Rainforests and Amazon News

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at how women are leading the charge to protect the Amazon rainforest, the largest rainforest in the world. Listen…

A wave of planned “mega” infrastructure projects across the tropics of Latin America threatens the region’s forests and the biodiversity and carbon they contain, a group of scientists warned Aug.…

Greenpeace has released dramatic new photos of illegal fires burning in the Brazilian Amazon. The aerial images — captured by photographer Christian Braga over the states of Rondonia, Amazonas, Pará,…

In a befuddling move, the Bolsonaro administration last Friday cut all agency funding to fight deforestation and put out fires in the Amazon and Pantanal, then reversed the decision; even as both biomes burned.

When harvest season comes to the Amazon, Irlene das Graças da Cunha de Figueiredo’s day revolves around fish. During a handful of days every year, when the floodwaters of the…

Update 8/28/20 17:00 Pacific: shortly after this post was published, the Ministério do Meio Ambiente (MMA) - Brazil's Ministry of Environment - announced it had reached a deal to secure…

Low carbon investment in agriculture, industry and energy shows better economic prospects than business-as-usual scenario, raising hopes Brazil will add environmental priorities to COVID-19 economic recovery plan.

QUITO — COVID-19 has made it hard to ignore the gaping social and economic inequalities and environmental destruction worldwide, particularly in the global south. That’s why researchers and social movements…

An area nearly 5 times that of New York City’s land area has burned so far in 2020, most of it recently deforested, and now illegally burned over, to make way for new cattle pastures and croplands.

The Kayapó Mekrãgnoti Indigenous people have launched a blockade of the BR-163 highway, a key Brazilian commodities shipment route, mostly in protest over lost funding to prevent reserve invasions.

NEW YORK — On an early December morning last year in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, half a dozen members of the Indigenous Guajajara people packed their bags with food,…

The world watched in horror and surprise as the Amazon burned in 2019, windblown smoke darkening the sky over far-off São Paulo, Brazil. The ability to predict where fires are…

Last week a new film was released that documents the building of a road into the Manu Biosphere Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon. It's a story of conflict, community development,…

The historical record shows that Indigenous reserves are only safe from invasion by illegal deforesters once fully protected by government — protections rapidly eroding in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

Wary of Western medicine and of the prejudice and neglect they say they suffer at hospitals, Amazon's Kokama people decided to turn to traditional healing practices, administered by shamans. The Kokama were the first Indigenous group in Brazil to be infected with COVID-19, and to date there have been more than a thousand confirmed cases and 60 deaths within the community.

As the 2020 Amazon fire season moves toward its August peak, hundreds of blazes — almost all in Brazil, mostly illegal, and some on conserved lands — have been detected: Report.

Despite a growing realization worldwide of the need for environmentally responsible investing, financial institutions and fund managers who have otherwise committed to going green are still funding the sector most responsible for deforestation.

Two Brazilian biologists divided the Amazon Forest into 13 subregions, according to tree and shrub species. This spatial distribution allows targeting protection efforts.

On July 15, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro decreed a ban on fires in the Amazon for 120 days. While this is ostensibly positive—a message to the world that Brazil’s government…

While individual investors have no idea where their money is applied, large finance firms camouflage participation in companies that foment tree-cutting in the Amazon.

New satellite data shows major tree loss, while Brazil’s VP cherry picks the findings, according to experts. Meanwhile, the environment minister appears to welcome illegal miners’ demands for less enforcement.

While MRN, a mining firm makes big profits working within, and harming, a Brazilian conservation unit, traditional people can be fined for collecting Brazil nuts and fishing sustainably in a nearby protected area.

An area of rainforest larger than the city of São Paulo was cleared during the month of July, bringing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon to 9,205 square kilometers over the…

In a remote slice of Triunfo do Xingu, deep in Brazil’s northern Pará state, swaths of lush forest have been engulfed by flames in recent days. In another stretch to…

For two years, regions of Brazil that depend on precipitation fed by Amazonian vegetation have seen rainfall below historical averages, impacting crops and harvests. A recent bulletin from a federal agency points to agribusiness itself as one of the drivers of this pattern.

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.

The recent deaths of four Indigenous Yanomami babies and subsequent disappearance of their bodies from a hospital in Brazil have revealed yet another hardship in the way the coronavirus pandemic has impacted Indigenous communities.

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.

The new Science Panel for the Amazon — modeled on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — aims to consolidate knowledge on the Amazon rainforest and guide future public policies to conserve it.

Niobium is an important element used as a steel additive in the making of cars, planes, nuclear weapons, and even piercings. Jair Bolsonaro would like to see it actively mined, even in indigenous reserves.