Newsletter 2018-03-29

On April 5, the Bay Area Tropical Forest Network and Mongabay will be hosting Jaguars of the Chaco at Stanford University. Admission is free.

FEATURED

Cerrado Manifesto could curb deforestation, but needs support: experts by Anna Sophie Gross [03/29/2018]

– The Cerrado Manifesto, issued in 2017, calls for a voluntary pledge by companies to help halt deforestation and native vegetation loss in the Cerrado. The Brazilian savannah’s native vegetation once covered 2 million square kilometers that has been reduced by soy, corn, cotton, and cattle production by more than half.
– The Manifesto has been signed mostly by supermarkets and fast food chains, including McDonalds, Walmart, Marks & Spencer and Unilever. However, commodities firms such as Cargill, Bunge, and ADM, all active in the Cerrado, have yet to sign. Experts say big traders must join in to make the initiative effective.
– The Cerrado Manifesto is modeled on the 2006 Amazon Soy Moratorium, which some say was effective in cutting deforestation due to the direct conversion of forests to soy plantations. Critics of the Manifesto say that its top down approach should also include major incentives to farmers to not clear native vegetation.
– One concern is that the Manifesto and other deforestation mechanisms could force good actors out of the Cerrado, creating a vacuum into which entities unsupportive of environmental reform might enter. Among entities of concern is China, which already buys a third of Cerrado soy. China has not signed the Manifesto.

Do environmental advocacy campaigns drive successful forest conservation? by Mike Gaworecki [03/29/2018]

– How effective are advocacy campaigns at driving permanent policy changes that lead to forest conservation results? We suspected this might be a difficult question to answer scientifically, but nevertheless we gamely set out to see what researchers had discovered when they attempted to do so as part of a special Mongabay series on “Conservation Effectiveness.”
– We ultimately reviewed 34 studies and papers, and found that the scientific evidence is fairly weak for any claims about the effectiveness of advocacy campaigns. So we also spoke with several experts in forest conservation and advocacy campaigns to supplement our understanding of some of the broader trends and to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge.
– We found no evidence that advocacy campaigns on their own drive long-term forest conservation, though they do appear to be valuable in terms of raising awareness of environmental issues and driving people to take action. But it’s important to note that, of all the conservation interventions we examined for the Conservation Effectiveness series, advocacy campaigns appear to have the weakest evidence base in scientific literature.

Cerrado: U.S. investment spurs land theft, deforestation in Brazil, say experts by Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance [03/28/2018]

– In Brazil, large swathes of land are owned by the state, but can be legally claimed by small-scale farmers if they cultivate crops and homestead on it, though they may lack legal title. In the 1990s, 240 small-scale farm families laid claim to lands in Cotegipe municipality, Bahia state.
– Over time, local elites allegedly drove them off those lands, using intimidation and violence, and then laid claim to 140,000 hectares (540 square miles) — an area bigger than Los Angeles. That land was sold and resold. Today, it is occupied by the Campo Largo farm, a minimally productive operation owned by Caracol Agropecuária LTDA.
– The capital that Caracol used to buy that land has now been traced to its foreign partners. Caracol is apparently owned by the endowment fund of Harvard University, via its Harvard Management Company: HMC, which oversees more than 12,000 funds, is believed to own Caracol through two subsidiaries: Guara LLC and Bromelia LLC.
– Globally, HMC, TIAA-CREF and other financial firms began investing heavily in farmland in developing nations after 2007/08. Often, say analysts, these lands were originally obtained via land theft. In Cotegipe, 22 families are still fighting to reclaim the small farms they say were stolen from them — a Mongabay exclusive.

In a land untouched by mines, indigenous holdouts fight a coal invasion by Ian Morse [03/28/2018]

– Despite opposition from local officials and the absence of a required environmental impact assessment, a coal company was granted a permit to mine in Indonesian Borneo’s Central Hulu Sungai district.
– The local Dayak people have vowed to fight the mine, and an environmental NGO is suing the central government for issuing the permit.
– The permit was issued after changes to the law — said to simplify the process of issuing permits — allowed mining firm PT MCM to sidestep local officials.

