The Amazon, home to the largest tropical forest on the planet, is an irreplaceable natural asset with enormous biodiversity and a critically important component in global carbon and water cycles.…
Across the world, around 18,500 marine protected areas have been set up to protect sea life and the ecosystem services that oceans supply, covering about 8% of the sea surface.…
SANTA ELENA DE UAIRÉN, Venezuela — Flying over a dense jungle in southern Venezuela, the sea of trees below is suddenly replaced by large patches of bare soil, tree stumps…
Today, Mongabay launches a digital version of the book, A Perfect Storm in the Amazon, by Timothy J. Killeen, an academic and expert who, since the 1980s, has studied the…
SANTA ELENA DE UAIRÉN, Venezuela — Standing at the brink of a man-made canyon, Jhonny Pereira, a Brazilian-born mining boss, looks down at a dozen gold miners as they plough…
On the evening of March 15, 2016, two large jaguars walked along a narrow lakeshore trail in Venezuela’s Llanos ecosystem, a vast mosaic of seasonally flooded lowland savannas, forests, pastures…
Venezuela sits on one of the largest deposits of proven crude oil and natural gas reserves in the world. For decades, it’s been the backbone, if not the lifeline, of…
Illegal gold mining is accelerating deforestation in one of Venezuela’s most threatened national parks, a new report from Amazon Conservation revealed. Satellite imagery analyzed by the NGO shows that thousands…
When Nelly Flores looks out over the Urao Lagoon, she smiles and asks me: “Do you know what those dots moving in the water are?” Mosquitoes, I guess. Nelly shakes…
Scientists say they have solved the mystery behind the periodic disappearance and reappearance of the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) across huge areas of central and South America. A new study…
Deforestation is pushing the Amazon rainforest dangerously close to its tipping point, and the effects could soon be felt across the globe. A new report from the World Wildlife Fund…
Scientists warn that the Amazon is hurtling toward a tipping point, beyond which it would begin to transition from lush tropical forest into a dry, degraded savanna, unable to support…
Forest loss is increasing south of the Orinoco River due to lack of Venezuelan official oversight, a growing Colombian insurgency, fires set to create mining camps, and new agricultural lands cleared to feed miners.
In southern Venezuela, the headwaters of some of the country’s largest rivers snake through remote parts of the Amazon rainforest near the Brazilian border, where Yanomami, Ye’kwana and other Indigenous…
For years, Ruth Alipaz has been fighting against the Chepete-El Bala hydroelectric project. The project involves the construction of two reservoirs that together would flood at least 66,200 hectares (163,500…
In the world’s largest rainforest, wildlife crawls, hops, flies and prowls through every nook and cranny. Most animals are adept at hiding from humans, though, so finding them can be…
While trying to put together a review of what happened to Venezuela’s environment in 2021, conservationists ran into a problem. The government publishes virtually no statistics on things like deforestation,…
China has spent the last two decades quietly establishing an economic foothold in Latin America, a region that has traditionally relied on Western investment. It’s become the top trade partner…
Cecilia Rivas remembers Tukupu as a place to live freely. The dwellings of the Indigenous Kariña community, spread out under the shade of the trees in the Imataca Forest Reserve,…
With humans sending probes to Mars and the sun, one might think we’ve already explored the full extent of our own planet. But scientists say we’ve only begun to find…
A one-minute audio clip made the rounds on Venezuelan Twitter last year, in which a state official being interviewed on a radio show tells citizens that, because of ongoing national…
It’s not unusual to see some rivers running black in Venezuela, or for fishermen to return home scraping dark sludge off their boots. Crumbling infrastructure and a lack of government…
New study addresses the effects of fires on biodiversity loss in the world’s largest forest during the last two decades. Researchers measured the impacts on the habitats of 14,000 species of plants and animals, finding that 93 to 95% suffered some consequence of the fires.
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the only species of bear in South…
A recent investigation has found dangerously high levels of mercury among women from different Indigenous communities in four Latin American countries. This chemical element is a neurotoxic substance that presents…
Editor's note: Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the…
Mongabay caught up with Igarapé Institute co-founder Robert Muggah this week to discuss Ecocrime, a new data visualization platform that combines visual storytelling with access to raw data on environmental crime…
On an expedition in the tepuis, or “sprouting rock,” landscape of the Guiana Highlands in South America, Mateusz Wrazidlo snapped a photo of an orchid he had never seen before.…
Held aloft by a canopy crane nearly 10 stories above the forest floor, Susan Kirmse observed and collected beetles in the rainforest canopy for an entire year. What did she…
In a failed state, environmental NGOs endure restrictive government policies; shortages of cash, personnel, water and other resources — surviving via creative monetary policies, volunteerism, and sheer grit.
