Sites: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
topic: Rainforests
Social media activity version | Lean version
New study points to private land as key to Atlantic Forest recovery
- A new study shows that restored private lands in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest achieved up to 20% more forest cover than unrestored neighboring private lands.
- With 75% of the Atlantic Forest in private hands and a 6.2-million-hectare (15.3-million-acre) deficit of native vegetation, according to the law, private landowners are key to recovery.
- Over the past decade, forest gains and losses in the Atlantic Forest have essentially stagnated; but last year, half of all deforestation hit mature forests over 40 years old, threatening biodiversity and carbon stocks.
Navigating the complex world of reforestation efforts
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Reforestation has become a feel-good global rallying cry. From corporations touting “net zero” targets to philanthropies seeking visible impact, planting trees has become shorthand for planetary repair. Yet behind the glossy photos of saplings and smiling farmers lies […]
Green labeler PEFC under fire for certifying Indonesian firm clearing orangutan habitat
- Sustainable forestry certifier PEFC is under fire for its endorsement of Indonesian plantation firm IFP despite it being a major recent deforester, with tens of thousands of hectares cleared in orangutan habitat and ongoing forest loss documented into 2024.
- Earthsight and other NGOs say the certification exploits loopholes, including PEFC’s “partial certification” model that lets companies exclude recently cleared areas while still selling certified timber.
- Deforestation-linked timber may have entered global supply chains, with mills processing IFP-linked wood exporting large volumes to the EU ahead of the bloc’s new deforestation regulation.
- Critics say PEFC’s weak safeguards and Indonesia’s IFCC certification system enable greenwashing, and call for IFP’s certification to be revoked and rules tightened to bar any company or corporate group involved in post-2010 forest clearing.
Malaysian companies dominate PNG forest-clearance permits: report
- A recent report examining land-conversion permits issued by the Papua New Guinea government found that 65 of 67 such licenses are controlled by Malaysian-linked companies.
- The stated purpose of these permits — Forest Clearing Authorities (FCAs) — is for creation of sustainable jobs via agribusiness and other development projects, but critics contend the licenses have been used to facilitate large-scale logging and timber exports.
- After repeated allegations of misuse of the permits, PNG’s government imposed a moratorium on new FCAs in 2023, but exports continue from existing projects.
- The 65 licenses examined by the report cover 1.68 million hectares (4.1 million acres) of rainforests, about 88% of which are categorized as ‘undisturbed forest.’
Sumatra’s ‘natural’ disaster wasn’t natural: How deforestation turned a rare cyclone catastrophic
- Cyclone Senyar was an unusually rare event for Sumatra, but the scale of destruction cannot be explained by weather alone. Decades of deforestation, mining, plantations, and peat drainage left watersheds unable to absorb intense rainfall, turning extreme weather into a mass-casualty disaster.
- Forest loss and land conversion have systematically weakened Sumatra’s natural defenses. The island has lost millions of hectares of forest since 2001, increasing runoff, destabilizing slopes, and amplifying floods and landslides when heavy rain hits.
- Peatland drainage has created a hidden, compounding flood risk. Canals dug for plantations dry and compact peat soils, causing land subsidence and transforming once water-retentive landscapes into low-lying areas prone to chronic inland and coastal flooding.
- Rising exposure, not just rising hazards, is driving future risk. Urban expansion into floodplains and degraded catchments means that even rare storms now endanger more people and infrastructure, locking much of Sumatra into a cycle of disaster unless land-use governance changes.
Sumatran flood disaster may have wiped out a key Tapanuli orangutan population, scientists fear
- As many as 35 critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans — 4% of the species’ total population — may have been wiped out in the catastrophic floods and landslides that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra recently, scientists warn, after the discovery of a carcass.
- Satellite and field evidence show massive destruction of the western block of the Batang Toru ecosystem, with thousands of hectares of steep forest slopes destroyed — an “extinction-level disturbance” for the world’s rarest great ape.
- Conservationists have lost contact with monitored orangutans in the disaster zone, raising fears more individuals were killed or displaced as feeding areas and valleys were obliterated.
- The tragedy has renewed calls to safeguard the Batang Toru ecosystem by halting industrial projects and granting it stronger protection, as climate-driven disasters escalate across Sumatra.
Mexico is inflating its climate spending by billions of dollars. Here’s how.
- Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took office last year touting her climate science background, yet continues to neglect renewable energy and conservation while subsidizing state-owned oil company Pemex.
- Funds her government earmarked for climate change and a renewable energy transition are actually going to infrastructure, oil and gas, and other projects unrelated to the environment, a review of the 2026 budget shows.
- In one case, more than $40 million for a train line is counted twice but only spent once, misrepresenting how much money the government is dedicating to the environment.
Wildlife and communities bear the cost as Simandou rail corridor advances across Guinea
- A 650-km (400-mi) railway corridor is being built that will link the iron ore mine in eastern Guinea to the country’s Atlantic port of Moribaya.
- Its route crosses forests that are home to some of the last populations of forest elephants and western chimpanzees in the country, with NGOs warning of disruptions and fragmentation of vital habitat, putting several species at risk of local extinction.
- Villagers along the route also complain that dust and pollution have impacted their livelihoods, and that compensation has been delayed or incomplete.
- Experts and civil society actors are calling for a strategic environmental study and better implementation of environmental and social management plans.
Real-time deforestation alerts get an AI boost to identify the causes
- A new alert system developed by online deforestation-tracking platform Global Forest Watch tells users what’s causing the deforestation.
- The new alert system deploys AI models to classify deforestation alerts based on what’s causing them, from agriculture (large- and small-scale), to mining and wildfires.
- While the data currently focus on the Amazon Rainforest, Congo Basin and Indonesia — home to most of the world’s tropical rainforests — the team plans to expand to other forests as well as non-forest ecosystems.
Hope, solidarity & disappointment: A familiar mix for Indigenous delegates at COP30
- COP30, held in Brazil, was promoted as both the “Amazonian COP” and the “Indigenous COP,” where more than 900 Indigenous representatives from around the world formally took part in the negotiations.
- While Brazil announced the demarcation of new Indigenous territories and 11 signatories issued a joint commitment to strengthen land tenure for Indigenous peoples, wider frustrations overshadowed these measures.
- Indigenous delegates described a familiar pattern: They were invited into the venue but not into the center of decision-making; that divide was visible in the Global Mutirão, the main COP30 outcome, in which Indigenous peoples appear in the preamble but are absent from the operative paragraphs — the part of the text that directs how countries must act and report.
What would this scientist tell Trump? Interview with Robert Watson, former chair of the IPCC
- This week, the UN Environment Program launched the Global Environment Outlook 7 (GEO-7), a stark assessment that comes on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of climate change as a “con job.”
- In this context, Mongabay interviewed GEO-7 co-chair Sir Robert Watson about what to tell a political leader who rejects the science.
- “The evidence is definitive,” says Watson, who argues that countries must rethink their economic and financial systems and that science must be heard in the rooms where power lies.
Balancing evidence and empathy in an age of doubt
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. People often say that good journalism requires a 30,000-foot view. I’ve found the opposite to be true. The stories that move the world rarely start in boardrooms or at summits; they start with someone standing knee-deep in a […]
Brazil fast-tracks paving controversial highway in Amazon with new licensing rule
Brazil’s Senate approved an environmental licensing bill that could expedite major infrastructure projects, including paving a highway that cuts through one of the most intact parts of the Amazon Rainforest in northwestern Brazil. The BR-319 highway runs through 885 kilometers (550 miles) of rainforest, connecting Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, with Rondônia state farther […]
An Empire of Nature: African Parks and Rwanda’s Nyungwe Forest
- In 2020, South Africa-based NGO African Parks signed a 20-year deal to manage Rwanda’s Nyungwe National Park, one of the largest montane rainforests in Africa.
- Nyungwe is one of 24 protected areas managed by African Parks in 13 countries.
- Founded by a Dutch industrialist, African Parks is a pioneer of the “public-private” conservation model in Africa.
- Mongabay visited Nyungwe to look at African Parks and its approach to conservation.
Indigenous guardians protecting the Amazon Trapeze continue to face challenges
- Defending the Amazon Rainforest is something that Indigenous communities have been doing for centuries, and the practice has gained renewed interest with the “Indigenous guard” program that launched two decades ago in Colombia.
- According to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), there are around 1,200 guards across the three Indigenous councils in the Amazon Trapeze region, Colombia’s tri-border area with Peru and Brazil.
- However, the lack of income for the guardians in particular, and of economic opportunities for communities here in general, have driven many Indigenous people, including some guards, to get involved in illicit activities such as coca cultivation in Peru or drug trafficking.
- To continue protecting the environment, Indigenous guards are calling for greater government support and say they hope to receive fair compensation for the work they do.
New agreement aims to streamline Amazon Rainforest protection efforts
- A new agreement announced at the COP30 climate talks in Brazil intends to unify countries and institutions from around the world to monitor and protect the Amazon Rainforest.
- The Mamirauá Declaration aims to develop a streamlined framework that will unify various long-term efforts to streamline data gathering and analysis.
- The agreement focuses on the active participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities in monitoring; it also calls for more capacity building in countries in the Amazon Basin.
What’s at stake for the environment in Honduras’ presidential election?
- Honduras will hold elections Nov. 30 for president and all 128 seats in Congress.
- The winners will hold office for the next four years, shaping the country’s environmental policies at a time when its many forests and ocean ecosystems are rapidly disappearing.
- Leading candidates include Rixi Moncada of the progressive LIBRE party, Salvador Nasralla of the centrist Liberal party and Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura of the conservative National party.
DRC hit by record deforestation in 2024, satellite data show
- In 2024, the DRC experienced an uptick in primary forest loss, with 590,000 hectares of forest lost, according to satellite data visualized on Global Forest Watch.
- Subsistence agriculture continues to be the main driver of forest loss, with recent research finding artisanal mining in the eastern DRC results in more forest loss than researchers previously thought.
- Wildfire emerged as a growing concern in the DRC in 2024, and data suggest fire activity may have have intensified further in 2025.
- Escalating conflict and insecurity in the eastern DRC also put increasing pressure on forest resources.
Saving forests won’t be enough if fossil fuels beneath them are still extracted, experts warn
- A new analysis finds that tropical forests in 68 countries sit atop fossil fuel deposits that, if extracted, would emit 317 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases — more than the remaining 1.5°C (2.7°F) carbon budget — revealing a major blind spot in global climate policy.
- Because Brazil’s proposed Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) focuses only on stopping deforestation, researchers warn it risks missing far larger emissions from potential oil, gas and coal extraction under protected forests.
- India, China and Indonesia hold the largest fossil reserves beneath forests, with Indonesia facing acute trade-offs as most of its coal lies under forest areas where mining threatens biodiversity and Indigenous communities, including rhino habitats in Borneo.
- Experts say that compensating countries for leaving fossil fuels unextracted — through mechanisms like debt swaps or climate finance — could unlock massive climate benefits, but fossil fuel phaseout remains excluded from TFFF negotiations despite growing calls to include it.
Norway’s multibillion-dollar bet on forests: An interview with Minister Eriksen
- Two major forest finance initiatives announced at COP30 — the Brazil-led Tropical Forest Forever Fund (TFFF), backed by $6.7 billion, and the newly launched Canopy Trust — signal renewed global attention on the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest.
- Canopy Trust, formally launched Nov. 17, relies on blended public–private finance and has already raised $93 million, with a goal of mobilizing $1 billion by 2030 to support sustainable enterprises and early-stage, high-impact forest projects in the Congo Basin.
- Norway, the largest contributor to both the TFFF and Canopy Trust, sees the new fund as complementary to existing mechanisms like CAFI — rewarding low deforestation and strengthening sustainable production. One of its key functions is to de-risk investments in local small and medium-sized enterprises, which might otherwise find it hard to attract private investors.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Norway’s Minister of Climate and Environment Andreas Bjelland Eriksen said the ultimate test will be whether these mechanisms finally deliver what communities demand: direct access to finance, local ownership and tangible economic benefits on the ground.
Why are Amazonian trees getting ‘fatter’?
- A new study has found that the trunks of trees in the Amazon have become thicker in recent decades — an unexpected sign of the rainforest’s resilience in response to record-high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
- Nearly 100 scientists involved in the study have stated that old-growth forests in the Amazon are sequestering more carbon than they did 30 years ago, contradicting predictions of immediate collapse due to climate change.
- But the warning still stands: Despite the trees’ capacity to adapt, scientists fear that the extreme droughts and advancing deforestation could invert the rainforest’s balance and threaten its vital role in global climate regulation.
A forest worth more standing: Virgilio Viana on what it will take to protect the Amazon
The first time Virgilio Viana saw the Amazon up close, he was a 16-year-old with a backpack, two school friends and very little sense of what he was walking into. They arrived by land, drifting along dirt roads that had more potholes than surface, then continued by riverboat as the forest thickened around them. Something […]
The land deal threatening a vital piece of Bolivia’s Chiquitano dry forest
- A 30,019-hectare (74,178-acre) forest in Santa Cruz, Bolivia is on the verge of being sold to Bom Futuro, a Brazilian agriculture company with plans to clear the land, documents reviewed by Mongabay suggest.
- The forest is being sold by a local affiliate of Dutch wood flooring producer INPA, which has helped sustainably manage the area since the mid-2000s.
- Conservationists say the plot is an important part of Bolivia’s Chiquitano dry forest, which acts as a transition between the Amazon Rainforest and the Gran Chaco and Cerrado savannas.
Indigenous Dayak resist new southern Borneo national park amid global protection deficit
- Indigenous peoples and student protesters staged several demonstrations in Indonesian Borneo in August in a bid to pressure local authorities to cancel plans for a 119,779-hectare (295,980-acre) national park in the Meratus mountain range.
- Meratus Mountains National Park would be the first national park in South Kalimantan province, and the 58th in Indonesia.
- The draft plans will absorb almost two dozen villages impacting several thousand families, many of whom fear displacement given the lack of formal state recognition of Indigenous communities.
- Local civil society organizations say the public protests reflect a lack of consultation with affected communities, a pattern established by many governments as countries rush to protect 30% of the world’s land and marine areas by 2030.
Pioneering primatologist in Madagascar shares decades of conservation wisdom
Patricia Wright, a pioneering primatologist who established the Centre ValBio research station in Madagascar, began her work there in 1986. As the person who first described the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus) to Western science, her contributions led to the creation of Ranomafana National Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. She joins the Mongabay […]
Indonesia labeled ‘Fossil of the Day’ for echoing industry talking points at COP30
- Indonesia has been publicly rebuked at COP30 with a “Fossil of the Day” award after civil society groups accused its delegation of echoing fossil fuel and carbon industry lobbyists during negotiations on Article 6.4, the U.N.’s new carbon market mechanism.
- Observers say Indonesia’s position closely mirrors the talking points in an industry-backed letter calling for weaker safeguards under Article 6.4 — a move critics warn could undermine the integrity of global carbon markets and benefit groups with financial stakes in nature-based carbon projects.
- Indonesia denies being influenced by lobbyists, even though at least 46 representatives from fossil fuel and heavy-industry companies are accredited under its delegation — raising broader concerns about corporate access to negotiations amid a COP already flooded with a record proportion of fossil fuel lobbyists.
- Experts warn Indonesia’s push to loosen Article 6.4 rules risks weakening international oversight, aligning the mechanism with the far less transparent Article 6.2, and potentially undermining both Indonesia’s climate credibility and the robustness of the Paris Agreement’s carbon market safeguards.
Top ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin’s COP30 reflections on Amazon conservation (analysis)
- The global battle to mitigate climate change cannot be won in the Amazon, but it can certainly be lost there, writes top ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin in a new analysis for Mongabay. Though he’s well-known for investigating traditional uses of plants in the region, he’s also a keen observer of and advocate for Indigenous communities and conservation there.
- Compared to the 1970s, he writes, the Amazon enjoys far greater formal protection, understanding and attention, while advances in technology and ethnobotany have revealed new insights into tropical biodiversity, and Indigenous communities — long the guardians and stewards of this ecosystem — are increasingly recognized as central partners in conservation, and their shamans employ hallucinogens like biological scalpels to diagnose, treat and sometimes cure ailments, a technology that is increasingly and ever more widely appreciated.
- “The challenge now is to ensure that the forces of protection outpace the forces of destruction, which, of course, is one of the ultimate goals of the COP30 meeting in Belém,” he writes.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Strategic ignorance, climate change and Amazonia (commentary)
- With the support of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, essentially all of Brazil’s government outside of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change is promoting actions that push us toward tipping points, both for the Amazon Rainforest and the global climate.
