Category Archives: Deforestation

The jaguars fishing in the sea to survive

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The big cats’ resourceful new behaviour was recorded by a WWF study on a remote island off the coast of Brazil

A thriving population of jaguars living on a small, unspoilt island off the coast of the Brazilian Amazon has learned to catch fish in the sea to survive, conservationists have found.

The Maracá-Jipioca Ecological Station island reserve, three miles off the northern state of Amapá, acts as a nursery for jaguars, according to WWF researchers who have collared three cats and set up 70 camera traps on the remote jungle island.

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Converting coal plants to biomass could fuel climate crisis, scientists warn

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Experts horrified at large-scale forest removal to meet wood pellet demand

Plans to shift Europe’s coal plants, including the giant Drax complex in North Yorkshire, to burn wood pellets instead could accelerate rather than combat climate crisis and lay waste to forests equal to half the size of Germany’s Black Forest per year, according to campaigners.

Climate thinktank Sandbag said the heavily subsidised plans to cut carbon emissions will result in a “staggering” amount of tree cutting, potentially destroying forests faster than they can regrow.

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Brazil’s Amazon deforestation this year nearly size of Puerto Rico, says agency

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Destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest in November more than doubled the same period last year

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon jumped to the highest level for the month of November since record-keeping began in 2015, according to preliminary government data published.

Destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest totalled 563 square kms in November, which is more than double the area in the same month last year, according to the country’s space research agency INPE on Friday.

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Indigenous boy, 15, murdered on Brazil’s Amazon border

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Erisvan Soares Guajajara’s body was found with knife wounds in Maranhão region

A 15-year-old indigenous boy has been murdered in Brazil on the edge of a heavily-deforested indigenous reserve in the state of Maranhão, on the fringes of the Amazon.

The murder, the fourth from the Guajajara tribe in recent weeks, came as a wave of racist abuse against indigenous people swept social media in the state.

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Greta Thunberg labelled a ‘brat’ by Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro

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  • Swedish activist tweeted about murders of indigenous people
  • President laments press attention for ‘pirralha [little brat]’

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has derided Greta Thunberg​ after the teenage climate activist added her voice to growing international condemnation of a surge of anti-indigenous violence in the Amazon.

Related: Amazon indigenous leaders killed in Brazil drive-by shooting

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Bees in Amazon ‘are greatest ally to halt rainforest destruction’

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Stingless insects also improve livelihoods of rainforest’s people, say environmentalists

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Under an Amazonian canopy of guava and Xylopia trees, Neida Pereira lifts the lid of a beehive, gently lowers an unprotected hand into the swarm, and smiles as she lifts it out unscathed but covered in pollinators and honey.

For the 49-year-old educator and environmentalist, the stingless Amazonian insects are the greatest ally she has found in a decades-long campaign to halt the destruction of the rainforest and improve the livelihoods of its people.

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Long-term damage from logging hits ability of Canada’s forests to regenerate

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  • ‘Logging scars’ blight up to 25% of formerly logged areas
  • Canada partly relies on forests to capture carbon

Canada’s logging industry has a larger and more damaging impact on forest health than previously thought, a new report has found, casting doubt on the sustainability of forestry management in the country.

Related: The last great tree: a majestic relic of Canada's vanishing rainforest

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Middle Earth: the fight to save the Amazon’s soul – video

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In the heart of the Amazon rainforest, an alternative climate conference is taking place that brings together youth activists, indigenous leaders, scientists and forest dwellers. In a region known as Middle Earth, they are building a new alliance and demonstrating that the rainforest is central to life on Earth, even though Brazil backed out of hosting this year's official UN climate talks after the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president

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Revealed: ‘monumental’ NSW bushfires have burnt 20% of Blue Mountains world heritage area

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More than 10% of forest in NSW national parks destroyed by fire this season, with the damage to Gondwana rainforest a ‘global tragedy’

More than 10% of the area covered by New South Wales national parks has been burned in this season’s bushfires, including 20% of the Blue Mountains world heritage area, state government data obtained by Guardian Australia has revealed.

The amount of bushland destroyed within NSW national parks dwarfs that of the entire previous fire season, when 80,000 hectares were lost.

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Brazil’s president claims DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires

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Jair Bolsonaro falsely accuses actor of funding deliberate destruction of rainforest

Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest.

Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money for the Amazon to be torched.”

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Climate emergency: world ‘may have crossed tipping points’

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Warning of ‘existential threat to civilisation’ as impacts lead to cascade of unstoppable events

The world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is “an existential threat to civilisation”, they say, meaning “we are in a state of planetary emergency”.

Tipping points are reached when particular impacts of global heating become unstoppable, such as the runaway loss of ice sheets or forests. In the past, extreme heating of 5C was thought necessary to pass tipping points, but the latest evidence suggests this could happen between 1C and 2C.

