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In 2023, women working at the Salala plantation told Mongabay their managers often tried to pressure them into sex. Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.

Second progress report shows little action on World Bank redress plan at Liberian plantation

Victoria Schneider 9 Apr 2026
Juma Xipaia, an Indigenous chief from the Brazilian Amazon. Image © Malaika Pictures.

Behind the scenes of the Amazon’s gold rush: Director Richard Ladkani on the making of ‘Yanuni’

Aimee Gabay 25 Mar 2026
Indigenous protesters and self-proclaimed river defenders demonstrate against Brazilian dams. Image courtesy of Amazon Watch.

A decade after the death of Berta Cáceres, we can no longer tolerate threats to environmental activists (commentary)

Michael Sutton 17 Mar 2026
The eye of a jumbo flying squid (Dosidicus gigas), photographed off Calfornia, U.S. Image by joescience1 via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Modest controls put on freewheeling squid fleet at South Pacific fisheries meeting

Francesco De Augustinis 12 Mar 2026
Juvenile Sumatran orangutans like this are highly sought by traffickers. Image courtesy of Onrizal Onrizal.

Indonesia’s orangutan trafficking cases reveal need for a change in approach (commentary)

Onrizal Onrizal 12 Mar 2026
A wholesale seafood market

Seafood fraud is rampant, imperiling fish populations, report finds

Edward Carver 5 Mar 2026
A pack of lions in Botswana.

DNA fingerprinting convicts Zimbabwe lion poachers in landmark case

Spoorthy Raman 5 Mar 2026

China’s Pacific squid fishery rife with labor, fishing abuses: Report

Francesco De Augustinis 3 Mar 2026
Eastern shingleback lizards in New South Wales, Australia.

Australia hands record prison sentence to reptile smuggler in trafficking crackdown

Gloria Dickie 25 Feb 2026
Collage featuring cockfighting and a largetooth sawfish

Why is cockfighting a risk to Peru’s rarest fish?

Romi Castagnino 25 Feb 2026

Migrant fishers’ deaths at sea tied to unchecked captain power, study shows

Basten Gokkon 20 Feb 2026
Tanoh Jallah, a resident of one of the towns in the IFC complaint, said all the good farmland was taken by Salala.

Community complaints in limbo as Socfin cuts ties with Earthworm Foundation

Ashoka Mukpo, Victoria Schneider 10 Feb 2026

Five detained over alleged hunting in Javan leopard habitat

Basten Gokkon 29 Jan 2026
Two members of the Prey Preah Roka Community Network – a grassroots activism group made up of communities around the wildlife sanctuary - document an illegally logged tree in the wildlife sanctuary. The grassroots group regularly patrol the wildlife sanctuary, documenting any illegal logging they come across by marking GPS coordinates, as well as taking a note of the species and diameter of the trees. Image by: Andy Ball / Mongabay.

Environmental crime prevention is moving into the diplomatic mainstream (commentary)

Robert Muggah 8 Jan 2026
Rescuers search for victims at the site of a landslide in Suwawa on Sulawesi Island in July 2024.

Indonesia’s illegal gold boom leaves a toxic legacy of mercury pollution

Sarjan Lahay, Junaidi Hanafiah, Teguh Suprayitno 7 Jan 2026
Guatemala accounted for 13% of the environmental defenders killed or disappeared across the world in 2024, as documented by Global Witness. Image courtesy of the Guatemalan President’s Office.

Guatemala’s eco defenders reel from surge in killings and persecution

Gonzalo Ortuño López 2 Jan 2026
The mining dredges installed along the Nanay River have begun to consume sections of forest. Image courtesy of FCDS Peru.

Mercury, dredges and crime: Illegal mining ravages Peru’s Nanay River

Enrique Vera 31 Dec 2025
Herders cross the Lungasamba pass with their yaks. Image by Chyamtang-Kathmandu Welfare Society.

Nepal Indigenous leaders refile writ petition against hydropower project

Sonam Lama Hyolmo 12 Dec 2025
Devastation left behind by illegal gold mining within the borders of the Sararé Indigenous territory in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Image courtesy of IBAMA.

Brazilian Amazon’s most violent city tied to illegal gold mining on Indigenous land

Shanna Hanbury 3 Dec 2025
A juvenile orange-fronted parakeet seized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in California.

It’s ‘whack-a-mole’: Alarming rise in pet trade fuels wildlife trafficking into California

Spoorthy Raman 25 Nov 2025
A male Vallarta mud turtle, one of the 40 seized as part of the operation, cared for at the Guadalajara Zoo.

Massive turtle bust in Mexico reveals ‘Wild West’ of wildlife trafficking

Spoorthy Raman 14 Nov 2025

After 6 years, trial in Indigenous forest guardian killing pushed to 2026

Karla Mendes 7 Nov 2025

Interpol announces a new global fight against illegal deforestation

Associated Press 5 Nov 2025
Timber illegally extracted from the Amazon by Ricardo Stoppe's group was sold to the USA and Europe.

Brazil charges 31 people in major carbon credit fraud investigation

Shanna Hanbury 4 Nov 2025

Amid systemic corruption, Amazon countries struggle to fight environmental crime

Timothy J. Killeen 31 Oct 2025

The rise of anti-corruption prosecutors in the Amazon region

Timothy J. Killeen 24 Oct 2025
Two members of the Prey Preah Roka Community Network – a grassroots activism group made up of communities around the wildlife sanctuary - document an illegally logged tree in the wildlife sanctuary. The grassroots group regularly patrol the wildlife sanctuary, documenting any illegal logging they come across by marking GPS coordinates, as well as taking a note of the species and diameter of the trees. Image by: Andy Ball / Mongabay.

New book unearths environmental crime’s psychological roots

Mike DiGirolamo 21 Oct 2025
U.N. special rapporteurs Mary Lawlor, left, and Clément Voule in 2023. Image courtesy of U.N. Photo/Evan Schneider.

Rise in persecution of climate defenders in Europe slammed by UN expert

Shanna Hanbury 21 Oct 2025
Palm civet in a wildlife farm in Dong Nai Province, Viet Nam. Image courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

New global guidelines needed to rein in the wildlife pet trade (commentary)

Elizabeth Bennett 7 Oct 2025
Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica

Controlling wildlife crime saves more than species (commentary)

Kumar Paudel 10 Sep 2025
IBAMA officers watch a camp on fire.

Brazil can green its environmental crime-fighting in the Amazon (commentary)

Anna Gielas 4 Sep 2025
Although operations like Green Shield are useful, experts say that they are not the solution for combatting illicit activities in the Amazon in the long run, as activities such as illegal mining continue to expand. Image courtesy of the UAE Ministry of Interior.

Formalizing small-scale gold mining can reduce environmental impacts & crime (commentary)

Robert Muggah 7 Aug 2025

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