By Joel Connelly 8 October 2019 (SeattlePI) – Five Bristol Bay native and fisheries groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, seeking to restore Clean Water Act protection and block a giant open pit copper-goldmine proposed cheek-by-jowl with the world’s greatest sockeye salmon fishery. The suit was filed on National Salmon Day. The U.S. Environmental […]
By Claire Wordley 1 October 2019 (Mongabay) – Despite over six weeks of firefighting, the infernos destroying Bolivia’s forests continue to spread. 5.3 million hectares (about 13.1 million acres) — an area larger than the whole of Costa Rica — have been destroyed, and about 40 percent of that area was forest. A perfect storm of factors — from […]
By Carolina Méndez, Isabel Mercado 6 September 2019 (Mongabay) – “Fire is a monster and is threatening us. Everything is ashes and fear,” says Iván Quezada, the mayor of Roboré, a town in eastern Bolivia. Last week, fires consumed more than 450,000 hectares (1.11 million acres) of forest; if added to the amount of forest […]
By Zoë Schlanger 18 September 2019 (Quartz) – The smoke wafting from fires in the tropical forests of Indonesia—forming plumes big enough to blot out the sky in Malaysia and Singapore—is a reminder of a global supply chain run amok. Whereas the devastating fires burning in the Amazon rainforest were set largely for cattle ranches that feed the […]
By Jenny Gonzales 9 September 2019 (Mongabay) – It is not only President Jair Bolsonaro who views rainforests and indigenous people as obstacles to Brazilian economic development. Seven of the nine Amazon state governors are in line with the policies of the chief executive, as attested to at an August 27 meeting between the president and representatives […]
By Samuel Gilbert 13 September 2019 TUCSON, Arizona (The Guardian) – Construction of a 30ft-high section of Donald Trump’s border barrier has begun in the Organ Pipe Cactus national monument in southern Arizona, a federally protected wilderness area and Unesco-recognized international biosphere reserve. In the face of protests by environmental groups, the wall will traverse the entirety of […]
By Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin 13 September 2019 (The Washington Post) – The Trump administration on Thursday said it would seek to open up the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, picking the most aggressive development option for an area long closed to drilling. In filing […]
By Gayatri Suroyo and Jessica Damiana 11 September 2019 JAKARTA (Reuters) – Thousands of Indonesians prayed for rain in haze-hit towns on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo on Wednesday, as forest fires raged at the height of the dry season, the state Antara news agency reported. Fires have burnt through parts of Sumatra and […]
By Peter Hannam 30 August 2019 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – The Great Barrier Reef is at “a critical point” with the marine park’s outlook downgraded on Friday from “poor” to “very poor” due to coral bleaching and deforestation. Climate change resulting in rising sea temperatures was blamed in the federal government’s five-year Great Barrier Reef […]
By Jenny Gonzales 18 August 2019 (Mongabay) – The combined impact of ongoing deforestation and escalating climate change on the Amazon rainforest could radically transform its configuration by 2050, with the biome divided into two distinct blocks — one occupied by still significant but very seriously diminished rainforest, the other dominated by agribusiness and scattered […]
