Articles by John Cannon
John Cannon became a correspondent for Mongabay in 2014 and joined the site's team full time as a features writer in 2016. John's reporting has also appeared in New Scientist, Slate.com, Yale Environment 360, Pacific Standard, Science, Business Insider and Bicycle Times. John has been a guest on the BBC as well as 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 African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Rwanda. He lives in California with his wife and their two cats, adopted when they lived in Gaza. Follow him on Bluesky.
Peruvian Indigenous groups thwart oil drilling in their territory — for now
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
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Bolivia’s El Curichi Las Garzas protected area taken over by land-grabbers
- Authorities struggle to protect Bolivian national park from drug-fueled deforestation
- Poverty and plantations: Nigerian reserve struggles against the odds
- Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea
Oceans
- Warming seas push India’s fishers into distant, and more dangerous, waters
- No protection from bottom trawling for seamount chain in northern Pacific
- Annual ocean conference raises $11.3b in pledges for marine conservation
- Caribbean startups are turning excess seaweed into an agroecology solution
Amazon Conservation
- Amid record-high fires across the Amazon, Brazil loses primary forests
- A web of front people conceals environmental offenders in the Amazon
- Brazil boosts protection of Amazon mangroves with new reserves in Pará state
- Cross-border Indigenous efforts in Peru & Brazil aim to protect isolated groups
Land rights and extractives
- Hyundai ends aluminum deal with Adaro Minerals following K-pop protest
- Brazil’s illegal gold trade takes a hammering, but persists underground
- Maluku bone collector unearths troubling consequence of coastal abrasion
- New FPIC guide designed to help protect Indigenous rights as mineral mining booms
Endangered Environmentalists
- Indonesian activists face jail over FB posts flagging damage to marine park
- Vietnamese environmentalist sentenced to 3 years in prison for tax evasion
- Son of slain Quilombola leader will still strive for community’s rights
- Video: Five Tembé Indigenous activists shot in Amazonian ‘palm oil war’
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- 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
Conservation Effectiveness
- The conservation sector must communicate better (commentary)
- Thailand tries nature-based water management to adapt to climate change
- Forest restoration to boost biomass doesn’t have to sacrifice tree diversity
- How scientists and a community are bringing a Bornean river corridor back to life
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
- To build its ‘green’ capital city, Indonesia runs a road through a biodiverse forest