Besides its ecological relevance, the disappearance of the Paraná pine (Araucaria angustifolia), a tree that is native to Brazil, also threatens the survival of an entire people: the Kaingáng, the…
JAKARTA — Environmental activists have slammed a rule change by the Forest Stewardship Council that will allow some loggers who couldn’t qualify over the past 30 years to now be…
Plot out all the Indigenous territories in the Amazonian region of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, and you’ll get an idea of just how important conserving these lands is for…
Asian companies made their entry in force in the 1990s, in Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. In Southeast Asia, companies intensively and unsustainably logged the dipterocarp forests, the tall, straight-trunked…
This year's Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) General Assembly in Bali on 9th-14th October marked the most significant change in direction for the certification scheme in the last 20 years. One…
Groups demand end to Chinese gold mine operating inside DRC reserve ITURI PROVINCE, Democratic Republic of Congo — Civil society groups have condemned what they say is illegal gold mining…
Electric wire fences set up to keep marauding elephants out of farms and villages in Indonesia’s Aceh province worked well — at least at first. When the elephants realized the…
“What the figures show us today is that President [Iván] Duque’s government is closing out its term by breaking the rising trend of deforestation in Colombia, which had reached its…
Marked by a fine for illegal deforestation, Agro Xavante, an initiative created with the blessing of president Bolsonaro, moves ahead with leasing public lands and a failure to conduct prior consultation with the local population.
Four years since the Brazilian government signed an executive order declaring a half-million-hectare sustainable-use reserve in the Amazon, the area remains protected on paper only — leaving it open to…
MINDANAO, Philippines — In the remote mountain village of Ned, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, the arrival of heavy machinery signals that development is underway on a controversial,…
DAKAR — The construction of a highway linking the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to Saint Louis, the principal city in the north of the country, will encroach heavily on forest reserves,…
The Gura Ferda forest in southwest Ethiopia is a beautiful example of a forest and local people living in harmony, says biodiversity and protected area specialist Julian Bayliss. Bayliss, who…
Some of the world’s largest beef exporters are still buying cattle that grazed in protected areas of the Amazon rainforest, despite commitments to stop this practice, according to a new…
JAKARTA — Sustainability commitments and greater scrutiny of supply chains is helping bring down deforestation rates associated with palm oil in Indonesia, a new analysis suggests. The country is the…
Neidinha, Almir and Txai Suruí are leading the fight against invaders destroying two of the most threatened Indigenous territories in the Brazilian state of Rondônia: the Sete de Setembro and Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau reserves.
This report is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam, La Región and Red Ambiental de Información. ROBORÉ, Bolivia—The Ñembi Guasu region is referred to as the “great refuge”…
The sun has set, and darkness takes over the world’s largest rainforest. Little by little, our senses become more acute. Moisture sticks to the skin and animal sounds become more…
Feeding wild animals is a common habit in Brazil. Whether it is for the opportunity to approach and observe them up close or take a picture, or because of the…
Wild felids in Brazil’s Amazon face a myriad of pressures from habitat loss and, most recently, the threat of fires. In the central Amazon region, a long-running community-based monitoring program…
A group of Indigenous communities in Ecuador is taking legal action to regain control of territory in a wildlife reserve they say the government recognized a long time ago but…
Even before a definitive license was issued by the Brazilian main environmental agency, paving works had already begun on the so-called Middle Section of the BR-319, the highway that connects the Amazonian cities of Porto Velho and Manaus.
At the heart of Brazil’s “arc of deforestation,” the São Nicolau Farm has become a demonstration reforestation project, designing and refining tropical reforestation techniques on 2,000 hectares of degraded pastureland.
Scientists and companies are looking to a small section of the textile market to address the clothing industry’s threats to climate and ecosystems. Cellulose fabrics are fibers extracted from plants,…
Along a northeastern stretch of the Brazilian Amazon, a palm oil war has broken out. Escalating violence triggered by land disputes between palm oil companies, on one side, and Indigenous…
“For the first time ever, there is a government that is against fracking,” says Amarilys Llanos Navarro. An activist and lawyer with the Cesar Without Fracking and Gas Movement, an…
Led by a teacher and a family farmer, 15 traditional communities living in public forests in Brazil’s Amazonas state earned official recognition and the rights to collective use of their…
ANDRAMASINA, Madagascar — It’s transplanting season in Andramasina’s rice fields. The town is just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Madagascar’s bustling capital, Antananarivo, but it takes two and a…
JAKARTA/NORTH PENAJAM PASER, Indonesia — The Indonesian government’s strategy to minimize the marine impacts of building a new capital city on the island of Borneo is severely lacking, researchers and…
Update: Shortly after this story was published, INPE updated the September data. The numbers have been revised accordingly. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is surging ahead of the presidential election…
