Aerial view of an illegal gold mine surrounding Yanomami Indigenous huts in Yanomami Indigenous land, Brazil, 10 January 2024. Photo: Ueslei Marcelino / REUTERS

Gold miners bring fresh wave of suffering to Brazil’s Yanomami – “This is war because people are dying. Hundreds of Yanomami have died in the humanitarian crisis, and they are Brazilians too.”

By Ueslei Marcelino and Anthony Boadle 18 January 2024 (Reuters) – Brazil is losing the upper hand in its battle to save the Yanomami Indigenous people, who are dying from flu, malaria, and malnutrition brought into their vast, isolated Amazon rainforest reservation by resurgent illegal miners. A year after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva […]

Percentage of documented and undocumented mines, by country. More than half of the global mining areas (56 percent) visible from satellite images have no production information available listed in a global compilation from the S&P Capital IQ Pro database. The total worldwide mining land use for mining in 120,000 km2, with 67,000 km2 undocumented. Graphic: Nature

Impacts for half of the world’s mining areas are undocumented – 56 percent of global mining areas visible from satellite images have no production information available

By Victor Maus and Tim T. Werner 3 January 2024 (Nature) – Mining is a crucial industry — from iron and copper to gravel and sand, we depend on it for the basic building blocks of the modern world. It is a fast changing sector, as the clean energy transition and digitalization boost demand for […]

An illegal gold dredge burns in Paruari river during an operation against illegal gold mining at the Urupadi National Forest Park in the Amazon rainforest, conducted by agents of the Chico Mendes environmental agency ICMBio with support of the Federal Police, the Federal Highway Police, Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) agents and Brazilian Public-Safety National Force officers, in the municipality of Maues, Amazonas state, Brazil on 1 June 2023. Photo: Adriano Machado / REUTERS

Brazil cracks down as wildcat miners in the Amazon shift their operations – “We destroy their camps and they keep coming back”

By Adriano Machado 28 December 2023 SUCUNDURI, Brazil (Reuters) – Deep in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil is fighting destructive wildcat gold mining as it spreads from Indigenous lands into government-protected conservation areas. Federal Police have joined the government’s biodiversity conservation agency ICMBio on a series of recent operations to catch illegal gold miners and destroy […]

A canoe rests on the bank of a dried-out creek in the Amazon rainforest. Transport by canoe became impossible in some places at the height of the 2023 drought. Photo: Lucas Amorelli / Sea Shepherd

Amazon rainforest experienced worst drought on record in 2023 – “We’ve never seen anything like this”

By Stephanie Hegarty 25 December 2023 (BBC World Service) – The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged, and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return. As […]

Aerial view of boats stranded in the mud of the parched Rio Negro amid a drought in the Amazonas state of Brazil on 29 September 2023. Photo: Michael Dantas / AFP

Drought drains Brazilian Amazon residents reliant on waterways – “It’s every man for himself”

By Orlando Junior 3 October 2023 (AFP) – Not far from the emblematic site where the black waters of the Rio Negro join the brown currents of the Solimoes, two chief tributaries of the Amazon, what once was a lake has given way to a vast stretch of cracked mud. Now, the only water remaining […]

Wind farms in Boqueirão da Onça, or Jaguars’ Ravine, in the Caatinga in northeastern Brazil. Conservationists say companies shouldn’t install turbines in long rows, which forces animals to make unnecessarily long detours. Photo: Dado Galdieri / The Wall Street Journal

Brazil’s big cats under threat from wind farms – “Wind power is a fantastic proposal, and the northeast certainly has plenty of wind … but wind parks must also take into account what is happening here on the ground”

By Luciana Magalhaes and Samantha Pearson 17 September 2023 JUAZEIRO, Brazil – Weighing more than 100 pounds, big cats have long reigned over this hot and semi-arid region of Brazil, developing tougher paws for the scorched earth and reaching speeds of 50 miles an hour to bring down wild boar and deer. But nothing could […]

The Bald Mountain Wildfire burns in the Grande Prairie Forest Area in Alberta on 12 May 2023. Government of Alberta Fire Service / Canadian Press / AP

Forests are no longer our climate friends – “As extreme as this year’s wildfire emissions have been, they are just the latest escalation in a multi-decade flood of CO₂ pouring out of Canada’s ‘managed’ forests and forestry”

By David Wallace-Wells 6 September 2023 (The New York Times) – Canadian wildfires have this year burned a land area larger than 104 of the world’s 195 countries. The carbon dioxide released by them so far is estimated to be nearly 1.5 billion tons — more than twice as much as Canada releases through transportation, […]

Composite image of Bruno Araújo Pereira, a renowned defender of the rights of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, and Guardian reporter Dom Phillips. Both were murdered on 5 June 2022 for exposing organized crime committing acts of deforestation in Brazil. Graphic: Guardian Design / WWF / Getty Images / AP / AFP

One year after they were murdered, their work must go on – Forest defender Bruno Araújo Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips were assassinated in Brazil on 5 June 2022

By Katharine Viner 1 June 2023 (The Guardian) – Forest defenders should not be killed for exposing crimes. Journalists should not be killed for reporting facts. But, one year ago, the Guardian was devastated by the awful news that in the Amazon rainforest, two lives had been taken on the frontline of the battle to protect the […]

Maps showing the global distribution of animals with decreasing (top), stable (middle) or increasing (bottom) populations combining data from all taxonomic groups. Numbers of species were counted within each 1° × 1° grid cell covering the globe, using a Behrmann’s equal area projection. Graphic: Finn, et al., 2023 / Biological Reviews

Global loss of biodiversity is significantly more alarming than previously suspected – “Almost half of animals on Earth for which assessments are available are currently declining. To make matters worse, many of the animal species that are thought to be non-threatened from extinction are in fact progressively declining”

23 May 2023 (Queen’s University Belfast) – A new study led by researchers from Queen’s University Belfast has shown that the global loss of biodiversity caused by human industrialisation is significantly more alarming than previously thought. The global-scale analysis has been published in the journal Biological Reviews. The study looked at changes in the population densities […]

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, February 2008 - February 2023. After a drop in January 2023, deforestation in the Amazon returned to growth in February. According to Imazon data, 325 km² of forest were cleared in February 2023, equivalent to the size of Belo Horizonte. This was the biggest devastation recorded for February in 16 years, since the research institute deployed its SAD satellite imagery monitoring system. Graphic: Imazon

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rose by 14 percent in March 2023 – “The new government needs to act urgently to rebuild its capacity for repression to environmental crime, which had been totally destroyed by the Bolsonaro government”

By Steven Grattan 7 April 2023 São Paulo (Reuters) – Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose 14 percent in March from the previous year, preliminary official data showed on Friday, highlighting the continued challenges for the new leftist government. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office on 1 January 2023, pledging to end deforestation […]

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