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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41 stories
The Nepalese paper plant is used to make the traditional lokta paper.

Nepal sees positive outcome from reforestation project using local knowledge

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 8 Jul 2025
Indigenous leaders at the first congress in Brazzaville. Image by Maribel Arango.

First congress of forest basin leaders results in call for direct financing

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 24 Jun 2025
A woman in the field in the Bien La commune.

Study shows Vietnam’s ethnic communities’ grapple with hydropower plant impacts

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 5 Jun 2025
Limbu locals stage protest against the project. Image courtesy of Mukkumlung Protection and Struggle Committee.

In Nepal, confrontation looms over controversial cable car project as court lifts stay order

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 27 May 2025
Horseback patrolling in a community-based conservancy

Community conservancies in Kyrgyzstan see conservation success against illegal hunting

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 26 May 2025
Tsimi Judith harvesting the Gnetum (okok) in the village of Minwoho, Lekié, Center Region, Cameroon.

Report shows policy gaps in safeguarding the carbon rights of forest communities

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 8 May 2025
Limbu locals stage protest against the project. Image courtesy of Mukkumlung Protection and Struggle Committee.

Cable car project in Nepal under fire for flawed environmental review

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 5 May 2025
Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).

‘We belong to one ocean’: Indigenous leaders push for seat at the table of high seas biodiversity treaty

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 29 Apr 2025

Ecuador communities resist Canada-backed gold mine in sacred highlands

Aimee Gabay, Sonam Lama Hyolmo 17 Apr 2025
Tiwai Honey Initiative product picture. Image © Ezekiel Kargbo for The Iris Project.

How a young beekeeper’s initiative brought hope and profit to Sierra Leone communities

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 31 Mar 2025
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
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

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Emergent tree in the Amazon Rainforest, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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