Study finds that worsening Amazon fires are melting Andean glaciers; soot builds up on snow, absorbing more solar radiation. Melting source isn’t accounted for in current climate models.
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. Widely available satellite imagery via platforms like Google Earth brought new levels of accountability which, for the first time,…
A major six nation study finds that the arrau is thriving mostly in river systems where conservationists are active, but not elsewhere; climate change looms as a major threat.
The Gran Chaco is South America’s second-largest forest, comprising around 648,000 square kilometers (250,000 square miles) and stretching over portions of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina (as well as a corner…
Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.
Despite over six weeks of firefighting, the infernos destroying Bolivia’s forests continue to spread. 5.3 million hectares (about 13.1 million acres) — an area larger than the whole of Costa…
A new app aimed at tracking forest fires in Bolivia could shake up the way authorities and firefighters battle fires, allowing them to pinpoint their locations more accurately and safely.…
The fires ravaging the Amazon forest in Brazil and Bolivia this year have burned key habitats of at least 500 adult, resident jaguars as of Sept. 17, rendering them dead…
One fine day in late November in 1998, while standing on a knife-edged, precipitous ridge some 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) above sea level in Bolivia’s Cordillera Apolobamba, I came across…
This story is a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay’s Latin America (Latam) team and the Bolivian newspaper Página Siete “Fire is a monster and is threatening us. Everything is ashes and…
A new protected area in northwest Bolivia will promote wildlife conservation and sustainable development in local communities, its creators say. The municipal government of Reyes, in northwest Bolivia, approved the…
Indigenous reserves and other conserved lands in nine Amazonian nations are under extreme pressure as roads, mining, dams, oil drilling, fires and deforestation encroach.
A new report examines the “unchecked development” in the Amazon that has driven deforestation rates to near-record levels throughout the world’s largest tropical forest. The main drivers of deforestation vary…
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…
The International Rights of Nature Tribunal has issued its ruling on the Bolivian government’s road development project in the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). In a statement, the…
At first glance, the news seems good: global tropical deforestation declined for the second year in a row, according to new satellite data. But digging in a little deeper reveals…
The peacefulness of Monte Punku is disrupted every day at lunchtime, when many vehicles and hundreds of workers burst into this town located 188 kilometers (117 miles) from the city…
A biologist known as Bolivia’s Batman, ground zero for Amazon deforestation in Peru, and camera traps showing the bird species from ancient cave drawings were among the top stories from…
Scandal surrounds indigenous management of a major Easter Island protected area, a newly described freshwater crab species in Colombia, declines in Central America’s peccaries, and a man who can recognize…
ÑUFLO DE CHÁVEZ, Bolivia — Few countries in the tropics have seen their trees chopped down as quickly as Bolivia did between 2001 and 2017. According to data from the…
A state of emergency against illegal mining in Peru, open season for new mining ports in Chile, drones vs rats in the Galápagos, and jaguar corridors in Colombia are among…
The environmental impact of the global demand for lithium and more jaguar protection in South America, plus profiles of five pioneering women in conservation science, and a newly discovered tree…
When Valentine’s Day rolled around last year, Romeo found himself without a date. That’s because Romeo is a Sehuencas water frog and, as far as scientists knew at the time,…
The recent top stories from Mongabay Latam, our Spanish-language service, include a call to cover climate change, the dangers of opposing Colombia’s largest hydropower plant, and the most inspiring conservation…
For Adamo Diego Cusi, a search for oil in the Bolivian Amazon by the Chinese-backed company BGP Bolivia has been a terrible ordeal. His work as coordinator of environmental and…
Illegal mining has become an “epidemic” in the Amazon rainforest, destroying naturally protected areas and threatening indigenous territories, according to a new joint study by six Amazonian countries. The crux…
The top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam, looked at jail sentences for wildlife traffickers in Bolivia; conserving river dolphins in Venezuela and culling lionfish in Colombia; and shark…
Life is hard for the community of Trinidadcito, but its people don’t feel poor. Rather, they say they’re being punished for opposing the construction of a highway that would cut…
The recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam, concerned hungry manatees in Venezuelan zoos; giant tortoises stolen from the Galápagos Islands; and a ban on free, prior and…