The Carib language is slowly disappearing from the villages of its descendants in Guyana. But in the remote village of Kwebana in the country’s Barima-Waini region, a schoolteacher, a community…
The story of the American bison is both tragic and uplifting. Once dappling the prairies of North America in the tens of millions, hunting winnowed the number to perhaps a…
Under a midnight summer sun, the Inari Sámi gather reindeer. New calves, born just months before, are given a distinctive earmark by the Indigenous herders and then released to graze…
Adrian Lasimbang, an Indigenous leader in Malaysian Borneo, is suing the state of Sabah, contesting a recently signed agreement selling the rights to carbon and other natural capital from 2…
One of the major announcements from the United Nations climate summit in Scotland last month, known as COP26, was the Glasgow Declaration on Forests and Land Use, along with the…
This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay…
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,…
JOCOTÁN, Guatemala - Baudilio García walks up past alternating rows of trees and dried maize lining the hillside. Together with family members, he’s preparing to substitute the crops between the…
Low German Old Colony Mennonites, who have been settling across Latin America for the past 100 years, have cleared 495 hectares (1,223 acres) of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon so…
WEST KIMBERLEY, Australia — November marks the end of the dry season in the Kimberley, the northernmost region of Western Australia, the country’s largest state. As the monsoonal rains start to…
Wbeimar Cetina says he remembers with chilling clarity the 14 months he spent in jail in Arauca, Colombia. Because he couldn’t have visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he replayed…
This is the fourth article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. The muddy cores that Ian Lawson and his colleagues…
This story was written in partnership with Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. Leaving the headquarters of the Wayuú Women’s Force, Mülo’u took the first taxi she saw. It was…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has rejected a bid by two palm oil companies to have their permits restored after they were scrapped by local authorities for a litany…
In the village of Nongtraw in India's northeastern state of Meghalaya, one of the world’s wettest regions, honey is a sought after resource by the Khasi Indigenous community. They go…
Research published in recent years has shown that Indigenous territories have experienced substantially lower rates of forest loss than non-Indigenous lands. Given that Indigenous territories account for at least 36%…
In one of the largest and most spontaneous protests in post-apartheid South Africa, thousands of people gathered on the country’s eastern coastal beaches last Sunday to voice their dissent against…
Today, being an environmental defender in the Peruvian rainforest means challenging death. It means facing narcotrafficking, land encroachment, deforestation, and illegal logging and mining. It implies traveling hundreds of kilometers,…
This is the third article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Four. The logging concession moratorium signed in 2002 was supposed to shore…
At the very southern tip of Colombia, Indigenous communities practice a sustainable food system that involves artisanal fishing and rotating crop structures within cycles of flooding periods. This has allowed…
This is the second article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Three and Part Four. The announcement came in mid-2019: A pool of oil lay deep…
Nestled between steep mountains and a sandy shoreline that slopes into the Solomon Sea, the village of Baniata is testimony to resilience and self-sufficiency. Located on the remote southern shore…
Roads, trucks, fences, cow barns, cattle herds, and vast pasturelands. Overflight images from advocacy groups have revealed all this inside what’s supposed to be the protected territory of the Piripkura…
Pledges and solutions proposed by world leaders to address the climate and biodiversity crisis at the United Nations climate summit, COP26, and biodiversity conference, COP15, are not going to be…
This is the first article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. The notion seemed straightforward: A massive swamp in the Congo Basin…
Mining interests in the Brazilian Amazon pose an imminent threat to Indigenous groups, a new study shows, causing “incalculable damage” for 43 isolated groups if a bill legalizing mining on…
“Bornean communities locked into 2-million-hectare carbon deal they don’t know about” - 9 Nov 2021, Mongabay This was the headline Sabah woke up to on the morning of November 10th.…
In the prairies of the Lower Brulé Indian Reservation, the typically knee-high grass extends to the horizon. But in areas home to burrowing mammals, like prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), the…
One of the most poisonous animals on earth, the golden dart frog carries enough toxins in its body to kill 10 people. If it enters the blood stream, the toxin…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Mount Apo, a protected area on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, is threatened by small-scale illegal mining, which remains a lingering problem elsewhere in the resource-rich…