- Crossing any of these tipping points would result in global warming escaping from human control, with devastating consequences for Brazil that include mass mortalities.
- The question of whether Brazil’s leaders understand the consequences of their actions is relevant to how they will be judged by history, but the climatic consequences follow automatically, regardless of how these actions may be judged, a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Cautious win for Indigenous groups in Malaysia as palm oil firm pauses forest clearing
- Indigenous Penan and Kenyah residents in Malaysian Borneo have filed a lawsuit and a complaint with Malaysia’s sustainable palm oil certifier, accusing palm oil company Urun Plantations of clearing natural forest within its concession along the Belaga River in violation of its lease and sustainability certification.
- Urun Plantations agreed in late October to pause development activities after a palm oil mill suspended buying palm fruit from the plantation.
- Satellite imagery and NGO field evidence indicate ongoing deforestation since 2023, while the company says it is only replanting previously developed land and denies breaching certification rules.
- The company maintains the project has local support, with the dispute underscoring growing tensions in Malaysia’s Sarawak state over palm oil expansion into remaining forests and Indigenous territories.
A blueprint for communicating about the Amazon rainforest (commentary)
- Rhett Ayers Butler contributed a section on communicating about the Amazon to the Amazonia in Danger report, a multilingual collection of 22 essays by 55 authors organized by COICA, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin.
- His piece suggests that stories of crisis could evolve from despair to agency by pairing truth with tangible examples of progress—verified, replicable actions that show systems can still respond and that hope, grounded in evidence, can be a form of endurance.
- He emphasizes that credibility depends on who delivers the message as much as what is said, calling for communications infrastructure that centers local voices, prioritizes trust, adapts messages to specific audiences, and measures success by lasting outcomes rather than fleeting attention.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Three tracks to rescue 1.5°C: fossil exit, forest protection, and nature’s carbon (commentary)
- Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, co-founder and president of the Igarapé Institute and of the Green Bridge Facility, argues that keeping global warming below 1.5 °C requires action on three simultaneous fronts: phasing out fossil fuels, ending deforestation, and scaling up natural carbon capture in forests and oceans.
- She contends that energy decarbonization alone is insufficient; protecting and restoring ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, and mangroves is essential for both emissions reduction and resilience, and must be backed by transparent finance and accountability.
- With COP30 approaching in Belém, her piece calls for an integrated, finance-backed plan that ties together clean-energy expansion, a time-bound zero-deforestation roadmap, and rigorous safeguards for community-led nature-based solutions.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
After 6 years, trial in Indigenous forest guardian killing pushed to 2026
- The trial of the two suspects charged in the killing of Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara and attempted killing of fellow guardian Laércio Guajajara in the Brazilian Amazon in 2019 was pushed to 2026, triggering outrage among the Guajajara people and Indigenous rights advocates.
- The trial over the crimes will be a legal landmark as the first Indigenous cases to go before a federal jury in Maranhão; usually, killings are considered crimes against individuals and are tried by a state jury, but these crimes were escalated to the federal level because prosecutors made the case that they represented an aggression against the entire Guajajara community and Indigenous culture.
- A long-awaited anthropological report on the collective damages to the Indigenous community as a result of the crimes was concluded and attached to the court case in August, but the trial is very likely to only happen in early 2026, “given that there is not enough time for it to be held by the end of this year,” the judge’s advisory staff in the case said.
- Paulo’s father, José Maria Paulino Guajajara, said he is “really angry” at white people for killing his son for no reason — and inside the Arariboia territory, where their entrance is forbidden. “We Indians are dying, and the white man won’t stop killing us.”
COP30 tropical forest fund may drive debt and deforestation, groups warn
A new global fund meant to reward tropical countries for protecting forests could instead drive deforestation and deepen debt in the developing world, civil society groups warn. The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), launched Nov. 6 in Belém, Brazil, ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, aims to raise $125 billion and promises to pay […]
New pledge, old problems as Indonesia’s latest Indigenous forest promise draws skepticism
- Indonesia has pledged to recognize 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) of Indigenous and customary forests by 2029, a move the government says will curb deforestation and advance Indigenous rights.
- Advocates call the pledge another empty promise, citing years of stalled reforms, including a long-delayed Indigenous Rights Bill and a slow, bureaucratic process that has recognized less than 2% of mapped customary forests.
- Rights groups say state-backed development continues to drive land grabs and forest loss, with a quarter of Indigenous territories overlapping extractive concessions and widespread conflicts linked to the government’s strategic national projects (PSN).
- Critics urge the government to enact legal reforms and recognize Indigenous land beyond the 1.4-million-hectare target, warning that without real action, the pledge will be symbolic rather than transformative.
UNESCO biosphere listing raises hope, questions for Malaysia’s Kinabatangan floodplain
- UNESCO has declared the floodplain around Malaysian Borneo’s Kinabatangan River a biosphere reserve, linking the Heart of Borneo to the Lower Kinabatangan–Segama Wetlands.
- Conservationists warn that the landscape remains heavily fragmented by oil palm plantations and faces persistent threats from pollution and weak land governance.
- They argue that lasting change will require land reform, corporate accountability and stronger coordination between Sabah’s forestry and wildlife authorities.
Climate finance must reach Indigenous communities at COP30 & beyond (commentary)
- Indigenous and local communities protect 36% of the world’s intact tropical forests, yet receive less than 1% of international climate finance — a contradiction that threatens global climate goals and leaves the most effective forest guardians without the resources they need.
- As the COP30 climate summit in the Amazon draws near, pressure is mounting to get funding directly into the hands of Indigenous and local community organizations who are the frontline defenders of the world’s rainforests.
- “As billions of dollars in climate finance will be discussed or even decided upon at COP30 in Brazil, the priority must be to get resources directly to Indigenous and local communities who have safeguarded forests for generations,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Brazil can protect its forests while growing its economy, says Arapyaú’s Renata Piazzon
- Renata Piazzon, CEO of the Instituto Arapyaú, is one of Brazil’s leading voices for aligning conservation with economic development, arguing that protecting forests and improving livelihoods must go hand in hand.
- Under her leadership, Arapyaú has helped catalyze initiatives like MapBiomas and the Forest People Connection, which link data, finance, and connectivity to reduce deforestation and strengthen Amazonian communities.
- As Brazil prepares to host COP30, Piazzon envisions the country shifting from negotiation to implementation—demonstrating global leadership through regenerative agriculture, forest restoration, and a low-carbon economy.
- Piazzon spoke with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler in November 2025.
Brazil charges 31 people in major carbon credit fraud investigation
Brazil’s Federal Police have indicted 31 suspects for fraud and land-grabbing in a massive criminal carbon credit scheme in the Brazilian Amazon, according to Brazilian national media outlet Folha de S.Paulo. It is the largest known criminal operation involving carbon credit fraud to date in the nation. The police probe, called Operation Greenwashing, was launched […]
Suriname’s plan to capitalize on carbon: Q&A with President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons
- Suriname’s first female president, Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, sat down with Mongabay to discuss her goals for the U.N. Climate Change Conference taking place next week in neighboring Brazil.
- She’s been a vocal proponent of climate financing for countries meeting their emission targets and conserving the rainforest.
- At the same time, Geerlings-Simons is grappling with Suriname’s deep-seated mining industry, which often skirts regulations and destroys natural ecosystems with mercury and cyanide.
- Geerlings-Simons said she recognizes the importance of extractive industries for funding the country’s infrastructure, law enforcement and the agencies that provide environmental oversight.
As Ghana ships first ‘gold standard’ timber to EU, questions about FLEGT’s future remain (commentary)
- Ghana is the first country in Africa to be awarded a Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) license, which is seen as the “gold standard” in the sustainable timber trade.
- The fate of many of Africa’s surviving forests could depend on its success, highlighted by an official meeting in Brussels this week that will mark the first shipment of timber from Ghana to the EU under the program — but a new op-ed wonders if it will it be the last.
- “If Ghana’s FLEGT license turns out to be the last, it would snatch defeat from the jaws of a famous victory. But there is also hope that Ghana’s groundbreaking system of timber traceability could help spur similar systems in other countries,” the author argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Beyond deforestation: redesigning how we protect and value tropical forests (analysis)
- Following his earlier essay tracing possible futures for the world’s forests, Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler turns from diagnosis to design—asking what concrete interventions could still avert collapse. This piece explores how governance, finance, and stewardship might evolve in a second act for tropical forests.
- The essay argues that lasting protection depends structural reform: securing Indigenous land rights, treating governance as infrastructure, and creating steady finance that outlasts election cycles and aid projects.
- Butler also examines overlooked levers—from restoring degraded lands and valuing forests’ local cooling effects to rethinking “bioeconomies” and building regional cooperation across borders. Each points toward a shift from reactive conservation to deliberate, sustained design.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
What might lie ahead for tropical forests (analysis)
- Heading into COP30, where tropical forests are set to be a central theme, Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler offers a thought experiment—tracing today’s trajectories a little further forward to imagine where they might lead. What follows are scenarios, some improbable, others already taking shape.
- The essay envisions a world where deforestation gives way to disorder: weakened governance, runaway fires, and ecological feedback loops eroding forests from within even without the swing of an axe. It explores how technology and biology—AI-driven agriculture, gene-edited trees, and microbial interventions—could either accelerate destruction or redefine restoration, depending on who controls them.
- Across these imagined futures, one pattern recurs: forests thinning, recovering, and thinning again, as human ambition, migration, and climate instability test whether nature will be given the time and space to heal.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Heading into COP, Brazil’s Amazon deforestation rate is falling. What about fires?
- Brazil’s official data show deforestation in the Amazon fell 11% in the 12 months to July 2025, with independent monitoring by Imazon confirming a similar trend—evidence that policies under President Lula da Silva are reversing the sharp rise seen during Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.
- Even as land clearing slows, fires and forest degradation have become major drivers of loss. Exceptional drought in 2024, record heat, and the spread of roads and logging left large areas of the forest dry and flammable, causing 2.78 million hectares of primary forest loss—roughly 60% from fire.
- Burned areas have dropped by 45% over the past year, suggesting some recovery, yet scientists warn the Amazon is entering a more fragile state shaped by climate extremes and the lingering effects of past destruction.
- As Brazil prepares to host COP30 in Belém, attention will center on sustaining recent gains and advancing initiatives like the proposed $125 billion Tropical Forest Forever Facility, even as new roads, gold mining, and policy uncertainty—such as the wavering soy moratorium—continue to threaten progress.
Belém faces its social and natural demons as host to COP30
- Deforestation and the city’s historic shift from rivers to roads led to a massive influx of people into low-lying baixadas, where 57% of residents lack services, such as sewage, and are highly prone to flooding.
- The lack of trees in one of the Amazon’s most revered cities, especially in poor neighborhoods, contributes to projections that Belém will face 222 days of extreme heat by 2050.
- Experts argue that the infrastructure projects being implemented don’t offer sustainable solutions, reflecting a long-term failure to address Belém’s water and sewage crises.
Gold mining impacts persist after DRC shuts down company operations: Video
In a new short video, Mongabay visits the Dimonika Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO site in southwestern Republic of Congo. The government shut down a Chinese company’s gold mining operation in November 2024, but mining pollution and its impacts on local communities persist. Photojournalist Berdy Pambou talked with local artisanal gold miners who accuse the Chinese […]
Report urges full protection of world’s 196 uncontacted Indigenous peoples
- A comprehensive global report on uncontacted Indigenous peoples, published Oct. 27 by Survival International, estimates that the world still holds at least 196 uncontacted peoples living in 10 countries in South America, Asia and the Pacific region.
- About 95% of uncontacted peoples and groups live in the Amazon — especially in Brazil, home to 124 groups. Survival International says that, unless governments and private companies act, half of the groups could be wiped out within 10 years.
- Nine out of 10 of these Indigenous groups face the threat of unsolicited contact by extractive industries, including logging, mining and oil and gas drilling. It’s estimated that a quarter are threatened by agribusiness, with a third terrorized by criminal gangs. Intrusions by missionaries are a problem for one in six groups.
- After contact, Indigenous groups are often decimated by illnesses, mainly influenza, for which they have little immunity. Survival International says that, if these peoples are to survive, they must be fully protected, requiring serious noncontact commitments by governments, companies and missionaries.
International Gibbon Day: Spotlighting the overlooked, underprotected ‘lesser apes’
Gibbons, commonly called lesser apes, aren’t as well-known as some of their great ape cousins like chimpanzees or gorillas. But the lives of these highly arboreal primates are no less fascinating. They reside in the canopy of the tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia, living in small family groups, each patrolling its own territory, […]
Forest Declaration Assessment reveals a forest paradox
- Tropical forests are regenerating across millions of hectares, with Latin America and Asia showing dramatic gains—but this apparent recovery conceals a deeper contradiction: deforestation remains stubbornly high.
- The world continues to clear about 8 million hectares of forest each year, far off the path to meet the 2030 zero-deforestation pledge, as fires, drought, and agriculture erase progress almost as quickly as it appears.
- Primary forests, rich in carbon and biodiversity, are disappearing fastest, driven mainly by agriculture; current funding for forest protection is dwarfed by subsidies for industrial farming.
- Natural regrowth offers hope—young secondary forests sequester carbon efficiently—but without halting new clearings, these green shoots risk becoming temporary pauses in an ongoing cycle of loss.
Indigenous guardians successfully keep extractives out of Ecuador’s Amazon forests
- For generations, the Pakayaku community in Ecuador’s Amazon has successfully kept unsustainable mining, logging and oil extraction activities out of forests while preserving their cultural traditions and ecological knowledge.
- Mongabay visited the community to see their guardian program, made up of 45 women warriors who constantly patrol 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of rainforest to detect incursions — which few have been allowed to witness firsthand.
- The community created a “plan of life” map that details their vision, identity and economic alternatives to extraction.
- Leaders worry Ecuador’s concentration on courting international investment in sectors like mining and natural gas could threaten the forests.
Measuring success in trees, not clicks
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. “I knew I was disposable.” That realization, from earlier in his career, helps guide Willie Shubert today in building a kind and capable global newsroom. Shubert oversees Mongabay’s English-language newsroom — its largest — and shapes the organization’s […]
Indigenous monitoring project helps protect isolated peoples in Colombia’s Amazon
- Indigenous communities neighboring the peoples living in isolation in Colombian Amazon have spent more than a decade helping the latter remain separate from the outside world.
- Members of the Curare-Los Ingleses Indigenous Reserve and of the community of Manacaro use traditional knowledge and technology alike to monitor threats to their territory and to protect nearby communities living in isolation.
- In Manacaro, women take on traditionally masculine roles by patrolling the rivers, collecting data, and safeguarding their neighbors’ lives amid the advance of armed actors and illegal mining.
- Surveillance work has provided evidence of uncontacted peoples, such as the Yuri and Passé ethnic groups, which was fundamental in the federal government’s decision to formally recognize them.
Mamai Lucille Williams, a quiet symbol of dignity amid destruction, has died, aged about 93
- Mamai Lucille Williams, a Patamona elder from Karisparu in Guyana’s North Pakaraimas, was forcibly evicted in 2018 when miners—accompanied by police and a mining officer—destroyed her home and farm to clear land for gold extraction.
- Her case, raised by local Indigenous councils, became emblematic of the wider struggle against illegal and unsafe mining that continues to displace Amerindian communities across Guyana and the Amazon.
- Despite government promises of compensation, Mamai spent her final years away from her ancestral land, which she had occupied since childhood, symbolizing the precariousness of Indigenous tenure amid extractive expansion.
- She died in September 2025, remembered by her community as a “living symbol of courage, resilience, and dignity” and honored for preserving the Patamona language through her contribution to the first Patamona Learning Handbook.
Report finds increased tropical forest regrowth over the last decade
Natural forest regrowth in the world’s tropical rainforests is expanding. According to the Forest Declaration Assessment 2025, more than 11 million hectares (27 million acres) of tropical moist forests are under some stage of forest regrowth between 2015 and 2021. The growth is most notable in the tropical areas of Latin America, where regrowth increased […]
Peru considers stripping protections for Indigenous people and their territories
- Several bills working their way through Peru’s Congress would loosen restrictions for oil and gas drilling, and make it harder for Indigenous people to obtain protected status for their land.
- One of the laws gives Congress the power to reevaluate the legal categorization and reserve status of Indigenous peoples living in isolation and initial contact, or PIACI.
- Some advocacy groups called for the suspension of international climate financing to several parts of the Peruvian government until they implement concrete PIACI protections.
Tanzanian conservationists mourn death of plant expert Aloyce Mwakisoma
- Aloyce Mwakisoma, a renowned plant expert from Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains, was struck and killed by a bus on Oct. 6 near the village of Sanje.
