Tropical ecologists Willian Farfan Rios and Miles Silman with the Andes Biological and Ecosystem Research Group gather data on tree species migration in a field plot at 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) on the elevational transect in the Kosñipata Valley in the Peruvian Amazon. Image by Justin Catanoso.
In this story, I return to the theme and focus of my very first environmental reporting in summer 2013 in the southern Peruvian Amazon — how climate change-driven warming in the tropics is driving upslope species migration. It was a concept that largely baffled me when I first encountered it. But the years since, I’ve come to understand and appreciate it in depth and historical context.
Thus, when his new, exhaustive and pioneering research was brought to my attention, I immediately pitched a story idea to my editor, Glenn Scherer, who just as quickly grasped the importance of the researchers’ findings.
Here’s the essence: In the tropics, vast lowlands can require species to move large distances north or south to escape warming. The most rapid path to climate-resilience is upslope migration, with plants and animals relocating shorter distances uphill to cooler places. A new study has mapped major elevational gradients in the Amazon that offer the best possibility for connectivity and upslope relocation in the biome — overlaying elevational gradients, amount of forest cover, fragmentation and protected areas.
With the except of the primate photo, I took all the photos that accompany the story during my repeated visits to the Peruvian Amazon since my first reporting trip there in 2013.
Densely forested slopes of the Peruvian Amazon in Manu National Park offer what scientists believe are pathways to climate resilience and species survival as warming temperatures across the South American tropics force many plant and animal species to migrate to cooler temperatures to remain in their ecological equilibrium. Image by Justin Catanoso.
Palm trees, which make up 20% of the trees in the Amazon, grow mixed among various tree and grass species in the southern Peruvian Amazon lowlands of Manu National Park. Image by Justin Catanoso.
It is usual for research coming from the Amazon to be even remotely upbeat. But this story of mine may qualify. Published long-term research based on field monitoring, not computer modeling, shows that forests dominated by palm species in low water table regions of the rainforest are more drought resilient, and thus functioning and healthier, than previously understood. Such forests make up more than a third of the Amazon.
This research is unique and perhaps groundbreaking. It bears close attention and scrutiny. That’s because most Amazonian research points to a rainforest devastated by drought, deforestation and wildfires, and close to tipping from a carbon sink to a carbon source. All those things are true, but…
Lead researcher and ecologist Flavia Costa of Brazil told me: “Our research goes against the belief that the Amazon is collapsing. And this is big because someone needs to say that things are more patchy [than generally believed] and there are possibilities of a positive outcome. Because then, if there are such possibilities, you can go and protect these specific areas.”
Thanks to my editor Glenn Scherer for pushing for a bit more reporting context on this story, and to my longtime colleague Enrique Ortiz, a leading Peruvian forest ecologist, for bringing this study to my attention.
A research scientist marks a tree in a shallow water table forest in Brazil to gauge its response to drought conditions. More than a third of the Amazon is composed of such wetland forests, suggesting that huge swaths of the world’s largest rainforest may be far more resistant to severe droughts than recognized by previous research. Image courtesy of Flávia Costa.
Research shows that “biomass burning power plants emit 150% the CO2 of coal, and 300-400% the CO2 of natural gas, per unit energy produced.” Image by GIZ Bush Control and Biomass Utilisation Project via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
My first story for Mongabay in 2026 is among the more important stories I’ve written in recent years on the forest biomass beat. Forest advocates across the EU have had little success in pushing back against the expanding use of forest biomass — wood pellets — for industrial-scale energy generation and the billions in state subsidies paid to support the industry.
In what appears to be an unprecedented development, law enforcement in the Netherlands is weighing whether to launch a criminal investigation against RWE, one of the largest energy providers in the Netherlands, and a significant importer of wood pellets from Asia, the U.S. and Eastern Europe. Forest advocates Comite Schone Lucht and Biofuelwatch alleged that RWE has misrepresented what its imported wood pellets from Malaysia are made out of in order to receive lucrative Dutch subsidies. RWE says it supports and abides by Dutch and EU certification schemes.
