Erik Hoffner
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erikhoffner.bsky.social
Erik Hoffner
@erikhoffner.bsky.social
Editor, photojournalist & award-winning podcast producer for nonprofit news outlet @Mongabay. Member of Society of Envi Journalists & Vermont Center for Photography
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Our Latin America bureau @mongabaylatam.bsky.social won the Global Shining Light award last night 🏆 💯

One of the highest honors in investigative journalism, it's given at the annual @gijn.org conference

Their winning project moved Peruvian officials to protect land defenders in the Amazon:
Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories
Mongabay and Earth Genome detected 67 clandestine airstrips used for transporting drugs in the Peruvian regions of Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco. The analysis used artificial intelligence (AI) and satell...
news.mongabay.com
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Rich nations blamed operational rifts and budget constraints to hold off funding TFFF, a struggle that reflects a worldwide crisis in climate finance; nearly one-third of the funds raised by global forest mechanisms remain undisbursed.

Carla Ruas on @mongabay.com

news.mongabay.com/2025/11/braz...
Brazil’s forest fund faces a slow takeoff at COP30 despite initial support
Operational rifts and budget constraints choked ambitious funding from rich nations for TFFF at Belém’s summit.
news.mongabay.com
November 24, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Finally published a major story I've been working on for some time, with my colleague @atikarehman.bsky.social and @sushmitaw.bsky.social.

Leaked documents have revealed Amazon's "dirty energy empire", as families in Mumbai suffer.

www.source-material.org/amazon-data-...
Leak reveals Amazon’s hidden data centres' impact on emissions
Soaring electricity demand in Mumbai, where Amazon has 16 data centres, has led to crumbling coal power stations being kept open.
www.source-material.org
November 25, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Founders on LinkedIn still seem to be struggling with the difference between telling people about their humble beginnings and admitting to straight up committing fraud.
November 24, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
"Letting the government control which journalists can cover the highest office in the land and setting rules about what those journalists can say or write is a direct attempt to undercut the First Amendment."- AP Executive Editor Julie Pace

apnews.com/article/asso...
OpEd: Executive Editor Julie Pace on why AP is standing for your right to speak freely
The executive editor of The Associated Press says the news organization is fighting for the right of the press and public to speak freely without being targeted by the government.
apnews.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Latest for @mongabay.com w. @andyball.bsky.social & @vantha.bsky.social uncovers a gold mine has poisoned the O'Ta Bouk River in Virachey National Park.

Water, soil & fish from the river are contaminated, sickening the Indigenous communities downstream who depend on the river for everything.
Toxic runoff from politically linked gold mine poisons Cambodian rivers, communities
*Sources have requested pseudonyms be used to protect their identity out of fear of retaliation from the government or mining companies BANGKOK, Thailand/RATANAKIRI, Cambodia — “When you touch the wat...
news.mongabay.com
November 24, 2025 at 8:47 AM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Our Latin America bureau @mongabaylatam.bsky.social won the Global Shining Light award last night 🏆 💯

One of the highest honors in investigative journalism, it's given at the annual @gijn.org conference

Their winning project moved Peruvian officials to protect land defenders in the Amazon:
Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories
Mongabay and Earth Genome detected 67 clandestine airstrips used for transporting drugs in the Peruvian regions of Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco. The analysis used artificial intelligence (AI) and satell...
news.mongabay.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Congratulations to these guys! Fantastic to see this work being recognized.
Our Latin America bureau @mongabaylatam.bsky.social won the Global Shining Light award last night 🏆 💯

One of the highest honors in investigative journalism, it's given at the annual @gijn.org conference

Their winning project moved Peruvian officials to protect land defenders in the Amazon:
Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories
Mongabay and Earth Genome detected 67 clandestine airstrips used for transporting drugs in the Peruvian regions of Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco. The analysis used artificial intelligence (AI) and satell...
news.mongabay.com
November 23, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
If you’re a journalist who’s still on Twitter, from now on in your writing you have to replace “the American people want” with “troll bots in Eastern Europe demand”

Being there makes your judgment suspect. I don’t care how savvy you think you are, you’re marinating in a disinformation campaign.
November 23, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Our Latin America bureau @mongabaylatam.bsky.social won the Global Shining Light award last night 🏆 💯

One of the highest honors in investigative journalism, it's given at the annual @gijn.org conference

Their winning project moved Peruvian officials to protect land defenders in the Amazon:
Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories
Mongabay and Earth Genome detected 67 clandestine airstrips used for transporting drugs in the Peruvian regions of Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco. The analysis used artificial intelligence (AI) and satell...
news.mongabay.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Actors

www.thedailybeast.com/top-maga-inf...
Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Actors
A new feature on Elon Musk’s X has given deeper insight into the online “America First” movement.
www.thedailybeast.com
November 23, 2025 at 12:44 PM
As a photographer I’m always looking for a new angle

Extreme fisheye lens on a phone can provide that, with all of beauty’s imperfections

Full set at Instagram: www.instagram.com/erikhoffner
November 23, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
I served as our Ambassador in Ukraine for 3 years under Putin’s missiles and drones but resigned when Trump kept appeasing Putin. America does not bow to dictators. It’s not who we are.

Here's why this Trump-Putin so-called "peace plan" is a disaster:
November 21, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
"Brazil’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been arrested at his villa in the capital, Brasília, amid suspicions he was poised to abscond to a foreign embassy to avoid going to prison for masterminding a military coup."