- Mwakisoma, who was born and raised in the Udzungwas, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the plants and animals found in his home in the Eastern Arc.
- His colleagues recognized him as one of the many local experts whose indigenous knowledge powerfully informs the description and protection of the continent’s biodiversity.
A cacao rush drives ‘alarming’ deforestation in Liberia
- Satellite data and reports from the ground show how a rapid expansion of smallholder cacao farming in southeastern Liberia is causing “alarming” deforestation.
- Large numbers of migrant workers from Côte D’Ivoire have been invited into Liberia by community leaders looking set up cacao plantations.
- Liberia’s remote southeast is one of its most densely forested regions, and also one of its poorest.
- Cacao grown in these new plantations would likely run afoul of new EU regulations barring deforestation-linked commodities, which the bloc is considering delaying.
Amazon Rainforest hits record carbon emissions from 2024 forest fires
In 2024, the Amazon Rainforest underwent its most devastating forest fire season in more than two decades. According to a new study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the fire-driven forest degradation released an estimated 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, a sevenfold increase compared with the previous two years. The […]
Indigenous leaders gather at the IUCN Indigenous Peoples and Nature summit
More than 100 Indigenous leaders from across the world are gathering at the global Indigenous peoples’ summit at the IUCN World Conservation Congress that begins Oct. 8 in Abu Dhabi. The summit aims to set priorities and commitments for the broader conservation community, highlighting Indigenous peoples’ effective participation in environmental negotiations, leadership and action. IUCN […]
Mongabay founder Rhett Butler wins the Henry Shaw Award
Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler has been awarded the 2025 Henry Shaw Medal from the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, U.S. Established in 1893, the award recognizes “individuals who have made a significant contribution to the Missouri Botanical Garden, botanical research, horticulture, conservation, or the museum community.” While many recipients have been scientists, […]
RSPO sparks NGO outrage for dismissing complaint over alleged ‘shadow companies’
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has dismissed allegations that Indonesian conglomerate First Resources Ltd. Controls a network of shadow companies, despite evidence presented by NGOs linking these firms to deforestation, peatland destruction, river pollution and labor abuses.
- The decision by RSPO has triggered outrage among NGOs that say it exposes a loophole that lets corporate groups hide destructive operations behind undeclared affiliates while keeping their sustainability credentials intact.
- FRL told Mongabay it recognized transparency concerns but emphasized that the panel “did not find evidence of hidden operations or deliberate concealment.”
Whose Amazon is it?
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, overlapping land claims and state-issued agreements have intensified a territorial dispute between Indigenous nations living in Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, a protected area. This Mongabay special series investigates the legal, cultural and political dimensions of the conflict — between the Siekopai Nation and the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha — and the potential […]
Massive fungus from India is newly described species
From the forests of northeast India’s Arunachal Pradesh state, researchers have described a new-to-science species of fungus with “exceptionally large” fruiting bodies that can hold the weight of a person. The species is named Bridgeoporus kanadii in honor of Indian mycologist Kanad Das for his contributions to Indian macrofungi. The researchers led by Arvind Parihar, […]
New conservation panel to focus on microorganisms crucial for human and planet health
The IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, has established a new expert group that will help shape conservation priorities for a previously overlooked but vital group of organisms: microbes. In a recent commentary, the Microbial Conservation Specialist Group (MCSG), formed in July, announced that it will look at the status and threats to various beneficial […]
New deal pushes Amazon’s controversial ‘tipping point road’ ahead
- Brazil’s President Lula has personally cemented his support for the project and set his cabinet to work out a deal to renew the BR-319 highway, which passes through one of the most preserved areas of the Amazon.
- Scientists warn the highway will create a “fishbone effect” of illegal side roads, fueling deforestation that could push the Amazon past a critical tipping point and trigger its irreversible conversion into a savanna.
- A recent congressional reform, labeled the “Devastation Bill” by activists, allows strategic projects like BR-319 to bypass full environmental reviews and shifts approval authority to a politically appointed council.
Arturo Gómez-Pompa, biologist who revealed the human history in “virgin” forests, has died, aged 90
In the steaming lowlands of Veracruz and the Yucatán, where strangler figs knot the canopy and howler monkeys bellow at dawn, a man with a field notebook kept noticing what others overlooked. Arturo Gómez-Pompa believed tropical forests were not untouched wilderness but “landscapes of memory,” shaped for millennia by Indigenous hands. Long before “biodiversity” became […]
The fate of flying rivers could decide Amazon ‘tipping point,’ report says
- The Amazon’s “tipping point” refers to the transition of the rainforest into a drier, savanna ecosystem. The rainforest’s ecological balance depends on the transport and recycling of moisture, but deforestation has been shown to disrupt the region’s water cycle.
- Moisture moves east to west, from the Atlantic Ocean across the Amazon Basin via what scientists call “aerial” or “flying rivers,” a critical mechanism in the region’s water cycle.
- A new report from Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Project identified areas of deforestation that disrupt these flying rivers from hundreds of miles away. It also found that not all parts of the Amazon have the same tipping point.
- The researchers stressed the need for regional, transboundary conservation efforts that account for varied threats in different parts of the Amazon.
Setting the record straight on Jurisdictional REDD+: The case of Brazil
- Jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+) has been a climate finance mechanism under the UN for nearly two decades. In Brazil, JREDD+ is a public policy approach developed by Brazilian federal and state governments to promote large-scale forest conservation and climate mitigation.
- Emission reductions are measured at the jurisdictional level—not tied to individual properties or collective territories—and generate carbon credits based on verified drops in deforestation and degradation.
- Participation is voluntary and protected by safeguards and law, ensuring communities, farmers, and local actors can opt in or out while retaining land and resource rights. JREDD+ enables access to climate finance from private and public sources, with benefits distributed to rural sectors and credits issued only after independent verification.
- The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
The mire of Brazil’s BR-319 highway: Deforestation, development, and the banality of evil (commentary)
- Brazil’s BR-319 highway project is moving inexorably forward toward approval and construction, with the individual actors in the different government agencies acting to fulfill their assigned duties despite the overall consequence being potentially disastrous for Brazil and for global climate.
- The bureaucratic system failure this represents was codified as the “banality of evil” by Hannah Arendt, a problem that applies to many bureaucracies around the world, resulting in major impacts for the environment.
- President Lula is in a position to act on behalf of the wider interests of Brazil, but so far, he has isolated himself in a “disinformation space” that excludes consideration of the overall impacts of BR-319 and other damaging proposals in the Amazon.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Animals that spread seeds are critical for climate solutions
- New research analyzing more than 3,000 tropical forest sites reveals that areas with fewer seed-dispersing animals store up to four times less carbon than forests with healthy wildlife populations.
- The study found that 81% of tropical trees rely on animals to disperse their seeds, establishing an ancient partnership now threatened by human activities such as deforestation, road construction, and hunting.
- Researchers mapped global “seed dispersal disruption” and found it explains a 57% reduction in carbon storage potential across proposed forest restoration areas.
- The findings demonstrate that protecting wildlife and addressing climate change are interconnected challenges, with conservation strategies like wildlife corridors and species reintroduction offering approaches that serve both biodiversity and climate stability.
Funding is needed to save Samoa’s ‘little dodo’ from extinction (commentary)
- Since 2014, Samoa’s “little dodo” has been listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List: related to the extinct dodo, an adult manumea, as it’s called locally, has not been photographed well in the wild, and its song has rarely been recorded.
- But an underfunded conservation effort led by the Samoa Conservation Society and the nation’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE) could still snatch this fascinating species from the extinction list, a new commentary argues.
- “In my view, a large-scale, multiyear forest conservation project funded by the Global Environment Facility and led by the MNRE is essential,” the author writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
New conservation area protects 53% of carbon in northern Peruvian Amazon
- Peru’s government has established the Medio Putumayo Algodón Regional Conservation Area in the Loreto region of the Amazon Rainforest.
- This new protected area holds 53% of Peru’s carbon stock, which will be conserved by preventing deforestation in the region.
- The regional conservation area covers more than 283,000 hectares of primary rainforest along the Putumayo River, which links Peru and Colombia.
- The area will benefit 16 Indigenous communities, including the Murui (Huitoto), Yagua, Ocaina, Kukama Kukamiria, Kichwa, Maijuna and Bora peoples.
Norway fund drops Eramet over Indonesia mine threatening forests, Indigenous tribe
- Norway’s $1.6 trillion government pension fund is divesting its $6.8 million stake in French miner Eramet after its ethics council found “unacceptable risk” of severe environmental damage and human rights violations at the PT Weda Bay Nickel mine the company operates in Halmahera, Indonesia.
- Weda Bay Nickel sits in the Wallacea Biodiversity Hotspot and has already cleared about 2,700 hectares (6,700 acres) of rainforest since 2019, far exceeding its plan, threatening endemic species and risking extinctions before they’re documented.
- Weda Bay Nickel sits in the Wallacea Biodiversity Hotspot and has already cleared about 2,700 hectares (6,700 acres) of rainforest since 2019, far exceeding its plan, threatening endemic species and risking extinctions before they’re documented.
- The case highlights growing investor scrutiny over whether nickel for electric vehicle batteries and other clean-energy technologies can be sourced without destroying tropical forests or violating Indigenous rights.
Meet the DJs of nature, inspired by biodiversity
- Technology has allowed electronic music artists endless possibilities for mixing and creating sounds.
- Some of these artists draw inspiration from nature and biodiversity, incorporating birdsong, rainforest soundscapes and the sounds of plant and animal species into their work.
- From Frankfurt, Germany, to the Peruvian Amazon, musicians are creating music that raises awareness about the beauty of biodiversity and how it is nowadays threatened.
Madagascar’s dry forests need attention, and Verreaux’s sifakas could help
- Western Madagascar is home to some of the country’s poorest communities and its most endangered wildlife, presenting intertwined challenges for conservation.
- The region’s characteristic dry forests have been badly damaged by clearing of land for shifting agriculture — and for mining, plantations and timber harvesting — over the past 50 years: Across Madagascar, nearly 60% of dry forest species are classed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.
- NGO leaders, scientists and government representatives are forming a dry forest alliance to better coordinate efforts to protect this valuable biome.
- Among the new alliance’s first actions was pushing for the inclusion of the critically-endangered Verreaux’s sifaka on the latest list of the World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates, which alliance members hope will attract greater attention to this primate’s threatened habitat.
The carbon market paradox: Steve Zwick on why financing forests is more complicated than it looks
- Steve Zwick’s career has traced the intersection of climate, finance, and media, from Chicago trading pits to international business reporting, Deutsche Welle, Ecosystem Marketplace, and now his Bionic Planet podcast and Carbon Paradox, where he focuses on clarifying the complexities of carbon markets and REDD+.
- He emphasizes that carbon markets are built on probabilities, not certainties, and criticizes both media and advocacy for flattening nuance into oversimplified verdicts. For him, methods evolve through revision, guardrails, and conservative accounting, with avoidance of deforestation often delivering the greatest climate impact.
- Zwick frames forest carbon as payment for services protecting a global commons, not charity, and insists that best practice must be community-led. He warns that skewed scrutiny and polarized narratives risk sidelining a tool that, while imperfect, can mobilize resources quickly until deeper emissions cuts take hold.
- Zwick was interview by Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler in September 2025.
Forests on Indigenous lands help protect health in the Amazon
Healthy forests are more than climate shields; in the Amazon, they also serve as public-health infrastructure. A Communications Earth & Environment study spanning two decades across the biome links the extent and legal status of Indigenous Territories to 27 respiratory, cardiovascular, and zoonotic or vector-borne diseases. The findings are complex, but one pattern is clear: […]
Park guardians or destroyers? Study dissects 2 narratives of DRC’s Indigenous Batwa
- A recent study looks at two polarized characterizations of Indigenous people in Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo: forest guardians vs. forest destroyers.
- The two narratives are rooted in colonial perspectives on the Batwa people who had lived inside the park until they were evicted in the 20th century; today, some Batwa populations have returned in an effort to try to rebuild their lives.
- Tensions remain between Batwa members who say they have faced broken promises and insufficient support from park management, but the park management team says it prioritizes Indigenous rights and efforts to improve livelihoods; meanwhile, the situation on the ground is changing amid renewed M23 rebel violence.
- Researchers say the overall situation is much more nuanced than the two narratives of forest guardians vs. destroyers allow for.
More than half the world’s forests fragmented in 20 years — but protection works: Study
- Large intact forests and connected landscapes support biodiversity and ecosystem processes.
- Globally, more than half of the world’s forests became more fragmented between 2000 and 2020, according to a new Science study, with the highest rates in the tropics.
- The study used new measures of fragmentation that more closely align with ecological functions and is higher than previous estimates of fragmentation rates.
- The study also finds that in the tropical forests, protected areas experienced much lower rates of fragmentation than similar unprotected forests.
Colombia’s Siona Indigenous guard faces landmines, violence around territory
- In the Buenavista and Santa Cruz de Piñuña Blanco reserves, two Indigenous leaders guard an ancestral legacy that armed conflict, landmines and the state’s uneven support threaten to erase.
- The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted protective measures in favor of the Indigenous Siona reserves of Buenavista and Piñuña Blanco. But seven years later, their leaders report noncompliance, militarization and ongoing threats in their territory.
- Widespread landmines have caused mass displacement, robbed people of their freedoms, and confined the Siona to their own forest.
- Siona communities are demanding the legal expansion of their ancestral territory, approximately 52,000 hectares (nearly 130,000 acres), as a guarantee of their physical, cultural and spiritual survival in the face of slow government support.
Americans’ love of RVs tied to destruction of orangutan habitat: Investigation
- Investigations by the NGOs Earthsight, Auriga Nusantara and Mighty Earth have found that plywood from forests cleared in Indonesian Borneo — including critical orangutan habitat — is ending up in U.S. RVs made by brands like Jayco, Winnebago and Forest River.
- Logs from a concession held by PT Indosubur Sukses Makmur were traced to plywood giant KLAM, then exported via U.S. intermediaries (MJB Wood, Tumac Lumber and Patrick Industries) into RV manufacturing supply chains.
- Indonesia allows legal clearing of natural forests, while the U.S. bans only illegal logging under the Lacey Act — creating a loophole that lets deforestation-linked wood enter supply chains unchecked.
- FSC-certified sustainable alternatives exist and would add as little as $20 to an RV’s price, but RV makers prioritize low costs, critics say; experts call for stronger Indonesian protections and U.S. deforestation-free import laws.
Isolated tribes under threat as Peru votes down Yavarí Mirim Indigenous Reserve
- The proposed Yavarí Mirim Indigenous Reserve would have protected an area a fifth the size of Ireland in the Peruvian Amazon, home to several Indigenous communities living in isolation.
- Last week, a government commission voted 8-5 against the proposal, despite ongoing threats against the Matsés, Matis, Korubo, Kulina-Pano and Flecheiro Indigenous peoples.
- A new study will have to be developed and proposed to the commission, which could take several more years, critics of the outcome said.
- In the meantime, they warned, forest concessions in the area could expand and groups tied to mining, logging and drug trafficking could force the isolated groups off the land.
Tropical bird numbers plummet due to more days of extreme heat, study finds
Tropical bird populations are crashing as temperatures soar. That’s according to a new study that found abundances of tropical birds were 25-38% lower than they would be without human-driven climate change and the rising temperatures it has caused. This temperature impact on birds is greater than declines attributed to deforestation. “It’s a staggering decrease. Birds […]
Guatemala closes oil field, increases security in Maya Biosphere Reserve
- Guatemala is converting the Xan oil field inside Laguna del Tigre National Park into a base for military and law enforcement operations, with special focus on protecting the rainforest from illegal activity.
- The oil field, operated by Anglo-French firm Perenco since 2001, produced between 5,000 and 7,000 barrels of crude oil a day, accounting for around 90% of national output.
- The government did not renew the concession, which ended in August, but Perenco will continue to operate a pipeline until 2044.
- Officials said they want to devote more funding and personnel to the Maya Biosphere Reserve, of which Laguna del Tigre is a part, and which loses thousands of hectares of rainforest every year to cattle ranching, agriculture and logging.
Where life has found its richest expression – Amazon Rainforest Day
Amazon Rainforest Day, first celebrated in 2008, aims to raise awareness about the importance of Earth’s largest rainforest. There is a place where the Amazon meets the Andes, where forests climb the lower slopes of mountains before giving way to the mists of the cloud forests. To stand there is to feel the weight of […]
Brazil can green its environmental crime-fighting in the Amazon (commentary)
- Brazil’s special operations unit known as the Grupo de Especialização de Fiscalização (GEF) targets destructive criminal groups involved in illegal gold mining in the Amazon, which encroaches on territories inhabited by Indigenous communities and releases heavy metals such as mercury into the environment.
