Latin America News

Soaring gold prices, brought on by the economic meltdown and COVID-19 uncertainty, have led to a rapid, largely un-policed, expansion of illegal gold mining in the Amazon.

In 2006, when the first large environmental monitoring project began in the Peruvian Amazon, its objective was not to uncover new environmental crimes in the forest. Instead, the project was…

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…

More than 3,660 indigenous people are infected, with many elders dead. Analysts suggest the rising toll may be driven by deep poverty, and the undermining of traditional cultures and overall health by modern intrusions.

In her first study in the region, Brazilian conservationist and Whitley Gold Award winner Patrícia Medici wants to understand how South America’s largest land mammal responds to changes in the forest caused by human economic activity.

In a corner of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, a handful of clandestine roads neatly slice the dense jungle canopy into rectangles. From the sky, an entourage of bulldozers can be…

An exclusive study shows that 114 properties have been certified inside indigenous territories awaiting demarcation in the Brazilian Amazon, spurred in large part by a recent statute that leaves these reserves unprotected from such illegal land grabs.

A first ever study has quantified carbon emissions across Brazil’s entire soy sector in detail and pinpointed the highest deforestation related emissions in the Cerrado savanna, followed by the Amazon.

Recognized as one of the 50 most influential women scientists in fire studies in the world by the journal Fire, Dolors Armenteras is also a pioneer in Colombia in monitoring…

Some indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest are being devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, recalling memories of the severe toll wrought by diseases introduced during first contact with the outside…

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…

The COVID-19 pandemic and the arrival of fire season in two of the world’s major rainforests are on a collision course, scientists and public health researchers say, and the results…

A lapsed moratorium protecting the Amazon river dolphin is up for renewal, but the Bolsonaro administration has delayed acting, even as scientists warn it could mean the freshwater mammal’s extinction.

Read the original investigation. TIKTIK KAANU, Nicaragua – Laughter drifted up from the riverbank, where the glow of fireflies pulsed on and off between the tree trunks. It was Friday…

Deforestation in Earth's largest rainforest increased for the fourteenth consecutive month according to data released today by the Brazilian government. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is currently pacing 83% ahead…

In December 2019, sitting on the wooden patio of his hilltop cabin, the Amazonian forest buzzing in the background, Rodrigo Trujillo reflects on his 25 years growing coca, the raw…

Worsening Amazon floods with reduced fish catches, along with government policies that shred welfare programs and encourage deforestation, are increasing food insecurity in riverine communities.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surpassed 10,000 square kilometers in 2019, the according to revised data from Brazil's national space research institute INPE. It's the first time forest clearing in…

Everyone’s lives have been upended by coronavirus, but perhaps nowhere have the impacts been as devastating as in Mesoamerica’s indigenous territories. In March, just before the pandemic really hit the…

In an attempt to derail the onslaught of anti-environmental policies put forward by Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, NGOs, prosecutors and opposition political parties are taking the government to court.

Land grabbers, landed estate owners and even oil companies stand to benefit from a new guideline released by FUNAI, the federal indigenous affairs agency, which opens up 237 indigenous territories in Brazil for sale, subdivision and speculation.

Primary forests in the tropics are declining at an accelerating rate according to analysis of satellite data released last week by the University of Maryland (UMD) and World Resources Institute…

Researchers have detected the "first major fire of 2020" in the Brazilian Amazon three months ahead of the fire season, while other scientists warn that there could be a “catastrophe”…

Forest peoples in the Brazilian Amazon rely on their elders as key decision makers and culture keepers; COVID-19 is already killing indigenous elders at a high rate. All fear worse lies ahead.

TRIBUGÁ, Colombia — Aida Leides Palacios Moreno strolls through the narrow dirt streets in the Colombian town of Tribugá surrounded by palm and plantain trees rustling in the seaside breeze.…

Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) arrived in Boa Vista on the Trombetas River in 1979. While the mining company made big profits, traditional people say it has given back little while doing great harm.

The illegal harvesting of valuable Brazilian wood is rife as loggers supply the EU, US and other nations. Mongabay goes deep into the rainforest to meet some of the workers illegally felling trees.

Pixaim is one of the remaining quilombos on the Atlantic coast, an Afro-Brazilian settlement already gravely impacted by upstream dams. Now climate change could doom it.

Native Brazilian bees provide several environmental services – pollination of flora and agricultural crops being the most important one. But new studies show that pesticides may affect them more intensely.

A series of measures by the Bolsonaro government that attack the environment are putting indigenous peoples at risk, say the authors.