GEMBOGL, Papua New Guinea — In Papua New Guinea’s central highland province of Simbu, residents of the mountainous Gembogl district eagerly await the completion of a long-overdue road upgrade that…
As Grainrail, the BR-163 and BR-319 highways, and other transport projects improve Amazon access, they attract land thieves ready to kill.
Violence in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua has stalled a massive infrastructure project that researchers have separately warned may threaten the island's ecological health and the livelihood of its residents.…
The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), a hairy, pig-like mammal that once lived throughout the forests of Central and South America, now only skitters around in 13 percent of its former…
Brazil created 11 conservation units to protect the Amazon’s Purus-Madeira moist forest from development due to the BR-319 highway, but to date the preserves mostly exist only on paper.
From 2016 to 2017, Mongabay contributors Sue Branford and Maurício Torres traveled to the Tapajós River Basin, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, to report on the controversial plan…
Agribusiness desperately wants Grainrail built, but it poses a clear threat to 20 indigenous territories, and to the livelihoods of Amazonia’s truckers. A battle could be brewing.
Life is hard for the community of Trinidadcito, but its people don’t feel poor. Rather, they say they’re being punished for opposing the construction of a highway that would cut…
The general public knows about the precarious situation of the world’s mostly recently identified great ape — the Tapanuli orangutan — within the Batang Toru Ecosystem. There, the construction of…
The biodiverse Amazon rainforest between the Purus and Madeira river basins was once deemed safe, but rapid deforestation is moving up the improved BR-319 highway.
President elect Jair Bolsonaro signals his government will be strongly pro-business, likely bringing major setbacks for the environment, indigenous groups and social movements in Brazil.
Politicians and planners often sell roads as wholly beneficial to communities. New arteries open up opportunities for employment, connections to markets and access to services such as health care, so…
New, highly detailed maps now reveal the state of the world’s wilderness, both on land and at sea, and the picture looks bleak. In a series of recent studies, a…
Soy farmers see Grainrail as salvation; traders ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Amaggi see it as profit; but the Amazon railway could harm habitat and indigenous communities.
Brazil is on the verge of electing a president who, supported by a new Congress, could escalate Amazon deforestation and pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement: analysis.
In the early 21st century, Brazil greatly reduced Amazon deforestation. A Jair Bolsonaro presidency would again put forests and the global climate at risk: study.
Interviewed by Mongabay in 2016, Aluisio Sampaio is the most recent victim in a growing wave of Amazon violence against socio-environmental activists.
The imminent election this month of far right Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s new president poses threats to the environment, indigenous people, and the global climate.
With around half the world’s forest cover cleared or otherwise degraded at some point in the recent past, the new forests that pop up to replace them – called secondary…
Mongabay begins a new series in which our contributors drive the BR-319 highway into one of the Amazon’s most remote wild areas – a region facing rapid deforestation.