- While GEF’s strikes against such operations are often effective in disrupting them, their methods can also be destructive, as they typically rely on burning mining equipment and infrastructure.
- A new op-ed argues that GEF should add environmental stewardship to its operations: “Fighting illegal gold mining cannot rely on destruction alone. Protecting the rainforest can mean transforming enforcement into a tool for healing.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Discovery of dazzling blue butterfly underscores peril facing Angola’s forests
- Scientists have described a new butterfly species, Francis’s gorgeous sapphire (Iolaus francisi), from Angola’s Namba Mountains, where its survival depends on mistletoe plants.
- High-altitude evergreen forests, known as Afromontane and covering about 590 hectares (1,460 acres) in the Namba Mountains, are the largest of their kind in Angola but remain without legal protection.
- Researchers warn that fires, timber harvesting, and especially unregulated farming could devastate the forests, as has happened at Kumbira, another Angolan Afromontane forest.
- Conservationists say community-led initiatives are key to protecting Namba, as Angola’s parliament moves to consider protected status for nearby Mount Moco, another Afromontane oasis.
Why is rainfall declining in the Amazon? New research says deforestation is the leading driver
- Deforestation in the Amazon has been identified as the main driver of declining rainfall, responsible for nearly three-quarters of the drop in dry-season precipitation since the mid-1980s.
- Between 1985 and 2020, dry-season rainfall fell by about 21mm annually, with 15.8mm linked to forest loss, while maximum daily temperatures rose by 2°C, about one-sixth of which was caused by deforestation.
- Amazonian trees generate more than 40% of the region’s rainfall through transpiration, and their removal disrupts local and regional weather, influencing monsoons and increasing drought risk far beyond the basin.
- If current deforestation trends persist, by 2035 the region could lose another 7mm of rainfall in the dry season and heat up by 0.6°C, pushing the Amazon toward a drier climate like the Cerrado or Caatinga.
‘Let’s understand the value of the forest’ says Liberia’s Silas Siakor
- Twenty-eight communities in southeastern Liberia are set to begin receiving “area-based payments” in exchange for preventing unsustainable logging and mining, curbing shifting agriculture and limiting the establishment of new settlements in forests they manage.
- A pilot project, designed by a Liberian NGO and backed by funding from the Irish government, will pay villagers to protect the forest over the next two years.
- Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo spoke to Goldman Prize-winner Silas Siakor about how the initiative responds to the immediate needs of this rural population.
Liberia has a new plan to protect its rainforests. Can it work?
- Half of West Africa’s remaining rainforests are in Liberia, but in 2024, it lost more than 38,000 hectares (94,000 acres) of humid primary forest, according to Global Forest Watch.
- That was the highest rate of deforestation recorded for Liberia, driven by trees being cleared for agriculture, mining and logging.
- A new pilot project being launched in Liberia’s remote southwest will make “area-based payments” to 28 communities in exchange for commitments to protect some of their customary forests.
- Designed by former Goldman Environmental Prize winner Silas Siakor, the project is an example of “non-market approaches” to carbon sequestration.
Despite pledge, Colombia still has ways to expand Amazon oil exploration
- The Colombian government has “shelved” some oil blocks in the Amazon, but they can be reactivated at any time, critics warn.
- Even though it promised to stop issuing new exploration licenses as part of its clean energy transition, the government still has the legal power to expand oil and gas production in the Amazon.
- A new analysis by Earth Insight, a nature and climate policy group, recommends that lawmakers pass legislation to formally recognize a ban on expanding oil and gas production in the Amazon.
As forest elephants plummet, ebony trees decline in Central Africa’s rainforests
- In the past three decades, poaching has decimated Africa’s now-critically endangered forest elephants, and as a result, their vital role as seed dispersers of many forest plants has been disrupted.
- A new study from Cameroon provides the first direct evidence that without forest elephants, there are fewer ebony saplings; on average, as few as 68%, in Central African rainforests.
- Researchers found that seeds pooped out in elephant dung have a better chance of surviving and sprouting as they are protected from hungry rodents and other herbivores that chew and destroy the seeds.
- The findings show that losing key ecosystem engineers and seed dispersers has far-reaching ecological and economic impacts, potentially altering entire ecosystems.
Brunei built Southeast Asia’s longest bridge. What does this mean for wildlife?
- The 26-kilometer (16-mile) Sultan Haji Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien (SOAS) Bridge, the longest bridge in Southeast Asia, connects remote eastern areas to the country’s urban capital, while facilitating access to forests teeming with unique biodiversity and protected species.
- Authors of a recent study spoke with locals to examine whether easier access to wildlife trade markets is influencing traditional hunting behaviors and practices.
- They found that hunting is still primarily driven by cultural and traditional purposes for consumption rather than to sell at markets, although these motivations are gradually declining.
- Locals noted that while the bridge offers better job prospects and income opportunities, they have also observed unusual wildlife movements and migration patterns since its construction.
Brazil’s Atlantic Forest still losing ‘large amounts’ of mature forest, despite legal protection
- Despite a federal protection law, Brazil’s Atlantic Forest lost a Washington, D.C.-sized area of mature forest every year between 2010 and 2020, with most of the deforestation occurring illegally on private lands for agriculture.
- The Atlantic Forest is a critical biodiversity hotspot that supports 70% of Brazil’s GDP while serving nearly three-quarters of the country’s population.
- Major agribusiness companies, including COFCO, Bunge and Cargill, have been identified as exposed to deforestation in their soybean supply chains, with agriculture and livestock farming driving most forest loss.
- Conservation success stories like the black lion tamarin’s recovery from near-extinction demonstrate that restoration is possible, with one project planting millions of seedlings and generating significant local employment.
Officials struggle with land invasions in Mexico’s Balam Kú Biosphere Reserve
- Around 450 people have crossed into Balam Kú Biosphere Reserve this year in Mexico’s southern state of Campeche, deforesting hundreds of hectares of dry tropical forest.
- The group is made up of people who relocated from the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Veracruz and other parts of Campeche, according to officials.
- Authorities want to remove the temporary settlements before illegal agriculture and cattle ranching spread into other parts of the reserve. So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.
Brazilian court restores Amazon soy moratorium, for now
A federal court in Brazil has reinstated the Amazon soy moratorium, a private-sector antideforestation measure that helps protect the Amazon Rainforest against the expansion of soy farms in the biome. The Aug. 25 ruling overturns a suspension issued last week by Brazil’s antitrust regulator, CADE, which had opened an investigation into claims that the two-decade-old […]
In Brazil, invaders set fires in Karipuna Indigenous land, leaders say
Indigenous leaders say land-grabbers are setting fires inside the Karipuna Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Rondônia state, in the northwest Amazon. The fires come less than one month after Indigenous leaders warned authorities about renewed invasions. Satellite monitoring detected more than 90 fire alerts in the territory between Aug. 14 and Aug. 25, according to an […]
Ecosystems as infrastructure: Tim Christophersen on how to rebuild humanity’s ties to nature
- Tim Christophersen argues that humanity’s crises of climate, biodiversity, and pollution stem from a fractured relationship with nature—one that cannot be abandoned, only repaired.
- He sees restoration as both urgent and possible: ecosystems, once given diversity and space, can recover quickly, offering resilience, carbon storage, and abundance.
- From UN diplomacy to corporate initiatives, he presses for treating ecosystems as essential infrastructure, requiring imagination, investment, and a “century of ecology” to secure civilization’s future.
- Christophersen was interviewed by Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler in August 2025.
Brazil suspends Amazon Soy Moratorium, raising fears of deforestation spike
Brazil’s antitrust regulator suspended a key mechanism for rainforest protection, the Amazon Soy Moratorium, on Aug. 18, less than three months before the nation hosts the COP30 climate summit. The Amazon Soy Moratorium is a 19-year-old voluntary private-sector agreement to not source soybeans from areas deforested after 2008 in the Brazilian Amazon. It is estimated […]
Global brands join drive for deforestation-free palm oil in Indonesia’s Aceh
- Major brands including Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever have launched the Aceh Sustainable Palm Oil Working Group to align with a new road map for deforestation-free palm oil in the Indonesian province.
- Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, is home to the Leuser Ecosystem and other critical habitats, but has lost nearly 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres) of forest since 2020, much of it driven by expansion of oil palm plantations.
- The initiative aims to boost the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, protect high conservation value forests, and help producers comply with new global rules like the EU Deforestation Regulation.
- While the plan has drawn international backing, civil society groups stress its success depends on ensuring accountability, transparency and sustained pressure to halt illegal deforestation.
Indonesia’s idle land problem
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Indonesia is defying the global trend in tropical deforestation. While forest loss in much of the tropics reached record highs in 2024, Indonesia’s rate fell by 14% compared with the previous year. Yet beneath this apparent success lies […]
How rain can reveal what lives in rainforest treetops
Perched high above the forest floor, the tropical canopy is a reservoir of biodiversity that has long resisted scrutiny. Its inaccessibility has left many of its inhabitants — orchids, epiphytes, ants, monkeys, frogs — poorly studied and poorly protected. But a new study offers a workaround: let the rain do the climbing. Scientists led by […]
Pulp and paper giant APP moves closer to regaining FSC stamp despite pending review
- The Forest Stewardship Council has allowed Asia Pulp & Paper — “one of the world’s most destructive forestry companies” — to resume its remedy process toward regaining certification it lost in 2007 for deforestation and land conflicts.
- Watchdog groups say the decision is premature because a legal review of APP’s links to Paper Excellence/Domtar, the biggest pulp and paper company in North America, is still unfinished.
- Critics warn the move could erode trust, enable greenwashing, and expose communities in conflict with APP-linked companies to further harm.
- NGOs are calling for the remedy process to be paused until the review is completed and for full transparency on corporate ownership and compliance.
Venezuela tries an environmental rebrand, but critics aren’t buying it
- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last month unveiled the Gran Misión Madre Tierra, or “Great Mother Earth Mission,” designed to address Venezuela’s climate emergency.
- The mission mandates the creation of new reforestation efforts, climate change adaptation and response programs, a national waste management initiative, and sustainable agricultural practices.
- But critics say the government’s renewed interest in environmental issues is a way to access climate financing and appease international partners.
- They say the mission strategically omits oil spills and illegal gold mining in protected areas — activities that government officials sometimes facilitate for personal benefit.
How Indonesian companies dodge fines for forest & peatland fires
- While Indonesia’s courts have fined plantation companies more than $21 trillion rupiah ($1.3 billion) for forest and peatland fires, almost none of that money has been collected.
- This fuels a cycle of impunity where fires continue to flare up in concessions already found guilty by court.
- In a common pattern, companies found guilty of burning forests either shield their assets, declare bankruptcy or exploit loopholes to avoid paying.
- Indonesia’s enforcement gaps also allow repeat offenders to continue operating unchecked, profiting from the very land they were banned from using.
World Orangutan Day: Ongoing threats & habitat loss haunt these great apes
Despite years of research into their complex behavior and intelligence, orangutans remain critically endangered on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where they’re endemic. Mongabay has extensively covered the threats they face from habitat degradation and what studies say about how human activities affect them. This World Orangutan Day, on Aug. 19, we take a […]
US proposes threatened listing for widely trafficked Borneo earless monitor
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recently proposed listing the Borneo earless monitor, an elusive lizard endemic to the Southeast Asian island of Borneo, as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Borneo earless monitors (Lanthanotus borneensis) are illegally trafficked for the international pet trade. Finalizing the threatened listing would prohibit the import, export and […]
What’s at stake for the environment in Bolivia’s upcoming elections?
- Bolivians will go to the polls on Aug. 17 to vote for a new president, vice president and 166 combined members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.
- Polls suggest that conservative candidates Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga and Samuel Doria Medina have the best chance of winning, with a focus on economic recovery rather than the environment.
- Their policies will determine the future of the lithium industry, illegal gold mining and forest loss in the Amazon and Chiquitania.
Will we still eat beef in 50 years?
- Beef production contributes to numerous global crises, from climate change to habitat destruction to biodiversity loss.
- Big conservation NGOs have worked fervently to combat these crises, and many also have programs to encourage more sustainable ranching practices.
- Proponents of “regenerative ranching” and similar approaches that involve rotational grazing and other strategies say these practices have benefits for preserving grassland habitats, encouraging the diversity of birds, wildlife and grasses that live on these ranches and sequestering carbon in their soils.
- But many conservationists also contend that the world must reduce the number of cattle on the planet and find other sources of protein.
Brazil’s Forestry Code seeks to strengthen forest conservation, but controversies remain
- Suffering repeated changes, Brazil’s Forest Code regulates protected areas and forest management on private property, as well as commercialization of forest products.
- If a landholder exceeds the legally permitted area eligible for conversion, they are legally required to restore the forest to meet the Code’s requirements.
- In 2012, the Forest Code was modified to lessen restoration requirements under certain circumstances and freed landholders of liability for any fines or damages linked to forest clearing prior to 2008.
NASA satellites show surge in Indonesia hotspots as 2025 fires send smoke to Malaysia
- NASA satellite data show a dramatic uptick in fire hotspots across Indonesia, with smoke from Sumatra detected in Malaysia in late July.
- The July spike follows early warning signs in May and June, with most fires detected in peatlands and fire-prone agricultural areas, raising alarms over worsening air quality, public health, and environmental damage.
- Activists warn the 2025 fire season could be one of the worst in recent memory, rivaling past disaster years.
- The crisis unfolds a decade after Indonesia’s 2015 fire disaster, which burned 2.6 million hectares, caused an estimated 100,000 premature deaths, and triggered a regional haze crisis affecting Singapore and Malaysia.
Unrestricted funding is key for frontline conservation groups: Mongabay podcast
The U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) works to link funders with community-based conservation groups, ensuring that much-needed resources are reaching the frontlines. In a Mongabay Newscast episode in July, Jean-Gaël “JG” Collomb, CEO of WCN, advocates for giving more unrestricted funding to local groups who know the environment best, allowing them to decide how to […]
Borneo killing linked to coal industry stays unsolved as Indonesia VP visits Dayak village
- On Nov. 15, 2024, two Indigenous men were attacked before dawn at a checkpoint in Muara Kate, a roadside hamlet in East Kalimantan province, established by the local population to enforce a ban on mining vehicles using local roads. This community decision followed the death of a young pastor a month earlier in an accident with a coal truck.
- Police have questioned staff from coal miner PT Mantimin Coal Mining in connection with the case, but at the time of writing, authorities had yet to name any suspects in connection with the November murder.
- In June, Indonesia Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka visited the community where the killing took place; an aide to the vice president said a report would be made to President Prabowo Subianto.
- Killing of environmental defenders in Indonesia is rare compared with countries like Brazil and the Philippines, but political scientists say democratic conditions in Indonesia have been eroded in the past decade.
The case for hope in environmental journalism
I often return to this image, which I took in 2022 in Jambi, Indonesia. At first glance, it seems to capture something hopeful: a full-circle rainbow arcing over a lush green landscape. But look closer, and you’ll see what lies beneath the beauty: a vast oil palm plantation, carved out of what was once native […]
Indigenous alliance unveils Brazil’s first Native-led emissions strategy
Brazil’s largest Indigenous organization has launched the country’s first Native-led strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on Aug. 9. The idea is for the plan to be incorporated into the Brazilian government’s own emissions reduction plan, the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which the country updates and […]
Who is clearing Indonesia’s forests — and why?
- Most tropical countries are experiencing record-high deforestation rates, but in Indonesia, forest loss is slowing.
- But nearly half of the forest cleared in 2024 can’t be linked to an identifiable driver, raising red flags about speculative land clearing, regulatory blind spots and delayed environmental harm.
- Land is often cleared but not immediately used; research shows that nearly half of deforested lands in Indonesia remain idle for more than five years.
- Experts say these trends signal regulatory failure, as the government issues permits widely and concession holders face few consequences for clearing forest and abandoning the land, creating a cycle of destruction without accountability.
Formalizing small-scale gold mining can reduce environmental impacts & crime (commentary)
- Small-scale gold mining provides more jobs than any other mining sector, yet it’s also the world’s largest source of mercury pollution, a major driver of tropical deforestation, and its informal nature breeds organized crime and corruption.
- One proposed solution to these ills is investment in centralized gold processing plants — which are already operating in nations like Peru and Tanzania — because they use less toxic techniques to extract the ore, while reducing the prevalence of criminal networks in the industry.