Such certification has been designed to ensure that imported wood pellets are not contributing to deforestation where they are produced. Forest advocates argue that the certification process is imprecise and unreliable. Now, Dutch law enforcement agencies will determine whether to investigate to see if corporate fraud is involved.
Sea otters are lean, nonstop eating machines. They spend most of their lives in frigid Alaskan waters. Because they have no blubber, they must eat up to 30% of their body weight daily to maintain warmth. An exhibit in a National Park Service museum near Anchorage displays their favorite foods: urchins, mussels, butter and razor clams, moon snails. Credit: Wikicommons
I am particularly happy with this story that I reported during a more than two-week stay in southcentral Alaska in June/July, 2025. Here’s how it started.
When my partner and I decided on a vacation trip to Alaska, I knew I wanted to have a story to report during our stay. A Wake Forest colleague of mine, Greg Larsen, was working with the National Park Service in Juneau and connected me to someone he knew in the Anchorage office, Heather Coletti, a marine ecologist. After an extended phone call prior to flying west, she and I discussed various ideas regarding her research. We settled on sea otters — or rather, the implications of a newly surging sea otter population throughout the sweeping Gulf of Alaska on both near-shore ecosystems and the economy of shell-fishing and crabbing.
Sea otters were nearly hunted into extinction for their pelts a century ago. They were introduced into the Gulf of Alaska in the 1960s. Because their primary food sources have become so abundant, they’ve had all the food they need to rebuild their populations throughout the gulf. As apex predators, there is little, as of yet, to control that grow until until they eat through their food supply.
It turns out, these sleek, richly furred creatures must eat as much as 30% of their 50 pounds in body weight every day to stay thrive and reproduce. Some estimates put the number of sea otters in Alaska at 70,000 — up from a few thousand some 20 years ago. That’s when you start to glimpse why clams, crabs, oysters, mussels and snails are harder to find off the coasts of seafaring places like Homer, Seward, Cordova and Valdez — as well as plenty of roadless Native Alaskan communities that rely on nature for their basic dietary needs.
When I started reporting, I figured the story had essentially two sides — the otters’ positive impact on balancing intertidal ecosystems by helping kelp forests thrive and their controversial impact on the very seafoods we humans consider delicacies. But as I interviewed more expert sources during my travels, a more nuanced science, economic and cultural story emerged — with a significant Native Alaskan angle.
In recent summers, I’ve had the great opportunity to report for Mongabay from Olympic National Park, Vancouver Island and northern California. This reporting from Alaska might be my favorite.
A Native rights activist, Raven Cunningham says Native Alaskans hold the key to balancing sea otter populations in the Gulf of Alaska. Here, she holds an otter she hunted in Orca Bay in Prince William Sound, near where she lives in Cordova. Image courtesy of Bjorn Olsen.
A traditional waffle garden, like this one in New Mexico, has grid-like sunken beds with earthen walls that capture rain, retain moisture and prevent runoff. Image by Geoffrey Kie.
Permaculture is a word I’ve gotten familiar with from a Greensboro neighbor and good friend Charlie Headington. He has turned his 60×150 foot property into a flourishing urban farm of fruit trees, garden beds, beehives and water features. In a space usually reserved for lawns, Charlie has adapted his land to be productive year round, regardless of weather conditions.
When Latoya Abulu, Mongabay’s Indigenous editor, offered me the opportunity to report and write this story on Native American dry farming techniques in New Mexico and Arizona, I thought about Charlie — and how much I had to learn about permaculture. Fortunately, I had several excellent sources in the U.S. Southwest who patiently answered my questions, offered examples and demonstrated how age-old dry farming holds lessons for regions around the world as climate change makes weather more erratic and regular rains harder to come by.
Roxanne Swentzell, who shared her inspiring story with me, is shown here harvesting drought-resistant corn on her garden plot in the Santa Clara Pueblo of New Mexico. Image courtesy of Roxanne Swentzell.
Krystal Martin, right, co-founder of Greater Greener Gloster, attended the October Mississippi DEQ hearing with many of her neighbors, who say they were disappointed with the outcome. She stands beside Kadin Love, a social justice organizer with the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental nonprofit. Image courtesy of Krystal Martin.
