Primary Forests News

This story is a journalistic collaboration between Revista Vistazo and Mongabay Latam.   Fifteen years ago, Martha Valencia relied on the nearby river for water and for food. But then…

The damage only became clear once the rain stopped and the clouds parted over Altamira National Forest in northern Brazil. Instead of dense jungle, large patches of bare land now…

Residents of the community of París de Leán in Honduras say they have been dealing with dirty water for a decade. To demonstrate this, Concepción Aguilera dips a dish into…

2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…

SÃO FÉLIX DO XINGU - As João Inácio de Assunção’s small boat sliced through the clay-colored waters of Rio Fresco in northern Brazil, he recalled a different time when the…

The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. Widely available satellite imagery via platforms like Google Earth brought new levels of accountability which, for the first time,…

ATALAYA, Peru — Pascual cuts the motor and our dugout canoe glides below a massive tree trunk suspended a few feet above the river. I motion to the bank. “We…

NACOPA, Mozambique — It’s nighttime on Mount Nallume in central Mozambique and the chirping of frenzied crickets fills the thick forest air. Then, toward midnight, another voice joins the cacophony.…

A landmark five-year, $250-million pay-for-performance agreement between wealthy, oil-rich Norway and heavily forested Guyana was supposed to keep the South American nation’s biodiverse and carbon-rich forests standing and their carbon…

“Palm oil is here to stay,” reads the 2018 report “Oil Palm and Biodiversity,” which was produced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and represents one of…

Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia continues to be illegally cleared, according to a new report by the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN). Located in the central plains of Cambodia, Prey…

Recent dry-season fires that raged across Indonesia in September and October have taken a toll on forests, even in protected areas. Fires were particularly destructive in southern Sumatra, burning around…

The Mexican state of Campeche sits on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region renowned for its lush jungles and high biodiversity. But the state’s forests are being wiped out by agriculture…

This article is a collaboration between Rutas del Conflicto and Mongabay Latam.   PUERTO GAITÁN, Colombia — When Modesto Paredes bought 25 acres of land 10 years ago in the…

The Gran Chaco is South America’s second-largest forest, comprising around 648,000 square kilometers (250,000 square miles) and stretching over portions of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina (as well as a corner…

Losing undisturbed tropical forests is more devastating for the planet than previously thought, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances. “Our results revealed that continued destruction of…

All that is left of the lush forest that once covered this patch of land in the Terra Indígena Ituna/Itatá in northern Brazil are a few dried branches and the…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  This month Mongabay and The Gecko Project published “Saving Aru,” an article chronicling how the people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands thwarted a…

Bonobos, unlike closely related chimpanzees, choose love over war. But with each passing year, there is less room in this world for these amorous primates as the world’s largest bonobo…

When inspectors from Peru’s Technical Administration for Forestry and Wildlife (ATFFS) in Puerto Inca Province received a complaint about the presence of miners in the buffer zone around the El…