One recent study shows how hotter tropical forests may add significantly to climate change woes. But another suggests how active restoration of degraded tropical forests could help avoid climate disaster.
Gold mining can demolish Amazon rainforest in just a few days. New research finds that the impacted forest does not recover even 3-4 years after a mine is abandoned.
Niobium is an important element used as a steel additive in the making of cars, planes, nuclear weapons, and even piercings. Jair Bolsonaro would like to see it actively mined, even in indigenous reserves.
Research measured the impacts of human disruption: bird flocks declined and vanished, seed dispersion changed, while the Rupununi region showed just how bountiful an undisturbed ecosystem can be.
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the world’s highest coastal mountain range, is an isolated massif in northern Colombia. Due to its unique geography, the steep mountain slopes ascend through…
Colombia is the world’s second-most biodiverse country after Brazil. Central Colombia’s Macarena region, in particular, is important for biodiversity as it serves as a transition zone between three major biomes:…
Dung beetle species populations are moving toward collapse in parts of the Brazilian Amazon apparently due to climate change-driven drought, fires, and other human disturbances.
An illegal armed group connected to land grabbers killed four members of the indigenous Mayangna people, left two injured and burned 16 houses in northern Nicaragua on Jan. 29, according…
An intensification in fires, coupled with increasing deforestation and worsening climate change, could rapidly shift the Amazon toward being a carbon source by 2050.
Three European countries have put up $366 million in foreign aid to fight deforestation in Colombia’s Amazon. The region’s rate of forest loss remains stubbornly high, up 97% since the…
Jaime Luis Arias grew up on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. An isolated coastal pyramid-shaped massif in northern Colombia, the Sierra Nevada is one of…
Scientists warn that escalating deforestation due to mining, agribusiness and other human disturbance is reducing the ability of intact tropical forests to sequester carbon.
Bonobos, unlike closely related chimpanzees, choose love over war. But with each passing year, there is less room in this world for these amorous primates as the world’s largest bonobo…
Torrential rain creates a deafening roar as it strikes the metal roof of community leader Ubence Zelaya’s two-bedroom home on the southern border of the Mayagna indigenous territory. Zelaya lives…
Powerful drug-traffickers and landless farmers continue to push cattle ranching and illegal logging operations deeper into the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in eastern Honduras. The…
Emboldened by a right-wing president and congressional approval, a Colombian public-private partnership is working through a licensing process to build a deepwater “megaport” on the country’s northern Pacific coast. Arquimedes…
Colombia has registered its first drop in deforestation since the country’s historic 2016 peace deal with former FARC guerrillas closed a chapter on a half-century of armed conflict but also…
Colombian authorities have announced they will investigate 33 gas stations for allegedly selling an estimated 70 million gallons (265 million liters) of gasoline to cocaine producers in rural regions of…
When pioneering ecologist Alton Lindsey founded the Ross Biological Reserve at Purdue University in 1949, he envisioned a “living laboratory” where time-extensive ecological studies could be carried out and flourish.…
Rafael Orjuela, a community leader in Cartagena de Chairá, Colombia, moved to the Amazonian department of Caquetá in 1979 to escape severe economic hardship in the interior Andes region. At…
BOGOTA - Renowned environmental activist and Goldman Prize winner Francia Márquez has survived an attack against a meeting of Afro-Colombian human rights defenders by unknown gunmen in southwest Colombia. During…
Scientists have mapped out an enormous network of potential protected areas, covering more than one-third of the world's oceans, to conserve marine biodiversity threatened by overfishing, emerging deep-sea mining, plastic…
One person has reportedly died and another was injured after police in Colombia cracked down on a protest by indigenous groups demanding a meeting with the country’s president over land…
Forests around the world are absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but they still can’t keep up with the sheer volume of the global-warming gas being emitted through human…
The IUCN has identified tree species that are resilient to deepening drought and fires brought on by climate change in Indonesian Borneo. The species will be used for government-backed forest…
Before clothes from the outside world arrived, the Sápara people of the Ecuadoran Amazon made their own clothes from tree bark harvested in the rainforest. Today, the Sápara are in…
Colombia’s environmentalists have declared an ecological disaster after the country’s second most important river, the Cauca, was reduced to less than 10 percent of normal flow after the country’s largest…
Berta Cáceres, a high-profile environmental activist in Honduras, was assassinated in 2016. While seven men were convicted for her murder less than a month ago, her death is a reminder…
Indigenous people in Ecuador say their territorial rights are being systematically violated, according to a top United Nations official. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous…
While many people from Atlantida, Honduras, are attempting to escape desperate poverty and deepening political violence by traveling some 3,000 miles to reach the border of the U.S., a few…