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Brazilian police arrest Bolsonaro amid suspicions he was about to flee
Politician reportedly taken from his villa into custody at a federal police base about 7 miles from presidential palace
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
"Where is their humanity?"

Developing country negotiators speak candidly about meetings behind closed doors at the #COP30 climate summit

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
‘It’s like arguing with robots’: negotiators on the state of Cop30 talks
Three representatives of developing countries speak candidly about meetings behind closed doors in Belém
www.theguardian.com
November 21, 2025 at 8:52 PM
“If the Amazon COP ends with a decision that ignores Indigenous rights and props up offset markets that science says cannot work, it will squander the moral clarity of this moment,” a new op-ed at @mongabay.com by @ran.org argues

Forests cannot be used as offsets, as the COP30 Science Council said:
It’s time to end the carbon offset era, COP30 scientists & communities say (commentary)
At COP30 in Belém, the first climate summit held in the Amazon, something rare has happened. For years, the risks and failures of carbon offsetting have been dismissed as activist exaggeration or tech...
news.mongabay.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
The CDC has altered its website on autism and vaccines, removing unequivocal statements that immunizations don’t cause the neurodevelopmental disorder and replacing them with inaccurate and misleading information. @corinnepurtill.bsky.social @jennyagold.bsky.social www.latimes.com/science/stor...
CDC replaces website on vaccines and autism with false and misleading statements
The CDC removed its own research into the safety of vaccines and replaced it with inaccurate statements.
www.latimes.com
November 21, 2025 at 2:37 AM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler has been announced a winner of this year’s Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. The annual prize is awarded to “outstanding leaders whose work is courageous, innovative, impactful, rooted in universal values, and global in perspective."
Mongabay founder Rhett Butler wins Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Prize
Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler has been announced a winner of this year’s Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. The annual prize is awarded to “outstanding leaders whose work is…
news.mongabay.com
November 21, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Nature is not an optional “extra” in the fight against climate change: It is a living system that underpins our survival.

news.mongabay.com/2025/11/no-b...
No, Bill Gates, we don’t have to choose between people & planet (commentary)
Bill Gates has long been a leading voice in the global response to human health and climate change. His climate investments and advocacy have helped drive innovation, expand access to clean energy and...
news.mongabay.com
November 10, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
[PODCAST]

Patricia Wright, a pioneering primatologist, first described the golden bamboo lemur to Western science.

She joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss her conservation breakthroughs and the challenges the island faces during political instability and widespread poverty.
Pioneering primatologist in Madagascar shares decades of conservation wisdom
Patricia Wright, a pioneering primatologist who established the Centre ValBio research station in Madagascar, began her work there in 1986. As the person who first described the golden bamboo lemur…
news.mongabay.com
November 20, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Big Oil loves Landman's anti-clean-energy message so much that it's hijacked it to spread its own propaganda

Gift link to my column for @opinion.bloomberg.com

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
Big Oil Hijacked ‘Landman’ for Its Propaganda
I wasn’t planning on writing about the hit TV show Landman, about a Texas oil man, mainly because I haven’t actually, how do you say, watched it. That seems like kind of a prerequisite. But Landman ke...
www.bloomberg.com
November 19, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Big news for grassroots environmental movements against extractive industries:

Massive miner Rio Tinto backs away from its aggressive campaign to convert Serbian farms & natural areas into a lithium strip mine

Years of opposition to protect a fertile valley (& Belgrade's water supply) led to this:
Rio Tinto puts Jadar lithium project on backburner
According to the memo seen by Bloomberg, Rio said it was “not in a position to sustain the same level of spend and resource allocation.
www.mining.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Published a new op-ed to @mongabay.com by noted ethnobotanist @tareno70.bsky.social who's been visiting the Amazon since the 1970s & works w/ #Indigenous communities

He's seen some change!

Often asked what the status of the basin's #conservation is, here are his reflections about it during #COP30
Top ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin’s COP30 reflections on Amazon conservation (analysis)
Having studied the healing plants and peoples of tropical South America for well over four decades, I am often asked, “What is the conservation status of the Amazon Rainforest? Is the glass half-full ...
news.mongabay.com
November 18, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Nominations are open for the next Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity, @cgf-uk.bsky.social 🏆

€1 million award for individuals or organizations that accelerate proven, impactful #climate action benefiting people & planet

Please nominate & repost this if your followers work in the #climatechange sphere:
Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity
The 1 million euro prize recognises outstanding contributions to climate action and climate solutions that inspire hope and possibility.
gulbenkian.pt
November 17, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Nearly extinct but saved by #journalism 🌴

@mongabay.com reported that the last Round Island hurricane palm - an endangered species of Mauritius relied on by rare insect & geckos - had snapped during a windstorm

Then Rio's botanical garden reached out saying they have some that can repopulate it 💪
Reporting spurs effort to return key tree to nature in Mauritius - Environmental Journalism and Education
In November 2024, Mongabay published a report detailing how the last wild Round Island hurricane palm (Dictyosperma album var. conjugatum), a rare species native to Mauritius, had snapped during a win...
mongabay.org
November 16, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Erik Hoffner
Imagine when around 80% of the island of Ireland looked something like this, with lynx, wild boar, wolves, bears, and so much more. We should be a rainforest nation.

A *massive* part of our heritage has been stolen from us. Let's start bringing some of it back, via #Rewilding.
November 15, 2025 at 5:47 AM