Monthly deforestation, degradation, and wildfire scar data for the Brazilian Amazon

- The Brazilian Amazon is experiencing a new and potentially catastrophic gold rush driven by increased international demand for the precious metal.- Over the past year, an estimated $1.2 billion worth of gold has been exported from Brazil to Switzerland, making it the second-largest export market for the country’s gold, after Canada. About a fifth of this gold comes from the Amazon, according to official figures.- The scale of Brazil’s gold exports to Switzerland has raised concerns among environmental and transparency advocates that a significant quantity of illicit gold from the Amazon may be entering global supply chains.

- Chemicals created to kill agricultural pests are being sprayed by aircraft into native forest areas.- Glyphosate and 2,4-D, among others, cause the trees to defoliate, and end up weakened or dead in a process that takes months. Next criminals remove the remaining trees more easily and drop grass seeds by aircraft, consolidating deforestation.- Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, discovered that in addition to land grabbers, cattle ranchers use the method in order to circumvent forest monitoring efforts.

- Once the epicenter of the global trade in gold, illegal mining is once again surging across the Amazon.- Its extraction and trade is not only fueling corruption, money laundering and criminal violence – it is accelerating deforestation in the world’s largest tropical forest, says Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute.- Muggah details a range of challenges facing efforts to rein in the gold mining sector. He says political leadership is critical to make progress on the issue: “Absent political will from the top, however, Brazil’s gold chain will continue to resemble the wild west.”

- Government data show the number of cattle in Acre, a state in the Brazilian Amazon, increased by 8.3% in 2020, putting the state’s herd size at more than 3.8 million, or four times its human population.- The cattle industry is a key driver of Acre’s economy, and aligns with the state’s aims of promoting and expanding agricultural development within the region.- However, activists say they’re concerned the increase will lead to further environmental damage in the state, which this year recorded its highest deforestation rate in 18 years.- Experts say Acre’s cattle growth is currently not sustainable and will lead to further deforestation in the Amazon unless sustainable solutions are encouraged and implemented.

- Conservation biologist Tom Lovejoy died on Christmas day, 2021 at the age of 80.- Through his innovative ideas, leadership, and advocacy, Lovejoy leaves an enduring legacy to the field of conservation, writes Jeremy Hance.- “Among career highlights, Lovejoy published one of the first estimates of global extinction rates in 1980; invented the debt-for-nature swap, a massive boon to conservation areas the world over; he helped raise awareness of the plight of rainforests worldwide, and the Amazon in particular, during the 1980s during the peak save-the-rainforest movement; and he was an advisor to the PBS program, NATURE,” Hance writes.- “Lovejoy’s work lives on, not only through his fragments project in Brazil, but through years of advising and collaborating with other researchers, celebrities and world leaders, including four US presidents, to preserve the ecological integrity of our natural world.”

- Between rising deforestation in the Amazon, new financial and political commitments to reduce deforestation, and growing interest in “nature-based solutions” like conservation and reforestation, 2021 may prove to have been a fateful year for the world’s tropical rainforests.- So what should we expect in 2022? Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler provides a brief look at what may be some of the major storylines for tropical forests in the coming year.- He picks 12 issues to watch, ranging from the post-COVID recovery to carbon markets to geopolitics.

- Mongabay published numerous deep-dive investigations this year, some of them data-driven and others relying on on-the-ground interviews, to hold companies and governments accountable.- The investigations ranged from Brazil to China to Nigeria, covering a wide range of issues, from deforestation to workers’ rights and discrimination against Indigenous peoples.- In this article, Mongabay looks at some of the most impactful investigations from 2021.

- The world’s largest rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.- Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever.- The rainforest as a whole remains a net carbon sink, thanks to conservation areas and Indigenous territories, where deforestation rates remained low.- Indigenous communities continued to be hit by a barrage of outside pressure, from COVID-19 to illegal miners and land grabbers, while community members living in Brazil’s cities dealt with persistent prejudice.

- The Terra do Meio Ecological Station comprises some 3.37 million hectares in the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará, and is home to hundreds of species – including some that are threatened with extinction.- But despite its protected status, Terra do Meio has come under growing pressure, with satellite data showing deforestation doubling in 2021.- Environmentalists say the destruction within Terra do Meio is being driven by illegal loggers, cattle ranchers and land speculators spilling over from the neighboring Área de Proteção Ambiental (APA) Triunfo do Xingu, a sustainable use reserve that has become the most deforested slice of the Brazilian Amazon in recent years.- Pending legislation could make it even easier to legalize illegitimate land claims, providing hope to land speculators and cattle ranchers that they could soon receive land titles for land they have deforested and occupied illegally.

- 2021 was a year where tropical forests featured more prominently in global headlines than normal thanks to rising recognition of the role they play in addressing climate change and biodiversity loss.- Despite speculation in the early months of the pandemic that slowing economic activity might diminish forest clearing, loss of both primary forests and tree cover in the tropics accelerated between 2019 and 2020. We don’t yet know how much forest was cut down in 2021, but early indications like rising deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon suggest that forest loss will be on the high end of the range from the past decade.- The following is a look at some of the major tropical rainforest storylines from 2021. It is not an exhaustive review.