In 2024, Latin America’s tiger cat, previously recognized as two species, was determined by scientists to be three species — a taxonomic reshuffling that has major conservation implications for these small cats.
Gold is universally recognized as a form of money that has retained value over decades, centuries and millennia. Since it is non-corrosive and precious, approximately 95% of the gold mined…
JAKARTA — The tropics continue to lose primary forest at an alarming rate, with an area of tree cover half the size of Panama disappearing in 2023, new data from…
On March 18, the Mato Grosso State Environmental Department (SEMA-MT) shelved the environmental license application for the Castanheira hydropower plant. Organizations and social movements have mobilized for more than 10…
An alliance announced at the 2021 U.N. climate summit in Scotland has already allocated $240 million for projects that align increased agricultural productivity with environmental preservation in Brazil. The IFACC,…
How do wild animals manage to continue hunting and reproducing in areas occupied by houses, roads, domestic animals and crops? Scientists increasingly point out that the only solution for most…
The Brazilian Congress is analyzing a bill that would leave all the country's non-forestry vegetation unprotected, affecting an area twice the size of the United Kingdom.
New research from the NGO Conservation Strategy fund, working with federal prosecutors in Brazil, has refined a tool that puts a dollar value on the socioenvironmental costs of illegal gold mining across vital ecosystems in the Amazon.
Environmental advocates routinely oppose mining and hydrocarbon-development projects because they believe that remote areas of the Amazon should remain pristine. Typically, they organize their opposition during the environmental review process…
While wind turbines and solar panels multiply across the Brazilian dry forests, Tião Alves insists on tin windmills and PET bottle-based heaters. "Backcountry technology," as he defines it, arguing that…
Tasso Azevedo, one of the creators of Tropical Forests Forever, details the financial instrument envisaged to reward conservation.
Deforestation from soy continues to spread through Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon Rainforest, with satellite readings showing new areas of forest loss from as recently as last December, a new study…
In early January, Brazilian environmental agents went on strike, claiming their salaries do not make up for their risky and highly-qualified work, in a threat to Lula's zero deforestation target.
Researchers and protection agencies expected a dry season with more fires in Brazil’s Roraima state at the start of 2024, but the effects of an intense and prolonged El Niño have aggravated the situation.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has continued on a downward trajectory despite a sharp increase in fires associated with the severe drought in the region, reveals data released by Brazil's…
The climate emergency has affected development and violated the rights of children and adolescents around the world, and in Brazil. In addition to fires, prolonged, extreme droughts make access to…
Amazonian states have gone largely unrepresented at the top of the Brazilian judicial system for decades, a political distortion that has spurred calls for reform.
In the municipality of Camocim, on Brazil’s northeastern coast, the fishing village of Praia do Xavier was erased from the map. Or at least that’s how it appeared on the…
One of the benefits of agroforestry and plantation forestry is the ability of tree crops to capture and store carbon in their above-ground biomass. Although they must be renovated (cut…
There are three fundamental rules of financial planning: (1) save continuously, (2) invest in a diversified portfolio of assets and (3) exercise patience via a long-term strategy. This common-sense advice…
As infrastructure projects and soy plantations pump up land values in the Brazilian Amazon, smallholders are selling up and moving to more distant frontiers, perpetuating a cycle of displacement and deforestation.
The Pampa grassland of South America covers just 2% of Brazil’s territory, dwarfed to the north by the immense rainforest, wetland and savanna landscapes of the Amazon, Pantanal and Cerrado.…
JURUTI, Pará state, Brazil — One of the little sand piles appears to be moving. Fábio Andrew Cunha opens the way with his hands, and a baby pitiú emerges from…
As you read this, a sailing ship is retracing the path of the voyage taken by English naturalist Charles Darwin in the 19th century — the very voyage that led…
When Leandro Castello graduated with his degree in oceanography in 1998, he didn’t immediately get a job related to the ocean. Instead, he found himself in the Middle Solimões region…
Of the approximately 2,500 fish species found in the Amazon Basin, two catfish are special both to state economies in the region and to global biology: the gilded or dorado…
"The heat at night was too much; we couldn't sleep," says Evanice Auxiliadora da Silva, a resident of Cuiabá, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso in west-central Brazil,…
The agro-industrial farms of Mato Grosso are among the most efficient on the planet; they benefit from abundant rainfall and a long rainy season, which allows them to plant and…
The creation of protected areas and Indigenous reserves offers the best hope for conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon; however, the management of the human modified landscapes will determine whether…
A central figure in many Indigenous systems is that of the Enchanted Ones, ancestral entities thought to connect the earthly world and the spiritual world. Some of these contacts are…