Tropical forest covers 12% of the planet’s land surface yet hosts around two thirds of all terrestrial species. Amazonia, which spans the vast Amazon River basin and the Guiana Shield in South America…
A satellite captured large and small deforestation patches in Amazonas State in 2015. The forest loss has escalated since then.
USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images
The lockdown may be a greater worry than the disease itself.
Antonio, from the Yanomami village of Watoriki, photographed in November 1992. After contact with Brazilian society in the 1970s, more than half the Yanomami population died from infectious diseases.
William Milliken
Reversing the damage from fires in Brazil’s rainforest is not as simple as allowing trees to grow back. Decades of research shows how fires degrade their long-term health and utility.
The First Mass in Brazil (1860) by Victor Meirelles.
Wikipedia
Don’t blame climate change for the 39,000 forest fires now incinerating huge tracts of the Brazilian Amazon. This environmental catastrophe is human-made and highly political.
Brazil’s new president could clear the way for plans to develop remote areas around the Tapajos River basin over the objections of the indigenous people who live there.
Maningrida, a community on Australia’s remote north-central coast, is a language hotspot.
Jill Vaughan
At the Maningrida football Grand Final in 2015, commentary was recorded in nine languages. But elsewhere, the threat of language loss poses a serious risk to our nation’s cultural inheritance.
One of the four newly discovered titi monkeys from Southern Amazon, Brazil.
Diogo Afonso Silva
Rivers are natural boundaries for evolving populations. But scientists don’t agree whether they create new species or just help maintain them. Research using birds’ molecular clocks provides some answers.
Illegally logged rosewood in Antalaha, Madagascar, 22 February 2005.
Erik Patel
The illegal timber trade is a huge global business worth up to US$150 billion yearly. One way to curb it is by convincing consumers in wealthy countries that buying contraband wood products is wrong.
A mythical Amazonia of lost tribes or lost cities is easy to challenge on a factual basis, but such objections appear rather feeble in the face of the power of cliché.