The Amazon rainforest is the region of Brazil that has suffered the most from deforestation - Press Release/Brazilian Federal Police A rural worker was found dead on Wednesday (29) in the town of Labrea left his house last Sunday morning (26) to pick up chestnuts He was a resident of the Marielle Franco encampment His body was found next to a motorcycle with a gunshot wound to the chin On January 14, another worker was killed in the region. Small farmer Francisco do Nascimento Melo, known as Cafu, was shot dead in the rural area of the municipality of Boca do Acre while the suspect was giving testimony at a police station Civil Police Chief Paulo Mavigner posted a video on his Instagram profile sharing general information about the case “Valdir Silva is responsible for the killing of Cafu a fact that happened amid an agrarian conflict and which generated big repercussions in the city of Boca do Acre,” he said.  Boca do Acre and Labrea are two of the 32 municipalities in Amacro where agribusiness activities are expanding the Amacro region lost approximately 7 million hectares of native vegetation according to data from the Amazon Institute for Man and the Environment (Imazon) It is also a region with high rates of deforestation and a concentration of agrarian conflict cases such as those that killed Jacozinho and Cafu recorded 27 conflicts over land in 2023 involving river dweller communities “In 2023, Amacro concentrated 10% [179] of all land conflicts registered in Brazil, and 26% of all assassinations that took place in the context of conflicts in the countryside,” highlights the pastoral's 2023 Report on Conflicts in the Countryside Of all the 31 murders related to conflicts in the countryside that year five of which were caused by land grabbers of the 60 registered conflicts in the countryside in the state of Acre Professor Julia Adão Bernardes explains that violence against residents of the area is part of the process of expanding agribusiness frontiers “The Brazilian agribusiness frontier is born from the conflict over land with the populations in the areas that will be affected by commodity plantations [raw materials produced on a large scale for export a researcher in social geography at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ murdering their leaders and threatening their way of life,” she says.  a resident of the Tiago Campin dos Santos encampment located in Porto Velho capital of Rondonia (a municipality that makes up Amacro) The area where he used to live was being reclaimed by the company Leme Empreendimentos Ltda whose owner is a well-known land grabber in the region two other residents of the area were also assassinated by military police in a repossession action six squatters – known in Brazil as “posseiros” – were victims of an assassination attempt in the same region where Cafu was killed on the Recreio do Santo Antônio undesignated public land lawyer Fernando Ferreira da Rocha was shot dead inside his house in Boca do Acre According to a publication on the CPT's website he worked to defend peasant families in the region he had to change his address and joined the Ministry of Human Rights' Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Communicators and Environmentalists (PPDDH when it was announced that the Recreio do Santo Antônio undesignated public land was untitled federal land that the government was collecting to register and legalize the land for landless families,” he explains While the demarcation doesn't take place the land remains legally insecure and is targeted by land grabbers According to the most up-to-date database of the National Register of Public Forests (CNFP around 15% of Amacro's territory is made up of undesignated public land This corresponds to an area of more than 6.5 million hectares These are lands that belong to the state or federal government but have not yet been transformed into settlements Conservation Units or other protected territories such as Indigenous Lands and the Quilombola Territories.  This is the case of the Recreio do Santo Antônio gleba inhabited by extractivists and squatters who are waiting for their land to be regularized According to the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) Although the conflicts have intensified since 2017 Capistrano has been receiving threats for over a decade a man warned that Capistrano and one of his colleagues would die that year he received notes and messages threatening him among other kinds of intimidation.  “We are threatened because we denounce land grabbing crimes against rural workers,” says Capistrano who has been threatened for more than a decade “When you denounce this absurdity – these factors that directly affect communities as happened with Cafu – we are targeted,” he laments the landowner suspected of killing Cafu announced he would kill the rural worker The suspect used to threaten and intimidate landless workers “Valdir killed Cafu on the branch that leads to the colony," he says The branch – a small dirt road – is an access route between the area occupied by landless workers and the city of Boca do Acre Valdir Silva has properties on the side of the road and The landowner installed a gate on the road and padlocked it “They wanted to take land from residents saying that the area was his and that of other ranchers,” says Capistrano.  Boca do Acre has just over 35,000 inhabitants and is on the list of Brazil's 100 largest municipalities in terms of land area according to a dossier published by the De Olho nos Ruralistas Observatory with a territory equivalent to that of the state of Sergipe the municipality had almost 305,000 hectares occupied by pasture which represents around 13% of its territory The municipality is on the list of priority areas for action to curb deforestation in the Amazon monitored by the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm The list includes 70 municipalities which together are responsible for almost 80% of deforestation in the biome On the edge of the farm is the Marielle Franco encampment, where Jacozinho lived, occupied by around 200 families who are waiting for the land to be regulated. While the area is not demarcated, residents denounce attacks by big landowners. There have been reports of houses being set on fire and threats. The people responsible for the farm claim ownership of the land, which they acquired in 1985. The case is before the courts. According to INCRA, “the process of collecting the area was sent to INCRA's Specialized Federal Attorney for legal analysis on December 30, 2024." Like Boca do Acre, Labrea is on the list of the 100 largest municipalities in Brazil, being the 10th place on the list, with a territory of almost 7 million hectares. In 2022, farmer couple Sebastião David Pereira and Maria Aristides da Silva were murdered in an ambush. They lived in the Monte Settlement Project, Pará state, created in 1994 to house 940 families. In 2023, the CPT recorded four conflicts in PA Monte. “Land grabbing is quite common in this region and this has become a very dangerous scheme because those who have money call the shots and those who don't obey,” Capistrano laments. All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced, provided it is not altered and proper credit is given. All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced, provided it is not altered and proper credit is given. Local authorities have declared a state of emergency Defesa Civil Amazonas (the state’s civil defense) have distributed more than 36 tons of humanitarian aid to flood victims “We … are working on the needs of the population and municipal deficiencies caused by this natural disaster,” said the Secretary of Defesa Civil Amazonas At least 70 families have been forced from their homes and are being housed in emergency tents Authorities say that 8 out of the 9 local districts have been affected across the city Schools in the area have been closed as a result of the floods Defesa Civil Amazonas reported that the city’s water treatment plant has been damaged increasing worries about supplies of drinking water Maize and banana crops have also been flooded Boca do Acre is a small municipality of around 30,000 people located at the point where the Purus and Acre rivers meet High levels of the Acre River earlier this month caused severe flooding in several locations in Acre state, in particular the city of Rio Branco where the river reached record levels Parts of Amazonas state were affected soon after Recent heavy rainfall in the region could mean increased levels of the Purus and Juruá rivers This may well add to the flood woes in numerous parts of Amazonas and could affect municipalities including Itamarati which have already been placed under “Situação de Emergência” by Defesa Civil Amazonas Richard Davies is the founder of floodlist.com and reports on flooding news Cookies | Privacy | Contacts © Copyright 2025 FloodList Marielle Franco Landless Families' Encampment The Brazilian Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra, in Portuguese) has concluded the process of collecting part of the area of Novo Natal non-designated land (known in Brazil as “gleba”), in the town of Labrea, State of Amazonas, for the families living in the Marielle Franco encampment The process’ conclusion could end almost a decade of violence landless families have been attacked – including torture and threats – and have had their houses burned down an encamped landless worker was found dead Araújo claims innocence and defines the region as a “lawless land.” The collection of 28,400 hectares of the Novo Natal gleba – the process that designates the land as belonging to the state – was published in Brazil’s Official Gazette on February 24 of this year According to Incra’s superintendence in Amazonas the settlement will probably be created in the next few months and will serve 150 of the 200 families waiting for the area to be regularized The encampers’ activities include harvesting Brazil nuts This practice allows for environmental preservation a farmer who prefers not to reveal her last name has lived in the encampment for around nine years “We were under psychological torture,” she says referring to the pressure on the community during the conflict as well as house fires and threats of eviction Joana believes that collecting the land and settling the families will reduce the number of attacks by large landowners One of the big farmers the encampers identified as the mastermind behind the threats is cattle rancher Sidnei Sanches Zamora who owns land in the states of Acre and Amazonas Among them is a property called Palotina Farm which partially overlaps the area the encampers are requesting was arrested on remand by the 7th Federal Environmental and Agrarian Court of the Amazonas Judicial Sub-section as part of an investigation into a criminal organization specializing in land grabbing Zamora Filho said he was dismayed and surprised to receive the arrest order “Especially since I wasn’t even heard [by authorities].” “I have always denounced the invaders and cooperated with environmental and police authorities,” he added In a reply sent by email he said that his legal team “managed to reverse this injustice and canceled the preventive detention order by proving that I had not committed any violent crime” the cattle rancher claims that Incra has recognized his ownership of Palotina Farm is signed by João Miguel Souza Aguiar Maia de Sousa a colonel appointed to the position of National Agrarian Ombudsman during Jair Bolsonaro’s government (2019-2022) Maia de Sousa became notorious for sending a memo to Incra’s regional superintendencies recommending that they not receive “entities that do not have legal status” the determination prevented the institute from dialoguing with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST the certificate of ownership for part of the land that Zamora Filho mentioned has been canceled which is to fulfill Incra’s mission of collecting vacant land,” says the superintendent the Amazon needs to have its territory regularized democratized and produced according to sustainability principles,” he says The Marielle Franco landless encampment is located in a border area between the towns of Labrea and Boca do Acre both in the state of Amazonas and leaders in the number of cases of violence in the countryside according to data from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT “While we’re witnessing a decrease in violence in the Legal Amazon it’s growing in Amacro,” says Afonso Chagas Amacro concentrated 10% [179] of all land conflicts registered in Brazil and 26% of all murders that occurred in the context of conflicts in the countryside,” highlights the Pastoral’s 2023 report on conflicts in the countryside Of the 31 murders related to rural conflicts in Brazil that year of the 60 records of agrarian conflicts in the state of Acre physical violence and murders have been a specialty of landowners about the high number of violence cases in Labrea and Boca do Acre He believes that the difficulty in reaching the region is one of the factors driving the rise in violence With more than 6 million hectares – the same area as Sri Lanka – Labrea is the tenth-largest municipality in Brazil Although the Marielle Franco encampment is within Labrea the complaints against Araújo were registered by the police in Boca do Acre whose urban area is closer to the encampment From the urban center of Labrea to the community area it is more than a thousand kilometers of distance “As the region is difficult for the state to reach – that is everything is far away because it’s a border area – the jurisdictions are not sufficiently demarcated Impunity is a kind of cover and legitimacy for these violent practices,” says the Pastoral worker Another attraction for land grabbers in the area is the abundance of undesignated public lands – those that belong to the state or federal government such as Indigenous Lands and Quilombola Territories these areas are left in a state of legal insecurity and are attractive to invaders “[Amacro] is the epicenter of all this violence which corresponds to the other data: That’s where there is the largest number of uncollected federal public lands not allocated and illicitly appropriated by large land grabbers,” explains Chagas the first conflict on the Novo Natal gleba Paulo Sérgio Araújo was arrested after going to the Boca do Acre Civil Police to report a case of violence in the Marielle Franco encampment in February 2024 when four residents of the area were beaten and tortured filming the illegal logging activities of invaders in the area when they were approached by men wearing bulletproof vests According to one of the victims’ statements to the Civil Police the aggressors “(…) beat them with a ‘machete the victims say that the attackers told them they weren’t going to kill them “so that they would tell the community to be afraid of them” A video the residents recorded shows one of the victims “No investigation was conducted into the crime of torture,” Araújo complains When he went to the police to report the case Araújo found out about the investigation against him According to the victims’ statements the torture was filmed and transmitted to the mastermind using a Starlink router which allows internet access in remote areas In August 2024, Araújo’s house was burned down. A few days later, another house in the encampment was also consumed by fire They even killed the dog that was inside the house,” Araújo recalls The community leader is currently at his family home in Rio Branco where he is serving an open prison sentence and awaiting the next decision from the courts He will only be able to return to the encampment if his imprisonment is reversed All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced provided it is not altered and proper credit is given All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced InfoAmazonia three years later: over half of the forest burned in the Amazon has become pasture In addition to the area targeted for livestock nearly 40% of the forest affected by the 2019 arson is still unused and was burned ‘for the sake of burning.’ Three years later, 61% of the forest area burned on the “Day of Fire” in São Félix do Xingu, Altamira and Novo Progresso, in the Brazilian state of Pará, has turned into pasture. However, not everything that burned became space for livestock: 37.4% of the affected forest area remains forest, but is now degraded These municipalities are among those where the most forests burned in the criminal action of the Day of Fire when groups of ruralists coordinated on WhatsApp to set fire to the Amazon from the edges of Interstate BR-163 Located over 1,600 kilometers from the epicenter Novo Progresso Porto Velho (Rondônia) is third on the list Of the ten municipalities that saw the most forest burned in the episode Lábrea recorded the highest conversion to pasture: 91.53% of the area that caught fire in the municipality in 2019 has become pasture The lowest conversion was registered in Arame (Maranhão) with 10.62% of the burned area transformed into pasture and the remaining 89% turned into degraded forest 48.7% of the burned area has become pasture and 49.8% turned into degraded forest 75.44% of the area was converted into pasture and 23.13% is now degraded forest: Partial and gradual elimination of forest vegetation for the selective extraction of wood and other natural resources It can also occur due to fire and climate change.; in Novo Progresso 67.15% has become pasture and 31.37% degraded forest The analysis was conducted by researchers from the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) a monthly survey of fire scars in the country The data refers to the changes detected between 2019 and 2021 – conversion data for 2022 and 2023 are not yet available The results are available in an interactive panel. It is possible to select the display by states located 2,300 kilometers from Novo Progresso (Pará) and just over 200 kilometers from Rio Branco (Acre) is the most distant among the 20 with the largest areas of burned forest Although the criminal action of the Day of Fire was concentrated in Pará and Mato Grosso four other states of the Legal Amazon: A region that occupies almost half of Brazilian territory and has an area greater than that of the Amazon biome recorded fires of large proportion: Amazonas “The fact that these fires have reached this far from a crime coordinated by groups from Novo Progresso only shows that the people who set fire to the forest mainly targeted the Brazilian Amazon especially in states with a high concentration of indigenous lands and protected areas,” says Ane Alencar The fact that these fires have reached this far especially in states with a high concentration of indigenous lands and protected areas Of the six states with the most burned forest at the time Amazonas was the one with the highest conversion rate: 76.71% of the burned forest became pasture Maranhão was the state whose burned forest area changed the least: 24.17% became pasture and 74.9% degraded forest In all the states of the Legal Amazon: A region that occupies almost half of Brazilian territory and has an area greater than that of the Amazon biome. there were over 11,500 km² of forest burned from the Day of Fire while another 46.6% gave way to degraded forest The portion draws attention from researchers “The behavior observed after burning is normally a change in land use either with conversion to pasture or agriculture But we see that the areas of forest burned on the Day of Fire have not met the same fate the images show us that much of the forest areas were burned ‘for the sake of burning,’ without necessarily having any use afterwards not even an illegal one,” explains Felipe Martenexen a researcher at IPAM who conducted the analysis The behavior observed after