On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Katie Baker, a reporter for Buzzfeed News investigating allegations of human rights violations and other abuses committed against local indigenous communities by park rangers in Asia and Africa who receive funding from conservation organization WWF.

The investigation by Buzzfeed News revealed that anti-poaching forces funded and trained by WWF have been accused of imprisoning, torturing, and killing indigenous villagers on the fringes of national parks. Baker and her colleague Tom Warren have written a series of articles detailing the allegations and WWF’s response. In the latest installment, the journalists report that the director and board of WWF were made aware of the abuses by one of their own internal reports more than a year before Buzzfeed broke the story.

In this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Baker discusses the findings of her investigative reports, what it took to chase this story down, and the impacts she’s seen so far from her reporting.

“No one is saying that [WWF’s rangers] don’t have really difficult jobs… but just because they have a difficult job doesn’t mean they can rape and kill and torture with impunity or arrest people without evidence,” Baker says, adding: “I have not received any hate mail from [WWF employees] telling me I got it wrong.”

Here’s this episode’s top news:

• Violence against indigenous peoples explodes in Brazil
• Study finds massive reorganization of life across Earth’s ecosystems
• $85 million initiative to scale up agroforestry in Africa announced
• Once close to extinction, western South Atlantic humpback population close to full recovery

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Follow Mike Gaworecki on Twitter: @mikeg2001

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