Latin America News

Researchers have described a new species of praying mantis from Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, adding to the 250 known mantis species native to the country.

Continued deregulation and fast tracking of new products under President Bolsonaro have helped secure Brazil’s place as the world’s largest user of very toxic pesticides.

Leaders of several indigenous communities have lodged a complaint with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, that a Netherlands-based oil company fouled the environment in Peru's slice…

In 2019, suspect exports of rare wood to Europe, the US and beyond were legalized, likely prompting soaring damage to the Amazon rainforest and new attacks on indigenous people by illegal loggers.

After almost losing its jaguar population in the first decade of the century, the Atlantic Forest area between Brazil and Argentina registered more than twice the increase in the number of individuals. It is the only case registered in South America.

A coalition of environmentalists is fighting to prevent Spanish company Globalia from building an ecotourism resort bordering Cotubanamá National Park, one of the last remaining patches of pristine lowland rainforest…

Late last year, historic wildfires raged through Bolivia, holding the country hostage for two months between July and September and burning more than 5 million hectares (50,000 sq km or…

In seeking an alternative to the develop-or-conserve dichotomy that governs policymaking over the Amazon, Brazilian scientists have come up with the Amazonia Third Way, a plan to preserve the region’s biodiversity by supercharging sustainable forestry practices with technology.

The biodiverse rainforest of the Amazon’s Purus and Madeira river basins is at risk; new roads could be built to eventually serve extensive oil and gas wells.

Leticia Merino graduated from college with a degree in social psychology. But her plans to continue her studies in that field were thrown into doubt after she encountered a community…

Billions of dollars in loans issued to resource-rich countries could saddle them with insurmountable debt, according to a new report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a nonprofit organization…

After decades of suppressing fire, park managers in Brazil’s savanna are relying on indigenous and traditional fire knowledge and Integrated Fire Management as a conservation tool.

In 2009, scientists estimated that Mexico’s tropical montane cloud forests — hillside woodlands blanketed in fog and rain — were down to 28% of their original extent. Fifty-three percent of…

Attacks on indigenous Kaiowá communities in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the start of the year have highlighted a long-running campaign of persecution and growing violence against the group.

Pan American Silver, one of the world’s largest mining companies, operates eight mines in Central and South America that are beset with allegations of environmental disruption and human rights violations,…

Patagonia’s huemul is an agile herbivore of which only about 1,500 may remain at 100 or so scattered sites between sea level and the Andes; it is being buffeted by complex interrelated stressors.

Lucía Madrid spent her childhood in a land of trees and a time of flux. It was the 1980s in Mexico’s Sierra Norte de Oaxaca region, and communities were organizing…

PORTO JOFRE, Brazil - Only fragile wisps of freshly-sprouted grass dotted the charred plot of farmland in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands. Standing amid the ash and burnt vegetation, Eledilson Nunes de…

The murder of Sister Dorothy in 2005, and resulting international outrage, helped curb violence in Brazil for a time, but crimes against landless peasants and activists are on the rise.

Climate change and deforestation are forcing a rainforest-to-savanna tipping point threatening agribusiness, hydropower, and the Brazilian economy; Bolsonaro is blind to the danger.