For three decades, INPE, Brazil’s civilian space agency has successfully and publicly monitored Amazon deforestation and fires. Now Jair Bolsonaro is intent on giving the job over to the secretive Brazilian military.
In a befuddling move, the Bolsonaro administration last Friday cut all agency funding to fight deforestation and put out fires in the Amazon and Pantanal, then reversed the decision; even as both biomes burned.
Two Brazilian biologists divided the Amazon Forest into 13 subregions, according to tree and shrub species. This spatial distribution allows targeting protection efforts.
New satellite data shows major tree loss, while Brazil’s VP cherry picks the findings, according to experts. Meanwhile, the environment minister appears to welcome illegal miners’ demands for less enforcement.
In April, Brazil’s environment minister urged Pres. Bolsonaro to “run the cattle,” using the nation’s focus on COVID-19 as a diversion to dismantle environmental rule of law; some new executive acts appear to do just that.
Brazilian NGO flyovers show that indigenous reserves — including Munduruku lands in the Tapajós basin — are being illegally invaded and deforested by miners likely funded and directed by elite land speculators.
17 former Brazilian Finance ministers and Central Bank presidents reject Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, urging end to Amazon deforestation and adoption of economic policies addressing climate change.
Just days after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro got the bad news that the Amazon 12-month deforestation rate has risen 96% since he took office, his administration fired the researcher overseeing monitoring.
With the Amazon fire season looming, 38 transnational firms, including Alcoa, Bayer, Shell, Siemens, Suzano, and Amaggi asked Brazil to act against environmental crimes. Brazil’s vice president has responded with a fire ban — critics say much more is needed.
It’s the one-year anniversary of the finalization of a gigantic trade agreement between the EU and Mercusor, a bloc of Latin American nations, but Brazil’s soaring deforestation rate puts ratification at risk.
The 38 species, some found in the Amazon, were logged, milled, and sold in Brazil or exported, likely ending up as high-end decking. Better tracking and protection is needed, say researchers.
Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.
Global outrage at Environment Minister Ricardo Salles caught on video saying "run the cattle herd" through the Amazon, "changing all the rules and simplifying standards" while public distracted by pandemic.
Two environmental agency coordinators with a record of deeply reducing illegal mining and deforestation in the Amazon’s Xingu basin were sacked after they led a recent successful raid.
Continued deregulation and fast tracking of new products under President Bolsonaro have helped secure Brazil’s place as the world’s largest user of very toxic pesticides.
After almost losing its jaguar population in the first decade of the century, the Atlantic Forest area between Brazil and Argentina registered more than twice the increase in the number of individuals. It is the only case registered in South America.
25 environmental and indigenous groups in Brazil have filed a formal inquiry request into Environment Minister Ricardo Salles’ possibly illegal deal with convicted land grabbers.
Forty percent of samples collected from 116 tapirs in a Cerrado study were poisoned with 13 toxic residues including 9 insecticides and herbicides, plus 4 heavy metals: report.
A major six nation study finds that the arrau is thriving mostly in river systems where conservationists are active, but not elsewhere; climate change looms as a major threat.
In the past, only the Amazon and Cerrado were monitored for tree loss, but now Amazon Fund money will pay for Pantanal, Atlantic Forest, Caatinga and Pampa monitoring.
The 88.5 meter (290 foot) tree was found by a study team creating a detailed forest biomass map of the Amazon to track carbon emissions caused by land use change.
At an Amazon fire meeting, President Jair Bolsonaro and 7 out of 9 state governors pressed forward with plans to open indigenous areas to mining and agribusiness.
While conservationists point to the link between environmental deregulation and the Amazon fires, one ruralist farmer claims Brazil’s National Park Service set the blazes.
Combined impacts of escalating climate change and rising deforestation could result in an up to 58 percent reduction in Amazon tree species richness by 2050.
Environmentalists are alarmed as Brazil approves 290 new pesticides and reduces restrictions for toxicological product evaluations, paving way for more approvals.
Indigenous reserves and other conserved lands in nine Amazonian nations are under extreme pressure as roads, mining, dams, oil drilling, fires and deforestation encroach.
Before becoming the chief of police at the Police Specialized in Crimes Against the Environment (DEMA) in the northern Brazilian state of Amapá, Leonardo Brito had never worked in the environmental field…
As part of a wave of rural violence sweeping Amazonia, dam activist Dilma Ferreira Silva, her husband and a friend were brutally murdered last Friday; a large scale landowner is in custody.
Brazil’s president met with Donald Trump this week, with trade and agribusiness topping the agenda; a USAID $100 million Amazon biodiversity impact investment fund was also advanced.
Top ministers say ban on leasing indigenous land to agribusiness must end during PR event held at indigenous reserve where commercial GMO commodity crops are illegally grown.
Jenny Gonzales is a Brazilian journalist based in São Paulo. Formerly contributor at the sustainability & companies section of Valor Econômico newspaper, business assistant editor of Carta Capital magazine, correspondent for Brazilian publications and editor of Time magazine's Portuguese supplement in New York.
