KAWEMHAKAN, Suriname — Beneath thousands of square kilometers of rainforest here lie vast deposits of gold and other minerals. Around a million ounces are extracted legally every year, but much more remains buried throughout the Amazon. In some of the farthest-flung parts of the rainforest, such as these small villages along the border with French Guiana, the government hasn’t stopped locals — joined by Brazilian miners and Chinese traders — from clearing the forest in search of gold. Moving up and down the Lawa River and its tributaries, these criminals establish mining camps and trading posts far beyond the reach of most law enforcement, where robberies, extortion and other violent crimes happen out of sight. Many Indigenous Wayana families live on both sides of the Lawa River — which also marks the border with French Guiana — and face a growing list of challenges, including health issues from mercury use on their land and dwindling wildlife populations they’ve long relied on for food. Indigenous Wayana communities have lived in the area for generations but still lack an official land title that might offer some protection. The only airstrip for kilometers around, and the primary practical connection to the capital, Paramaribo, sits in the middle of one of the Indigenous villages, giving leadership some leverage with miners and traders: Unless they want to travel for days by river to get back and forth from the city, it’s important to be on good terms with the community, residents said. These delicate relationships…This article was originally published on Mongabay
MANAUS, Brazil — Midway through the conversation with Mongabay, Otacílio Farias, a 75-year-old farmer, stops to read a message on his phone: “Right now, there’s a fire near a friend’s house.” Farias has lived his entire life near the Autaz Mirim River, near Manaus, Brazil’s largest city in the Amazon. Forest fires have affected the area for more than 30 days. “Nearby, Lake Miriti was shrouded in haze at dawn, but it wasn’t morning mist: It was smoke,” he said. Farias says the nearby municipalities of Autazes and Careiro da Várzea are experiencing the worst fire crisis of his lifetime. “My throat and nose are in terrible shape,” he said. Farias’ community WhatsApp groups are packed with pleas to save crops and reports of elderly residents rescued as flames approached. Farias was at home on Oct. 1 when friends of his 18-year-old son, Fabrício, arrived on motorcycles, calling for help against fires approaching homes. Around 100 community members joined the effort. It wasn’t until Oct. 10, however, that the Amazonas state government declared an emergency in 36 municipalities, paving the way for federal assistance. Between Oct. 1 and 19, Brazil’s space agency, INPE, recorded 1,921 fire hotspots in Amazonas, up 202% from the same period in 2025. The daily average also rose 51.5% compared with late September 2026. Of these, 584 (30.4%) were in the Manaus metropolitan area: 197 in Autazes, 134 in Itacoatiara and seven in Manaus. Hotspots also spiked after the first round of Brazil’s presidential election: INPE…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Federal civil servants in environmental and Indigenous affairs fear a resurgence of the intimidation and institutional harassment they faced under the administration of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) if his son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, wins the presidency in Brazil. The candidate has announced that he will eliminate “environmental hurdles” so rural landowners can do “whatever they want on their land.” “We literally have a target in the middle of our forehead,” Tânia Maria de Souza, president of the federal environmental civil servants’ association, Ascema, told Mongabay. “It’s déjà vu.” The Bolsonaro administration brought a relentless series of actions against the environment and Indigenous rights. Bolsonaro refused to demarcate any Indigenous territories, fulfilling his 2018 campaign pledge, while deforestation and violence against Indigenous groups and public servants escalated alongside measures to open Indigenous lands to mining and agribusiness in clear violation of the Federal Constitution. “It was traumatic,”Alexandre Bahia Gontijo, former director of Ascema and former president of Asibama-DF, which represents IBAMA civil servants in the Federal District, said of the Bolsonaro administration. “Everyone is extremely apprehensive.” Activists call Flávio’s agenda “the return of the cattle herd,” referencing a 2020 statement by then-Environment Minister Ricardo Salles that the COVID-19 pandemic was an opportunity to “let the cattle herd run through” by changing environmental rules and regulations without drawing scrutiny from the National Congress and the press. Former Environment Minister Ricardo Salles left, with former President Jair Bolsonaro (right). Image courtesy of Marcos Corrêa/PR. Flávio finished first in the opening round…This article was originally published on Mongabay
