Becca Brunner was standing chest-deep in an Ecuadoran rainforest stream, holding up audio equipment as she recorded the high-pitched call of an elusive glass frog. But then she encountered something…
Thanks to the rollout of free, high-resolution satellite imagery, the job of monitoring deforestation in tropical forests just got a lot easier. Last year Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment…
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…
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…
There was a time when Noemí Gualinga, a leader of the Indigenous Kichwa Sarayaku people of the Ecuadoran Amazon, used to sit out on the stoop of her old house…
*This article is a collaboration between Mongabay Latam and GK, Ecuador. At the beginning of June 2020, Ecuador’s National Assembly overwhelmingly passed the Oil Palm Law, officially called the…
Six grassroots environmental activists will receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in a virtual ceremony this year. Dubbed the “Green Nobel Prize,” this award is given annually to environmental heroes…
* This report is a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and GK from Ecuador. Amid the swirling mix of fresh and salt water in the Gulf of Guayaquil live groups…
In August this year, a fleet of around 300 Chinese fishing vessels attracted international attention when they congregated just outside Ecuador's territorial waters around the famed Galápagos Islands. Said to…
A historic court ruling in Ecuador that will let a community vote on whether to allow mining in its midst could set the stage for a region-wide grassroots pushback against…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we’re shining a spotlight once again on women who are leading Amazon conservation — as well as a new international treaty that would…
This article is a collaboration between Mongabay Latam and the digital news site GK of Ecuador. On Sept. 18 this year, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador approved a request…
QUITO, Ecuador — Katy Mochoa marched down the streets of Quito on Oct. 12, holding in one hand the corner of a large Wiphala flag — the rainbow-hued banner of…
Mining, both legal and illegal, impinges on more than one-fifth of Indigenous territory in the Amazon, according to a new study from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Amazon…
Appreciation of the outsized role that Indigenous people play in helping to protect the planet’s biodiversity, intact ecosystems, and global carbon stocks is growing around the world. On Wednesday, the United…
QUITO, Ecuador — It was a historic moment in April of 2019. Dozens of Indigenous Waorani plaintiffs filled a small courtroom in Ecuador’s Amazon city of Puyo, many of them…
SANTIAGO — In early June, a fleet of around 260 boats from China reached the limits of Ecuador’s exclusive economic zone around the Galápagos Islands to fish for Humboldt squid…
A first-of-its-kind study conducted within the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve's Intangible Zone (IZ) in Ecuador and captured in the film “Yasuní Man,” can now be found on streaming services. The zone is…
* This story is a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and GK of Ecuador. Instability and financial crisis wrought by COVID-19 have reached the national parks of Ecuador. On June…
QUITO — COVID-19 has made it hard to ignore the gaping social and economic inequalities and environmental destruction worldwide, particularly in the global south. That’s why researchers and social movements…
Two Brazilian biologists divided the Amazon Forest into 13 subregions, according to tree and shrub species. This spatial distribution allows targeting protection efforts.
As sick patients flood hospitals throughout the Sunbelt and healthcare providers step up selflessly to meet the challenge, I think about my friend Rosa Moreno, the most courageous nurse I…
The collapse of the San Rafael waterfall on Feb. 2 and the accelerated regressive erosion that began to occur on the riverbed and edges of the Coca River have turned…
A new indigenous geo-storytelling platform, Tribal Stories, launched on Aug. 9, the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. The new platform, by Netherlands-based nonprofit People’s Planet Project (PPP), features…
A pork and chicken producer has expanded its operations in northern Ecuador with the help of funding from the World Bank's commercial lending arm, despite sustained complaints from local communities…
QUITO — As COVID-19 sweeps across communities in the Amazon rainforest, the Indigenous Waorani in Ecuador are celebrating a bittersweet victory after a provincial court ruled in their favor in…
Tropical rainforests have an outsized role in the world. Of the Earth’s ecosystems, rainforests support the largest variety of plants and animal species, house the majority of indigenous groups still…
Ten days after showing his first symptoms, Dannes Piaguaje struggled to breathe as he leaned over a traditional steam remedy in his leaf-thatch jungle home in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The…
It's freezing cold. The wind whistles. A gentle drizzle falls from the sky, and the ground wheezes like a soaked sponge with every step. It is an inhospitable and at…
For nine months, the communities near Ecuador’s Los Cedros Protected Forest have been unable to fully celebrate a win in a provincial court to protect the forest. The decentralized autonomous…