The second recipient of the Thomas E. Lovejoy Prize, launched in 2024, was announced Sept. 23 at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, during New York’s climate week.

Martín von Hildebrand, an ethnologist and anthropologist, won the award for his decades of work with Indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon, helping them secure their rights and protect their forest.

“I have spent 50 years with the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, speaking about land, laws, and their own governments or intercultural governments,” von Hildebrand said in a press release. “I never fully understood their culture, nor did they mine, but we built trust, held hands, walked together and changed the history of the region.”

The Lovejoy Prize honors the legacy of Thomas E. Lovejoy, often called the “godfather of biodiversity.” Lovejoy was a renowned ecologist and passionate advocate for science and conservation, especially of the Amazon Rainforest.

“The prize honors his dedication to the Amazon by acknowledging the achievements of individuals who embody that same spirit and dedication,” the press release notes.

Von Hildebrand first arrived in the Amazon in the early 1970s, when he started living with Indigenous groups in Colombia. During his decades there, he worked with the communities to ultimately secure roughly 26 million hectares (64.2 million acres) of Indigenous territory, building one of the world’s largest community-led conservation systems.

In 1990, Hildebrand founded the Gaia Amazonas Foundation (GAF) to support Indigenous-led conservation. The organization’s guiding principle is that Indigenous peoples, as the original inhabitants of the Amazon, are the most knowledgeable stewards of the land. Indigenous territories protect more than 27% of the Amazon, the GAF website notes, and empowering Indigenous land rights is one of the best ways to protect nature and mitigate climate change.

As part of his work with GAF, Hildebrand also leads the Andes-Amazon-Atlantic Corridor (AAAC) initiative, a collaboration with Indigenous Colombians and NGOs aiming to establish an ecological corridor to connect vast regions of the Amazon with ecosystems in the Andes and Atlantic Ocean. When completed, the corridor will span roughly 135 million hectares (333 million acres) of rainforest, making it the largest ecological corridor in the world, according to the AAAC website.

“Martín von Hildebrand’s life’s work exemplifies the vision and courage needed to secure the future of the Amazon and the people who depend on it,” Joe Walston, executive vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society Global, said in the press release. “His leadership has demonstrated that empowering Indigenous communities is not only a matter of justice but also the most effective path to safeguarding one of the most vital ecosystems on Earth.”

Banner image: Martín von Hildebrand (left) accepting the 2025 Lovejoy Prize from Amazon senior scientist Carlos Nobre (right).

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Ecuador’s plans to offer dozens of blocks of land for oil exploration for more than $47 billion has prompted opposition from seven Indigenous peoples in the Amazon. Those groups say 18 of the proposed blocks overlap their ancestral territories and that they were not consulted. Government officials say their plan is key to modernizing an oil sector that supplies Ecuador’s top export. The dispute comes amid a state of emergency and a national strike over fuel prices, extractive projects and the government’s failure to honor a referendum limiting drilling in Yasuní National Park.

By: Steven Grattan, Associated Press

Banner image: Waorani Indigenous people march to the Constitutional Court to protest for their right to consultation before the bidding for the exploration and exploitation of oil and gas on their territory in Quito, Ecuador, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa, File)

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

Madagascar’s rainforests often steal the spotlight, with their flamboyant biodiversity and familiar lemur mascots. Less noticed are the country’s dry forests in the west and southwest, which shelter equally remarkable life yet have been steadily eroded by agriculture, fire and logging. Now, conservationists are betting that one of their most charismatic residents, Verreaux’s sifaka, a white “dancing” lemur famed for its sideways bounds across the ground, could rally support to save what remains, reports contributor Mino Rakotovao for Mongabay.

Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) has just been added to the World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates list, a move driven by a new Madagascar conservation alliance, the Ankoatsifaka Initiative for Dry Forests (AID Forests), a coalition of NGOs, scientists and government officials. Its advocates say they hope the listing will draw attention not only to the sifaka’s plight but also to the fragile forests it depends on.

“In the west and southwest [of Madagascar], the situation is just as serious, with widespread food insecurity, increased bushmeat hunting, and similar threats like deforestation,” said Rebecca Lewis, a primatologist and founder of AID Forests.

