In 2025, Mongabay’s investigative journalism earned international honors for stories exposing environmental crime, corruption, and abuse of both people and the environment. Mongabay journalists uncovered hidden public health risks, schemes to take advantage of Indigenous groups, and took personal risk traveling to underreported regions on nature’s frontlines. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes won first place in the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism for her investigative report, “Revealed: Illegal cattle ranching booms in Arariboia territory during deadly year for Indigenous Guajajara.” In this three-part series, Mendes uncovered a direct connection between the cattle industry and a spike in violent crime against local Indigenous Guajajara people in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory of the Brazilian Amazon. Federal prosecutors said they will use Mendes’s reporting as evidence in a trial for the murder of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, a forest guardian allegedly killed by loggers in 2019. Contributor Gloria Pallares won in the Innovation & Investigative Journalism category of the International Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award, and received an honorable mention from the Trace Prize. Both honors were for her story “False claims of U.N. backing see Indigenous groups cede forest rights for sketchy finance.” Pallares’s investigation dug into false claims by entities in Latin America that they had the backing of the U.N. to convince Indigenous groups to give up economic rights to their forests for decades to come. The Rio Grande do Sul Press Association awarded second place for national reporting to Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, Philip Jacobson and Fernanda Wenzel, alongside the Pulitzer…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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