burning is normally a change in land use Traces of illegality in the action are more evident with the data of burned forest in indigenous lands: Territories of the Union recognized and delimited by the federal government in order to maintain the indigenous way of life and culture throughout the country and conservation units: Territories designated for the maintenance of ecosystems and natural resources for society as a whole and delimited managed and protected by the public authorities. Urubu Branco would take Porto Velho’s place as having the third largest area of burned forest The indigenous territory inhabited by the Tapirapé people in the northeastern region of the state of Mato Grosso has the second largest area of burned forest out of the indigenous territories The Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area would also surpass Porto Velho: a conservation unit with the largest area of burned forest located in the municipalities of São Félix do Xingu and Altamira The smoke penetrates our homes and it gets very hot The red-footed tortoise is one that has disappeared from our region one of eight in the Urubu Branco Indigenous Territory the source of a tributary of the Tapirapé River began drying up every year “This water had never dried up before but now we’re seeing it all the time “Another strong impact is in terms of culture: we can no longer find the leaves of wild bananas not to mention the specific woods that we used to build the Takãra the roofs of people’s homes are made of coconut leaves we’re not going to have any more new houses,” he adds The eight villages organize actions to prevent and combat the fires that have entered the territory Groups trained by the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples: FUNAI responsible for implementing policies to protect and promote indigenous rights throughout Brazilian territory and with the support of the Fire Department operate on indigenous land headquartered in the main Tapi ‘itãwa village and with rooms in the others over 300 children and teens learn about the relationship between fire and nature The areas affected by the fire are concentrated in the north of the indigenous territory which may indicate the presence of invasions and land grabbing: Illegal occupation of public lands through the falsification of documents. As the fires tend to get close to villages in this region the community wants to institute indigenous brigades in order to control them the fires continue until they reach the village We’re all responsible,” says the chief Days with even more fire in the Brazilian Amazon occurred after 2019 there were 30,900 hot spots in August and 19,900 in September according to data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) the years 2020 and 2021 maintained the same level and there were over 33,000 hot spots in August and 41,000 in September more than double that of the same month in 2019 The smoke that permeates the daily lives of the Amazon’s populations has once again reached the Brazilian Southeast and countries such as Bolivia and Peru It was the largest record of outbreaks in the biome since September of 2007 The explanation might be found on the calendar of institutional politics Scientists estimate that the occurrence of fires and deforestation usually increases in election years The diversion of the government’s attention leads to a weakening of oversight which paves the way for environmental crimes the largest area of forest burned in 2019 and 2022 Of the ten cities with the most burned areas in 2019 they also repeated the feat in the same period last year: Porto Velho The presence of fire in the Amazon is directly related to human interference Fire does not occur in the forest without agricultural operations or deforestation the application of fire in an attempt to “clear” an area can get out of control and become a forest fire fire is part of a stage of the deforestation process According to MapBiomas Fogo 19% of the Brazilian Amazon was burned on at least one occasion between 1985 and 2022 an area larger than the state of Minas Gerais About 68% of that total was burned more than once there’s also a time: 75% of fires occur between August and November during the “burning season,” characterized by a dry period in most of the biome The application of Integrated Fire Management (IFM) strategies can reduce the risk of the fire spreading IFM includes the mapping of vegetation and risk areas the formation of local fire brigades and the creation of barriers to the passage of fire Measures to control deforestation and forest degradation are also reflected in the reduction of burning since fire is one of the main components of these processes The first phase of the PPCDAm (Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon) reduced the burned  area by 46% between 2004 and 2012 “The process of recuperating degraded forests is slow and the problem is that the more degradation the more likely new disturbances are to occur which makes recuperation even more difficult the first step in recuperating a forest is precisely to protect it preventing new disturbances from taking place,” says Alencar who also coordinates the MapBiomas Fogo network The analysis developed for this report used data from the Monitor do Fogo on land cover and use – these surveys are the most recent available and go until 2021 they do not include changes that may have occurred in 2022 and 2023 Satellite images from 2018 were used to compare with the forest cover prior to the Day of Fire This report is the result of an exclusive partnership between the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and InfoAmazonia, published specifically as part of the project PlenaMata Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" The fires are largely responsible for the pollution related to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases A study shows that the Amazon rainforest is capable of absorbing 26,000 tons of particulate matter per year and that indigenous territories contribute 27% of this total Preserving them prevents 15 million new cases of illness every year Brazilians elect 81 federal deputies committed to the environmental cause Former environment minister Marina Silva and indigenous leader Sônia Guajajara promise to heat up debates on the issue in Brasília A scientist at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research with almost two decades’ research on the Amazon for has carried out a ground-breaking analysis of how deforestation puts agricultural production at risk and turns Brazil into a driver of climate change By visiting this site, you agree to the use of cookies, which are designed to improve your experience and are used for the purpose of analytics and personalization. To find out more, please read our Cookies policy Thousands of fires burning across Brazil’s Amazon rainforest have captured international attention over the past week. The fires are mainly being set by ranchers and farmers seeking to clear land for cultivation is cause to be “freaking out,” according to tropical fire ecologist Paulo Brando of the University of California Not only are the fires releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide and smoke but they’re also a sign that the Amazon is under direct threat of destruction Here’s a look at some of the numbers that define the fires burning in the Amazon this week Smoke billows during a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Humaita The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon region so far in 2019 reported by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research as of Monday This number is smaller than some reports — that claim more than 80,000 fires have been burning since January — because it only refers to hot spots located by satellite in the Amazônia Legal (Legal Amazon) region of Brazil The number of countries that contain part of the Amazon rainforest Watch: Instagram story with more footage of Amazon fires The approximate amount of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil alone. That’s why Brazil’s Amazon region is of major international concern. However, Bolivia is also fighting fires and increased deforestation in its portion of the Amazon A satellite image shows smoke rising from Amazon rainforest fires in the State of Rondonia Brazil in the upper Amazon River basin on August 15 Photo credit Satellite image ©2019 Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters The amount that G-7 countries, which collectively have a GDP of nearly $34 trillion, have pledged to fight fires in nations that are home to parts of the Amazon rainforest G-7 nations spent approximately twice as much — $40 million — on the current summit in Biarritz The number of troops that the Brazilian government has pledged to send to help fight the fires A snake is seen while a tract of the Amazon jungle burns as it is cleared by loggers and farmers in Porto Velho The highest possible estimate for how much of the planet’s oxygen comes from the Amazon rainforest. There are plenty of other reasons to worry about the Amazon, but oxygen isn’t one of them The proportion of all known species on the planet that live in the Amazon. So far, researchers have described 40,000 species of plants, 3,000 species of fish and more than 1,000 species of birds that live in the forest. Some scientists estimate that Brazil is likely home to a total of nearly 2 million species of invertebrates The number of indigenous groups that live in the Amazon and depend on the forest and rivers for food and shelter © 1996 - 2025 NewsHour Productions LLC PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization Subscribe to Here's the Deal with Lisa Desjardins the page you were looking for could not be found The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web “Where does your ayahuasca come from?” is a question many drinkers of the psychoactive Amazonian brew would