- The next international climate summit, COP30, which will be hosted in Brazil’s Amazon, offers a strategic opportunity to put the gold mining issue squarely on the international agenda, a new op-ed argues: “Gold’s glitter will not fade, but if mined without reform, it will continue costing the world its forests, its rivers, and its security.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
How urban greening is helping Singapore bounce back from widespread forest loss
Singapore, the smallest country in Southeast Asia, lost most of its original forest cover in the early 1800s to agriculture. But since the 1960s, when Singapore began pursuing urban greening initiatives, Singapore has greened 47% of its spaces, according to an episode of Mongabay’s podcast published in July. Speaking with host Mike DiGirolamo, Anuj Jain, […]
Lúcio Flávio Pinto: The Brazilian reporter who wouldn’t be bought or silenced
- For nearly six decades, Lúcio Flávio Pinto has reported fearlessly from the Brazilian Amazon, chronicling land grabs, illegal logging, and environmental destruction while refusing to be silenced or swayed by power or money.
- After leaving Pará’s dominant newspaper in 1987, he launched Jornal Pessoal, a fiercely independent, ad-free newsletter funded solely by subscriptions, modeled after I.F. Stone’s Weekly.
- Pinto has faced physical assaults, death threats, 33 lawsuits, and judicial harassment—including a criminal conviction—yet has remained rooted in Belém, documenting the Amazon’s unraveling when others fled or fell silent.
- Now in his seventies, Pinto’s memoir Como me tornei um amazônida reflects a life devoted not to advocacy, but to truth as a form of reverence—undaunted by the odds, still trying to write a different ending for the forest he loves.
Invasion intensifies on Karipuna Indigenous land in the Brazilian Amazon
Illegal invasions in the Karipuna Indigenous Territory in the northwest of the Brazilian Amazon have started to advance again, Karipuna leaders told Mongabay following an alert by global nonprofit Survival International. “This year has been very difficult because there are a lot of people on our territory,” André Karipuna, the chief of the Karipuna people, […]
Cocoa boom fuels new wave of deforestation in Cameroon
Once threatened by palm oil and loggers, Cameroon’s forests now face a new driver of deforestation: booming cacao production to supply the European market. A new report by the environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth finds deforestation in Cameroon has accelerated, with the country losing around 782,000 hectares (1.9 million acres), or 4.2% of its forest […]
Indonesian farmers plant hope for isolated Javan gibbons
In Indonesia’s Central Java province, two groups of Javan gibbons have become isolated in two small forest patches. To help the gibbons make their way to larger forest areas, a local NGO, SwaraOwa, is working with farmers in the region to restore and build “corridors” that would connect the fragmented forest blocks, Mongabay reported in […]
Uncovering forest loss in gorilla park six months after M23 offensive in the DRC
- Six months since M23 armed rebels took control of provincial capitals in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local activists and satellite imagery collected by Mongabay have identified sites of expanding forest loss in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
- Researchers say this is due to collapsing conservation efforts, lack of park monitoring, and massive logging and charcoal production inside the national park. While M23 and other militias don’t produce the charcoal directly, they profit by taxing its transport and trade.
- Activists who have denounced the illegal exploitation have been harassed, attacked, or even killed. Some, like Josue Aruna, have been forced into hiding or exile after facing death threats.
- On July 19, the DRC government and M23 signed a ceasefire agreement, with conservationists saying they hope this will create conditions for restoring security in the area and halt the destruction of the rainforest.
Indigenous leadership and science revive Panama’s degraded lands
Two Indigenous groups in Panama are collaborating with researchers in a long-term reforestation project that promises them income in return for growing native trees for carbon sequestration, Mongabay contributor Marlowe Starling reported in May. As part of the project, researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) have partnered with the local leadership in the […]
Arboreal camera traps reveal wildlife feasting on Borneo’s fruiting fig trees
Camera traps installed high in the rainforest canopy in Malaysian Borneo have filmed a bounty of threatened primates, hornbills and a host of tree-dwelling animals feasting on figs. Biologists from Malaysia-based nonprofit 1StopBorneo Wildlife, along with Sabah Parks and local conservationists, scaled two enormous fig trees in Tawau Hills National Park in Sabah state to […]
As Indonesia reclaims forests from palm oil, smallholders bear brunt of enforcement
- Indonesian authorities have reclaimed 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of forest from illegal oil palm plantations under a militarized crackdown, but critics say it disproportionately targets Indigenous communities and smallholders while sparing large corporations, deepening land inequality.
- Much of the reclaimed land is being handed over to state-owned plantation company PT Agrinas Palma Nusantara, raising concerns that private monopolies are being replaced by a state one, with some communities pushed into profit-sharing schemes critics call exploitative.
- In biodiversity-rich Tesso Nilo National Park, thousands of families are being forcibly evicted, while powerful figures like a local legislator evade sanctions, highlighting a two-tiered policing system.
- Activists are calling for a new forestry law to address outdated legislation, protect Indigenous land rights, mandate ecological restoration, and close legal loopholes that allow corporate violators to avoid accountability.
Peruvian rainforest defender shot dead in suspected targeted killing
Environmental activist Hipólito Quispe Huamán was shot and killed Saturday night in the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru, in what authorities suspect was a targeted attack linked to his work defending the Amazon rainforest, AFP reports. Quispe Huamán was driving along the Interoceanic Highway when he was gunned down, according to local prosecutors. […]
‘Insignificant risk’ EUDR proposal threatens fight against deforestation, critics say
- Some European Union officials want to simplify a section of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the bloc’s landmark law that seeks to eliminate commodities associated with deforestation.
- A European Parliament proposal wants to reconsider a benchmarking system that categorizes trading partners into high, standard and low deforestation risk.
- Supporters of the proposal say EUDR rules are still too complicated for producers, while environmental groups say the world’s forests can’t afford further delays.
Where there’s political will, there’s a way to stop tropical deforestation, study finds
- A study focused on why deforestation rates have slowed in Indonesia and the Brazilian Amazon revealed that political will was a critical factor, often as a result of pressure from civil society and diplomacy to conserve forests.
- The authors surveyed the expert opinions of researchers, policymakers and advocates working on forest conservation in Brazil or Indonesia.
- In Brazil, experts said government action — like satellite monitoring and recognizing Indigenous lands — was key to stopping deforestation.
- Indonesia’s forest conservation success comes not just from political will, but also from corporate efforts and pressure from civil society groups.
Indonesian palm oil company sues experts who helped secure $18m pollution ruling
- Two top Indonesian environmental experts, Bambang Hero Saharjo and Basuki Wasis, are being sued by palm oil firm PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri for their court testimony that helped convict the company for massive fires in Borneo.
- The lawsuit is widely condemned as a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) — a legal tactic to silence critics — and raises concerns about the chilling effect on scientists who testify in environmental cases.
- Despite existing anti-SLAPP regulations in Indonesia, poor enforcement has allowed such lawsuits to proceed, with activists calling the case a form of judicial harassment and an attempt to evade responsibility for ecological damage.
- The case highlights broader issues of corporate impunity and weak enforcement of environmental rulings, as the company continues to operate and burn peatland, even after a binding court order to pay fines and restore the land.
Ecuador’s new protected areas law sparks debate over security, development
- A new law on protected areas in Ecuador is designed to improve security, funding and economic development in the country’s 78 protected areas.
- It creates a new service to oversee management decisions and a trust to generate funding for protected areas, while mandating increased technical training for park rangers.
- It also strengthens partnerships with law enforcement and the military.
- Critics of the law say it militarizes the country’s protected areas and erodes the autonomy of local and Indigenous communities.
Mongabay journalist Karla Mendes wins 2025 Oakes Award for environmental journalism
Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes has won the 2025 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, announced on July 23. Her investigation in the Brazilian Amazon uncovered a direct connection between the expansion of the cattle industry in Maranhão state and an increase in violent crime against the inhabitants of the state’s Arariboia Indigenous Territory. […]
Nickel boom on an Indonesian island brings toxic seas, lost incomes, report says
- Nickel mining on Indonesia’s Kabaena Island has polluted the sea, degraded forests and disrupted the lives of Indigenous Bajau fishers and farmers, who have reported severe drops in income, fish catches and seaweed quality.
- The mining has harmed biodiversity, threatening leatherback turtle nesting sites and the island’s unique long-tailed macaques, while also causing health issues among locals, including skin and respiratory problems, according to a report by NGOs.
- Affected communities report land seizures without proper consultation or compensation, limited public participation, and criminalization of protests, all in violation of Indigenous rights and national laws.
- The report ties the mining firms to political elites and global EV supply chains, including alleged links to Tesla and Ford, and calls for mining permit audits, stronger protections for affected communities and full accountability from companies.
An aging leopard’s suffering sparks ethical debate in Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka, the fate of an aging, injured leopard, well-loved by tourists, has triggered a debate. Wildlife enthusiasts are urging authorities to help the leopard, named Neluma, in Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka’s largest protected area. However, wildlife officials and conservationists are against intervening and providing veterinary support, Mongabay contributor Malaka Rodrigo reported in […]
Hope and frustration as Indonesia pilots FSC’s logging remedy framework
- Indonesia is the first test case for the Forest Stewardship Council’s new remedy framework, which allows logging firms to regain ethical certification by addressing past environmental and social harms.
- However, NGOs have found serious flaws in the process, including lack of consent, rushed assessments, and exclusion of many affected Indigenous communities.
- The process also faces backlash over poor transparency, intimidation of Indigenous rights activist, and allegations of undisclosed corporate ties to ongoing deforestation.
- Some communities see the framework as a rare chance to reclaim land and rights — but only if it becomes truly fair and accountable.
From deforestation to renewal: Why reforestation isn’t just about trees
- Sociologist Thomas Rudel explores the social and political forces behind global reforestation, arguing that forest regrowth is rarely automatic and often depends on human decisions and local conditions.
- He critiques top-down climate pledges for failing to engage with smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities, who are frequently the key actors in both forest loss and recovery.
- Rudel highlights the importance of “corporatist coalitions” that link global funders with grassroots actors, enabling more flexible and locally effective forest restoration efforts.
- Rudel spoke with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler in July 2025.
Landmark Indigenous land title in Ecuador protected area still in limbo
- Twenty months after a landmark court ruling granted the Siekopai Nation land rights within a protected Amazon area, the Ecuadorian government has yet to issue the official title, with sources citing legal issues, government hesitancy and intercommunity conflicts.
- Tensions have escalated between the Siekopai and the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha communities, which both claim ancestral ties to the land, with reported incidents of violence and a lack of compromise.
- Some critics say the conflict stems from improper agreements made by the state without adequate consultation and that or a growing scarcity of land in the Amazon.
- Indigenous leaders and experts call for greater government accountability, improved mediation and potentially a jointly managed protected area to resolve the dispute and prevent similar conflicts in other regions of the country.
Landmark Indigenous land title in Ecuadorian Amazon reserve mired in controversy
- A 2023 court ruling granted land rights in Ecuador’s Cuyabeno Reserve to the Siekopai people, recognizing their ancestral ties and setting a precedent for Indigenous land claims in protected areas.
- The decision has sparked controversy, as it affects the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha, another Indigenous people with ties to the same land and a government agreement.
- The case has raised broader concerns about inter-Indigenous conflict, the role of NGOs and the limits of state agreements in resolving overlapping land claims.
- Many Indigenous leaders argue that land titling is essential but warn that current legal approaches risk intensifying disputes rather than promoting shared stewardship.
Indigenous groups debate use of land agreements in Ecuador’s protected areas
- The Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community lost some of the land it had been managing in the Cuyabeno Reserve under an agreement with the Ecuadorian government when the Siekopai Nation was awarded a land title in a 2023 court case.
- While these agreements have allowed Indigenous communities to manage ancestral lands in protected areas, critics argue they offer limited autonomy and can favor the government.
- Land titles provide greater self-determination and legal permanence for Indigenous communities, though some argue they could impact conservation efforts in protected areas.
- Some Indigenous leaders worry that the case could have side effects that aggravate disputes over ancestral land claims and undermine their own agreements, while others highlight that it’s an opportunity for communities to obtain firmer land rights.
Tropical forest roots show strain as changes aboveground filter below
- Tropical forest plant roots have not received as much research attention as aboveground vegetation. This knowledge gap affects our understanding of how rainforests adapt to change, including their ability to capture and store atmospheric carbon.
- An emerging field of research is looking at how root systems respond to global change. New evidence dramatically underlines the outsized importance of tropical forests in the global carbon cycle. Tropical forests represent one of the world’s largest carbon sinks, largely thanks to plant roots, which add carbon to soils.
- Despite the challenge of studying tiny roots hidden underground, researchers are uncovering important insights. Some tropical forests send roots deeper into the soil under dry conditions, possibly seeking moisture, which may aid in drought tolerance. Others seem unable to do this, making them more vulnerable to climate change.
- Recent plant root studies are confirming the immense stress tropical rainforests are under, with conditions changing faster than roots belowground can adapt. Knowing more precisely which forests can, and can’t, tolerate escalating climate change and other stressors could better inform management and conservation decisions.
‘Revolutionary technology’ uses scanners for easier species detection in the wild
Researchers in Brazil’s Amazonas state are testing easy-to-use scanners that can help them identify animal species they come across in the wild, Mongabay contributor Miguel Monteiro reported in June. The scanners use a technology called near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which currently has many applications, from measuring food quality to monitoring blood oxygen levels in the medical […]
Ecuador’s government promised same land in the Amazon to two Indigenous peoples
- A court in Ecuador ordered the delivery of a property title within the Cuyabeno Reserve to the Siekopai Nation, intensifying a long-simmering dispute with the Kichwa de Zancudo Cocha community, which also has claims to the land.
- The ruling challenges an existing 2008 land and conservation agreement between the Kichwa community and the environment ministry, with the former set on armed resistance.
- Some observers argue that the government’s failure to properly consult all affected groups before signing land agreements has fueled this dispute.
- Indigenous people are calling for a peaceful resolution of the conflict amid growing concerns that the ruling could impact other land agreements and intensify Indigenous land conflicts in Ecuador’s Amazon.
Attack on Indigenous land defenders in Peru reveals snags in protection system
- In April 2025, members of the community forest monitoring committee from the Kakataibo Indigenous community in Peru’s Mariscal Cáceres province were attacked while patrolling their ancestral territory.
- Organizations that support environmental defenders have criticized the slow response and lack of action from the Intersectoral Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.
- For several months, emails and formal requests for meetings and other forms of support have gone unanswered.
- According to the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, between April 2021 and April 2025, the Intersectoral Mechanism registered 706 human rights defenders and 64 of their family members.
What’s holding back natural climate solutions?
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Natural climate solutions, or NCS, range from reforestation and agroforestry to wetland restoration, and have long been championed as low-cost, high-benefit pathways for reducing greenhouse gases. In theory, they could provide more than a third of the climate […]
Iconic Brazil nut crop plunges after extreme drought, skyrocketing prices
- Communities in the Amazon reported severe cuts of up to 80% of Brazil nut crops, with some territories collecting “not even a single nut.”
- The nut tree, which can live up to 800 years, is crucial for forest economies and ecosystems, but is increasingly vulnerable to extreme climate events, such as the historic droughts of 2023 and 2024.
- Sold worldwide, the Brazil nut’s price soared fourfold, prompting experts to warn of market instability if buyers abandon it, urging recognition of their ecological value and continued inclusion in product lines.
Inside Panama’s gamble to save the Darién
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In the dense, humid expanse of the Darién Gap — a forbidding swath of rainforest bridging Panama and Colombia — a tentative transformation is underway. Once synonymous with lawlessness and unchecked migration, this biologically rich frontier is now […]
Why is Lula still silent on Brazil’s ‘Bill of devastation?’ (commentary)
- A bill that would essentially eliminate Brazil’s environmental licensing system is moving rapidly toward approval by a large anti-environmental majority in Congress.
- An amendment has been added to the bill allowing “strategic” projects, such as the mouth-of-the-Amazon oilfields and the BR-319 highway, to get accelerated licensing with a deadline for approval, after which approval would be automatic.
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has not supported his environment minister in opposing the bill, and has not mobilized his supporters in Congress to push against it.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Forest connectivity key to preserving PNG’s spectacular rainforest birds: Study
- Papua New Guinea is a global hotspot of avian biodiversity, home to spectacular and behaviorally complex bird species that occur nowhere else on the planet.
- A new study shows that forest fragmentation reduces unique forest-specialist birds, but boosts generalist species like pigeons, sunbirds and bulbuls.
- Birds suffered greater declines in habitats cut off from the surrounding landscape, compared to degraded habitats that remained connected to nearby intact forests.
