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

- Mongabay examined four REDD+ projects in Pará state and found that all were developed in partnership with sawmill owners with a long history of environmental fines.- The projects were developed by Brazil’s largest carbon credit generator, Carbonext, a company linked to a major fraud involving REDD+ projects and illegal loggers in Amazonas state.- According to experts, REDD+ projects may have become a new business opportunity for individuals who have profited from deforestation for decades.

- Scientists captured the first-ever camera collar footage of wild Andean bears, revealing unprecedented behaviors, including canopy mating and cannibalism.- The research team, led by Indigenous researcher Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya, successfully tracked a male bear for four months in Peru’s challenging cloud forest terrain.- The footage challenges previous assumptions about Andean bears being solitary vegetarians and shows them behaving more like other bear species.- While the bears face mounting threats from climate change and human conflict, researchers are combining scientific study with community education to protect them.

- Oil and gas companies have the ability to become a significant source of climate financing, a new study in Climate Policy argues.- The study looked at oil and gas profits from 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine spiked energy prices across the globe, boosting realized companies’ earnings by 65%, or around $495 billion.- If governments had imposed an additional 30% tax on the profits of private oil and gas companies, it would have raised $147 billion, the study said.- Climate financing was the focus of the COP 29 climate conference, which only managed to come up with $300 billion in annual support for developing countries.

- In addition to being a shaman, Davi Kopenawa is a shaman and a political leader active in denouncing the gold miners who illegally invaded the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in the Brazilian Amazon.- The Yanomami, who inhabit Brazil’s largest Indigenous Land, still face a humanitarian and health crisis, worsened by the invasion of 70,000 illegal miners. Increased under the Jair Bolsonaro government, the invasion brought diseases and contaminated rivers with mercury. - In this interview, Kopenawa criticizes the environmental and social impacts of administrations led by politicians such as Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump.

- Xingu Indigenous Park and Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory in Brazil cover an area larger than Belgium.- The Indigenous territories are still largely covered in primary forest, and a haven for wildlife in a region considered an agricultural powerhouse.- Satellite data show Xingu Indigenous Park lost 15% of its primary forest cover, and Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory lost 8.3% of its forest cover, between 2002 and 2023.- Indigenous groups fear proposed transportation projects will bring a fresh wave of deforestation and open up their territories to invaders.

- Mongabay Latam has identified six secret runways in and around Indigenous reserves in the regions of Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco in the Peruvian Amazon. One was found inside the Kakataibo reserve and one in its surroundings.- These findings came from an algorithm created with artificial intelligence, which was jointly developed by Mongabay Latam and Earth Genome. It uses satellite images to detect traces of runways hidden in forests.- Official and local sources confirmed that the runways are used to unload drug shipments.- The territory has become extremely dangerous due to drug trafficking, which has changed the social dynamic of some Indigenous communities. Since the pandemic in 2020, six Kakataibo leaders have been murdered for protecting their communities.

- Unallocated public areas account for 28% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and the destruction of these lands keeps rising even as rates plummet across other parts of the rainforest.- To tackle the problem, Brazil’s federal government plans to convert lands around controversial Amazonian highways into protected areas.- One of the priority areas is along the BR-319 highway, where experts warn deforestation may increase fourfold under another government plan to pave the highway.- Despite the advances in comparison with former President Jair Bolsonaro, Indigenous and land reform movements are unhappy with the pace of land designation under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

- In a groundbreaking expedition, researchers from Harvard and Amazonas State University began monitoring water quality and mercury contamination in the Amazon Basin’s largest tributary.- The Madeira River Basin has been heavily impacted by human actions, such as hydropower plants, deforestation and illegal gold mining, which degrade its ecosystems.- Initial results from Harvard reveal high levels of mercury in the Madeira, although still below the limit recommended by Brazil’s authorities.- Predatory fish species showed mercury levels above the recommended limit, while scalefish traditionally consumed by riverine populations were below.

- Triunfo Do Xingu Environmental Protected Area was created to protect rich Amazonian forest and shield adjacent reserves.- But deforestation has been rampant within the reserve and is spreading to nearby areas- From 2006 to 2023, the reserve lost 41% of its primary forest cover.- Preliminary satellite data for 2024 from show deforestation picking up even further, and spreading into nearby areas including Terra do Meio Ecological Station and Serra do Pardo National Park

- Surveys of Brazil’s beef industry found there is still a serious lack of transparency throughout the supply chain, including from slaughterhouses and retailers. If better regulations aren’t implemented, they could be exposed to 109 million hectares (270 million acres) of deforestation by 2025.- The survey was conducted by Radar Verde, a cattle monitoring initiative made up of several climate groups. It reviewed the regulations and exposure to deforestation of dozens of companies in Brazil.- Indirect suppliers of beef are the most difficult to track, the survey found, with none of the 132 companies or 67 retailers competently able to demonstrate whether cattle had been raised on illegally deforested land.- Struggles to monitor indirect suppliers could pose a challenge for companies trying to meet the EU deforestation-free products regulation (EUDR), which will require suppliers to prove beef and other commodities exported to the EU aren’t sourced to illegally deforested land.