location: Honduras

location: Honduras

Social media activity version | Lean version

Indonesian palm oil, Brazilian beef top contributors to U.S. deforestation exposure
- A new report reveals that the United States imported palm oil, cattle products, soybeans, cocoa, rubber, coffee and corn linked to an area of tropical deforestation the size of Los Angeles between October 2021 and November 2023.
- Palm oil from Indonesia was the largest contributor to deforestation, followed by Brazil due to cattle grazing.
- The report by Trase, commissioned by Global Witness, found that the U.S. continues to import deforestation-linked commodities while awaiting the passage of the FOREST Act, which aims to prohibit imports of products linked to illegal deforestation.
- Experts emphasize the need for action from companies, governments, financial institutions and citizens to stop commodity-driven forest loss, urging support for smallholders, increased transparency in supply chains, and the passage of the FOREST Act in the U.S.

Agroforestry project sows seeds of hope in drought-hit Honduras
- In response to longer and more intense droughts, Indigenous Tolupan farmers in Honduras are turning to agroforestry and agroecology strategies to adapt to the changing climate.
- The strategies include diversifying their crops, building water storage systems, introducing methods to better conserve water in the soil, and building up banks of native seeds.
- Although Honduras wasn’t among the 22 countries that declared a drought emergency in 2022 and 2023, severe heat waves and El Niño events are hitting harvests hard, leading to an exodus of young people out of rural areas.
- Locals participating in the adaptation initiative say it’s starting to bear fruit and give them hope — a precious resource in a dry land.

Report: Human tragedy stalks the prized Honduran lobster industry
- The Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) is a coveted delicacy, with Honduras exporting $46.7 million worth of the shellfish in 2019, mainly to the U.S.
- But its flourishing trade comes at the expense of the Indigenous Miskito community living along Honduras’s Atlantic coast, according to an investigation published in December by nonprofit news outlet Civil Eats.
- Hundreds of Miskito lobster divers have died, and thousands more are injured or have become paralyzed in pursuit of the lobsters, the report noted.
- So far, efforts at reforming the Honduran lobster fishery have failed to adequately address the divers’ situation, according to the investigation.

U.N. carbon trading scheme holds promise and peril for tropical forests
- Suriname is one of the first countries to announce it aims to use emissions reduction results through a forest conservation scheme known as REDD+ to trade almost 5 million carbon credits underArticle 6 of the Paris Agreement.
- Article 6 of the agreement establishes a framework for emissions trading through market and non-market mechanisms, which are poised to play a central role in delivering the pledged emissions cuts of many countries.
- Around 85% of countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement have indicated their intent to use international carbon markets to achieve their updated or new emissions reduction targets.
- While some experts see Article 6 as a valid way to channel finance into REDD+, others are wary that it could compromise the integrity of the system.

Top 15 species discoveries from 2022 (Photos)
- A resplendent rainbow fish, a frog that looks like chocolate, a Thai tarantula, an anemone that rides on a back of a hermit crab, and the world’s largest waterlily are among the new species named by science in 2022.
- Scientists estimate that only 10% of all the species on the planet have been described. Even among the most well-known group of animals, mammals, scientists think we have only found 80% of species.
- Unfortunately, many new species of plants, fungi, and animals are assessed as Vulnerable or Critically Endangered with extinction.
- Although a species may be new to science, it may already be well known to locals and have a common name. For instance, Indigenous people often know about species long before they are “discovered” by Western Science.

Guatemala landfill feeds ‘trash islands’ hundreds of miles away in Honduras
- An estimated 20,000 metric tons of trash from the Guatemala City landfill flows down the Motagua River into the Caribbean each year, where it washes ashore on Honduran beaches and forces residents to form cleanup efforts.
- While cleanup efforts are a good temporary solution, the root cause of the problem is poor waste management infrastructure at the landfill, something that has proven extremely difficult to address due to complex social issues and the cost of relocating waste disposal sites to other parts of the country.
- The trash also comes from illegal dumping along the river.
- As a stopgap, some stakeholders are focused on catching the trash in the rivers before it can reach the ocean.