just as soon not ask of their suppliers a religion whose rituals are based on the purifying power of this drink and trained forester in Brazil’s northern Acre state In a 2017 video posted to YouTube titled “Is your ayahuasca sustainable?” Martins warns that vastly increased international demand for ayahuasca is motivating unsustainable harvesting of the vine and leaf used to make it and that often it’s concocted for profit made “any old way” by people who don’t even drink it themselves and who don’t care about the future of the forest As the scene jumps to a shot of a chainsaw-wielding man in the forest cutting down a tree to retrieve the vine growing on it Martins warns viewers that they may be drinking ayahuasca with “good intentions,” but if its source is unknown there’s a risk that it “wasn’t produced with good intentions,” and “that’s harmful for the forest.” But members of its oldest Santo Daime churches tell Mongabay the rules have done little to mitigate either threat adherents of Santo Daime say the churches have had to fight to sustain themselves and to seek self-sufficiency by increasing their own plantings of the vine and leaf Jair Facundes tells of helping make ayahuasca for his church as a child in Acre’s capital “When the adults would bring the leaves from the forest,” he told Mongabay in a video interview “they’d have detritus in them — twigs spiderwebs — and so they’d spread them out on a table and the kids would clean them up.” Once cleaned the leaves — from the shrub Psychotria viridis a relative of the coffee plant — are added to mashed pieces of the vine to be boiled in large pots for hours over a raging hardwood fire While these two plants are the staple ingredients of all ayahuasca drinks found throughout the Amazon different communities have their own variations; for the Santo Daime devotees their particular blend of ayahuasca is called simply daime Traditional daime production is a process involving the whole community Women and children could help with the leaves and cooking the daime were strictly men’s work this reporter learned from past fieldwork in the region the men must harvest the vine within three days of the new moon and prepare the drink in a special building at the forest’s edge while observing strict dietary and sexual taboos When the daime is consumed — in folk Catholic rituals centered either on dancing and hymn-singing or seated meditation — its suitability for spiritual “work” is understood to depend on the purity of intention instilled in it by this sacred production process one of a number of Santo Daime churches in Rio Branco’s outlying Irineu Serra neighborhood an outspoken critic of ayahuasca’s commercialization insisting on volunteer labor and transparent accounting of church expenses — down to toilet paper and cleaning supplies — are keys to staying true to “Mestre” (Master) Irineu’s commitment never to charge for his spiritual work is why “it’s called daime [‘give me’] not vendaime [‘sell me’].” For the first several decades of Santo Daime’s existence its adherents faced little difficulty acquiring the plants to make the ayahuasca arrived in the area as a young man around 1910 part of a wave of rubber boom-era migration according to research on Santo Daime’s origins He learned to make and use ayahuasca in the border area between Brazil and by the 1920s had brought the practice to Rio Branco Indigenous people across the Upper Amazon had used ayahuasca for centuries if not millennia; in bringing it to the city as part of a reportedly Christian mission received who appeared to him as the “Forest Queen.” At the time of his death The number of people flocking to the Amazon grew quickly in the 1970s as it became a focus of the military regime’s land reform attracting itinerant southern spiritual seekers who soon established the first Santo Daime churches outside the Amazon most notably in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo thereby beginning the expansion process that accounts for much of today’s global demand for ayahuasca with its several adjoining hectares of forest is able to meet its need for daime with cultivated plants “Just one of these trucks would provide enough vine to supply the oldest Daime centers for five years,” Facundes says “The situation today is worse than it’s ever been a Santo Daime church located on a couple of hundred hectares of an old rubber camp in the municipality of Capixaba about 60 kilometers (38 miles) from Rio Branco He describes seeing a typical pattern of deforestation unfold on neighboring properties in last 20 years since the religious center was founded: smallholders in resettlement projects clear the forest to farm then sell their plots to larger ranchers when it gets difficult to make a living from them The ranchers then consolidate several small plots into a larger one and convert it all to pasture “Sometimes they’ll leave a small patch of forest and you go into it and find all kinds of vine and leaf It makes you sad for what was lost in the rest of the forest that was cut down.” Acre’s current rules on harvesting the vine and the leaf were outlined in 2010 to preserve the plants as a means of ensuring the sustainability of its rubber-boom-era ayahuasca culture which was formally recognized as state cultural heritage in 2006 The regulations mostly duplicate those put in place by IBAMA the federal environmental protection agency requiring ayahuasca centers to register with the state to keep track of their production and consumption of ayahuasca and to limit the quantities of vine and leaf they harvest the regulations compel responsible ayahuasca centers to play by the rules but do little to stop those that serve the commercial market Tarauacá and Sena Madureira — ranked among the top 10 Amazonian cities in terms of total area deforested is stretched thin watching over everything “from gas stations to general forest management,” according to Cristiane Souza Complaints about unauthorized ayahuasca production are rare and it’s been “three or four years” since IMAC has received any a prosecutor of Acre’s State Public Ministry there have been no prosecutions for unauthorized harvesting of the regulated plants during this time he’s worked to undo the PT legacy that favored environmental and cultural causes summed up in the concept of florestania (a neologism evoking “forest citizenship”) was what helped move the discussion around ayahuasca from being an issue of drug policy to one of cultural heritage giving it a voice in projects — like a bypass highway and high-voltage power lines — that threaten its quality of life With its church surrounded by one of the largest unbroken areas of forest in Rio Branco CICLU-Alto Santo is well positioned to sustain its 300 members with cultivated vine and leaf to make daime But the stresses on the natural resources are symptoms of a deeper malaise that’s part of what gives the church grist for its spiritual work Alves says: a tension between dominion over nature and belonging to it Buying ayahuasca expresses the desire for dominion in contrast to the relationship to the natural world that Santo Daime is about After two decades of progress that made it possible to treat Acre’s ayahuasca churches as a matter of cultural heritage instead of drug use the churches seem caught up in a new wave of extractivism fed by weakened environmental policy “If they can start a fire right under the nose of the environmental authorities and not get caught,” Martins says “how is the state going to do anything about somebody out in the forest at night making ayahuasca for sale?” Banner image: Straining ayahuasca at the Forest Queen Center in Rio Branco The unfinished liquid is strained several times and added to fresh plant material to strengthen the brew FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page. The “fortress conservation” model is under pressure in East Africa, as protected areas become battlegrounds over history, human rights, and global efforts to halt biodiversity loss. Mongabay’s Special Issue goes beyond the region’s world-renowned safaris to examine how rural communities and governments are reckoning with conservation’s colonial origins, and trying to forge a path forward […] Rivers have been rising since the start of the year and surpassed alert levels in many areas in early April Figures from the Geological Survey of Brazil (CPRM) show that levels of the Solimões River (name for the upper stretches of the Amazon River in Brazil) in Manacapuru municipality the Negro River at Manaus and the Amazon River at Itacoatiara have since exceeded the highest alert level referred to as Cota de inundação severa (Severe flood level) CPRM warned in April that this year’s flood in Manaus is likely to be among the highest in recent years and possibly surpass the highest on record seen in 2012 when the river reached 29.97 metres the Negro River at Manaus stood at 29.19 metres Civil Defence were monitoring the situation of around 5,000 vulnerable families at several points of the city along the river Local media reported 5 people were injured on 03 May after floods swept through a camp for refugees from Venezuela The city of Manaus declared a state of emergency on 06 May 2021 As of 21 May state government 23,960 people have been affected by floods in the capital As of 24 May flooding has affected communities across 52 municipalities across Amazonas state The hardest hit areas include Parintins municipality where 47,035 people have been affected; and Manacapuru with 40,052 affected Other hard-hit municipalities include Codajás (20,300 people affected); Ipixuna (17,275); Boca do Acre (16,887); Anori (16,652) and Barreirinha (16,560) To ease the hardship on affected communities the State Government of Amazonas is carrying out an aid programme under the name Operação Enchente 2021 (Operation Flood 2021) distributing food items and offering credit debt amnesty and the suspension of the water charges Over the last few weeks aid has been distributed to communities in several municipalities in the state Manacapuru and most recently Careiro da Várzea where the state government said that flooding has now affected 24,087 people and displaced almost 8,000 WASHINGTON (AP) — Brazil’s foreign minister said his country is successfully extinguishing the fires in the Amazon region that have generated international concern after discussing the situation with President Donald Trump on Friday at the White House. