Saving The Amazon News

As the world recommitted to Paris carbon cuts last month, Britain and Brazil have moved to tap 176 billion barrels of undersea oil, risking further climate destabilization.

A soon to be finalized Mercosur / European Union trade deal will contain indigenous human rights clauses that may be a last hope for indigenous groups under attack in Brazil.

In 2016, Pres. Maduro proclaimed the Orinoco Mining Arc. Today armed gangs and the military fight over its riches at the expense of the environment and small-scale miners.

Brazil is fast-tracking the Ferrogrão grain railway planned for the Tapajós Basin without prior environmental review, and despite protests from indigenous groups.

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…

Under President Correa, Ecuador partnered with China, building megaprojects like the Coca Codo Sinclair dam, with negative outcomes for local communities and the environment.

With COP23 well underway, scientists warn that President Temer’s policies could doom the Amazon and Brazil’s Paris goals, while destabilizing the global climate.

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.

To avoid impeachment on corruption charges, Brazil’s president has bought Congress and wealthy elite ruralists with a wave of decrees that will destroy the Amazon.

As COP23 negotiators meet in Bonn, indigenous and rural leaders warn that time is running out to protect global forests — a crucial hedge against perilous global warming.

27 percent of Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park in Goiás state has burned; flames blazed for 12 days. Arson is suspected, with recent park enlargement a possible motive.

A new study found that mining caused nearly 10 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015, not the 1-2 percent assumed by past assessments.

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.

Federal police arrest a gang of timber thieves who cut rare ipê trees on an Amazon indigenous reserve and used falsified records for export to U.S., Europe and Asia.

On Sept 26, two scientists and a NASA astronaut completed TransAmazon +25, a bike trek across the Brazilian Amazon. What makes this trip particularly interesting is that one of the…

The president has undermined Brazil’s slavery law, making it very difficult to prosecute the wealthy elites enslaving roughly 155,000 Brazilians, critics say.

During the wet season, manatees swim Amazon basin floodplains; in dry times they migrate to lakes. Hundreds of planned dams could disrupt that cycle.

Last Friday, eighty Munduruku warriors — demanding an apology for destruction of two sacred sites — tried to occupy an Amazon dam; they were met by armed police.

Colombia is home to more bird species than any other country on Earth. It’s also well-known for a long-simmering conflict that has only recently begun to cool. Now, a pair…

14 million Amazon animals and plants — caiman skins, turtles, parrots, orchids and more — are legally exported annually. Illegal trafficking levels are unknown.