The state of Pará’s Calha Norte region, one of the Amazon’s least studied areas, is the planet’s largest mosaic of protected forests. It is a rich reserve of biodiversity facing threats from illegal land occupation and deforestation. Species could disappear even before they are discovered.
A planned industrial shipping channel would destroy vital fish habitat at the Lourencão Rocks on the Tocantins River in the Brazilian Amazon, while also likely wrecking traditional fishing livelihoods.
Soaring gold prices, brought on by the economic meltdown and COVID-19 uncertainty, have led to a rapid, largely un-policed, expansion of illegal gold mining in the Amazon.
More than 3,660 indigenous people are infected, with many elders dead. Analysts suggest the rising toll may be driven by deep poverty, and the undermining of traditional cultures and overall health by modern intrusions.
Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) arrived in Boa Vista on the Trombetas River in 1979. While the mining company made big profits, traditional people say it has given back little while doing great harm.
A series of measures by the Bolsonaro government that attack the environment are putting indigenous peoples at risk, say the authors.
Boa Vista Quilombo — an Afro-Brazilian community of runaway slave descendants — lacks basic health services, but COVID-19 is now just a half mile away, infecting MRN mining company personnel.
In Brazil, indigenous lands make up 13.5% of the national territory and are home to half a million indigenous peoples speaking 280 distinct languages. New research, published in the journal…
Applications to mine on indigenous lands in the Amazon have increased by 91% under the Bolsonaro administration. Among the applicants are mining giant Anglo American, small-scale cooperatives whose members are embroiled in a range of environmental violations, and even a São Paulo-based architect.
Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA has stepped up efforts to fight environmental crimes during the COVID-19 crisis. But the fate of these operations is now uncertain, following the firing of IBAMA’s enforcement director.
Environmental degradation has already triggered disease outbreaks in Brazil. The risk of a new emergent zoonotic disease arising there, like COVID-19, is intensified by Bolsonaro’s forest policies.
Invasions of indigenous reserves continue to escalate in the Brazilian Amazon amid the rapid spread of COVID-19 throughout the country, exposing how indigenous people are vulnerable to increased violence and infection amid a reduction in environmental oversight.
Illegal gold mining led to deforestation of thousands of hectares of forests inside indigenous reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, according to new satellite image analysis by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). Mongabay had exclusive access to the report prior to its release.
Exclusive data shows that the mining company has 11 survey petitions filed with the National Mining Agency (NMA) that would directly affect the Arara da Volta Grande do Xingu and Trincheira Bacajá Indigenous Reserves in the state of Pará. The project was planned to be the largest open-air gold mine in Latin America.
Scientists who spent five years studying the impact of illegal mining in Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios department recently explored that impact in La Pampa, a geographic area in the…
Anglo American, one of the biggest mining companies in the world, and its two Brazilian subsidiaries have submitted nearly 300 applications to dig for gold and other minerals inside indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon, records seen by Mongabay show.
More than a decade of illegal gold mining around the upstart town of La Pampa in the Peruvian Amazon has tainted local water supplies, razed forests adjacent to a world-class…
At a UN event, Brazil was accused of Amazon deforestation policies leading toward “ethnocide” against indigenous peoples, and “genocide” against uncontacted indigenous groups.
Nearly 4,000 requests have been submitted for mining-related activities on 31 indigenous reserves and 17 protected areas in Brazil, according to recently obtained data from the nongovernmental Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) and the National Mining Agency.
A new analysis based on estimated deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 pinpoints hotspots of forest loss and identifies several country-specific trends in the region. The figures project that deforestation…
On Jan. 25, 2019, the Brumadinho dam collapsed, releasing a slurry of water containing the waste products, or tailings, from the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in southeastern Brazil.…
Legislation would open indigenous reserves in Amazon and across Brazil to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, ranching, agribusiness, new dams and tourism.
Gold mining in just 23,613 hectares (58,349 acres) of the Peruvian Amazon forest — an area about twice the size of the city of Paris — emitted as much carbon…
In an exclusive interview with Mongabay, Marcelino Guedes, a researcher at Brazil’s Amapá Federal University, talks about how important the management of traditional knowledge is for strengthening the forest economy in Brazil to overcome the paradigm that sees standing forest as an enemy of development.
Models and real-world events indicate that, unless action is taken now, up to 70% of the Amazon rainforest could become savanna in under 50 years, with huge carbon releases, destabilizing global climate.
Data obtained via the Access to Information Act reveals that Vale has 236 applications registered with the National Mining Agency for mineral exploration in Brazil’s Amazon Basin. Many of them are applications for research, the first step to obtaining authorization for mineral exploration.
The new council headed by nation’s VP who is a retired general will oversee all ministries ‘involved in the protection, defense and development… of the Amazon.’
Joenia Wapichana is the first indigenous woman to be elected a federal representative in Brazil. Last year, she submitted a bill to Congress proposing that funds collected from fines for environmental infractions committed on indigenous lands be returned to native peoples.
Brazil is the most biologically diverse country in the world, harboring 10 to 18% of the world’s total biota. This biodiversity, however, is rapidly declining due to habitat degradation, overexploitation,…
Transnational mining firms are in a rush to get access to the protected Amazon as the Bolsonaro administration plots with them to mine in RENCA and indigenous reserves.
