Environmental crime News

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Organized crime adds to environmental destruction in the Amazon, report finds

Aimee Gabay 18 May 2026

Illegal wildlife trade in Himalayan countries threaten mountain ecosystem

Mongabay.com 15 May 2026
Indigenous communities face changes to their ways of life due to the presence of illegal economies. Image courtesy of Amazon Watch.

Crime affects 32% of Amazon Indigenous areas, says study

Yvette Sierra Praeli 11 May 2026
A Bengal tiger from Rajasthan, India. Poaching is one of the biggest threats to tigers, an endangered cat in Asia.

Facebook is a hub for illegal wildlife trade, and that’s by design, report says

Spoorthy Raman 5 May 2026
This red-tailed monkey was photographed at a hotel in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As wildlife trade expands, so do pathways for disease spillover to humans

Cate Twining-Ward 4 May 2026
High-resolution satellite imagery allows IBAMA to detect deforestation in almost real time.

Brazil bill aims to ban satellite tool used to slow Amazon deforestation

Fernanda Wenzel 30 Apr 2026
Excavators clear a pile of trash at the Bantargebang landfill following a landslide in March.

Indonesia escalates ‘war on waste’ with criminal probe into Jakarta landfill disaster

Achmad Rizki Muazam, Luh De Suriyani 29 Apr 2026

Nigeria arrests suspected pangolin trafficking kingpin on the run

Spoorthy Raman 27 Apr 2026
Lanal Banten (Banten Navy Base) displays hundreds of kilograms of pangolin scales seized from a Vietnamese-flagged vessel.

Investigators eye organized crime links in 3-ton pangolin scale haul at Jakarta port

Anggita Raissa 24 Apr 2026

Oil spill continues in Gulf of Mexico vulnerable habitats, while Pemex admits fault

Caitlin Cooper 22 Apr 2026
Gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon in 2011. Photo by Rhett Butler.

The Amazon’s silent crime crisis (commentary)

Carlos Nobre, Robert Muggah, Ilona Szabo 15 Apr 2026
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

Tracking environmental crime in the Amazon: A conversation with Alexa Vélez

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Apr 2026
Portrait of Jacqueline Flores. Image by Heinz Plengue Pardo. Design by Emilie Languedoc.

As traditional forest governance erodes in Peru, ‘ghost permits’ fill the vacuum

Michele Calamaio 30 Mar 2026
Pangolins are one of the most in-demand wildlife in Asia, used in traditional chinese medicine preparations. After Chinese pangolins plummeted by about 90% in the 2000s, traffickers shifted to African species.

Asia now hub of growing illegal wildlife trade across 100+ countries, study shows

Spoorthy Raman 30 Mar 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
Officers display pangolin scales intended for smuggling into Cambodia.

Jakarta port authorities seize 3 tons of pangolin scales in Cambodia-bound container

Anggita Raissa 20 Mar 2026
An oil pipeline through Wampis territory in the Amazonas department. Image by Jacob Balzani.

How foreign investor lawsuits stymie environmental protection

Aimee Gabay 19 Mar 2026
Tiger

By protecting tigers ‘we save so much more,’ says Debbie Banks

Mike DiGirolamo 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

Bringing Mongabay’s Amazon narco airstrip exposé to the stage

Mike DiGirolamo 24 Feb 2026

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

Basten Gokkon 20 Feb 2026
A Malayan softshell turtle (Dogania subplana).

Study refutes claim that Indonesia’s legal turtle trade supports livelihoods

Spoorthy Raman 16 Feb 2026

Seven years after Brazil’s worst dam disaster, mining operations bounce back

Felipe S. Duran, Mylena Melo 16 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

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