Amazon Mining News

LA PAZ — At dawn in Apolobamba, in the Bolivian highlands, groups of vicuña and alpaca — some sheared, some shaggy — amble around looking for scrub to graze on,…

YANOMAMI INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil – Four officers from IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, throw themselves from a helicopter into the murky waters of the Uraricoera River below and swim toward…

Engineers and realtors from southern Pará take advantage of their knowledge to abet land grabbers.

After four years of environmental destruction, Brazil has reached a crossroads that will determine the fate of its biomes and its role in the global climate crisis. In its first…

PORTO VELHO, Brazil — Cruising north in a speedboat along the Madeira River, the signs of Brazil’s illegal gold mining boom are everywhere: mounds of sand extracted from the riverbed…

Canadian mining company Aura Minerals plans to establish a major gold extraction project in Brazil’s Tocantins state without hearing the Quilombola (slave descendant) community that will be affected by the operations, thus violating their right to free, prior and informed consultation.

Illegal deforestation, wildcat mining, drug trafficking, and lethal violence: Name your scourge and the Amazon Basin seldom disappoints. But as an unusual compact between police officers, prosecutors, environmental protectors, and…

MOCOA, Colombia — “We are experiencing a profound crisis, not only in the Amazon but throughout humanity,” said Campo Elías de la Cruz, a Catholic priest and environmental activist who…

In 2015, researchers in Brazil started a project to address a tricky challenge: Reducing exposure to mercury contamination in the region of the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the…

SÃO PAULO — Since the new Brazilian government under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office on Jan. 1, its ministries have been working together to overcome a humanitarian…

In January, a wave of outrage swept Brazil after photos and footage of sick and starving Yanomami were made public. The newly sworn-in Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,…

The election victory in 2022 of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president in decades, has fanned winds of change in the country. The new government has vowed to tackle many…

ALTAMIRA, Brazil — The warehouse donated to house the Castelo dos Sonhos farmers’ market for local growers has stood empty for nearly 15 years. Opened in 2008 and spanning 480…

On Dec. 5, a flight over the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s northern Amazon showed the Greenpeace and Brazilian NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) members on board an illegal road, already…

On the morning of May 24, 2017, police and military carried out an operation in the Santa Lúcia farm in Brazil’s northern Amazon state of Pará, killing 10 unarmed rural…

Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu region, in Pará; project foresees the extraction of 74 tons of gold in 20 years of operation.

Illegal gold mining is accelerating deforestation in one of Venezuela’s most threatened national parks, a new report from Amazon Conservation revealed. Satellite imagery analyzed by the NGO shows that thousands…

Residents of a landless worker’s settlement in Anapu, Pará state in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the Federal Government of favoring large landowners, land grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.

APYTEREWA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil — Deep in the Apyterewa reserve, Tye Parakanã waves a hand toward the lush rainforest flanking his village. In the distance, a faint cloud of smoke…

The fight to save the Amazon has continued in 2022, as tragedy and political hope are shaping the region. Violence against environmental defenders ran rampant Indigenous people have continued to…

This year ended with a big bang for many Indigenous leaders, communities and activists around the world. During the U.N. biodiversity conference, known as COP15, Indigenous traditional lands and rights…

The city of Lago Agrio, which lies in the province of Sucumbíos in northern Ecuador’s Amazonian region, is considered the country’s oil capital. It also sits in the midst of…

This story was produced with the funding support of the Rainforest Journalism Investigations Network (RIN) of the Pulitzer Center. WAIKAS, Brazil — From up above, long, massive, yellowish stains tear apart…

Opening up protected areas to mining in the Brazilian Amazon could have an even bigger impact than previously thought, according to a study published in Nature Sustainability earlier this year.…

Artisanal gold mining is driving the global demand for mercury, with 2,058 metric tons of the toxic metal contaminating water, land and air every year, according to a recent report…

The new Brazilian president pledges to protect the Amazon, Indigenous peoples and their lands, ending illegal mining, logging and land grabbing. But he must deal with a largely hostile congress and “not enough” international forest funding.

Lucía lives in Peru, in one of more than 50 indigenous communities along the Putumayo, an Amazonian river that marks the border between Peru and Colombia. She has a banana…

LA PAZ — Mercury, even at room temperature, will slowly transition from its silver liquid state into a dangerous vapor that, when inhaled, can leave a person with permanent brain…

LA PAZ — Gold is Bolivia’s second-biggest export, valued at more than $1 billion annually and employing hundreds of thousands of people in the country. But much of that gold…

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil on Oct. 30 in a close runoff with incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. But voters of eight out of the 10…