Conservation

The Amazon Rainforest is the largest in the world and a key player in regulating global water and carbon cycles. It also happens to be home to sophisticated criminal networks…

With their bright orange tails and elongated snouts, redtail garras are a popular aquarium fish. Yet while these fish have graced aquariums for decades, information about their biology has been…

If you stress out a rattlesnake, make sure it has a friend around. Much like humans, stressed snakes are calmed by a companion's presence, according to new research. Stress can…

This story is the second article of a three-part Mongabay mini-series exploring the link between Cambodia's garment factories and illegal logging. Read Part One and Part Three. KAMPONG SPEU, Cambodia…

This story is the first article of a three-part Mongabay mini-series exploring the link between Cambodia's garment factories and illegal logging. Read Part Two and Part Three. KAMPONG SPEU, Cambodia…

Amazon river dolphins navigate the complex waterways of the forest, their pods spread across the Amazon Basin in six different countries. The routes of these large, pink mammals are naturally…

In the arid forests of northern Peru, a rare variety of cacao tree known as blanco de Piura is cultivated by farmers and used to produce "fine-flavor" cacao (the main…

The soybean industry is one of the largest drivers of deforestation today, with over 75.5 million hectares (186.5 million acres) cultivated across the globe, according to the FAO. An overwhelming…

When Mauricio Velasco Castro graduated from culinary school in Bogotá, he didn’t look for a job in one of Colombia’s fine dining restaurants or for an internship abroad. Instead, he…

Colombia has nearly 60 million hectares (147.5 million acres) of natural forest covering over half its territory, much of it in the Amazon basin. As a “megadiverse” country, possessing around…

More carbon is stored in the soil than in all plants, animals and the atmosphere combined, making it among the most critical conservation frontiers as we face the climate crisis.…

Last year, the Amazon saw some of the highest rates of deforestation in over a decade, due to a combination of cattle ranching, agriculture, mining and road projects that cleared…

JAKARTA — The tropics lost 10% more primary rainforest in 2022 than in 2021, as forest loss in deforestation hotspots like Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continued…

JAKARTA — There’s been renewed scrutiny of the infrastructure being built for Indonesia’s new capital city on the island of Borneo following the sighting of a critically endangered orangutan crossing…

Plants play a vital role in purifying water, regulating the climate, supporting biodiversity, and stabilizing the soil. Or more simply put, vegetation holds the planet together. Because of this, international…

Climate change impacts could cost countries in Central America up to $314 billion per year by 2100 if ecosystem services provided by the region’s forests are affected, a recent study…

An afro-descendent community in northern Ecuador is fighting to retake its land from a palm oil company that has allegedly used questionable permits and expensive lawsuits to maintain a hold…

Beneath the luxurious foliage and the majestic trees of the Amazon Rainforest lies a counterintuitive reality: a mostly infertile soil that becomes swiftly depleted once its plant coverage is stripped…

The environmental issues facing Venezuela are serious and wide-ranging: illegal mining in the Amazon, national water shortages, mudslides and flooding exacerbated by climate change, the degradation of protected areas, oil…

Plants and fungi struck a deal way back when. More than 400 million years ago, plants began trading sugar made from sunlight (a.k.a. carbon) for some of the soil nutrients…

The pungent smell of manure as cows and sheep graze on the green pastures makes the campus of the University of Concepción in the Chilean city of Chillán look like…

The takeover of a polluting landfill in Colombia was supposed to help clean up the area for residents falling sick from exposure to toxic chemicals, but years later they say…

Rosaleen Duffy has long drawn the ire of those who support a forceful “guns and gates” approach to protecting wildlife. A professor of international politics at Sheffield University in the…

JAKARTA — Most peatlands in Indonesia that need protection are currently not protected, a new study has found. It identifies 5.65 million hectares (13.96 million acres) of peatlands — an…

Across the world, around 18,500 marine protected areas have been set up to protect sea life and the ecosystem services that oceans supply, covering about 8% of the sea surface.…

MEXICO CITY — The U.S. has opened up the possibility of imposing a trade embargo on Mexico due to its failure to stop illegal fishing in the Gulf of California,…

Drug trafficking, logging, oil palm plantations, oil spills, highways, illegal fishing, expanding Mennonite communities — in the Peruvian Amazon, there’s no shortage of threats against Indigenous peoples or their lands.…

The borders between the countries that make up the South American trading bloc Mercosur (or Mercosul in Brazil) have an economic life of their own, where different characters subsist. An…

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from…

Peru has attracted millions of dollars in forest conservation projects over the years, has a series of international agreements and targets to protect forests and has 254 public and private…