Cerrado: Agribusiness boomtown; profits for a few, hardships for many by Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance [03/26/2018]

– Luís Eduardo Magalhães (LEM) is a soy boomtown, built on Cerrado agribusiness. Its population has grown fourfold since 2000, to 83,000 people, and is one of Brazil’s fastest growing cities. But LEM has suffered growing pains as the people from rural areas have rushed there seeking jobs and opportunities.
– Public services have failed to keep up, with most urban streets still dirt and sanitation services lagging behind population growth. Many new arrivals from the countryside, lacking specialized skills, have been unable to get good jobs or gain access to the highly mechanized and specialized industrial agribusiness economy. So they remain poor.
– Many have ended up in Santa Cruz, an impoverished neighborhood where drug trafficking and gang violence are a constant daily threat. Those with better skills and more luck may end up in Jardim Paraíso (Paradise Garden), a nearby upscale neighborhood marked by security fences and security alarms as protection against crime.
– Experts say LEM seems likely to follow the path of agribusiness boomtowns globally: population grows rapidly, but initial economic gains and urbanization aren’t followed by ongoing development and investment. Disorderly growth negatively impacts the environment, leading to more poverty and a concentration of land ownership and wealth.

“Save the Krill” urges Greenpeace report by Kim Smuga-Otto [03/23/2018]

– A recent report by Greenpeace International describes the role of krill in Antarctica’s marine food chain and calls for nations to restrict their krill fishing in areas under consideration for protected status designation.
– Automatic identification system signals from commercial krill-fishing vessels allowed Greenpeace to map the precise routes these ships take around the Antarctic Peninsula and to identify transfers of catch and fuel between ships.
– The report warns that krill fishing competes for food with other marine wildlife, and that anchoring and pollution from the ships could damage the larger ecosystem.
– Video footage and samples collected from submarine dives by a recent Greenpeace expedition will be analyzed and presented at meetings this summer to support the creation of marine protected areas in the Weddell Sea and other regions around Antarctica.

NEWS

Do environmental advocacy campaigns drive successful forest conservation? by Mike Gaworecki [03/29/2018]

– How effective are advocacy campaigns at driving permanent policy changes that lead to forest conservation results? We suspected this might be a difficult question to answer scientifically, but nevertheless we gamely set out to see what researchers had discovered when they attempted to do so as part of a special Mongabay series on “Conservation Effectiveness.”
– We ultimately reviewed 34 studies and papers, and found that the scientific evidence is fairly weak for any claims about the effectiveness of advocacy campaigns. So we also spoke with several experts in forest conservation and advocacy campaigns to supplement our understanding of some of the broader trends and to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge.
– We found no evidence that advocacy campaigns on their own drive long-term forest conservation, though they do appear to be valuable in terms of raising awareness of environmental issues and driving people to take action. But it’s important to note that, of all the conservation interventions we examined for the Conservation Effectiveness series, advocacy campaigns appear to have the weakest evidence base in scientific literature.

Indonesia may achieve renewables target, but still favors coal for power by Basten Gokkon [03/29/2018]

– Indonesia is set to achieve its target for renewables portion in the national energy mix by 2025, but the country will still rely heavily on coal in the next 10 years, according to revisions in the national electricity plan.
– The new plan also sees cuts to the country’s target to install additional electricity capacity across the archipelago by 2027 amid stagnant demand, slower-than-projected economic growth, and state utility PLN’s financial concerns over the glut of idle power in some parts of the nation.
– Energy activists, however, argue that the trims are still not enough to solve PLN’s financial woes or to reduce Indonesia’s dependence on health- and environment-damaging coal.

‘Ropeless’ consortium aims to end entanglements of declining North Atlantic right whales by John C. Cannon [03/29/2018]

– ‘Fishermen, engineers, manufacturers, scientists and managers’ have come together to develop ropeless fishing gear to keep North Atlantic right whales from getting entangled.
– Only 451 right whales are left, and it’s likely that fewer than 100 are breeding females.
– Research teams have recorded no new calves this breeding season, which ended this month.
– Scientists warn that the North Atlantic right whale could go extinct if the trend in their numbers doesn’t change.

Australia opens vast swaths of famed marine parks to fishing by Mic Smith [03/29/2018]

– Australia is known for protecting its sea life in a 3.3 million square kilometer (1.3 million square mile) system of marine parks that cover 36 percent of the country’s oceans.
– The protection of those parks is now at stake, as the government last week approved five long-awaited management plans covering 44 parks. The new plans open an area almost the size of Japan to commercial and recreational fishing compared to the original plans formed by the previous government when the parks were proclaimed in 2012.
– A coalition of opposition parties attempted to block the new plans in parliament on Tuesday but failed.
– Conservation groups and hundreds of marine scientists have voiced vehement opposition to the government’s new plans.