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Police raid office of Brazil NGO linked to brigade that helped battle Amazon fires

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Raid and arrests of four volunteer firefighters were a politically-motivated attack, indigenous associations and campaigners say

The headquarters of an award-winning Brazilian NGO which works with remote communities in the Amazon has been raided by police, who also arrested four volunteer firefighters and accused them of starting wildfires to raise international funding.

At dawn on Tuesday, heavily armed police raided the offices of the Health and Happiness Project, (known by its Portuguese initials as PSA) in Alter do Chão in the Amazon state of Pará, seizing computers and documents.

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Amazon deforestation ‘at highest level in a decade’

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Almost 10,000 sq kms lost in year to August, according to Brazilian government data

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest annual level in a decade, according to new government data which highlights the impact the president, Jair Bolsonaro, has made on the world’s biggest rainforest.

The new numbers, showing almost 10,000 sq kms were lost in the year to August, were released as emboldened farm owners scuffled with forest defenders in Altamira, the Amazonian city at the heart of the recent devastation.

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Money and maps: is this how to save the Amazon’s 400bn trees?

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Alarmed by the impact of logging, indigenous Peruvians are using satellite mapping to manage their land

The first thing Ramón heard about the deal was the televisions. A number of families from the Asháninka indigenous group had received them from outsiders, in exchange for land. Loggers were interested in the mahogany, oak and tornillo trees that grow to impressive heights in this part of the rainforest around Cutivireni in central Peru.

The loggers had other means of persuasion, besides bribery. They might offer to build a school or a meeting house in exchange for timber. When the work ran over budget, they would demand money – and since the Asháninka had none, they would take more trees to service the debt, according to Adelaida Bustamante, the community treasurer. And if that failed, they used violence. In 2014, four forest defenders from the Asháninka were murdered for their campaign to keep loggers off their land (Ramón asked me not to use his real name).

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Forest guardians: the Asháninka of Peru – in pictures

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In an area of the Amazon vulnerable to illegal loggers, Cool Earth, a UK-based charity, is working with the Asháninka people to reduce deforestation. Photographer Alicia Canter travelled to Cutivireni in central Peru

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Brazilian ‘forest guardian’ killed by illegal loggers in ambush

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Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed by armed loggers in the Araribóia region in Maranhão

A Brazilian indigenous land defender has been killed in an ambush by illegal loggers in an Amazon frontier region.

According to a statement by the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Association, Paulo Paulino Guajajara was shot and killed inside the Araribóia indigenous territory in Maranhão state. Another tribesman, Laércio Guajajara, was also shot and hospitalised and a logger has been reported missing. No body has yet been recovered.

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Rewilding will make Britain a rainforest nation again | George Monbiot

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I will take vision and a willingness to confront vested interests, but we can restore our trashed ecosystems

The forests still burn, but the world now looks away. In both the Amazon basin and the rainforests of Indonesia, the world-scorching inferno rages on, already forgotten by most of the media. Intricate living systems, species that took millions of years to evolve, are being incinerated in moments, then replaced with monocultures. Giant plumes of carbon tip us further into climate breakdown. And we’re not even talking about it.

Related: World losing area of forest the size of the UK each year, report finds

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Greta Thunberg: ‘We are ignoring natural climate solutions’

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Film by Swedish activist and Guardian journalist George Monbiot says nature must be used to repair broken climate

The protection and restoration of living ecosystems such as forests, mangroves and seagrass meadows can repair the planet’s broken climate but are being overlooked, Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot have warned in a new short film.

Natural climate solutions could remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as plants grow. But these methods receive only 2% of the funding spent on cutting emissions, say the climate activists.

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‘Chaos, chaos, chaos’: a journey through Bolsonaro’s Amazon inferno

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A 2,000km road and river odyssey in Brazil reveals consensus from all sides: Bolsonaro has ushered in a new age of wrecking

From afar it resembles a tornado: an immense grey column shooting thousands of feet upwards from the forest canopy into the Amazonian skies.

Up close it is an inferno: a raging conflagration obliterating yet another stretch of the world’s greatest rainforest as a herd of Nelore cattle looks on in bewilderment.

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Amazon fires are a shameful indictment of our lust for excess

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The flames engulfing the world’s biggest rainforest are a human tragedy as well as an environmental one. We are all to blame

The scale of the devastation caused by the wildfires still raging in the Amazon is hard to comprehend. This is a rainforest that provides one-fifth of the world’s oxygen; it is hard not to feel powerless and despairing in the face of the disaster overtaking the region.

But however strong – and bitter – the feeling about this as an environmental catastrophe, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is also a human tragedy.

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