- The shift in the bird community in degraded and isolated habitats undermines ecosystem stability and resilience, as birds that once performed vital pollination, seed dispersal and insect control services are lost.
From apps to Indigenous guardians: Ways we can save rainforests
Deforestation figures can be frustrating to look at, but there are a number of success stories when it comes to protecting tropical forests that we can learn from, Crystal Davis, global program director at the World Resources Institute, says in a recent Mongabay video. “We know what works. We know how to do it,” Davis […]
Young secondary forests may be the planet’s most overlooked carbon sink
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. As governments and corporations scramble to meet climate pledges, the search for reliable and scalable carbon removal strategies has turned increasingly toward forests. But while tree planting captures the public imagination, a new study suggests a simpler, less […]
The guardians of the Amazon who work without pay — or fear
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a corner of the rainforest where Colombia meets Peru and Brazil, the hum of chainsaws and gunfire never quite dies. Yet, in the shadows of this long emergency, a subtler resistance endures. Its frontline is marked not […]
Mongabay India podcast ‘Wild Frequencies’ wins audio reporting award
Mongabay India won an excellence in audio reporting award recently from the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA). The award was for the limited series podcast Wild Frequencies. SOPA, which promotes best practices and excellence in journalism, announced the winners of its 2025 Awards of Editorial Excellence during a ceremony in Hong Kong on June […]
Peru’s Indigenous aguaje harvesters turn to sustainability, but challenges remain
Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon are working to revive populations of the aguaje palm tree, commercially valued for its fruits, by shifting to more sustainable harvesting practices, Mongabay’s Aimee Gabay reported in April. The reptilian-looking fruits of the aguaje palm tree (Mauritia flexuosa) are consumed raw or used as an ingredient in beverages, soap, […]
Endangered primates use new canopy bridges in a Brazilian Amazon city
Hundreds of monkeys can now safely cross roads in Alta Floresta, a city in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Seven canopy bridges have reconnected rainforest fragments that were separated by urban roads. Camera traps have recorded more than 3,000 crossings by canopy-dwelling wildlife, an average of more than 12 a day, since October 2024, when the […]
104 companies linked to 20% of global environmental conflicts, study finds
A recent study has found that just 104 companies, mostly multinational corporations from high-income countries, are involved in a fifth of the more than 3,000 environmental conflicts it analyzed. The study examined 3,388 conflicts, involving 5,589 companies, recorded in the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas) as of October 2024. The atlas is the world’s […]
Indigenous guards: The shield of Colombia’s Amazon
- For years, using organization and collaboration, unarmed guards in Colombia have acted as protective barriers of territories, the environment and communities.
- These days, the guards combine their traditional knowledge with monitoring technology, such as GPS and satellite imagery, so the data can be used by government entities.
- Working to protect their territory has put them in danger: Between 2014 and 2024, at least 70 Indigenous guardians have been killed in Colombia.
- A team of journalists tracked five cases in the Colombian departments of Amazonas, Putumayo and Guainía to get a firsthand look at these defense processes and the risks Indigenous guardians face.
Meatpacking giant JBS debuts on NYSE six months after $5m Trump donation
JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 13, just six months after its U.S. subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride, made a $5 million donation to Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, the single largest contribution to the event. The Brazil-founded company has sought a U.S. listing for more than a […]
Panama boosts protections in the Darién Gap, but deforestation threats still loom
- Panama is pouring new resources into protecting Darién, a remote province where the rugged, nearly impenetrable jungle provides cover for migrants, drug traffickers, illegal loggers, miners and cattle ranchers.
- Dozens of park guards have been hired and trained with new technology, and officials are working on implementing stricter regulations for logging and agribusiness.
- New roads and bridges will bring investment, access to education and health care to hard-to-reach communities, but they could also attract an influx of people ready to cut down the forest.
- As more people arrive to the region, the agricultural frontier pushes closer to the limits of the park, raising concerns among rangers about how they will defend it in years to come.
Protecting the Darién Gap: Interview with Panama national parks director Luis Carles Rudy
- Mongabay spoke with Panama’s national director of protected areas, Luis Carles Rudy, about the ongoing environmental challenges in Darién National Park.
- The park covers around 575,000 hectares (1.42 million acres) of rainforest at the southern border, but has been a popular spot for criminal groups for the last several decades, and more recently illegal mining operations and migrants coming from South America.
- Carles Rudy told Mongabay about new rangers and technology that will help protect the park, but said there still aren’t efficient solutions to encroaching agribusiness and migrant waste.
UN calls out Indonesia’s Merauke food estate for displacing Indigenous communities
- U.N. special rapporteurs have raised concerns that Indonesia’s food estate project in Merauke district is displacing Indigenous communities, clearing forests without consent, and using military forces to suppress dissent, threatening more than 50,000 Indigenous people.
- They point to deforestation of more than 109,000 hectares (269,000 acres), loss of biodiversity, and violations of Indigenous rights, including lack of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and intimidation by military forces.
- The Indonesian government has rejected the allegations, claiming compliance with national laws, and saying the project boosts food security and that Indigenous rights and environmental safeguards are respected — despite civil society calling these claims misleading.
- NGOs are urging stronger U.N. monitoring, a fact-finding mission, and genuine FPIC processes, warning that the project risks erasing Papuan Indigenous culture while facilitating corporate land grabs.
Half a million hectares of rainforest were saved — in part thanks to journalism
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a packed event held in Palo Alto, California, at the end of SF Climate Week in April, Willie Shubert, the vice president of programs and executive editor at Mongabay, shared a compelling example of how Mongabay’s journalism […]
Trump administration plans to rescind rule blocking logging on national forest lands
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The Trump administration plans to rescind a nearly quarter-century-old rule that blocked logging on national forest lands. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Monday that the 2001 roadless rule from the last days of the Clinton administration impeded road construction and timber production that would have reduced the risk of major […]
Nine takeaways on Brazil’s crackdown on illegal mining in Munduruku lands
Mongabay published a five-part series delving into Brazil’s ongoing operation to evict illegal gold miners from Munduruku Indigenous territories, deep in the Amazon Rainforest. While there has been some disruption to mining in the region, Munduruku organizations told Mongabay the operation is not yet completely successful, with small groups of illegal miners, or garimpeiros, still […]
On World Rainforest Day, the world confronts an unprecedented wave of tropical forest loss
- Record-breaking forest loss in 2024: Tropical primary rainforest loss surged to 6.7 million hectares—nearly double the previous year—driven primarily by fire for the first time on record.
- Latin America bore the brunt: Brazil accounted for 42% of global tropical forest loss, while Bolivia saw a staggering 200% increase; Colombia experienced rising deforestation linked to land grabs and coca cultivation.
- Global implications intensify: Fires also ravaged boreal forests, pushing fire-related emissions to 4.1 gigatons—more than quadruple the emissions from global air travel in 2023. With just five years left to meet global deforestation pledges, halting forest loss will require urgent political action, strong governance, and leadership from Indigenous communities.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
World Rainforest Day and the state of Earth’s most vital rainforests
June 22 marks World Rainforest Day, launched in 2017 by Rainforest Partnership to highlight the critical role of tropical forests. These ecosystems stabilize the climate, regulate rainfall, store vast amounts of carbon, and support most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity. Yet despite their importance, 2024 proved to be a devastating year. Fires ravaged millions of […]
On World Rainforest Day, stories of Amazon danger and resistance
Rainforests are among the most critical ecosystems on Earth. Home to roughly half of all terrestrial species, they provide oxygen and habitat, and help regulate regional rain and weather patterns. In honor of World Rainforest Day on June 22, we look at two recent Mongabay investigations that shed light on the challenges and triumphs in […]
In Peru, Yine women show how defending the Amazon supports local livelihoods
- Women from the Yine Indigenous community in Peru are working to harvest and process the seeds of the murumuru, a native Amazonian palm tree.
- The community of Monte Salvado, where many Yine people live, borders the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve and Alto Purús National Park, two areas that are often traversed by Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.
- Community leaders warn that illegal loggers have been destroying the forests of these isolated communities, forcing them to travel to the Yine people’s communal lands to seek food and help.
- Families in Monte Salvado earn their income through the sustainable collection and processing of Brazil nuts and murumuru seeds, and by selling handicrafts made from the seeds.
Wildfires push tropical forest loss in Latin America to record highs
- Recent data from the University of Maryland show the tropics lost 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) of primary rainforest in 2024 — nearly double the loss of 2023 and the highest on record.
- Six Latin American countries were in the top 10 nations for primary tropical forest loss.
- In the Amazon, forest loss more than doubled from 2023 to 2024, with more than half the result of wildfires. Other key drivers include agricultural expansion and criminal networks that increasingly threaten the region through gold mining, drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
- Fire was the leading driver of forest loss (49.5%), destroying 2.84 million hectares (7 million acres) of forest cover in Brazil, Bolivia and Mexico alone.
Protect one large forest, or many small ones? New study reignites conservation debate
- The scientific community has been divided since the 1970s as to which sort of forest offers more protection for biodiversity: a set of many small patches of forest, or a single large tract?
- A newly published study has rekindled the debate, backing the thesis that large expanses of green space are more important for species conservation, particularly for larger animals that require a more extensive range.
- The debate could help policymakers better direct conservation efforts and funding, but researchers agree that all standing forest, regardless of size, must be protected.
Pandemic-era slump in ivory and pangolin scale trafficking persists, report finds
- A recent report from the Wildlife Justice Commission analyzed trends in ivory and pangolin scales trafficking from Africa over the past decade using seizure data and found that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted the illegal trade, with fewer significant seizures reported post-pandemic.
- The report attributes this dip to pandemic-induced lockdowns, increased law enforcement and intelligence gathering, successful prosecutions, and declines in the prices of ivory and pangolin scales.
- While Nigeria has been a major export hub for both commodities, the report finds that trafficking hotspots are shifting to other countries such as Angola and Mozambique, which have historically been hubs of the rhino horn trade.
- The report recommends that African nations strengthen law enforcement and intelligence gathering, dismantle crime networks by targeting those at the top tiers of these networks, and foster better cooperation between countries and other organizations to address trafficking.
Artificial nests help a rare Brazilian parrot bounce back
Brazil’s red-tailed amazon parrot is a rare success story for reviving a species heading toward extinction, Mongabay Brasil’s Xavier Bartaburu reports. By the end of the 20th century, the population of the red-tailed amazon (Amazona brasiliensis) had dwindled to fewer than 5,000 individuals in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, one of the most endangered biomes in the […]
Mounting risks due to climate change threaten Sri Lanka’s endemic species
- Sri Lanka’s isolation during past glacial cycles resulted in the evolution of unique species, but ongoing human-induced climate change now poses a major threat to their survival.
- Using species distribution models, researchers have discovered that montane amphibians and reptiles that are particularly restricted to narrow ecological niches with limited mobility are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures.
- Species with direct development, like many Pseudophilautus frogs, which bypass the tadpole stage, are especially sensitive to microclimate changes.
- Of the 34 amphibian species confirmed extinct worldwide, 21 were endemic to Sri Lanka, underscoring the island’s fragility and the urgent need for targeted conservation efforts.
No respite for Indonesia’s Raja Ampat as nickel companies sue to revive mines
- Three companies are suing the Indonesian government to be allowed to mine for nickel in the Raja Ampat archipelago, a marine biodiversity hotspot, Greenpeace has revealed.
- The finding comes after the government’s recent revocation of four other mining permits in the area, following a public outcry over environmental damage and potential zoning violations.
- At the same time, the government is also encouraging the development of a nickel processing plant nearby, raising concerns this could fuel pressure to reopen canceled mines to supply the smelter.
- Greenpeace has called for a total mining ban across Raja Ampat and for an end to the smelter project to ensure the conservation of the archipelago’s unique ecosystems and biodiversity.
It’s time to pay the true value of tropical forest conservation (commentary)
- Conserving the world’s tropical forests requires large-scale and predictable finance, a new op-ed by Brazilian officials argue in making their case for the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a finance regime that will be discussed at this year’s U.N. climate summit (COP30) in their nation.
- The TFFF would pay a fixed price per hectare of tropical forest conserved or restored, providing positive incentives aligned with national fiscal planning via a funding model that blends public investment and private market borrowing.
- “The time to act boldly for our forests is now. The TFFF is not only possible — it is essential. We are calling on the world to join us,” they write.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Mongabay India wins best science podcast at Publisher Podcast Awards
Mongabay India’s 2024 podcast miniseries “Wild Frequencies” bagged the “Best Science and Medical” category at the Publisher Podcast Awards ceremony in London on June 11. The podcast is a three-episode series that tells stories of how researchers in India use the science of bioacoustics, or animal sounds, to better understand the lives of wildlife, such […]
Top tools to protect rainforests | Against All Odds
Crystal Davis, Global Program Director at the World Resources Institute, highlights positive strides in rainforest conservation worldwide. From successful protection efforts in Brazil and Colombia to the critical role of Indigenous communities in safeguarding rainforests, we explore how technology, like Global Forest Watch, and strong political leadership are helping to combat deforestation. While acknowledging the […]
Resilient forests are key to ecological, economic and social resilience, report finds
- Human society depends economically and socially on resilient forests, a new report from the International Union of Forest Research Organizations demonstrates.
- As a result, pushing forests toward collapse threatens human well-being globally, not just in communities in or near forests.
- The report authors recommend approaches for improving forest resilience, including more inclusive governance and remedying power imbalances.
- They also advocate managing for resilience in ways that include social and ecological concerns, not just the extraction of commercial and monetary value from forests.
With offerings in 4 languages, Mongabay’s podcasts expand global reach
Mongabay now produces podcasts in four languages: Indonesian, English, Spanish and, the latest addition, French. “Producing podcasts in multiple languages is part of our nonprofit news outlet’s strategy to reach people where they are, in the mediums they prefer, and in the language that they use,” Rhett Ayers Butler, founder and CEO of Mongabay, said in […]
Uniting plantations to save Bornean elephants: Interview with Farina Othman
- Conservationist Farina Othman, a 2025 Whitley Award winner, has been working with endangered Bornean elephants in Sabah, Malaysia, since 2006.
- Since the 1970s, logging, oil palm plantations and roads have reduced and fragmented elephant habitats, increasing contact between the animals and humans; retaliatory killings arising from human-elephant conflict are now among the major threats to the species’ survival.
- Equipped with knowledge of the Bornean elephant’s behavior, Othman works with local communities and oil palm plantations to promote coexistence with the elephants.
- In a recent interview with Mongabay, Othman dives deep into the human-elephant conflicts in the Lower Kinabatangan area, explaining why and how she attempts to change communities’ perceptions of elephants and reconnect elephant habitats.
The reaches, limits and (alleged) biases of feasibility studies and environmental licenses
- In the last 20 years, EIA has become a factor already incorporated into the strategic planning of countries, where the potential trade-offs arising from environmental and social impacts are of great importance.
- This is how public consultations arise, allowing civil society to have a voice in the appearance of private or public investment. In all the systems of Panamazonia, the principle is the same: the possibility of canceling a project if its negative impacts are unacceptable.
- For Killeen, one of the most obvious conflicts of interest occurs when the construction contract gives the mining company itself responsibility for conducting both the feasibility study and the environmental assessment.
- Likewise, multilateral financial organizations require high-quality environmental studies, but their credit advisors are evaluated by the number of projects managed, not by their ability to reject high-risk projects.
Why Brazil should abandon its plans for oil and gas in Amazonia (commentary)
- The Brazilian government has major plans for oil and gas extraction both in the Amazon Rainforest and offshore — including at the mouth of the Amazon River — with a drilling rights auction scheduled for June 17 for fields both in the forest and offshore.
- Under intense pressure, the head of the federal environmental agency has now overridden his technical staff to allow the proposed mouth-of-the-Amazon project to move forward for approval.
- In addition to the risk of an uncontrollable oil spill, the economics of opening this and other new oilfields implies continued extraction long past the time when burning fossil fuels must cease if a global climate catastrophe is to be avoided.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Latin American banks still slow to protect the environment, report finds
- Across Latin America, banks have failed to integrate sustainability regulations into lending, bond issuance and financial advisory services, according to a WWF sustainable finance assessment.
- WWF examined the policies of 22 banks across Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, and found that the countries’ financial sectors had largely failed to implement protections against nature-related risks, such as deforestation and biodiversity loss.
- Only six of the 22 banks have policies that acknowledge the “societal and economic risks” associated with environmental degradation, and just two of them have made net-zero carbon emission commitments for their lending portfolios.
