The unintended consequences of a U.S./China trade war could shift Chinese soy purchases from the U.S. to Brazil, leading to rising Amazon deforestation, and a hazardous climate change tipping point.
A very mild May over the Arctic Ocean could be setting us up for record ice loss at the September minimum; a giant cyclone and high temps in June escalated the melt.
Brazilian law allows landless families to claim abandoned private land. But Gabriel Filho residents have been evicted by a large-scale landowner accused of killing the hamlet’s namesake.
Both species of Amazon river dolphin declined by over 90 percent between 1994-2017 in an Amazonas state reserve, mostly due to hunting and fishing: study.
Brazilian environmental authorities unleashed Operation Soy Sauce at the end of May, fining soy commodities traders and farmers $29 million for illegal Cerrado deforestation.
Gold mine owners have polluted a river in Brazil’s Tapajós basin and placed a price on the heads of resisting Munduruku leaders. A federal raid in May failed to stem the conflict.
The Netherlands for more than a decade has quietly supported Brazil’s plan for the Northern Corridor; road, rail and port projects that would do major harm to the Amazon, harm the Dutch disregarded.
Brazilian loggers have faked forest inventories and issued phony timber credits to harvest Ipê trees exported to U.S. and Europe. Importers often turn a blind eye: report.
The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has become a crisis for wildlife and zoo animals too, as a hungry, desperate population hunts wild species for food.
A coalition of environmental analysts has a practical plan to end deforestation in the Amazon, and to boost agribusiness production and profit across the region. It starts by everyone sitting down at a table.
Most oil palm production in Pará state has so far been on degraded lands, but researchers warn a coming Brazilian oil palm boom could result in large-scale Amazon deforestation.
Brazil’s bancada ruralista has attached a wave of riders to bills in Congress that could overthrow the nation’s environmental and indigenous protections. There is a high chance of passage.
In January 2018, two officials announced an end to plans for Brazilian mega-dams; both have since been replaced, and to date, no planned dams have been cancelled.
“What’s going to drive you off this land is hunger,” an official from ICMBio, the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity Conservation, cautioned fishing families and settlers living along the mid-reaches…
The pangolin trade remains brisk, as conservationists scramble to identify populations and lobby for tough protections, while U.S. zoos make a controversial try to raise them.
Venezuela’s ongoing economic crisis has helped trigger an illegal invasion by squatters into a University of the Andes research forest, a refuge of the Critically Endangered brown spider monkey.
Scientists say burning woody biomass is not carbon neutral, yet the United Nations IPCC appears to be ignoring its own guidelines, so substantial emissions aren’t getting counted. But nature knows.
“Grazing the Amazon,” a new film, is winning international acclaim and bringing public attention to severe deforestation caused by cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon.
Indigenous and traditional groups united in a protest last week in Brazil’s capitol seeking territory demarcation, consultation on infrastructure projects, and an end to violence.
A small community, far from Venezula’s Orinoco Mining Arc, discovers gold, leading to an incursion by illegal miners, environmental devastation and an allegedly deadly army raid.
