Authorities in Bangladesh have been slammed for harassment and lack of compassion after arresting 59 people from forest-dependent communities for violating a ban on entering the Sundarbans, the world’s biggest…
When she was a child, Cruz Ávila used to walk through the forest as part of her daily routine. She would pick wood or medicinal plants. She learned to find…
For 13 years, the Indigenous Ogiek people have been embroiled in a legal battle with the Kenyan government for legal recognition of their rights to the Mau Forest, the largest…
CHELEM, Mexico — In Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, a few words describe the most common occupations: fisher, merchant, mother. Over the past decade, the port town of Chelem has seen the…
Iluka Alain was a bit surprised when the two men turned up on a motorcycle in December 2021 in Bofekalasumba, the village where he’s chief in the northwestern Democratic Republic…
SATKHIRA, Bangladesh — Over the past three decades, Moyna Rani Mondol, who lives right on the coast in Bangladesh's southwestern district of Satkhira, has lost her home around 10 times…
AMMAN, Jordan — It’s a quiet day in Omar al-Faisal Park, in the impoverished industrial outskirts of Jordan’s capital, Amman. Sandwiched between the runway of a military airport and residential…
PALAWAN, Philippines — On a dreary April day, agroforestry worker Jimmy Tablason frowns in the sweltering heat as he trudges through the ruins of forests protected for decades by his…
KAMALCHHORI, Bangladesh — Anupam Chakma, 60, has lived in the hilly village of Kamalchhori in Bangladesh all his life. When his grandfather and his contemporaries arrived in the region many…
For the ancient Mayans, the king vulture was an intermediary that crossed the skies, communicating with humans and the gods. Seeing it soar through the air today, with its wingspan…
It’s just before noon on a Saturday in the forest shared by the San Juan Totolapan ejido, or communal farming village, in central Mexico. Not a single bird can be…
For the past decade, an association of small farmers has been growing vegetables amid a strip of filao trees that grow on the sand dunes along the coastline in the…
MAKOKOU, Gabon — In August 2020, the Massaha community in northeastern Gabon made a formal request to the government to declassify a logging concession allocated to a Chinese company, Transport…
CANELOS, Ecuador — An almost invisible trail snakes through thick buzzing forest leading to a chakra, an ancestral food garden in the Kichwa Cuya community located in Ecuador’s largest province,…
“It still rains here,” says Emeterio Hernández Cano, the San Francisco communal land commissioner, at the start of a tour of La Fabriquita, a pine and oak forest of just…
Two decades ago, the inhabitants of four communities in the northern Mexican state of Durango put together a proposal: to make sustainable forest management a means of living. Over the…
SHOUF BIOSPHERE RESERVE, Lebanon — Late afternoon light falls across Talal Riman’s weathered face as he stands under the ancient cedars he’s tended for almost three decades in Lebanon’s Shouf…
“We are hopeful, we never gave up on our goal, to get our house back,” says Heber do Prado Carneiro. He and his wife, Vanessa Honorato, are Caiçaras, members of…
KINANDU, Democratic Republic of the Congo - A small group of residents from Kinandu village, 19 kilometers (11 miles) west of Lubumbashi, head into the miombo wooded savanna, decimated by…
An Asian elephant supports itself on one leg, completely submerged in garish electric-blue water, while a keeper tugs painfully at its ear. The photograph shows bubbles rising from its trunk…
A Brazilian Federal Police operation dismantled a criminal organization that operates in illegal mining inside Kayapó Indigenous Land, in southern Pará state. The gold is sold abroad to Chimet, an Italian business group specializing in refining gold to make jewellery.
KATHMANDU — Nepalis whose livelihoods rely on access to the country’s community forests have suspended planned protests against a new law they say will threaten their autonomy and force their…
MIGORI COUNTY, Kenya — On a hot, sunny afternoon, Susan Aluoch is among a group of volunteers preparing a tree nursery in preparation for the upcoming long rains. Aluoch is a…
PEKALOBEAN, Indonesia — Haeriah is a young homemaker and a member of the Marena Indigenous community on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Although she’s lived all her life near her…
Cecilia Rivas remembers Tukupu as a place to live freely. The dwellings of the Indigenous Kariña community, spread out under the shade of the trees in the Imataca Forest Reserve,…
A chief from the Bakanga clan of Batwa living within view of Mount Kahuzi was asked in the 1970s to help delineate a boundary using surveyor’s chains. He agreed, not…
NIMBA COUNTY, Liberia — In 2020, villagers from the Blei and Sehyi Kodoo districts agreed to allow Solway Mining Incorporated to explore for iron-ore deposits in their territory in the…
MAASAI MAU, Kenya — Two years ago, Kenyan authorities evicted 30,000 people from their homes in the Maasai Mau section of the Mau Forest. The evictees, many of whom had…
Bangladesh’s population of one of the world’s largest tortoise species received a boost last month when researchers and villagers released 10 captive-bred juveniles into the evergreen forests of the Chattogram…
TANAKEKE ISLANDS, Indonesia — Wading through a mangrove swamp in the coastal waters of Indonesia’s Tanakeke Islands, Hayati wiped the sweat from her brow and tried her best to keep…
