- As Brazil moves to explode the deep, rocky river territory of the Lourenção Rocks, locals on the Tocantins River say the government’s refusal to recognize them as “impacted” excludes thousands of fishers from protections.
- Scientists compare the 43-kilometer (26.7-mile) rocky stretch to an “underwater Galapagos,” warning that detonations will destroy the quiet water pockets and deep rocks where rare species breed.
- The industrial shipping route is designed to accelerate global exports of soy and minerals, a move critics say prioritizes corporate profit over the survival of traditional peoples.
ITUPIRANGA, Brazil — Ronaldo Macena and Erlan Moraes, traditional riverfolk leaders whose families have lived for generations on the Lourenção Rocks fishery on the Amazon’s Tocantins River, were hopeful in September when a federal judge visited their villages.
For several generations, Macena told the judge, the peoples of the Pedral do Lourenção riverfolk territory, as they call it, have thrived in its rocky reaches, gaining not just income and dignified livelihoods but also cultural identification from fishing its stony subaquatic canyons that reach to more than 76 meters (250 feet) deep.
But as the federal government seeks to open the river as a new shipping route, their rights have been systematically violated, Macena said, by a federal government that hasn’t treated them as traditional peoples with a distinct “culture, language and traditions” — but instead lumped riverfolk in with urban peoples, leaving their traditional knowledge, fishing and even existence barely acknowledged in government records.
Brazil’s federal transport agencies plan to explode the deep, rocky river territory of the Pedral do Lourenção, as riverfolk call it (formally known as Pedral do Lourenço), a first step toward a riverway on the Tocantins River meant to expand exports of grains, minerals and cattle. The project is being executed by Brazil’s infrastructure transport department (DNIT), with studies by the Brazilian engineering consulting firm DTA Engenharia.
To turn the river into a shipping route, authorities decided to blow up the rocks of a 35-kilometer (21.7-mile) section of the Lourenção, which is 43-kilometers (26.7-miles) long and obstructs large boats during the dry season, from June to December. The 100-140 meter-wide (328-459 feet-wide) channel would also be dredged through Indigenous and Afro-descendant territories to the north.
Environmental licenses have been issued for rock-blasting, although the explosions have been disputed in courts. DNIT told Mongabay it has complied with all socioenvironmental issues and respected the rights of local communities.
Macena and Moraes were among hundreds of riverfolk who attended special meetings when Judge André Cavalcanti visited four villages in September. They and other residents told him what the Lourenção means to them: livelihood, sustenance and income, their wooden canoes’ traditional navigation route, ancestors’ traditions, and spiritual source.
The Lourenção rocks serve as a breeding ground for fish. Without the rocks and with regular dredging, local communities said they fear fish, now abundant, will disappear.
Their practices belong to generations-old communities who have preserved the Pedral because their lives depend on its tremendous productivity as a fishery that sends fish to far-flung states, feeding the region and beyond, Mongabay learned through dozens of on-site interviews. Riverfolk told the judge that explosions and future barge traffic threaten traditional livelihoods and food security in ways never measured, according to a lawsuit by the Pará Federal Prosecutors’ Office (MPF). Many communities were labelled, without evaluation, as “not impacted” — even though they fish and live on the rocky fishery slated to be detonated.
Macena said communities have been made “invisible” in official studies. In the project’s socio-environmental assessment, 69% of interviewees were from Itupiranga city rather than riverside communities and it was finalized by what Macena called an “invasion” of their territory, violating their consultation protocol, as Mongabay previously reported. “We don’t accept this as a community assessment,” he said.
“We don’t want to be seen merely as people who live along the riverbank,” Macena told the judge in September. “Here, we have our culture, our traditions, our way of life, our communities’ local dialect. For us, the Tocantins River is our street; the Tocantins River is our way of life.”
“The Pedral do Lourenção means a great deal to us, because it is there, among the rocky outcrops, that we make our living — where we take what we need to survive, where we fish, where we spend free time together.”
‘The channel will kill fishers’
Eunice Silva is a grandmother, TikToker and president of the Pimenteira association, representing nine Tucurui dam reservoir communities. Her followers love seeing her catch and prepare large quantities of fish, using her fishing knowledge of three decades on the Tocantins River. Most don’t know that the fishing they admire is in danger of being literally exploded.
