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…
Behind some of the beef sold in Colombian supermarkets is a story of deforestation in protected areas and illegal armed groups who benefit from cattle ranching. The Colombian Agricultural Institute…
The signing of a peace deal in 2016 between the Colombian government and armed rebels was one of the most anticipated moments in decades for millions of Colombians. But the…
Legal mining in Colombia is a significant driver of deforestation, contributing to the destruction of 121,819 hectares (301,021 acres) of forest from 2001 to 2018. During that time, deforestation from…
Luke Mahler didn’t exactly set out to study lizards that could breathe underwater. But when he and fellow scientist Rich Glor were out on a research expedition in Haiti in…
Colombian actor Juan Pablo Espinosa has starred in a number of roles spanning his native Colombia and the United States, including Tu voz estéreo, Merlina mujer divina and Floricienta, the…
Fires had a devastating effect in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in Colombia’s Caribbean region, between 2012 and 2013. In 2013 alone, the region lost an estimated that 22,000…
For the past several years, Colombia’s Tinigua National Natural Park has been racked by one of the highest levels of deforestation of any such protected area in the country. According…
In the forests of El Tuparro National Natural Park, a protected area in the far east of Colombia’s Orinoco region, a jaguar roams freely, the king of a territory it…
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…
For the past several years, the Colombian Amazon has been hit harder by deforestation than any other region in the country, according to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental…
Indigenous communities in Latin America and the Caribbean have consistently asserted that they are the best guardians of their forests. Now, a recent U.N. report has mainstreamed this argument, adding…
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…
In 2012, researchers described a teensy, aspirin-sized chameleon, Brookesia nana, from a thin slice of rainforest in northern Madagascar. The species, which experts believe is the smallest reptile in the world, grabbed plenty…
I’ve lost count of the number of times, working as a journalist across Latin America, that I’ve met, spoken to, or heard from or about Indigenous peoples and other local…
Today we’re taking a look at agroecology, an approach to sustainable farming that emphasizes working with and even enhancing local ecosystems. Agroecology is changing the way food is produced, especially…
“One of the good things about living here is that it is — or at least it was, before the pandemic — possible to coexist and share ideas, sips of…
After drugs and arms trafficking, illegal fishing is the third most lucrative illegal activity in the world. It is estimated that around 26 million tons of fish and other marine…
It happened the way it so often does in Colombia: the government announced a new official appointment and outrage ensued. As the year 2020 drew to a close, the minister…
Impunity still reigns when it comes to the murders of human rights defenders around the world, according to the Front Line Defenders organization, in its global analysis of 2020. The…
The Amazon basin lost more than 2 million hectares of primary forest cover in 2020, according to a new satellite data analysis released today. The authors say this likely eclipses…
The Siona are a binational people, their territory straddling two countries: Sucumbíos province in northeastern Ecuador and in the Putumayo department in southeastern Colombia. But the forest they depend on…
Bogotá — As the world became fixated on the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the situation for environmental defenders across the globe has only become more precarious. In 2019, 212 environmental…
Flor Angela Martinez is a mother, campesino and entrepreneur. Based in the Colombian Amazon, her company has become renowned for its sustainable timber harvesting practices. But before she made the…
In a small, sprightly basement office in the neighborhood of Chapinero in Bogotá, navigating the winds of political dysphoria and generalized uncertainty that have characterized the year the world over,…
Between 2010 and 2020, South America lost an average of 2.6 million hectares of forest per year, according the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In other…
Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented a travel moratorium for staff and contributing journalists in March 2020. In practice, this meant we stopped assigning stories that required travel…
“This is a country that has a forestry vocation,” says José Miguel Orozco, professor of forest governance and policy at Bogotá’s Francisco José de Caldas District University. High-altitude Andean forests,…
Nazareth Cabrera is like a 'manicuera' they say, a sacred drink of the Indigenous Uitoto people that is obtained from the sweet yucca or fareka. Everything that is bitter, she…