Honduran forest governance agreement brings cautious hope
- A timber trade agreement that aims to ensure Honduras exports only legally harvested timber products to the European Union is the first of its kind to go into force in the Americas.
- Under the framework, a timber legality assurance system currently under development will be the backbone of licenses for the export of legal timber and timber products.
- Indigenous and agroforestry groups that took part in negotiations leading up to the agreement say they hope the deal will spur action to address illegal logging and land grabs affecting forests and communities.

Mining company destroys Indigenous cemetery during expansion in Honduras
- Indigenous residents living near the San Andres mine in western Honduras were devastated to learn that a centuries-old cemetery was dug up in the middle of the night, making it nearly impossible for some families to find their loved ones.
- The mass exhumations come after nearly a decade of community-level and legal battles between the Maya Chortí and Minerales de Occidente (Minosa), a subsidiary of Toronto-listed mining company Aura Minerals.
- The controversy highlights the fact that the national government hasn’t yet upheld its promise to close open-pit mining concessions.

A look at violence and conflict over Indigenous lands in nine Latin American countries
- Indigenous people make up a third of the total number of environmental defenders killed across the globe, despite being a total of 4% of the world’s population, according to a report by Global Witness. The most critical situation is in Colombia, where 117 Indigenous people have been murdered between 2012 and 2020.
- Conflicts over extractive industries and territorial invasions are a major cause of violence against Indigenous communities. Between 2017 and 2021, there were 2,109 cases of communities affected by extractive industries and their associated activities in Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
- Mongabay Latam interviewed 12 Indigenous leaders from nine countries across Latin America and spoke to them about the threats they face and the murders occurring in the region.

On a Honduran island, a community effort grows to protect its precious reefs
- On the tourism-reliant island of Roatán in Honduras, a homegrown environmental organization has allied with local communities to ensure the natural beauty that draws visitors remains safe.
- Roatán sits along the Mesoamerican Reef, and is home to rich corals and lush mangroves, which face threats from the tourism boom.
- The Bay Islands Conservation Association (BICA) takes a three-pronged approach to its work, focusing on science, institutional support for the authorities, and community work.
- The group’s success over the years is unusual in Honduras, which routinely ranks among the most dangerous countries for environmental activists.

Honduras bans open-pit mining, citing environmental and public health concerns
- The government of Honduras is no longer granting environmental permits for open-pit mining projects due to the deforestation and pollution they cause.
- Honduras has a poor human rights track record when it comes to mining, with numerous environmental defenders having been arrested or killed in the past decade in connection with their opposition to mines.
- It is unclear when the ban will go into effect or how existing open-pit mining projects will be affected.

Innovative sewage solutions: Tackling the global human waste problem
- The scale of the world’s human waste problem is vast, impacting human health, coastal and terrestrial ecosystems, and even climate change. Solving the problem requires working with communities to develop solutions that suit them, providing access to adequate sanitation and adapting aging sewage systems to a rapidly changing world.
- Decentralized and nature-based solutions are considered key to cleaning up urban wastewater issues and reducing pressure on, or providing affordable and effective alternatives to, centralized sewage systems.
- Seeing sewage and wastewater — which both contain valuable nutrients and freshwater — as a resource rather than as pollutants, is vital to achieving a sustainable “circular economy.” Technology alone can only get us so far, say experts. If society is to fully embrace the suite of solutions required, a sweeping mindset change will be needed.