Methods to recognize the Amazon’s isolated peoples: Interview with Antenor Vaz
- Mongabay interviewed Antenor Vaz, an international expert on recognition methodologies and protection policies for Indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact (PIACI), about the importance of confirming and recognizing the existence of isolated peoples.
- Vaz is a regional adviser for GTI-PIACI, an international working group committed to the protection, defense and promotion of the rights of PIACI, which recently launched a report to help governments, Indigenous organizations and NGOs prove the existence of Indigenous peoples living in isolation.
- In this interview, Vaz highlights strategies states can use to confirm and recognize the existence of isolated peoples while maintaining the no-contact principle.
Climate strikes the Amazon, undermining protection efforts
Fires raged across the Amazon rainforest in 2024, annihilating more than 4.6 million hectares of primary tropical forest—the most biodiverse and carbon-dense type of forest on Earth. That loss, which is larger than the size of Denmark, was more than twice the annual average between 2014 and 2023, according to data released last month by […]
Villagers in Sumatra bring ancient forest flavors back to the table
- Women living around the 7th-century Muaro Jambi temple complex in Sumatra, Indonesia, have revived ancient ingredients and cooking techniques to serve one-of-a-kind meals to visitors.
- Their dishes are inspired by the plants and animals depicted on the bas-reliefs of another ancient Buddhist site: Borobudur in Java.
- The ancient menu has proved popular both among visitors and locals, who are rediscovering their agrobiodiverse heritage.
- The women have nurtured an ancient food forest and garden in Muaro Jambi to conserve the diverse wild plants and varieties in their menus.
Indigenous forest stewards watch over one of the world’s rarest raptors
The Philippine eagle is considered one of the world’s rarest birds of prey, with roughly 400 breeding pairs left in the wild. Amid ongoing threats from logging and hunting, Indigenous forest rangers are helping conservationists protect the species’ nests and habitat, Mongabay contributor Bong S. Sarmiento reported last year. Datu Julito Ahao of the Obu […]
Female bonobos wield power through unity: Study
Male bonobos are larger and stronger than females, so researchers have found it puzzling that the female apes enjoy high status in bonobo society. After analyzing three decades of behavioral data, researchers recently shared a study that pinpoints their source of power: female alliances and coalitions. “Only [among] bonobos, females form coalitions to gain power […]
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility needs more local and Indigenous focus (commentary)
- The new Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) aims to fund forest conservation by paying nations an annual fee of $4 for every hectare of forest they maintain.
- The fund’s launch is expected to be a major focal point of the COP30 climate summit in November, and the TFFF secretariat is currently negotiating many of its fine details, which are expected to be released at the end of June. A new briefing prepared by 40+ environmental, human rights and Indigenous organizations lays out their concerns about the TFFF’s equity issues, and describes how they should be tackled.
- “About 20% of the funds are expected to be allocated to Indigenous and local communities. This is a step in the right direction, but for the TFFF’s funding to reach its intended recipients, it must go directly to them, to the largest extent possible, rather than as in the current proposal, with payments being in the hands of national governments,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
EUDR risk classifications omit governance & enforcement failures, critics say
- Critics say the EU’s anti-deforestation law, the EUDR, uses a risk classification system that overlooks critical issues like governance, corruption and law enforcement capacity, missing systemic failures and enforcement gaps — the very conditions that enable illegal deforestation to flourish.
- A Forest Trends analysis warns that this approach may lead to misclassification of countries with weak enforcement and high illegality as “low risk.”
- These shortcomings in the benchmarking system have triggered growing unease among countries affected by the EUDR, including some that say their deforestation risk has been misrepresented.
- Set to take effect at the end of this year, the EUDR will ban imports of seven forest-linked commodities — soy, palm oil, coffee, cocoa, timber, rubber and beef — unless they can be proven to be deforestation-free and legally produced.
After years of silence, Indonesia moves to assess its iconic wildlife
- Indonesia, home to critically endangered orangutans, elephants, tigers and rhinos, has gone nearly two decades without official updates on the populations of some key species.
- Under the previous forestry minister, population surveys and conservation plans were shelved or retracted, and relationships with conservation organizations were often tense.
- Under new leadership, the ministry has signaled that initiating wildlife surveys and publishing population and habitat viability analyses (PHVAs) are key priorities, and surveys of several key species are already underway.
- While welcoming pro-science statements from environment authorities, conservationists caution that data remain alarmingly deficient for many species, and that updating surveys is time-consuming and expensive — a particular concern given recent cuts to the ministry’s budget.
Deforestation and fires persist in Indonesia’s pulpwood and biomass plantations
- NGOs in Indonesia have documented widespread environmental and social violations across 33 industrial tree plantations since 2023, including deforestation, peatland destruction, fires, and land conflicts with Indigenous communities.
- Major corporations APP and APRIL, despite sustainability pledges, were linked to illegal deforestation, peatland drainage, and failure to follow proper consent procedures, potentially violating both Indonesian laws and international standards.
- Key case studies include endangered rainforest clearance in West Sumatra’s Mentawai Islands, unauthorized forest clearance in Riau, peatland burning in South Sumatra, and land disputes in West Kalimantan.
- The NGOs are urging stronger law enforcement and reforms, warning that current violations undermine Indonesia’s climate goals and could threaten market access under the EU Deforestation Regulation.
Indonesia convicts trafficking accomplice in a Javan rhino poaching scandal
- Indonesia’s Supreme Court has sentenced Liem Hoo Kwan Willy to one year in prison for facilitating communication in the illegal trade of Javan rhino horns, overturning his earlier acquittal despite evidence linking him to the transactions.
- The ruling is part of a broader crackdown following the 2024 exposure of organized poaching in Ujung Kulon National Park, where police linked up to 26 rhino deaths to coordinated criminal networks involving local and international actors.
- Conservation groups have raised concerns over flawed population data, with evidence suggesting rhino killings began as early as 2018 and continued despite official reports of stable numbers, while key suspects and evidence remain unaccounted for.
- Meanwhile, the recent identification of three new Javan rhino calves offers hope, credited to strict park protections and improved monitoring, even as experts warn that ongoing poaching threatens the species with extinction.
Mongabay journalist Karla Mendes profiled in new book on climate leaders
Mongabay reporter Karla Mendes has been featured as one of 36 global climate leaders in a new book launched in the U.S. on May 27. What Will Your Legacy Be?: Conversations With Global Game Changers About the Climate Crisis by author Sangeeta Waldron includes a chapter on Mendes’s investigative work and career trajectory. The chapter […]
Silvery lining for Java’s endangered gibbon as Rahayu Oktaviani wins Whitley prize
- Indonesian conservationist Rahayu Oktaviani, known for her work with Java’s silvery gibbon, received this year’s Whitley Award for achievements in grassroots conservation.
- The 50,000 British pound ($67,000) prize will be used to expand her foundation’s work carried out local communities near Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park in West Java province.
- Halimun-Salak is where up to half of the 4,000-4,500 silvery gibbons estimated to exist in the wild remain.
- Indonesia is home to nine species of gibbon, but only one of those species lives on Java, the world’s most-populous island.
‘Satellites for Biodiversity’ upgrades with new projects and launches insight hub
The Airbus Foundation and the Connected Conservation Foundation (CCF) recently announced the winners of their “Satellites for Biodiversity” grant, which now uses higher-resolution satellite imagery to aid conservation efforts. They also launched an Ecosystem Insight Hub, which comprehensively documents the processes and findings of their grantees. The latest batch of six “Satellites for Biodiversity” awardees […]
What’s at stake for the environment in Suriname’s upcoming elections?
- Voters in Suriname this weekend will elect all 51 members of the National Assembly, who will then choose the president, usually the leader of a majority party or coalition.
- Incumbent President Chandrikapersad Santokhi is a likely candidate, but critics say he’s prioritized agribusiness and mining over conserving the country’s vast Amazon Rainforest or land rights for Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities.
- Other candidates include Vice President Ronnie Brunswijk and former National Assembly chair Jennifer Geerlings-Simons.
Without vultures, carcasses are slow to rot and disease-carrying flies abound
- Researchers in Costa Rica found that pig carcasses decomposed twice as fast when vultures had access to them compared to carcasses where vultures were excluded.
- The absence of vultures led to a doubling of fly populations at carcass sites, which could affect human health, since these flies can carry diseases like botulism and anthrax, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- Unlike temperate regions with diverse scavenger communities, the neotropical forest system showed vultures as the primary vertebrate decomposers, with few other animals eating carcasses.
- The study highlights a major research gap since neotropical vultures are represented in only 7% of existing vulture literature, despite facing similar conservation threats as Old World vultures, like habitat loss, poisoning and power line collisions.
On Amazon destruction, will Brazil President Lula’s ‘disinformation space’ be penetrated? (commentary)
- Brazil’s President Lula apparently lives in a “disinformation space” surrounded by ministers promoting projects that destroy the Amazon Rainforest and lock in petroleum extraction for decades to come, a new opinion piece argues.
- Among these projects are the BR-319 highway and its associated side roads; the distribution of government land to known deforesters; and opening new oilfields at the mouth of the Amazon River.
- Lula’s support for these proposals is leading Brazil to a climate catastrophe that would devastate the country, the author writes, and the two key ministers who should be the ones to explain to the president the consequences of these projects are apparently not penetrating Lula’s disinformation space.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Indigenous rights advocates petition to overturn Indonesian conservation law
- In Indonesia, where state-designated conservation areas often overlap with customary territories, Indigenous peoples have faced prosecution and imprisonment for living in and managing their ancestral lands as they always have.
- Many hoped a new 2024 conservation law would recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples to manage their lands; instead, the law continues to sideline communities and potentially criminalizes their traditional practices, despite scientific evidence that Indigenous peoples are among the most effective stewards of nature.
- Indigenous rights proponents say the new law was passed without meaningful participation of Indigenous peoples, and several groups have filed a judicial review petition with the Constitutional Court, seeking to overturn the new law.
Tropical forest loss hit new heights in 2024; fire a major driver in Latin America
- A new dataset and analysis released by World Resources Institute finds global tropical forest loss jumped to a record high in 2024, with 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) worldwide.
- In total, the area of forest lost in 2024 is nearly the size of Panama.
- For the first time, fire, not agriculture, was the primary driver of primary tropical forest loss, with Latin America badly hit.
- Non-fire related tropical forest loss also increased, by 14%.
Why biological diversity should be at the heart of conservation
For the last several decades, global biodiversity has been in crisis. Yet, as we celebrate International Day for Biodiversity on May 22, which commemorates the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty, we offer some recent Mongabay stories highlighting lessons from undoing past harms and conserving biodiversity for our planet’s future. What […]
In New Guinea, megadiverse lowland forests are most at risk of deforestation
- Located at the edge of the western Pacific Ocean, New Guinea is a vast island where the biota of Asia and Australasia meet, making it a melting pot of unique plants and animals that occur nowhere else on the planet.
- Development pressure is ramping up across the island, however, opening up landscapes to new roads, industrial logging and agricultural conglomerates pushing biofuel agendas.
- New Guinea’s low-elevation forests, which represent some of the world’s last vestiges of ancient lowland tropical rainforest, are particularly imperiled, according to a new study.
- To avert tragedy, the authors urge policymakers to improve land-use planning systems, focus on retaining intact forest landscapes, and strengthen the rights of the people who live among them.
Deforestation in REDD-protected Congo rainforests is ‘beyond words’
The Republic of Congo had been protecting about half of its dense rainforests via the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) framework. In exchange, the country is supposed to receive payments from the World Bank. But Mongabay Africa staff writer Elodie Toto’s recent investigation revealed the nation has also granted nearly 80 gold […]
Brazil rewilds urban forest with vaccinated brown howler monkeys
Following a deadly yellow fever outbreak in 2016, brown howler monkeys are slowly making a recovery through targeted vaccination and reintroduction efforts in one of the world’s largest urban forests. The recovery is detailed in a Mongabay video by Kashfi Halford and a report by Bernardo Araujo. Brown howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba) are endemic to […]
Study unveils mystery of monkey yodeling — and why humans can’t compete
- Researchers found that New World monkeys can produce extreme yodeling-like sounds by rapidly switching between their vocal folds (for low tones) and specialized vocal membranes (for high tones), achieving frequency jumps up to 12 times greater than humans can manage.
- Scientists conducted their research at Bolivia’s La Senda Verde animal refuge, using recordings and electroglottographs on live monkeys.
- Humans lost these vocal membranes during evolution, trading vocal gymnastics for more stable speech that’s easier to understand.
- The complex vocalizations likely help monkeys manage social relationships and grab attention in the rainforest.
Republic of Congo’s gold mining boom undermines conservation efforts
The Republic of Congo has one of the lowest deforestation rates in the world, but “uncontrolled gold mining” in recent years could harm the country’s biodiversity, especially in the Sangha region, Mongabay’s Elodie Toto reported in a video published in February. Sangha, located in the country’s north, on the border with Cameroon and the Central […]
Profit imbalance in palm oil industry risks environmental compliance, report says
- A new report calls on palm oil-buying firms to take serious steps to address systemic imbalances in the distribution of profits across the supply chain.
- Smallholder farmers produce nearly one-third of raw palm oil globally, yet they receive a disproportionately small share of industry profits compared to large corporations, the report says.
- Small-scale producers are often locked out of high-value markets due to a lack of technical capacity and financial capital to meet increasingly hefty due diligence requirements driven by consumer demand for less environmentally destructive goods.
- The authors urge industry buyers to adjust their purchasing policies to be more inclusive of smallholder farmers, helping to create an industry that is more socially responsible and less environmentally destructive.
Brazil antideforestation operation blacklists more than 500 farms in the Amazon
The Brazilian government blocked 545 rural properties in the Amazonian state of Pará from selling crops and livestock both domestically and internationally, citing illegal deforestation, according to a May 6 announcement by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. The announcement marks one of Brazil’s largest uses of remote sensing to sanction agriculture activity associated […]
Malagasy wildlife champion wins top global conservation award
Malagasy scientist Lily-Arison René de Roland has been announced as the winner of this year’s Indianapolis Prize, which recognizes “extraordinary contributions to conservation efforts.” In its announcement, Indianapolis Zoo, which presents the award, highlighted René de Roland’s scientific and conservation work that has led to the discovery of several species and the establishment of four […]
Sumatran tiger protection needs more patrols, tougher penalties, study finds
- A new study on Sumatran tiger conservation in Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park underscores that poaching remains the top threat, despite extensive patrols and antitrafficking efforts over the past decade.
- Researchers found that while patrols removed hundreds of snares and law enforcement increasingly pursued criminal charges, poaching rates remained high and tiger populations continued to decline in some areas.
- Despite stricter conservation laws and improved prosecution rates, the financial rewards of poaching still outweigh the penalties, limiting the deterrent effect on poachers and traffickers.
- The study recommends increasing patrols in high-risk areas, improving community engagement in law enforcement, and providing alternative livelihoods to reduce the economic lure of poaching.
Borneo project hopes to prove that forests and oil palms can coexist
- Monoculture palm oil production has come at the cost of rainforest habitat, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia.
- Researchers are conducting experimental trials in Malaysian Borneo to see if native trees can be planted in oil palm plantations without significantly reducing palm oil yields.
- While still in the initial stages, the experiment is so far showing there are no detrimental effects to oil palm growth.
- In fact, interplanting with native forest trees may benefit oil palm, with the researchers finding oil palm trees had more leaf growth in agroforestry plots than in monoculture ones.
Lack of funds, cattle ranchers challenge Brazil’s sustainable farmers
In 2005, the Brazilian government created PDS Brasília, a sustainable settlement in the state of Pará. The settlement was designed to encourage 500 families to practice small-scale family farming, while also collectively using a standing forest to harvest its fruits and nuts, Mongabay’s Fernanda Wenzel reported in March. The 19,800-hectare (49,000-acre) settlement was created following the […]
Attacks on Cambodian environmental journalist continue to pile up
- Cambodian environmental journalist Ouk Mao was attacked by a group of men, apparently including a former police officer, while documenting illegal logging in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, following a pattern of escalating harassment and threats.
- Mao has faced numerous legal challenges, including defamation and incitement charges, that he claims are retaliation for exposing environmental crimes, with local officials allegedly trying to silence his work.
- Cambodia’s crackdown on critical journalism has intensified, with Mao’s case reflecting a broader decline in press freedom, as highlighted by the country’s plummeting rank in the 2025 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedoms Index.
- Advocacy groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association warn that the lack of accountability for attacks on journalists has created a dangerous environment for those reporting on illegal logging and other sensitive issues.
In Côte d’Ivoire a changing climate hits farmers and markets alike
- Towns across Côte d’Ivoire are facing shortages of staple foods like plantain and tomatoes, due to erratic weather.