AI can ‘help us move mountains’ for people and planet, Watson developer says by Erik Hoffner [03/28/2018]

– IBM Master Developer Neil Sahota believes artificial intelligence (AI) can help humanity ‘move mountains’ in terms of improving lives and the environment.
– Sahota helped develop Watson, the supercomputer which is now being used in a variety of useful ways, like predicting crop yields for farmers in Africa.
– In this interview with Mongabay, he shares multiple examples of AI being used by actors ranging from the UN to NASA and NGOs, for good.

Under the sea: Life is the bubbles in newly described deep-reef zone by Basten Gokkon [03/28/2018]

– Scientists have recently described a layer of the deep ocean zone as the “rariphotic,” calling it home to an array of unidentified reef fish and a refuge for species from shallower waters drive out of their coral habitats by warming waters.
– Nearly 4,500 fishes were observed representing 71 species, nearly half of them new species, the researchers reported.
– The scientists are calling for more exploration into deeper marine ecosystems to better understand the deep-reef ecosystems and the impact of changes taking place in shallower zones.

Small section of controversial refinery wall in Indian ‘elephant corridor’ demolished by Shreya Dasgupta [03/28/2018]

– On March 13, officials tore down a 289-meter (948-foot) stretch of a 2.2-kilometer (1.4-mile) concrete wall built by an Indian oil refinery, allegedly blocking an elephant corridor.
– In August 2016, India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT) — tasked with ensuring the speedy disposal of environmental cases — ordered NRL to demolish the entire length of the wall within a month.
– But only a 289-meter-stretch was demolished, reportedly because that stretch encircled an area of land that fell within a proposed reserved forest. The case is ongoing.

How a series of shady deals turned a chunk of Borneo into a sea of oil palm by The Gecko Project and Mongabay [03/27/2018]

In the leadup to the release of the second installment of Indonesia for Sale, our series examining the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis, we are republishing the first article in the series, “The Palm Oil Fiefdom.” This is the fourth part of that article. The first part described a secret deal between the son of Darwan Ali, […]

PHOTOS: The great Sandhill crane migration makes its annual stopover on the Platte River by Mike Gaworecki [03/27/2018]

– The annual migration undertaken by sandhill cranes in North America is considered one of the world’s great natural spectacles, on par with Africa’s wildebeest migration and the “march of the penguins” in Antarctica.
– Nowhere is the sandhill crane migration more visible in all its majesty than on the Platte River in the U.S. state of Nebraska — you truly have to see it to believe it.
– You can hear many of the sounds of the sandhill crane migration on a recent episode of the Mongabay Newscast. It’s one thing to hear the migration, however, and quite another to see it.

‘Annihilation trawling’: Q&A with marine biologist Amanda Vincent by Rebecca Kessler [03/27/2018]

– For years marine biologists have been raising concerns about bottom trawling, a fishing technique that unintentionally scoops up non-targeted creatures as bycatch and disrupts marine habitat.
– While the technique is widely acknowledged to be destructive, seahorse expert Amanda Vincent is calling attention to a new problem: in Asia and elsewhere, bottom trawlers are no longer targeting particular species at all but going after any and all sea life for processing into chicken feed, fishmeal and other low-value products.
– In an interview with Mongabay, Vincent describes her observations in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Borneo’s elephants prefer degraded forests, a new study finds by John C. Cannon [03/27/2018]

– New research has found that Bornean elephants most often use degraded forests with canopy heights topping out at around 13 meters (43 feet).
– Less than 25 percent of the state’s protected intact forests, which include primary forests, are suitable for elephants, the authors concluded.
– The team suggests that maintaining suitable elephant habitat in Malaysian Borneo will require the protection of relatively small patches of degraded forests that elephants favor.