What Mississippi gives to a poor, Black community in the state it can just as quickly take away. That’s what this story details. In May, I reported that a permitting committee of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality voted to deny wood-pellet maker Drax its request for a new classification to enable it to exceed air pollution standards.
In October, after a Drax appeal, the same committee sided with the company and against the small community — which has been telling anyone who will listen that the air pollution from one of the largest wood-pellet mills in the country is damaging their health and quality of life.
As my story explains: Pellet mills have increasingly come under fire from rural communities who accuse large-scale manufacturers like the U.K.’s Drax and Enviva in the U.S. of air pollution, dust and noise violations. A 2023 study found that pellet mills in the U.S. Southeast release 55 hazardous pollutants.
Moreover, the Drax plant has been fined more than $2.75 million since 2016 for exceeding toxic emissions limits. While Drax says it has invested millions in pollution mitigation technology to prevent future pollution, those living in Gloster told me they’ve seen no difference in their air quality.
A participant plants local green plants in a park as part of Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative, which aims to plant 7.5 billion trees by the end of the year, at Jifara Ber site, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July 2025. (AP Photo/Amanuel Birhane)
In this story, I had an opportunity to evaluate an increasingly common national strategy of combatting climate change: planting trees. Lots and lots and lots of trees.
I first became familiar with massive tree-planting pledges as a way of fighting climate change at COP20 in Lima, Peru in 2014. The Bonn Challenge promised to reforest 350 million hectares of deforested or degraded land by 2030. The person declaring the great promise of this pledge was Bianca Jagger, the former wife of the Mick Jagger; her environmental nonprofit was an official sponsor of the challenge. It sounded great at the time. It sounded far less great as time went on.
Over the years, the national promises have mounted — to the extent where they became unrealistic if not plain misleading. Rather than do the hard work of reducing emissions and protecting biodiverse forests, countries simply promised to plant more and more trees — often in ecosystems such as savannas and grasslands that would be damaged by such efforts.
The new study in Science that I report on makes clear that there is far less available land for reforestation than imagined. Perhaps more importantly, as forestry expert Bill Moomaw shared with me, there is no shortcut to slowing down the ever-accelerating climate crisis.
Monoculture tree farms do very little to sequester carbon compared to mature, biodiverse forests. They do even less to harbor biodiversity. Here, you see an oil palm plantation (left) and native tropical rainforest on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Image by Rhett Ayers Butler/Mongabay.
Tropical forests like this one in the Peruvian Amazon could qualify for annual payments from the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) to help keep them standing and delivering planetary ecosystem services — especially carbon sequestration that slows the rate of climate change. Image by Justin Catanoso
In this story, I revisit a promising initiative I first wrote about at the UN biodiversity meeting in Cali, Colombia, in October, 2024. At Climate Week 2025, Brazilian President Lula stepped forward to pledge the first $1 billion to a tropical forest protection fund unlike any other, as my sources have told me.
Highlights from my story, as summarized from my story by my editor, Glenn Scherer.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) — a proposed $125 billion fund to conserve tropical forests worldwide — was developed by Brazil in 2023, and pushed forward in 2024 at the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia. Since then, momentum has built in support of this market-driven approach to conserving tropical forests.
Once fully established, the $125 billion fund would spin off as much a $4 billion in interest annually (above what is paid to investors), potentially going to more than 70 TFFF-eligible developing nations, which collectively hold more than one billion hectares of tropical forests. The fund could be operational before 2030.
At Climate Week in New York City on Sept 23, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that his country will invest the first $1 billion in the fund. Other nations, including China, Norway, the UK, Germany, Japan and Canada seem poised to contribute. Even oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia have shown interest.
But hurdles lie ahead: TIFFF needs $25 billion from sovereign nations and $100 billion from private investors before a full launch, with Indigenous and local communities (IPLCs) to be major benefactors. The make-or-break moment for TIFFF is expected to occur at the UN climate summit (COP30) in Belém, Brazil Nov. 10-21, 2025.
Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of the environment and climate change, has been instrumental in TFFF development and was in New York City during Climate Week to discuss it with other environmental ministers. She is shown here in an Oct. 2024 meeting with journalists at the UN biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
Barry McCovey has been director of the Yurok’s fisheries department for a quarter-century and is seen here on the Klamath. He says that while the four dams coming down on the Upper Klamath River is a crucial step toward restoring what was once the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast of the United States, the tribe’s reclamation of the Blue Creek watershed might be even more important to the eventual recovery of the entire ecosystem. Image courtesy of Matt Mais of the Yurok Tribe.
The genesis of this Northern California story began in Paris, France, in March 2024. There, I was visiting my friend and former student Phil Glynn, where he lives with his family. I asked if he knew of any environmental stories in the Pacific Northwest, where I would be traveling in late July. It wasn’t a random question. Phil and his wife Elizabeth, also a former student, run Kansas City-based Travois, a full-service company that facilities economic development and conservation on Indigenous lands across the U.S.
Phil told me about reclamation and restoration of Blue Creek. I recognized its news value and environmental importance immediately, as I explain in this story. What followed in the spring and summer of 2024 was a host of interviews with leaders of Portland, Oregon-based Western Rivers Conservancy, the Yurok tribal leadership and an immersive visit to Northern California, the Klamath River and, most importantly, ice-cold Blue Creek (in which I snorkeled to look for salmon!).
One of the biggest environmental stories of 2024 was the removal of all four dams on the Klamath River, the largest river restoration project in U.S. history. But without the concurrent revitalization of Blue Creek, what was once the West Coast’s third-largest salmon run would have little chance of full recovery. While it took a generation and a pioneering $60 million fundraising effort on behalf of Wester Rivers, the Blue Creek watershed and the salmon are coming back to the Yurok, the land’s rightful stewards — a rare environmental success story involving a timber-rich ecosystem and California’s largest Indigenous tribe.
Sue Doroff, former president and co-founder of Oregon-based Western Rivers Conservancy, spent the better part of the last 18 years working diligently and creatively to raise the $60 million required to buy the entire 19,000-hectare (47,000-acre) Blue Creek watershed from a timber company for the Yurok Tribe. Standing in the creek, she says, “We are in the business of forever; that’s how we feel about the Yurok taking over as stewards of this vital creek and watershed.” Image by Justin Catanoso.
In 2023, Brazilian officials and representatives from several other cities around the nation met for a workshop in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro state as part of the “Nature-Based Solutions Accelerator in Cities” project. Participants discussed ways for improving adaptation and nature-based solutions projects in order to better access climate finance. Image courtesy of Diego Padilha-Yantra Imagens/WRI Brasil.
When it comes to global finance for climate adaptation and resilience, the billions made available to vulnerable countries continues to fall hundreds of billions short of the actual need as climate catastrophes mount annually. In this story for Mongabay, I report on a novel, detailed study by World Resources Institute that is critically important to policymakers and finance leaders who gather at annual UN climate summits.
WRI economist Carter Brandon‘s team evaluated 320 adaptation and resilience grants in 12 mostly tropical countries totaling $133 billion in finance between 2014 and 2024. They found that for every $1 invested there was a return of more than $10 in value in unaccounted for benefits. This came in areas such as permanent infrastructure, job creation, risk management, public health improvements, lives saved, biodiversity protection. These benefits accrue whether or not they are counted or even recognized.
Brandon argues that finance institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and other major eco-financiers should consider these ancillary benefits as they evaluate future grant requests. He emphasized that countries, too, should better understand the full impact of the most effective adaptation and resilience projects and sharpen their finance requests. “What we now can see is that this investment is not only good for resilience,” Brandon told me, “but it’s also a really strong investment in development and public health.”
The Guandu water treatment plant in Nova Iguaçu, Brazil. The facility supplies water to more than 9 million people in Rio de Janeiro. Under the Cities4Forests initiative, WRI conducted a study on the benefits of natural infrastructure for water in five metropolitan regions, including Rio de Janeiro. By restoring forests and protecting watersheds upstream, the Rio de Janeiro project also helps reduce pollution, lower water treatment costs and secure long-term water quality. Image courtesy of Marizilda Cruppe/WRI Brasil.