Dry forests provide food, medicine, timber and grazing land for some of Madagascar’s poorest communities. They also face some of the world’s fastest rates of loss. Yet unlike the better-known humid forests, they lack coordinated international backing. The alliance aims to change that by pooling knowledge, strengthening patrols and amplifying the voices of local people.

The sifaka’s presence offers a powerful symbol. As seed dispersers, these lemurs help regenerate forests, knitting human livelihoods and ecological health together.

“I’ve never been more optimistic about the future of Madagascar’s dry forest,” said Anne Axel, an associate professor of biological sciences at Marshall University in the U.S.

If the sifaka succeeds as an ambassador, the “dancing lemur” may yet give Madagascar’s overlooked forests a chance to endure.

Read the full story by Mino Rakotovao here.

Banner image: A “dancing” Verreaux’s sifaka. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — China, the world’s largest carbon polluting nation, has announced a new climate fighting goal to cut emissions by 7% to 10% by 2035. It came as more than 100 world leaders lined up Wednesday to talk of increased urgency and the need for stronger efforts to curb the spewing of heat-trapping gases. With major international climate negotiations in Brazil 6½ weeks away, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened a special leaders summit during the General Assembly to focus on climate change.

By Seth Borenstein and Lelina Walling, Associated Press

Banner image: Secretary General Antonio Guterres greets Annalena Baerbock, President of the General Assembly, during the 80th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Mongabay journalist Karla Mendes has received the 2025 John B. Oakes Award from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Mendes was presented with the prestigious prize at an event in New York on Sept. 18 for her investigation documenting a direct connection between increased violence against Indigenous Arariboia leaders and the expansion of illegal cattle ranching in Brazil’s northern Maranhão state.

“Today, receiving this award is really an honor. Not for me, but especially to honor the memory of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, all the guardians of the forest, and all the Indigenous people who give their lives to protect their territory,” Mendes said at the award ceremony.

Paulo Paulino Guajajara was an Arariboia forest guardian who was killed by loggers in an ambush in 2019.

This is the first time Mongabay has won the Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, one of the top prizes recognizing exceptional contributions to the public’s understanding of environmental issues. It’s also the first time a Brazilian journalist has received the award.

The annual award, founded in 1993, recognizes journalists “whose work meets the highest standards of journalistic excellence” and “makes an exceptional contribution to the public’s understanding of environmental issues.”

“Congratulations to Rio-based Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes. She has done groundbreaking reporting on illegal cattle ranching on Indigenous land in the Amazon rainforest,” Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, announced at the ceremony.

“Her investigation made a direct connection between the expansion of the cattle industry and an increase in crimes against people and nature,” Cobb added. “She risked her life multiple times to report on the ground, moving through areas controlled by the cattle ranchers.”

The award’s top prize is $5,000, with two other finalists receiving $1,500 each. Sharon Lerner of ProPublica and The New Yorker was recognized for her reporting on 3M executives suppressing evidence from their own scientists about the dangers and widespread contamination of “forever chemicals” from their products.

The other finalist was a team from Grist, El Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, Atlanta News First and El Paso Matters, who exposed that medical supply warehouses across the U.S. are leaking ethylene oxide, a toxic gas that can cause cancer, into nearby neighborhoods.

Read Karla Mendes’s investigative series “Dying for Arariboia” here.

Banner image: Mongabay journalist Karla Mendes receives the 2025 John B. Oakes award on Sept. 18. Image courtesy of the John B. Oakes Awards.

SHENZHEN, China (AP) — Typhoon Ragasa, one of the strongest in years, has caused massive destruction in Taiwan and the Philippines before slamming ashore in southern China. The typhoon whipped waves taller than lampposts onto Hong Kong promenades and turned seas rough on Wednesday. In Taiwan, 17 people died in a flooded township and 10 deaths were reported in the northern Philippines. Nearly 1.9 million people were relocated across China’s Guangdong province. Hong Kong and Macao canceled schools and flights, with many shops closed. Ragasa is the strongest tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific and South China Sea region so far this year.

Read full reporting by Kanis Leung and Ng Han Guan, Associated Press.

Banner image: A fallen tree sits inside the park in Ho Man Tin area, as super typhoon Ragasa approaches in Hong Kong, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei).