The second recipient of the Thomas E. Lovejoy Prize, launched in 2024, was announced Sept. 23 at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, during New York’s climate week. Martín von Hildebrand, an ethnologist and anthropologist, won the award for his decades of work with Indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon, helping them secure their rights and protect their forest. “I have spent 50 years with the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, speaking about land, laws, and their own governments or intercultural governments,” von Hildebrand said in a press release. “I never fully understood their culture, nor did they mine, but we built trust, held hands, walked together and changed the history of the region.” The Lovejoy Prize honors the legacy of Thomas E. Lovejoy, often called the “godfather of biodiversity.” Lovejoy was a renowned ecologist and passionate advocate for science and conservation, especially of the Amazon Rainforest. “The prize honors his dedication to the Amazon by acknowledging the achievements of individuals who embody that same spirit and dedication,” the press release notes. Von Hildebrand first arrived in the Amazon in the early 1970s, when he started living with Indigenous groups in Colombia. During his decades there, he worked with the communities to ultimately secure roughly 26 million hectares (64.2 million acres) of Indigenous territory, building one of the world’s largest community-led conservation systems. In 1990, Hildebrand founded the Gaia Amazonas Foundation (GAF) to support Indigenous-led conservation. The organization’s guiding principle is that Indigenous peoples, as the original inhabitants of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

COLOMBO —Galle Face Beach in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, Colombo, is a popular spot among city dwellers, watched over by lifeguards assigned by the coast guard unit of the Sri Lanka Navy. But one Sunday morning, lifeguard Chamara Vipulasena’s rescue wasn’t a human swimmer, but a sea turtle entangled in a drifting fishing net. Vipulasena had to swim about 150 meters (492 feet) from shore to reach the struggling turtle. “The net was old and covered with algae, suggesting it had been drifting for some time,” he told Mongabay. The exhausted young olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) sported deep cuts on its flippers and head, from its struggle to break free from the nylon threads. The turtle could have been floating with the net without feeding for days, Vipulasena said. The turtle was later treated for its injuries and released back to the sea. Two olive ridley turtles caught in discarded fishing nets. Image courtesy of Galbokka Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Center. This rescue highlights a growing problem in Sri Lanka’s waters with abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear, commonly called “ghost nets.” These nets continue to trap and kill marine animals long after being discarded in to the sea — an act known as “ghost fishing.” “These lost fishing gear kill scores of marine species and remains a specific problem for marine turtles,” said Thushan Kapurusinghe, project lead of the Turtle Conservation Project of Sri Lanka. The impact of ghost nets extends well beyond Sri Lanka. A five-year…This article was originally published on Mongabay

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Ecuador’s plans to offer dozens of blocks of land for oil exploration for more than $47 billion has prompted opposition from seven Indigenous peoples in the Amazon. Those groups say 18 of the proposed blocks overlap their ancestral territories and that they were not consulted. Government officials say their plan is key to modernizing an oil sector that supplies Ecuador’s top export. The dispute comes amid a state of emergency and a national strike over fuel prices, extractive projects and the government’s failure to honor a referendum limiting drilling in Yasuní National Park. By: Steven Grattan, Associated Press Banner image: Waorani Indigenous people march to the Constitutional Court to protest for their right to consultation before the bidding for the exploration and exploitation of oil and gas on their territory in Quito, Ecuador, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa, File)This article was originally published on Mongabay