Indonesian graftbusters put a price tag on environmental crime by Hans Nicholas Jong [03/27/2018]

– Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency, the KPK, has alleged huge losses incurred by the state as a result of illegal mining permits handed out by a provincial governor. The severity of the charge relies heavily on estimates of environmental damage.
– The KPK sees the move as a breakthrough that could lead to heavier sentences and fines in corruption cases in Indonesia’s natural resources sector.
– NGOs, however, say the agency is pulling its punches and should have cracked down harder, including seeking fines in the same amount as the alleged losses to the state.
– In a twist in the case, the expert who helped derive the monetary figure for the environmental damages now faces a lawsuit from the defendant’s team, which claims he presented an inaccurate calculation.

Traditional landowners reject mining exploration bid in Bougainville by Catherine Wilson [03/27/2018]

– Ahead of next year’s referendum on independence from Papua New Guinea, the government of the autonomous region of Bougainville believes reopening the Panguna copper mine is the key to gaining economic self-sufficiency.
– In January, traditional landholders rejected a bid by Bougainville Copper Ltd. — now majority owned by the Bougainville and Papua New Guinea governments — to renew exploration at the mine.
– The dispute of the mine highlights the ways in which traditional communal landownership in Melanesian states complicates both public and private development projects — and the role landowner groups can play in environmental stewardship.

Range countries to lead new estimate of global snow leopard population as downgraded threat status remains controversial by Mike Gaworecki [03/26/2018]

– The newly announced Population Assessment of the World’s Snow Leopards initiative, called PAWS for short, will be overseen by the Steering Committee of the Global Snow Leopard & Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP), which is comprised of the Environment Ministers of all twelve snow leopard range states.
– The snow leopard had been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1986 until late last year, when its threat status was downgraded to Vulnerable — ostensibly welcome news that ultimately proved quite controversial.
– In a recent commentary for the journal Science, snow leopard researchers questioned the scientific merit of the data the IUCN relied on in downgrading the threat status of snow leopards. GSLEP says it categorically rejects any change in snow leopards’ threat status until PAWS is complete and a scientifically reliable population estimate is available.

Trump’s elephant, lion trophy hunting policy hit with double lawsuits by Jeremy Hance [03/26/2018]

– In policymaking, the Interior Dept. announced it was allowing U.S. citizens to import elephant and lion body parts to the United States last November. President Trump immediately put that decision on hold. Then in 2018, the USFWS said trophy hunting decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis.
– Now, Born Free USA, the Humane Society of the United States, the Center for Biological Diversity, and other litigants have filed a lawsuit against the plan, saying USFWS policymaking failed to offer a public comment period, lacked transparency, and didn’t outline a process as to how decisions will be made.
– In a second lawsuit, Born Free USA, an NGO, accused the Trump administration of stacking its newly formed International Wildlife Conservation Council (IWCC) with pro-trophy hunting members, some with ties to the gun industry, an allegation largely confirmed by an Associated Press study.
– The IWCC held its first meeting this month. A critic who attended said she was shocked that a council meant to advise the government on conservation seemed to know very little about the poaching crisis in Africa. A renowned trophy hunter was appointed to head the group’s conservation subcommittee.

‘IUCN Green List of species’: A new way to measure conservation success by Shreya Dasgupta [03/26/2018]

– Scientists have proposed a framework for a new “Green List of species” that outlines a standard way of measuring species recovery and conservation success.
– The framework starts by defining what a “fully recovered species” looks like, then lays down four metrics that quantify the importance of conservation efforts for a species’ recovery.
– The Green List will eventually become a part of the IUCN Red List, the scientists say, with the final species assessment including both the extinction risk categories as well as the four conservation metrics to help judge whether conservation actions are helping a species recover.

Local conservancies create new hope for wildlife in Kenya’s Maasai Mara (commentary) by Daniel Sopia and Fred Nelson [03/26/2018]

– Naboisho and roughly a dozen neighboring conservancies in Kenya’s Maasai Mara are made up of hundreds of individual plots owned by local Maasai residents of the Mara, who converted their traditional communal lands in this part of Kenya to individual holdings.
– Tour operators with existing camps around the Mara have worked to pool together individual Maasai landowners who had subdivided their lands into larger groups that could then lease a large area of land to the tour operators.
– Each landowner is paid a monthly lease fee of around $235, amounting to over $900,000 of landowner income annually.
– This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

In Jakarta, wildlife monitors find a hotspot for the illegal tortoise trade by Basten Gokkon [03/26/2018]

– Indonesia’s capital has seen an increase in the sale of non-native species of tortoises and freshwater turtles that are prohibited for international commercial trade, according to a report by the wildlife-monitoring group TRAFFIC.
– Growing demand for these species, coupled with Indonesia’s lax enforcement of customs regulation at international ports of entry and an outdated conservation act, have allowed the illicit international animal trade to grow, TRAFFIC said.
– The group has called on the Indonesian government to improve the country’s conservation laws and regulations, and urged more stringent monitoring of the markets, pet stores and expos in Jakarta and across the country to document and assess the extent of any illegal trade.