Across Latin America, palm oil violations abound — with little accountability
- Palm oil producers across four countries in Latin America are able to violate environmental safeguards with relative impunity, according to a recent investigation.
- A team of Mongabay Latam journalists, Agencia Ocote (Guatemala), Contracorriente (Honduras) and La Barra Espaciadora (Ecuador) made 70 requests for information to Colombian, Ecuadorian, Honduran and Guatemalan authorities about environmental sanction processes launched against oil palm producers between 2010 and 2020.
- Despite the difficulty of obtaining official information, the investigation revealed that the expansion of oil palm as a profitable industry that provides substantial employment in the region often wins out over complaints about the industry’s environmental problems by communities and NGOs

Inga tree points to way out of slash-and-burn for Central American farmers
- The Inga Foundation has created a sustainable agricultural system that doesn’t deplete nutrients in the soil like slash-and-burn farming does.
- Alley cropping inga trees has been shown to restore degraded land while withstanding tropical storms and drought.
- Around 400 families in Honduras have planted over 4 million trees in accordance with the Inga Foundation planting system.
- Yet despite its successes with Honduran farmers that could translate to all of Central America, the organization has struggled to gain traction on a regional level.

Former dam executive found guilty in the killing of Berta Cáceres
- The alleged ringleader of the 2016 killing of environmental and Indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres was convicted of murder by a Honduran court on Monday.
- Roberto David Castillo Mejía, the ex-head of the dam company Desa, was found guilty of participating in the assassination of Cáceres. The court decision was unanimous.
- Cáceres was gunned down in her home on March 2, 2016 at the age of 44 after leading opposition to the Agua Zarca dam on the Rio Galcarque, a river that holds spiritual significance for the Lenca people.
- Cáceres was recognized for her activism in 2015 when she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

In the Honduran Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an illegal road for cattle and drugs
- Multiple sources, backed by satellite data, say an illegal road is being cut through the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Sources say the road will facilitate land invasions into the biosphere and is likely to be used as a drug-trafficking route.
- The road has created divisions between Indigenous groups, with the Bakinasta Miskito denouncing its presence and demanding the government step in to halt it.
- Despite knowing about the road for more than a year, the Honduran government has not taken definitive action to enforce the law.

Drugs and agriculture cause deforestation to skyrocket at Honduran UNESCO site
- Honduras’ Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve occupies a large portion of the country’s eastern region.
- However, despite official protection and recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Río Plátano is plagued by deforestation; satellite data show the biosphere reserve lost 13% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2020.
- Deforestation shot up in 2020, nearly doubling the amount of forest loss over 2019. 2021 may be another rocky year for the biosphere reserve, with satellite data showing several “unusually high” spikes of clearing activity so far this year.
- Sources say deforestation in the reserve is being driven by logging, agriculture and the drug trade.

Electronic ears listen to poachers in a key Central American jaguar habitat
- The international NGO Panthera has been using acoustical monitoring systems to support their anti-poaching patrols in Guatemala and Honduras since 2017.
- The acoustical recorders can pick up gunshots, conversations and wildlife sounds, and help rangers plan their patrols to be more effective in combating illegal activities.
- Panthera is particularly concerned about protecting the jaguar, which is threatened by poaching, wildlife trafficking and habitat loss in this region.

The perfect firestorm: COVID-19 in Mesoamerica’s indigenous territories (commentary)
- Jeremy Radachowsky, Director of the Mesoamerica and Western Caribbean Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), writes about a recent expedition to the Miskitu indigenous territory called Bakinasta in the heart of Honduras’s Moskitia Forest.
- Radachowsky’s team entered the area before the COVID-19 epidemic started spreading widely through the Americas. By the time they exited the remote area, the world was a different place.
- Radachowsky says the Bakinasta territory, which is already under severe threat due to invasions by land grabbers, is being devastated economically by COVID-19. He’s calling on the global community to help indigenous peoples as they navigate this crisis.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Palm oil, fire pushing protected areas in Honduras to the ‘point of no return’
- According to the Honduran Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (SAG), 190,000 hectares of oil palm are being cultivated in Honduras. They extend from the Cortés department to the Colón department along the country’s Atlantic coast.
- African oil palm has taken over 20 and 30 percent of the land in Punta Izopo National Park and Jeanette Kawas National Park, respectively.
- In 2016, a fire in Jeanette Kawas National Park consumed 412 hectares of land. Fire also damaged Punta Izopo National Park in August 2019.

