Forest peoples in the Brazilian Amazon rely on their elders as key decision makers and culture keepers; COVID-19 is already killing indigenous elders at a high rate. All fear worse lies ahead.
In January 2017, researchers noticed two ill chimpanzees in Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire. The baby and adolescent West African chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) were coughing, breathing hard, and…
Mongabay senior editor Morgan Erickson-Davis joins this special edition of our podcast to provide the interesting context for the 2018/2019 special series she produced on the potential 'Bsal' salamander pandemic…
Dean Cycon spoke recently to students at Harvard Business School. A student asked him what his profit margin was at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee, a company he founded in 1993…
Ricardo Lopes Dias, an anthropologist and Christian Evangelical pastor, appointed to head Brazil’s isolated indigenous tribes department, has been removed due to a “conflict of interest”
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam – Conservation organizations in Vietnam sent a letter to the Prime Minister last week asking for an update on planned measures to curtail the trade…
Around 2008, a mysterious disease started killing off the fire salamanders in the Netherlands, and three years later, 96% were dead. That disease, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), is a relative of…
The coronavirus has rocked the foundations of societies across the globe. Since the virus originated in wildlife, there has been public outcry demanding the closure wildlife meat markets. Neglected thus…
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, popularly known as CITES, is a rare animal: an international environmental treaty with teeth. It regulates the global trade in some of…
The inhabitants of Culden village in northern Peru heard that the virus that causes COVID-19, the disease wreaking havoc around the world, originated in bats. So when they discovered a…
I used my Brazilian name above, but in my community, I am known as Wino Këyashëni. I belong to the Marubo people, one of the seven ethnic groups that inhabit…
I am writing this from Bukit Lawang (North Sumatra, Indonesia) a prominent ecotourism town on the fringes of the Gunung Leuser National Park. The town is devoid of tourists amid…
Thousands of workers at the world’s largest copper and gold mine, run by U.S.-based Freeport McMoRan in the Indonesian province of Papua, have been instructed to remain on the company’s…
Applications to mine on indigenous lands in the Amazon have increased by 91% under the Bolsonaro administration. Among the applicants are mining giant Anglo American, small-scale cooperatives whose members are embroiled in a range of environmental violations, and even a São Paulo-based architect.
As COVID-19 continues to wrack our lives, the topic of the illegal wildlife trade and its connection to the coronavirus has garnered recent headlines. Many organizations, such as the Wildlife…
Extreme flooding in the Ecuadoran Amazon has caused widespread disarray along the banks of the Bobonaza River, all amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past couple of weeks, the surging…
I have been sick with COVID-19. When I started writing this, holed up in my New York apartment, I could feel the shakiness, sharp headache, muscle and joint pain that…
BONTOC, Philippines — Each weekend since March, no one has crossed the boundary into the town of Bauko, in the northern Philippine region of Cordillera. The prohibition, a municipal advisory,…
The president of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, on April 20 appeared to promote an unproven treatment for COVID-19. The remedy, named COVID-ORGANICS, is effective against the virus, Rajoelina said, speaking in…
As the death toll and economic cost of the COVID-19 crisis mounts, calls are mounting to ban the trade in wild animals for human consumption, believed to have sparked the…
JAMBI, Indonesia — As Indonesia grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, infections from another animal-borne disease have gone on the rise largely unnoticed and likely driven by climate change, with more…
Environmental degradation has already triggered disease outbreaks in Brazil. The risk of a new emergent zoonotic disease arising there, like COVID-19, is intensified by Bolsonaro’s forest policies.
A team of Ugandan herpetologists has just returned from near their country's border with Kenya. They were searching for a glimpse of a critically endangered frog that hasn't been recorded…
Over four months after the first cases of COVID-19 surfaced in China, the world remains in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, with nearly 1.5 million confirmed cases and almost…
The only positive effect of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is that it has generated public awareness of the risks of emerging diseases. One may hope that this will result in…
Illegal gold mining led to deforestation of thousands of hectares of forests inside indigenous reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, according to new satellite image analysis by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). Mongabay had exclusive access to the report prior to its release.
LAMONGAN/JAKARTA, Indonesia — At a fishing port in eastern Java, fisherman Muhammad Fauzi was unloading his catch after spending days out at sea. He still goes fishing even though sales…
Local authorities and indigenous communities in Indonesia’s Papua region have imposed a sweeping lockdown to minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus. The region, which comprises the provinces of West…
MANILA — Facing armed conflict in their hometowns in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, dozens of indigenous students moved to Manila to continue their education. But with the new…
A 20-year-old Kokama indigenous woman in northern Amazonas state tested positive for COVID-19, the first case among indigenous people in Brazil. Experts fear the spread of the pandemic and its effects for native people, calling for urgent action from the government.
