Monitoring deforestation in the Amazon

- Indigenous women from Krahô communities in Brazil’s Tocantins state have formed a surveillance group to protect their ancestral territory from invaders.- The thirteen Krahô Warriors received training in surveillance and carry out operations for 15 days each month.- Territorial protection actions are planned and implemented based on Krahô traditions and ways of life.- The Kraolândia Indigenous Land (TI) is under pressure from loggers, hunters, charcoal factories and agribusinesses that surround its territory.

The year 2024 was the hottest on record, with an average temperature of 1.55° Celsius (2.79° Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial levels, surpassing the previous record set in 2023, according to six international data sets. Scientists caution that the data represent the average for the Earth’s year-round weather and don’t mean that the climate has exceeded

- An Indonesian forensic scientist whose testimony has proved crucial in securing rulings against environmental violators faces a third potential lawsuit.- A complaint filed with police alleges that Bambang Hero Saharjo lacked competence to assess the damages in an illegal tin laundering case, which he calculated had caused more than $16 billion in environmental damages.- Bambang’s testimony has led to several convictions in court, including for the CEO of Indonesia’s biggest tin miner.- Prosecutors have defended his assessment, and activists say the campaign against him is a systematic attempt to silence him from speaking out against environmental crimes.

At least three people were killed in Madagascar over the weekend as Tropical Cyclone Dikeledi brought heavy rainfall and flooding to the island on its way to the African mainland, news reports said. The French island territory of Mayotte, the archipelagic country of Comoros, and Mozambique were also affected by the storm. It came less than

- Lawmakers in El Salvador recently voted to reintroduce industrial mining in the country, ending a 2017 landmark ban that has protected freshwater and public health.- President Nayib Bukele has advocated for the return of mining despite the unpopularity of the industry in El Salvador, arguing that it will bring in billions of dollars and create thousands of jobs.- The government will have at least 51% control over every mining project while also being in charge of oversight, causing concern from environmentalists that it will be hard to challenge projects that aren’t being carried out responsibly.

Birds produce an impressive variety of songs and calls, but the biological and ecological factors that influence the pitch, or frequencies, that birds create hasn’t been well understood — until now. Previous studies haven’t come to a consensus likely because they were small in scope, focusing on an individual species or a specific range. But

- 2024 was the hottest year on record, producing intense, long-lasting heat waves. Climate change-intensified extreme events last year included the formation of vast heat domes — areas of high pressure that stalled and persisted above continental land masses in Asia, Africa, South and North America, and Europe.- Heat domes intensify unhealthy air pollution from vehicles, industry, wildfires and dust storms. When a heat wave gripped New Delhi, India, last summer, temperatures soared, resulting in unhealthy concentrations of ground-level ozone — pollutants especially unhealthy for outdoor workers.- When climate change-driven heat, drought and record wildfires occurred in the Brazilian Amazon last year, the fires produced massive amounts of wood smoke containing dangerous levels of toxic particulates that cause respiratory disease. Indigenous people living in remote areas had little defense against the smoke.- Intense heat also impacted Nigeria in 2024, where major dust storms and rising temperatures created conditions that helped increased cases of meningitis — a sometimes deadly disease, especially in poor areas. Escalating climate change is expected to exacerbate pollution and worsen public health in the future.

- In protected areas across Africa, human-wildlife conflicts are a growing problem, with nearly three-quarters of governments saying they’re a “major or serious concern.”- At Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, crop-raiding by elephants and livestock predation can destroy the incomes of farmers and pastoralists.- One solution that’s being implemented is electric fences, which are popular with farmers outside the park’s boundaries.- But the fences aren’t popular in other communities, which see them as symbolic of their historic exclusion from the park.

Flood-mitigation infrastructure built in the southern Philippines for more than $100 million by clearing native vegetation could exacerbate flood risk in the future, reports Mongabay’s Keith Anthony Fabro. In 2011, floods and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Washi, known locally as Sendong, killed more than 1,260 people in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and

A new global data set makes it possible to track near-real-time changes in several types of vegetation across different ecosystems, including grasslands, savannas, shrublands, croplands, temperate forests and boreal forests. Called DIST-ALERT, the new product can be visualized on the Global Forest Watch platform of the World Resource Institute (WRI). GFW has long offered the