Mongabay

Packed into a thatched-roof meeting hall in the village of Urucurituba, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, hundreds of Mura Indigenous people mulled over whether to allow a massive potash mine on their lands. Some worried it could pollute their rivers, killing the…

Local opposition to a planned coal mine in northern Thailand escalated in April when plaintiffs representing more than 600 villagers filed a lawsuit requesting the revocation of an environmental impact assessment conducted and approved more than 10 years ago.…

In the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean lies a remote tropical island known as Saint Helena. It is a United Kingdom territory that is 1,200 miles (1,950 km) west of the southwestern coast of Africa. “St Helena holds over 30% (502 known native/endemics) of…

Surf enthusiasts and volunteers are mapping out hotspots of a spectacular form of surfing on Brazil’s northern coast, in a bid to both preserve the practice and help boost tourism in coastal communities. For years, surfers would descend on the mouth of the…

Antibody tests conducted on domestic cats and wild cats in Malaysian Borneo indicate that oil palm plantations may act as transmission sites for viruses, according to a new study. The study, carried out by researchers working with the Health at the Edge…

PHNOM PENH — The early onset of Cambodia’s wet season had seen the rain fall thick over Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, turning freshly cut paths through the forest into a near-impassible slick of churned-up mud. But the torrential weather had done little to…

MUARA JAMBI, Indonesia — In a wood-plank house on the banks of the Batang Hari River, a dukun, or traditional healer, named Siti Hawa, 62, handles a grass-like plant topped with white and purple flowers. Its leaves can cure fever, she says, while the flowers…

KATHMANDU — In a “historic announcement,” Nepal’s Supreme Court has ordered the government not to build a controversial international airport in the country’s south. The order comes four years after judges issued a stay on the $3.45-billion Nijgadh…

On an island in the estuary known as Lagoa dos Patos, in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, an old lady kept a treasure in her fridge. For years, it held a gift she had received at her wedding decades earlier: beans and pumpkin seeds. “She said she was…

The rainforest is dense with sound. Like musicians in an orchestra, each animal plays a part, occupying its own “acoustic niche” in both frequency and time. But repeated fires are silencing the symphony, according to a new study published in the…

Tanzania’s Rufiji Delta is arguably the mangrove capital of East Africa, home to around 55,000 hectares (135,900 acres) of mangrove forest. In the face of the climate crisis, mangroves like this play an important role sequestering large amounts of carbon…

JAKARTA — The United Nations has reiterated its concerns over allegations of human rights violations in a mega infrastructure tourism development project on the Indonesian island of Lombok. In light of this, various environmental and human rights…

Brazil, one of the largest countries in the world, is crisscrossed by a network of roads and highways that run more than 1.7 million kilometers (1.06 miles) — enough to circle the globe more than 40 times. Cutting through some of the most biodiverse areas on…

Seven grassroots environmental activists will receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize today, on May 25. Known as the Green Nobel Prize, the Goldman Prize honors environmental activists from each of the six continental regions. The prize was founded…

Looking at the roll call of Linnean Medal winners is to witness the history of natural history, taxonomy, and nature conservation since Darwin. The medal is tangential to the orbit of the Nobel Prize – more international and human-centric with few famous…

Scientists already knew that where the western Amazon rainforest sits today was once a vast wetland, almost four times the size of Texas and periodically flooded by pulses of seawater. Now, a new study posits that the source of these pulses was most likely the…

CASILLAS, Guatemala — Evelin Cante got involved in the protest camp right from the start. Her village isn’t far from the Escobal silver mine in southern Guatemala, and she was worried about its impacts on the environment and local homes, especially from…

The butiá landscapes of Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state are exotic, even by the standards of tropical forests. The palm trees that make up these forests, from the genus Butia, are 200 years old on average. But agriculture and unrestrained urbanization are…

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — As dawn breaks, the fishing wharf at Tamba Kula in Freetown buzzes with the movement of early-morning commerce. Fishers just back from days spent far out at sea unload their catch from wooden boats, hauling snapper, barracuda and…

Tangled up too often in fishing nets, manta rays have been plunging toward extinction as fishing pressure and other stressors take a toll on their populations. But the species has found a safe haven in Komodo National Park, a swath of water around…