Yasuní National Park in Ecuador’s northern Amazon rainforest has long been famed for being one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, home to thousands of species of plants, birds,…
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…
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 a species of nocturnal primate: the Spix's…
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…
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…
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…
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…
This year, six environmental activists will receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in a virtual ceremony. Known as the “Green Nobel Prize,” this award is given annually to grassroots environmental…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…