“I’ve been fishing the Pedral for 27 years,” Silva in September. “We earn our livelihood from the [natural] river channel.” By contrast, the river margins only have “little fish” that aren’t lucrative, she said. “That’s why this fishing is so important to us. If this shipping channel is built, it will kill fishers.”
Silva recalled a meeting in Tauiry Village where “DNIT or DTA Engenharia said they were going to break the rock, but that it would only be that little spot.” She said she disagreed.
“Folks, they’re going to break it — it’s not just a little spot. Any tip of rock they break there will already make a difference for us, because every rock tip creates a remanso,” she said, referring to quiet pockets of water. “That’s where we set our nets, searching for the remansos to catch the big fish — jaú, barbado, filhote.”
She described three kinds of fishing techniques in the middle of the channel, which she expects would be undermined by both explosions and barge traffic: boiada lines on the surface, kibada nets set 3-4 meters (9.8-13.1 feet) deep, and lead-weight lines that spool up to 100 meters (328 feet) of panel nets to sit on the river bottom “in the mud, on the Pedral.”
“Mandi-moela fishing here, which comes from the bottom of the river, is like gold to us,” she said about her most lucrative catch. “Mapará fishing is very important to us. It depends on the luada [the right phase of the moon].”
Silva says barges will “carry our nets away” and imperil residents. Though few barges manage to pass today, she recalled one losing control and destroying the trapiche pier where her children were standing. She ran and pulled them away just in time.
“What security will you offer us?” she asked.
“As far as I’m concerned, there should be no rock-blasting because it takes away our livelihood,” she said. She added that she fears being deceived — paid temporarily if at all, then abandoned if fishing never returns. “I was never anyone’s employee,” she said proudly. “I have no house in the city” — nowhere else to go. DNIT didn’t include Silva’s village among those affected by the waterway construction, so she won’t receive payments during or after the explosions.
Federal prosecutors say that framing is strategic: By defining the license as covering only “interventions,” not shipping channel operations, DNIT argues the government is not responsible for the channel’s broader impacts. “IBAMA currently licenses only the works and maintenance interventions necessary for the use of the channel,” the agency emailed Mongabay, only licensing explosions and dredging — not analyzing impacts of future barge traffic.
For Silva, that legal fiction has life-or-death consequences. If the government claims no channel exists (as it told the judge), she fears it can deny responsibility for the loss of fishing grounds, the arrival of barges in front of her home, or erosion of her island.
‘We will have nowhere to fish’
Erlan Moraes, Praia Alta village association president, comes from a family of 11 siblings. “[Our mother] was always on the river fishing. Everything we learned about the river and about fishing was taught to us by our mother.” He said that when she died when he was 15, he helped care for his siblings as the second eldest and fished to help the family. He went into the military for eight years then returned to Praia Alta with his wife, Sara.
Erlan and Sara recently had their second child, now eight months old. Erlan carried her in his arms in September when three judges and a retinue of military, DNIT, IBAMA, DTA and government lawyers came to his village. He wondered what his daughter Maria Cecilia’s future would be.
DNIT assured residents they’d be able to continue fishing during construction — and after. Erlan said he’s doubtful. The channel would take up between 100-140 meters (328-459 feet), but during the dry season “sometimes the river isn’t even that wide,” he said, meaning “we will have nowhere to fish.” Like Eunice Silva, Moraes said, they rely on pockets of still water formed by rocks and on nets tucked into rocky spaces. “When that rock where I fish is gone, where will I put my net?” his brother Abel asked Mongabay, adding that the government never came to Praia Alta to study their fishing.
Erlan, fearing contamination like many, asked DNIT and DTA, “Which chemicals will you use to explode the rocks?” Neither replied. The leader inquired how “metals contained for millions of years in the Pedral’s rocks” could be released by explosions, “contaminating water that we drink directly from the river,” especially during the dry season when rustic wells run dry. The company didn’t take sediment samples for analysis of heavy metals in Praia Alta and Tauiry villages, according to the company’s environmental impact study, which said they found only rocks. Macena countered, “The riverbed also has sediments.”