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said earlier in the day that his son and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo were heading to Washington to discuss possible U.S. aid in fighting the fires. The far-right president said he asked Trump for help and the U.S. president had said that “he couldn’t make a decision without hearing from Brazil.” Araujo told reporters after meeting with Trump that the fires “are not an excuse to promote ideas of international management of the Amazon,” though he said the South American country is open to cooperation with other countries. “The fires that exist today are already being fought and we are being successful in extinguishing most of the fires,” he said, adding that the meeting with Trump did not bring up specific U.S. aid. Bolsonaro is considering appointing his son, congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, to be ambassador to the U.S., though the posting would need to be approved by the upper house of the Brazilian congress. Araujo said the Trump administration had already expressed its approval to a possible ambassadorship of congressman Bolsonaro. “Now we have to wait for the Senate to approve hopefully the invitation,” he said. Araujo said the fact that Trump hosted both him and the congressman at the White House even though they are not heads of state “shows how far we are in building a very special relationship with the United States.” The compliments about the relationship with the Trump administration contrast with criticism of Brazil’s government from French President Emmanuel Macron and some other European leaders. A $20 million offer of aid from the Group of Seven nations to help fight fires and protect rainforest stalled after Bolsonaro said Macron would have to apologize for remarks he had made. Macron had questioned Bolsonaro’s trustworthiness and commitment to environmental safeguards in a sharply personal dispute between the two leaders. “All of Europe, together, doesn’t have any lessons to pass to us when it comes to preservation of the environment,” the Brazilian president said. Bolsonaro said he expected to speak by telephone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Journalists asked him about the possible resumption of donations to a Brazilian government fund for the Amazon. Norwegian donations, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, were suspended this month because of concerns about Brazil’s commitment to the environment. Germany has also suspended a separate line of funding for Amazon projects. “We want to know where this money will go,” Bolsonaro said. “Usually it goes in part to NGOs, which gives no return. In part it goes to good things … but it’s a lot of money for little preservation.” Bolsonaro also said that past allocations of land to indigenous people, many of whom live in the Amazon rainforest, had been excessive. About 14% of Brazil is indigenous territory, a huge area for a relatively small population, the president said. Some indigenous leaders say their communities are under pressure from farming and ranching expansion and complain that authorities are doing little to enforce environmental law. Without offering evidence, Bolsonaro initially suggested that non-governmental groups started the fires to try to damage the credibility of his government, which has called for looser environmental regulations in the world’s largest rainforest to spur development. Critics say his policies and promises have motivated ranchers and loggers to move into the Amazon, sometime setting fires to open land for farming and pasture. On Thursday, Brazil banned most legal fires for land-clearing for 60 days in an attempt to stop the burning. Many of the current fires were set in areas already cleared of trees. About 60 percent of the Amazon region is in Brazil. The Amazon’s rainforests are a major absorber of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. By Leo Correa, Mario Lobao, Anna Jean Kaiser, Associated Press By Luis Andres Henao, Christopher Torchia, Associated Press Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm. © 1996 - 2025 NewsHour Productions LLC. All Rights Reserved. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Sorry, the page you were looking for could not be found. The page might have been removed, had its name changed, or become temporarily unavailable. The latest engineering, electronics and technology advances Most of the fires in the Amazon are on private lands, but one-third are in environmentally protected or indigenous areas. (Bruno Kelly / Reuters)August 27, 2019 ShareSave Over the past week, as fires have sent up enough smoke to darken the skies of São Paulo the world has rallied concern for the fate of the Amazon leaders pledged support and $20 million to help fight the fires only to have that amount rejected by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who claims that the Amazon belongs to Brazil and that the country’s “sovereignty” is under threat this is a fight over who controls this land and how it will be treated And for the indigenous people who live among the forests now burning but the vivid illustration of a long struggle for autonomy one of the most well-known indigenous leaders in Brazil suspects that farmers and ranchers could have set the fires to clear the land or burned indigenous territories to send a threatening message in the dry season the fires could have been started by recklessness “Right now any cigarette butt could turn into a fire,” she says During his campaign, Bolsonaro promised to push indigenous people to “develop”— arguing that marking out indigenous territories for indigenous people only serves to separate them from the rest of the population, like “animals in a zoo.” During a televised national address Friday night command and control enforcement actions are not enough We need to give opportunity to all of this population so they can develop like the rest of the country,” he said Although plenty of fires were burning before this moment these enthusiasts intended to show Bolsonaro that they were “ready to work,” that is ready to clear the land and make it productive for farming and ranching Read: The Amazon cannot be recovered once it’s gone Sometimes forest land is slashed and burned by its owner: In the case of the current Amazonian fires two-thirds of the fires started since January have been on private lands But according to data from the Instituto Socioambiental in the past month there were 3,500 fires in 148 indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon “This is a pretty shocking statistic,” says Christian Poirier He says that indigenous people are responding by “trying to expose what is happening on their territories and demanding that the government take action.” who handles many indigenous affairs for the public ministry of the Amazonian state of Pará “I’ve been receiving many complaints in the past few months of many invasions on indigenous land.” These intrusions are happening “even in areas that have been guaranteed in Brazilian law to be free from invasion.” The Brazilian constitution offers protections to both the environment and indigenous peoples but local enforcement agencies often fail to safeguard either “Enforcement has essentially been paralyzed in the Bolsonaro administration,” Palmquist says She says that indigenous people often complain to the police that they hear tractors or see smoke coming from the forest but that the federal police don’t seem to do anything “The indigenous people are on the front lines They are feeling the greatest impact from the destruction of the forest,” she told me “Indigenous people have always been protecting biodiversity and nature; we’ve always been working for this,” says Aldilo Amancio Caetano Kaba Munduruku in the upper Tapajós River area of southern Pará state “And today many white men are invading the territory of the Munduruku." About 300 different indigenous groups exist in Brazil and for decades many of them have fought for the demarcation of their lands The Brazilian constitution describes indigenous territories as areas where indigenous people can live permanently—that is where they can practice their cultures and traditions (which might include hunting or cutting down trees)—even though the land technically still belongs to the government The multistep process to demarcate lands as indigenous territories can take years and requires groups to demonstrate that the land is their ancestral territory Many groups have been stuck in limbo in that process waiting and hoping for the government to act Read: The Amazon fires are more dangerous than WMDs which is known to be tightly allied with the rural lobby of agribusiness interests Poirier equates this act with “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.” Although the Brazilian Congress and supreme court pushed the demarcation power back to FUNAI the demarcation process “has essentially been frozen,” Poirier says we are under threat of invasions and explorations so demarcation is our minimum legal protection to avoid these things.” Environmentalists also believe that demarcation is a key tool for environmental protection and for keeping the Amazon intact “The best mechanism for the protection of the forest is demarcation,” says Miguel Aparicio a professor of ethnography who has been researching indigenous communities in the Amazon for 25 years “Demarcated land has the lowest rates of