Crime and militarization pose an existential threat to Indigenous territories across the Amazon Basin, a new report warns.
Published ahead of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) taking place this week in New York, the report finds Indigenous groups are being harmed by restricted access to crucial natural resources, and are suffering health consequences from mining pollution. They’re also being impacted by compromised state and community governance systems, according to the report published by Amazon Watch, a U.S.-based Indigenous rights advocacy group.
Criminal organizations such as Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in Brazil, and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia, have replaced or weakened state governance across the region, the report notes. In at least two-thirds of municipalities across the Pan-Amazon, such criminal actors “impose systems of social and economic control over communities,” the report says.
Criminal presence in Indigenous territories has led to displacement, environmental degradation, mercury contamination from mining, food insecurity and other threats.
Such criminal groups are frequently involved with several interconnected illicit crimes at once, such as illegal gold mining and drug trafficking. The report says these activities are directly tied to lucrative global markets and cause generational harm locally.
In Brazil’s Munduruku Indigenous Territory, for instance, mercury contamination linked to illegal gold mining has polluted rivers and fish. Locals say the contamination has led to severe and long-lasting health issues, including diarrhea, childhood paralysis and developmental problems.
“These activities reshape local ways of living completely around the exploitation of resources,” report author Rafael Hoetmer, director of the western Amazon program at Amazon Watch, told Mongabay by text message. Meanwhile, government responses to the criminal activity, such as militarization or other repressive strategies, can exacerbate existing risks and still fail to address the root causes.
With support, Hoetmer said, Indigenous people are best positioned to protect themselves. “Where Indigenous organizing is stronger, it has more resilience and capacity to contain the expansion.”
He said government officials rarely know how to work with Indigenous communities to combat organized crime in Indigenous territories, nor do they know how to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into their systems. While there has been some progress in terms of combined state and Indigenous monitoring strategies, participatory and complementary mechanisms are still lacking, he said.
“Indigenous peoples are crucial for any security solution to safeguard critical ecosystems for the future of the climate and the planet,” Hoetmer said. “Therefore, they should be a central actor whose voice needs to be included in international discussions around this.”
Hoetmer pointed to the upcoming U.N. conference on transnational organized crime as an opportunity for including Indigenous groups in discussions “around the protocol against crimes that affect the environment.”
Banner image: Armed police and military forces called by a Canadian mining company carry out operations in Sigchos, Ecuador. Antimining protesters have been demonstrating against a controversial consultation process led by the Ecuadorian government. Image courtesy of Verónica Potes Guerra.
SAO PAULO (AP) — Labor prosecutors in Brazil filed a lawsuit Wednesday against meatpacking giant JBS, accusing the company of buying cattle from farms where workers were held in slavery-like conditions.
The civil action suit before a labor court in the northern Brazilian state of Para seeks nearly 119 million reais (about $24 million) in compensation, an amount prosecutors say reflects the total value of transactions between JBS and the suppliers.
According to the filing, 53 workers were rescued from properties owned by seven ranchers who supplied the meatpacking company between 2014 and 2025. Those employers were listed in Brazil’s official public registry of companies found to have subjected workers to conditions that are similar to slavery, prosecutors said.
JBS showed “a systematic pattern of negligence,” the prosecutors said. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brazil is the world’s largest beef producer, accounting for about 20% of global production. The South American nation recently surpassed the United States, which now accounts for about 19% of the global beef production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A statement from Brazil’s labor prosecutors noted that cattle ranching accounts for the highest number of rescued workers nationwide and has also been a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Para state is part of the Amazon region.
In March, the Office of the United States Trade Representative included Brazil on a list of 60 countries under investigation for forced labor.
JBS is the world’s largest meatpacking company, with a market capitalization of about $17 billion. It operates plants in the U.S., including in Colorado, where workers staged a three-week strike earlier this year.
