To recognize the significant role Indigenous peoples’ play in global conservation efforts, Mongabay rounds up some of this year’s most impactful stories.
The second Monday of October marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day in multiple cities and states across the U.S. Originally juxtaposed against Columbus Day, celebrated at the same time, the day was set aside to honor Indigenous peoples and their cultures within the country and ecosystems their ancestors have stewarded for millennia. In the U.S., and across […]
New orchid species from Guiana Highlands named by Indigenous group
by Liz Kimbrough on 15 January 2021
An orchid species new to science has been described from the Guiana Highlands in Venezuela and Brazil.
Members of the Pemón Arekuna Indigenous community of Paruima named the species in their native language.
The researcher who described the new orchid advocates for “de-colonizing science nomenclature and giving more representation to Indigenous [and] local languages.”
Epidendrum katarun-yariku, grows. Photo courtesy of Mateusz Wrazidlo.
On an expedition in the
tepuis, or “sprouting rock,” landscape of the Guiana Highlands in South America, Mateusz Wrazidlo snapped a photo of an orchid he had never seen before. Back in the herbarium, a place where dried plant samples are kept for research, he and his colleague, the orchid expert Eric Hágsater, determined it was a species new to science