Central American countries pledge to protect Mesoamerica’s ‘5 Great Forests’
- The governments of all eight members of the Central American Commission for Environment and Development (CCAD) — Belize, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama — presented an ambitious regional climate action plan at COP25.
- Among the objectives of the 5 Great Forests Initiative is ending all illegal cattle ranching within the forests; ensuring that no wildlife species in the great forests goes extinct; protecting 10 million hectares (nearly 25 million acres) of land; and restoring 500,000 hectares of forest.
- The initiative also aims to improve the livelihoods of forest-dependent peoples, especially members of indigenous and local communities within the five forests, whose leadership is seen as crucial to forest conservation efforts.

Researchers urge sustainability as palm oil tightens its grip on Latin America
- Hindered by deforestation restrictions in Southeast Asia, palm oil producers are looking farther afield to West and Central Africa, and Latin America, where conditions are conducive to oil palm cultivation and land is easier to come by.
- Four Latin American countries already fill out the list of the world’s top 10 palm oil producers, with Colombia coming in at number four, and Ecuador, Brazil and Honduras placing seventh, ninth and tenth, respectively. Mexico may soon join the list, with a plan to cultivate an additional 100,000 hectares of the crop in the coming years.
- While these countries have vast areas of land that have previously been deforested for agriculture and are suitable for growing oil palm, plantation expansion is still coming at the expense of rainforest. Researchers and the residents of areas that have been turned into plantations also allege human rights violations at the hands of palm oil producers.
- Researchers and conservationists call for tighter regulation of the industry and more study of how oil palm production may impact the surrounding environment.

Rainforest destruction accelerates in Honduras UNESCO site
- Powerful drug-traffickers and landless farmers continue to push cattle ranching and illegal logging operations deeper into the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in eastern Honduras.
- Satellite data show the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve lost more than 10 percent of its tree cover between 2001 and 2017, more than a third of which happened within the last three years of that time period. Preliminary data for 2019 indicate Río Plátano is experiencing another heavy round of forest loss this year, with UMD recording around 160,000 deforestation alerts in the reserve between January and August, which appears to be an uptick from the same period in 2018.
- Local sources claim the government participates in drug trafficking, and those involved in the drug business are allegedly the same people who are involved in illegal exploitation of the land for cattle ranching and illegal logging of mahogany and cedar.
- Deforestation in Río Plátano means a loss of habitat for wildlife and a loss of forest resources for indigenous communities that depend on them. But another threat is emerging: water resources are becoming increasingly scarce as forests are converted into grasslands.

La Mosquitia: Dangerous territory for scarlet macaws in Honduras
- The scarlet macaw (Ara macao), with its iconic red, blue and yellow plumes, is the national bird of Honduras. It inhabits forests from northern Central America to the southern Amazon, but the northern subspecies (A. m. cyanoptera) is particularly imperiled.
- “Ecotrafficking,” the term for wildlife trafficking in Honduras, is a major problem in La Mosquitia, the part of eastern Honduras, near the border with Nicaragua.
- Today, around 600 scarlet macaws inhabit the pine forests of Gracias a Dios, the Honduran department where Mabita is located. Anaida Panting and her family oversee 38 scarlet macaw nests and 30 great green macaw (Ara ambiguus) nests.

