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 the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest: the Amazon, home to roughly 10% of all known species on Earth.
Despite its ecological importance, parts of the Amazon are hotbeds of violence, illegal deforestation, cattle grazing, mining, and drug smuggling. Mongabay’s reporters traveled to the rainforest, at personal risk, to tell those stories.
Narco airstrips in the Peruvian Amazon
In 2024, Mongabay Latam journalists trekked through the dense Peruvian Amazon to see firsthand a clandestine airstrip used for drug trafficking. Combining AI-analyzed satellite images, official records and on-the-ground reporting, the team uncovered 67 such clandestine airstrips. Many of them were located in or near Indigenous territories.
Their six-part investigation documented deforestation linked to the airstrips and revealed a climate of violence: at least 15 Indigenous leaders have been killed in the region. In two communities, reporters learned that schoolchildren had overdosed on cocaine brought to the community, and residents lived in fear of armed traffickers.
“We know where the airstrips are; they’re not very far from where we live, but we don’t go there for safety reasons,” a source, who asked not be named for fear of their safety, told Mongabay. “They’re armed, and everything is guarded. They’ve even surrounded them with mines.”
Indigenous Guajajara are killed in record numbers amid surge in illegal cattle
In a year-long investigation, Mongabay’s Karla Mendes found that illegal cattle ranching in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon coincided with a record number of killings of Indigenous residents. In 2023, four Guajajara individuals were killed, while another three survived attempts on their lives.
With support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, Mendes visited the Indigenous territory and witnessed illegal cattle ranching firsthand. She then used satellite imagery, data analysis and in-person interviews with the locals and officials to paint a full picture of the illegal activity and violence against forest guardians.
Mendes found that many of the ranches illegally encroaching on Indigenous land were owned by people with a history of criminal activity, including land grabbing, illegal logging and illegal firearm possession.
Following the Mongabay investigation, Brazilian authorities removed thousands of illegal cattle from the region, citing Mendes’s reporting as the reason for their action.
“It was a topic that I would say had gone a bit unnoticed,” Marcos Kaingang, national secretary for Indigenous territorial rights at the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, told Mongabay.
The report has been quoted in a book, podcast, and CBC series. It recieved an honorable mention from a Brazilian journalism prize and is on the shortlist for another top environmental journalism award.
Banner image of the Peruvian Amazon, by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
