Newly appointed Minister of Infrastructure Tarcísio Freitas is resolved to build new Amazon roads and railroads, but expresses limited patience for environmental or indigenous concerns.
Through its insatiable consumption of agro-commodities like soy, palm oil, and beef, the EU is contributing to a global deforestation crisis. After stalling for years while it carried out study…
Indigenous groups, quilombolas, agrarian reform settlements, and environmentalists are all responding to the new president’s early moves which could undermine past protections.
FUNAI moved rapidly before Christmas to safeguard the isolated Kawahiva indigenous group from intruders into their territory – two weeks before Pres. Bolsonaro took office.
On his first day in office, Brazil’s new president shifted the demarcation responsibility for indigenous lands to the agriculture ministry, potentially putting the Amazon at risk, critics say.
South America’s Gran Chaco is a hot, semi-arid biome that stretches from eastern Bolivia down through western Paraguay into Argentina, barely touching Brazil on its way. It’s characterized by sparse…
From 2016 to 2017, Mongabay contributors Sue Branford and Maurício Torres traveled to the Tapajós River Basin, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, to report on the controversial plan…
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…
Agribusiness desperately wants Grainrail built, but it poses a clear threat to 20 indigenous territories, and to the livelihoods of Amazonia’s truckers. A battle could be brewing.
Nearly 70 percent of all investigated foreign capital going to 9 major soy and beef firms responsible for major Amazon deforestation was transferred through tax havens between 2000-2011.
The biodiverse Amazon rainforest between the Purus and Madeira river basins was once deemed safe, but rapid deforestation is moving up the improved BR-319 highway.
President elect Jair Bolsonaro signals his government will be strongly pro-business, likely bringing major setbacks for the environment, indigenous groups and social movements in Brazil.
The benefits of zero-deforestation agreements in the Amazon are being offset by the spillover of deforestation and native vegetation loss into other biomes.
Honduras has committed to protecting part of the tropical rainforests found in the Moskitia region, a move that conservation groups say will protect the region’s rich wildlife, carbon stocks and…
The president elect’s plan to fuse the ministries has met with staunch resistance from environmentalists, scientists, and even some in the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby.
Brazil has plans for an expansive Amazon and Cerrado rail network, including two transcontinental Atlantic to Pacific lines, but development likely depends on China.
The Brazilian cattle industry’s lack of traceability allows deforestation-linked beef to reach retailers committed to eliminating it. Uruguay’s digital traceability system could be a solution.
Rising temperatures seem to have made a southern African park less hospitable to the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.), the carrier of a dangerous disease-causing microorganism, new research shows. Named for…
To stay under 2 degrees Celsius of warming and thereby stave off the worst effects of climate change, more funding must be allocated to forest-focused global warming mitigation strategies. That’s…
In the early 21st century, Brazil greatly reduced Amazon deforestation. A Jair Bolsonaro presidency would again put forests and the global climate at risk: study.
Interviewed by Mongabay in 2016, Aluisio Sampaio is the most recent victim in a growing wave of Amazon violence against socio-environmental activists.
The imminent election this month of far right Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s new president poses threats to the environment, indigenous people, and the global climate.
New research finds that one-third of critical jaguar habitat in the Gran Chaco, South America’s largest tropical dry forest, has been lost since the mid-1980s. According to the study, led…
Climate scientists were wary when the Brazilian government announced in August that its 2020 goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions had already been met. Brazil has certainly reined…
With around half the world’s forest cover cleared or otherwise degraded at some point in the recent past, the new forests that pop up to replace them – called secondary…
Mongabay begins a new series in which our contributors drive the BR-319 highway into one of the Amazon’s most remote wild areas – a region facing rapid deforestation.
Knowing where deforestation is happening is critical for efforts aimed at stopping or slowing it. Major breakthroughs toward this goal have been made over the previous few years, with NGOs…
Boosting agricultural productivity is key to solving one of the most critical issues of our time: meeting the growing demand for food and bioenergy while simultaneously protecting the environment. With…
"Territories are like books: they can be in front of you, but if you do not read them you will never understand them," said Juan Carlos Clavijo about Tinigua National…
Several decades of seemingly unrelated policies, ranging from increases in elk hunting to the reintroduction of wolves, have combined to cut a population of mountain lions in the western United…