As you read this, a sailing ship is retracing the path of the voyage taken by English naturalist Charles Darwin in the 19th century — the very voyage that led…
When Leandro Castello graduated with his degree in oceanography in 1998, he didn’t immediately get a job related to the ocean. Instead, he found himself in the Middle Solimões region…
Of the approximately 2,500 fish species found in the Amazon Basin, two catfish are special both to state economies in the region and to global biology: the gilded or dorado…
EL ARROZAL, Guatemala – A Yucatán black howler monkey, an endangered species, swung from a branch in its enclosure at the ARCAS wildlife rescue center in northern Guatemala. It was…
Fifty kilometers north of Santiago, Chile, sits Loma Los Colorados, a sprawling landfill that receives more than 60% of the capital city’s domestic waste. Day after day, heavy machinery buries…
"The heat at night was too much; we couldn't sleep," says Evanice Auxiliadora da Silva, a resident of Cuiabá, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso in west-central Brazil,…
Regardless of what satellite images show, inhabitants who have illegally planted crops within the protected area told committee officials that they “take care of Curichi”, because each union member’s rice…
The agro-industrial farms of Mato Grosso are among the most efficient on the planet; they benefit from abundant rainfall and a long rainy season, which allows them to plant and…
When researchers arrived in Ecuador’s Esmeraldas province to document one of the most threatened animals on the planet, the brown-headed spider monkey, their initial plan was to simply carry out…
In September 2021, Colombian police received an alert from a shipping company urging them to inspect some cardboard boxes that were about to be exported to Hong Kong from El…
The creation of protected areas and Indigenous reserves offers the best hope for conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon; however, the management of the human modified landscapes will determine whether…
A central figure in many Indigenous systems is that of the Enchanted Ones, ancestral entities thought to connect the earthly world and the spiritual world. Some of these contacts are…
“Be honest with me: Now you want to study fireflies too, right?” said Luiz Felipe Silveira, a professor at Western Carolina University and one of the world’s leading experts in…
In 2020, a Mongabay reporting team visited Bolivia’s Amboró National Park and Integrated Management Natural Area and found that portions of its protected forest had been cleared and replaced by…
Undesignated public land One of the objectives of the ZEE process was to assist the nations of the Pan Amazon to allocate their public lands among different constituencies and stakeholder…
The cattle ranching industry in Brazil is deforesting one of the country’s largest ecosystems without proper authorization, often with the financial backing of major international banks. Some of the country’s…
After winning a historic lawsuit late last year, a traditional Afro-Brazilian community has finally obtained legal recognition of its land located in São Paulo’s Alto Ribeira Tourist State Park, a…
Scientists warn that 10% of the Amazon has a high risk of being converted into a drier and degraded ecosystem by 2050, while 47% has a moderate transitional risk.
Ecuador The territorial planning framework in Ecuador is known as the Plan de Desarrollo y Ordenamiento Territorial (PDOT). It is one component in an ambitious effort to articulate a Plan…
A new species of giant anaconda has been found in the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador, scientists announced. The snake, named the northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), is genetically distinct from…
In October 2022, Paraguay hosted the ODESUR South American Games for the first time. The event proved a great success, and from the outset, people flocked to the games, largely…
Ocean rise and changes in the Amazon River are ruining the way of life in an archipelago close to where the Amazon River runs into the Atlantic.
Teeming with tropical rainforest, the Amazon Basin is a vital defense against global warming. Yet deforestation combined with extreme weather are behind the region's worst drought in fifty years. Forest clearance to make…
The number of threatened species in Colombia is much higher than previously thought, after officials carried out a study to reevaluate the state of the country’s flora and fauna. The…
“When I see the rainforest burning, I know what I’m really seeing is Amazonia dying. I see that fire and, as a scientist, I know how much that hectare will…
Brazil tops the list of the countries that import and consume the most pesticides in the world. At the end of 2023, Bill 1459/2022, known among environmentalists as the "Poison…
Land-use maps and their explicit recommendations are most relevant on pioneer landscapes that are in the flux of change. Recommendations can provide sound information and support an expanding agricultural production…
Regulating land tenure is not the only power available to the state for influencing how people use land. Land-use planning and land-use zoning are two closely related mechanisms that Pan…
In January 2019, a dam holding back mining sludge at the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in Brumadinho, southeastern Brazil, collapsed. Around 10 million cubic meters (2.6 billion gallons)…
A new road connecting eight Indigenous Waorani communities to urban centers in Ecuador’s Pastaza province aims to improve access to the interior of the Amazon and reduce transportation costs. But…