By Gabriela Sá Pessoa, Associated Press
Banner image: The JBS meat processing plant, in Greeley, Colo. Image by David Zalubowski, Associated Press
This year’s Whitley Awards honor six grassroots conservationists from South Asia, South America, and Africa protecting a range of wildlife and habitats, from threatened amphibians to marine and freshwater fish and lions.
Dubbed the “Green Oscars,” the awards are presented annually by U.K. charity the Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN), and honor grassroots leaders from the Global South, channeling a total 420,000 pounds (about $566,000) to urgent conservation projects.
The six conservationists each received 50,000 pounds ($67,300). Additionally, the Whitley Gold Award of 100,000 pounds (about $135,000), awarded to a past Whitley Award recipient, was presented to Indonesian conservationist Farwiza Farhan.
The awards ceremony was held April 29 at the Royal Geographical Society in London and included a special tribute to WFN ambassador and presenter David Attenborough, turning 100 on May 8.
“Receiving the Whitley award gives us the chance to strengthen communities, protect more nests, and secure a future for the Indian skimmer,” said Parveen Shaikh, a winner, during her awards speech. “And perhaps, in protecting this river, we are also protecting something far more fragile: our connection to the wild.”
The 2026 Whitley Award winners:
Barkha Subba from India works with communities in Darjeeling, West Bengal state, to protect the rare Himalayan salamander (Tylototriton himalayanus) within a rapidly transforming tea estate landscape.
Parveen Shaikh, also from India, is expanding community-led riverine conservation for the Indian skimmer (Rynchops albicollis) to Prayagraj in the Ganga Basin. Her initiative has led to significant recovery in the endangered waterbird’s population.
Issah Seidu from Ghana is working to save threatened guitarfish along his country’s coastline. He’s mapping critical habitats of four guitarfish species to establish the country’s first locally managed marine area.
Marina Kameni from Cameroon is leading the “Frogs and Farmers” initiative in the southwestern part of the country to protect threatened amphibians. The region is also home to the Goliath frog (Conraua goliath), the world’s largest.
Moreangels Mbiza from Zimbabwe is expanding a coexistence model of conservation that allows lions to move between protected areas and community land. She has led interventions that have helped reduce human-wildlife conflict incidents in some areas by up to 98%.
Paola Sangolquí from Ecuador is safeguarding the nesting sites of the critically endangered Galápagos petrel (Pterodroma phaeopygia) from invasive species on private land. She aims to develop a global model for the conservation of seabird nesting colonies.
“As a woman belonging to an indigenous mountain community, winning a Whitley Award means both recognition of years of work on conservation and opportunity to spread this work across the Himalayan landscape,” said Barkha Subba at the awards ceremony.
The Whitley Gold Award was presented to Farwiza Farhan from Indonesia. She leads the NGO HAkA, working to protect the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, a 2.7-million-hectare (6.6-million-acre) UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s the only place on Earth where orangutans, elephants, rhinos and tigers still coexist.
Banner image courtesy of Whitley Fund for Nature.
Young Atlantic salmon exposed to cocaine and its breakdown product, benzoylecgonine, swim farther and more widely in the wild, a new study shows. This behavioral change can put them in risky situations, researchers say.
“[T]he effects of illicit drug pollution on aquatic wildlife is not just a laboratory finding — it can measurably alter wildlife behaviour under natural conditions,” study co-author Jack Brand, an ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, told Mongabay by email.
Researchers are increasingly detecting cocaine and its primary metabolite, benzoylecgonine, in aquatic wildlife, from sharks to freshwater shrimp. However, most studies into the impacts on behavior and brain chemistry in animals have been done in laboratory settings, Brand said. “We wanted to find out whether these effects translate to the real world.”
The researchers selected Lake Vättern in Sweden for their real-world experiment. Young Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) are released in the lake from a hatchery each year for recreational fishing.
In some of these hatchery-raised 2-year-old salmon, the researchers implanted small devices that slowly released chemicals. One group of 35 fish received implants containing cocaine, another group got benzoylecgonine, while a third, control, group didn’t receive any chemical.