‘It’s getting worse’: National parks in Honduras hit hard by palm oil
- Production of oil palm has risen by nearly 560 percent in Honduras over the past two decades, making the country the eighth-largest producer worldwide and number three in the Americas.
- By 2010, Jeanette Kawas National Park, which sits along the coast in northern Honduras, had lost approximately 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) to oil palm plantations. Nearby Punta Izopo National Park and Cuero y Salado National Park lost more than 8 percent and 4 percent of their tree cover, respectively, between 2001 and 2017.
- Small-scale farmers, some living legally within park borders, are clearing deeper and deeper sections of forest. A growing number of residents are cultivating small-scale oil palm plantations and have become off-the-books suppliers for companies operating in the area, which has become a source of serious concern for conservation organizations.
- Local officials say that due to bureaucratic red tape, cutting down even illegally planted oil palm trees can put them at risk of legal repercussions, making it difficult to restore forest after it’s been converted to oil palm plantations.

Fishing for sharks in Honduras’s sanctuary seas: Q&A with biologist Gabriela Ochoa
- In 2011, Honduras declared the creation of a shark sanctuary encompassing all its waters.
- A 2016 decree allows for the sale of sharks caught incidentally, but in the absence of monitoring and inspection, hundreds of sharks are still being caught daily during certain seasons to supply an Easter-time demand for dried fish.
- Mongabay spoke with marine biologist and conservationist Gabriela Ochoa, who studies Honduras’s ongoing shark fishery, about the trade.

Latam Eco Review: Resistance, hope and camera traps

Capybaras, Colombia. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay

The recent top stories from Mongabay Latam, our Spanish-language service, include a call to cover climate change, the dangers of opposing Colombia’s largest hydropower plant, and the most inspiring conservation news of 2018. ‘We are not doing enough’: 25 media groups commit to cover climate change “Journalists across the continent have a profound obligation to […]
The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
- This is our annual rainforests year in review post.
- Overall, 2018 was not a good year for the planet’s tropical rainforests.
- Rainforest conservation suffered many setbacks, especially in Brazil, the Congo Basin, and Madagascar.
- Colombia was one of the few bright spots for rainforests in 2018.

‘There are no laws’: Cattle, drugs, corruption destroying Honduras UNESCO site
- Poverty and political violence are driving Hondurans into Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage site holding some of the region’s largest tracts of old growth rainforest.
- Local conservation and agroforestry organizations say the settlers are contributing to deforestation in the reserve. However, research indicates illegal ranching is the biggest deforestation driver in the area.
- Locals say many illegal cattle ranchers maintain ties to the drug business. They claim government corruption and apathy are also contributing to the situation.
- An investigation found criminal groups are able to operate with impunity in Honduras because of an ineffective justice system and corrupt security forces.

Honduras aims to save vital wildlife corridor from deforestation
- Honduras has pledged to remove livestock from the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site that’s home to jaguars, tapirs and macaws.
- The reserve is found in the Moskitia region’s rainforests, around 30 percent of which have been cleared in the past 15 years, largely due to cattle and livestock ranching.
- Conservation groups hailed the move as one that would benefit both Honduras and the world because of the region’s biodiversity and carbon stocks.

Audio: Racing to save the world’s amazing frogs with Jonathan Kolby
- On this episode, we discuss the global outbreak of the chytrid fungus, which might have already driven as many as 200 species of frogs to extinction.
- Our guest is biologist and National Geographic explorer Jonathan Kolby, who founded the Honduras Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Center, or HARCC for short, to study and rescue frogs affected by the chytrid fungus. Tree frogs in Cusuco National Park in Honduras, some of which are found nowhere else on Earth, are being decimated by the aquatic fungal pathogen.
- In this Field Notes segment, Kolby plays for us some recordings of the frog species he’s working to save from the deadly fungal infection in Honduras and says that there might be hope that frogs and other amphibians affected by chytrid can successfully cope with the disease.

