Cattle ranching can be a scourge to forests, requiring vast tracts of cleared land to produce relatively small amounts of food. It is also the primary cause of deforestation in…
In Paris, Brazil promised to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent by 2025. But the country’s emissions grew by 8.9 percent in 2016, largely due to deforestation.
Brazil’s Temer has forgiven 6o percent of $3.5 billion in fines for environmental crimes, so long as perpetrators pay other 40 percent. No new means of enforcement was announced.
Starting around 2004, the deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon began a precipitous decline. By 2012, the rate had dropped about 80 percent, reaching the lowest levels recorded since annual…
The president has undermined Brazil’s slavery law, making it very difficult to prosecute the wealthy elites enslaving roughly 155,000 Brazilians, critics say.
The Australian state of Queensland is losing tree cover at the fastest rate in more than a decade, according to a government study released in September. “It’s even worse than…
Brazilian politicians and economically dominant social classes have for centuries exploited nature as if it was infinite. It is not. The consequences are more than evident.
On one of our business trips to the city of Madison, in the U.S., we visited Graze, a restaurant that is proud to show the origin of the ingredients it…
Living together can be hard. But put people and their livestock close to lions and other hungry predators, and it’s as hard as it gets. In East Africa, wildlife and…
Scientists know that the carbon released by large-scale deforestation in the tropics inevitably helps boost global temperatures. Now, new research indicates that this conversion of land, often to farms and…
Conservationists call for total halt to deforestation and implementation of sustainable agroforestry in Brazilian state of Maranhão.
Three South American studies find that severe deforestation in one region can impact faraway forests and continent-wide climate, while intact forests offer more resilience.
Court decides against claims of Mato Grosso state, which wanted compensation for land lost to Indian reserves set up in that Amazonian state by federal government.
Indians decry Temer’s backing of “marco temporal,” which could negate legal indigenous claims to millions of hectares in the Amazon and elsewhere, protestors say.
EIRUNEPE, Brazil - An expedition exploring a remote watershed in the western Amazon has uncovered the first living evidence of a species of monkey not seen alive by scientists in…
Last week, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the largest-ever recorded low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. At 22,730 square kilometers (8,776 square miles)…
Reporting on the plight of wild tigers (Panthera tigris) generally doesn’t lead us down very many pleasant paths. Poaching, habitat loss and the decimation of their natural prey has led…
The MST, in a protest against corruption, has occupied six farms of Brazil's elite.
Satellites are mechanical reporters of the Amazon deforestation process. By documenting the degradation and gaps created by the clear-cutting process over the years, they deliver the verdict: two-thirds of the…
Trees from one of South America’s fastest-disappearing landscapes are ending up as charcoal on the shelves of European supermarkets, according to a report by the NGO Earthsight. The London-based watchdog…
Part of Brazil’s most altered landscape has proven that it's capable of regenerating after the effects of farming, timber plantations and ranching, according to a recent study. The research demonstrates…
The life’s journey of controversial businessman and politician Blairo Borges Maggi has led him from a small family farm, to ruling over a vast international agribusiness empire. It saw Maggi…
BRASILIA, Brazil: On 11 July, President Michel Temer signed into law important new legislation (MP 759) that paves the way for land thieves, who have illegally occupied and cleared vast…
Brazil’s Forest Code, a set of laws passed in 2012 to protect the country’s vast wooded landscapes, carried with it the promise of stopping illegal deforestation and continuing the country’s…
Indigenous territories and nature reserves in Nicaragua have undergone precipitous declines in forest cover since 2001. The remote Indio Maíz Biological Reserve (IMBR) has, fortunately, escaped most of the onslaught…
Six years ago, Boston, Massachusetts-based NGO Ceres started tracking resolutions filed by shareholders asking food and beverage companies to report on how they are managing the risks that come with…
Beef production has become a major driver of tropical deforestation, responsible for as much as 65 percent of rainforest destruction caused by the global agricultural commodities trade in the first…
(Leia essa matéria em português no The Intercept Brasil. You can also read this Mongabay article in Portuguese at The Intercept Brasil) Until this week 80 impoverished families, camped for almost…
The political turmoil continues in Brasilia, as President Temer, having survived an attempt to impeach him in May, now fights off accusations made by the bosses at JBS, the world’s…
(Leia essa matéria em português no The Intercept Brasil. You can also read this Mongabay article in Portuguese at The Intercept Brasil) he Amazon is the sort of wild place where…