By Sue Branford and Maurício Torres 1 June 2017 (Mongabay) – “The first five months of 2017 have been the most violent this century,” says Cândido Neto da Cunha, a specialist in agrarian affairs at the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) in Santarém, Brazil. According to the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
3 May 2017 (Al Jazeera) – Venezuela is experiencing the worst economic crisis in its history, with an inflation rate of over 400 percent and a volatile exchange rate. Heavily in debt and with inflation soaring, its people continue to take to the streets in protest. President Nicolas Maduro announced the highest increase in the […]
[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 […]
13 April 2017 (Radboud University) – Hunting is a major threat to wildlife particularly in tropical regions, but a systematic large-scale estimate of hunting-induced declines of animal numbers was lacking so far. A study published in Science on April 14 fills this gap. An international team of ecologists and environmental scientists found that bird populations […]
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 […]
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 – […]
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 […]