Tech and collaboration are putting indigenous land rights on the map by Lalini Pedris [03/26/2018]

– Tierras Indígenas’ advanced mapping technology is bringing South America’s Chaco ecosystem into the spotlight and allowing indigenous groups to digitally map out their territories in an effort to protect their forests.
– Mapping indigenous land rights and forest change requires collaboration among various stakeholders and standardization of data collection, using clear protocols, precise data, and participatory management.
– By accessing the Global Forest Watch and Tierras Indígenas platforms, users can view forest change in particular areas within the Gran Chaco ecoregion, as well as the legal status of indigenous land claims to those same areas.

Study reveals the Pacific Garbage Patch is much heftier than thought — and it’s growing by Mongabay.com [03/26/2018]

– A recent survey of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch revealed that the aggregated plastic there weighs in at 79,000 metric tons (87,100 short tons).
– The plastic is floating across an area larger than Mongolia at 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles).
– Around 75 percent of the pieces that are larger than 5 centimeters (2 inches) in length, and old fishing nets make up a minimum of 46 percent of the total mass.
– The scientists calculated that 94 percent of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch are microplastics.

How Indonesia’s Seruyan district became an epicenter of fires and haze by The Gecko Project and Mongabay [03/26/2018]

In the leadup to the release of the second installment of Indonesia for Sale, our series examining the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis, we are republishing the first article in the series, “The Palm Oil Fiefdom.” This is the third part of that article. The first part described a secret deal between the son of Darwan Ali, […]

Colombia scraps Amazon highway plans due to deforestation concerns by Taran Volckhausen [03/23/2018]

– The Marginal de la Selva highway is part of $1 billion infrastructure project that would have opened a trade route for heavy land cargo to pass from Venezuela to Ecuador through Colombia without having to enter the treacherous Andes mountains.
– Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos declared earlier the controversial project will not be completed, citing rampant deforestation and potentially irreversible environmental impacts to a sensitive ecological corridor near three national parks if the highway were developed as planned.
– Conservationists are lauding the President’s announcement, calling it “extraordinary news for deforestation mitigation and restoration efforts” to restore the region’s ecological integrity.

The wind of change blowing through Ghana’s villages (commentary) by Mark Olden [03/23/2018]

– For generations, those who lived by Ghana’s forests invariably saw their lives get tougher when timber companies arrived in their areas: access to the forests they relied on was restricted, while the wealth generated from the logging eluded them.
– Overhauling Ghana’s forest laws has meant trying to resolve this through new regulations that require companies to negotiate Social Responsibility Agreements (SRAs) with the communities living within a five-kilometer radius of their logging concessions. Under these agreements, the timber companies must share the benefits of the forests they exploit with the people who live there.
– In the past, any agreements between timber companies and local people would be conducted by the local chief. This left the door open to chiefs enriching themselves by capturing rents at the expense of their communities. But an SRA needs the consent of the entire community, and when people have a voice in the decisions that effect their lives, the power starts to spread.
– This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Brazil ignored U.N. letters warning of land defender threats, record killings by Jenny Gonzales [03/23/2018]

– United Nations rapporteurs sent two letters to the Temer administration in 2017. The first warned of threats to human rights activists in Minas Gerais state. The second condemned the record number of environmental and land defender killings in Pará state last year. Brazil ignored both letters.
– The State Public Ministry (MPE), the independent public prosecutor’s office in Minas Gerais, had requested the inclusion of six laborers and their families in the Protection Program of Human Rights Defenders, of the Secretariat of Rights of the Presidency in May, 2017.
– The laborers say they were threatened by representatives of Anglo American Iron Ore Brazil S.A., a subsidiary of London-based Anglo American, a global mining company. In March Anglo American Brazil reported a mineral duct rupture which contaminated the Santo Antônio and Casca rivers, and riverside communities.
– 908 murders of environmentalists and land defenders occurred in 35 countries between 2002 and 2013. Of those, 448, almost half, happened in Brazil. In 2018 so far, at least 12 Brazilian social activists and politicians have been slain — twice as many as compared to the same period in 2017.