Latam Eco Review: Five newly described snakes named by auction in Ecuador

Among the top stories published by our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week were features about five newly described snake species being named by auction in Ecuador, and news that Bolivia’s Madidi Park could possibly be the most biodiverse park on Earth. The banner image above shows one of the newly described snakes, a Bob […]
Honduras: Indigenous Garifuna use radio to fight for their land
- The Garifuna, an Afro-indigenous ethnic group, have inhabited eastern Honduras since the late 18th century, collectively owning and conserving large tracts of Honduras’s rich coastal ecosystems.
- In recent decades both their way of life and their ancestral lands have been increasingly threatened by the relentless encroachment of powerful private interests in Honduras’s burgeoning tourism and biofuel industries.
- The Garifuna have been mounting a resistance, aided in part by a network of community radio stations.
- In addition to serving up traditional music and shows on health and nutrition, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other topics, the stations have helped raise the profile of people struggling to protect indigenous lands and ways of life and serve as a strong means of mobilization, according to local activists.

Latam Eco Review: Colombia’s last nomadic tribe faces extinction

Below are summaries of the most popular stories by our Spanish language service, Mongabay Latam, from the week of April 30 – May 6. Among the top articles: more than 20 families of the last nomadic indigenous peoples of Colombia face a serious food crisis. In other news, a new app allows fisherfolk and others […]
Cooperative agroforestry empowers indigenous women in Honduras
- The Lenca indigenous group in a dry region of Honduras has practiced agroforestry for millennia, planting timber and fruit trees over food and medicine crops to provide shade that increases soil humidity.
- Recently a group of women formed a cooperative to market their coffee grown in the shade of these trees as organic and fair trade, and they have enjoyed a sizable price increase.
- The Lencas’ agroforestry system also provides fruit and timber products that are ready for sale or trade during times of the year when the coffee crop is not ripe.
- Agroforestry is beneficial to the climate because it sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, and it also benefits biodiversity: the village has observed an increase in populations of animals like opossums, snakes, hares, armadillos, squirrels, birds and coyotes as the agroforestry plantings expand.

Honduras arrests alleged mastermind of Berta Cáceres’s murder
- On March 2 Honduran authorities arrested a hydroelectric company executive they say orchestrated the murder of indigenous activist Berta Cáceres two years ago.
- David Castillo Mejía is executive president of Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA), the company building the Agua Zarca dam in western Honduras to which Cáceres had led a formidable opposition.
- Eight others arrested so far in the murder case include a DESA manager and several former members of the military. Among them are the four accused gunmen.

Mesoamerican Reef gets improving bill of health
- The Healthy Reefs Initiative released its report card on the state of the Mesoamerican Reef. In the last decade, the grade has risen from poor to fair.
- The Mesoamerican Reef runs along about 1,000 kilometers of the coastlines of Mexico, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala.
- Fish populations have grown, as have the coral that make up the reef.
- But scientists were concerned to see an increase in macroalgae on the reef, which results from runoff and improperly treated sewage effluent.

Cattle ranching devours Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve
- The Bosawás Biosphere Reserve is the third largest forest reserve in the world and is home to indigenous people and 21 ecosystem types, which host high levels of biodiversity.
- Nicaragua’s booming livestock industry is causing a migration of ranchers to the reserve where they often pay land traffickers to illegally secure title to land.
- From 1987 to 2010, more than 564,000 hectares of the reserve were cleared and replaced with ranch lands and farms. 92,000 hectares have been cleared in the last 5 years.

Protected areas found to be ‘significant’ sources of carbon emissions
- The researchers found 2,018 protected areas across the tropics store nearly 15 percent of all tropical forest carbon. This is because protected areas tend to have denser, older forest – thus, higher carbon stocks.
- Their study uncovered that, on average, nearly 0.2 percent of protected area forest cover was razed per year between 2000 and 2012.
- Less than nine percent of the reserves that the researchers sampled contributed 80 percent of the total carbon emissions between 2000 and 2012, putting this small subset of reserves on par with the UK’s entire transportation sector.
- The researchers say their findings could help prioritize conservation attention.

