Articles by Yvette Sierra Praeli

Forest fires in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz department razed an area twice the size of Jamaica in the first 10 months of 2021, officials said, with more than half of the…

Peru is home to many Indigenous communities that don’t appear on official maps. Without government recognition, these communities’ existence rests solely on their community names and on the knowledge of…

When the threats of potential mining activity arrived in the Bolivian community of Las Mangas, in the Indigenous Lomerío territory, the community held a meeting where they decided to put…

Forest fires in Bolivia are showing no sign of abating, with blazes sweeping through ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest, Chaco scrubland, Chiquitanía savanna, and Pantanal wetland. With almost 1 million…

When Peru declared the creation of the Nazca Ridge National Reserve in the country’s southern waters this past June, it also increased — in one fell swoop — the proportion…

In September 2015, officials from the agriculture agency of Peru’s Ucayali department arrived in the district of Masisea with one goal: to create a rural land registry in a forested…

"In 2000, Loreto had only one protected natural area, which was the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve (RNPS), today there are 14," says Corine Vriesendorp, director of the Andean Amazon Program…

After nearly twenty years of discussion, the Peruvian government has moved to establish a new Indigenous reserve for "uncontacted peoples" deep in the Amazon rainforest. Yavarí Tapiche Indigenous Reserve, which…

A jaguar roars in front of a camera trap in Panama’s Mamoní Valley. The video lasts only 11 seconds, but it provides a valuable glimpse at this iconic animal of…

Forest fires in Bolivia have burned 1.4 million hectares (3.4 million acres) across the country this year, according to the government. And as in 2019, the Chiquitania and Chaco ecosystems…

Sitting in the doorway of his house, Isaac Zacharías Klassen, the patriarch of a Mennonite colony that has settled in Masisea, in Peru’s Amazonian department of Ucayali, says he was…

Wadson Trujillo is an environmental monitor in Cuninico, an Indigenous community in northern Peru. In 2014, he was a witness to an oil spill in which thousands of barrels of…

"This pandemic is taking away our wise men," Zebelio Kayap, the Indigenous leader of the Organization of Border Communities of Cenepa (ODEFROC), says in a broken voice. Kayap speaks with…

Inversiones La Oroza, a company under investigation since 2015 for alleged timber trafficking, has just been awarded $380,000 from Reactiva Peru, a stimulus program by the Peruvian government to revive…

The Bolivian government’s decision to close all national parks in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March was supposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. But it’s also had…

A gunshot ended the life of Indigenous leader Arbildo Meléndez Grandes in Peru. On a Sunday in early April this year, he went hunting and fishing for his family and…

For the past five years, the indigenous Matsés people of the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto ventured deep into their territory to draw up a complete map of everything that…

The first case of a member of an indigenous community in Peru testing positive for Coronavirus was recorded late last month. The person in question, Aurelio Chino, is an indigenous…

Scientists who spent five years studying the impact of illegal mining in Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios department recently explored that impact in La Pampa, a geographic area in the…

The health situation of indigenous peoples due to infectious-contagious diseases is already serious due to its high prevalence and the very poor health service. The coronavirus would further aggravate this…

After enduring a fraught election process that resulted in the resignation of president Evo Morales in November 2019, Bolivia will once again be holding a general election in 2020. Meanwhile,…

For 13 years, Marlene Rivas has been part of a team working to protect the red-fronted macaw (Ara rubrogenysa), a bird endemic to Bolivia that is classified as critically endangered…

A major operation across five regions of Peru has seen 47 prosecutors and 1,200 police officers arrest 18 people who, according to Peruvian authorities, were members of a criminal organization…

Late last year, historic wildfires raged through Bolivia, holding the country hostage for two months between July and September and burning more than 5 million hectares (50,000 sq km or…

The guanaco (Lama guanicoe), the spindly, wild forebear of the llama, ranges across a broad reach of western and southern South America. While the species as a whole is not…

Under the sea, jutting into the Pacific from the southern Peruvian department of Ica, rises a mountain range called Dorsal de Nasca. The 93 submarine mountains harbor more than 1,100…

When inspectors from Peru’s Technical Administration for Forestry and Wildlife (ATFFS) in Puerto Inca Province received a complaint about the presence of miners in the buffer zone around the El…

It isn’t unusual for those who defend the environment to be threatened, but sometimes their commitment to nature puts their lives directly at risk. According to a recently published Global…

An invasion of the Macuya Forest has claimed its first victim. Julio Crisanto López was the last person keeping watch at the Macuya Forestry Investigation and Training Center (Centro de…

In the Guaraní language spoken in some parts of South America, the words “Ñembi Guasu” mean “the great hideout” or “the great refuge.” Ñembi Guasu is also the name of…