NUEVA VENECIA, Colombia — Sandra Milena Manjarez puts two plates of bright yellow rice topped with liza — a finger-sized mullet fish similar to a sardine — on the white…
Floodplains are extraordinarily productive because they are the interface between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are remarkably diverse because they integrate a mosaic of lakes, marshes, palm swamps and inundated…
This story is part of a Mongabay series on female environmental defenders in the Amazon. Read about the lives and work of Soraida Chindoy, Maydany Salcedo, and Etelvina Ramos. “Don’t…
PALMAR SUR, Costa Rica — “Once, we were digging to build a fence for the animals and we discovered by luck some archaeological artifacts,” says Ana Isabel Vargas Ortiz, a…
More than eight years after the Mariana dam disaster, Indigenous Krenak people remain scarred by the memories of one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. Living…
In 2024, Latin America’s tiger cat, previously recognized as two species, was determined by scientists to be three species — a taxonomic reshuffling that has major conservation implications for these small cats.
Carlos Zorrilla is a leader in what locals say is the longest continuous resistance movement against mining in Latin America. Zorrilla’s family fled from Cuba to the U.S. in 1962…
Gold is universally recognized as a form of money that has retained value over decades, centuries and millennia. Since it is non-corrosive and precious, approximately 95% of the gold mined…
On March 18, the Mato Grosso State Environmental Department (SEMA-MT) shelved the environmental license application for the Castanheira hydropower plant. Organizations and social movements have mobilized for more than 10…
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has deployed military troops, light tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats, and armored carriers to the Guyanese border in what appears to be a brazen threat to claim…
An alliance announced at the 2021 U.N. climate summit in Scotland has already allocated $240 million for projects that align increased agricultural productivity with environmental preservation in Brazil. The IFACC,…
How do wild animals manage to continue hunting and reproducing in areas occupied by houses, roads, domestic animals and crops? Scientists increasingly point out that the only solution for most…
This story is part of a Mongabay series on female environmental defenders in the Amazon. Read about the lives and work of Soraida Chindoy, Alis Ramírez, and Etelvina Ramos. On…
The Brazilian Congress is analyzing a bill that would leave all the country's non-forestry vegetation unprotected, affecting an area twice the size of the United Kingdom.
Over the past 4 billion years, lifeforms have evolved into the spectacular array of species that now inhabit the planet. While many species radiated into extensive families of closely related…
The lowland forest of El Impenetrable National Park in northern Argentina sprawls across the hot, swampy green of the Gran Chaco biome, home to South America’s largest mammals and thousands…
New research from the NGO Conservation Strategy fund, working with federal prosecutors in Brazil, has refined a tool that puts a dollar value on the socioenvironmental costs of illegal gold mining across vital ecosystems in the Amazon.
Flooding caused by heavy rains in central Peru in March displaced hundreds of Indigenous families and destroyed their sustainable agroforestry projects, raising concerns about how they’ll recover and what steps…
Environmental advocates routinely oppose mining and hydrocarbon-development projects because they believe that remote areas of the Amazon should remain pristine. Typically, they organize their opposition during the environmental review process…
While wind turbines and solar panels multiply across the Brazilian dry forests, Tião Alves insists on tin windmills and PET bottle-based heaters. "Backcountry technology," as he defines it, arguing that…
Tasso Azevedo, one of the creators of Tropical Forests Forever, details the financial instrument envisaged to reward conservation.
Deforestation from soy continues to spread through Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon Rainforest, with satellite readings showing new areas of forest loss from as recently as last December, a new study…
With exponential AI energy demand threatening to soon overwhelm the U.S. electric grid, analysts fear that AI’s rapid entry into Latin America could bring massive energy and water consumption, putting communities at risk.
Mineral extraction is a major cause of contention among the inhabitants of the Pan Amazon. Thousands of families depend on economic activity that originates, directly or indirectly, from the mining…
A team of paleontologists found a giant fossilized skull along the shore of the Napo River in the Peruvian Amazon. To their surprise, the relic belonged to a newly described…
The government in Suriname said it cancelled a controversial pilot program that would have brought hundreds of Mennonites to the country to carry out agricultural activity, likely in forested areas.…
In early January, Brazilian environmental agents went on strike, claiming their salaries do not make up for their risky and highly-qualified work, in a threat to Lula's zero deforestation target.
This story is part of a Mongabay series on female environmental defenders in the Amazon. Read about the lives and work of Maydany Salcedo, Alis Ramírez, and Etelvina Ramos. On…
KOSÑIPATA, Peru – “It’s the best road I’ve ever gone birding on, in terms of the variety of habitats and birds,” says Victor Emanuel, one of the pioneers of modern…
Researchers and protection agencies expected a dry season with more fires in Brazil’s Roraima state at the start of 2024, but the effects of an intense and prolonged El Niño have aggravated the situation.