Honduran politicians, US aid implicated in killings of environmentalists
- An investigation by NGO Global Witness finds Honduras has one of the one of the world’s highest levels of violence against environmental activists, with more than 120 killed since 2010.
- Investigators say government corruption surrounding development projects like dams, mines, and oil palm plantations are largely to blame.
- Their report also highlights international finance institutions as playing a role in conflicts surrounding hydroelectric projects, as well as U.S. aid to Honduran military and police forces, which have been implicated in numerous human rights violations in the country.

In Latin America, environmentalists are an endangered species
- At least 185 environmental activists were murdered worldwide in 2015, nearly two-thirds of them in Latin America, according to a June report from the U.K.-based NGO Global Witness.
- The reasons for the killings vary, but many are related to a surge in development in remote parts of the region. There, governments have been granting concessions for hydroelectric dams, mines, and other projects, often without consulting indigenous or farming communities already occupying the land.
- With little government assistance, some members of these communities are opposing environmental destruction on their own and paying the ultimate price.

The assassinations of Mother Nature’s guardians (commentary)
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.
- Protecting the planet is a dangerous job.
- The risk of murder is higher for environmental activists and wildlife officers than for police officers.

Demands grow for a thorough investigation of Berta Cáceres’ assassination in Honduras
- A report calculates that at least 101 people were assassinated in Honduras alone between 2010 and 2014 in connection to a wave of large mining, agriculture, and dam projects.
- Since last week, Cáceres’ family has asked the Honduran government to join the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the creation of a “commission of experts that supervise, support, and participate on the investigations by the Public Ministry.”
- Cáceres had an order of protection from an international court on human rights, yet she was still regularly harassed and ended up being murdered.

A plane survey of Central America’s last remaining forests
- The Megaflyover is focusing on the five largest forest blocks still standing in Mexico and Central America.
- According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, the single biggest direct cause of tropical deforestation is conversion to cropland and pasture, “mostly for subsistence, which is growing crops or raising livestock to meet daily needs.”
- The flyover researchers are sharing the findings with national protected areas agencies in the region as they go, and overtime, they will analyze how human influence has expanded over this region over the past 15 years.

Honduran environmental and indigenous rights activist, Berta Cáceres, is gunned down
- Cáceres won the Goldman Environmental Prize, a prestigious award for her environmental activism on behalf of her fellow indigenous Lenca people.
- During her last few weeks of life, Cáceres and COPINH faced an escalation in threats and violence.
- In a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, Cáceres’ murder joins hundreds of other indigenous activists who have been slaughtered in Honduras for the right to land and resources.

Marine protected areas are helping the Mesoamerican Reef recover
- Coral cover in the Mesoamerican Reef is up 10 to 16 percent since 2006, according to a report by the Healthy Reef Initiative.
- Fully protected areas were found to have 10 times more biomass of important commercial fish species like snapper and grouper than regions with little or no protection.
- Only 7 percent of the protected marine areas in the Mesoamerican Reef are under “full protection,” per the report.

2015 Equator Prize winners span 19 countries
- The United Nations today announced 21 winners of the 2015 Equator Prize, a prestigious award that recognizes community-led environmental initiatives.
- The winners, selected from a pool of 1,461 nominations across 126 countries, include a wide range of groups from around the world.
- The winners were announced during a ceremony hosted by actor Alec Baldwin

62M ha of Latin American forests cleared for agriculture since 2001

Forest conversion for agriculture in Colombia. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Over 62 million hectares (240,000 square miles) of forest across Latin America — an area roughly the size of Texas or the United Kingdom — were cleared for new croplands and pastureland between 2001 and 2013, find a study published in Environmental Research Letters. […]
Facing Future Storms: Poor Honduran Communities Unite to Protect Watersheds and Nature

Residents of El Eden, one of the 28 Pico Bonito communities that banded together to protect their water supply. Photo credit: Pat Goudvis. There hasn’t been much good news out of Honduras recently. One of the poorest Latin American nations, it has been afflicted by a series of natural and political calamities. In 1998, Hurricane […]
Killings of environmental activists jumped by 20 percent last year

