Category Archives: Deforestation

Human impact on wildlife to blame for spread of viruses, says study

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Increased contact with animals likely cause of outbreaks such as Covid-19, say experts, as conservationists call for global ban on wildlife markets

Hunting, farming and the global move of people to cities has led to massive declines in biodiversity and increased the risk of dangerous viruses like Covid-19 spilling over from animals to humans, a major study has concluded.

In a paper that suggests the underlying cause of the present pandemic is likely to be increased human contact with wildlife, scientists from Australia and the US traced which animals were most likely to share pathogens with humans.

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Bolsonaro government thanked Johnson for Amazon fire support

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UK prime minister’s refusal to criticise Amazon fires and sharp rise in deforestation praised by Brazilian ambassador

Boris Johnson was personally thanked by the Brazilian government for refusing to support European action over the Amazon fires, according to documents obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

As the rainforest burned last summer – fuelled by a sharp rise in deforestation that critics blame partly on President Jair Bolsonaro’s agenda – Johnson criticised a threat by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to block the EU’s Mercosur trade deal with Brazil.

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Tropical forests losing their ability to absorb carbon, study finds

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Amazon could turn into source of CO2 in atmosphere by next decade, research suggests

Tropical forests are taking up less carbon dioxide from the air, reducing their ability to act as “carbon sinks” and bringing closer the prospect of accelerating climate breakdown.

The Amazon could turn into a source of carbon in the atmosphere, instead of one of the biggest absorbers of the gas, as soon as the next decade, owing to the damage caused by loggers and farming interests and the impacts of the climate crisis, new research has found.

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World’s biggest meat company linked to ‘brutal massacre’ in Amazon

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Investigation traces meat sold to JBS and rival Marfrig to farm owned by man implicated in Mato Grosso killings

A new investigation has linked the world’s biggest meat company JBS, and its rival Marfrig, to a farm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal Amazonian massacres in recent memory.

The report by Repórter Brasil comes as JBS faces growing pressure over transparency failings in its Amazon cattle supply chain.

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Bolsonaro attacks Pope Francis over pontiff’s plea to protect the Amazon

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  • Pope urged Catholics to ‘feel outrage’ over Amazon destruction
  • Bolsonaro: ‘What is Greenpeace? Nothing but rubbish’

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonarohas lashed out at Pope Francis after the pontiff pleaded for the protection of the Amazon rainforest, and attacked the environmental group Greenpeace as “rubbish”.

“Pope Francis said yesterday the Amazon is his, the world’s, everyone’s,” said Bolsonaro, who has often railed against international criticism of his environmental policies as an attack on Brazilian sovereignty.

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Cacao not gold: ‘chocolate trees’ offer future to Amazon tribes

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In Brazil’s largest indigenous reserve thousands of saplings have been planted as an alternative to profits from illegal gold mining

The villagers walk down the grassy landing strip, past the wooden hut housing the health post and into the thick forest, pointing out the seedlings they planted along the way. For these Ye’kwana indigenous men, the skinny saplings, less than a metre high, aren’t just baby cacao trees but green shoots of hope in a land scarred by the violence, pollution and destruction wrought by illegal gold prospecting. That hope is chocolate.

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‘It’s a food forest’: Amazon villagers face down Bolsonaro threat

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Project part-funded by Global Greengrants Fund UK provides economic incentive to protect forest

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From space, the Amazon rainforest resembles a giant dark-green lung veined with blue rivers that is steadily succumbing to the disease-like spread of grey fires, orange roads and square-cut farms. What the satellite images cannot show is how most of the remaining bands of verdant, healthy foliage are defended on the ground by forest dwellers who act as antibodies to drive out malignant invaders.

Among the most impressive of these is the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve in the state of Para in northern Brazil, where residents are trying to bolster their economic resistance with a series of new agro-forestry and solar power projects.

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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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