Global ayahuasca trend drives deforestation in Brazil’s Acre state
"Where does your ayahuasca come from?" is a question many drinkers of the psychoactive Amazonian brew would just as soon not ask of their suppliers. But Thiago Martins e Silva,…
Articles by Matthew Meyer
Born and raised in rural Northern California. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, with a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Virginia. Exchange student to southern Brazil after high school, with fieldwork in Acre and Amazonas in grad school. Lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada-Cascades region.
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
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- 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
Land rights and extractives
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- 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
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
