Killing gods: The last hope for the world’s rarest reptile
Eighty-eight-year-old Le Huy Hoanh stands up from his bench and carefully poured tea in rural Vietnam, and mimes for us how he used to kill gods. With his long spear…
Toxic river: Mining, mercury and murder continue to plague Colombia’s Atrato
Snaking its way through Colombia’s northwestern department of Choco, for centuries the Atrato River has been the lifeblood for Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities living along its banks. But decades of…
Fires in Brazil’s Amazon have devastating consequences
A dense layer of pollution has plagued the Brazilian cities of São Paulo, Manaus and Cuiabá for days on end, rolling in from the large number of fires burning mainly…
No need to dam free-flowing rivers to meet world’s climate and energy targets
In a comment article published in the Nature last month, scientists argue that an “energy future in which both people and rivers thrive” is possible with better planning. For decades,…
Gold, wood, religion: Threats to Colombia’s isolated indigenous peoples
This story originally appeared on Mongabay Latam as part of a special series on threats facing isolated indigenous peoples in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. Other stories in the series…
In Indonesia, bigger catches for a fishing village protecting its mangroves
SUNGAI NIBUNG, Indonesia — The phone signal comes and goes and the electricity grid has yet to reach this patch of jungle on the west coast of Borneo. The quickest…
Recently discovered Brazilian river dolphin’s calls could help us understand evolution of marine mammal communication
The Araguaian river dolphin was just discovered and described to science in 2014, so it’s no surprise that there’s a lot we don’t know about the cetacean native to the…
Controversial aquaculture projects threaten Myanmar’s remaining mangroves
TANINTHARYI, Myanmar — Most of the waterways surrounding the islands of the Mergui archipelago in the Andaman Sea are lined with mangroves, and the one leading into the island of…
Conceived in a dream, new solar canoe will serve Amazon tribes
A group of 20 men, women, and children, mostly members of the Achuar and Shuar indigenous communities, move through dense jungle near a military base in the town of Shell…
Sarawak can invest in or give away its future (commentary)
In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report outlining strategies the world can pursue to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and maintain healthy economies and…
New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
Animals around the globe are losing ground to farming and ranching, and their numbers are dwindling at the hands of human hunters. But the question of where to direct precious…
Brazil’s Sinop Dam flouts environmental legislation (Commentary)
The Sinop Dam has become a critical test case — not only on the question of clearing reservoirs before filling, but also on the real effect of Brazil’s environmental legislation…
Dam holding mining waste collapses in Brazil
The collapse of a dam in southeastern Brazil has killed at least 58 people and left hundreds more missing as they were buried by a wave of toxic mud. The…
Community-based conservation offers hope for Amazon’s giant South American turtle
A 40-year conservation effort on the remote Juruá River in Brazil’s Amazonas state cut turtle poaching to 2 percent, while also conserving bird, river dolphin and other species too: study.
‘Amazon Besieged’: Q&A with Mongabay contributor Sue Branford about new book
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…
Dam drove ‘collapse’ of rainforest bird populations in Thailand
The construction of a hydroelectric dam in Thailand in the 1980s devastated the area’s wild birds, leaving behind just a few of the many species that once inhabited the region,…
Extreme floods on the rise in the Amazon: study
Severe flood events have become five times more common over the last century as a result of natural atmospheric oscillations and human-driven climate change.
New climate change report highlights grave dangers for Vietnam
HO CHI MINH CITY – Earlier this month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new report on the potential impacts of a 1.5C rise in global temperatures…
As India’s Ganges runs out of water, a potential food shortage looms
Millions of people living in the lower reaches of the Ganges basin in India may face food shortages in the next three decades if the iconic river continues to lose…
Gold mining suspected as cause of Cambodian mass poisonings
A spate of mass toxic poisonings in the Cambodian provinces of Kratie and Mondulkiri have hospitalized hundreds and killed at least 16 people since May. Although the causes of the…
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- Fighting to save an endangered ape, Indonesian activists fear for their lives
- Iran sentences eight conservationists convicted of spying
- Watchdog denounces arrests of four anti-mining activists in Indonesia
Indonesias forest guardians
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
Amazon infrastructure
- Amazon’s Munduruku stage daring Christmas raid to recover sacred urns
- Belo Monte boondoggle: Brazil’s biggest, costliest dam may be unviable
- Amazon’s Mura indigenous group demands input over giant mining project
Asian rhinos
- Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
- Indonesia to capture 3 wild Sumatran rhinos to add to breeding population
