Mongabay series: Amazon Conservation

A solemn Kanimari man looks at filmmaker Céline Cousteau and says, "I'm 28 years old. All of my cousins — my relatives that were born at the same time as…

"If a tree lives 500 years, it carries the carbon assimilated and stocked for the last 500 years,” says Giuliano Locosselli, a researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP)…

Scientists warn that we are approaching the Amazon biome tipping point, but proposed solutions in Brazil appear stillborn, politically impractical or lack sufficient scale and/or funding.

The Black Jaguar Foundation is planning a 1,615 greenway to be planted with 1.7 billion trees. The big challenge: the corridor runs through rural landowners’ properties, and they need convincing.

An average 75% of respondents in 12 European nations say the gigantic EU-Mercosur trade pact should not be ratified if Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil doesn’t end Amazon deforestation; EU governments are listening.

In some of the wettest parts of the Amazon rainforest, dry air may increase plant photosynthesis rates — a response that contradicts the assumptions of many climate models, according to…

Environmental monitoring and firefighting saw budgets cut by over a third in two years; agencies endured massive deregulation, with nearly 600 rule changes aimed at undermining conservation, say critics.

The Roraima state bill legalizing garimpo prospecting, if signed into law by the governor, could put the Yanomami reserve and other Indigenous territories at greater risk of invasion and COVID-19 infection.

The governor of Amazonas state in an exceptional appeal — apparently bypassing the Bolsonaro administration — is asking for emergency international assistance to combat a devastating new COVID-19 second wave.

Amazon hospital beds and ICUs overflow, and oxygen runs out as a new, maybe more virulent, COVID-19 variant rages. “It’s not a second wave we’re dealing with, but a whole tsunami,” says a doctor.

The Brazilian Amazon is home to public lands that span an area the size of Spain — undesignated forests that are at growing risk of land grabbing encouraged by the…

The advent of the Amazon soy moratorium in 2006 seemed to usher in a new era of hope for ending deforestation for food production in the world’s largest rainforest. From…

Osvalinda Alves Pereira is the first Brazilian to win the prestigious Edelstam Prize. As a civil rights defender, and at great risk to herself, Osvalinda is resisting criminals illegally harvesting Amazon timber.

The Biosphere 2 project, run by the University of Arizona, maintains a replica of a humid tropical forest inside a glass dome in the middle of the desert outside Tucson.…

When Celso Silva Junior, a Ph.D. candidate at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE), stepped back from his recently completed map of Brazil’s secondary forests, he was surprised by…

Brazil is suffering from the third-highest number of COVID-19 infections in the world, and the second-highest number of deaths, behind only the U.S. But for the residents of the municipality…

A day after Brazil announced 11,000 square kilometers of annual deforestation, France, the EU’s biggest buyer of Brazilian soy flour, announced plans to become more self-sufficient on the commodity.

Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park is at risk from a BR-364 branch road running from Acre state to Peru. Brazil’s Congress is about to strip away the park’s protections, risking wholesale deforestation.

South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.

The illegal wildlife trade is out of control in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, says the award-winning NGO known as RENCTAS, which tracked 3.5 million wildlife trafficking ads on social networks last year.

Their territory is suffering the ravages of COVID-19, invasion by 20,000 illegal miners, mercury pollution, severe deforestation, and “genocidal” government apathy, say the Yanomami people.

Integrating aquatic biodiversity into conservation planning could yield substantial benefits for freshwater species with minimal cost to terrestrial creatures, according to a study published in Science last month. Conservation areas…

Brazilian armed forces accused of incompetence, funding misappropriations in 2020 Amazon deforestation prevention and fire suppression operations: Critics.

An analysis of 12 Brazilian volunteer projects certified by the REDD+ carbon-offset program found that emission and deforestation reductions were overstated. Improvements in carbon accounting are recommended.

Amazon fires are burning this year within the protected lands inhabited by isolated uncontacted Indigenous peoples. The fires, largely illegal and intentionally set by land grabbers, ranchers and farmers, are…

For the first time, researchers have developed a model capable of anticipating drought periods in the Amazon up to 18 months in advance. The study was conducted by scientists from…

Georeferencing, a digital process for registering land ownership, is now widespread in South America, but it is high-tech that can be used by landgrabbers and companies to obtain deeds to collective ancestral lands.

2020’s record Brazilian fires, which devastated the Pantanal wetlands, also reached the Amolar Mountains in recent weeks, a refuge for jaguars and other wildlife, and home to traditional Indigenous villagers.

More than 120 major fires have been detected in Bolivia since August, more than a quarter of them in protected areas, including Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a UNESCO World…

Last recorded in 1968, Megaelosia bocainensis, a frog known for its rounded snout and granular skin, was thought extinct until researchers tracked down its environmental DNA in Brazil’s São Paulo state.