"In an outdoor classroom surrounded by snake specimens preserved in jars, teacher Melqui Mosquera proudly talks about the nature reserve he set up in a Colombian region environmentally devastated by illegal mining."

"Miners Vale, BHP, and Samarco are discussing a near $30 billion compensation deal with Brazilian authorities related to the 2015 Mariana dam collapse, they said on Friday, with an agreement set to be signed on Oct. 25, sources said."

"The Kalunga people have mastered wildfires in the Cerrado for generations. Now they fight blazes from the Amazon to the Pantanal"

"Drought is devastating Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and some rivers are falling to historic lows. Images of one of the Amazon River’s main tributaries, the Negro River, show just how dramatically water is dwindling."

"President Lula bet big on mega dams in the 2000s to expand clean energy. Now climate change is hurting Brazil's green ambitions"

"Wildfires have burned through 40,000 hectares (400 square kilometers) of Argentina's central farming region of Cordoba, according to officials, leaving charred cattle, houses, forests and fields in their wake."

"Preservationists say governments at all levels have failed to prevent authorized and illegal off-road racers from driving through giant figures of animals, humans and objects."

"A destructive cocktail of herbicides, including a key compound in the lethal defoliant Agent Orange, is being used to chemically deforest huge areas of Brazil as ranchers there seek new, less detectable ways to clear forests for grazing cattle."

"The worst drought on record has lowered the water level of the rivers in the Amazon basin to historic lows, in some cases drying up riverbeds that were previously navigable waterways."