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.
Two Brazilian biologists divided the Amazon Forest into 13 subregions, according to tree and shrub species. This spatial distribution allows targeting protection efforts.
Billions of dollars in loans issued to resource-rich countries could saddle them with insurmountable debt, according to a new report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a nonprofit organization…
A major six nation study finds that the arrau is thriving mostly in river systems where conservationists are active, but not elsewhere; climate change looms as a major threat.
A spill that coated Brazilian beaches with some 4,000 tons of oil is still a mystery, with critics blasting the Bolsonaro government’s weak response and secrecy of its investigation.
The Chávez and Maduro administrations have concealed vast amounts of vital scientific data on climate change, deforestation, pollution, mining, water quality and much more, as far back as 2011.
Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.
After two years of severe drought, lacking electricity and water, with a $500 annual budget, the Botanical Garden of Caracas struggles valiantly to protect its precious collection.
Indigenous reserves and other conserved lands in nine Amazonian nations are under extreme pressure as roads, mining, dams, oil drilling, fires and deforestation encroach.
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…
This month’s nationwide blackout forced citizens to deforest parks for firewood, to pull water from polluted rivers, and resulted in the death of hospitalized babies and endangered wildlife.
The recent top stories from Mongabay Latam, our Spanish-language service, include a call to cover climate change, the dangers of opposing Colombia’s largest hydropower plant, and the most inspiring conservation…
Illegal mining has become an “epidemic” in the Amazon rainforest, destroying naturally protected areas and threatening indigenous territories, according to a new joint study by six Amazonian countries. The crux…
Microbiomes of Venezuela’s lost glaciers, mile-high Andean lizards, and starving baby seals are among the recent top stories from Mongabay Latam, our Spanish-language service. The abandoned microbes of Venezuela’s last…
The top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam, looked at jail sentences for wildlife traffickers in Bolivia; conserving river dolphins in Venezuela and culling lionfish in Colombia; and shark…
“To leave my dream was difficult, but I had to do it for my son,” says Ileana Herrera, a former ecologist from Venezuela, now living in Ecuador. Herrera, like many…
The recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam, concerned hungry manatees in Venezuelan zoos; giant tortoises stolen from the Galápagos Islands; and a ban on free, prior and…
Caura National Park is under pressure from gold miners, but Afro-Venezuelan and indigenous groups have teamed with NGOs and companies to do sustainable agroforestry and safeguard forests.
The most popular stories last week from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, followed farmed salmon escapes in Chile, a new biosphere reserve in Ecuador, and high-tech forest monitoring in Peru. Patagonia’s…
The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week investigated how land trafficking is destroying Lima’s fragile hill ecosystems; government inaction and oil spills in Venezuela; open…
The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, in the last week investigated how human hunger is driving hunting in Venezuela (and danger for zoo animals, pictured above), how…
The most popular stories by our Spanish language service, Mongabay Latam, for the week of June 18- 24 include features in honor of Colombia’s World Cup team (Humboldt Institute created…
The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has become a crisis for wildlife and zoo animals too, as a hungry, desperate population hunts wild species for food.