Land grabbers, landed estate owners and even oil companies stand to benefit from a new guideline released by FUNAI, the federal indigenous affairs agency, which opens up 237 indigenous territories in Brazil for sale, subdivision and speculation.
TIKTIK KAANU, Nicaragua — Eduardo Solano did not say much on the way home. He bought some oranges from a fruit vendor at a makeshift dock in Bluefields, the capital…
The illegal harvesting of valuable Brazilian wood is rife as loggers supply the EU, US and other nations. Mongabay goes deep into the rainforest to meet some of the workers illegally felling trees.
Last year the world lost some 119,000 square kilometers (45,946 square miles) of tree cover – an area the size of Nicaragua – according to satellite data collated by the…
A cattle farmer in Tefé, Brazil, has turned his ranch into a new standard for cattle raising in the forest. It’s a more productive and more profitable system that eliminates the need for cutting down forest to open new pastureland.
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.
A new study shows taxpayer money is helping to prop up the beef industry in Brazil, one of the primary drivers of deforestation in the country. For every dollar of tax revenue collected from the industry, only 20 cents effectively goes to society — the rest goes back to producers in the form of incentives, easy credit, and even debt forgiveness.
A bill in Congress on the verge of passage this week would allow land grabbers to self-declare their ownership of government land, ultimately converting vast stretches of Amazon rainforest to cattle ranches.
Following the International Day for Biological Diversity, a leader of the Partnership Fund for Critical Ecosystems draws attention to the environmental importance of the most biodiverse tropical savanna on the planet.
The pandemic is spreading across the Brazilian Amazon, but that isn’t slowing deforestation or land grabbing or a political crisis which has left the rainforest without adequate field surveillance.
A sweeping policy change by the Bolsonaro government opens unregistered ancestral indigenous lands to landgrabbers, loggers, ranchers, and soy growers, with huge risk for the Amazon.
An area half the size of Switzerland in Brazil’s Cerrado biome could see its biodiversity plummet as sugarcane farms expand to meet global demand for bioethanol, a new study says. Researchers calculated that some parts of the Cerrado could see up to 100% loss of mammalian species richness; endangered animals like the maned wolf and the giant anteater will be the most affected.
Juncos, blackbirds, meadowlarks and other common species comprise two-thirds of the 3 billion birds lost in the last half century, a decline scientists have likened to that of the now-extinct…
Beef served to UK military personnel in the Middle East was sourced from a Brazilian company whose suppliers have illegally deforested more than 8,000 hectares of land, including in the…
Ranching is booming in Paraguay’s Gran Chaco, destroying the biome, but the nation’s goal of breaking into sustainable beef and leather markets may offer a motive to curb deforestation.
After enduring a fraught election process that resulted in the resignation of president Evo Morales in November 2019, Bolivia will once again be holding a general election in 2020. Meanwhile,…
Late last year, historic wildfires raged through Bolivia, holding the country hostage for two months between July and September and burning more than 5 million hectares (50,000 sq km or…
The murder of Sister Dorothy in 2005, and resulting international outrage, helped curb violence in Brazil for a time, but crimes against landless peasants and activists are on the rise.
The guanaco (Lama guanicoe), the spindly, wild forebear of the llama, ranges across a broad reach of western and southern South America. While the species as a whole is not…
JBS SA, a Brazilian meatpacking company dogged by its links to deforestation, recently signed a deal that would put its products in more than 60,000 shops and markets around China.…
The construction of the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon is the narrative engine that drives Sequestrada, the first full-length film by U.S. cinematographer and sociologist Sabrina McCormick.
Legislation would open indigenous reserves in Amazon and across Brazil to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, ranching, agribusiness, new dams and tourism.
The recent fires in Australia bring flashbacks of last August in the Brazilian Amazon, when news of massive blazes also captured the world’s attention (and for many, provoked intense concern…
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.
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.
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.
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.’
Two Darwin's rheas (Rhea pennata) run at full speed between the thorny bushes and tall grasslands that cover the paleobasin – an ancient river basin and floodplain near the Bermejo…
Amazon mega-dam was built with 11,233 MW capacity, but has fallen far short, even as deforestation and drought make the goal more remote. The US$9.5 billion dam may never be profitable.
The damage only became clear once the rain stopped and the clouds parted over Altamira National Forest in northern Brazil. Instead of dense jungle, large patches of bare land now…
