Indigenous Reserves
Illegal road found in Yanomami land accelerates destruction
On Dec. 5, a flight over the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s northern Amazon showed the Greenpeace and Brazilian NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) members on board an illegal road, already 150 kilometers (93 miles) long, and four hydraulic excavators nearby. “The road is the road to chaos. It will turn the Yanomami Indigenous land into […]
Historic EU law against deforestation-linked imports ignores Brazil’s Cerrado
Officials and NGOs have hailed the European Union’s agreement on a law banning the import of commodities associated with deforestation, but say it falls short of protecting areas typically not considered forests yet nevertheless of huge ecological importance. Among the responses to the law are that it’s a “landmark,” “groundbreaking,” “radical,” a “great opportunity” for […]
We’ve crossed the land use change planetary boundary, but solutions await
Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at the time, Butler recalls being devastated. “This place of wonder and beauty was lost forever,” he wrote in a 2018 story. “The orangutan, the hornbills, […]
Brazilian miners ramp up their invasion of Yanomami land in Venezuela
In southern Venezuela, the headwaters of some of the country’s largest rivers snake through remote parts of the Amazon rainforest near the Brazilian border, where Yanomami, Ye’kwana and other Indigenous communities have lived for hundreds of years. For most of their history, the Yanomami survived without much contact from the outside world, relying on traditional […]
Indigenous Shuar community in Ecuador wins decades-long battle to protect land
An Indigenous community in Ecuador has finally obtained national protections for part of its territory after decades of fighting off deforestation and pollution in its mega-diverse rainforests. Ecuador’s National System of Protected Areas now includes the 5,497-hectare (13,583-acre) ancestral Tiwi Nunka Forest, which the Shuar Indigenous community of El Kiim lives in and relies on […]
Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2021
The world’s greatest tropical 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. But the rainforest as a […]