RIN Fellow's Series on Illegal Cattle Ranching Wins Top Environmental Journalism Award

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A Pulitzer Center-supported investigation into illegal cattle ranching in the Amazon has won a $5,000 environmental journalism award.

Columbia Journalism School announced that Rainforest Investigations Network Fellow Karla Mendes' reporting on illegal cattle ranching on Indigenous land has been selected as its winner of the 2025 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. Columbia called Mendes' series for Mongabay "groundbreaking."

Mendes is a Brazilian journalist working as a Rio de Janeiro-based investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay. According to Mendes and Mongabay, she is the first Brazilian journalist to win the Oakes award.

The Oakes award, which carries a $5,000 prize, honors "news reporting that makes an exceptional contribution to the public’s understanding of environmental issues," Columbia's Journalism School says on its website. Oakes, called "an environmental journalism pioneer," served as editor of The New York Times' editorial page. Oakes died in 2001.

Mendes' project, Blood Timber War, which began in 2023, unveiled a “laundering” scheme that allowed illegal timber trade from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory to international markets, including the United States and the European Union. The series of reports also revealed the killings of Indigenous Guajajara people amid unlawful logging.

"Mendes traveled to the region in 2023 and witnessed illicit cattle ranching and other environmental crimes both inside and outside the Arariboia Indigenous Territory. She also analyzed satellite images of the area and carried out a spatial analysis which proved that, among other crimes, deforestation had occurred in protected areas," according to Columbia's award announcement.

In addition, Mendes' reporting led to Brazil's crackdown on illegal cattle in the Amazon. A government operation launched earlier this year has removed more than 1,000 illegal head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon rainforest.

Mendes said she is grateful for the Pulitzer Center's support of the project.

"I'm really thankful for all the support received from the Pulitzer Center. It'd be impossible to make this project happen without you all!"

Click here to read more about Mendes' award and the award finalists.