Around the world, environmental laws are under attack in all sorts of ways

By Bill Laurance 30 May 2017 (The Conversation) – As President Donald Trump mulls over whether to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, it is hard to imagine that he’s listening to the experts.US climate researchers are being so stifled, ignored or blackballed that France has now offered sanctuary to these misunderstood souls.One might […]

Brazilian farmers attack indigenous tribe with machetes in brutal land dispute – Two Gamela tribesmen have hands cut off

By Jonathan Watts 1 May 2017 RIO DE JANEIRO (The Guardian) – Brazilian farmers in Maranhão state have attacked an indigenous settlement, severing the hands and feet of some of their victims in what appears to be a brutal escalation of a territorial conflict. Thirteen members of the Gamela community were hospitalised after the assault […]

Wild Amazon faces destruction as Brazil’s farmers and loggers target national park

  By Jonathan Watts 28 May 2017 Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade (The Guardian) – To understand why the Brazilian government is deliberately losing the battle against deforestation, you need only retrace the bootmarks of the Edwardian explorer Percy Fawcett along the Amazonian border with Bolivia. During a failed attempt to cross a spectacular tabletop […]

Brazil Senate reduces protection of 597 thousand hectares of Amazon forest

By Fabiano Maisonnave 23 May 2017 MANAUS (Folha De São Paulo) – Unchanged, the Senate ratified on Tuesday (23) two provisional measures that reduce the protection of 597 thousand hectares [1.48 million acres] of protected areas in the Amazon, equivalent to four municipalities of São Paulo.Provisional measures 756 and 758, which paved the way for […]

In seven minutes, Brazil committee approves selloff of 510 thousand hectares of protected Amazon forest – Nearly 2.2 million protected hectares at risk

[Translation by Google.] By Victor Pires 12 April 2017 (ISA) – In a symbolic vote, at the end of the morning (12/4), in seven minutes, parliamentarians approved a report by Deputy José Reinaldo (PSB-MA) of Provisional Measure (MP) 758/2016, which reduces the protection of 510 thousand hectares [1.26 million acres] of protected areas in western […]

Rotten beef and illegal deforestation: Brazil’s largest meatpacker rocked by scandals

By Mike Gaworecki5 April 2017 (Mongabay) – The month of March saw the world’s largest meatpacker, Brazilian company JBS, rocked by not one but two major scandals. On March 17, agents with Brazil’s Federal Police raided facilities belonging to JBS and another food processing giant, BRF, as well as several smaller companies. The raids were […]

Deforestation increased 79 percent in Amazon rainforest protected areas from 2012 to 2015

By E. Araújo, P. Barreto, S. Baima, and M. Gomes [Translation by Google.]26 March 2017 (Imazon) – Conservation Units (CUs) cover 22% of the Amazon forest and are an effective strategy to conserve animals, plants and environmental services, contain deforestation and maintain the planet’s climate balance. However, deforestation rates in PAs have been increasing – […]

Forest fragmentation may be releasing much more carbon than we think

By Morgan Erickson-Davis31 March 2017 (Mongabay) – The earth’s forests have been broken into around 50 million fragments, the edges of which add up to a length that would make it a third of the way to the sun and which increase annual tropical deforestation carbon emissions by 31 percent. This, according to a new […]

Image of the Day: Map of protected Amazon forest and encroaching deforestation, February 2017

24 February 2017 (Imazon) – This map of protected areas in the south of the Amazon shows the deforestation pressure that already happens around conservation units that will be reduced, if the Provisional Measure is adopted. [Translation by Facebook.] Original text: Mapa de Áreas Protegidas do Sul do Amazonas aponta a pressão (desmatamento) que já […]

Study finds that tropics became uninhabitable during PETM mass extinction

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana, 3 March 2017 (Purdue University) – New research findings show that as the world warmed millions of years ago, conditions in the tropics may have made it so hot some organisms couldn’t survive. Longstanding theories dating to the 1980s suggest that as the rest of the earth warms, the tropical temperatures would […]

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