Drivers Of Deforestation News

The collapse of the San Rafael waterfall on Feb. 2 and the accelerated regressive erosion that began to occur on the riverbed and edges of the Coca River have turned…

Between the departments of Boyacá and Santander in Colombia is one of the last remnants of tropical rainforest of the Middle Magdalena Valley. The Serranía de Las Quinchas is so…

In April, Brazil’s environment minister urged Pres. Bolsonaro to “run the cattle,” using the nation’s focus on COVID-19 as a diversion to dismantle environmental rule of law; some new executive acts appear to do just that.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — A $9.3 billion residential and tourism development has been approved within the buffer zone of the Can Gio Mangrove Biosphere Reserve here in this…

JAKARTA — Lifting people out of poverty in Indonesia has also helped slow the country’s rate of deforestation, a new study finds. The study looked for links between deforestation data…

Brazilian NGO flyovers show that indigenous reserves — including Munduruku lands in the Tapajós basin — are being illegally invaded and deforested by miners likely funded and directed by elite land speculators.

In a step towards understanding the impending Amazon rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, scientists have quantified the knock-on effect that drought and deforestation have on each other for the first time.

JBS, a Brazilian company repeatedly accused of “laundering cattle” in the past, has again allegedly been caught purchasing livestock illegally reared in an Amazonian indigenous reserve in Rondônia state, Brazil.

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.

A federal judge has issued an emergency order giving the Bolsonaro administration just days to evict all illegal miners, and keep them out until the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

For conscious consumers, palm oil tends to be the pariah of tropically grown crops. This is due to the well-publicized fact that oil palm plantations are highly destructive to biodiversity,…

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.

An exclusive study shows that 114 properties have been certified inside indigenous territories awaiting demarcation in the Brazilian Amazon, spurred in large part by a recent statute that leaves these reserves unprotected from such illegal land grabs.

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.

In an attempt to derail the onslaught of anti-environmental policies put forward by Pres. Jair Bolsonaro, NGOs, prosecutors and opposition political parties are taking the government to court.

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.

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.

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.

Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.

IBAMA officials, while trying to halt deforestation in Cachoeira Seca Indigenous Reserve, were threatened and assaulted by illegal loggers. The Bolsonaro administration is largely unresponsive.

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.

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.

Some 600 indigenous people have seen their crops die due to the expansion of agribusiness in the state of Pará, Brazil. The streams used by the Munduruku have also been damaged, if not dried up.

Four Alter do Châo volunteer firefighters were charged last year with setting Amazon fires; the police lack evidence, while locals say the real suspects — landgrabbers — are likely still on the loose.

Research measured the impacts of human disruption: bird flocks declined and vanished, seed dispersion changed, while the Rupununi region showed just how bountiful an undisturbed ecosystem can be.

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.

Two environmental agency coordinators with a record of deeply reducing illegal mining and deforestation in the Amazon’s Xingu basin were sacked after they led a recent successful raid.

The Brazilian savanna has always been a dry place, but the massive conversion of native vegetation to soy is making it far dryer, as is deepening, climate change-driven, drought.

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.