The researchers found that in the exposed fish groups, concentrations of the chemicals per fish averaged about 43 nanograms per gram for cocaine, and 34 ng/g for benzoylecgonine. Previous studies have found up to 107.5 ng/g of cocaine in muscle samples of wild sharks, and nearly 70 ng/g of cocaine in some wild crustaceans.
“These [results] are broadly consistent with what we’d expect for fish living downstream of major urban wastewater outfalls in regions where cocaine use is prominent,” Brand said.
Over an eight-week period, the salmon exposed to cocaine or benzoylecgonine swam farther and more widely than the control group. The effects were strongest in fish exposed to benzoylecgonine, which swam up to 1.9 times farther per week than unexposed fish and dispersed up to 12.3 kilometers (7.6 miles) farther across the lake.
Movement “determines which habitats a fish uses, what food it encounters, what predators it’s exposed to, and how much energy it expends,” Brand said. “Fish that are moving farther and dispersing more widely than they normally would are potentially entering unfamiliar or suboptimal habitats and spending more energy on locomotion; energy that could otherwise go towards growth or building reserves for later life stages.”
The effects of benzoylecgonine are particularly concerning because it’s considered an inactive product in humans, Brand said. “[O]ur findings highlight that metabolites deserve greater attention in environmental risk assessments. Benzoylecgonine is more abundant than cocaine in most waterways and, based on our results, may be more disruptive to fish behaviour.”
Cocaine pollutants reach waterways after they pass through humans, and wastewater treatment plants fail to eliminate them. Brand said the study’s finding “underscores the need for improved wastewater treatment and more comprehensive environmental monitoring” of both parent compounds and their metabolites.
Banner image of young Atlantic salmon, by Jörgen Wiklund via Eurekalert.
In India’s northeastern Nagaland state, orb-weaver spiders are a sought-after source of protein, according to a new study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.
Here, “edible spiders hold a significant place in the local diet and have been consumed for generations,” study lead author Lobeno Mozhui, from Nagaland University, told Mongabay by email.
The researchers surveyed 33 people with traditional knowledge about the consumption of two orb-weaver spider species: Nephila pilipes and Trichonephila clavata. Both species are locally known as siyankyü in the Lotha Naga language.
Respondents told the researchers that before cooking, they remove the spiders’ head and legs. They then clean and cook them with seasoning, resulting in a “creamy, nutty” and nutritious meat substitute.
The researchers also collected specimens of the two orb-weaver spiders from Nagaland University, and examined their total protein content, with legs removed. Both were rich in protein, ranging from 36.03-73.65% in N. pilipes and 34.17-57.65% in T. clavata — much higher than some commonly eaten insects.
Mozhui said this research is an important baseline and that “the consumption of edible spiders has the potential to gain wider acceptance.”
Arachnophagy, or the consumption of arachnids like spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites, has a long history, the authors write, yet only about 23 of the world’s more than 50,000 known spider species are eaten.
The world’s largest spider, the goliath bird-eater (Theraphosa blondi), is part of the traditional diet of the Yanomamo and Piaroa peoples of the Amazon. Orb-weavers of the genus Nephila are eaten around the world, including in Mexico, Madagascar and Thailand. In Cambodia, tarantulas are sold as street food.
Eraldo Medeiros Costa Neto, from the State University of Feira de Santana in Brazil, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay by email that spiders “are rich in protein, contain relevant micronutrients like iron and zinc, and generally have a relatively low fat profile.” Like insects, they’re an ecologically efficient food source, he added.
But he warned that harvesting of wild spiders must be carefully managed. Spiders regulate insect populations, so overharvesting them could have “indirect consequences, such as increased pest outbreaks, trophic imbalances, and disruptions to food webs in which spiders also serve as prey,” Costa Neto said.
So why don’t more people eat spiders? Disgust and fear of being bitten are two common reasons. Also, “Spiders are notoriously difficult to farm at scale,” Costa Neto said.
