Katelynn Delos Reyes thought she knew what to expect when Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into Saipan in April. As a lifelong resident of the island, Delos Reyes had survived frequent storms, including Super Typhoon Yutu, the second-strongest in U.S. history. Eight years ago, Yutu’s 274-kmph (about 170-mph) winds devastated her village in the southern end of Saipan. Just three years before that, she survived Typhoon Soudelor. But Sinlaku was different. “At the beginning, it was OK. But later on it wasn’t,” said Delos Reyes, who is Chamorro, Indigenous to the Mariana Islands. A few days before it hit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, on April 14, Sinlaku had tropical-storm winds. That made it what is known in the Marianas as a “banana typhoon” because such storms level banana trees but leave others standing. Then over the weekend, the typhoon rapidly intensified by 120 kmph (75 mph) in just 24 hours before becoming a 298-kmph (about 185-mph) monstrosity and the strongest storm on Earth so far this year. Delos Reyes and her family had done what they could to prepare. They boarded up the windows. They bought gallons of drinking water and filled plastic drums to use in the shower and toilet. Then the storm hit, and Delos Reyes grew scared. The winds, which had weakened to 240 kmph (about 150 mph), ripped the wood from a window. Rainwater gushed through the ceiling and soaked their belongings, including Delos Reyes’ mattress. She and her partner, her mother, her…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The year 2011 marked the first time a land-use restriction order was enforced for the Ituna/Itatá Indigenous Territory, a swath of Brazilian Amazon roughly twice the size of Singapore and home to people living in voluntary isolation. The order was meant to protect the latter by prohibiting unauthorized individuals from entering — but rates of forest loss and invasions grew. In 2019, Ituna/Itatá was one of the Indigenous territories with the highest forest loss, primarily due to illegal land grabbers. In Brazil, land-use restriction orders exist to protect isolated Indigenous peoples and are a temporary tool in cases where the demarcation process to formalize the protected status and boundaries of Indigenous territories are not yet complete. But as recent Mongabay reporting has shown, they’re often renewed many times over for years while the formal land titling stalls, and aren’t always effective at protecting isolated peoples’ lands from invaders. Following one of the latest land-use restriction orders in 2022 for the Ituna/Itatá territory, the area lost 2,211 hectares (5,464 acres) of tree cover, or about 1.5% of its total area, according to satellite analysis by Mongabay. The most recent renewal was in 2025. Brazilian federal public prosecutor Daniel Luís Dalberto, head of the office for recently contacted Indigenous peoples and those living in voluntary isolation, told Mongabay in a recent interview that while the legal measure is important, it should have “a short time frame, until the Indigenous territory is demarcated as quickly as possible,” and should be accompanied by other…This article was originally published on Mongabay

BUTEMBO, Democratic Republic of Congo — In the lush forests of North Kivu, Gangala Yafali Mangusa Jr. leads a forest patrol with members of his community. Together, they monitor human activity, identify threats and prevent damage to biodiversity, such as large-scale logging, unregulated timber harvesting and artisanal mining. “For example, once a month or once a quarter, we conduct inspections to check whether there are people in the community who are illegally hunting [protected] animals,” he explains. In his 30s, Mangusa Jr. leads the local management committee in the Bamasobha Local Community Forest Concession (CFCL), located in Lubero, a region threatened by terrorist attacks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Composed of Indigenous Batwa, Bapiri and local communities, Mangusa Jr.’s team works together to protect this community forest, promote sustainable management of natural resources and strengthen coexistence between communities and the ecosystems on which they depend. According to him, this commitment is rooted in a personal history marked by tensions and, at times, violence experienced around the Maiko National Park — a sprawling park protecting endemic species such as eastern lowland gorillas, okapi, chimpanzees and forest elephants — after the 1970s. Aerial view of forest and river in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Image by MONUSCO/Myriam Asmani via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). He recounts that, when the park was established, his family, like so many others, faced park rangers for several years who had been sent to enforce the new park boundaries, particularly in the Batike settlement, within…This article was originally published on Mongabay