deforestation so there is nothing better than demarcating to guarantee the long life of the forest.” He says that the fires are being put out most quickly by residents when they are in indigenous territory “because indigenous people are truly fixated on extinguishing the fires and protecting their land.” For him more indigenous territory means more guardians of the forest and “For us to lose the forest and the animals in these fires … they are basically burning our rights and our way of life,” Guajajara says “The fires are destroying where we get our food; they are damaging the rivers where we get our water; and they are impacting our rituals So these burnings are immeasurable losses.” If the forest burns it is almost always because of humans around the peak of the so-called "queimadas" as the burning season here is known the number of fires in Brazil's Amazon jumped to its highest since 2010 Fire is the second stage in clearing the forest Cutting down the forest is illegal without permission and using fire is against the law except in exceptional circumstances The latest data from August 2018 through July 2019 showed more rainforest was cleared than at any point in the past 11 years An area larger than Puerto Rico was cut down Preliminary figures suggest the rate has increased since Three teams of Reuters journalists spent weeks travelling thousands of miles across the world's largest tropical rainforest this year witnessing the devastation of what scientists regard as a vital protection against climate change stretching into the distance beside the road Some people have taken protecting the forest into their own hands Reuters spent seven days with an indigenous vigilante group fighting to keep illegal loggers off their land in the state of Maranhao six Guajajara tribesmen – faces painted for battle – rushed to ambush a group of loggers At a choke point in the local network of rutted dirt roads forcing the loggers to scatter into the forest One of the men that night was Paulo Paulino Guajajara He knew it was dangerous work and spoke frankly of his fear Members of his tribe said loggers had shot him through the head PHOTO EDITING BY GABRIELLE FONSECA JOHNSON; TEXT EDITING BY MIKE COLLETT-WHITE; LAYOUT BY JULIA DALRYMPLE A house stands in front of a burning tract as it is cleared by loggers and farmers near Porto Velho Billows of smoke rise over a deforested plot in Porto Velho An aerial view looks over a burning tract as it is cleared by farmers in Itaituba A truck drives through a deforested plot in Boca do Acre An aerial view shows a deforested plot near Porto Velho Remains of trees lie on the ground of a burnt tract near Porto Velho Eliane Muller walks next to a burnt tract as it is cleared by farmers after the fire hit 2 acres from her cassava plantation in Rio Pardo The carcass of a cow lies along a tract as it is cleared by loggers and farmers in Porto Velho A cow stands in front of a burning tract as it is cleared by loggers and farmers in Apui reacts in front of a deforested area in nondemarcated indigenous land inside the Amazon rainforest Employees relax in a camp inside the Bom Retiro deforestation area on the right side of the BR 319 highway near Humaita plays while a fire burns in the distance as it is cleared by loggers and farmers near Porto Velho A Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) fire brigade member attempts to control hot points during a fire at Tenharim Marmelos Indigenous Land Smoke from a burning tract rises into the distance behind a cabin near Porto Velho A tree trunk is engulfed in flames during a fire in Itapua do Oeste IBAMA fire brigade members attempt to control hot points during a fire at Tenharim Marmelos Indigenous Land A tract burns at Tenharim Marmelos Indigenous Land Huge geometric earthworks built by pre-Columbian people are thought to reflect agroforestry (photo: aerial view of the Jacó Sá site Huge geometric earthworks built by pre-Columbian people are thought to reflect agroforestry By Peter Moon  |  Agência FAPESP – In the last 30 years deforestation in the east of Acre State in Brazil has revealed hundreds of massive geometric earthworks built by pre-Columbian peoples demonstrate beyond doubt that the region was inhabited thousands of years ago and that the forest cover was partially cleared in that era to make way for agricultural land use currently supported by FAPESP with a postdoctoral scholarship received her PhD from the University of Exeter for research on the environmental impact of prehistoric settlers in the region due to the earthworks that they built She studied two excavated and dated geoglyph sites: Jacó Sá and Fazenda Colorada. The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and immediately drew international attention, with news coverage by The New York Times The Jacó Sá archeological site is reached from Rio Branco by taking the BR 317 highway toward Boca do Acre in Amazonas State It takes about an hour to drive the 50 km to Jacó Sá you can see pastures with Nelore cattle where there used to be primary Amazon rainforest Remnants of the biome are still visible on both sides of the road in the far distance This entire portion of the far west of Acre was covered by primary forest until the 1980s and has since been cleared for cattle ranching Half the region’s forest cover has been lost if it were not for the expansion of human settlement in Acre the more than 450 prehistoric geoglyphs catalogued so far would have remained hidden under forest cover There are geoglyphs all the way along the Acre Iquiri and Abunã river valleys between Rio Branco and Xapuri as well as north of Rio Branco toward Amazonas State Neither the shape nor the size of the geoglyphs can be seen from the ground but they are visible from aircraft flying at 500 m square or rectangular; concentric circles or circles inside huge squares are frequent the geoglyphs are huge ditches measuring 11 m across and 4 m deep The immense amount of soil that must have been removed for their construction is striking indicating that the population size must have been considerable both square shaped and about 100 m in length on each side One has a perfect circle inside the square Satellite images of these geoglyphs can be found on Google Maps at 9°57′38"S 67°29′51”W Watling wanted to discover what type of plant cover existed in the area at the time that the geoglyphs were built The team set out to answer a number of questions such as “Was bamboo forest also dominant before the geoglyphs What was the extent of the environmental impact associated with geoglyph construction?”  Other questions included: “Was the area covered by forest before the arrival of the people who built the geoglyphs for how long did the cleared areas remain open What happened to the vegetation once the geoglyphs were abandoned Did previously cleared areas undergo forest regeneration?” Watling is now carrying out postdoctoral research under the supervision of Eduardo Góes Neves an archeologist affiliated with the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archeology & Ethnology (MAE-USP) she spent six months working on the archeological digs in Acre Her findings at Jacó Sá and Fazenda Colorada showed that the bamboo forest ecosystem has been there for at least 6,000 years which suggests that the bamboo was not introduced by Amerindians but was instead part of the original landscape Human settlement of the area dates from at least 4,400 years ago especially since 4,000 years before the present (BP) implies that forest clearing and/or management by Amerindians intensified over time The main increase in charcoal coincides with the period during which the geoglyphs were built Despite the relative ease with which bamboo forest can be cleared (compared with laborious mahogany and Brazil nut tree felling Watling found no evidence that sizeable clearings were created for geoglyph construction and use this means that the geoglyphs were not built in an area deforested by clear cutting they were surrounded by closed-canopy forest The local vegetation was never kept completely open during the pre-Columbian period This finding is consistent with archeological evidence that the geoglyphs were used on a sporadic basis rather than continually inhabited,” Watling said “The digs haven’t brought to light a significant number of artifacts which suggests the geoglyphs were not places of permanent habitation Another conclusion is that the geoglyphs were not built in untouched forest that was cleared The paleobotanic data analyzed by Watling suggest that they were built on previously occupied land in anthropogenic forest that had been fundamentally altered by human activities over thousands of years This makes sense now that the region is known to have been inhabited for 4,000 years its inhabitants spent 2,000 years managing the forest before the geoglyphs were built Research on other geoglyphs has shown that the people who built these huge structures grew corn and squash forest clearing by fire between 4,000 and 3,500 years BP was followed by a significant increase in the number of palm trees in the forest composition No natural explanation exists for this increase in palms: the climate in the region was (and still is) wet and hence favorable to colonization by tall trees forming a dense canopy palm proliferation correlates with an overall increase in human land use their trunks can be used as pillars and beams for longhouses and their leaves can serve as thatch roofs this suggests that the first inhabitants of the region cleared some forest and then allowed the proliferation of only the plant species that they found useful prehistoric and ancient settlers used primitive forest management techniques for thousands of years The absence of charcoal only 500 m away from the geoglyphs implies that the surrounding forest was not cleared “This suggests the geoglyphs were not designed to be visible at a distance which is an unexpected