MEXICO CITY — In early October, Mexico’s environment ministry published a statement about minimizing infrastructure development inside the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, a protected area on the Caribbean coast. But environmental groups say road construction continues to move forward there, threatening mangroves, cenote sinkholes, and dunes. The courts should address a lawsuit filed by local communities to halt the road construction and repair ecological damage, they said. They added that while the statement by the ministry, formally the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), is hopeful, it doesn’t provide the same legal guarantees as a court ruling. “We want certainty for the communities that, first, the project is canceled, and second, that they repair the damage already done,” Viridiana Maldonado, co-coordinator with Territorios Diversos para la Vida, an environmental NGO that supports Indigenous peoples defending the environment, told Mongabay. “Because a good part of the project is already built, the damage is done. They cut down mangroves, they cut down forest, they interrupted hydrological flows.” The Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve covers more than 528,000 hectares (1.3 million acres) of mangroves, rainforests, and dunes in the southern state of Quintana Roo. It received UNESCO World Heritage status in 1987 and provides extensive habitat to jaguars (Panthera onca), Central American tapirs (Tapirus bairdii), and hundreds of migratory birds, among other species. The reserve also has 47 community-based tourism initiatives and 140 permits for tourism and recreational activities, according to Semarnat. The Puerta al Mar (“Door to the Sea”) project underway in…This article was originally published on Mongabay
“People think that because we live in the forest we have plenty of water, but this is the reality,” Erick Tijé, an Indigenous Harakmbut resident of the southern Peruvian Amazon, says in a tone of disappointment, pointing to the murky water flowing down the Inambari River. That river isn’t what it was five years ago, when fishing and life along its banks were very different for residents of the Arazaire Indigenous community. Illegal mining stole their water, only to return it to them polluted. Today, they have to buy the water they drink. On the other side of the Peruvian border, in the Colombian Amazon, Lázaro Ibañez, an elder of the Coreguaje people who live in the Jácome Indigenous Reserve, blames cattle ranching and climate change for reducing water availability around their territory. “The cattle have been destroying everything, and now all you can see is pastureland; there are hardly any trees left,” he says, having witnessed how deforestation to create grazing for cattle has gone hand in hand with the drying up of their water sources. Inhabitants of parts of the world’s greatest rainforest face a paradox: they’re surrounded by water, but can’t use it. For Indigenous peoples, it’s also the loss of the spirits that guard their water sources, driven away by the advance of logging and cattle ranching. Reporters from Mongabay, Colombian news outlet El Espectador, and Venezuela’s El Correo del Caroní, in partnership with scientists from Brazil’s Serrapilheira Institute, analyzed more than two decades of satellite…This article was originally published on Mongabay
“With a single stroke of a pen, he can undo all the achievements we have accomplished in these almost four years,” said the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Eloy Terena, regarding a possible victory of the far-right candidate, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, for Brazil’s Presidency. “We are very concerned.” With 47.03% of the vote, Flávio topped the first round of the presidential election on Oct. 4, despite voting polls showing current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as the favorite for reelection. “If elected, one of the first ministries that will be abolished is the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples,” Terena told Mongabay by phone. “For us, this is a given, because it’s a government that has no commitment to Indigenous peoples.” The candidates face a runoff on Sunday, Oct. 25. The unprecedented Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (MPI) was created by Lula in January 2023, fulfilling a promise to native peoples who supported his candidacy. Sonia Guajajara was appointed minister, the first time an Indigenous person led a ministry. “The creation of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples has a very great symbolic, but also effective, power, because it is a government that comes precisely after a period in which Indigenous peoples were extremely attacked during Bolsonaro’s administration,” said Terena, who took office in March when Sonia left the ministry to run for reelection as a federal deputy for São Paulo. The unprecedented Ministry of Indigenous Peoples was created by President Lula in January 2023. Sonia Guajajara was appointed minister, marking the first time…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Home