent in jail in Arauca, Colombia. Because he couldn’t have visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he replayed…
Boosting human and machine expertise with conservation tech: Q&A with Sara Beery
Some people know that they want to be scientists from an early age. Not so with Sara Beery. The computer vision expert got started on her path to science in…
In wildlife traffickers, the internet finds a cancel target everyone agrees on
It was 2008, and Danielle Kessler was sitting in front of her computer, shocked by what she was seeing on the internet: a live rhino for sale. The internet and…
For Indigenous Zoró, the Brazil nut is a weapon against deforestation
“When people see the nuts all bagged up here, they think it’s easy, but it’s really tough out there in the rainforest,” says Waratan. “You have to find them, cut…
Amazonian birds are shrinking in response to climate change, study shows
The canary in the coal mine for how climate change is affecting the treasure trove of biodiversity in the Amazon is … also a bird. Dozens of them, in fact,…
Galápagos census looks at impacts on turtles during and after COVID lockdown
It’s six in the morning and the beach is empty. The tide has erased the footprints from the sand, and the surface is a blank slate of white and perfectly…
You can’t see them to count them, but Amazonian manatees seem to be recovering
Diogo de Souza used to wake up at 3 a.m., stop by the house of a community member who knew about manatees, and the two began work among the carapanãs,…
In Brazil’s wildlife care centers, struggles and successes go unseen
On Feb. 15 this year, the day after Valentine’s, a two-toed sloth was checked into the government-run wildlife screening center in Manaus, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, for some…
Chile’s burrowing parrot marks 35 years of a slow but successful recovery
The story of Cristián Bonacic and Río de los Cipreses National Reserve is, in a way, a story of love at first sight: they “met” in the summer of 1986,…
An unlikely safari in Brazil is helping save the Pantanal’s jaguars
Watching the largest feline in the Americas in the wild has always been a rare and remarkable experience. In Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest continental floodplain and one of the…
Study evaluates role of rivers in creating the Amazon’s rich biodiversity
Since the first European naturalists arrived in the Amazon Rainforest at the end of the 18th century to catalog its copious natural wonders, one of the most intriguing questions has…
‘Superstitious belief kills pangolins’: Q&A with biologist Elisa Panjang
When Elisa Panjang was 10 years old, playing outside her home in Sandakan, a small town in Malaysian Borneo, she heard a snuffling sound near the forest’s edge. As she…
Côte d’Ivoire braces to save what’s left of its single-digit forest cover
There was no good news to be found in the forest and wildlife inventory for Côte d'Ivoire published earlier this year. But the Ivorien Ministry of Water and Forests (MINEF)…
Green light for mining project raises red flags for Chile penguin reserve
The approval of a mining and port project in Chile has generated a wave of outrage in the country. The Dominga project was rejected in 2017 due to its potential…
Outgunned by militants, rangers fear for chimpanzees in southwest Mali
Forestry officer Karim Kamisoko is not at his post. Instead of patrolling Bafing Faunal Reserve in southwestern Mali, he and his fellow rangers are 70 kilometers (43 miles) away, taking…
Sinking hope of justice as exporter of 26-ton shark fin cargo gets token fine
In April 2020, customs officers in Hong Kong made one of the largest seizures of shark fins in history: 26 metric tons, all of it exported from Ecuador. This number…
Brazil’s Indigenous Xavante strangled by agribusiness, slammed by COVID-19
Beneath the intense sun of Brazil’s Central-West region, protesters paraded their bodies painted black and red — with charcoal and annatto, from the urucum (achiote) plant — and adorned with…
Your açaí smoothie may be destroying floodplain forests in the Amazon
Açaí has always been part of the Amazonian diet. Locals consume the round, purple fruit, which grows in bunches on the Euterpe oleracea palm tree, almost daily. In the mid-1990s,…
‘People don’t know the Yanomami’: Q&A with filmmakers Davi Kopenawa & Luiz Bolognesi
After a dream, Yanomami shaman and great leader Davi Kopenawa began to reflect: television, cinema and all the images created and transmitted are an important part of white people’s culture.…
Indigenous Bolivians take the defense of their land into their own hands
When the threats of potential mining activity arrived in the Bolivian community of Las Mangas, in the Indigenous Lomerío territory, the community held a meeting where they decided to put…
Drones are a knife in the gunfight against poaching. But they’re leveling up
In 2016, during the height of the rhino poaching war, field rangers in Kruger National Park in South Africa saw sobering scenes day after day. The field reports showed just…
To spot wild-caught birds in pet trade, researchers zoom into isotopic detail
For pet enthusiasts, buying an exotic, rare or endangered species can be done legally, and many pet owners want to obey the law. The problem is that illegally obtained animals,…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Indigenous communities in Peru ‘living in fear’ due to deforestation, drug trafficking
- Indigenous community in Peru losing forests to timber, drug, land trafficking
- Bolivian protected areas hit hard by forest fires
- The protected area that isn’t: Bolivia’s Ñembi Guasu beset by fires, farms, roads
Oceans
- Indonesian authorities nip island auction in marine reserve in the bud
- ‘It was a shark operation’: Q&A with Indonesian crew abused on Chinese shark-finning boat
- Fishers in Flores Sea opt to limit harvest of overexploited sea cucumbers
- As shark numbers plummet, nations seek ban on devastatingly effective gear
Amazon Conservation
- To be effective, zero-deforestation pledges need a critical mass, study shows
- Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland
- U.N. report calls for the ban of mercury trade and its use in gold mining
- Following the impacts of palm oil alliance: Violated regulations and penalty proceedings
Land rights and extractives
- To replace Western food imports, Cameroon gives community lands to ‘no-name’ agro-industry
- Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland
- About 72% of gold miners poisoned with mercury at artisanal mining sites in Cameroon
- ‘We go in and take Indigenous lands back from cattle ranchers’: Q&A with activist Pablo Sibar
Endangered Environmentalists
- Worries and whispers in Vietnam’s NGO community after activist’s sentencing
- Scientists call for end to violence against Amazon communities, environmental defenders
- Indigenous advocates sense a legal landmark as a guardian’s killing heads to trial
- In Brazil, an Indigenous land defender’s unsolved killing is the deadly norm
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’
Conservation Effectiveness
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows
- ‘South Asia needs its own tiger plan’: Q&A with Nepal’s Maheshwar Dhakal
- Nepal was supposed to double its tiger population since 2010. It tripled it
- In prioritizing conservation, animal culture should be a factor, study says
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
- Java communities rally as clock ticks on cleanup of ‘world’s dirtiest river’
