Cerrado News

For more than a century, the natural cycles of the Cerrado grasslands have guided the lives of the farmers and cowboys in the deep west of Brazil’s Bahia state. Residents…

Since 2010, the Giant Armadillo Project has been dedicated to researching the world's largest armadillo, an animal that, despite its size and range across almost every country in South America, is one of the world’s least recognized animals.

Every year between August and September, poachers in the Brazilian Cerrado steal turquoise-fronted parrot hatchlings from their nests to supply the exotic pet market.

A recent report shows that one of the world’s most highly regarded, and wealthiest, universities invested heavily in land in Brazil’s Cerrado grasslands, where land-grabbing and other environmental crimes are rife.

New research finds that roughly 20% of Brazilian agricultural exports to the EU are linked to illegal deforestation, but only about 2% of agricultural properties produce the majority of this forest loss.

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.

Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.

In her first study in the region, Brazilian conservationist and Whitley Gold Award winner Patrícia Medici wants to understand how South America’s largest land mammal responds to changes in the forest caused by human economic activity.

A first ever study has quantified carbon emissions across Brazil’s entire soy sector in detail and pinpointed the highest deforestation related emissions in the Cerrado savanna, followed by the Amazon.

Native Brazilian bees provide several environmental services – pollination of flora and agricultural crops being the most important one. But new studies show that pesticides may affect them more intensely.

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.

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.

The land rights of quilombos — communities of runaway slave descendants —are assured by Brazil’s Constitution; but those rights are now largely disregarded by agribusiness and Bolsonaro.

Huge swaths of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are drier than usual after a rainy season with rainfall index well below historical levels, raising concerns about a further spike in wildfires and deforestation as the dry season approaches.

The amount that the Brazilian government fails to collect because of tax exemptions on pesticides is nearly four times as much as the Ministry of the Environment’s total budget this year. In addition, multinational giants in the pesticide sector also receive millions in public funding for research.

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 decades of suppressing fire, park managers in Brazil’s savanna are relying on indigenous and traditional fire knowledge and Integrated Fire Management as a conservation tool.

Attacks on indigenous Kaiowá communities in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the start of the year have highlighted a long-running campaign of persecution and growing violence against the group.

Climate change and deforestation are forcing a rainforest-to-savanna tipping point threatening agribusiness, hydropower, and the Brazilian economy; Bolsonaro is blind to the danger.

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.…

For three years, the Bandeiras e Rodovias project looked at how giant anteaters interacted with the highways in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state. One of the conclusions: road deaths have cut the species' growth rate in half.

A new initiative by Nutreco, Tesco and Grieg Seafood pledges $13 million to pay soy growers not to deforest the savanna for new soy fields. More are hoped to join the fund.

Soy-driven deforestation is destroying Brazil’s savanna; the Bergamaschi family is committed to sustainable soy, but the EU government and consumers aren’t — so far.

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 Estrondo mega-farm exports soy to the EU and China, but it is accused in a mega-land grab; it also has a long record of threatening traditional people.

2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…

Meat and dairy consumption in Europe are contributing disproportionately to habitat destruction of charismatic species like the giant anteater in Brazil's Cerrado savanna.

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.

Listed by Brazil’s National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) as one of the largest cases of land grabbing in Brazil, the Condomínio Cachoeira do Estrondo Agribusiness venture occupies…

Nutrient limitations in the Amazon’s million-year-old soils may mean climate models are overestimating the size of the future carbon sink by 46-52 percent.