"The Most Dangerous Place on Earth to Be an Environmentalist"

"The assassination of Goldman Prize-winning activist Berta Cáceres last March shocked the global community. But in her home country of Honduras, where more than 100 activists have been cut down in the past five years, it was business as usual."

"Just before two o’clock in the morning on Thursday, March 3, 2016, the phone rang at Tomás Gómez Membreño’s home in La Esperanza, 70 miles west of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Membreño, a leader of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the country’s most prominent environmental-activist group, groped for the receiver. The organization’s attorney was on the line, and the news he had was grim.

“The first thing he said was, ‘Tomasito, are you OK?’ ” recalled Membreño, a short, muscular man in his late thirties wearing cutoff jeans and a green T-shirt emblazoned with the words NO IMPUNIDAD—no impunity. “It scared me, because I knew that something must have happened. I said, ‘Yes, I’m fine. I was asleep.’ He said, ‘They shot Berta.’ ” "

Joshua Hammer reports for Outside November 29, 2016.