Sonam Lama Hyolmo

Sonam Lama Hyolmo

About

Sonam Lama Hyolmo is a staff writer at Mongabay and a Kathmandu-based multimedia journalist writing at the intersection of environment, Indigenous rights, climate science, and conservation.

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32 stories
Leroy Ignacio is president of the South Rupununi Conservation Society, which works to protect the red siskin. Image courtesy of Chung Liu/SRCS.

10 unique community-led conservation solutions in the face of environmental despair

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 10 Mar 2025
Shea butter production process near Chiana, Kassena Nankana District, Ghana. Image by Axel Fassio/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Women in Ghana plant ‘diversion’ trees to protect shea trees and their livelihoods

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 8 Mar 2025
Fishing in Fiji. Image courtesy of Tom Vierus/WCS.

Funerary practices in Fiji protect marine areas while honoring the deceased

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 28 Feb 2025
Melquiades, a Brazil nut producer in the Amazon rainforest. Image by Yoly Gutierrez/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Forest communities craft recommendations for better ART TREES carbon credit standard

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 13 Feb 2025
Researchers on one of the field visits to the Näätämö River, remote wilderness areas and the fjord at the outflow to the Arctic Ocean.

Researchers find microplastics for the first time in the Finnish Sámi waters

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 4 Feb 2025
The San Gerónimo community in the nearby province of Oxapampa, department of Pasco. Image by Guillermo Carlos Gómez via Wikimedia Commons.

Early results suggest communities stop logging during basic income pilot project

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 27 Jan 2025
A tiger-legged monkey tree frog

IPBES report highlights Indigenous & local knowledge as key to ‘transformative change’

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 27 Dec 2024
Landscape of the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park. Image courtesy of the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park Committee.

Communities launch new Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park amid Myanmar civil war

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 17 Dec 2024
A Dayak elder with a young member in Sungai Utik.

Borneo’s ‘omen birds’ find a staunch guardian in Indigenous Dayak Iban elders

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 15 Nov 2024
Families are migrating from Gardi Sugdub, a tiny island belonging to the Indigenous Guna Yala people of Panama, packed with houses to the edge of the water, due to sea level rise.

What Indigenous leaders want from the COP29 U.N. climate conference

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 11 Nov 2024
A yellow oriental paper wasp (Polistes olivaceus)

Bats & bees help ni-Vanuatu predict storms — but will climate change interfere?

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 10 Sep 2024
Battsengel Lkhamdoorov stands next to one of the summer quarters built by Oyu Tolgoi.

Rio Tinto-linked mine still not fulfilling promises to Mongolian herders

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 28 Aug 2024
Goondoi rangers performing a traditional dance at Etty Bay Beach.

Shaping the next generation of Indigenous rangers: Interview with Manni Edwards

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 18 Jul 2024
Morchella esculenta mushrooms, locally called gucchi.

Traditional foods have the potential to help Kashmir communities adapt to climate change: study

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 16 Jul 2024
Preparation towards graduating boys into Maasai warriors in Simanjiro District.

Forced evictions suppress Maasai spirituality & sacred spaces in Tanzania

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 22 Jun 2024
Local and International organizations participated in the plantation.

Uzbekistan plants a forest where a sea once lay

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 29 May 2024
A lemur leaf frog in Costa Rica.

Are carbon credits another resource-for-cash grab? Interview with Alondra Cerdes Morales & Samuel Nguiffo

Latoya Abulu, Sonam Lama Hyolmo 22 May 2024
Indigenous people with sled dogs in Greenland.

Plastic pollution talks end & Arctic peoples return home to a ‘sink’ of plastic

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 7 May 2024
A man from the Vedda community in Sri Lanka.

In largest ever study, Indigenous and local communities report the impacts of climate change

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 18 Apr 2024
Women carrying saplings.

New online tool is first to track funding to Indigenous, local and Afro-descendant communities

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 11 Apr 2024
Ofelia Samboni an Indigenous Yanacona member and landowner in Monclart, holds a stone containing copper. The stone was found in the river close to the mining area. Image by Antonio Cascio for Mongabay.

New FPIC guide designed to help protect Indigenous rights as mineral mining booms

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 8 Apr 2024
Indigenous Tolupan people cultivating crops in Yoro, Honduras

Agroforestry project sows seeds of hope in drought-hit Honduras

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 26 Mar 2024
Flowers of Scaevola parvifolia

Traditional Aboriginal fire practices can help promote plant diversity: Study

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 13 Mar 2024

Gharial conservation plan leaves Nepal fishing communities searching for new jobs

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 28 Feb 2024
Some of the villagers with their land title certificates.

Not waiting for the government, Myanmar’s Karen people register their own lands

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 26 Feb 2024
A nomadic community preparing a meal in Ladakh, India.

‘Healthy humans without a healthy planet is a logical fallacy’: Interview with Dr. Sakib Burza

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 6 Feb 2024
Neem flowers

Ghana’s medicinal plants, the ‘first aid’ for communities, are under threat

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 2 Feb 2024
Bissy (Cola acuminata) fruit pod, seeds, and grated seeds, to make bissy tea, a morning tea and medicinal beverage

Caribbean traditional plant knowledge needs recognition or it’s lost: Study

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 26 Jan 2024
A woman prepares a field for paddy farming after harvesting foxtail millet.

Indigenous Gurung farmers revive climate-resilient millet in Nepal

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 1 Jan 2024
Forensic reconstruction of a woolly dog based on Mutton’s pelt measurements and archaeological remains. Image courtesy of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

How a 160-year-old pelt piqued new findings on Indigenous ‘woolly dog’ breed

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 22 Dec 2023
Melquiades, a Brazil nut producer in the Amazon rainforest. Image by Yoly Gutierrez/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Community tropical forest management linked to social & environmental benefits: Study

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 8 Dec 2023
Chörtens right outside the walled city of Lo Manthang. Image by Jean-Marie Hullot via Flickr (CC BY 2.0 Deed).

Traditional healers push for recognition and licensing of age-old Himalayan practice

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 5 Dec 2023

News and Inspiration from Nature's Frontline.

Why are the British flooding parts of their coast? Once farmland protected by flood defenses, Steart Marshes in southwest England now thrives as a restored salt marsh. As the defences weakened, the land became increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Instead of rebuilding defenses, conservationists, the government and local communities made a bold choice to let the sea reclaim the landscape. Just over 10 years ago the sea wall was breached, allowing the sea to take over the land, transforming the area into a vital wetland habitat. Salt marshes, which have declined by 85% in the U.K. since the 19th century, play a crucial role in coastal ecosystems. They provide shelter for wetland wildlife, act as natural flood defenses by absorbing storm surges, stabilize coastlines against erosion, and store carbon to help combat climate change. Managed by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Steart Marshes now provides a model for future restoration projects, proving that working with nature can protect communities while rebuilding lost habitats.
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Akit tribe residence, Titi Akar Village, North Rupat, Bengkalis, Riau, Indonesia. Image courtesy of Nukila Evanty.
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Rainstorm over Pillcopata in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by Rhett Butler/Mongabay.
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