Other stories in Mongabay’s series on the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve Communities lead the way in rainforest conservation in Guatemala Controversial park…
ambodian authorities released a leader of the Chong indigenous group from prison on March 3. Ven Vorn, imprisoned since October, was convicted of harvesting forest products without authorization and sentenced…
Two weeks ago, the activist Berta Cáceres was shot and killed while she slept in her home, in the city of La Esperanza, in western Honduras.The news of her assassination travelled around the world…
Berta Cáceres' colleagues allegedly kept a eulogy for her for years, one they never hoped to use. "Her murder would not surprise [them]," read last year's Goldman Environmental Prize announcement, published when Cáceres…
The rare “forest giraffe,” a native of the lowland rainforests in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, faces numerous threats, including habitat loss, armed conflict, poaching, and, increasingly, the mining…
The son of the president of a reforestation association who was murdered on November 19 vowed to continue his father’s work in Peru’s southern Amazonian forest. “We want to be…
Another prominent environmentalist has been killed in Peru. On Thursday night, Alfredo Ernesto Vracko Neuenschwander, a woodworker who led a movement to resist forest invasions by illegal gold miners in…
Cambodian authorities have detained four activists linked to the environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia. The four, all Cambodian nationals, await trial at a prison in the country's southwestern province of…
Sieng Darong, a Forestry Administration ranger, and Sab Yoh, a police officer, were shot and killed while patrolling a protected forest in Cambodia on Saturday morning. A third ranger wounded…
urilo Reis was guiding a group of tourists on his private nature reserve in a remote part of northeastern Peru two months ago when he came across more than a…
palm oil company remains at the heart of conflict in northern Guatemala, months after a mass fish die-off. A day after company operations were suspended pending further investigation into the…
Armand Marozafy, a nature guide in Madagascar who was arrested on defamation charges for sending an email exposing two businessmen allegedly linked to illegal rosewood logging, has been released after…
It has become a political ritual: in February 2014, shortly after his election, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, Madagascar’s newest president, publicly denounced the “plague” of illegal logging and the pillage of the…
he streets of Ecuador will fill with colorful flags and footsteps again on Wednesday as indigenous organizations and other groups renew protests over government policies. The planned marches come on…
n 1997, the government of Botswana began evicting San and Bakgalagadi people from their homelands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve out of concern that the groups' hunter-gatherer way of…
he Cambodian government has begun relocating some 5,000 villagers away from the flood site of the Lower Sesan 2 dam. The controversial project in the country's northeast province of Stung…
Indigenous small-scale miners and traditional authorities in western Colombia are facing threats in the wake of a local leader’s murder this spring. On April 7, 2015, Fernando Salazar Calvo was…
They came at dawn. Police officers in riot gear wielding assault rifles and flanked by attack dogs took aim at protesters in the camp. Their targets, the police had been…
Sea turtle nesting grounds on Pacuare Beach, Costa Rica, where poachers attacked conservationists late last month. Photo credit: Sea Shepherd/Eva Hidalgo. Activists working to protect sea turtles have once again…
A resident of Mataquescuintla, Guatemala, at a November 2014 celebration of the second anniversary of the municipality's referendum on mining. The referendum was one of many in the region, and…
Mayan women protest hydroelectric dam projects in Santa Cruz Barillas in western Guatemala on March 16, 2014. Local opposition to the construction of dams and other natural resource projects in…
Villagers in the country's lush Black Sea region face police force, legal hurdles, and more subtle means of suppression in their fight to protect the environment. The Fol Creek Valley…
Emerging regional and national networks seek to build connections between local communities and provide support to their fights against dams, mines, and other environmental threats. An anti-mining protest in the…
A white rhinoceros rests in Kruger National Park, South Africa, the epicenter of a spate of rhino poaching. Photo credit: Rhett A. Butler. Two adult rhinos and a calf lie…
Children carry a banner commemorating two children allegedly killed in 2013 by an employee of the company that owns the Santa Rita dam. The banner reads in part "They are…
Motive not yet clear in nightclub stabbing of Indonesian environmental campaigner Slain activist Jopi Peranginangin posted this photo to his Facebook page in April. (The children are not his.) An…
Other Special Reporting Initiatives Articles by Sandra Cuffe Nickel Mine, Lead Bullets: Maya Q'eqchi' seek justice in Guatemala and Canada The Guatemalan cabinet ministers for the environment, the interior,…
Toribia Lero, an indigenous leader from the faction of the indigenous organization CONAMAQ (National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu) that is not recognized by the government sits for…
Angélica Choc (left), German Chub (front) and other Maya Q'eqchi' seek justice for human rights violations linked to a Canadian mining company. Photo Credit: Rachel Schmidt German Chub faces the…
"I am arrested and ready to be deported now – Alex." So read the text sent at 5 pm on February 23 by Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, the founder of the Cambodian conservation…