Spiders can be cannibalistic, are territorial, require insect feed, and breed and grow slowly, he said. Web-building species like Nephila are especially challenging to farm because they need a lot of space for their webs.
“Spiders may still hold value as a local or cultural food source, and possibly as a niche gastronomic item,” Costa Neto said. However, “turning them into a significant component of the human diet would require advances in husbandry, automation, and perhaps even domestication — developments that remain a long way off.”
Banner image: Raw and cooked orb-weaver spiders. Image by Mozhui et al., 2026 (CC BY 4.0).
A rare Javan gibbon was born at a wildlife park in the U.K., one of the world’s main centers for the species’ captive breeding. Lima, now just over 2 months old, is a potential candidate for returning to the species’ native habitat on the Indonesian island of Java.
The Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch), known locally as owa, is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. A 2017 study estimated a wild population of between 2,640 and 4,178 individuals. This number is declining due to habitat destruction, forest fragmentation, and poaching for the illegal pet trade and bushmeat trade.
“We’re very happy that we’ve got a new baby at our site and we’re very happy that she may be something that could be reintroduced into the future as well, back into the wild,” said Simon Jeffery, the animal director at Port Lympne Hotel and Reserve in the southern U.K. county of Kent, where Lima was born. Jeffery is also the animal director at the nearby Howletts Wild Animal Park.
Both parks, run by U.K. charity The Howletts Wild Animal Trust, together hold 26 Javan gibbons, representing around 40-50% of the global captive population, Jeffery told Mongabay by phone. Many Javan gibbons born there have since been rehomed, he added.
The trust has bred Javan gibbons since the early 1980s, recording more than 50 births across both parks in the past two decades. Since 2012, it has also sent around 10 individuals to Java.
Lima, whose name means “five” in Indonesian, is the fifth offspring of her parents, Belle and Gapak, both also captive-born.
“Belle is a very, very good mother. She’s had lots of kids before, so we weren’t too worried,” Jeffery said. “[Belle and Gapak] get on very, very well as a couple.”
Belle will likely be placed on contraceptives for a couple of years to avoid her genes becoming overrepresented in the small European population of Javan gibbons.
Releasing a captive-born gibbon into the wild can take years of preparation for the team. They run extensive medical tests to ensure the animals are completely disease-free, and adjust their diets in the U.K. to match what’s available in the wild, even importing Javan fruit so the animals can get used to it before the move.
In Java, the gibbons spend a month in quarantine, then move into progressively larger enclosures, before a soft release into a protected forest, where a partner organization tracks them in the wild.
“What’s unique about the Javan gibbons is it’s actually the female that does all the calling and controls the territory, not the males,” Jeffrey said. “They’re fantastic to look at. How they move and how they break into branches, it’s just amazing to watch.”
Javan gibbons travel from branch to branch by overhand swinging, called brachiation, and can cover distances of 10 meters (33 feet) between swings.
Banner image: Javan gibbon Lima and her mother, Belle. All images courtesy of Port Lympne.
Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified the parks’ operator.
A new report published by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) warns that wealthy nations’ push toward cleaner energy comes with high environmental and social costs in mineral-producing countries.
The investigation links the extraction of transition minerals used in green energy technologies like solar panels and rechargeable batteries to acute water insecurity, livelihood disruptions and health risks for local communities.
The authors conclude that the very technologies designed to combat climate change are also contributing to deepening inequality levels in vulnerable regions, mostly through the disproportionate usage of water.
“Extraction, especially lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements, directly depletes and contaminates freshwater resources, often in already water-stressed and water-bankrupt regions,” lead author Abraham Nunbogu told Mongabay via email.
Across the world, mining activities have been linked to the depletion and contamination of freshwater sources as well as reduced access to safe water for local communities, increasing the risk of disease. Studies from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the world’s largest producer of cobalt, have linked the prevalence of gynecological problems, skin diseases and chronic illnesses in mining areas to heavy metal exposure through polluted water sources.
“These impacts are not incidental side effects but structural outcomes of prevailing extraction models,” said Nunbogu, who is a researcher at the UNU-INWEH.
Critical minerals are the minerals considered crucial to secure countries’ economic and security needs, especially in terms of energy access.
Between 2010 and 2023, the demand for critical minerals tripled, with cobalt demand growing by 70% between 2017 and 2022. To meet the climate targets set in the Paris Agreement — limiting global warming to below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels — the authors said the demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite and cobalt could quadruple by 2050.
“The report documents a profound imbalance in which benefits accrue primarily to consumers and industries in the Global North, while economic, environmental, and health burdens are displaced onto communities in the Global South,” UNU-INWEH Director Kaveh Madani, who led the report’s investigation team, told Mongabay via email. He said women and children, often responsible for fetching water, are especially affected through direct exposure to polluted water.
For Madani, the DRC is emblematic of the problems highlighted in the report. The central African country supplies more than 60% of the world’s cobalt but faces water contamination from mining associated with high rates of disease. Foreign-controlled extraction — 80% of cobalt production is foreign-controlled — means little economic benefit stays in the country.
“This case captures water insecurity, health injustice, labor exploitation, and governance failure in one setting,” Madani said.
The report calls for a shift from voluntary standards to binding global governance frameworks to ensure human rights and environmental safeguards are upheld, the implementation of strict water-use regulations, zero-discharge policies and enforceable accountability mechanisms.
Banner image: Children and adults cleaning and washing minerals in Kakanda, DRC. Image by Didier Makal/ Mongabay.
A startup known as “Sloth World” brought some 69 sloths to Orlando, Florida, with plans to charge $49 to let visitors see them up close. However, 52 sloths are believed to have died in conditions a former employee described to Mongabay as “heartbreaking,” ultimately forcing Sloth World to shut down, with plans to file for bankruptcy.
Described as a slotharium, the venture was framed as a rescue mission to save sloths from deforested areas in Peru and Guyana. However, according to Rebecca Cliffe, founder and director of the Costa Rica-based nonprofit Sloth Conservation Foundation, that premise amounts to greenwashing, as more than 80% of Guyana is covered in rainforest. “There is no lack of habitat available for these sloths,” Cliffe told Mongabay in a video call.
“There’s no way taking healthy adult breeding sloths out of an ecosystem, to go into a for-profit exhibit in the United States… [is] in the sloth’s best interest,” Cliffe said.
In their natural habitat, sloths mainly eat native tree leaves and live alone.
At Sloth World, the animals were kept in small cages stacked on top of each other and fed vegetables.
“They would feed kale, carrots, zucchini, yellow squash and Mazuri biscuits, an exotic animal feed,” a former caretaker who briefly worked at Sloth World told Mongabay. The caretaker asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
In their two weeks working with Sloth World, the caretaker said they saw a lot of sick animals, that they were told had intestinal problems. Normally, sloths defecate just once per week, but the caretaker said some of the sloths were routinely covered in feces and when they became heavily soiled, the individuals were carried in a pillowcase and washed off.
“That was one of the things that really hurt to see because…. his little arms were struggling all over the place and I know that puts a ton of stress on them,” the caretaker said. “And after they hosed him off, they would just put him back into the enclosure all wet.”
They said the final straw was when a baby sloth in the facility died. It came with its mother, but the mother died after arriving in Florida. “It was heartbreaking,” the caretaker said, adding they quit the job soon after.
A state investigation found 31 sloths died in the facility which lacked proper heating. Peter Bandre, formerly Sloth World’s vice president, told state inspectors that most of the animals died from a “cold stun” when the power went out overnight and the space heaters used to warm the facility didn’t work.
However, Ben Agresta, the owner of Sloth World said the sloths that died had a virus, with “barely any symptoms.”
Sloth World recently shut down and surrendered 13 surviving sloths to the Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Garden. On April 29 the zoo reported that 1 sloth has since died, the remaining 12 are in stable condition.
Banner image: A three-toed sloth. Image by Sergio Delgado via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0.)
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