A legal complaint in Costa Rica has alleged that a banana plantation destroyed parts of a protected wetland in Bananito Sur, located in the Valle La Estrella district in the central province of Limón. Workers on the La Paz banana plantation, owned by Standard Fruit Company de Costa Rica, a subsidiary of Dole, cut down and burned vegetation inside an area listed on the country’s National Wetlands Registry, according to several complaints and a June 23 Supreme Court filing. In addition to environmental impacts, the dispute has raised questions about government transparency, with several agencies allegedly failing to provide information about what was happening in the area. “The government has to draw a line and say enough is enough, and stop the company. It hasn’t done that,” Marco Levy Virgo, president of the Association for the Development of Ecology, an environmental advocacy group, told Mongabay. Alleged destruction from the plantation. Image by Marco Levy Virgo. Banana plantations often require extensive pesticide use, as well as complex drainage systems with channels that transport water away from crops. Levy said he noticed damage related to that work at the start of the year. He submitted formal requests for information and technical data to the authorities, including the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE). In April, MINAE’s Caribbean Hydrological Unit, responsible for managing the country’s largest watersheds, published two reports describing an agricultural drainage channel passing through the wetland from the plantation, with cutting and burning running parallel to it. The cleared area measured between…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Record wildfires devastated South America in 2024, raging out of control in biomes where fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, but also entering rainforests that had never burned before. Driven by expanding industrial agriculture, an El Niño episode, and droughts worsened by global climate change, the thick smoke from the wildfires grounded flights, shuttered schools, and caused lasting health problems. After favorable weather led to a reprieve from the most destructive fires worldwide last year, fire experts expect major wildfires to return to South America in 2026 and 2027. With fire season beginning in the continent, park rangers and firefighters hope that a trio of satellites launched in early July will provide more precise, rapidly updated data to wildland firefighters worldwide. The first three operational satellites from Earth Fire Alliance are meant to help improve global fire detection by providing frequent high-resolution wildfire data. These are part of the nonprofit’s FireSat program, which aims to deploy about 50 low-orbit satellites by 2030. The satellites are still being tested and calibrated, but in a few months, a first cohort of early adopters will gain access to the data. Once fully operational, the system could help fire agencies reduce emissions from wildfires worldwide by 5-10% yearly, according to Paul Bodnar, director of clean industry and special projects at the Bezos Earth Fund, which provided a $26 million grant to the program. The new satellites launch as the world enters an El Niño climate pattern that will likely mean drought and…This article was originally published on Mongabay