finding,” Watling said The geoglyphs studied by Watling and colleagues from Brazil and the UK were abandoned about 650 years ago concordant dates associate the beginning of palm decline with the period of geoglyph abandonment The geoglyphs are striking in the beauty and precision of their outlines What techniques did they use to achieve such perfect forms The first image that comes to mind is of the Nazca Lines a vast series of giant animal figures and other shapes “drawn” in Peru’s Nazca desert They were discovered in 1927 and dated to about 3,000 years ago they appear to be endless lines that disappear over the horizon The best-known figures include a hummingbird These and other Nazca Lines were made famous in the 1970s by Swiss author Erich von Daniken’s book Chariots of the Gods which sold millions of copies and was made into a documentary film with the same title Von Daniken claimed that certain civilizations were visited by some form of intelligent extraterrestrial life and that this explained why the Nazca geoglyphs made sense only from a great height explaining that the Amerindians who created these works of art thousands of years ago in Nazca intended to appease the gods and persuade them to make rain The geoglyphs in Acre are 1,000 km northeast of the Nazca desert and a lack of rain is not a problem in tropical Acre Watling’s postdoctoral research is also focusing on the impact of an indigenous settlement on the forest a dig in the Upper Madeira River region of Rondônia “Teotônio has some of the oldest datings in prehistoric Amazonia It’s been occupied for at least 5,000 years,” she said The article “Impact of pre-Columbian 'geoglyph' builders on Amazonian forests” (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1614359114) by Jennifer Watling, José Iriarte, Francis E. Mayle, Denise Schaan, Luiz C. R. Pessenda, Neil J. Loader, F. Alayne Street-Perrott, Ruth E. Dickau, Antonia Damasceno and Alceu Ranzi, published in PNAS, can be read by subscribers at: pnas.org/content/114/8/1868.abstract We're on a mission to spread meaningful content far and wide By subscribing I accept the terms of use and privacy policy. 97% of the 12,000 square kilometers of land deforested in Brazil last year was in the Amazon and the Cerrado Half of the cleared area was concentrated in three states: Pará (2,990 km²) The data is from the First annual report on deforestation in Brazil an initiative that aims to map land use in the country a nongovernmental organization (NGO) comprised of 36 Brazilian civil societies more than 99% of the deforestation was illegal involving clearing without authorization or in prohibited areas “Brazil clears more forest than any other country in the world deforests less than half of the area removed in Brazil each year,” says forest engineer Tasso Azevedo The report counts deforested areas above 0.003 km² (3,000 square meters) approximately half the size of a soccer field By cross-referencing data from the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) with vegetation clearing permits and forest management plans the initiative also identified where deforestation occurred in conservation units and indigenous reservations there was at least one deforestation alert in 16% of the 1,453 areas listed in the National Register of Conservation Units and in 37% of the 573 indigenous reservations in Brazil Using its own methodology to determine the situation in each biome the results are based on deforestation data from three different public it used alerts issued by the Real Time Deforestation Detection System (DETER) operated by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) managed by the Institute of Man and the Environment in the Amazon (IMAZON) an environmental organization operating in northern Brazil The situation in the other ecosystems was calculated based on information from the Global Land Analysis & Discovery (GLAD) initiative at the University of Maryland the new report cannot be used to make comparisons with previous years or to infer trends indicate that deforestation in the Amazon has been rising over the last year after having fallen between 2005 and the middle of the last decade which is officially responsible for monitoring deforestation rates in the Amazon and the Cerrado has not yet determined its final figure for 2019 but it estimates that deforestation reached 9,762 km² last year The definitive deforestation rate is expected to be calculated and disclosed later this month (June) “The rise in deforestation seen last year will certainly continue,” comments Cláudio Almeida a specialist in remote sensing and coordinator of the INPE Monitoring Program for the Amazon and Other Biomes the consolidated figure is an average of 4% above or below the preliminary estimate.” The total area deforested in Brazil last year is 50% larger than the entire São Paulo Metropolitan Region Copernicus Sentinel-1 / ESA Overlaid radar images show deforestation in part of Mato Grosso: the blue areas were deforested in 2015 and red in 2019; the gray areas suffered no significant changeCopernicus Sentinel-1 / ESA Short-term data indicate that the clearing of native vegetation in the northern Amazon is continuing at an accelerated rate even since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country According to the most recent IMAZON bulletin 1,073 km² were deforested in the Legal Amazon between January and April 2020 an increase of 133% over the same period in 2019 a system created by IMAZON in 2008 that uses images of Earth provided by Landsat (a NASA satellite program) and Sentinel a European Space Agency (ESA) observation mission The system is capable of detecting deforestation in areas as small as 0.01 km² (1 hectare) The same trend can be seen in the INPE data from DETER it recorded the highest number of deforestation alerts in the Amazon in the last five years There is also cause for concern in other Brazilian biomes home to much of Brazil’s agricultural sector was reduced to a quarter of its previous rate The annual deforestation rate varies from 6,500 to 7,000 km² the biome that has historically suffered the most and where more than 70% of the Brazilian population lives deforestation had been decreasing since 2016 According to a survey published last month by SOS Mata Atlântica in partnership with the INPE deforestation in the biome in 2018/2019 increased by 27.2% over the previous year—an estimated 145 km² was cleared More than half of the deforestation occurred in two states: Minas Gerais and Bahia less than half of the area recorded in the previous year two states managed to stop deforestation: Alagoas and Rio Grande do Norte,” says Marcia Hirota As there are still no continuous deforestation monitoring programs in the other Brazilian biomes (the Caatinga it is difficult to know precisely what is happening in these ecosystems we plan to extend this service to other biomes,” says the INPE’s Cláudio Almeida © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved Subscribe to BuzzFeed Daily NewsletterCaret DownThese Heartbreaking Photos Show The Devastation Of The Amazon FiresMore than 80,000 fires have broken out in the Amazon rainforest in 2019 leaving a trail of ash and devastation in what is often called the "lungs of the planet." The Amazon rainforest has seen more than 80,000 fires sweep across its lush ecosystems this year, which, according to Brazil’s space agency INPE The Amazon rainforest is home to 10% of all known species on Earth and soaks up vast amounts of carbon dioxide which is essential to fighting global climate change “The Amazon forest is a subject for the whole planet We can find the means for your economic development that respects the natural balance," French President Emmanuel Macron said "But we cannot allow you to destroy everything.” These photos show the total devastation left in the wake of fires that continue to rage in the Amazon rainforest Brazilian farmer Helio Lombardo Do Santos and a dog walk through a burnt area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho An aerial view of the Amazon forest in Porto Velho The right side shows the forest calcined by the fires A tree stump glows with fire amid smoke near the city of Porto Velho A section of the Amazon rainforest is decimated by wildfires near Porto Velho A snake is left dead following fires in Rondônia A region of the forest is left burnt near Porto Velho Firefighters walk across charred land near Porto Velho Military firefighters stand in line to board a plane to Rondônia to help fight fires in the Amazon rainforest An aerial view of burnt areas of the Amazon rainforest A fallen tree glows red with embers near Abunã A tract of the Amazon rainforest is seen after a fire in Boca do Acre A tract of the Amazon rainforest in Boca do Acre A fallen tree lies surrounded by charred ground near Porto Velho Regions of the forest are left burnt near Porto Velho A tract of the Amazon jungle in Boca do Acre Flames continue to burn on a toppled tree in Boca do Acre é uma doença de contato cujo tratamento também é feito com a Ivermectina - UFAL health experts and state and local administrations are investigating an outbreak of skin lesions that might be linked to the increased use of ivermectin falsely claims that the drug is an effective treatment against covid-19 The possible link between ivermectin and the public heath problem was first made in a paper published in august written by a group of researchers from the Alagoas State University "Ivermectin is an antiparasitic and antimicrobial drug that’s what happens: every time people excessively use an antimicrobial drug it increases the chance of the pathogen getting resistant" a professor from the Alagoas State University.  Also on this week show: the surveys to the 2022 elections in Brazil point out the former president Lula leading the poll president Jair Bolsonaro is in the second position and the former judge Sergio Moro is in the third position.   