- Prolonged drought and heavy rains have affected growers in towns like Soubré, who are struggling to maintain sufficient production to supply local markets.
- An expert says adapting to the new climate reality is key, and proposes training farmers in new agricultural techniques and improving natural resource management.
Warming climate is already too hot to handle for 2% of amphibians, study shows
- Researchers found 2% of amphibian species are already experiencing temperatures beyond their physiological limits, potentially increasing to 7.5% with continued climate warming.
- The study revealed an unexpected pattern where tropical species in the Southern Hemisphere face greater heat risk, while in the Northern Hemisphere, species at higher latitudes are more vulnerable.
- Habitat plays a crucial role in vulnerability, with aquatic species facing the lowest risk, tree-dwelling species at moderate risk, and ground-dwelling species experiencing the highest risk of overheating.
- Conservation efforts should focus on maintaining water bodies and shaded areas, as these serve as critical thermal refuges that can help amphibians survive extreme heat events.
Seeds rescued from India’s coffee farms could help forest restoration
Coffee agroforests in India’s Western Ghats mountains, where coffee shrubs are grown under the shade of trees, could be a good source of seeds for forest restoration efforts, according to a recent study, reports Mongabay India’s Simrin Sirur. Much of India’s coffee is grown in the rain-rich Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot. Coffee farms […]
Alwyn Gentry died young, but left a forest’s worth of ideas behind
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Long before “biodiversity hotspot” became a conservation cliché, Alwyn Howard Gentry was painstakingly mapping them — one vine, one tree, one tenth-hectare transect at a time. His early death in 1993 at age 48, in a plane crash […]
How Mongabay Indonesia grew into a trusted environmental voice: Interview with Ridzki Sigit
- This series features interviews with Mongabay leaders about their personal and professional journeys, beginning with Ridzki Sigit, Program Director of Mongabay Indonesia.
- Ridzki joined Mongabay when it was a novel concept in Indonesia, helping transform it into one of the country’s most influential environmental news platforms since its 2012 launch.
- With a background in forestry and documentary filmmaking, Ridzki brought storytelling and environmental expertise to Mongabay, leading investigations that have influenced policy and spotlighted urgent conservation issues.
- He emphasizes creativity, collaboration, and local empowerment, viewing environmental journalism as both a mission and legacy to protect Indonesia’s biodiversity for future generations.
Indonesia’s deforestation claims under scrutiny over ‘cherry-picked’ data
- Researchers say Indonesia’s claim of a 90% deforestation drop over the past decade is misleading due to cherry-picked data and an extreme baseline year.
- The actual decline is closer to 50-69%, driven by earlier policies and reduced forest availability in many regions.
- Deforestation is rising again, especially in Papua and Sulawesi, fueled by palm oil, pulpwood, and mining expansion.
- Civil society groups are crucial in tracking and exposing forest loss amid conflicting government policies and rising environmental threats.
International Leopard Day celebrates the resilient, yet often-overlooked, big cat
Shy, solitary leopards might lose out to tigers and lions in the game of charisma, but the rosette-patterned big cats are incredibly adaptable — they can survive in the densest of cities just as easily as in forests, grasslands and high mountains. While highly adaptable, leopards (Panthera pardus), listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red […]
New report reinforces critical role of Amazonian protected areas in climate fight
- A new report has found that protected areas and Indigenous territories in the Amazon store more aboveground carbon than the rest of the rainforest.
- Protected areas and Indigenous territories were also found to serve as significant carbon sinks between 2013 and 2022, absorbing 257 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
- Protected areas in Colombia, Brazil, Suriname and French Guiana were found to be significant carbon sinks.
- The report underscores the need to protect these areas that aren’t currently threatened by deforestation as they play a critical role in offsetting emissions from other parts of the forest.
Gold rush moves closer to Amazon’s second-tallest tree
Illegal gold miners are now operating very close to the second-tallest tree in the Amazon Rainforest, Mongabay’s Fernanda Wenzel reported in April. Six giant trees, including a red angelim (Dinizia excelsa) that stands 85 meters (279 feet) tall, are found inside the Iratapuru River Sustainable Development Reserve in Brazil’s Amapá state. Despite the area’s protected status, […]
Abel Rodríguez, artist who drew a vanishing forest from memory, died April 9, age unknown
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In a modest home on the edge of Bogotá, a forest lived in exile. Redrawn leaf by leaf from memory with ink and conviction, it existed not on maps or in satellite imagery, but on sheets of paper, […]
Study suggests there are more jaguars in the Amazon than previously thought
Jaguar numbers in the Amazon Rainforest may be higher than previous estimates, according to a new large-scale study that offers the most comprehensive population snapshot to date. Using camera-trap images of jaguars (Panthera onca) across the Brazilian, Colombian, Peruvian and Ecuadorian Amazon, researchers calculated an average density of three jaguars per 100 square kilometers (about […]
Indigenous stewardship plays a key role in protecting imperiled primates
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. While most people are familiar with monkeys, the great apes, and possibly lemurs, fewer may realize that there are more than 500 known species of primates, making them one of the most diverse groups of mammals. These species […]
Indris like to “move it”
Madagascar’s Indri indri lemurs can carry a tune. Through collecting songs and calls produced by 20 indri groups in Madagascar’s rainforests over the span of 15 years, scientists have found that indri songs exhibit rhythmic patterns that are common in human music — providing a pathway for decoding the evolution of music. Indris are critically […]
How to conserve species in a much hotter world
By 2075, we will be living on a planet that is much hotter, possibly 3-5° Celsius (5.4-9° Fahrenheit) hotter than the preindustrial average. But how can humanity help nature improve its climate resilience in the years to come? Mongabay’s Jeremy Hance found some answers after interviewing several conservationists. “In 50 years, it’s entirely possible that […]
Brazil prosecutors dispute $175m Amazon Rainforest carbon credit deal
Brazilian prosecutors are calling for the cancellation of the largest carbon credit deal in the Amazon Rainforest, saying it breaks national law and risks harming Indigenous communities. The 1 billion real ($175 million) contract, signed last year by the state of Pará, promises to sell up to 12 million metric tons of forest-based carbon credits […]
We can’t plant our way out of climate change
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Forests with diverse tree species are more resilient to climate extremes and better at storing carbon, according to recent studies conducted in China and Panama. Though hardly groundbreaking, these findings reinforce an increasingly evident truth: Biodiversity in reforestation […]
Côte d’Ivoire cacao farmers struggle as climate havoc devastates crops
- Farmers in a cacao-producing region of southwestern Côte d’Ivoire have seen their yields decline so much that they’re abandoning their plantations and considering switching to other crops.
- They say cacao, long a mainstay of the agricultural economy of this region and the country, is no longer profitable due to changing weather patterns and an increase in plant diseases like swollen shoot.
- An agronomist says the changing weather is partly due to deforestation caused by the expansion of cacao production in recent decades, and recommends agroforestry and reforestation as a remedy.
Paying to prevent deforestation is positive & not ‘nothing’ (commentary)
- Should the world pay people to refrain from their destroying forests, a new commentary asks?
- There is something inherently uncomfortable about paying someone to do ‘nothing’ like not cut down their rainforest, but in reality, the value of these places’ ecosystem services and climate regulation is not much different from dividends shareholders earn by owning stocks.
- “By compensating landholders for the services their forests provide, we recognize their true value and offer a pragmatic response to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change,” the author argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Mexican government looks to correct Tren Maya environmental damages
- Environment Minister Alicia Bárcena said the government is considering ways to correct some of the damage done by Tren Maya to cenotes and rainforests in the Yucatán peninsula.
- Officials want to remove fencing along the tracks, create new protected areas and ban the construction of additional roads connecting the train with harder-to-reach tourism activities in rainforests.
- At the same time, the government plans to expand the Tren Maya route and build several other trains across the country that could threaten protected areas.
Earth Day: The wonder of iconic satellite images
There’s something about viewing Earth from space — the shift in perspective has for decades moved us emotionally, scientifically, and philosophically. The iconic Earthrise image of our planet rising above the lunar horizon, taken in 1968 by astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 mission, is widely credited with fueling the environmental movement that led to the […]
Earth Day check-in: Planetary boundaries in peril
Scientists have identified nine planetary boundaries that help regulate a livable planet. Human activities have pushed six of those nine critical Earth systems beyond safe limits, threatening the stability of life as we know it. Mongabay has consistently reported on all nine systems: Climate change, largely driven by fossil fuel emissions, is causing sea level […]
Indonesia strengthens forest monitoring with new tool to meet EU deforestation law
- Indonesia is stepping up traceability efforts to comply with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which bans imports of deforestation-linked commodities like palm oil, timber and coffee starting in December 2025.
- A new platform, Ground Truthed.id (GTID), combines field-based evidence and geolocation data to detect and document environmental violations in real time, offering a bottom-up alternative to satellite-reliant systems.
- GTID emphasizes collaboration with Indigenous peoples, civil society and law enforcement, using a verification process to turn grassroots reports into legally actionable cases.
- The platform is expected to complement a government-run traceability dashboard by acting as an independent watchdog, helping prevent illegally sourced or conflict-ridden products from entering international supply chains.
Armed groups, cattle ranchers drove 35% rise in Colombia’s deforestation in 2024
- Colombia lost 1,070 km² (413 mi²) of forest in 2024, according to data from the country’s environment ministry, representing a 35% increase from 2023.
- Illegal agriculture is thought to be the main driver behind this increase, with cattle ranching spreading inside national parks.
- The environment ministry notes that despite the increase in deforestation last year, the 2024 figure is still one of the lowest in the past 23 years.
- However, experts fear that the increase will continue in 2025 and that armed groups will continue to strengthen their hold over the Colombian Amazon, hindering the progress of conservation strategies with communities.
Locals, researchers race to save unique biodiversity of PNG’s Torricellis
Torricelli Mountains, a tiny mountain range in northern Papua New Guinea, is estimated to host roughly 4% of the world’s known species, many found nowhere else on Earth, Mongabay’s John Cannon reported in March. “I mean, for 0.003% of the world’s land area — it’s a ‘wow’ factor for me,” Jim Thomas, CEO of the […]
New refuge helps protect Amazon’s most endangered monkey, but gaps remain
Brazil designated a refuge twice the size of Manhattan near the Amazonian city of Manaus in June 2024 to protect the pied tamarin, South America’s most endangered monkey. But almost one year later, the 15,000-hectare (37,000-acre) reserve is still being implemented institutionally, and conservationists say it falls short of what the species needs to survive. […]
Nature on the move: How conservation must adapt to survive
Resilience means getting through something — tough, messy, with losses, but surviving. So said Andrew Whitworth, executive director of Osa Conservation in Costa Rica, summing up a growing shift in conservation thinking. As the planet hurtles toward a future 3-5° Celsius (5.4-9° Fahrenheit) warmer by 2075, holding the line is no longer enough. The goal […]
Why conservation research findings are rarely surprising
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. “We already knew that.” I frequently receive complaints from readers about findings in scientific papers being commonsense or obvious. And yes, it’s true: science often confirms what we’ve long suspected or seen in practice. By its nature, science […]
2 Mongabay podcasts shortlisted for 2025 Publisher Podcast Awards
Podcasts from Mongabay and Mongabay India have been shortlisted in two categories of the 2025 Publisher Podcast Awards. Media Voices, the weekly publication behind the award, announced the shortlist for the Publisher Podcast Awards last week. Episodes from Mongabay Explores, hosted by Mike DiGirolamo, and Mongabay India’s Wild Frequencies were both shortlisted in the “Best […]
Endangered Chilean frogs thrive in London while waiting out deadly fungus
A total of 86 Darwin’s frogs are being housed at London Zoo to keep them safe from a deadly infectious disease that has affected over 500 amphibian species worldwide. In October 2024, conservationists from the Zoological Society of London, the NGO Ranita de Darwin and other partners rescued 53 southern Darwin’s frogs (Rhinoderma darwinii) from […]
‘Heart of Borneo’ dams raze Indigenous forests for Indonesia green energy drive
- A joint venture between Indonesia and state-owned Malaysia companies is constructing a network of dams in the Bulungan and Malinau districts of North Kalimantan, a sparsely populated Bornean province bordering the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
- The dams will generate 9,000 megawatts to power industry in the under-construction Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia in Bulungan district, a site the government hopes will be a global hub of solar panel and battery manufacture.
- One community of around 28 families has already been relocated as dam contractors prepare to submerge more villages and tunneling continues.
Mongabay investigation spurs Brazil crackdown on illegal cattle in Amazon’s Arariboia territory
- An ongoing Brazilian government operation launched in February has removed between 1,000 and 2,000 illegal head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Rainforest.
- In June 2024, Mongabay published the results of a yearlong investigation, revealing that large portions of the Arariboia territory have been taken over for commercial cattle ranching, in violation of the Constitution; the project received funding and editorial support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.
- “Your report is very similar to what we’re actually finding in the field. It showed an accurate reality and this helped us a lot in practical terms,” Marcos Kaingang, national secretary for Indigenous territorial rights at the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, told Mongabay in a video interview.
- The investigation also revealed details that authorities said they hadn’t been aware of, including the illegal shifting of the territory’s border markers, Kaingang said: “We brought it up as an important point in our discussions and we verified that the [markers] had in fact been changed.”
Nepal farmers regret planting government-hyped eucalyptus
In the late 1970s, Nepal launched a reforestation project to restore its massively deforested lands in the southeastern Terai landscape. However, the main tree of choice, eucalyptus, after showing initial signs of success has now proven detrimental to the region’s soil moisture and fertility, Mongabay contributor Mukesh Pokhrel reported in February. To prepare for the […]
How tires leave a long trail of destruction
Tires play an essential role in modern society, but have enormous negative environmental impacts. Mongabay recently reported on how the world’s top tire manufacturers are unable to prove that the supply chain of their rubber products is deforestation-free. A look back at an episode of Mongabay’s video series “Consumed,” published in January 2024, shows how […]
Bonobos combine calls in ways that resemble human language, study finds
Bonobos, one of humanity’s closest relatives, appear to string together vocal calls in ways that mirror a key feature of the human language, a new study carried out in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has found. While bonobos (Pan paniscus) produce grunts, peeps, whistles and hoots, they also combine these calls […]
Brazil is speeding-up forest fire prevention to avoid dangerous tipping points in the Amazon (commentary)
- In this commentary, Robert Muggah and Ilona Szabo of the Igarapé Institute examine Brazil’s escalating forest fire crisis, highlighting a record 237,000 fires in 2024 that devastated over 30 million hectares of vegetation—most of it in the Amazon—and triggered a national environmental emergency.
- Muggah and Szabo underscore the alarming interplay between human-driven deforestation, climate change, and increasingly severe El Niño and La Niña events, warning that parts of the Amazon may tip into savanna if trends continue.
- While Brazil is pursuing a range of responses—including new technologies, indigenous fire brigades, and international cooperation—Muggah and Szabo stress the need for systemic solutions backed by smart policy, inclusive governance, and innovative financing to truly curb the crisis.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Farmers turn to living ‘yam sticks’ to grow their crop and spare the forest
- In major yam-producing areas such as West Africa and the Caribbean, the tuber is traditionally grown using sticks as scaffolds for vine growth, which are traditionally cut from the forest, causing deforestation.
- Scientists and yam breeders are trialing ways to replace these sticks through agroforestry, introducing living supports that can also improve the soil and provide other benefits to farmers.
- Trials using plants such as pigeon pea and bitter damsel as living yam sticks have shown potential.
- However, conservationists say that entrenched traditional farming methods and a lack of funding to promote more sustainable approaches are preventing living vine sticks from widespread application.
Innovators battling wildfires with AI, drones & fungi get $50k grants to scale up
To address the devastating effects of wildfires in Western North America, the nonprofit Conservation X Labs (CXL) and its partners have awarded $50,000 each to 12 shortlisted teams seeking to scale up novel technologies and processes to lower wildlife risk and increase ecosystem and community resilience. CXL announced the 12 finalists of its first Fire […]
New strategy launched to protect Tanzanian biodiversity hotspot
- A conservation strategy for the next 20 years has been launched to protect Tanzania’s most biologically rich landscape.
- The Udzungwa Mountains are home to rare and endemic plants and animals, including a small population of kipunjis, a genus of monkeys only revealed to the world in 2006.
- Sustainable financing is being sought to fund the conservation strategy and boost livelihoods and social well-being in communities surrounding three core protected areas.
- A key part of the strategy will be the rollout of energy-efficient stoves, seen as a priority by local communities who depend on firewood and charcoal.
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia