New report asks, do land titles help poor farmers?
Companies and governments are pushing for the privatization of land around the world as a way to get at economically valuable resources, according to a recent report from the Oakland…
Articles by John C. Cannon
John is an American journalist currently based in Gaza City. Before that, he lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. He has written for New Scientist, Slate.com, Yale Environment 360 and Bicycle Times, as well as other publications. John first wrote for Mongabay as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz in 2008, became a correspondent in 2014 and joined the site’s team full time in October 2016. Always eager to find local perspectives on global stories, he has reported from Cameroon, CAR, DRC, Peru, Malaysia and Rwanda.
World Bank-funded factory farms dogged by alleged environmental abuses
A pork and chicken producer has expanded its operations in northern Ecuador with the help of funding from the World Bank's commercial lending arm, despite sustained complaints from local communities…
‘Saving sun bears’: Q&A with book author Sarah Pye
In his 2006 book, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, science writer David Quammen says, “Some people admire soldiers, or surgeons, or firemen, or astrophysicists, or medical missionaries, or cowboys. I admire…
COVID-19 and rainforest fires set up potential public health crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic and the arrival of fire season in two of the world’s major rainforests are on a collision course, scientists and public health researchers say, and the results…
Bison: (Back) home on the range
As a young boy living on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation, Wizipan Little Elk remembers the first time he saw a buffalo herd. The experience ignited a passion, and at…
Overlap of fire, COVID-19 peaks: A ‘catastrophe’ for Brazil’s Amazon
Researchers have detected the "first major fire of 2020" in the Brazilian Amazon three months ahead of the fire season, while other scientists warn that there could be a “catastrophe”…
‘Don’t let your cat outside’: Q&A with author Peter Christie
The statistics capturing the effects that pets have on wildlife are mind-boggling. Cats in the United States alone kill at least 1.3 billion birds and up to 22.3 billion small…
Gender-based violence shakes communities in the wake of forest loss
KOKOPO, Papua New Guinea — Change. That’s what Monica Yongol has seen in her 54 years. In that time, the loggers and then the oil palm companies have moved into…
Canadian company positions for mining ban lift in Argentine province
Like much of the world, Argentina remains locked down, its citizens more or less homebound due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Amid the torpor, Yamana Gold, a Canada-based mining company,…
New database wrangles data on land rights projects around the globe
The Land Portal Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, recently released what it’s calling “the largest global database of land and property rights projects.” In around a decade…
Decades-old mine in Bougainville exacts devastating human toll: Report
On satellite images, the Panguna mine yawns amid the otherwise green mountain forests of central Bougainville Island in the South Pacific, a silty river valley tracing a jagged path from…
Gold mining threatens indigenous forests in the Brazilian Amazon
Illegal gold mining led to deforestation of thousands of hectares of forests inside indigenous reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, according to new satellite image analysis by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). Mongabay had exclusive access to the report prior to its release.
Oil exploration at odds with peatland protection in the Congo Basin
The peatlands of the Congo Basin are home to more than just massive carbon stocks and some of our closest — and most threatened — relatives in the animal kingdom,…
Qualified success: What’s next for Peru’s Operation Mercury?
