Articles by Xavier Bartaburu

Iracambi is a Brazilian NGO in the Serra do Brigadeiro mountain range, located in the heart of the Atlantic Forest, a biome largely destroyed by rampant deforestation.

There’s near-universal folklore told throughout Brazil of colorful fish that fall from the clouds during the rains to live in newly formed ponds. These stories arose to explain a hard-to-believe…

Germany was among the donor countries that welcomed the revival of the Amazon Fund at the start of the year, seen as an important conservation measure by Brazilian President Luis…

The Tepequém frog (Anomaloglossus tepequem) used to be seen in abundance in streams in the Serra do Tepequém, in the state of Roraima. Endemic to Brazil and this specific locality,…

Carbonext, which is partially owned by Shell oil company, has been accused of having convinced Indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon to sign documents containing blank pages and of offering…

Coffee was not a crop traditionally grown by the Paiter Suruí people, an Indigenous community in the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Territory, deep in the Brazilian Amazon. The Suruí’s first…

NOVA XAVANTINA, Brazil — This past July, 15 Indigenous women made the thousand-mile journey from their home of Rolim de Moura, in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Rondônia, east to…

"One of the greatest pleasures I had when I came here was telling my friends, 'Today I planted 5,000 fig tree seeds,'" says Yacov Kilsztajn. "Planting seeds here at the…

Ana Rosa de Lima is a Brazilian materials engineer living in Germany. She had no idea that a 2019 crowdfunding campaign for a beekeeping project in the Indigenous Kayapó village…

As the fire season reaches its peak in the Amazon region, coffee producers located thousands of kilometers away are also living their own private hell. Farms like Felipe Barretto Croce's…

The Amazon Rainforest — together with other forests around the globe — lies at the center of concern over climate changes inside Brazil and worldwide. Yet little is studied and…

“Our voice is a political voice,” says Samela Sateré Mawé, communicator of the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestry (ANMIGA) and Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB).…

Long before the European conquest of the Americas, the Warao Indigenous people, originally from the Orinoco Delta in what is today northeastern Venezuela, lived off nature, supporting themselves by fishing…

“This here is really great. I feel so good! I’m not stressed, and I’m not sad. When I’m here in the garden, everything is good,” says Waldir Francisco de Almeida,…

The unprotected southern portion of the Chapada Diamantina mountain range, in the state of Bahia, is in the crosshairs of mining operations, remaining vulnerable to land grabbing and deforestation. This place, known as Serra da Chapadinha, houses threatened species, water reservoirs and an endless supply of scenic beauty.

A new study identified the presence of up to seven transgenic genes in single seeds of traditional, or “creole” corn from more than 1,000 samples collected in 10% of the towns in Brazil’s Caatinga.

Researchers in Brazil have implanted the first subcutaneous heart rate monitoring devices on wild maned wolves, South America’s largest canid; they want to map the stress levels that a human-dominated habitat entails.

Arrested by Brazilian Federal Police, cattle rancher Bruno Heller and relatives have already received over US$ 5 million in environmental fines. He is also suspected of land grabbing. 

In recent years, several exhibitions held abroad have featured Indigenous people from Brazil and Latin America, giving unprecedented visibility to artists historically erased by gallery owners and museums.

Between March 2017 and January 2018, researchers tracked the movements of a female puma as it prowled around the Boqueirão da Onça protected area complex in the north of Brazil’s…

Released in February 2022, the latest report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stressed that greenhouse gas emissions are increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme temperatures…

Niéde Guidon has long since stopped her walks through Serra da Capivara National Park. Living as a recluse since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the archaeologist, who retired from…

The Araripe manakin is a Brazilian bird so unique and so threatened that it has its own national conservation action plan. The species, Antilophia bokermanni, is endemic to the Chapada…

A new study foresees a 20% increase in cases of viruses like dengue, Zika and chikungunya over the next 30 years due to climate change. Higher temperatures are already causing the diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito to spread in cooler regions like southern Brazil and southern Europe.

In the Chapada dos Veadeiros area, in Goiás state — 230 kilometers (143 miles) from Brasília — members of seed networks from several parts of Brazil met for almost a…

Once a nursery for marine life, Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro is now dying from the dumping of thousands of liters of sewage into its waters; artisanal fishermen now survive by picking up the garbage that floats in the bay.

The Parcel de Manuel Luís coral reef, off the coast of northeastern Brazil, is vital for the survival of 53 species at risk of extinction. Despite vetoes from Brazil’s environmental regulator, the local government seeks to give the go-ahead to oil drilling projects in the Pará-Maranhão basin.

Four thousand students planted nearly 10,000 trees on public school grounds in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, in 2022, and another eight mini-forests will be planted in 2023.

Anyone living near the Paraopeba River, which runs through the state of Minas Gerais, remembers what happened to its waters. Along its 510-kilometer (317-mile) stretch, the river still passes through…

Agribusiness magnate from the USA, who is already the biggest producer of corn-based ethanol in Brazil, plans to leverage “green” investments from governments and banks to meet negative carbon emissions using an unproven method.