A new report reveals that investing in securing the land rights of Indigenous and tribal communities across Latin America and the Caribbean could cut carbon dioxide emissions at low costs…
I’ve lost count of the number of times, working as a journalist across Latin America, that I’ve met, spoken to, or heard from or about Indigenous peoples and other local…
Since Lucely Pio was a little girl, she has been collecting medicinal plants in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savanna. At 5, she walked through the grasslands and forests of the…
One of the dominant trends in conservation over the past 20 years has been growing recognition of the contributions Indigenous peoples have made toward conservationists' goals of protecting biodiversity, wild…
The Naso Tjër Di people of Panama now have a protected territory of their own. The creation of the 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca, as it’s called in Panama, came as a…
Even in this era of “alternative facts,” the letter to the New York Times from Norte Energy (the company responsible for Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam) will surely be remembered as…
The governor of Amazonas state in an exceptional appeal — apparently bypassing the Bolsonaro administration — is asking for emergency international assistance to combat a devastating new COVID-19 second wave.
Amazon hospital beds and ICUs overflow, and oxygen runs out as a new, maybe more virulent, COVID-19 variant rages. “It’s not a second wave we’re dealing with, but a whole tsunami,” says a doctor.
Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.
315 traditional families in the Brazilian Amazon, evicted from their homes starting in 2015 to make way for the Belo Monte mega-dam, have won the right to resettle near their former Xingu River homes.
Brazil has been mined for gold, bauxite, manganese and more. While companies, investors and nations benefit, the Amazon’s people often haven’t, as they’ve lost traditional cultures, livelihoods and health.
Flor de María Paraná, 47, describes the bleakest moment of her life as the one that made her the leader she is today. "It was the day that everything changed,"…
Nazareth Cabrera is like a 'manicuera' they say, a sacred drink of the Indigenous Uitoto people that is obtained from the sweet yucca or fareka. Everything that is bitter, she…
María Clemencia Herrera Nemerayema did not get a diploma when she finished primary school at the Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús boarding school in the municipality of La Chorrera, in…
There was a time when Noemí Gualinga, a leader of the Indigenous Kichwa Sarayaku people of the Ecuadoran Amazon, used to sit out on the stoop of her old house…
Brazil’s mining authority is actively entertaining more than 3,000 requests to mine on Indigenous lands in the Amazon, despite such activity being prohibited under the country’s Constitution, an investigation by…
In the Peruvian Amazon, two Indigenous groups have been battling the government and oil companies for decades to prevent an incursion they believe would forever alter their homeland. An immense…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we’re shining a spotlight once again on women who are leading Amazon conservation — as well as a new international treaty that would…
Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…
Poaching for tusks, horns or other body parts is a well-recognized threat to Africa's wildlife, but the impact of hunting for bushmeat may pose a greater threat. Conservationists in Southern…
At just 25 years old, Camila Chindoy is seen by many in her community as a possible future governor of the Inga Indigenous reserve of Yunguillo in the Colombian Amazon.…
Georeferencing, a digital process for registering land ownership, is now widespread in South America, but it is high-tech that can be used by landgrabbers and companies to obtain deeds to collective ancestral lands.
Wade Davis is a celebrated anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and author who has written thought-provoking accounts of indigenous cultures around the world. These have ranged from The Serpent and the Rainbow…
Mining, both legal and illegal, impinges on more than one-fifth of Indigenous territory in the Amazon, according to a new study from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Amazon…
Humanity today face multiple crises. A pandemic grips societies around the globe and with each passing year greed, poor governance, and naivete push us further toward a climate change forced…
Earlier this month Rieli Franciscato of the Brazilian government’s Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI was killed on the edge of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous territory in Rondônia, Brazil. Franciscato, a sertanista or…
Rieli Franciscato, one of the most experienced field men of the National Indian Foundation of Brazil (FUNAI, a federal agency to protect Indigenous peoples), died a few days ago with…
A new study finds that the four fish species most commonly consumed by Indigenous and riverine communities in northern Brazil contain the highest concentrations of mercury, up to four times in excess of WHO recommendations.
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at how women are leading the charge to protect the Amazon rainforest, the largest rainforest in the world. Listen…
In his previous life, Matt Hill worked on Wall Street as a quantitative analyst (a.k.a. a “quant”) for stock portfolios worth billions of dollars. Now, at the helm of a…