
Articles by John Cannon
John is a staff features writer with Mongabay. He became a correspondent for Mongabay in 2014 and joined the site's team full time in October 2016. John's journalistic work has also appeared in New Scientist, Slate.com, Yale Environment 360, Pacific Standard, Science (online), Business Insider and Bicycle Times. John has been a guest on NPR's All Things Considered and Living on Earth, and he has also had several short stories published in literary magazines. He studied biology as an undergraduate at the Ohio State University and has a graduate degree in science writing from UC Santa Cruz. Always eager to find local perspectives on globally relevant stories, John has reported from Brunei, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Rwanda. He currently lives in Afghanistan with his wife and their two cats. Follow him on Twitter: @johnccannon.


IPBES report details path to exit current ‘pandemic era’

Mining covers more than 20% of Indigenous territory in the Amazon

World’s protected areas lack connections, recent study finds

‘Tamper with nature, and everyone suffers’: Q&A with ecologist Enric Sala

Study revealing New Guinea’s plant life ‘first step’ toward protection

The ‘Cougar Conundrum’: Q&A with author Mark Elbroch

New report asks, do land titles help poor farmers?

World Bank-funded factory farms dogged by alleged environmental abuses

‘Saving sun bears’: Q&A with book author Sarah Pye

COVID-19 and rainforest fires set up potential public health crisis

Bison: (Back) home on the range

Overlap of fire, COVID-19 peaks: A ‘catastrophe’ for Brazil’s Amazon

‘Don’t let your cat outside’: Q&A with author Peter Christie

Gender-based violence shakes communities in the wake of forest loss

Canadian company positions for mining ban lift in Argentine province

New database wrangles data on land rights projects around the globe

Decades-old mine in Bougainville exacts devastating human toll: Report

Gold mining threatens indigenous forests in the Brazilian Amazon

Oil exploration at odds with peatland protection in the Congo Basin

Qualified success: What’s next for Peru’s Operation Mercury?

Map reveals Canadian mining company’s environmental, social conflicts

Companies leave communities to grapple with mining’s persistent legacy

Early deforestation numbers for 2019 reveal trends in the Amazon

Managing fisheries helps stocks recover — most of the time

Illegal industrial fishing hampers small-scale African fisheries

Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside

Subsistence farming topples forests near commercial operations in Congo

Indigenous lands hold 36% or more of remaining intact forest landscapes

Cost-effective conservation: Study identifies key ‘umbrella’ species
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Satellites show deforestation surging in Indonesia’s Tesso Nilo National Park
- Large-scale logging in Cambodia’s Prey Lang linked to politically-connected mining operation
- Pasture replaces large tract of intact primary forest in Brazilian protected area
- Deforestation on the rise as poverty soars in Nigeria

Oceans
- Nickel, Tesla and two decades of environmental activism: Q&A with leader Raphaël Mapou
- All eyes on Tesla as it invests in a troubled nickel mine
- ‘The return of land to Indigenous people is key’: Q&A with Shinnecock Kelp Farm’s Tela Troge
- WTO finally nets deal curbing fisheries subsidies, but tables key bits for later

Amazon Conservation
- At 30, Brazil’s Yanomami reserve is beset by mining, malaria and mercury
- Pasture replaces large tract of intact primary forest in Brazilian protected area
- Ecuador’s Pastaza province, Indigenous groups collaborate on forest conservation
- ‘Giving up’: Amazon is losing its resilience under human pressure, study shows

Land rights and extractives
- Coal mining threatens Ethiopia’s ancient coffee forest
- Proposed copper and gold mine threatens the world’s ‘second Amazon’ in PNG
- In Indonesian Borneo, a succession of extractive industries multiplies impacts, social fractures
- Illegal mining threatens one of the last forest links between the Andes and Ecuador’s Amazon

Endangered Environmentalists
- A look at violence and conflict over Indigenous lands in nine Latin American countries
- Citizen participation: a key achievement at the first COP to the Escazú Agreement
- “We are on the front line”: Q&A with Indigenous land defender Adiela Jineth Mera Paz
- Death threats and friction with military force Guatemalan rangers to flee

Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- From Flores to Papua: Meet 10 of Indonesia’s mangrove guardians
- Why I stand for my tribe’s forest: It gives us food, culture, and life (commentary)
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time

Conservation Effectiveness
- In prioritizing conservation, animal culture should be a factor, study says
- Young forests can help heal tropical aquatic ecosystems: Study
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?

Southeast Asian infrastructure
- In Laos, a ‘very dangerous dam’ threatens an ancient world heritage site
- Bali’s new highway project sparks concerns about agriculture and conservation areas
- Deforestation notches up along logging roads on PNG’s New Britain Island
- Plantations and roads strip away Papua’s forests. They’re just getting started
