Rainforests and Amazon News

When Takushi Sato left Japan for Belém, Brazil, in 1971, he never imagined what he would go through. By 2000, as the manager of a timber company that shipped Brazilian…

Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu region, in Pará; project foresees the extraction of 74 tons of gold in 20 years of operation.

TRIUNFO DO XINGU, Brazil — Lenice Divina Ramos weaves through knee-high weeds and scorched shrubs before halting abruptly near the slice of jungle where, not long ago, she found the…

Illegal gold mining is accelerating deforestation in one of Venezuela’s most threatened national parks, a new report from Amazon Conservation revealed. Satellite imagery analyzed by the NGO shows that thousands…

Residents of a landless worker’s settlement in Anapu, Pará state in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the Federal Government of favoring large landowners, land grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.

Large hydropower dams that obstruct the Amazon basin have long come under fire for their environmental and cultural impact — Belo Monte being the most prominent example. Yet a bigger…

There were some hopeful developments for tropical rainforest conservation in 2022, including declines in the deforestation rate in Indonesia and the Brazilian Amazon, new high-level policy commitments supporting forest protection,…

APYTEREWA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil — Deep in the Apyterewa reserve, Tye Parakanã waves a hand toward the lush rainforest flanking his village. In the distance, a faint cloud of smoke…

The protected swathes of primary Amazon Rainforest in the Paru State Forest in the north of Brazil became the fifth-most deforested conservation unit in October, official data show. Illegal land-grabbing…

Once covering an expanse of more than 2,140 square kilometers (826 square miles) of the Colombian Amazon Rainforest, Tinigua National Natural Park has lost 29% of its forests over the…

Deforestation in Earth's largest rainforest accelerated sharply during the month of November when U.N. climate talks were underway in Egypt, according to data released today by Brazil. Via its satellite-based…

NOVA CALIFÓRNIA, Brazil —  Hamilton Condack smiles and points to a towering ipê tree rooted in the plot of land where he lives and produces food. “When I first got…

UCAYALI, Peru — Mennonites, an ultra-conservative religious group, are illegally converting pristine forests in the Peruvian Amazon into agricultural land. They are not only threatening biodiversity but also encroaching on Indigenous…

The territory belonging the Indigenous Kakataibo community of Puerto Nuevo comprises some 680 square kilometers (263 square miles) of rainforest between the regions of Huánuco and Ucayali in central Peru.…

Annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped 11.27% compared with the prior year, official data show. But the government of President Bolsonaro still accounts for the most Amazon destruction in…

This year’s Amazon fire season was milder than the previous two years, but there were still nearly 1,000 major fires, many of them in recently cleared areas in the Brazilian…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continued on an upward trajectory through October 2022 as citizens of South America's largest democracy faced a choice between two presidential candidates with radically different…

LA PAZ — Mercury, even at room temperature, will slowly transition from its silver liquid state into a dangerous vapor that, when inhaled, can leave a person with permanent brain…

From the coastline to freshwater streams, people living in Amazonia say industrial fishing, deforestation, hydroelectric dams and climate change have reduced fish populations. Industrial fishing is one of the main explanations for the low numbers. Fishermen report that large boats are trawling with nets up to 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) in length that do not allow fish to reach the shore.

Four years since the Brazilian government signed an executive order declaring a half-million-hectare sustainable-use reserve in the Amazon, the area remains protected on paper only — leaving it open to…

Some of the world’s largest beef exporters are still buying cattle that grazed in protected areas of the Amazon rainforest, despite commitments to stop this practice, according to a new…

Wild felids in Brazil’s Amazon face a myriad of pressures from habitat loss and, most recently, the threat of fires. In the central Amazon region, a long-running community-based monitoring program…

Even before a definitive license was issued by the Brazilian main environmental agency, paving works had already begun on the so-called Middle Section of the BR-319, the highway that connects the Amazonian cities of Porto Velho and Manaus.

At the heart of Brazil’s “arc of deforestation,” the São Nicolau Farm has become a demonstration reforestation project, designing and refining tropical reforestation techniques on 2,000 hectares of degraded pastureland.

Update: Shortly after this story was published, INPE updated the September data. The numbers have been revised accordingly. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is surging ahead of the presidential election…

For decades, satellite images have clearly captured how rampant deforestation is destroying the Amazon rainforest. But what about the trees that remain standing? What do their dimensions tell us about…

Across the entire 847 million hectares of Amazonian territory, some 26% of its forests are showing evidence of deforestation and degradation — 20% have suffered irreversible loss and 6% are…

Deforestation proponents in Brazil routinely argue that cutting down the Amazon is an effective way to alleviate poverty. For example, the Bolsonaro administration's official statement to the 2021 United Nations…

The Americas have a long history of occupation based on the destruction of nature and the violent massacre of native peoples, all in the name of a particular idea of…

Scientists warn that the Amazon is hurtling toward a tipping point, beyond which it would begin to transition from lush tropical forest into a dry, degraded savanna, unable to support…