Mongabay series: Amazon Illegal Deforestation

Soaring gold prices, brought on by the economic meltdown and COVID-19 uncertainty, have led to a rapid, largely un-policed, expansion of illegal gold mining in the Amazon.

An exclusive study shows that 114 properties have been certified inside indigenous territories awaiting demarcation in the Brazilian Amazon, spurred in large part by a recent statute that leaves these reserves unprotected from such illegal land grabs.

Land grabbers, landed estate owners and even oil companies stand to benefit from a new guideline released by FUNAI, the federal indigenous affairs agency, which opens up 237 indigenous territories in Brazil for sale, subdivision and speculation.

The illegal harvesting of valuable Brazilian wood is rife as loggers supply the EU, US and other nations. Mongabay goes deep into the rainforest to meet some of the workers illegally felling trees.

A bill in Congress on the verge of passage this week would allow land grabbers to self-declare their ownership of government land, ultimately converting vast stretches of Amazon rainforest to cattle ranches.

Some 600 indigenous people have seen their crops die due to the expansion of agribusiness in the state of Pará, Brazil. The streams used by the Munduruku have also been damaged, if not dried up.

Four Alter do Châo volunteer firefighters were charged last year with setting Amazon fires; the police lack evidence, while locals say the real suspects — landgrabbers — are likely still on the loose.

The pandemic is spreading across the Brazilian Amazon, but that isn’t slowing deforestation or land grabbing or a political crisis which has left the rainforest without adequate field surveillance.

One of the Amazon’s most deforested regions, Lábrea, in Brazil, is remote, poorly policed and suffering from a land tenure crisis. As a result, land grabbing, illegal logging and murder are routine.

Beef served to UK military personnel in the Middle East was sourced from a Brazilian company whose suppliers have illegally deforested more than 8,000 hectares of land, including in the…

Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA has stepped up efforts to fight environmental crimes during the COVID-19 crisis. But the fate of these operations is now uncertain, following the firing of IBAMA’s enforcement director.

An unprecedented court settlement guaranteed reparations to the Ashaninka people of the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, whose lands were deforested in the 1980s to supply the European furniture industry. The indigenous people only agreed with the negotiation because it included an official apology and a recognition of their "enormous importance as guardians" of the Amazon.

Agribusiness proponents in the Brazilian states of Rondônia, Acre and Amazonas plan to create a joint agricultural area, Amacro, inspired by the successful multi-state Matopiba region that is now the country’s grain-growing heartland.

Invasions of indigenous reserves continue to escalate in the Brazilian Amazon amid the rapid spread of COVID-19 throughout the country, exposing how indigenous people are vulnerable to increased violence and infection amid a reduction in environmental oversight.

Illegal gold mining led to deforestation of thousands of hectares of forests inside indigenous reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, according to new satellite image analysis by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). Mongabay had exclusive access to the report prior to its release.

More than a decade of illegal gold mining around the upstart town of La Pampa in the Peruvian Amazon has tainted local water supplies, razed forests adjacent to a world-class…

In 2019, suspect exports of rare wood to Europe, the US and beyond were legalized, likely prompting soaring damage to the Amazon rainforest and new attacks on indigenous people by illegal loggers.

Attacks on indigenous Kaiowá communities in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the start of the year have highlighted a long-running campaign of persecution and growing violence against the group.

JBS SA, a Brazilian meatpacking company dogged by its links to deforestation, recently signed a deal that would put its products in more than 60,000 shops and markets around China.…

Farmers and irregular occupants in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Acre are enjoying newfound political power and pressuring for the reduction of the first protected area of its kind in Brazil as it approaches its 30th anniversary in March.

The Estrondo mega-farm exports soy to the EU and China, but it is accused in a mega-land grab; it also has a long record of threatening traditional people.

Three indigenous Guajajara were killed in the last six days in the Amazonian state of Maranhão, making 2019 the country’s deadliest years for indigenous leaders in two decades. In total, 10 indigenous people were murdered so far this year; seven of them were leaders.

“Don’t give money to NGOs!” Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told viewers during a live stream on November 28. His urging came following the arrest of four volunteer firefighters belonging to…

An area of primary forest in the Brazilian Amazon the size of Hawaii’s Big Island was cleared in the past year. Experts warn the deforestation rate could be even higher in the coming months amid lack of enforcement and deforestation preceding fires in August and September 2019.

In a surprise move even to the sugarcane industry, the president has removed restrictions on Amazon sugarcane production; land speculators could benefit.

Amazon cattle, soy and timber producers employ “laundering” tricks to hide illegal deforestation. Easy solutions exist, but political will is weak: experts.

An indigenous Guajajara leader was reported murdered by loggers Friday, adding to rising violence occurring against forest protectors under the Jair Bolsonaro government.

Soybeans from a Belgium-sized swath of unregistered farms across Brazil are being exported to China and Europe via U.S. traders, according to a newly released report that raises concerns about environmental regulations being dodged.

Mamuru River traditional riverine and Sateré indigenous communities are fighting to save the rainforest and their way of life against invading illegal loggers and land grabbers.

On the same day that President Jair Bolsonaro made his anti-indigenous speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) released its annual report, “Violence…