of the world’s largest biodiversity, the Brazilian Amazon is one of the main hubs for international wildlife trafficking. Every day, thousands of animals are taken from the rainforest to be sold in other parts of the country and abroad. Despite its key role in this illegal market, there is still a lack of information about wildlife trafficking in the region. Data on animal seizures is scattered at the municipal, state and federal levels. The lack of an integrated system, along with the region’s vast territories and porous international borders, makes it difficult to get a full picture of wildlife trafficking in the rainforest. “Every river you travel on in the Amazon will have traffic incidents,” conservation intelligence specialist Antônio de Carvalho, from the conservation NGO WCS Brazil, told Mongabay in a phone interview. WCS Brazil is currently working on a Global Wildlife Trafficking Observatory, which will rely on artificial intelligence to gather information about wildlife trafficking from news websites and academic researchers. The goal is to support the work of investigators, environmental agents and journalists. “A lot of data on seizures is lost because the seizure is simply carried out and the animals are released right there on the spot, and that doesn’t even make it into official statistics,” Carvalho said. The zebra pleco (Hypancistrus zebra) lives only in a small stretch of the Xingu River, in Pará, and is highly coveted as an ornamental fish. Image courtesy of Birger A. In another attempt to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Lawmakers in Suriname are calling for a formal investigation into mining activity that allegedly uses heavily restricted chemicals like cyanide, and risks creating runoff and pollution in the surrounding ecosystem. On Sept. 19, two members of the National Assembly, Rabindre Parmessar and Michael Marengo, visited an area in Pelin Bergi, near Kwakoegron, in northern Suriname, and said they discovered “substantial” mining activity that raised legal questions about permitting. Now, the two lawmakers are calling on President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons to launch an immediate investigation and temporarily halt all mining activity in the area. “The situation on-site raises fundamental questions about the nature, duration, permitting, oversight and the fiscal and environmental controls on these activities,” the lawmakers said in a letter, reviewed by Mongabay, to the president’s office last month. It added, “[It’s] necessary to establish how activities of this scale have been able to take place over an extended period and to what extent the state’s interests and revenues have been protected in the process.” The lawmakers, who traveled with a group of local journalists and an environmental activist, observed “deep excavations” at the site and materials being transported to processing locations. There were also indications of cyanide use via heap leaching, a process in which the chemical is sprayed onto rock to dissolve gold, making it easier to collect smaller particles. The import and use of cyanide is heavily restricted in Suriname. Geerlings-Simons is trying to phase out imports and implement a registry system for the chemical, which is still…This article was originally published on Mongabay
PUERTO WILCHES, Santander – On the banks of Colombia’s largest river, the town and the wider municipality of Puerto Wilches sit amid a maze of wetlands and floodplain lakes in the Middle Magdalena Valley. Residents spend weekends at riverside swimming spots known as balnearios and nearby waterfalls, while local fishermen still cast their nets each morning. Since about 2018, however, the municipality has been a focal point in Colombia’s debate over how to balance energy security, environmental concerns, and the transition away from fossil fuels. In 2021, Puerto Wilches was chosen for two pilot projects to test whether fracking, a method of extracting oil and gas trapped in shale rock, could be done commercially in Colombia, targeting shale formations beneath the region. Then-President Gustavo Petro later halted the projects, arguing that Colombia should move away from fossil fuels rather than expand oil and gas production. But that policy could soon be reversed under the new government of right-wing populist Abelardo de la Espriella, who during his campaign pledged to “fully open the door to fracking.” De la Espriella and other fracking supporters say the practice could help shore up Colombia’s gas supplies. According to the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), the country’s proven gas reserves will only last another 5.9 years at the current production rate and with no new discoveries. Critics, however, warn that fracking could expose communities and ecosystems to environmental risks while also deepening Colombia’s reliance on fossil fuels, just as the country has been accelerating its clean…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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