Microplastic pollution in world’s oceans poses major threat to filter-feeding megafauna by Mike Gaworecki [03/23/2018]

– A study published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution last month looks at how filter-feeding marine animals like baleen whales, manta rays, and whale sharks are impacted by microplastic pollution in the world’s oceans.
– Filter-feeding megafauna must swallow hundreds to thousands of cubic meters of water every day in order to catch enough plankton to keep themselves nourished. That means that these species are probably ingesting microplastics both directly from polluted water and indirectly through the consumption of contaminated plankton prey.
– Microplastic particles can block nutrient absorption and damage the digestive tracts of the filter-feeding marine life that ingest them, while toxins and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) found in plastic can accumulate in the bodies of marine wildlife over time, changing biological processes such as growth and reproduction and even leading to decreased fertility.

In other news: Environmental stories from around the web, March 23, 2018 by Mongabay.com [03/23/2018]

Tropical forests A new study finds that deforestation rates of 20 to 25 percent in the Amazon could cause a collapse of the hydrological cycle (Fundação de Amparo ‘ Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo/EurekAlert). Logging concessions, if properly managed, could support wildlife such as jaguars (Wildlife Conservation Society/EurekAlert).

How to build a Guardian: students learn about making technology work in the field by Sue Palminteri [03/23/2018]

– Students in several science and tech schools in California are learning to design and build Guardians, acoustic monitoring devices to help protect rainforests from illegal logging while keeping a record of the sounds made by forest wildlife.
– Led by the non-profit Rainforest Connection, the students are constructing the Guardians from old, recycled smartphones armed with solar power and Google’s open source machine learning framework, TensorFlow, which transforms them into field-tough listening tools.
– The program also addresses the challenges of designing and developing technology for humid, rugged, remote field conditions typical of indigenous reserves and protected areas.

Cerrado: Traditional communities accuse agribusiness of ‘green land grabbing’ by Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance [03/22/2018]

– The Cerrado savannah includes many traditional communities. Among them are the geraizeiros who arrived in Western Bahia as much as 200 years ago. For those many years, they occupied small communal villages, and farmed, grazed, and harvested surrounding native lands held by the Brazilian government.
– Typically lacking legal deeds to these lands, the geraizeiros have increasingly come into conflict with agribusiness expansion. Company-run plantations have, according to local people, laid claim to the natural lands, fenced them off, placed guards, then converted native vegetation to soy, corn and cotton monocultures.
– Another conflict: in the Cerrado, a percentage of a land owner’s property must be kept in its natural state, as a Legal Reserve. However, these reserves needn’t be contiguous with croplands. As a result, say local people, agribusiness is laying claim to natural lands that the geraizeiros have long used sustainably for their livelihoods.
– Conflict continues to escalate. The Cerrado states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia – known collectively as Matopiba – saw a 56 percent increase in reported land conflicts (400 in total) over the five year period, 2012-2016. In contrast, the national increase over the same period was 21 percent.

Indigenous Amazonian women demand end to extraction by Kimberley Brown [03/22/2018]

– After long journeys by foot and bus, the women gathered in Ecuador’s capitol Quito to protest last week and call for a meeting with Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno.
– After several days of protest, Moreno agreed to a meeting with the group today.
– Amazonian leaders say they plan to discuss their mandate, particularly the sexual exploitation and harassment they face due to extractive activities in the Amazon and the loss of economic opportunity.

PREVIOUS FEATURES

Cerrado: Traditional communities accuse agribusiness of ‘green land grabbing’ by Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance [03/22/2018]

Indigenous Amazonian women demand end to extraction by Kimberley Brown [03/22/2018]

Brazilian lawmakers funded by donors guilty of environmental crimes: report by Anna Sophie Gross [03/21/2018]

Cerrado: Agribusiness may be killing Brazil’s ‘birthplace of waters’ by Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance [03/19/2018]

Ecuador: Sarayaku leader Patricia Gualinga defends territory despite threats by Isabel Riofrio [03/19/2018]

Save the Sumatran rhino ‘because we can’ (commentary) by Mongabay.com [03/16/2018]

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