By Dom Phillips 19 July 2019 BRASÍLIA (The Guardian) – The Amazon belongs to Brazil and European countries can mind their own business because they have already destroyed their own environment, said Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who also described his own government’s satellite data showing an alarming rise in deforestation as “lies”. “You have to understand […]
4 July 2019 (Science Media Centre) – A new study, published in Science, reports on the capacity for trees to reduce atmospheric carbon levels. Dr James Borrell, Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said: “Global forest restoration clearly has remarkable potential to address climate change, but restoring forest on this scale is a significant […]
3 July 2019 (Folha de São Paulo) – Deforestation in the Amazon in June was about 57% higher than in the same month last year, according to DETER, the deforestation alert system of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). [Translation by Google.] The data from last month, for the time being, only go until […]
By Francy Nava 6 July 2019 (Imazon) – Recent land cover mapping in Amazonia has identified a considerable number of water mirrors in rural properties, indicating the presence of small dams supporting agricultural activities. In Sorriso-MT, for example, Arvor, et al., (2018) identified a five-fold increase in the number of dams (86 to 522) in […]
By Kimberley Brown 5 July 2019 QUITO, Ecuador (Mongabay) – Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park sits in a unique position on the equator, between the Andes mountain range and the Amazon rainforest, which has allowed a rich and distinct biodiversity to flourish. The region is surrounded by towering ceibo and mahogany trees, emblematic of the area, […]
By Kathryn Hansen 3 July 2019 (NASA) – It is the “rain” in the term “rainforest” that makes possible the diverse ecosystem teeming with plants and animals. That doesn’t mean a rainforest is always wet: tropical rainforests are known for having distinct wet and dry seasons. But new research shows that the summer dry season in the […]
By Sue Branford and Thais Borges 10 June 2019 (Mongabay) – The Brazilian government’s environmental agency, IBAMA, has so far this year imposed the lowest number of fines for illegal deforestation in at least 11 years, while the country’s other leading environmental agency and its federal parks’ protector, ICMBio (the Chico Mendes Institute), did not […]
By by Andrea Nicolau, Andi Thomas, and Leah Kucera 18 April 2019 (NASA) – Considered a hotspot for biodiversity, the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru is an exceptionally fertile landscape. Standing at the edge of the Amazon basin, Madre de Dios has a rich concentration of endemic species—plants and animals that are found nowhere […]
By Stefania Costa 2 January 2019 (Imazon) – Deforestation continues to increase, according to data from the Deforestation Bulletin (SAD) November 2018 published today by Imazon. The state of Pará contributed with 63% of deforestation alerts registered in November 2018. The areas that suffered the most destruction are mainly in the northeast of the state, […]
By Hans Nicholas Jong 29 October 2017(Mongabay) – The wholesale destruction of rainforests across parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island to make way for cash-crop plantations has not just devastated animal and plant biodiversity in the region, but may also be driving an alarming rise in temperatures on the ground, a new study suggests. Average temperatures […]