Drug Trade News

Nine months ago, Abdón was one of 40 Indigenous people from the Peruvian municipality of Flor de Ucayali who traveled, for the last time, to the border between his community…

A group of Kichwa patrollers living in the Peruvian Indigenous communities of Santa Rosillo de Yanayaku and Anak Kurutuyaku made an unexpected discovery in 2018. On their land in the…

This story is the result of a reporting collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. In 2000, in the midst of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest, two elder members from…

This story is a reporting partnership between Mongabay Latam and La Barra Espaciadora. Balsa wood is a hot commodity in Ecuador, with the country exporting $402 million worth of the timber in…

San Rafael National Park/Proposed National Reserve sits in eastern Paraguay, quietly encompassing a remnant of the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest, a unique biome that stretches between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay…

Beginning along Honduras’s northeastern coastline and stretching south into its dense interior rainforests lies the Río Plátano Biosphere. Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, the Río Plátano is…

Tucked away on the Caribbean side of Honduras lies the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an area some in size with abundant green forests, rivers, ponds, and a great variety of…

Mario’s nervousness is evident on the other end of the phone as he speaks about how three men tried to stab him in November 2020. This wasn’t the first time something…

The Siona are a binational people, their territory straddling two countries: Sucumbíos province in northeastern Ecuador and in the Putumayo department in southeastern Colombia. But the forest they depend on…

The Catatumbo River originates in northeastern Colombia’s Norte de Santander Department and flows to Venezuelan Lake Maracaibo. For generations, it has provided passage for fishermen and small farmers; but increasingly,…

Between 2010 and 2020, South America lost an average of 2.6 million hectares of forest per year, according the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In other…

The mountainous forests of northern Madagascar are biodiverse beyond measure, containing plant and animal species found nowhere else on the planet. Other forests in Madagascar have been lost in recent…

This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the fifth installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…

This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the fourth installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…

In March 2020, as Bogota’s coronavirus quarantine began, a white smog hung over the city, coming from fires burning in Nukak National Nature Reserve, nearly 400 kilometers, or 250 miles,…

This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the third installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…

This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the second installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…

This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the first installment of a five-part series about illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…

The fishing boat flew a Singaporean flag as it sailed toward Batam Island in Indonesia. But when Indonesian Navy officers intercepted the vessel and boarded it in February 2018, they…

Between the cacao fields of northwest Madagascar and the vanilla of the northeast, a chain of rainforests bob along the highland interior. Tsaratanana Reserve, home to the country’s highest peak,…

ATALAYA, Peru — Pascual cuts the motor and our dugout canoe glides below a massive tree trunk suspended a few feet above the river. I motion to the bank. “We…

Powerful drug-traffickers and landless farmers continue to push cattle ranching and illegal logging operations deeper into the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in eastern Honduras. The…

On June 23, three police officers in Peru were arrested and now stand accused of providing security and information to narco-traffickers who are part of an international criminal organization. The…

Colombian authorities have announced they will investigate 33 gas stations for allegedly selling an estimated 70 million gallons (265 million liters) of gasoline to cocaine producers in rural regions of…

A patrol of eleven men is hiking along a rough jungle trail spotted with the blackened foliage of several small brush fires. Nearby trees, smoke-stained at their bottoms but still…

Rafael Orjuela, a community leader in Cartagena de Chairá, Colombia, moved to the Amazonian department of Caquetá in 1979 to escape severe economic hardship in the interior Andes region. At…

More than 2,000 illegal mining sites in the Amazon, a wetland in Chile threatened by a highway extension, and a possible new monkey species in Peru were among the top…

The burned forest and coca crops that have dominated the landscape along the road for the past two hours are gradually being transformed into coffee plantations. These are the last…

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…

LIMA, Peru — A joint operation by law enforcement agencies in Peru managed to seize 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of cocaine from a plane intercepted in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park last…