Since the 1990s, communities of the Intag Valley of Ecuador have been leading a conservation campaign to protect the remaining cloud forests in this highly biodiverse region of the planet,…
The tiny droplets of condensation in the canopies of the world’s cloud forests are just the first link in a life-giving chain. That water replenishes rivers, streams and reservoirs, filters…
If there is an ecosystem that captures my imagination, it is the cloud forests, or perhaps better called, “the forests of the clouds.” Walking underneath their damp and dark canopy…
For several weeks in 2015, the sound of chainsaws cutting down trees was incessant in the Angangueo municipality in the Mexican state of Michoacán. When a group of people tried…
In 2006, the world's leading hummingbird photographer, Luis Mazariegos, visited La Mesenia, an isolated village in Colombia’s western Andes. He had no idea that besides taking a picture of the…
An expedition into the cloud forests of the Bolivian Andes has uncovered 20 species new to science, including a frog that may be the smallest in the Andes, a new…
A new tiny orchid species with fiery orange flowers has been discovered on a mountain peak in the northern Philippines’ Cordilleras range. The wild orchid species was named Dendrochilum ignisiflorum…
In 2009, scientists estimated that Mexico’s tropical montane cloud forests — hillside woodlands blanketed in fog and rain — were down to 28% of their original extent. Fifty-three percent of…
A four-year study of streams in the cloud forests of Sri Lanka’s picturesque Knuckles Mountain Range has turned up an unexpected discovery: a new frog species found nowhere else on…
When a mining company came to exploit an old-growth cloud forest near Edicson Parra’s hometown of Fusagasuga in Colombia, he decided to take action. He rallied as many relatives and…
The way humans have changed the forests of Central and South America may be making it impossible for subsistence hunters to continue their way of life, according to two conservation…
There’s a new record for the tallest tree in the tropics, and the scientists who found it say it could add to our understanding of how and why some trees…
The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah has called on construction crews working on the multi-billion-dollar Pan Borneo Highway project to avoid breaking up the region’s forests and…
UPDATE (19 March 2019): The European Parliament voted March 12 to consent to the VPA with Vietnam by a vote of 632-14 with 23 abstentions. The resolution, including the explanatory…
LA GLORIA, Guatemala — The sun was still rising when Ovidio Yat Sacul set out, machete in hand, in search of a waterfall near the top of the mountain overlooking…
Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo will reopen its gates to tourists on Feb. 15 after officials closed them more than eight months ago. A spate…
The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week followed high-volume fishing in the Galapagos, oil drilling in Colombian cloud forests, mercury levels in the Peruvian Amazon,…
At 1,200 to 3,200 meters above sea level, the montane cloud forests on the eastern Andean flank in Ecuador lie between the Andes’ high-elevation grasslands (known as páramo) and the…
The equatorial ecosystems of the Albertine Rift are packed with plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Formed as tectonic plates in eastern Africa have slowly pulled away from…
There’s no doubt that animals play critical roles in maintaining healthy forests. In these species-rich ecosystems, birds and mammals – especially large ones – ingest seeds from all kinds of…
The cloud forest ecoregion of the Colombian Andes is arguably the most biodiverse in the world. A moist climate, varying altitudes, and high rates of endemism create idyllic conditions for…
he Paris Agreement marked the biggest political milestone to combat climate change since scientists first introduced us in the late 1980s to perhaps humanity’s greatest existential crisis. Last December, 178…
Scientists have described a strikingly colored new species of snake from the mountains of east-central Mexico. This snake, with a vivid orange and black banding pattern on its body, belongs…
Scientists say they’ve discovered a new species of horned pitviper in the critically endangered cloud forests of the Sierra Madre Oriental in Veracruz, Mexico, and determined that another pitviper is…
It’s good news for two of the world’s rarest salamanders: Finca Chiblac salamander (Bradytriton silus) and the long-limbed salamander (Nyctanolis pernix). A consortium of international conservation groups has purchased 2,000…
Two new cloud forest reserves in the Colombian Andes have been established to protect a number of rare, endangered species, including the Silvery-brown bare-face tamarin (Saguinus leucopus), a monkey found…
One degree of warming would drastically reduce the habitat of nearly all of the region's endemic vertebrates, according to a recent study.
NCI's buriti project helps local communities benefit while protecting areas of this wild palm , working to provide added value sales of palm fruit and extracts. Courtesy of NCI. One…
An adult male yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Lagothrix flavicauda) in northeastern Peru. Photo credit: Sam Shanee. Community conservation projects — initiatives that actively involve local people in conservation efforts — have…
Skin texture variation in one mutable rainfrog (Pritimantis mutabilis), which changes from spiny at 0 seconds to smooth at 330 seconds. Photo courtesy of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean…
