Fires rage in Bolivia’s Chiquitania region
Two years ago, fire ravaged the Tucavaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve in the heart of Bolivia’s Chiquitania region, wiping out thousands of square kilometers of habitat. Now this threat has…
Articles by Morgan Erickson-Davis
Morgan has been writing for Mongabay since 2008 and came on full-time in 2014. Trained in biology, Morgan has taken any available opportunity to learn more about the world, from working as a fisheries biologist aboard longliners and freighters in the South Pacific to evaluating river health in western Montana. Morgan spent eight years editing technical papers before jumping into journalism, with more than 50 manuscripts under her belt. Currently, she manages Mongabay's forests and global palm oil reporting programs.
Drug trafficking and illegal logging threaten Indigenous communities in Peru
A group of Kichwa patrollers living in the Peruvian Indigenous communities of Santa Rosillo de Yanayaku and Anak Kurutuyaku made an unexpected discovery in 2018. On their land in the…
Illegal mining in Colombia’s Amazon threatens Indigenous communities
This story is the result of a reporting collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. In 2000, in the midst of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest, two elder members from…
Indigenous Amazonian communities bear the burden of Ecuador’s balsa boom
This story is a reporting partnership between Mongabay Latam and La Barra Espaciadora. Balsa wood is a hot commodity in Ecuador, with the country exporting $402 million worth of the timber in…
USAID redirects funding in Cambodia as future of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary hangs in the balance
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — More than a month has passed since the Cambodia branch of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced it would be ending its assistance…
Illegal deforestation intensifies along Brazilian highway as agribusiness hopes swell
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — In a far-flung slice of the Brazilian Amazon, a potholed highway cuts hundreds of miles through the heart of the rainforest. In its most rudimentary…
As soy frenzy grips Brazil, deforestation closes in on Indigenous lands
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The thick plumes of smoke stretched for miles across this slice of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, blanketing the dense rainforest surrounding it. Soon, they drifted…
Carving up the Cardamoms: Conservationists fear massive land grab in Cambodia
A new regulation signed into law in March this year but only unveiled publicly in May will see almost 127,000 hectares (313,800 acres) of previously protected land in Cambodia made…
Deforestation of endangered wildlife habitat continues to surge in southern Myanmar
Tanintharyi, Myanmar’s portion of the spit of land that splits the Gulf of Thailand from the Andaman Sea, is still swathed in old growth rainforest home to a unique medley…
Deforestation spikes in Virunga National Park, DRC
Virunga National Park’s forests are some the most biodiverse in Africa and among the last bastions of mountain gorillas, okapis, Ruwenzori duikers and many other endangered species. Guarded by some…
Slash-and-burn clearing nears Indigenous park as Brazil’s fire season ignites
Situated deep in the middle of Brazil, Xingu Indigenous Park encompasses some of the most biodiverse rainforest in the country and is home to dozens of Indigenous communities and a…
Deforestation intensifies in northern DRC protected areas
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) contains the bulk of Africa’s humid rainforest. But forests that were once dense, impenetrable and continuous are increasingly fractured by deforestation. New satellite…
Drugs, fire, settlers poised to wipe out one of Paraguay’s most biodiverse forests
San Rafael National Park/Proposed National Reserve sits in eastern Paraguay, quietly encompassing a remnant of the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest, a unique biome that stretches between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay…
Illegal clearing for agriculture is driving tropical deforestation: Report
Tropical forests around the world are being destroyed at an alarming rate, even in 2020 when the global economy slowed dramatically during the pandemic. A new report released this week…
Settlers invading, deforesting Colombian national parks ‘at an unstoppable speed’
For the past several years, Colombia’s Tinigua National Natural Park has been racked by one of the highest levels of deforestation of any such protected area in the country. According…
Outrage as Cambodian court convicts activists for inciting ‘social chaos’
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — In a move that has prompted outrage in Cambodia and beyond, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on May 5 sentenced five activists from the environmental group…
‘Bad science’: Planting frenzy misses the grasslands for the trees
There’s a tree-planting frenzy everywhere you look. In August 2019, the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India announced that more than a million Indians had planted 220 million trees…
Casinos, condos and sugar cane: How a Cambodian national park is being sold down the river
