Panama legally recognizes rights of nature
The new law could have major implications for Panama’s land and energy development policies, which are now required to respect and protect the natural world’s new rights.
This archive tracks meaningful progress in protecting wildlife and preserving land — from habitat restoration and endangered species recoveries to new protected areas and conservation policy wins. These stories focus on what’s working, grounded in evidence and reported with care.
The new law could have major implications for Panama’s land and energy development policies, which are now required to respect and protect the natural world’s new rights.
New targets include ensuring 247 million acres of freshwater and forest ecosystems, as well as Indigenous and local communities’ lands, are effectively managed.
In 2007, the first pair of giant anteaters was reintroduced Iberá reserve, a region from which it had gone extinct decades earlier. Today, more than 200 anteaters live free in the reserve.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to show wolf populations could be sustained in the Midwest and portions of the West without protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The constitutional law, approved by parliament on Tuesday, says the state must safeguard the environment, biodiversity and the ecosystem “also in the interest of future generations”.
The population of monarch butterflies overwintering in California has increased a hundredfold, according to an annual count: more than 247,000 butterflies were counted in 2021, up from 2,000 butterflies in 2020.
The group of 10 tribes that have inhabited the area for thousands of years will be responsible for protecting the 500-acre parcel dubbed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ, or “Fish Run Place,” in the Sinkyone language.
The non-profit organization Glass Half Full collects glass bottles and grinds them down into super soft sand to use for disaster relief, eco-construction, and even new glass.
“The iconic American landscape provides drinking water supply for over 8 million Floridians, supports the state’s $90 billion tourism economy, and is home to dozens of endangered or threatened species.”
87 million dollars have now been secured to create a wildlife crossing across the 101 freeway in Liberty Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains.