Don Lizardo was sitting in his hammock, rocking gently back and forth, as he told us heartbreaking stories about working in haciendas when he was younger. We were sitting in…
QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park sits in a unique position on the equator, between the Andes mountain range and the Amazon rainforest, which has allowed a rich and…
NAPO, Ecuador — Gloria Ushigua, president of the Sápara women’s association, stops by a large, thin, spindly tree that looks almost dead, and breaks off a thin branch. Running her…
The Brazilian government’s environmental agency, IBAMA, has so far this year imposed the lowest number of fines for illegal deforestation in at least 11 years, while the country’s other leading…
Brazil’s National Congress has overturned changes set by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that transferred the decision-making power of indigenous reserves demarcation to the Ministry of Agriculture. The move gives that…
“I once asked a Matapí elder if he could spare an hour or two to tell me about what palms he knew, and how he used them,” says Rodrigo Cámara-Leret,…
PALAWAN, Philippines — Twenty years ago, people in this fishing village in the municipality of Quezon, on the Philippine island of Palawan, would just walk to the shore, throw a…
PALAWAN, Philippines — In the wilderness of the Philippines’ southwestern island province of Palawan, dubbed the country’s last biodiversity frontier, lives a scaly mammal found nowhere else on Earth: the…
PUYO, Ecuador — An indigenous community in Ecuador has filed a lawsuit against the government for failing to consult with it before putting its territory up for sale to the…
I grew up in Southern California, just north of Los Angeles, and spent time in nature consistently throughout my childhood. I credit the under-the-radar natural wonderland of Southern California, as…
In January 2018, the Cofán indigenous people of Sinangoe, Ecuador, discovered several machines mining the Aguarico riverbed near Cayambe Coca National Park. This came as a surprise to them because…
In the heart of the driest desert in the world, a company currently sanctioned for half a dozen environmental infractions continues to mine reserves of one of the most coveted…
Life is hard for the community of Trinidadcito, but its people don’t feel poor. Rather, they say they’re being punished for opposing the construction of a highway that would cut…
A palm oil supplier to PepsiCo, Mars, Hershey and Johnson & Johnson has resumed clearing intact forest in West Papua, Indonesia, despite pressure by other major companies, many of which…
In the town of Turkwel in Kenya’s vast Rift Valley region, 45-year-old Esther Aboi is busy placing pieces of wood inside her homemade kiln. The smoking firewood is an invasive…
Matilde Noza says she has never chewed a coca leaf. Noza, an indigenous woman, lives in the Nueva Galilea community of the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory, better…
Mongabay begins a new series in which our contributors drive the BR-319 highway into one of the Amazon’s most remote wild areas – a region facing rapid deforestation.
Traditional communities in Brazil’s savannah, lacking land deeds, have been displaced by large-scale soy growers, and forced to resettle in impoverished cities like Campos Lindos.
SAN JOSÉ DE WISUYÁ, Ecuador — One morning in November 2015, one of the elders, or taitas, of the Siona indigenous community in San José de Wisuyá, in Ecuador’s Sucumbíos…
What if the moral and spiritual influence of the world’s religious communities and their leaders were directed towards protecting rainforests and their indigenous guardians? Is this an appropriate role for…