Soy field in the Brazilian Amazon. Again this year, Brazil has the highest number of murders of environmental and land defenders. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The assassination, murder, and extrajudicial killing of environmental activists rose by 20 percent last year, according to a new grim report by Global Witness. The organization documented 116 killings […]
Discovery of ‘Lost City’ spurs conservation pledge

Media coverage of ruins raises controversy among scientists, but leads to stepped-up protection efforts in long-neglected region Temple at Tikal, a Mayan city in Guatemala. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Earlier this month, National Geographic made big news: the discovery of what it called a “lost city” below the thick jungles of Honduras. While the […]
Rainforest loss increased in the 2000s, concludes new analysis

Click charts to enlarge Loss of tropical forests accelerated roughly 60 percent during the 2000s, argues a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The findings contradict previous research suggesting that deforestation slowed since the 1990s. The study is based on a map of 1990 forest cover developed last year by Do-Hyung Kim and […]
‘Exciting implications’ for conservation: new technology brings the lab to the field

Advancements allow on-the-ground genetic analysis, can be used by scientists and novices alike For decades, genetic analysis has been limited to the laboratory domain. It required heavy, expensive equipment, and careful, sterile techniques that would have been impossible to carry out effectively outdoors. And so, the researchers who collected DNA in the field would have […]
A new face for palm oil? How a small co-op is changing the industry in Honduras

David Reyes plunges his hand into a black smelly liquid at the bottom of a cut-off plastic jug tied around a palm tree and pulls out a dead horned beetle. “We used to put insecticide on the bottom of these traps,” says Reyes, the agricultural manager of Hondupalma – a cooperative of small landowners in […]
Cocaine: the new face of deforestation in Central America

In 2006, Mexico intensified its security strategy, forming an inhospitable environment for drug trafficking organizations (also known as DTOs) within the nation. The drug cartels responded by creating new trade routes along the border of Guatemala and Honduras. Soon shipments of cocaine from South America began to flow through the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC). This […]
Camera-traps reveal surprising mammals at remote site in Honduras (photos)

A camera trap survey along the Sikre River in Honduras has discovered that the region is home to a menagerie of rare mammals, including giant anteaters. The survey, published in mongabay.com’s open access journal, Tropical Conservation Science, recorded five cat species in 70 square kilometers. The Rio Plátano Biosphere Reserve (RPBR), through which the Sikre […]
Mesoamerican Reef needs more local support, says report

From massive hotel development through the agriculture industry, humans are destroying the second largest barrier reef in the world: the Mesoamerican Reef. Although global climate change and its effects on reefs via warming and acidification of coastal waters have made recent headlines, local human activities may destroy certain ecosystems before climate change has a chance […]
Indigenous people of Honduras granted one million hectares of rainforest

One-hundred and fifty years after a treaty with England granted the Miskito people rights over their land–a treaty which was never fully respected–the government of Honduras has officially handed over nearly a million hectares (970,000 hectares) of tropical forest along the Caribbean Coast to the indigenous people. The Miskito are found along the eastern coast […]
Photo: Stunning new pit-viper discovered in Honduras

A male Bothriechis guifarroi, the newly discovered green palm-pitviper from Honduras. Photo credit: Josiah H. Townsend A stunning new species of pit-viper has been discovered in the cloud forest of Honduras. The venomous snake is described in the journal ZooKeys. The species is named Bothriechis guifarroi in honor of Mario Guifarro of Olancho, a conservationist […]
First strike: nearly 200 illegal loggers arrested in massive sting across 12 countries

One-hundred-and-ninety-seven illegal loggers across a dozen Central and South American countries have been arrested during INTERPOL’s first strike against widespread forestry crime. INTERPOL, or The International Criminal Police Organization, worked with local police forces to take a first crack at illegal logging. In all the effort, known as Operation Lead, resulted in the seizure of […]

Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia