Ecuador News

It’s six in the morning and the beach is empty. The tide has erased the footprints from the sand, and the surface is a blank slate of white and perfectly…

Early on the morning of Nov. 15, five Constitutional Court judges arrived by canoe to the Indigenous Cofan community of Sinangoe in Ecuador’s northern Amazon rainforest, wearing rubber boots and…

In April 2020, customs officers in Hong Kong made one of the largest seizures of shark fins in history: 26 metric tons, all of it exported from Ecuador. This number…

Before the pandemic, Ecuador’s Indigenous communities were on a roll, winning a series of lawsuits against the state for selling, or trying to sell, their land to oil and mining…

Ecuador will expand the marine reserve encircling the Galápagos Islands, President Guillermo Lasso announced on Nov. 1 at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The current Galápagos Marine Reserve…

The heads of the world’s biggest oil companies denied accusations they misled the public on climate change, despite evidence of pending environmental damages and funding for climate denial campaigns presented…

In late 2019, Mongabay launched a special reporting project on Amazon women that took readers to communities throughout the region to meet and learn about the women who are emerging…

High up in the evergreen cloud forests of the Ecuadoran Andes, researchers recently found three new species of orchids undescribed by science. The charismatic flowers were spotted by scientists studying…

In 2017, the name “La Merced de Buenos Aires,” or simply “Buenos Aires,” became famous throughout Ecuador. This small parish located high in the Andean province of Imbabura was invaded…

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…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the only species of bear in South…

QUITO — For almost five years, Andres Durazno and his niece Elizabeth would march, block roads, and confront mining authorities and police together. They were leading the fight against mining…

Scientists describing a new species of ant, Strumigenys ayersthey, have broken with conventional naming traditions and used the pronoun “they” instead of the traditional male or female form to promote…

Luke Mahler didn’t exactly set out to study lizards that could breathe underwater. But when he and fellow scientist Rich Glor were out on a research expedition in Haiti in…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting a species of nocturnal primate: the Spix's…

A coalition of groups, including a newly formed organization backed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, have mobilized $43 million for efforts to restore degraded habitats in the Galápagos Islands, an archipelago…

Western corporations have been inflicting environmental damage overseas for generations, but the sharp rise in the scale of China's international ambitions and operations in recent years has put a spotlight…

Manual Pintado spent the past 15 years raising cattle in El Pangui, a municipality nestled in south-eastern Ecuador´s Amazonian region. Now, he receives an income for leaving his 15 hectares…

It started as an ordinary morning in Ecuador’s eastern Orellana province. Abel Jipa’s sons, Byron and Johnny, and his son-in-law, Gibson, set out on the Coca River to go fishing…

Mongabay caught up with Igarapé Institute co-founder Robert Muggah this week to discuss Ecocrime, a new data visualization platform that combines visual storytelling with access to raw data on environmental crime…

A longer Spanish version of this essay appeared in the Journal of Latin American Geography. Indigenous elders play a key role in the protection of their culture and livelihoods. A…

I’ve lost count of the number of times, working as a journalist across Latin America, that I’ve met, spoken to, or heard from or about Indigenous peoples and other local…

“I’m very happy because, finally, justice has been served. We’re going to restore nature, for all the sick children, for the people, for the parents who have fought to stay…

After drugs and arms trafficking, illegal fishing is the third most lucrative illegal activity in the world. It is estimated that around 26 million tons of fish and other marine…

Like a thick scarf, the Galápagos Marine Reserve encircles its namesake islands, protecting 133,000 square kilometers (51,400 square miles) of nutrient-rich ocean that supports nearly 3,000 marine species. But the…

The Amazon basin lost more than 2 million hectares of primary forest cover in 2020, according to a new satellite data analysis released today. The authors say this likely eclipses…

France has rolled out a new initiative to fight deforestation and promote sustainable development. Under the initiative, announced in Ecuador in early December 2020, the South American country will be…

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…