More than a decade of illegal gold mining around the upstart town of La Pampa in the Peruvian Amazon has tainted local water supplies, razed forests adjacent to a world-class…
Map reveals Canadian mining company’s environmental, social conflicts
Pan American Silver, one of the world’s largest mining companies, operates eight mines in Central and South America that are beset with allegations of environmental disruption and human rights violations,…
Companies leave communities to grapple with mining’s persistent legacy
The scale of excavation for copper and gold in the 1970s and 1980s at the Panguna mine, then one of the world’s largest open-pit mines, was massive: It swallowed up…
Early deforestation numbers for 2019 reveal trends in the Amazon
A new analysis based on estimated deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 pinpoints hotspots of forest loss and identifies several country-specific trends in the region. The figures project that deforestation…
Managing fisheries helps stocks recover — most of the time
Fish stocks around the world are doing better, in general, where science guides their management, according to a recent study. Publishing their findings Jan. 13 online in the journal Proceedings…
Illegal industrial fishing hampers small-scale African fisheries
Fish are an indispensable source of food and protein for communities in many African countries. But the growth in industrial-scale fishing fleets around the continent has put that resource and…
Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside
Scientists know from a bevy of studies that the inclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities is critical to holding deforestation at bay across the tropics, even as a tide…
Subsistence farming topples forests near commercial operations in Congo
The effects of commercial logging, mining and farming can ripple beyond the boundaries of the operations, leading to the substantial loss and degradation of nearby forest for subsistence agriculture, a…
Indigenous lands hold 36% or more of remaining intact forest landscapes
More than one-third of the world’s remaining pristine forests, known as intact forest landscapes, exist within land that’s either managed or owned by indigenous peoples, a new study has found.…
Cost-effective conservation: Study identifies key ‘umbrella’ species
Governments could vastly improve the efficiency of money spent on conservation if they took a hard look at the species they prioritize, according to a recent study. The research probed…
10 noteworthy books on conservation and the environment from 2019
Grappling with the challenges of minimizing carbon footprints, memoirs of careers spent on the frontlines of conservation and stark warnings about the future inhabitability of our world, the roster of…
Deforestation for potential rubber plantation raises concerns in Papua New Guinea
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — The upstart deforestation over the past year and a half that's sidling up to Pochon Lili’s land has him worried. "As a landowner, I'm…
Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers
The outlook for eastern Africa's mountain gorillas is growing brighter, as a recent census released on Dec. 16 shows that the subspecies’ numbers have risen since 2011. Scientists believe there…
Vanishing sea ice in the Arctic could shake up seabird migrations
For seabirds, an Arctic Ocean with less sea ice could provide some tantalizing alternatives to the long-haul flights that some undertake each year. In a recent study, ecologist Manon Clairbaux…
Deforestation preceded fires in ‘massive’ area of Amazon in 2019
The prevailing narrative about the Brazilian Amazon this past summer was that the world’s largest rainforest was burning. A more accurate assessment would be that vast areas that used to…
Healthy ecosystems, healthy humans: ‘One Health’ broadens its scope
The world’s most impoverished communities don’t need to be told that intact ecosystems are vital to their health, says Joseph Walston, vice president for field conservation programs with the Wildlife…
Research points to low forensic capacity to tackle timber fraud in U.S.
A recent study suggests that a lot of fraudulently or inaccurately identified wood turns up in products on the U.S. market and that inspectors’ capacity to root out these issues…
Special series
Forest trackers
- Brazilian Amazon protected areas ‘in flames’ as land-grabbers invade
- Fires in the Pantanal: ‘We are facing a scenario now that is catastrophic’
- Understaffed and under threat: Paraguay’s park rangers pay the ultimate price
- No choice: Why communities in Paraguay are cutting down forests to survive
Oceans
- Study: Chinese ‘dark fleets’ illegally defying sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters
- Game changer? Antarctic ice melt related to tropical weather shifts: Study
- Dorsal de Nasca: Peru pledges to create a huge new marine reserve
- Science-backed policy boosts critically endangered Nassau grouper
Amazon conservation
- Is Chinese investment driving a sharp increase in jaguar poaching?
- As Amazon tree loss worsens, political pressure grows, and Brazil hedges: Critics
- Brazil dismantles environmental laws via huge surge in executive acts: Study
- Brazilian Amazon drained of millions of wild animals by criminal networks: Report
Endangered environmentalists
- Life as an Amazon activist: ‘I don’t want to be the next Dorothy Stang’
- In Philippines’ Palawan, top cop linked to assault on environmental officer
- Deaths, arrests and protests as Philippines re-emerges from lockdown
- In Brazil, COVID-19 outbreak paves way for invasion of indigenous lands
Indonesias forest guardians
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
- On the island of Java, a social forestry scheme creates jobs at home
Conservation effectiveness
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
- On a wing and a prayer? Evidence for ways to conserve bats (commentary)
- Audio: The sounds of a rare New Zealand bird reintroduced to its native habitat
- Eavesdrop on forest sounds to effectively monitor biodiversity, researchers say
Southeast asian infrastructure
- Indonesian case highlights potential for long-term harms of corruption
- Indonesia approves coal road project through forest that hosts tigers, elephants
- Experts see environmental, social fallout in Indonesia’s infrastructure push
- Bornean farmers and fishers brace as a new port opens in their midst
