Latin America News

RIPÁ, Brazil — One muggy morning last December, eight women and their chief drove out of the Indigenous Xavante village of Ripá across a forested savanna in the Brazilian state…

In the 1950s a group of Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous living in the community of Takuara in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul was forcefully evicted from the land…

Satellites have detected forest clearing within Triunfo do Xingu this year, an area that’s supposed to be a legally protected swath of Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s northern state of Pará.…

Protected areas and lands managed by Indigenous and traditional communities have been bulwarks of forest preservation and restoration in the Brazilian Amazon in recent years, a new study shows. It…

Training cattle ranchers in Brazil to recover degraded pastures could curb carbon dioxide emissions, scale down deforestation for agriculture in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, and increase their income, according…

A hydroelectric dam complex in southern Argentina, one of the country’s largest energy projects, is facing backlash from conservationists and Indigenous communities who are worried about its impact on the…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon exceeded 1,000 square kilometers in April, the highest total since 2008 and roughly twice the level of April 2021, according to data released today by…

It’s Jan. 29, two weeks after an oil spill off Pocitos Beach in the Ancón protected area, and one’s eyes and skin still burn when walking near the oil-blackened rocks.…

Patricia Gualinga takes a deep breath and pictures herself inside the rainforest in Sarayaku, Ecuador. “It’s hard to describe the smell of such pure air when you’re in the rainforest”,…

During the first conference of the parties to the Escazú Agreement (COP 1) held in April in Santiago, Chile, Indigenous leader Nadino Calapucha asked participants to respect the heart of…

Adiela Jineth Mera Paz wakes up every morning with only one thing on her mind – protecting her land in Puerto Asis, Putumayo, on the Colombia-Ecuador border. However, this is…

Based on the best scientific data available, the unprecedented Amazon Water Impact Index draws together monitoring and research data to identify the most vulnerable areas of the Brazilian rainforest. According to the index, 20% of the 11,216 Brazilian Amazon microbasins have an impact considered high, very high or extreme; half of these watersheds are affected by hydroelectric plants.

Ecuador has become the first Latin American country to join a growing international effort aimed at bringing greater transparency to the fishing industry and making it more sustainable. In a…

Brazil’s plan to open vast areas of Amazon forest to the entry of deforesters via Highway BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) and associated side roads such as AM-366 is undoubtedly the planned…

The Amazon gets a lot of attention, but there’s another massive forest in South America: the Gran Chaco. This hot, dry forest stretches across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina, covering 87…

Land degradation – the deterioration or loss of the productive capacity of land – is progressing at an alarming rate. Globally, over a fifth of the total land area has…

For the ancient Mayans, the king vulture was an intermediary that crossed the skies, communicating with humans and the gods. Seeing it soar through the air today, with its wingspan…

Throughout the winter and spring of 2007, there were several curious sightings of a manatee and her calf in a power plant intake canal in the Cuban town of Santa…

JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from…

*UPDATE: On April 1, 2022, Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) said it would designate the wetlands of La Kisst and María Eugenia as “critical habitats” for the…

How do you justify tearing down the world’s greatest rainforest for agribusiness? Pretend it’s not a rainforest. That appears to be the thinking behind a bill introduced into Brazil’s lower…

It’s just before noon on a Saturday in the forest shared by the San Juan Totolapan ejido, or communal farming village, in central Mexico. Not a single bird can be…

Before Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president in 2019, Canadian investment bank Forbes & Manhattan was facing problems with its business activities in the Brazilian Amazon. The situation began…

While trying to put together a review of what happened to Venezuela’s environment in 2021, conservationists ran into a problem. The government publishes virtually no statistics on things like deforestation,…

MANAUS, Brazil — In the historic center of Manaus, the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon, a giant mural depicting the city’s Indigenous history looms above pedestrians jostling for space…

The Atlantic Rainforest of the Northeast Project plans to reforest 70 hectares (173 acres) in the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas by 2023. Monitoring in Pernambuco’s Serra do Urubu region has shown an increase in bird diversity, from 105 species recorded in 2005, to 287 in 2021. Despite the progress being made, the situation remains fragile, with seven bird species having gone extinct in the Atlantic Forest in recent decades, and a strong tradition of keeping birds in cages still persisting.

Legal restrictions meant to protect Brazil’s Indigenous territories from outside threats are failing to deter illegal deforestation and cattle ranching, fueling fears for the safety of uncontacted and isolated Indigenous…

VICHADA, Colombia — Nearly 13 years have passed since the Guahibo Indigenous community El Trompillo was allegedly forcibly relocated from their territory. Members report persistent hunger and overcrowding in makeshift…

Glover’s Reef, part of the Belize Barrier Reef, is one of only four atolls in the Western Hemisphere. The rare, ring-shaped island of coral surrounds a lagoon 45 kilometers (28…

Only aerial footage captures the true scale of the horror: Houses have been flattened, roads ruined, and everything looks like it’s been covered in a film of dark-brown syrup. A…