DNIT replied, “There is no contract signed” for explosives yet, so “it is not yet possible” to specify “the types and compositions of explosives.”
Toxic metals expert Rachel Hauser-Davis of Fiocruz federal health research institute told Mongabay that dredging — planned in nearby stretches as part of channel construction — disturbs sediment, activating “highly toxic” methylmercury, which “can affect neurological development” and can cause “a range of environmental and health impacts.”
‘Unjust, violent, and imposed decision’
On Dec. 19, 2025, Judge Cavalcanti rejected the MPF’s appeal, maintaining the May 26 license to explode the Lourenção Rocks. He said the judiciary can’t contradict a project the Brazilian state has chosen as economically important and lacks the expertise to evaluate technical matters (referring in part to arguments that licenses omitted dozens of studies ordered by IBAMA). Communities wanted any talk of compensation to be contingent on being consulted and consideration of communities that the government doesn’t recognize as impacted. But the judge didn’t require that to be done, instead giving prosecutors 45 days to present compensation demands from Pedral’s local leaders.
The deadline ended in early February, and since then there’s no update from the judge. MPF appealed the decision on Feb. 23.
The Zé Claudio and Maria Institute, which advocates for the rights of riverfolk, condemned the decision in an open letter: “This is an unjust, violent, and imposed decision that turns our rivers into corridors of profit for a few, while condemning entire peoples to the loss of their territories and their future,” they wrote. “It is another direct attack on our rivers and on the communities that depend on them.”
“Any intervention in the river without listening to those who live from it is illegal, illegitimate, and violent,” the communities added, noting that “there was no free, prior, and informed consultation [FPIC], as required by ILO Convention No. 169.”
They joined other movements in demanding revocation of the August presidential decree privatizing the Tocantins, Madeira and Tapajos Rivers. On Feb. 23, Brazil’s federal government said it would annul the decree.
Ronaldo Macena, a spokesperson for a collective of 23 riverside Pedral communities, said the decision was crushing and renewed calls for consultation.
The channel will also affect Quilombola people (traditional Brazilian communities originally formed by runaway enslaved people) living close to the Tocantins River, where 61,000 Quilombolas live along the channel’s planned route, Mongabay found.
Maria José Brito, a regional Quilombola leader from São José de Icatu quilombo, told the judge in September that she fears dredging the river through Quilombola territories will affect the “veins” — tributaries running through quilombos — lowering stream levels. She told Mongabay, “People don’t understand that the water table will dry up, and we will be without water.”
In Tauiry village, when Judge Cavalcanti asked the audience of 236 riverfolk how many had been approached by DNIT to discuss explosions of the Pedral, two people raised their hands. DNIT told Mongabay that “there was effective participation by communities in public hearings and participatory meetings.” However, Moraes recounted meetings held in the city, not in riverside communities.
Macena said that only six villages of their collective of 23 Pedral communities were considered by the project. DNIT emailed Mongabay that their studies identified 11 communities within the direct area of influence of the works, though they only recognized two as traditional. “Part of the 23 communities mentioned by local leaders is located in the Tucuruí Reservoir, outside the area of direct intervention, but DNIT is evaluating environmental compensation projects that benefit the region as a whole.”
“Actions cannot be carried out unilaterally, disregarding traditional peoples and communities,” Edel Moraes, Brazil’s Secretary of Traditional Communities, told Mongabay. “It is necessary to guarantee the right to free, prior, and informed consultation and the recognition and protection of their rights. This is something the Brazilian government must do in this case.”
DTA’s Ana Claudia Abreu announced that they registered 2,026 fishers and would give a minimum wage (around $280) in compensation during explosions (possibly 30 months). Macena asked the audience: “Do only 2,000 fishers live in all these communities along the Tocantins River?” “No!” the fisherfolk shouted.
The compensation drew indignation from fisher Josias Pereira de Souza. He earned 12,000 reais ($2,232) in September by catching 3,300 kilograms (7,275 pounds) of mapará, he said. “How am I supposed to accept it today when someone comes to offer me mere crumbs of a minimum wage?” The audience of fisherfolk applauded in agreement.
