Latin America News

ELDORADO — The first time that somebody mentioned collecting seeds to Seu João Motta, he thought it was the stupidest idea he’d ever heard. Living in the middle of Atlantic Forest,…

Falsified numbers are contributing to widespread forest degradation from illegal logging and the over-exploitation of Amazonian timber species, according to experts. In a study published in Science Advances, researchers in…

"Territories are like books: they can be in front of you, but if you do not read them you will never understand them," said Juan Carlos Clavijo about Tinigua National…

Commodities traders have largely curbed soy buying from Brazilian Amazon producers, shifting buys to the Gran Chaco and Cerrado, where deforestation is now in full swing.

Brazil’s rural poor were once well served by social programs that offered urgently needed income, food, water and hope. But those programs have seen recent deep cuts, hurting rural communities.

A bill, which experts say could pass, would set a 5-year deadline for land dispute resolution in protected areas. If not resolved by then, a conserved area’s protected status could be revoked.

Report details soy supply chains, shows that just six traders control most of Brazil’s deforestation risk. Report is product of Trase, a powerful new Internet tracking tool.

Ecuador’s oil palm industry has taken what many see as another step forward by committing to a jurisdictional RSPO system as a way to transform the entire sector by making it…

AREIA, Pará state, Brazil — “I’m only leaving here when I’m dead. And I hope it won’t be after a gunman has killed me,” said peasant farmer Osvalinda Maria Marcelino Pereira,…

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, last week followed what is causing an 80 percent decline in some sea turtle populations in Peru, mafias and deforestation in…

WIMBI, Ecuador — When Yessenia Padilla heard that her community crops were being destroyed, she and about 70 of her neighbors rushed out to intervene. They grabbed large boards, rocks,…

LA CONCORDIA, Ecuador — Jorge Jurado has been farming oil palm on Ecuador’s coast for almost 20 years, and has seen the industry go through many changes. But over the…

APG and Robeco are two of the most recent companies to sign on to the Cerrado Manifesto, which calls for an end to deforestation in Brazil's Cerrado biome.

The Constitutional Court of Ecuador has issued a long-awaited ruling in favor of those affected by the transnational oil company Chevron, which operated through its subsidiary Texaco in Ecuador between…

New research finds that the canopies of tropical forests get significantly hotter than the surrounding air. As global warming ups temperature extremes around the world, scientists worry that this means…

These were the most read stories published by our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, last week: Scientists in Colombia strive to understand what is happening with the Athelopus frog genus in order…

MANU NATIONAL PARK, Peru — There was movement in the understory deep in the dense rainforest off Trail 6. We saw a shadow scurry left to right, followed by more…

July 16, 2018, marked history as the day that Colombia officially banned the use of mercury in mining, as established by law 1658 of 2013. The law determined that in…

Billions in backing for infrastructure by international development finance institutions (DFIs) triggered large-scale Andes Amazon deforestation from 2000-15 – a trend now poised to hit the Amazon basin: study.

Indigenous communities occupying four territories in eastern Panama are taking their nearly five-year land-titling battle with the government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. Their move…