South America News

The value is seven times higher than profits from commodities taken from the rainforest, the report concludes.

Elon Musk may claim to hate them, but can Twitter bots be put to good use? A new tool that aims to monitor and expose deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest…

Lula's administration is weighing the renewal of Belo Monte hydroelectric plant's license, a dam blamed for taking away the livelihoods of riverine communities and causing socio-environmental chaos - built by Lula's party.

Márcio Werá Mirim, chief of the village of Tekoá Yvy Porã, shares his people’s sacred story in a mix of Portuguese and Guarani as he walks along a path in…

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Karla Mendes is a fellow.   A prominent Indigenous leader was shot in the head on May 14…

Last December, delegates from nearly 200 governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. This agreement aims to conserve 30 percent…

Degraded by human activity, mountain forests across the tropical Andes are having a hard time bouncing back. But while scientists have long analyzed what drives their decline, they have largely…

*This report is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Vorágine, a Colombian news source. Juana* seems nostalgic when she talks about the work she used to do…

Within just five years, the Amazon Rainforest could lose half the total forest cover that it lost in the first 20 years of this century, a recent study has shown,…

In 2005, fishers in northern Thailand captured a Mekong giant catfish of gargantuan proportions. Tipping the scales at 293 kilograms (646 pounds), the critically endangered Pangasianodon gigas raised a question…

Loggers have entered the Trombetas River Biological Reserve in Oriximiná, in Brazil’s Pará state, to develop a forest management project that has divided the local Quilombola community.

The town of San José del Fragua is just over an hour's drive from Florencia, the capital of the department of Caquetá, in southern Colombia. On one side of the…

The human rights organization Front Line Defenders has published its Global Analysis 2022, a report on the state of people who have dedicated their lives to defending the environment, Indigenous…

MEXICO CITY — As climate change continues to choke off rainfall, many parts of the Amazon are facing a higher probability of dying off from drought than previously thought. A…

Conservation International and its partners pledged to plant 73 million trees in the Brazilian Amazon in 2017. Only 20% of that goal has been met, with the pandemic, the anti-environmental presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, and fires taking a toll.

The effects of rising global temperatures are becoming increasingly apparent. Heat waves, droughts, torrential rains and flooding are becoming more frequent. In the first three months of 2023, Latin America…

Neves has studied human occupation of the Amazon for 30 years and found evidence of rice, manioc and palm tree cultivation dating back thousands of years.

LA PAZ — At dawn in Apolobamba, in the Bolivian highlands, groups of vicuña and alpaca — some sheared, some shaggy — amble around looking for scrub to graze on,…

Protected areas and Indigenous territories in the Amazon Rainforest experienced just one-third the amount of primary forest loss as non-protected areas, according to a new report. The Monitoring of the…

YANOMAMI INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil – Four officers from IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, throw themselves from a helicopter into the murky waters of the Uraricoera River below and swim toward…

Brazil’s Cerrado may not be a household name like the neighboring Amazon Rainforest, but this vast savanna biome is even more threatened and fragmented. A new study now shows there’s…

SÃO PAULO — Last Friday, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed documents officially recognizing six Indigenous lands across the country. After years of stalling due to opposition by…

“One of the most important days of my life,” are the words that anthropologist Beatriz Matos uses to describe her February visit to the Javari Valley on her first project…

In part of the world’s first nationwide distribution of carbon credits, the government of Guyana announced Indigenous communities will receive millions as it signed off on a $750 million carbon…

In 1995, when Colombia protected the island of Malpelo by setting up the Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary, the area had a recorded 43 species of crustaceans, six species of…

State-owned Petrobras has requested a license to investigate an oil site in a region in the north of Brazil where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean.

*This report is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Cuestión Pública, a Colombian news source. In 2019, the Colombian government launched a military offensive against deforestation known…

In an interview with Mongabay, Alessandra discusses what the prize means to her, the policy changes in Brazil, and the current crisis in the Munduruku territory.

A new wave of land conflicts between a major palm oil company and local communities has recently broken out in the Brazilian Amazon, raising concerns about escalating violence in the…

*This report is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Vorágine, a Colombian news source. Cecilia García Barros is seated atop the peak of Mavicure Hill, a rocky,…