This underlined the importance of a fishing catch and income study, which the company maintains can be done in four months “before the start of the works,” DNIT emailed Mongabay. Scientists Cristiane Cunha, from the Federal University of Southeast Pará, and Rosália Souza, from the Federal Rural University of the Amazon, told the judge that a before-construction baseline requires a year to capture all four Amazonian seasons with varying water levels and reproductive cycles.
“I’ve worked with fisheries monitoring for more than 10 years,” Cunha told the judge. “Methodologically, it’s impossible to establish a baseline with four months of monitoring.” Ideally, the study should last at least two to three years to account for reproductive variations, Cunha told Mongabay.
‘Fish will die in their hiding spots’
Ronaldo Macena says one of the project’s core claims — that mitigation measures will prevent fish deaths — is based on assumptions that won’t work in the Pedral.
When explosions start, he warned, fish will not behave as planners predict. Some will hide deep in the Pedral’s 80-meter (262-feet) depths. “That’s knowledge we have [on fish behavior]” that the company has ignored, he said.
DNIT’s collections haven’t gone half that depth, meaning no one knows which species live in deeper waters before explosions begin. Leandro Sousa, a Federal University of Pará ichthyologist who dove to 40 meters in the Pedral in 2019 to record species, told Mongabay, “Blowing up the Pedral’s unique biodiversity is like exploding a Galapagos Island,” destroying many species that don’t exist elsewhere.
Ichthyologist Alberto Akama of the Goeldi Museum, in Pará state, confirmed Macena’s concern. He told Mongabay that test explosions could lead to fish deaths that cannot be verified if monitoring relies on fish floating to the surface. Akama said DNIT refused to use telemetry techniques that would confirm fish mortality. Telemetry consists of inserting chips into fish to monitor their movements remotely. DNIT told Mongabay that telemetry was not adopted because it is not included among the methods defined by licensing authority IBAMA.
DTA’s engineering manager, Gustavo Luiz Giorgiano, repeated in September’s hearing that they would use a bubble curtain and warning shots to scare fish away. Experts told the news outlet ((o))eco that bubble curtains won’t work. Macena countered that some species move toward loud sounds, not away: “Curious fish” such as “curimatá, pacu, and cará, when they hear a noise, they go see what it is. You haven’t studied that.” The Pedral’s dolphins move toward explosion sounds, too, Erlan Moraes told Mongabay.
Other fish, Macena said, are territorial about crevices. “So when they hear any noise, they go into their crevices. For example, scare a carí, and it goes inside its crevice,” he said. “That’s exactly where the blasting will occur.”
DTA’s Abreu had “just said that the sediment they remove will be dumped in the deepest area,” Macena noted. However, that means rocks will be dumped where bottom-dwelling fish live, imperiling their survival.
“There we have our bottom-dwelling fish — pirarara, jaú, surubim. The watercourse that used to flow there will no longer pass, because it will be clogged by rocks. Down deep are crevices of the jaú, the pirarara, the barbado, the mandi moela, the carí. So many fish live there, make their home there, and they don’t leave.” Fish won’t flee as the company expects — they’ll die protecting their niches.
“You don’t have that study,” Macena told project representatives. “We [riverfolk] have the knowledge that these fish behave this way.”
Giorgiano responded that mitigation plans are based on “bibliographic references and regulations” and said a year-long pilot blasting phase will be monitored, with adjustments made if fish deaths are observed. “If what we’ve planned isn’t effective, we’ll look for alternatives in the literature.”
Akama told Mongabay that won’t work in the Pedral without telemetry. “There is no ‘literature’ about how to scare off fish from Pedral areas in the Amazon to protect them from mass death,” he said. “If fish die, they won’t float to the surface.” “They’ll die deep within the Pedral” where the company won’t be able to verify if fish died or not.
Banner image: Fisherfolk at Lourenção Rocks on the Amazon’s Tocantins River. Image by Tiffany Higgins.
UPDATE (2-25-2026): The piece was updated with information about Brazil’s government decision to revoke a decree that would authorize the privatization of rivers.
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