In 2016, Pres. Maduro proclaimed the Orinoco Mining Arc. Today armed gangs and the military fight over its riches at the expense of the environment and small-scale miners.
A small but important group of Endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimps – just one of four left in Cameroon – have gone missing. Conservationists blame a new road.
MAROANTSETRA, Madagascar — Two years ago, a group of foreigners visited Marovovonana, the riverside village where Amélin Toto Arison runs a general store, to make a presentation about carbon. Arison…
A U.S. decision to allow import of trophy hunted elephants led to public outrage, Trump’s halt to the order, and the revival of a trophy hunting ethics discussion.
Carbon-rich tropical forests, which are often among the least-disturbed habitats, seem to be ideal bastions for sensitive and threatened animals, particularly compared to lower-carbon areas like timber and oil palm…
SAVA REGION, Madagascar — Madagascar is applying to sell millions of dollars’ worth of illegally logged timber, prompting fears of a bonanza for traffickers. The country has stockpiled tens of…
ANTALAHA, Madagascar — The piles of rosewood logs outside Chantal Rasoanirina’s office filled more than half the courtyard to head height. Each log, wet and weathered, was marked with a…
GUAPIRUVU, Brazil – To reach Guapiruvu one has to drive 20 kilometers (12 miles) on a gravel road. The first houses are big, solid, holiday homes for the wealthy people…
BEHELOKE BAS, Madagascar — For a few days each year, fishermen here can travel back in time. When octopus season opens on a new part of the reef every three…
Grassland researchers attending the COP23 climate summit opening in Bonn next week could urge creation of REDD-style initiatives to encourage savanna conservation.
Congress is locked in a heated debate over the 2018 budget, but if the GOP follows Trump’s lead, they could do extensive harm to the world’s wildlife and to developing nations.
In Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed militias terrorize people and wildlife, brave scientists have found 50 uncounted great apes.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Nothing says patience quite like tromping around wet woods in the middle of the night to collar bats and track them back to their daytime roosts. And…
During the wet season, manatees swim Amazon basin floodplains; in dry times they migrate to lakes. Hundreds of planned dams could disrupt that cycle.
ANKAFOBE, Madagascar — When he first told colleagues at the Missouri Botanical Garden that lemurs still lived in the forest in Ankafobe, Jean Jacques Rasolofonirina said he was met with…
Across the swath of vertebrate lifeforms that inhabit Earth, scientists have a pretty good idea about where most of the known land mammals, birds and amphibians live. That makes identifying…
As Trump firms build golf courses in Southeast Asia, imitating the Scottish landscape where the game was born, tropical habitat and aquifers are put at risk, according to environmentalists.
RANOMAFANA NATIONAL PARK, Madagascar — Late in the afternoon on June third of this year, Pierette Razafiandravao was at home getting ready for a church outing the following day when…
In an exclusive Mongabay interview, Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombia’s minister of the environment, tells how his nation has become a global leader in forest conservation.
14 million Amazon animals and plants — caiman skins, turtles, parrots, orchids and more — are legally exported annually. Illegal trafficking levels are unknown.
Soy-fed chicken sold in British supermarkets and fast food chains — including Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald’s — appear to be driving deforestation in the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado.
ANOSY REGION, Madagascar — The land in the Mandrare River Basin, in southeastern Madagascar, does not seem like the kind of place that could support an economy based on wood.…
Brazilian politicians and economically dominant social classes have for centuries exploited nature as if it was infinite. It is not. The consequences are more than evident.
To travel in Madagascar is to be reminded of just how small we are relative to our pale blue dot of a planet, or even its fourth largest island. Travel…
Study warns that six hydroelectric mega-dams proposed for Andean highlands would put environment and food security at risk in Amazon basin.
It’s not uncommon to find ecologist Greg Asner flying transects over the rainforests of the Amazon or Borneo. His specially outfitted plane has helped map out the three-dimensional structure of…
Brazilian president’s order to open 17,800 square miles of Amazon rainforest to mining met by crushing opposition; voided by judge (this story has been updated).
The president opens vast Amazon lands to mining; decrees new mining code that guts environmental monitoring, puts mining companies in charge of enforcement, opponents say.
Mining of vast diamond reserves, plus three new dams which could power the mines, would likely harm Indians on Roosevelt and Aripuanã rivers.
Amazon study: arboreal species actively use natural bridges above Peru pipeline, mitigating habitat fragmentation; could work for roads, other infrastructure.