Covering a vast peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Thailand on Cambodia’s southern coast, Botum Sakor is one of the largest national parks in the country and known…
Drugs and agriculture cause deforestation to skyrocket at Honduran UNESCO site
Tucked away on the Caribbean side of Honduras lies the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an area some in size with abundant green forests, rivers, ponds, and a great variety of…
Deforestation ramps up in Cambodia’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary
Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary sprawls across a vast expanse of Cambodia’s eastern reach. But much of what used to be covered in lush rainforest has been laid barren by deforestation.…
Cattle-driven clearing continues in Brazil’s Triunfo do Xingu protected area
Forest loss in Brazil’s lush Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area marches on, driven largely by a hunger for beef, emboldened land grabbers, and a lack of law enforcement. Triunfo…
New palm oil frontier sparks scramble for land in the Brazilian Amazon
In a far-flung stretch of the Brazilian Amazon, the dense rainforest is slowly giving way to neat rows of oil palm that stretch for miles. Beyond the plantations, a narrow…
Australia’s pivot to plantations may be too late for nearly extinct parrots
HOBART, Australia — A dividing line of marking tape separates a clearcut area from intact native forest in the Denison Range of Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost state. An hour’s drive from…
Deforestation rises in Colombia’s Chiribiquete National Park as cattle invade
For the past several years, the Colombian Amazon has been hit harder by deforestation than any other region in the country, according to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental…
‘What other country would do this to its people?’ Cambodian land grab victims seek int’l justice
“It started when some people from the government came around the community telling us that we were illegally occupying the land,” Chhae Kimsrour said in June 2020. “I’ve lived here…
Deforestation surge threatens endangered species in Tanintharyi, Myanmar
Stretching along the narrow spit of land that connects the Malay peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region is home to a confluence of animals and…
Thriving population of endangered monkeys gives hope to conservationists
While in many places, ecosystems and wildlife are under increasing threat and suffering population declines, Vietnam’s Van Long Nature Reserve provides a light in the darkness. The reserve is home…
Cambodians fight the ‘cancer’ eating away at Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary
“It was the same court, the same actors, the same script — it was just like the sequel,” laughed Ouch Leng as he recounted what is now his second arrest…
The Hungry Mills: How palm oil mills drive deforestation (commentary)
For decades, Indonesia has been blighted by some of the highest levels of deforestation on earth. It also provides more than half the world’s palm oil. The two things are directly related. Palm…
Slash-and-burn farming eats away at a Madagascar haven for endangered lemurs, frogs
Deforestation is so rampant throughout Madagascar, an island far larger than California, that it’s easy to forget the impact of tree clearance in any one specific area of the country…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Deforestation on the rise in Quintana Roo, Mexico, as Mennonite communities move in
- Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation
- Bolivian national park hit hard by forest fires in 2022, satellite data show
- Deforestation ‘out of control’ in reserve in Brazil’s cattle capital
Oceans
- Sea level rise looms, even for the best-prepared country on Earth
- Fishy business of squid vessels needs stronger regulation, study says
- Indonesia’s mangrove restoration will run out of land well short of target, study warns
- As U.N. members clinch historic high seas biodiversity treaty, what’s in it?
Amazon Conservation
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- Make it local: Deforestation link to less Amazon rainfall tips activism shift
- In Brazil, criminals dismantle one of the best-preserved swaths of the Amazon
- France seeks EU okay to fund biomass plants, burn Amazon forest to power Spaceport
Land rights and extractives
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase
- Lula government scrambles to overcome Yanomami crisis, but hurdles remain
- ‘Brought down by gold’: Communities and nature suffer amid Nigerian bonanza
Endangered Environmentalists
- ‘You don’t kill people to protect forests’: New Thai parks chief raises alarm
- Vietnam’s environmental NGOs face uncertain status, shrinking civic space
- ‘We lost the biggest ally’: Nelly Marubo on her friend Bruno Pereira’s legacy
- Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office
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
- For key Bangladesh wetland, bid for Ramsar status is no guarantee of protection
- Biodiversity, human rights safeguards crucial to nature-based solutions: Critics
- Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- As Indonesia’s new capital takes shape, risks to wider Borneo come into focus
- 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