heart of the Amazon rainforest: from there comes a big part of the Brazil nuts consumed in the urban areas That is a product that arrives at our tables only because of the hard work of the extractive workers produced by Brasil de Fato journalists in partnership with the ngo Papel Social went to the forest to show who are these workers.   All What's Happening in Brazil episodes are available at Brasil de Fato's YouTube channel, where you'll also find a special English-content playlist. Partners who wish to include a longer version of the show in their schedule may contact our international team at [email protected]. For more news about Brazil and our region, visit our website. The requested content cannot be loaded.Please try again later. with deforestation leaping almost 10 per cent in 2020.Smoke billowing from a patch of forest being cleared with fire in the surroundings of Boca do Acre in the Amazon basin in northwestern Brazil in 2019 The Amazon rainforest could soon become the Amazon savanna as a result of climate change 2 min readPublished 1 December 2020 9:15am ShareGet SBS News daily and direct to your InboxSign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.Your email address *Morning (Mon–Fri) NO SIGNS OF STOPPING: A tract of Amazon jungle is seen Aug BRASILIA – Six states in Brazil’s Amazon region requested military help on Saturday to combat record fires that are tearing through the rainforest provoking an international outcry because of the Amazon’s central role in combating global warming Acre and Mato Grosso – out of the region’s nine – have requested military assistance according to a spokeswoman for the president’s office a day after President Jair Bolsonaro authorized the military to step in The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and its protection is seen as vital to the fight against climate change because of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide it absorbs Brazil has 44,000 troops stationed in its northern Amazon region that are available to combat forest fires and could send more from elsewhere in the country the joint chief of staff for the country’s military Botelho and other officials did not say how many troops would be involved and gave few operational details of how they would be used and where Defense Minister Fernando Azevedo said forces would be concentrated in certain areas depending on the individual mission two planes would be made available that have capacity to carry 12,000 liters of water mixed with fire retardant river patrol forces and the local office of the Defense Ministry’s Amazon monitoring unit fewer than 50 troops will be sent from Brasilia to Porto Velho in Rondonia state to support operations there including 30 firefighters and 18 communications specialists executive director of think tank Brazil Climate Center and a founder of Brazil’s Green Party said while he supported military involvement he doubted that anyone would be able to put out the existing fires “Once you have a huge forest fire like that especially when you don’t have all the kind of forest firefighting equipment that you have in places like the U.S “They’ll only be extinguished by themselves depending on the weather conditions.” The military can help to prevent additional forest fires by enforcing environmental laws and stopping people from setting the fires Environmentalists have said that farmers clearing land for pasture were responsible for the uptick in fires Sirkis blamed the fires on speculators seeking to clear the land they hope to later sell for farming saying they have been emboldened by Bolsonaro’s strong rhetoric in favor of development of the Amazon region Bolsonaro enraged critics on Wednesday when he accused nongovernmental organizations of burning down the Amazon rainforest to hurt his government But on Thursday he admitted for the first time that farmers might be involved in lighting fires in the region Poll results are published every Monday in The Guam Daily Post Saturday’s Mad Collab Block Party in Hagåtña brought together more than 70 local businesses and artists in celebration with hundreds of attendees It was all about the wonders of Artificial Intelligence in the palm of your hand All of the latest features in Samsung's Galaxy AI were showcased at a GTA-sponsored event Thursday University of Guam students and alumni presented original research at the 19th annual International Conference on Business Economics & Information Technology (ICBEIT) hosted by the University of Guam School of Business and Public Administration in Mactan Newtown Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: Deforestation in the Amazon destroyed an area bigger than Spain from 2000 to 2018 wiping out eight percent of the world's biggest rainforest The Amazon plays a vital role in curbing climate change but destruction of the rainforest has only accelerated in recent years found the study by the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG) 513,000 square kilometres of the rainforest have been lost according to the updated Amazon atlas produced by the organisation a consortium of groups from across the region It is RAISG’s first such atlas since 2012 The consortium found that after hitting a high of 49,240 square kilometres of forest loss in 2003 − a record for this century − deforestation eased to a low of 17,674 square kilometres in 2010 the destruction has since surged to startling levels “The Amazon is far more threatened than it was eight years ago,” RAISG said in a statement “Deforestation has accelerated since 2012 The annual area lost tripled from 2015 to 2018,” the study found 31,269 square kilometres of forest were destroyed across the Amazon region the worst annual deforestation since 2003.” The Amazon stretches across eight South American countries − Brazil Suriname and Guyana − and the territory of French Guiana which holds most of the Amazon − about 62 per cent − is also responsible for the worst deforestation the study found: 425,051 square kilometres from 2000 to 2018 The destruction in Brazil has only accelerated since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019 Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged to a 12-year high of 11,088 square kilometres from July 2019 to July 2020 which analyses satellite images to track forest loss That was a 9.5 per cent increase from the previous year when deforestation also hit a more than decade-long high Bolsonaro has come under fire from environmentalists and the international community for cutting funding for rainforest protection programs and pushing to open protected lands to agribusiness and mining please register for free or log in to your account Dramatic images of the devastation of world's largest tropical rainforest Get the latest news and updates straight to your inbox Look: Al Jouf's olive trees burst into bloom Rent-a-chicken takes off as egg prices soar in the US The fire has spread so much it’s visible thousands of kilometres away in the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo and even from space Let's tell you more about the Amazon fires how these fires affect Qatar and what we can do about it as individuals and are raging with the consent of Brazilian President Bolsonaro and his lack of action regarding deforestation violations These environmentalists believe he is encouraging cattle ranchers and loggers to start the fires so they can monetise the land by building on it while some experts say ranchers and farms started the fires to clear out existing farmland Bolsonaro says non-governmental organisations (ngos) may have started the fires to criticize his government The Brazilian government has deployed its armed forces to try to put out the fire and has rejected aid from international countries who want to help stop the fires raging through the Amazon which is the world’s largest tropical rainforest is often talked about and referred to as the ‘lungs of the earth’ because it is the producer of approximately 15-20% of the world’s oxygen supply Though the Amazon is an essential part of the fight against global warming disagree with the theory that it’s the ‘lungs of the earth’ The Amazon is essential in the fight against global warming because it absorbs the carbon in the atmosphere and locks it away in the trees and the soil The Amazon forest is spread over Brazil (which has the biggest share: 60%) Suriname and French Guiana and makes up approximately 25% of the annual global sink when we lose this much carbon to the atmosphere it has huge consequences on world climate and global warming so protecting the Amazon is of critical importance The Amazon is also a biodiverse area and preserving it is of utmost importance because it slows down the extinction of different animals and plants 3,000+ plant species and 40,000+ plant species in the Amazon there are more than 305 indigenous groups residing in the Amazon and their survival depends on the Amazon forest and its rivers for food and shelter These fires are playing an integral role in degrading the world’s largest carbon sink and the most important home for biodiversity they are increasing the rate of deforestation and if the Amazon reaches its tipping point scientists believes there are chances of it becoming a dry savannah especially since at this point in the world’s life we need more and more trees so the climate of the world can be stabilised not the loss of the biggest rainforest in the world it’s important that we play our part in helping to save the environment we live in We may think this has nothing to do with us these fires will effect the climate we live in and the air we breathe No contribution is big small; every little bit counts In the word's of one of the worlds most well-known activists: we can all do our part and help save the environment: If you have anything you want to share with us, send us an e-mail at [email protected] Want to send a tip? 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